The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachmann

  They walked down the curving staircase, toward the hall of the airship. The rat faery moved behind Bartholomew, claws scuttling, pinning his arm to his back.

  “Mr. Lickerish isn’t going to help you, you know.” Bartholomew’s voice was sharp. “I don’t know why you think he will. I don’t know what’s wrong with the lady in plum, but Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care. He just keeps you to do things for him.”

  “Shut up,” the rat faery spat, and yellow teeth pinched into Bartholomew’s back, his wrists, and shoulders. “Shut up, boy, you don’t know—”

  Bartholomew wanted to cry with the pain, but he didn’t. “He’s not going to help you, can’t you see? You’re going to die when that door opens. You’re going to die just like everyone else. Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

  All at once the rat faery threw Bartholomew against the banister and collapsed, rolling and tumbling down the steps. Bartholomew watched it come to rest at the foot of the stairs, a wretched trembling mass.

  He glanced back up the stairs. Should I run? Someone might be watching. Some little pisky peeking down from the chandeliers, or a wooden face inside the wainscoting. And where would I run to?

  Bartholomew approached the rat faery slowly.

  “What is wrong with Melusine?” he asked. He tried to make his voice gentle. “If we stop Mr. Lickerish you can help her. That’s the only way you can help her.”

  The rat faery looked up at Bartholomew. Its face twisted in surprise, then suspicion, then confusion. Bartholomew thought it would say something, but its mouth just opened and closed over its uneven teeth.

  “Who is she?” Bartholomew asked, stooping down next to him. “Who is Melusine?”

  There was an instant when some of the rat faery’s hardness came back into its face. Bartholomew flinched, sure it was going to get up again and drag him on. But the hardness was gone again as quickly as it had come, replaced by something Bartholomew had never seen in a face so inhuman. A wistful look, sad and faraway.

  “I met her in Dublin,” it said, and its voice was a rasp in its throat. “She was shopping for ribbons on Nassau Street, and she was so fair. So fair. And I so ugly, watching from the shadows. I cast a spell on myself, a powerful glamour that in a wink made me the most handsome creature in all the world. I strolled up beside her and told her how pretty the purple ribbons would look with her hair. We began to talk. She introduced me to her parents and I was invited to dine with them. . . .

  “We were going to be married in May. But the stupid maid . . . Silly superstitious thing with an iron ring on her finger night and day. Or perhaps not so silly. She saw through my magic from the start. She saw me for what I was, a horrid knot of rats slinking at her mistress’s side. For a while she thought she was mad. Then she confided in the footman. The footman told the cook, the cook told the housekeeper, and eventually the tale reached the ears of Melusine’s father. He was always such a kind man, even to me, and he loved his daughter very much. The rumor disturbed him. A faery hunter was sent for from Arklow, to divine whether there was magical deception at work in the house, and Melusine’s father called her to him, told her of his fear. But I had spoken to her first. I turned her mind against him. She called him a liar and a heartless monster, and we fled together into a gathering storm, taking the ponies across the hill.”

  There was a pause, and the airship went very still. The flames in the gas lamps flared and dimmed silently. Only the hum of the engines made any sound at all.

  Bartholomew’s mind was racing. I don’t have time for this. I need to find Mr. Jelliby, find Hettie before she is turned into some horrible door. He wondered how strong the rat faery still was, what it would do if he tried to run. His fingers wrapped around a spindle in the banister. He could wrench it out, he thought, and beat the rats with it.

  But then the faery was looking at him again, and its eyes were wet and deep and unbearably sad.

  “We went to London,” it said, not really to Bartholomew. Not really to anyone. “We sold her jewels for wine, and danced until our feet were sore. I thought everything was going grandly, but not Melusine. Not my fair, fair Melusine. She missed her parents. She missed Ireland, and the high green hills. She is such a young thing, after all.” Bartholomew let his hand slip from the spindle. “And I knew then that she would never really be mine while the deception lasted. She didn’t love me. The thing she loved was an illusion and a lie, and so one day I shed my glamour. I showed her what I was.”

  The rat faery looked away. When it spoke again its voice was choked. “And she hated me. She hated me for my ugliness. She ran. Ran to the door, crying and screaming, but I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t. I knew it would kill her. I knew the rats would eat into her and she would never be the same again, but how else was I to keep her with me? I couldn’t let her leave me!” The rat faery jerked on the floor, as if all its many legs were hurtling in different directions. Then it curled around itself like a snail, hiding its head. “I met Mr. Lickerish then,” it whispered. “In the street in the night. He told me of his plan, how he needed someone to fetch him changelings. If the faery door were opened, he said, all would be well again. Magic would be strong in England and I would be able to keep Melusine from dying. I would be able to cast a glamour so strong and deep that not even the maid’s iron ring could help her see through it. And all this . . .” He raised a rat-tail hand, and waved it blindly. “All this would seem like an evil dream. And so I did it all. Everything he asked of me.”

  Bartholomew said nothing. He didn’t like what he had heard. He wanted to find Hettie and he wanted to hate Jack Box. He wanted to think him a monster for all the pain he had caused. But a nasty voice had crept into Bartholomew’s head and was saying, A monster? But he’s just like you. Just as ugly, just as selfish. You’re no different from him. Wouldn’t you kill a million people to save Hettie?

  Bartholomew closed his eyes. “But Melusine,” he said, trying to sound calm. “She’ll live now that you’ve left her. Bath is so far away. She’ll be safe now.”

  “Safe.” The faery’s voice was a bare, rattling whisper. “Safe from me. Safe forever.”

  Bartholomew stared at him.

  “No one helped her. Not the police, or Mr. Lickerish, even though I begged him and did everything he asked of me. One day, she lasted, perhaps two. And then she died, all alone on that chair, in that white room under the earth.”

  Mr. Lickerish spoke quickly into the brass speaking apparatus, excitement glimmering at the edge of his voice. “The greenwitch’s elixir has arrived at last. Take Child Number Eleven down to the warehouse and give it to her. Make certain she drinks every drop. And then hurry. The sylphs will come quickly. You will have only minutes before the door begins to destroy the city. Hurry back to the Moon, and do not delay. I will need you in the world of tomorrow.” He set down the mouthpiece, nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his silk watch ribbon.

  “Sathir?” the faery butler’s voice crackled through the device. “Sathir, are you there? Is there anything more you wish to say?”

  Mr. Lickerish picked up the mouthpiece again. “Yes. Yes, I believe there is. Jack Box has become . . . unstable. He is on his way down to the warehouse as we speak. Make sure he stays there.” And without waiting for a reply he slammed the mouthpiece into its cradle.

  The faery butler replaced the speaking apparatus slowly.

  “Very well,” he said to no one at all, and shooting one last suspicious look about the room, he took Hettie by the hand and pulled her toward the door.

  “Come along, half-blood. Are you thirsty? I imagine you must be parched.”

  “I’m sorry she’s dead,” Bartholomew said softly. In an odd way he really was sorry. She had always seemed a phantom and a witch, a symbol of all the evil that had intruded into his life. She had started it, walking into the alley and whisking away the Buddelbinster boy. But it hadn’t really been her at all. When he had edged up to her under the e
aves of the house on Old Crow Alley, that was when he had met the true Melusine. He had heard her soft voice and silly notions of valets and peaches and cream. He would never forget the shining pain in her eyes when she had seen the rat faery, racing across the cobbles toward her. Tell Daddy I’m sorry, she had said. Tell Daddy I’m sorry.

  If Bartholomew lived long enough, he would tell her father. He would find him and tell him how much Melusine had loved him in her last days, how much she had wanted to be home again.

  Bartholomew knelt down next to Jack Box. He almost reached out and touched him. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He knotted his fist, and said, “You don’t have to listen to Mr. Lickerish anymore. You don’t have to hurt people. Do you know where my sister is? Could you take me to her? Please, sir. Please help me save her?”

  For a moment Jack Box said nothing. His face was lost in the seething mass of hides and tails. The rats seemed to sense something was wrong. They were crawling over each other, eyes rolling back in their heads, yellow teeth chattering. For a moment Jack Box said nothing. Then, his voice muffled, “Why should I help you? Why should I help anyone now?”

  Bartholomew dug his nails into his palms. “Because . . .” he stammered, but he didn’t have an answer. Not then. All he could think of was Hettie, and her hand in his, and her stupid, unsnippable branches. “Just please help me? Please, please won’t you help?”

  A clank sounded in the hall and the hatch in the floor began to open, tearing a gaping hole in the warmth. Wind flew into the room, whistling around Bartholomew’s ears. Then a door opened and closed in the corridor above. Footsteps beat the carpet.

  Someone is coming. Bartholomew half rose, ready to run. We have to leave. We have to leave now.

  But the rat faery only sat up a little and stared at Bartholomew, his black eyes pleading.

  “You have to help me!” Bartholomew repeated desperately. “I don’t know why, you just have to! My sister is going to die! Please won’t you help?”

  Jack Box looked away. The rats were stirring into a frenzy, but the faery’s face had gone very still, almost calm.

  “No,” he said. The little word dropped like stone from his mouth. And then, dragging himself to the edge of the hatch, he slipped over it into the night. Bartholomew did not watch him fall. He stopped his ears against the cries of the rats and turned his face to the wall.

  Mr. Lickerish had finished his apple. He set the core down and began picking out the seeds, placing them in a neat row on top of his desk. When he had completed the task to his satisfaction, he rang a servant’s bell and ordered a glass of milk from the hunchbacked gnome. The milk arrived in due time, but instead of drinking it, Mr. Lickerish swept the apple seeds into his palm and dropped them into the glass. Then he went to the window and looked out, black satin cuffs crossed behind his back.

  A faint tinkling made him turn. The room was empty. A clockwork bird stared out at nothing with its beady eyes. In the cup, a film had formed on top of the milk the way it always does when milk is mildly fresh. As Mr. Lickerish watched, the film turned into a skin. The skin grew thicker. And all of a sudden the glass tipped over and a blue-white gobbet of milk plopped out onto the smooth top of the desk. It jiggled toward the edge. Mr. Lickerish caught it in his hand and held it up to his face. His mouth stretched across his sharp teeth in a gleaming smile. Faintly he could see the apple seeds in the center of the milk, little veins and lungs and a heart all sprouting out from them. Then two seeds popped forward as its eyes, and it tottered up on a pair of stemlike legs. It had a huge mouth that hung open, wide and bare and empty.

  “Charming,” Mr. Lickerish said, still smiling. “You will be my eyes for a little while, imp. Hurry down to the warehouse and keep watch. Whatever you see, I will see, and whatever I say, you are to say. Do you understand that?”

  The gobbet of milk stared at Mr. Lickerish, its apple-seed eyes somewhat mournful. It nodded slowly. Then it hopped down from the faery’s hand and wobbled off across the floorboards toward the door.

  Mr. Jelliby found Bartholomew in the airship’s hall, trying to hide himself under the carpets. The hatch was open. It was a clear, cold night, and the city spread away forever. The streets made a glowing spider’s web, Mayfair and High Holborn bright with the fierce lights of flame faeries, while the poorer streets were only gaslit threads, dim and flickering, or not lit at all. The river cut it all in half, sluggish and black, broken only by the occasional lantern of a corpse boat.

  “Bartholomew! What are you doing? Get away from the edge!” Mr. Jelliby hissed, tiptoeing across the hall. “The faery butler is with Mr. Lickerish as we speak. He has your sister, and he’s getting the potion and he’s going to take her down in the elevator.”

  Bartholomew sat bolt upright. “Hettie? You saw her?”

  “Yes! With my own eyes! But we must hurry.” He ran to the edge of the floor and reached out for the elevator, looking it over rapidly.

  “There. See those metal bars underneath? We can squeeze down there, I think, and then leap out when the butler’s alone in the warehouse. Quick now! In with you.”

  Without another word, Bartholomew scooted off the edge of the floor and onto the metal bars. The warmth of the hall was gone in an instant. Wind and frozen ash blew around him freely, but he barely noticed. Mr. Jelliby has found her. She is here and she is alive.

  The space under the elevator was barely a foot high and utterly open. Only the widely set bars kept him from falling into the dark. It’s the luggage rack, he thought. It was where the trunks and hatboxes would have been packed had the dirigible been used for anything ordinary.

  Mr. Jelliby dragged at the cable, and the elevator sank a foot. The luggage rack dropped below the lip of the hatch, hidden. Then he, too, swung down.

  Not a moment too soon. Mr. Jelliby barely had time to arrange his arms and legs before the first tread of feet sounded on the stairs.

  “Come on!” the faery butler’s whine drifted into the hall. “By stone, you are the most tiresome creature! The other nine weren’t half as bad.”

  There was a scuffling sound as he pulled Hettie along and she hurried to match his pace. Then the elevator swayed as they stepped aboard. Bartholomew could see a little through the metal grille of the floor. He could just make out the shadows of Hettie’s bare feet, the great long soles of the faery butler’s shoes. And there was something else, too. Something small and round that never stayed still, and made an odd sound like water in a jug.

  Bartholomew held his breath. Hettie was so close. Inches above him. He wanted to climb up and grab her, and tell her that he had found her and they’d be going home soon. Only a little longer. . . .

  The elevator began to descend, creaking down through the night. The only light came from the faery butler’s green eye. Mr. Jelliby prayed he wouldn’t look down. He would see them instantly if he did, lying there under the floor. His mechanical eye would pierce metal and darkness and—

  The faery lifted his nose and sniffed the air. Mr. Jelliby stiffened.

  “I smell rain,” the faery said, looking at Hettie curiously. “Rain and mud.”

  Hettie said nothing.

  The faery butler tapped his fingers against the railing. “It has not rained in London for days.”

  For several heartbeats the only sound was the wind. Then, without warning, a jagged blade descended from the faery butler’s sleeve, and he slashed it down through the air, driving it through the floor. Its tip came to a halt, ringing, inches from Bartholomew’s eye. He screamed.

  “Barthy?” Hettie cried, pressing her face to the grating.

  Mr. Jelliby dragged himself off the bars and hung from them, legs flailing forty feet above the ground. “Get out! Get out, Bartholomew, he’ll kill you!”

  The blade came down again, over and over, slicing Bartholomew’s arm, drawing blood. The elevator had reached the roof of the warehouse. The air turned warm as they sank into it.

  “Now!” Mr. Jelliby shouted, from where he
clung. “Let go! It’s not far anymore!”

  Bartholomew saw the blade hurtling down toward him, glimmering like a streak of rain. It would kill him this time. It would meet its mark, go clean through his heart. But just as its tip bit into his skin, he slipped between the bars and fell, down, down into the warehouse.

  The impact smashed the breath from his lungs. His knees buckled under him and he rolled, over and over, until he came to rest against a wall of crates. He heard the elevator clang against the floor. Then the patter of Hettie’s bare feet, the faery butler’s heels ringing on stone. When he opened his eyes he half expected to see the creature standing over him, knife poised to snuff him out.

  But the faery butler seemed to have lost all interest in him. Nor was he paying any attention to Mr. Jelliby, who had dragged himself into the sea of crates and sat crouched there, gasping. With quick, efficient movements, the faery forced Hettie’s feet into the charred shoes and set to knotting the shoelaces, over and over, until there was not the slightest chance she could step out of them.

  She tried to lift her feet, kick his hands away, but the shoes were hammered fast to the floor. His long fingers tugged at the knots, testing them. She scratched at his head, tried to pick at the laces herself, but the faery swatted her away.

  Bartholomew began crawling toward her on hands and knees. Still the faery took no notice of him. The butler rose and took the greenwitch’s elixir from his coat. He placed it to Hettie’s lips, tipping up the bottle. She spluttered once, spat, but he clenched her little face in his hand and forced it skyward, and there was nothing she could do but cough the liquid down in great gulps.

  When the bottle was empty the faery flung it aside. Without another word, he strode back toward the elevator.

  Mr. Jelliby leaped out from among the crates, swinging a metal hook before him like a rapier. The faery didn’t even flinch. He dodged it gracefully, sliding around it like a snake, and spinning, he struck Mr. Jelliby a vicious blow to the side of the head. Bartholomew watched Mr. Jelliby stagger and then scrabbled toward Hettie. I’ll get her to the window. We’ll climb out while the faery butler’s distracted and—