The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachmann

  It felt like he lay there for years. He imagined dust settling over him, and Old Crow Alley descending into ruins around him. But eventually he did feel himself drifting up, filling his body like a puddle spreading through a rut. It was bright outside. Sunlight fell through the grimy panes of the kitchen window and stung his eyes. He sat up and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.

  Hettie is gone. It was a slow, hollow thought. The lady in plum has come and stolen her away, just like the nine others before her. Just like my friend. I wasn’t the one they wanted. I am just a silly little boy who didn’t realize the danger until it was too late, who thought it was all about me, and going to London, and being important. And now Hettie is gone.

  Bartholomew pulled himself off the floor with the help of a table leg. His clothes were scaly with ash, but he didn’t notice. He went to his mother’s bed. She was just as he had left her, fast asleep, her breathing regular, peaceful. Sometimes she would smile a little, or snort, or roll over the way she did when she was normally sleeping. Only she wouldn’t wake up.

  Bartholomew grasped her shoulder. “Mother?” he wanted to say, but only a cracking sound came from his throat.

  In a daze, he wandered out of the flat, listening at the neighbor’s doors as he passed them. All was quiet. No crying children, no footfalls on the bare old boards, not even the smell of turnips. He went upstairs, downstairs, through the whole house, and everywhere it was the same. All he heard were snores now and then, what sounded like the creak of a bedspring. Even the hobgoblin who kept the door to Old Crow Alley was asleep on his little stool, a string of spit glistening on his chin.

  “Hello,” Bartholomew said. “Hello?” A little louder this time. The word flittered up the staircase, through silent passages and squares of sunlight. It echoed back to him, “Low, low, low . . .”

  Everyone was asleep. Every soul under the roof but him. The bells of Bath were ringing twelve o’ clock noon. He went outside and stood in the alley, numb and staring, wondering what to do.

  Clouds were drawing in, but it was still bright. He felt the sun on his skin, but it didn’t warm him. A ring of mushrooms had grown up among the cobbles. They were few and far between, and when Bartholomew walked into their middle, the air didn’t even stir. He stamped on them, one by one, and smeared the black liquid across the ground.

  After a while he caught sight of a man working his way up the alley. The man wore a dirty white suit with a blue collar. Bartholomew thought he must be a sailor. He was only a few steps away when he noticed Bartholomew. His eyes went wide and he crossed himself as he passed, scraping himself along the wall and hurrying on around the corner. Bartholomew watched him go, a dull, cold expression on his face.

  Stupid, stupid person. Suddenly Bartholomew hated him. Why should he cross himself and stare? He isn’t better than me. He’s just a stupid, dirty sailor, and he probably can’t even read. I can read. Bartholomew’s teeth began to ache, and he realized he was clenching them. His hand knotted into a fist at his side. In his mind he was hitting the man over and over again, punching his face until when he looked down it was no longer a face at all but a round broken pot with red stew dripping from it.

  “Oi! You there!” a rough voice said behind him. A hand grabbed Bartholomew’s shoulder and spun him violently about.

  He found himself looking into a round, pockmarked face like an old pancake. The face belonged to a thick, small man practically bursting out of his tattered military coat. A peddler’s backpack was on his back, but all the hooks where the spoons and pans and dollies should have been were empty.

  “What d’you think you’re doing, eh? Whispering enchantments at people’s backs? What kind of witchcraft are you up to, boy?” The little man drew Bartholomew up by the collar until he was only inches from his dirty, stubbly face.

  “Ah, a devil’s child, are we,” he wheezed. “A Peculiar. Tell me, devil boy, did your ma raise you on dog’s blood instead of milk?”

  “N-no,” Bartholomew rasped. His mind was no longer dragging. It was blunt and quick with fear. Don’t get yourself noticed, and you won’t get yourself hanged. Don’t get— He had gotten himself noticed.

  “Your lot is being murdered right now, did you hear ’bout that? Oh, yes! Being fished out of the river, all dripping and cold. I hear they have red marks up their arms, on their skin. And they’re just . . . empty, floating like cloth in the swill.” The little man laughed gleefully. “No guts! Ha-ha! No guts! Whada you think ’bout that, hmm? Do you have red lines up your arms, all a dancin’ and a whirlin’?” He tore at one of Bartholomew’s sleeves. His piggy eyes went wide, then narrowed slowly. When he spoke again his voice was low and dangerous.

  “You’re goina be dead soon, devil boy. You’re marked. You know the last boy who died? He was right from around here, looked like you. Binsterbull or Biddelbummer or sommet like that. And they just fished him out o’ the Thames, they did. In London. And he had just the same marks as that. Oh, yes. Just the same.” The man’s breath stank of gin and decaying teeth. Bartholomew began to feel sick. “Watcha been up to, eh, devil boy?” the man whined in his face. “Why they gonna kill you? Maybe I should kill you first and save them the tr—”

  Behind them, someone cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” a polite voice said.

  Without loosening his grip on Bartholomew’s collar, the peddler whipped around. He snorted.

  “Whada you want?”

  “I want you to unhand the young man,” the voice said.

  “You best start runnin’, mister. Run away, or I’ll finish you next.”

  The man didn’t move. “Release him or I’ll shoot you dead.”

  Bartholomew craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of his benefactor. He found himself looking down the barrel of a gun. It was a tiny silver gun with mother-of-pearl on its handle and rubies and opals all down its sides.

  The peddler only spat. “You? You couldn’t shoot a kitten if it bit your nose.”

  The man shot. A fine round pearl rolled lazily down the barrel of the gun and plopped out, falling to the cobblestones and bouncing away.

  “Drat,” the man with the gun said. “Look, leave the boy alone, won’t you? You can have the pistol. It’s worth a great deal, I suppose. And I assure you there’s no more. My money is all in named bills so you’ll never be able to cash them, and I don’t even have a watch chain, so you needn’t bother robbing me.” He held out the bejewelled pistol. “Now do unhand the child.”

  The man with the pancake face dropped Bartholomew unceremoniously to the cobbles. He snatched the pistol. “All right,” he said, squinting warily at the stranger. “But this ain’t no child. This is one o’ them changelings, it is, and it’s marked. It’s gonna be dead soon.”

  Then he was gone, scrambling away down the alley.

  Bartholomew got up off the ground and looked his rescuer over.

  The man was a gentleman. His shoes gleamed black, and his collar was starched, and he smelled terribly clean, like soap and fresh-pumped water. He was rather tall, too, with broad shoulders and square features, and blond stubble pricked up along his jaw so that it looked like he hadn’t shaved in several days. His face wore an expression of mild inquiry. Bartholomew disliked him right away.

  “Hello,” the gentleman said quietly. “Are you Child Number Ten?”

  “Mi Sathir? There is a problem.”

  The lady in plum stood with her back to Mr. Lickerish. Her arms were at her sides, and her elegant fingers were moving ever so slightly, picking at the velvet of her skirts. Her lips remained motionless.

  “Mi Sathir,” the voice said again. Mr. Lickerish did not look up. He was busy scribbling away on a scrap of paper with a curling black feather, fierce concentration etched into his fine-boned features.

  The lady and the faery were in a beautiful room. Books lined the walls and lamps cast halos around them. A low humming filled the air. Two metal birds were perched on the desk where Mr. Lickerish sat, their eyes dark an
d keen. In one corner of the room, a chalk circle had been drawn carefully on the floorboards. One section of the circle looked newer than the rest, crisper and whiter, as if it’d had to be redrawn.

  “A problem, Sathir.”

  Mr. Lickerish threw down the quill. “Yes, there are many problems, Jack Box, and one of them is you, and one is Arthur Jelliby, and one is old Mr. Zerubbabel and his crooked, slow fingers. How long does it take to build another bird out of metal? He has the plans and the route and . . . Speaking of which, did you kill him? Arthur Jelliby?”

  “I did. He’s dead by now. Most likely strangled by his bedsheets because they did not like being put under sizzling irons and drowned in suds. You know, it’s almost a shame wasting the Malundis Lavriel spell so late at night. There’s no one about to appreciate it. Now, on a crowded street, in the heat of the day, the result can be quite spectacular but . . . But I digress. We have a problem.” The lady in plum stepped aside, revealing a little girl curled up on the floor. The lady extended a jet-black toe from under her skirts and dug it into the child’s ribs. “Wake up, ugly thing. Wake up!”

  Hettie raised her head sleepily. For half an instant her eyes were blank, as if she thought she was still at home, safe. Then she sat up. Her mouth pinched, and she glared at the lady and Mr. Lickerish, each in turn.

  “Pull up your sleeves, half-blood. Show him.”

  She did as she was told, but she didn’t stop glaring. The dirty fabric was rolled up, revealing a pattern of lines, red tendrils twisting around her thin white arms.

  “Well?” the faery politician demanded. “What is it? She looks very nearly as wretched as the other nine.”

  A tongue clicked in annoyance. It was not the lady’s tongue, not the tongue behind the vivid red lips. It was a long, rough, barbed tongue, scraping over teeth. “Read it,” the voice growled.

  The faery politician leaned across the desk. He paused. One perfect eyebrow arched. “Eleven? Why is she marked eleven?”

  “That is the problem. I don’t know. I set up the spell just as you ordered, Skasrit Sylphii to brand each of the changelings as they traveled through the wings and to open their skin to the magic. This one ought to have been marked number ten.”

  Mr. Lickerish snapped his fingers and settled back into his chair. “Well then. It counted incorrectly. Magic is only as clever as its user, and you are not nearly as clever as you suppose.”

  “My magic is quite sound, Sathir. And at least I can still do such things. You know nothing of the old ways. You buy all your spells and potions like a regular spoilt toff.” The voice ought to have stopped there, but it went on, goading. “Or else you dispense with it altogether. Mechanics are so much more practical, after all. Clockwork birds and iron horses.” There was a snicker. “Just like a proper human.”

  “Hold your tongue,” Mr. Lickerish spat. “I am the one who is going to save you. Save us all from this cage of a country. And you will do your part just as I do mine. Now,” he said, suddenly calm again. “If the spell is still functioning, what could have happened?”

  “I see only one way: someone else came through the faery ring.”

  The room went deathly still. Only the gentle humming could be heard, throbbing somewhere in the walls.

  The lady’s fingers began to twitch, little jerks like a spider’s legs when it’s just been crushed.

  “Someone,” the voice said again, “after number nine and before this one. The magic fades slowly. If someone stepped in by accident, I suppose it’s . . . No. No, it couldn’t be. The sylphs would have devoured him in an instant, gnawed him to the bone. Oh, it makes no sense! Only a changeling would have been marked!”

  Mr. Lickerish stared at the back of the lady’s head. His eyes were hard and black.

  The voice went on, hurrying, stumbling. “It is the only way. The magic did not count incorrectly. The spell is quite sound. Eleven changelings have traveled to this room. Nine have met their deaths. One—this one, I assure you”—the lady’s hands were moving furiously now, scratching at the fabric like claws—“will be the means to a glorious end, and the other one is . . .”—the hands went limp—“. . . still about.”

  “Still about,” the faery politician enunciated slowly. “Still about? A changeling slipped into my private chambers, saw needle-knows-what, and is now marching lively as firelight through England?” Mr. Lickerish picked up a china figurine and hurled it across the room. “Find it!” he screamed. “Find it at once and kill it.”

  The lady in plum turned to face Mr. Lickerish. Her expression was blank, her lips slack. She slumped forward in a clumsy bow, and the voice said, “Yes, Mi Sathir. It will be the simplest thing in the world to track it down.”

  Hettie had crawled to where the figurine lay smashed. She was picking up the pieces one by one, staring at them in dismay. Mr. Lickerish turned on her.

  “And take that one to the preparation room. Beg the rain and stones she is everything we need her to be, or you and your sweetheart can stumble off in your present state, secure in the knowledge that nothing will ever happen to change it. She is becoming more and more unbecoming, by the way. Your sweetheart.” The faery gentleman flicked his long fingers in the direction of the lady in plum. “You might have her change out of that horrid dress.”

  Mr. Jelliby had spent the night on a bench in Hyde Park. The moment the dreary London sky was light enough to see by, he’d set off to his bank in nothing but his dressing gown and had rung the bell frantically until a sleepy-eyed clerk had let him in. He demanded his jeweled pistol and a great deal of money from the family safe box, and when he had gotten them, he took a cab to Saville Row, woke the tailor, and paid double so that he could leave with the Baron d’Erezaby’s new coat and waistcoat, a satin cravat, and a top hat. An urgent telegraph to his house on Belgrave Square told Ophelia that he was safe, that she must leave for Cardiff that very day if she could and not speak to anyone about it. By eight o’clock in the morning he was on his way to Bath.

  It was a comfortable journey despite the damp and the chill that pervaded everything. The great black steam engine sped across the countryside, dragging its fumes in a plume behind it, and leaving only a watercolor blur of greens and grays painted on Mr. Jelliby’s window. He arrived at the train station in New Bath just before noon.

  He had decided right away there was no point in going anywhere else. The London coordinates made no sense at all to him, and the other address on Mr. Zerubbabel’s scrap of paper was up north in Yorkshire. Besides, Bath was where the changelings were. If Mr. Jelliby was going to do anything to save them, it would be here.

  He climbed down from the railway carriage, into the swirling steam of the platform. He had heard about this vertical, filthy city, but he had never been to it before. It was not the sort of place people went if they could help it. The train station had been built close to the city’s foundations, under a rusting iron-and-glass dome. The platforms were almost deserted. Station masters and conductors rushed from wagon to wagon, hopping up onto the steps as soon as they could as if the ground were poison. No faeries waited here. Very few humans, either. One look at the rabbit-hole streets and drooping houses surrounding him, and Mr. Jelliby was convinced to go in search of a cab.

  A few dingy transports stood at the edge of the train station—a wolf-drawn carriage, two huge snails with tents atop their shells, and twelve bottles of potion that were more likely to leave you knocked out and penniless than take you where you wanted to go. Mr. Jelliby chose a towering blue troll with a palanquin strapped to its back and put a guinea into the box on its belt. Even on his toes, he could barely reach it. The guinea struck the bottom of the box with a clunk. There were no other coins inside.

  The troll grunted and flared its nostrils, and Mr. Jelliby was certain it would lift him up into the palanquin. It didn’t. He waited. Then he saw the wooden footholds attached to the outer part of the troll’s leg, and he climbed into the palanquin himself.

  The troll heaved into mo
tion. Mr. Jelliby settled into a heap of pungent-smelling cushions and studiously avoided looking at the faery city as they traveled down through it.

  At the base of the city, the troll stopped abruptly. Mr. Jelliby leaned out to complain, but one look at the creature’s storm-dark eyes and he closed his mouth with a clap. He climbed down the blue leg and watched the troll loaf back into the shadows of New Bath. Then he waved down a proper steam cab and gave the driver the Bath address that Mr. Zerubbabel had written down for him.

  The cab had driven no more than five minutes before it stopped, too. Mr. Jelliby wanted to scream. He thrust his head out the window.

  “What is it now?”

  “That’s a faery slum, through there,” the coachman said, pointing his whip toward an ivy-strangled arch between two tall stone buildings. “You’ll have to go on foot the rest of the way.”

  With an oath, Mr. Jelliby climbed out and walked under the arch. He went down first one foul street, then another. He asked directions several times, got lost, was stared at and cackled at and had his hat stolen off his head. But eventually he turned into a cramped, crooked little street called Old Crow Alley, and there came upon a child in the process of being murdered.

  “Well, are you?” Mr. Jelliby asked, trying to make his voice as kind as possible. “Are you Child Number Ten?” He wasn’t in any mood to be kind. His eyes kept returning to the boy’s pointed ears, his sharp, hungry face. So this is what a changeling looks like. Ugly, partway between a starving street child and a goat. But not really something to make a fuss about. Half of England’s faery population was uglier, and no one buried them under elderberry bushes. The boy didn’t look like he could cast curses on people, either. All he looked was sad and banged up. Mr. Jelliby was not sure what to make of that.