The Crooked Castle

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  “I’m sorry about all of this,” Grit said. “I really am. But I thought you had a right to know.”

  Beamsprout looked like she couldn’t decide whether to smile at Grit or slap her. It was an expression Grit was becoming familiar with.

  “How did you know?” Beamsprout asked. “How did you figure it out?”

  Grit sighed. “I think it’s because . . . well, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you all, either. It’s true, I’m a Seelie, and Carmer is a Friend of the Fae. But . . .”

  “BUT?” boomed Thundrumble.

  They all covered their ears.

  “But I think I sensed Yarlo because I’m not just a Seelie,” she admitted. “I’m a Seelie princess.”

  The Wonder Show faeries took a collective step back, Beamsprout’s eyes as wide as a panicked frog’s. The pixies shrieked so loudly everyone covered their ears again. It was exactly the kind of reaction Grit had been hoping to avoid since she’d left home—but there was no way to bring her cover back now.

  “Wait!” she said, holding up her hands. “So, I’m a Seelie princess. And . . . I think that means I can help you.”

  CARMER AND GRIT left the Wonder Show armed with a lock of a water fae’s hair, a vial of faerie dust contributed from each of the Free Folk, and directions to the nearest, clearest body of water (a pond in a neighborhood called Portside, which was, confusingly, not near the port at all).

  Grit could tell the free faeries didn’t trust her much. Why would a Seelie princess care about their plight? She tried to explain that she did care, that she had Free Folk friends back at home, and that she respected their right to rule themselves. That she had seen faeries of all courts and kinds killed, injured, and enslaved by the Mechanist, and it made her understand more than ever that every single one of her kind was in danger all the time. But the words seemed clumsy and inadequate. She was probably spending too much time around Carmer.

  The truth was, princess or not, she doubted her word would make much difference. She couldn’t even meet with the king on neutral territory, as was customary for official dealings between the courts, because there was nothing official about it. Humans (those who weren’t Friends of the Fae) and Free Folk were outside the bounds of much of faerie law. Other than outright slaughter, there wasn’t much that Seelies or Unseelies weren’t allowed to do to them. And to the Unseelies, it seemed, the respect for faerie life in general extended only so far. (Humans, naturally, were not considered at all.) Grit’s mother, the queen, would never have approved of her using her official status as a Seelie princess to ask for favors for a bunch of “lawless street fae.”

  So the meeting would be an unofficial one, on the king’s territory and in his palace under a rotting, unused section of docks in the bay.

  Carmer, needless to say, was far from thrilled. He insisted on accompanying her, a matter they fought about for a solid five minutes while the Wonder Show faeries watched impatiently, until Carmer hit upon a solution. He would go with Grit to the Unseelie Court; he’d just leave his body behind.

  “Fortunately for you,” said their friend Madame Euphemia in the reflection of the pond a few minutes later, “I just started boiling the water for my frog leg stew.”

  A turnip—or it might have been an onion; it was hard to tell—swam across the surface of the soup pot the old woman was peering down into, hundreds of miles away from Carmer and Grit. Grit spared a quick thought for the poor soon-to-be-boiled frogs as she and Carmer leaned in closer over the edge of the water. Madame Euphemia de Campos had many gifts in addition to being a Friend of the Fae and a recipient of her faerie partner’s magic at the time of his death. She was a Seer, and that meant she could scry using almost anything. Including, it seemed, the beginnings of frog leg stew.

  “How can I help you two troublemakers?” asked Madame Euphemia, her gravelly voice like rocks scraping along a creek bed. Her rainbow-colored braids were wound around her head in an elaborate updo, and her chandelier earrings stretched her brown, wrinkly earlobes well past her jaw.

  “How do you know we’re making trouble?” asked Grit indignantly.

  Madame Euphemia held up a spread of tarot cards, their backs to Carmer and Grit. “You children know I have my ways,” she said, the familiar twinkle in her eye. “Also, if the two of you are involved, anyone with half a head of brains can guess there’ll be trouble.”

  Carmer shrugged. She was probably right.

  “We need to teach Carmer how to see through other things,” explained Grit, “like you do with your puppets.” The old Seer had helped Carmer and Grit out of more than one sticky situation by inhabiting her puppets’ bodies, all while her physical body remained safe and sound inside her home. Grit could see a few of their creepy faces hanging on the walls of Madame Euphemia’s vardo in the background. Though why she needed so very many . . .

  Madame Euphemia frowned. “That’ll be difficult, even as a Friend of the Fae,” she said. “My eyes were made for Seeing things—and through things—that other eyes don’t. That boy doesn’t have an extraordinary bone in his body.”

  “Hey!” Grit protested.

  “No offense,” Madame Euphemia said.

  “None taken,” said Carmer, who was perfectly content with his unmagical bones.

  “You’ll need faerie dust, though how you’ll get it is a toughie, since you can’t make any on your own . . .”

  Grit tried and failed not to blush. Faerie dust was created with the friction of two faerie wings, and she’d never been able to produce any on her own—not even now that she had her mechanical wing.

  Carmer helpfully held up the vial of faerie dust from the Wonder Show. “We thought of that, actually.”

  “Of course you did,” said Madame Euphemia with an affectionate, raspy chuckle. “But the free-floating dust isn’t ideal, as I’m sure you know. It can have . . . unpredictable results. You’ll have to have a strong command of the magic.”

  Carmer gulped.

  Grit nudged him. “You’ll be fine. Strongest command ever.”

  “Might I ask why the both of you are so set on this boy leaving his goddess-given body behind?” Madame Euphemia asked.

  Grit could see her raised eyebrow, even through the ripples of the water.

  “Um . . .” said Carmer.

  “Because we have to go somewhere slightly . . . inaccessible,” Grit said.

  “And slightly inadvisable,” added Carmer.

  Grit smacked his hat.

  “Like I said.” Madame Euphemia shook her head, but she was smiling. “Nothing but trouble.” She sighed and fished the turnip out of her pot. “I guess those frogs can count themselves lucky. It’s going to be a long night.”

  CARMER WASN’T SURE if he was doing the right thing.

  Just weeks ago, Grit had pulled him into her world. She’d made him a part of it the moment she saved him from those bullies in the alley—the moment he saved her from the Mechanist’s terrifying mechanical cats. Even before he was named a Friend of the Fae, he’d accepted the danger that might come from being friends with someone whose very existence seemed impossible.

  Or at least, he thought he had. But then a faerie queen manipulated his memories, when his mind was the resource he counted on most in the entire world. And then the Wild Hunt came for Gideon Sharpe and killed the Mechanist, right there on the train tracks, and the true mercilessness of the fae was laid bare before him. It was wild and hungry and as beautiful, even, as it was terrible. He had run, then, and the train ran past him, with one more angry soul screaming from within.

  Carmer was no Seer, but he couldn’t help but feel that someday, when that train whistle blew again, it would be sounding for him.

  Maybe the sad thing was, he would rather know that than not know. If something was coming—even a huge, incomprehensible, magical spirit horde—he wanted to know everything he could about it. He wanted to learn, so that when the time came, even if he didn’t have a fighting chance, at least he’d understan
d why. At least he’d understand how.

  He was navigating a world he didn’t understand, not yet, but he had help. He had Grit, and Madame Euphemia, and even all of the faeries back in Skemantis. But there was someone out there who didn’t have Grit, who probably wasn’t a Friend of the Fae, and maybe didn’t even know that trouble was coming for them. The whistle was blowing, and they might not even be able to hear it.

  The person behind Rinka Tinka’s Roving Wonder Show, whoever he or she was, deserved to know the truth.

  So later that night, when Carmer stayed up late replacing half of his automaton soldier’s metal parts with meticulously carved wooden ones—a device with too much iron wouldn’t work as a vessel, Madame Euphemia had warned—the last thing he did was write a letter. He carefully copied the Blythes’ handwriting on the outside of it, along with the paw print sign they always sketched in the corner to mark their correspondence, in hopes that it would fall into the hands of whoever usually opened their letters. He squished as many words onto each page as he could, tightly rolled up the paper, and just managed to squeeze it into the right compartment of the other machine he’d been fixing up, little by little, since his arrival in Driff City—the Wonder Show’s rogue messenger glider. With a little bit of luck, it would soon return to its owner.

  Inside, coding his words with a simple cipher the Blythes and the Wonder Show designer had used in their more sensitive communications, Carmer explained everything. He explained who he was, who Grit was, the faeries on the Wonder Show, the Seelie and Unseelie courts, their theories about the reasons for sabotage—everything. He told them where he and Grit would be going, how he would accompany Grit as far as he could by possessing his own automaton. He told them where to find him if another air accident should happen. He offered to talk, if the letter’s recipient wanted to, after their visit to the Unseelie king.

  Carmer knew he was breaking his vow as a Friend of the Fae to protect their secrets with his life. But he couldn’t help but think that in this case, more lives would be protected if he didn’t. He explained everything, because it was better knowing than not knowing. The Wonder Show was clearly someone’s greatest love, their greatest gift to the world. They had a right to know about any forces, both natural and supernatural, that were conspiring against it, just as much as the Free Folk did. Maybe even more.

  What they would do with the information? Well, that was up to them.

  15.

  UNDER THE SEA

  There is an inlet on the shores of Driftside City where no ships ever dock.

  The reason why varies, depending on the level of superstition of whomever you ask.

  Some say the shoreline is too rocky, that ships—the kind that actually sail on water—would dash themselves to pieces before they got close enough to land. The wrecks all around it, sleeping at the bottom of the sea, seem proof enough of that.

  “But why even build docks there in the first place?” one might ask, to which someone else might answer that those docks had been built long ago, back when the first settlers came. They’d fallen into disrepair with the discovery of more favorable sections of the bay. Or perhaps it was that they’d burned down, years ago, and no one had thought to rebuild them. Whatever the reason, the place has long since been forgotten, and most Driftsiders agree it should stay that way.

  Then there are others—the grizzled fishermen or retired naval captains or old, wrinkled women with salt-encrusted hair who can shuck a clam faster than you can blink, who might tell you the real reason no one sails in those waters, or wanders too close to that inexplicably rocky shore after the sun goes down: because it is haunted. It is the place where the ghosts of those who don’t survive the great Atlantic crossing come to rest their weary hearts, where the spirits from faraway places stop to gather their strength and learn the lay of the land. All manner of strange things have been seen there: women in white, wailing for lost children; sleek, pale horses who gallop straight into the sea foam; lights that float in the fog with no lantern to give them life.

  And under the crumbling, barnacle-encrusted docks, if the right set of eyes squints the right way, they can see the castle. They can see that the pilings, half eaten away and riddled with holes, are actually great towers, their decorative crenellations just visible above the water. The stalactites that somehow hang from underneath the wooden boards are chandeliers, both beautiful and potentially deadly to the inhabitants below. The skeletons of fish and small animals—and anything else that comes too close—that accumulate in seaweed-tangled clusters could be sculptures in a white marble garden.

  All you have to do is look.

  Carmer and Grit looked, from their hiding place on a less rocky section of shoreline, and wondered what kind of reception awaited them in a castle that seemed less like an actual palace and more like a sailor’s ghost story incarnate. Carmer half expected an eye patch–wearing pirate skeleton to rattle up next to them and demand all their booty—not that they had any.

  Carmer didn’t even have his own body. Instead, thanks to a crack lesson in faerie magic from Madame Euphemia, his consciousness inhabited his miniature automaton soldier, affectionately named Lieutenant Axel Hudspeth by Kitty Delphine. The lieutenant was about two feet tall and cut an even stranger figure than usual, as many of his metal parts had been replaced by wooden ones, giving him the look of a slightly demonic, half-finished puppet. Only his stately little uniform—handily crafted by Kitty as well—gave him some air of respectability. Carmer’s actual body was on his bunk at the Moto-Manse, faerie dust coating his sleeping eyelids, well away from any Unseelie castles.

  Seeing through the eyes of something that did not strictly have eyes was a strange experience, to say the least. He kept tripping over the skinny rods of his puppet legs and being startled by every low-flying bird that hopped along the shore, often much too close to his not-face for his liking. His senses were muted, especially his sense of touch. He could feel the hinges in his knees rock back and forth with every step, or the springs turning in his neck, but other sensations, like the ground beneath his feet, were less vivid than usual. Madame Euphemia had told him to expect this, and in fact encouraged it. The more he could differentiate the automaton’s body from his natural body—while still maintaining the mental connection—the less likely he was to forget that they weren’t one and the same.

  Carmer and Grit crept along in silence, hiding among the jagged rocks around the tide pools, until Grit rapped on his shoulder and told him to stop.

  “This is as far as you go,” she whispered to Carmer. “Any closer and the mermaids might be able to grab you.”

  “Mermaids?” asked Carmer.

  “Some of them have suckers on their fingers, instead of webs,” Grit explained. “Like octopi! You’d never see the light of day again.”

  She sounded a little too excited for someone describing deadly suckers.

  “I’ll patrol the perimeter, like you showed me,” said Carmer as Grit flitted off his shoulder. “I’ll see if I can find any entrance they might’ve taken Bell through and then circle back. Shoot up a spark if you have to meet me somewhere different.”

  “I know the plan, Carmer,” Grit said, shifting from foot to foot on the rocks and making a face.

  “What?” Carmer asked.

  “I need you to stop talking wearing that automaton’s face,” she said with a shudder. “It is so. Creepy.”

  “But sucker-fingers are totally acceptable.”

  Grit stuck out her tongue. “Stay safe, Lieutenant Creep. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  And with that, she flew off toward the castle, leaving Carmer alone with nothing but his admittedly unnerving reflection in the tide pools.

  Until—seconds later—the calm surface of the water was broken by the flash of a familiar rainbow sheen, and Carmer’s world went dark.

  THE CLOSER GRIT flew to the Unseelie castle, the more unsettled she became. It was one thing to go adventuring with a handful of Free Folk, or your best
friend who was perfectly capable of squishing many of your potential adversaries with his ginormous feet. It was another thing entirely to walk calmly, purposefully, and entirely willingly straight into an Unseelie castle all alone.

  She ducked under the docks, her feet skimming the waves to avoid the pointy stalactites, enchanted spiderwebs, and other unknown dangers hanging above. The moist and rotting pilings surrounded her on all sides, pressing close. Only a small part of the castle was above the surface, like the tip of an iceberg. The rest was under the water, inaccessible to humans and many faeries alike. She would have to enter Faerie, the ever-shrinking true realm of the Fae, to see the king—and to survive the trip under the waves.

  “Such a brave little faerie,” said a familiar, accented voice. “But she has learned, I see, to judge when it is wise to turn on her light.”

  The waves frothed under her, practically boiling, revealing the long hairs of a mane, the outline of a horse’s head, and finally the jet-black eyes of a kelpie staring back at her. She recognized him as the kelpie that had bullied her and her Free Folk friends back in Skemantis—but who had also given Carmer a ride on his back in their plan to defeat the Mechanist.

  “Guard duty again?” Grit asked, trying to sound mocking, but she was secretly a little relieved to see him. It wasn’t exactly a friendly face, but it would do. “It really doesn’t suit you.”

  “I could go back to seducing young mademoiselles from the safety of their shorelines, if you would prefer,” said the kelpie.

  Grit frowned. She had to keep her wits about her in a place like this. She had to remember that even if the kelpie—and honestly, who had ever heard of a French kelpie?—had helped her once in the past, he was still an Unseelie. And that meant that “drowning people” would always be high on his list of leisure activities, whatever alliances he might make to preserve his own life.