by James Fahy
The running of the house in Irene’s absence was left as always to Hestia, and Madame Calypso was to remain in charge and ensure guardianship of the children.
This was not a task the nymph was particularly happy with, pointing out to Irene as they filled the large car with luggage, and not bothering to lower her voice, that her only responsibility in the house should be the Scion. The others, the nymph insisted, were perfectly able to govern themselves, with the exception of the faun, who, she allowed, was determinedly ungovernable.
It occurred to Robin as they stood on the steps, watching the car being loaded, that he hadn’t actually seen Woad at all since the night before. He had muttered something about being off on a ‘top-secret mission’, which was a phrase he used commonly when hunting squirrels, and hadn’t been seen since. He hadn’t been in Robin’s room when Robin fell asleep, and he hadn’t been there this morning either. There had been nothing but a few crusts of jellied bread on the table in the breakfast room this morning. Scant but convincing evidence that the messy creature had been around at some point.
“Just make sure that nobody throws anyone against a wall again,” Irene patted Calypso’s hand a little absently, unruffled by the nymph's protests. “And no impalements please.”
With a farewell to Robin, Karya and Jackalope, she and Mr Drover left, the autumn sun flashing from the rear window of the old rolls as it disappeared away under the brown crisp avenue of trees.
Robin glanced up at the sky after the car had gone and the sound of its engine had faded under the long avenue of trees which led down the hill. There was a definite chill in the air, and the clouds were pale and almost glowing, a sure sign of snow in the offing.
“Well,” Calypso eyed them all hazily. “Erlking has stood for time immemorial. I trust you three not to tear it down while I go down to the lake for a swim.”
“A swim?” Karya wrinkled her nose. “It’s freezing. You’ll be breaking through ice to get to it. I’ve never known a colder autumn.”
“I have swum in the northern oceans of the Netherworlde,” Calypso replied. “Where the ice is thicker above you than a castle wall, and as green as glass. The mortal world is a mild enough place.” She glanced back to the house thoughtfully. “And anywhere is preferable to the presence of a spluttering firecracker, today of all days. I will be glad when it is over, and our guests have gone.”
Robin, Jackalope and Karya retreated back inside out of the cold, leaving the nymph to dodge responsibility and Mr Ffoulkes, in her own way, and wondering how to fill their time until tonight. Henry would be up after school later. He had promised to make it to the Halloween feast. Hestia had indicated that she was preparing a great and impressive spread in honour of those planning their leave for the Netherworlde at midnight.
So, it was with some surprise, these plans already laid and agreed, that Robin found Ffoulkes standing at the top of the grand staircase, wrapped in a great, fur lined overcoat of golden suede and brocade, with several bags and cases at his feet.
“Off is she? The old gal? A-hahah,” he called down to them. “Fair play to her. Busy one, your aunt. But so good of her to let us stay. I only hope I offered some small guidance while we were here in these most luxuriant halls. And, of course, that we were not too much of a bother.”
“What are you doing?” Karya said, frowning up at him with her small hand on the bottom of the bannister.
Ffoulkes beamed his toothy grin and clapped his hands, rubbing them together. “Well! The thing is, I thought we’d get off too. The sisters and I. No time like the present, eh? Wouldn’t want to be a bother with the lady of the house gone and all. And my business in the Netherworlde is rather pressing.”
“We understood you would stay for the feasting tonight,” Jackalope pointed out, crossing his arms. “The mortals have a great tradition of it. There is to be much food to honour the dead and spirits. I aim to experience this thing they call ‘jelly’. That is the plan.”
Foulkes shook his head dismissively, picking up his heavy cases. He had a small backpack nestled between his shoulder blades also, lost in the furry folds of his decorative coat. “That does sound smashing!” he said. “And yet, the Netherworlde calls. As the sisters would say, ‘when the stars align', yes? Ahaha. I have business in the Agora town and if I'm to get there on time, we really should leave now. Such a shame, so sorry to be dashing. Shall we?” He turned and disappeared from the top of the staircase, not waiting to hear a response from any of them. He was headed, Robin guessed, for the red door at the end of the corridor upstairs which served as Erlking's own Janus station.
“Come along, young master of the house,” the Fire Panthea's jolly voice floated back. “The sisters are waiting already. They travel awfully light. Just a few wispy rags. You know, I don’t know how they manage it.”
Hestia had appeared from a side room, as was her wont when trouble was in the offing. Robin explained what was happening, and the short housekeeper looked both surprised and affronted.
“Leaving? Now? All of them leaving?” she stammered. “But … but … Hestia has prepared the feast! The gammon is salted! The potatoes are boiling. Seven … seven meringues have been prepared! And for all of this I do nothing? None of it to feed our guests? All of it only for …” she stared at Robin, Karya and Jackalope in disbelief. “…for you? It is not for you that I work my fingers to the bone all through the night!”
Bustling and bristling, she followed Robin and the others hastily up the stairs and along the twisting corridors of Erlking, grumbling all the time, until all of them reached the long passage at the end of which lay nothing but an unassuming red door. It was plainly decorated, yet a doorway to another world nonetheless. Before it stood Foulkes, practically hopping from one foot to the other in his strange eagerness to leave, and beside him, still and silent as the grave, the shadowy silhouettes of the three sisters who had raised Jackalope from his slumber.
“Aha! Here at last. The man of the hour,” Ffoulkes said, cheerily. “Capital! Capital! I believe this doorway opens for you, Master Robin, yes? Scion and all?”
“I do not understand this hurry,” Hestia said, sounding a little devastated and affronted. She was looking from the man to the sisters in confusion. “The feast? The feast tonight! A proper send off was prepared. There are … there are rules to hospitality.”
“More like guidelines, my dear woman,” Ffoulkes insisted dismissively, with a beaming smile. “And we must bend them a little, I’m afraid. Terribly sorry, of course. The Netherworlde calls, and a good business deal never waits, as they say.”
“Maybe we should fetch Calypso?” Karya said quietly to Robin.
“No time for that, cherub,” Ffoulkes said loudly. “The sisters and I are away, and that’s all there is to it. Although, of course, please do give my most ardent apologies to that wonderful vision of a lady, that I could not offer her words of parting in person.” His face became grave. “In truth, it is likely she knows already of our leaving, and the thought of our separation may be something too great for her to bravely bear.” He nodded gravely at his own words. “No, no. let her mourn our leaving in private. Women’s hearts are such fragile things.”
Robin suspected the most fragile thing in this corridor was probably Ffoulkes' jaw, should Karya get within swinging reach.
“The veil is thin from dawn on allhallows to midnight,” one of the sisters whispered quietly. “Any time is good to leave. The alignment of the stars is fair.”
“You see?” Hestia said quickly and hopefully. “There is plenty of time to stay. Won’t you be our guests this evening? So much work …”
“Alas,” Ffoulkes said, his voice perhaps a little firmer than intended. For a second, his eyes flashed orange. “Now is our time.” He looked to Robin, his mask of carefree geniality firmly back in place, though it had slipped for a second, and they had all seen it. “Scion of the Arcania? If you would be so kind as to do the honours?”
Robin hesitated. There was some
thing not right about all this. The sudden leaving. It all felt wrong. Not that he’d be sorry to see the back of the man.
Ffoulkes noticed the boy’s hesitation. He tilted his head to one side enquiringly, his waxed moustache twitching with a smile.
“Not a problem is there?” he asked. “We are after all guests at Erlking, not … ahahaha … prisoners?”
There was nothing really Robin could do. He couldn’t argue with this fact, and he could hardly stop them from leaving early, even if he’d wanted to. No matter how much it might upset Hestia and all the work she had put into the Halloween feast. It was incredibly rude of Ffoulkes, but it wasn’t actually a crime.
He reached past the sisters and placed his hand on the silver doorknob with its intricately carved letter J. There was a flash under his palm, like a ripple of static electricity, and he felt his mana stone pulse as Erlking reacted to him. There was a click, loud in the quiet corridor, and the doorway slowly opened.
Beyond the portal, it was daytime in the Netherworlde too, although from the warm breeze that rolled over him, it was significantly less chilly. Golden light flowed in what looked to be a short corridor of black stone, through a galley of high arrow-slit windows on one wall. A few paces in, and a wide stone spiral staircase, worn smooth and dipped like melted butter under the eons of many feet, wound down and away from them. The inner walls were scattered with overgrown ivy here and there.
This door, to Robin's knowledge, had never yet opened onto the same part of Netherworlde Erlking twice. It seemed to connect to a different portion of the immense, crumbling palace each time.
The smells of the Netherworlde, rolling through the door and over Robin, were the same though. Deep spices, honey and cloves, wild fresh grass, and something undefinable that never failed to make his heart ache a little.
The women passed silently through the doorway and out of the mortal world. The last of the three peering down at Robin through her veil.
“You have been fine hosts to us, little Scion,” she whispered raspily. “We have tried to repay your hospitality as we could.” She glanced back at Jackalope, standing in the corridor between Hestia and Karya. “In doing so, perhaps we have set events most calamitous in motion. But fate is blind, and the games she plays must play out. We are all merely pieces on her board. Remember that.” A bony hand reached out and laid on his shoulder. Robin managed to suppress a shudder, not wanting to seem rude.
“But remember also, that with the right strategy and chance, a pawn may one day topple a queen.”
The gnarled hand slid listlessly from his sweater with a rasp, and the woman moved on. “Or even … an empress,” she hissed.
Robin watched the three spectral women glide away down the stone corridor of Netherworlde Erlking, passing in and out of bands of golden sunlight until they reached the spiral staircase and disappeared silently from view. Compared to the tedious Ffoulkes, for all their creepiness, they didn’t seem too bad on the whole. They had helped Jack after all. If only they hadn’t predicted Robin being buried alive, he might have actually warmed to them. But things like that can stick in the mind.
“As the ladies go, so must I,” Ffoulkes said, clapping Robin on the shoulder heartily. “Be a good boy, eh?” He glanced down at Robin’s sweater and jeans ensemble critically. “And do work on developing a sense of style to match your bearing, eh? Clothes maketh the man, am I correct? Aha.”
Something rolled between Robin's feet and bumped against the brushed patent leather of Ffoulkes' shoe. They both peered down curiously.
It was a globe, like a cloudy glass crystal ball, smoky and churning beneath its surface.
“Oho,” Ffoulkes exclaimed. “What’s this then?” He tapped the orb with the tip of his shoe, and it rocked back a little, then rolled itself back at his foot a little urgently.
“Oh, that’s Inky,” Robin said, surprised. “It’s a kraken, well, a baby one anyway. Woad’s pet. We made him a travelling bubble so he can get about.”
He was aware of Hestia’s outraged stare behind him. They had managed, up to this point, to hide Inky’s existence from the housekeeper.
Ffoulkes shifted his backpack slightly and drew back a little, frowning good-naturedly at the ball. “Well well!” he said. “Will wonders never cease? This place, honestly. It really is filled with the strangest things. Little chap seems to have taken rather a shine to me.”
“Inky doesn’t really take a shine to anyone,” Karya observed, glancing back along the corridor to see if Woad had finally appeared. Usually the two were never very far from one another.
“I’m afraid you cannot come on this journey with me, little one,” Ffoulkes said, good naturedly. He pushed the orb back again a little more forcefully, as though shooing a bothersome cat. “Run along now, eh? That’s a good … squid.”
Robin bent and picked up the ball of water containing the kraken, cradling it in his arms and peering at Ffoulkes curiously. The ball was practically vibrating, as though Inky were thrashing around inside. He could even hear the faint screeching hisses. The creature was very agitated.
“Not that I wouldn’t enjoy such an exotic familiar on my travels,” Ffoulkes insisted with a laugh. “But I have a terrible reaction to seafood.”
He took a step backward, so that one foot crossed the threshold of the doorway and into the Netherworlde. At that moment, something odd happened. Every light along the corridor on the mortal world side of the portal flickered in its sconce. There was a low, creaking groan from the walls and floor, as though the house were settling in a storm.
“What was that?” Jackalope growled warily, his silver eyes darting around. “Dark sorcery.”
“The wind, surely,” Ffoulkes said, as the lights flickered again and the timbers groaned, low and quiet. “Winter is nearly here, it’s a draughty old house, aha.”
But when Robin glanced at Hestia, he was surprised to see her face was white and set rigid. At first, he assumed that she was still furious about the discovery of the kraken, but then he noticed she wasn’t paying any attention to the watery ball in his hands at all.
She was staring at the Fire Panthea with wide eyes.
“Hestia?” Robin asked. “What’s the matter?”
The housekeeper didn’t reply. Slowly, she raised an arm and pointed an accusing finger at the man. The lights in the corridor flickered again.
“You!” she said, and her voice shook tremulously. “You are stealing? From Erlking? You think to take from the bastion of the Fae what is not, and should not, be yours?”
Ffoulkes spluttered. “What? What are you … Of course not.” He sounded positively scandalised “What absolute … what nonsense! What on earth has gotten into you, dear lady?”
Inky wriggled in Robin’s arms. It was a struggle to keep hold of him, like a greased bowling ball with a mind of its own.
“These walls do not lie to me!” Hesita said shrilly, as Erlking groaned around her. “Not to old Hestia. These walls know everything, and so do I. The second your foot passed the boundary. You are … you are a thief, sir!”
Ffoulkes wrapped his fur coat tighter around his throat, looking rather affronted and sticking out his chin defiantly.
“How…how dare you!” he snapped. “The very arrogance! Unimaginable accusation. I–”
“The hospitality of Erlking has laws!” Hestia snapped. Any vestige of the woman who had, only moments ago, been crestfallen that she would have too many baked potatoes and not enough guests, had fallen away utterly. Robin had never seen her look so righteously furious. Her little eyes flashed. “You have broken those laws! Return what you have taken … or I shall take it back myself!”
Ffoulkes broke into a grin, sneering at the small woman with clear and undisguised disdain. His air of shocked innocence fell away in the face of her threat.
“You? What a tremendous insult,” he said. “A glorified washerwoman? A maker of sandwiches and a scrubber of floors?” The man looked angry, as though tired of playing the
charming guest. “You threaten action on me? I am of the House Ffoulkes, of the Black Glass Halls! I can trace my linage back to–”
“If you’ve stolen something, give it back,” Robin said firmly, cutting him off. Ffoulkes had been coveting every item, painting, vase and object in the house ever since he’d arrived. Hestia’s accusation didn’t seem remotely outlandish to him. It would certainly explain his sudden urgency to leave as soon as Aunt Irene was out of the house.
“Glorified washerwoman?” Hestia trilled, her voice painfully shrill. “Washerwoman, he calls old Hestia! Hestia is more to Erlking than you imagine, sir. I am housekeeper. I am the keeper of the house! And of all things in it! You will not take in secret what is Erlking’s to have. I will take it back from you.”
Hestia snapped her angry little fingers, and a whoosh of air flitted past Robin’s face. Ffoulkes voluminous fur coat billowed open, expensive buttons popping off and clattering away to the floorboards in a merry tinkle.
Beneath the coat, tucked into the man’s waistcoat, a bulky object was stuffed. They all stared. Hestia held out her hand, eyes still wild with indignation and the pale artefact flew out from its hiding place, sailed through the air and landed in her hand. Ffoulkes made a desperate attempt to snatch it mid-air but Hestia’s cantrip had been too fast.
It was odd, Robin later thought. He had always known Hestia was a Panthea, but it had never occurred to him before that she might have any actual skill with any of the Arcania. That however, had been a perfectly executed and controlled Featherbreath.
“Give that back!” Ffoulkes snapped indignantly.
“Well!” Hestia peered down at the object, flabbergasted and outraged. “And here it is. Shame on you, sir. Shame!”
It was, as far as Robin could make out, a mask. One of those rigid ones which covered only the eyes and top of the nose. He had seen them used for festivals in Venice, or at masquerade balls. This one was carved from a wood so ashen and white it looked like polished bone, powdery around the dark eye-holes. Its surface was carved in the shape of spiralling leaves, and above, where it would rest against one's eyebrows, there were thin carved tendrils, interlacing and swooping upwards like the branches of a tree.