The Crooked Castle

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  “Are you here to drown me?” Grit asked.

  “Ma chère,” said the kelpie with a wet-sounding chuckle, “if I were here to drown you, you’d be sleeping with the fishes already.”

  Grit gripped a slime-covered crystal on one of the pilings, as high as she could get from the water as possible.

  “I’m taking you to Faerie, of course,” the kelpie said with a toss of his mane. “Unless you’d prefer to swim . . . but that wing of yours doesn’t look very waterproof.”

  Grit scowled as she glided down toward him. “Where’s an iron bridle when you need one,” she muttered, and clambered on the back of the beast’s neck. His mane felt like a pile of wriggling worms, but she didn’t have much time to dwell on that.

  The kelpie dove.

  CARMER’S FIRST THOUGHT, when he could see again, was that he was back in the Blythes’ junkyard. He was in a damp, muddy place, surrounded by . . . well, junk. An ornate wooden ship’s wheel took up the majority of one wall, half of its spokes broken off. A collection of compasses on their chains, their needles going haywire, hung off it like necklaces on a jewelry stand. There were nonaquatic souvenirs as well; a Remington typewriter with a handful of keys missing and little cushions covering the others, as if they were bar stools for thumb-sized patrons; a phonograph with a cluster of black-streaked orchids exploding out of the horn; portraits of serious-faced people in ornate frames leaning up against one another like houses of cards; actual houses of cards, so moldy and yellowing their faces and numbers were indistinct; even a mismatched collection of silverware in a velvet display case spattered with mysterious stains. Everywhere he looked, there was just more . . . stuff.

  Under the dim light that came from—rather impossibly—a cluster of glowworms on the high, greenish ceiling, Carmer also saw an object he would have recognized anywhere, draped over the side of a seashell-framed mirror: the Mechanist’s cloak.

  Hundreds, if not thousands, of faerie wings had been meticulously sewn onto the silk to make one continuous, rainbow-hued sheet of fabric. The Mechanist had killed or captured scores of faeries to experiment on before he finally discovered the “perfect” method of channeling faerie magic for his own purposes. Those faeries had become nothing but a wearable collection of trophies.

  Not for the first time, Carmer wondered what part Gideon Sharpe had played in the creation of that cloak. Had those long, pale fingers plucked the wings from dead faeries—or live ones like Yarlo—and sewed them together with impossibly tiny, expert stitches?

  The most pressing question, though, was what the cloak was doing here—wherever here was. The last time Carmer had seen it was in the abandoned underground railroad tunnel where Gideon had lost his freedom and the Mechanist had lost his life.

  “Do you like my collection?” asked a soft voice.

  Carmer turned his head with some effort—his neck was unusually stiff—and saw a girl. She was sitting in a chipped teacup that had been turned on its side, her legs dangling over the edge. The cup was perched rather perilously on a stack of what must have been an entire tea service—all equally chipped flower-patterned cups and saucers and sugar dishes. The girl’s dark purple hair flowed out of the cup like some kind of molten candy, hanging past her feet.

  It occurred to Carmer, through the fog that was only just now clearing from his head, that girls did not normally fit inside teacups. It also occurred to him—the moment he tried to sit up to get a better look at her—that he was tied down flat on his back. A strained look downward showed his limbs were tied with what looked like seaweed to pointy, tooth-shaped pegs in the floor. For all he knew, they were real teeth.

  “It’s nothing grand, I know,” said the girl. “But most ships know better than to come near here by now, and so many things are just too big. I can’t exactly sneak a telephone through the front door . . .” She chuckled at her own joke, then amended, “Not that we have a front door, exactly.”

  When Carmer didn’t respond, her pale face fell.

  “You do know what a telephone is, don’t you?” she asked, suddenly serious. “Or have I said it wrong again? Oh, goodness, that would be so embarrassing . . .”

  It took a great deal of effort for Carmer to get his mouth working. “No, um, that’s right,” he said. “And yes, I know what a telephone is.”

  “You do talk!” exclaimed the girl, flitting down from her chipped china throne with ease. “I thought you might, but I couldn’t be sure.” The wings protruding from her back were nearly translucent. She wasn’t just a girl; she was a faerie.

  Which meant Carmer was in the Unseelie palace.

  “You’ll have to tell me all about telephones,” said the faerie, crouching down near Carmer’s head. “And then, I’d like to know about you.”

  Her purplish lips spread into a thin smile.

  “But how rude of me,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her pointed ear. “Badgering you about telephones and asking all sorts of personal questions when I haven’t even introduced myself.”

  She smiled and reached out a hand, edging her fingernail under one of the buttons on Carmer’s jacket.

  “I’m Princess Purslain Ashenstep, of the Unseelie Court,” she said. “But you can call me Pru.”

  BELL DAISIMER HAD never been so happy to be a disappointment in his life.

  At first, the young woman from the Jasconius—the Unseelie faerie princess, he knew now—barely let him out of her sight. She barely let him sleep. They would sit in the ruined dining room of the shipwreck—he at one end of an impossibly long table, surrounded by skeletons still in their dinner clothes, and she in the curved fixtures of the chandeliers up above—as she peppered him with an endless stream of questions. Why had he come back to Driff City? Had he told anyone about the day of the crash? Who was that fuzzy-headed little sprout of a faerie he was traveling with? Why was he working for “that buffoon,” Julius Tinkerton? And most important—did he know the Roving Wonder Show’s secret?

  Bell told her about Carmer and Grit. He didn’t feel great about it, but they weren’t exactly hiding who they were or what they were doing in Driff City, and so he didn’t see why he should, either—especially when Purslain threatened to constrict the jellyfish dome of his prison around him until he drowned.

  But when they got around to the subject of the Wonder Show, Bell obviously knew much less than Pru had hoped. He confessed he’d never even met the faeries on it—only Carmer and Grit had had that honor—and honestly, all he really wanted out of this whole thing was a new balloon and a fresh start, so could she please, please just let him go?

  Please.

  The answer was always no, with a toss of her slick, silky hair.

  “You should’ve run when you had the chance,” she would say.

  As their sessions together grew more infrequent, Bell began to wonder if he was losing his usefulness to her—and what was in store for him if that was the case. But Purslain no longer whispered threats while she twirled his hair around her fingers, and she didn’t seem inclined to kill him just yet. Perhaps he had simply been cast aside once he no longer entertained her, like one of the sad, broken dolls in her collection of human things. The secret of the Jasconius could never get out if its only witness was trapped at the bottom of the ocean for the rest of eternity, after all, and it wasn’t like his prison ship seemed destined for many other uses. For now, he was left alone and unharmed . . . mostly.

  And now that she’d stopped trying to get inside his head, Bell began to think a little more clearly—or as clearly as he could in an underwater magical realm he was told made humans inherently loopy. He began to consider his escape.

  But if Princess Purslain had lost interest in him, it only seemed to make the other inhabitants of the Unseelie kingdom even more interested. He would look out of the portholes to see hideous green, gilled faces staring back, or tangles of blue-black tentacles scuttling past. The Jenny Haniver guards—the few that were still stationed outside—had a time of it, poking th
eir sharpened shell swords at the curious fae onlookers who got too close. A few of the mermaids, unfortunately, seemed to enjoy special privileges; they would braid their seaweed hair and wave with their sucker-covered fingers right up against the barrier, smiling with coy grins full of pointed, sharklike teeth. Bell began to avoid the deck and the windows; sitting with the stiffs in the dining room quickly became preferable. How could he even think about making a break for the surface with all of those fishy eyes constantly trained on him?

  And then one day—night? How long had he been there?—the waters outside churned with so much activity that Bell was afraid the ship would tilt over. Everywhere he looked, schools of fish skeletons, chatting gaggles of water sprites, and writhing sea serpents were streaming past the ship. And though he knew the fae took pains to keep him in the dark—often literally—he could still make out the whispers that skipped from creature to creature like jumping salmon.

  She is coming.

  The other princess is coming.

  “The other princess?” Bell wondered out loud. Did the Unseelie king have another—hopefully slightly less murderous—daughter?

  Whoever this princess was, she was causing quite a stir. And Bell Daisimer had every intention of taking advantage of it.

  16.

  THE THRONE OF BONES

  Grit padded down the corridor to the throne room alone, though she wasn’t naive enough to think she went unobserved. The glittering walls on either side were covered in a hodgepodge of crystals and seashells and blooming mushrooms, and—occasionally, if she turned around fast enough to catch them—wide, unblinking eyes.

  No, the king knew she was here. And he was waiting for her.

  The great stone and mother-of-pearl doors to the throne room opened of their own accord, looking far too much like tombstones for Grit’s taste. Even in the magical “sideways-world” of Faerie, as Carmer called it, the infamous throne of the Unseelie king loomed large. It was as pale as the wall of crisscrossing, glittering cave formations behind it, but for quite a different reason. Some said the throne was made out of the bones of the king’s enemies; others that it was the ruins of every shipwreck the Unseelie fae had ever caused, bleached white with salt and age. Some said it was merely pale coral. One of the wilder theories was that the throne was actually some kind of special iron alloy that the king exposed himself to on purpose, to build up a resistance and discourage anyone else who might have entertained ideas of sitting on the throne of King Roden Bonefisher.

  But clearly, the last theory was wrong, because when Grit approached the throne, so tall she had to crane her neck to see the top, there was someone sitting in the Unseelie king’s throne—and it was not the Unseelie king.

  It was Mister Moon, the three-eyed leader of the Wild Hunt.

  “Well, if it ain’t the little princess of the freaks of Skemantis,” Mister Moon said in his jarring cockney accent, leering down at her. He raised two out of three eyebrows at her mechanical wing. “And hoho, the title’s more fittin’ than before!”

  “What are you doing here?” Grit asked. “Where’s the Unseelie king?”

  Mister Moon flicked a lit cigarette between his fingers, like Grit had seen Carmer and the Amazifier do with playing cards. How any fire could survive in this damp pit was a mystery to Grit.

  “The king’s more important matters to attend to than a trespassin’ princess,” sneered Mister Moon. “Oh yes, we know how long you been here. Without announcin’ yourself, too. That’s downright rude, if you ask me!”

  Though she hadn’t exactly been excited at the thought, Grit had been counting on the Unseelie king’s presence. What sort of king let some lackey hold court for him—and even sit in his throne? Queen Ombrienne didn’t have a throne, but Grit tried to picture her allowing someone to sit in it, if she did, and order about the other faeries while she swanned off somewhere else. It was so unthinkable Grit nearly laughed.

  Grit had been counting on the king’s obligation to give her an audience, one royal faerie to another. Mister Moon, though he was the leader of a major fae institution (if you could call a marauding band of criminal fae and spirits an “institution”), had no such obligation.

  “Well, I’m here now,” Grit said. “Ta-da.” She spread her wings and bent one knee in a brief, mocking curtsy. “And I need to talk with the king. Not you. It’s official court business.”

  “Is it?” asked Mister Moon with a tilt of his head, taking a drag from his cigarette. “’Cause here I thought you was about to sing us a little song about some filthy street fae scum.”

  The blood-soaked conductor’s hat that marked him as a redcap oozed a fresh droplet onto his shoulder.

  And somehow, the Free Folk are the filthy ones here, Grit thought.

  “Did your friend Yarlo tell you that?” Grit asked. “I’m afraid he won’t be able to feed you information anymore.”

  “Oh, I’ve got lots of friends,” said Mister Moon. A chill crept into the room, followed by indistinct whispers and the squeaking of what sounded like turning wheels. “And Friends. You might even know some of them! Like, oh, what was that little snitch’s name . . . Gideon Sharpe?”

  Tittering, wheezing laughter cut through the whispers, and Grit forced herself not to flinch at the sound. She hoped, at least, that Carmer was having better luck than she was.

  “I KNOW IT’S a strange habit for a faerie—especially an Unseelie princess—but I can’t help but be fascinated by the contraptions humans make,” Pru said, caressing a few of the items in her collection as she strolled around the room.

  “Just think! They can’t sing a tree taller, or summon a flame, or whisper to the wind so it takes them where they need to go. But somehow, those silly humans can do all of those things—and more. They can make buildings taller than any tree. They can strike a match and have a flame in their palm in an instant; they make the things that burn work for them, to power their machines. They can sail through the air in their ships farther than most faeries could ever hope to fly in one stretch.”

  Princess Pru’s face loomed over Carmer, coming in and out of focus. He couldn’t figure out exactly why his eyes—and his whole body, in fact—didn’t seem to be working the way they should. Even the proportions of the room seemed off, somehow; the spoons in the velvet case much too big, but the doorways leading to who-knows-where much too short. He supposed it was one of the side effects of being in Faerie; all the magic made humans’ brains fuzzy.

  Pru’s dark purple hair trailed to the floor, leaving a wet smear wherever she moved.

  Her skin was so white, like paper soaked in water and left out to dry, thin and crinkled—except for her feet. Starting from the knees down, her skin gradually darkened to completely black, gnarled, and callused toes. She wore no shoes.

  “Ashenstep,” she’d said her name was. He could see why.

  “Humans have used their gifts well,” she said, pausing a moment to run her fingers along Carmer’s arm. “And they’ve conquered us because of it. Oh, don’t look as if I’ve shocked you, like the faeries at court always do. They have. Why else would we hide here, in the depths of the sea, the only place the humans haven’t managed to extend their reach? Why else would we stop demanding their tithes, or luring them to our revels, or making them our sweethearts, if they were young and beautiful enough? Because we’re scared. Because they’ve got the upper hand, and have for over a hundred years. Every day their power grows, and ours diminishes.”

  She stood up, suddenly agitated, and strode away from him; small clusters of lichen sprang up in her wake where the soles of her blackened feet touched the floor.

  That explains the mushrooms, Carmer thought.

  Pru whipped around to face him. “Is it so amazing, then, that I should want to know more about my enemy?” she asked. “I don’t think so. How could I possibly hope to understand them if I shuddered at the mere mention of cold iron? How could I possibly hope to defeat them?”

  She took a deep breath, as if trying
to calm herself, and smiled at Carmer. “Now you . . . you just might be the most priceless addition to my collection I’ve ever encountered.”

  Carmer’s breath hitched.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, eyes wide and innocent, as if the idea that she might vivisect Carmer in her chamber of decaying artifacts wasn’t distressing in the least. “Is it the cloak that frightens you?” She turned to the Mechanist’s former garment. She seemed quite concerned for Carmer’s welfare, for someone who had him staked to her floor. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? It was a gift from Father. Look!”

  Pru scampered over to the cloak, which took up a large portion of the room. The moment she grabbed on to the edge, however, the entire cloak shuddered and shimmered, the multicolored reflections of the wings blurring in Carmer’s already unsteady vision. He blinked once as Pru lifted the cloak with a flourish, and it was suddenly half the size. It floated down around her shoulders, a macabre mantle.

  He blinked again, and she was gone.

  A giggle emanated from the empty space where she’d been standing just seconds before. A moment later, another titter echoed from somewhere near Carmer’s head. He looked frantically around, straining against his bonds, glimpsing only the slightest jumping shadows. A link of chains—iron chains, Carmer noted—snaked their way across the floor. The typewriter keys clacked up and down, seemingly of their own accord, spelling out nothing but gibberish.

  Something nudged him in the side and he flinched. Ten tiny black toes appeared out of nowhere, wriggling right next to his ribs.

  “Boo!” There was a swish of rainbow fabric and black silk, and Pru came out from under the cloak beside him.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, clearly delighted to be able to show off for someone. “Father reclaimed it from the corpse of one of our enemies, as was his right. Why should such an artifact go unused, left to molder with the dead human’s flesh, when so many faeries died to make it whole?”