The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachmann

  Mr. Jelliby let the blind fall back over the window and slumped against the glossy leather headboard. He and Bartholomew had arrived in Leeds early that morning, wet and cold and very miserable. They had caught the seven o’clock train to London, and pulled into the capital just as their socks were beginning to dry. A carriage had been secured on the bustling curb at Paddington Station. Mr. Jelliby had discovered his pistols were gone, but he had greater worries just then. He ordered the driver to take them to Belgrave Square at once.

  He hadn’t told Bartholomew where they were going, and he hadn’t wanted to. He was relieved when the first slow breaths of sleep sounded from the corner of the carriage.

  At the very edge of the square Mr. Jelliby signaled a stop. He peeked out again. There was his house—tall, grand, and white, only thirty feet away. The heavy winter drapes had been drawn across the windows. The first-floor shutters were closed. And parked at the gate for all the world to see was a shiny black steam carriage, its door emblazoned with the silver markings of the London police.

  One of the curtains stirred in an upstairs window. A face appeared at it—Ophelia’s, looking out. Her skin was very pale. Her hand was at her throat. The last time Mr. Jelliby had seen her doing this was when the letter had come that told her her father was dead.

  Mr. Jelliby swore and buried his head in his hands. She hadn’t gone. She must be so angry at him, sick with worry and confused. Everyone in Belgrave Square would be making up their own reasons why the police were at the Jellibys’ doorstep, and none of them would be right.

  What do you suppose Mr. Jelliby has done this time, dear Jemima? I think he’s probably murdered someone. With a knife.

  Well, they could think of him what they wanted, but not Ophelia. He wanted to leap out of the carriage, run to the house and tell her that it was all lies, that she must flee the city, and that whatever the police had told her was not the case. The front door was only a short dash away. But they would catch him if he did. The house, or the police. And who was to say Ophelia would even believe him now, raving about murderous Lord Chancellors and magical portals and the doom of London? The officers would drag him away, perhaps to an asylum. Ophelia would watch him go with sad and serious eyes. No, Mr. Jelliby could not go home. Not until he found a way to stop Mr. Lickerish.

  With a long sigh, Mr. Jelliby extended his hand out the coach window and waved the driver on. The carriage pulled away toward Bishopsgate and the river. They would go to the last of the coordinates now. Tomorrow no one would even care about gossip and scandal. Either he would expose Mr. Lickerish for what he truly was and become the hero of the age, or the faery door would open. And if the faery door opened, that meant Mr. Jelliby was dead. That meant Ophelia was dead, and Bartholomew was dead, and his little changeling sister as well. That meant most of London was dead.

  Mr. Jelliby pushed those thoughts away and set to studying his map.

  In the corner of the carriage, Bartholomew began to stir. His limbs felt heavy, solid like the boughs of a tree. He sat up and stole a look out the window.

  London. His mother had told him about this city. That huge, faraway place where laws were made, and money was made, and where the most dazzling shows were, and the gaudiest music halls. It was the place where the roads were so wide and yet the people had to fly in balloons to get any air.

  It was a very different sort of city than Bath, that much was clear, but Bartholomew didn’t think it looked too jolly. Mother probably only liked it because there weren’t so many faeries here. A few were about—the ones in the streetlamps, a goblin herding a flock of goats, and a handful of spriggan housemaids hurrying across the pavement with tired eyes and cloth-covered baskets. Bartholomew thought he saw one or two magical walking sticks of the sort that sing in sweet voices. But that was all. There were no dancing roots, or faces in the doors, and no trees. Not even any vines to climb up the sooty stone walls. The city seemed to be made entirely of smoke and clockwork.

  “Will we be there soon?” he asked, turning to Mr. Jelliby. The map was spread out in front of the gentleman, taking up half the carriage. He was frowning at it, his brows pinching over his nose.

  “Mr. Jelliby?” Bartholomew’s voice was quiet, insistent. How much time did they have? The Lord Chancellor had Hettie, those black-winged sylphs, and probably the greenwitch’s potion. They couldn’t have much time at all.

  Mr. Jelliby glanced up. “Oh. Good morning. I took a slight detour, but have no fear. We’re on our way. All dead in their beds, the greenwitch said. Mr. Lickerish is going to open the door in the night and it’s not gone four o’clock.”

  A detour? The door might only open in the night, but that doesn’t mean Hettie is safe.

  “Well, how long till we get there?”

  “An hour. Perhaps two, depending on the traffic. And depending on whether I can understand this. So far I’ve been not at all successful.” His frown deepened as he peered at the map. “Longitude and latitude would place our destination in Wapping, in the Docklands, but the altitude! Three hundred feet in the air! It makes no sense.”

  “Perhaps it’s a tower,” Bartholomew said, stretching his sore legs out slowly in front of him. “They build very tall towers nowadays.”

  He was beginning to feel dreadful. His joints ached, and he felt tired and very grubby. He wanted to be home again. Not the empty, sleeping place he had left, but the home from before all that. Mother would let him wash in the old laundry water while it was still warm. It always smelled of lavender, and since Hettie got it first, it would have pieces of bark and twigs floating in it. He used to set up such a fuss about that. It had made Hettie cry once, and she had hid her branchy hair under a sheet for a week. He had felt awful for that afterward, but he felt even worse now. Once he got back to Bath, back with Hettie and Mother, he would never make Hettie cry. He would never let anything bad happen to her again.

  “But not three hundred feet tall,” Mr. Jelliby said matter-of-factly. “Mr. Zerubbabel mentioned it, I believe. Something about the address being up in the air, and a faery named Boniface and . . . Oh, I can’t remember!” He made an angry noise with his tongue and began folding up the map. “There’s nothing to do but go to Wapping and see what’s there.”

  Bartholomew looked over at him. “Hettie’ll be there.”

  Mr. Jelliby paused crumpling with the map and looked back at him. He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Hettie’ll be there.” And that was all.

  Bartholomew knew right away when they had entered the Docklands. The smell of fish and muddy water seeped into the carriage. The streets became wider to accommodate the colossal iron steam-mobiles that hauled the freight, and there were no longer houses on either side—only warehouses and forests of masts, their tips just peaking over the rooftops.

  “Wapping,” Mr. Jelliby said, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than the carriage came to a halt in front of a great stone building. It looked to Bartholomew like the huge train stations he had seen, like Paddington and the station in Leeds, only more desolate, without the din and the engines. It had large sooty windows and a low tin roof adorned with points and spires. It had a single wooden door some thirty feet across at its front. A thick metal cable extended up from the roof into the sky. His gaze followed it, up, up, up . . .

  Next to him, Mr. Jelliby gave a low whistle.

  There it was. The final address. Hovering three hundred feet above the quay like a brooding storm cloud was an airship. Its envelope was vast, sleek, blacker than smoke and crows, blacker than everything else in the gloomy sky. A trio of propellers whirred slowly under its cabin.

  “Three hundred feet,” Mr. Jelliby said quietly. “That’s where he’ll be safe when the door opens.”

  They climbed out of the carriage and approached the warehouse slowly, still staring at the airship high above. The warehouse stood in a very quiet, shadowy part of the quays. Rubbish lay in heaps against the foundation. Newspapers and handbills skittered across the cobblestones. No doc
kworkers were about. No one but a grizzled old sailor sitting on a barrel some ways down the street. He had a pipe in his mouth. He was watching them.

  Mr. Jelliby waved the carriage away and walked along the front of the warehouse. Bartholomew followed, glancing around warily. They tried to look in at one of the windows, but it was impossible to see anything. The glass was completely dark, as if someone had painted over the inside with black paint.

  “We’ll have to break in,” Mr. Jelliby said matter-of-factly. “This is where Mr. Lickerish will have his portal open. It has to be. Perhaps it’s that door right there. The door to the warehouse.”

  Stationing Bartholomew at the corner of the building to keep watch, Mr. Jelliby slipped down the alley that ran along the warehouse’s north wall. A hook lay on the ground some ways down it, half hidden under a heap of slimy, staring fish. He snatched it up and tapped it against a pane in one of the warehouse’s windows. He tried to strike gently, without making much noise, but on the third tap the pane burst inward. Glass clattered in the space beyond. He threw a questioning glance back at Bartholomew. The boy nodded, signaling it was safe to proceed.

  Mr. Jelliby peered in through the broken window. The interior was very dim. He could just make out wooden crates rising in cliffs and towers toward the roof. In the shaft of light from the hole in the window, he also saw that the floor was scarred black, as if from fire.

  He hissed loudly for Bartholomew. “Psst. Bartholomew? Bartholomew! Come on!”

  Bartholomew threw one last glance around the quay. Then he too came darting down the alley.

  “We’re going in,” Mr. Jelliby said. He lifted the hook and began breaking more of the window, scraping the glass away with its tip. When there was a hole large enough to crawl through, he pushed Bartholomew up onto the ledge and then climbed up after him. They both dropped down into the warehouse.

  Everything echoed inside. The space was vast and dark, and every shuffle, every breath flew up to the roof on metal wings. When they heard the sounds again, they were eerie and far away, as if other things were sliding through the trestles, whispering.

  Bartholomew took a few steps forward. An odd smell tickled his nose. Hooks were faintly visible in the gloom above, pulleys and long chains. Somewhere at the far end of the warehouse he could hear water lapping against stone.

  “It’s a loading dock,” Mr. Jelliby said. “The warehouse runs right into the Thames. The dead changelings . . . They must have been dumped into the river here.”

  Bartholomew shivered and stepped closer to Mr. Jelliby. Hettie. He looked around, straining to see something in the blackness. Is she here somewhere? Is anything here?

  Suddenly he clutched Mr. Jelliby’s arm, so tightly the man jumped.

  “What in—!” he said, but Bartholomew didn’t loosen his grip.

  “Someone’s here,” he said in a small voice. He raised a finger, pointing toward a narrow gap that ran like a passageway into the wall of crates.

  Someone was there. Far back in the shadows stood a plain wooden chair. A figure was reclining on it. It sat very still, slung across the chair. One hand hung down limply, fingertips brushing the ground.

  Mr. Jelliby’s heart skipped a beat. He tried to swallow, couldn’t. He signaled for Bartholomew to stay where he was.

  “Hello?” Mr. Jelliby called out, taking a step toward the figure. His voice tolled in the darkness, cold and hollow like a watery bell.

  The figure in the chair remained motionless. He looked almost to be sleeping. His legs were stretched out in front of him. His head was thrown back over one shoulder.

  Mr. Jelliby took several more steps and froze. It was the doctor from the prison in Bath. Dr. Harrow of Sidhe studies. His eyes were open, staring, but they were no longer blue. They were dull and sightless, gray as a sky of rain. Dr. Harrow was dead.

  Mr. Jelliby backed away, horror and revulsion gripping his throat.

  “Who is it?” Bartholomew whispered from behind him. “Mr. Jelliby, what’s—”

  Mr. Jelliby turned. He opened his mouth to say something. Glass shattered on the floor. The window we climbed through. He spun toward it. The window was empty, but something had been there a moment ago. A few bits of glass tinkled to the floor.

  “Bartholomew?” he hissed. “Bartholomew, what was that?”

  “Something came in,” Bartholomew whimpered. He was looking around frantically, trying to distinguish shapes in the shadows all around. “Something’s here.”

  Just then, an orange glow lit the edge of a stack of crates. It grew steadily, spreading across the surface of the wood. Then a figure stepped into view. The glow came from a pipe. The pipe was pinched between the scabbed lips of the old sailor. He had followed them.

  The sailor shuffled along slowly, head to the ground, the glow of his pipe flaring with every breath. Then he stopped.

  Something shifted in the darkness behind him, and suddenly he went limp like a flag when the wind has died. A writhing mass of shadow mounted his shoulder, pin-prick eyes sparking out of the dark.

  Child Number Ten, a voice said inside Bartholomew’s head.

  The pipe fell from the sailor’s mouth, but not before Bartholomew caught a glimpse of the thing that had spoken. What he saw made his skin crawl. The parasite on the back of the lady’s head, the shadow in the attic, the shape racing across the cobbles in Old Crow Alley—now it was a mass of rats. It had no feet other than the scuttling claws of rats, no hands but what it twisted together out of fat brown rats’ tails. Its misshapen face seemed to be stretched across their matted hides like a mask.

  Mr. Jelliby snatched Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him down behind a huge iron winch, just as the creature’s gaze swept toward them.

  “Hide,” Mr. Jelliby mouthed. Bartholomew nodded, and they both sidled back into the ravine of crates.

  No use running, boy. I can feel you.

  Bartholomew kept his eyes on the ground and walked. Whoever it was propped up on the chair at the end of the passage, he didn’t want to know anymore. He could smell the death in the air and it terrified him.

  Naughty boy with the iron coal scuttle. Should be out cold like the rest. Is Arthur Jelliby with you? It would save me much trouble if he were.

  Bartholomew’s arms began to throb. He looked down and saw red light bleeding through the thin fabric of his sleeves. The lines were glowing again.

  Ahead of him, a crate stuck out further than the rest. He dashed around it and slid down, eyes shut. Mr. Jelliby tried to drag him back up, but Bartholomew shook his head.

  “You have to go,” he whispered. “It’ll find me no matter where I hide. It’s got me marked. Get my sister, Mr. Jelliby. Get her, and I’ll try to find you later.”

  Do I hear whispers? Little lying whispers sneaking in the dark? Didn’t your mummy ever tell you it’s not nice to whisper behind other people’s backs?

  Mr. Jelliby looked at Bartholomew gravely. He nodded once. Then he patted Bartholomew on the shoulder, and with a final halfhearted smile, crawled toward the slouched shape of Dr. Harrow.

  Oh, but of course, the voice rasped. Your mummy is sleeping, isn’t she. Don’t worry, she will wake up in a few days’ time, absolutely starving and practically dying of thirst. And she’ll think she slept a thousand years, so changed will the world be. Her darling children. Children Ten and Eleven. How she’ll miss them. Because they will be changed, too. Oh, yes. Quite changed.

  Bartholomew closed his eyes even tighter and pressed his cheek against the rough wood of the crate. Mother won’t miss us, he thought. She won’t have to. Claws rattled on stone somewhere close. We’ll go home, Hettie and me. We’ll go home, we’ll go home, we’ll go home. . . .

  “No,” the voice spat. It was no longer in his head. It was on the other side of the crate, sharp as nails. A hand, fingers of knotted rat tails, curled around the edge. Then a face appeared, teeth bared. “No, Bartholomew Kettle, you will not.”

  A little hunchbacked gnome stepped into Mr
. Lickerish’s study and bowed, sweeping so low his bulb-brown nose was only inches from the rich carpet.

  “Mi Sathir will permit me to speak, yes? Mi Sathir will listen? A great black cat has been found in the warehouse below. It is a very strange cat with too many teeth. It has a bottle round its neck. We suppose it is from the greenwitch, yes?”

  “Ah,” said Mr. Lickerish, allowing a smile to creep across his features. “My lunatic little witch has been busy then. I was beginning to worry we would have to wait yet another day. Bring it to me. The bottle, I mean. Shoo the creature away.”

  Almost half an hour was counted by the brass hands of the clock before the gnome reappeared. His face and hands were traced with scratches. He was clutching a perfectly round glass bottle to his chest. The bottle was filled with a dark liquid. Eyes fastened to the ground, the gnome scuttled up to the desk, deposited the bottle, and without a word, backed out of the room.

  Mr. Lickerish waited until the lock clicked. Then he picked up his handkerchief and began to polish the bottle with it, smoothing the thick glass until it shone. The liquid inside was very beautiful. It was not black or blue or purple but something in between. He held it up against the lamp to admire the colors. He peered closer. Something was floating inside the bottle, something barely visible at the center of the liquid.

  His eyes went wide. It was a feather. A perfect metal feather, its quill still hung with the broken cogs of a clockwork sparrow.

  Bartholomew and the rat faery were traveling up into the sky in a steam-engine elevator. It ran up the cable that anchored the airship to the warehouse, pistons banging. The elevator had no walls—only railings and a metal grille floor—and the higher it went the colder the air became. The wind flew through Bartholomew’s hair, straight through his cloak and shirt, icy-cold against his skin. The rat faery’s hand was coiled around his wrist. It was just as cold as the wind.

  “You might have lived, you know,” the faery said, drawing the tails so tight they pinched. “You escaped me in Old Crow Alley. You escaped me in Bath, and in the police station. And then you came all the way to London, all this way after your sister. Just to die.”