Witherward

by Hannah Mathewson

  “Tell me where you’re taking me,” she demanded.

  “Home.” He raised the stone higher and shone it about the cloisters to be sure they were alone, then he approached the fountain and sank a gloved hand into the shallow water. “Your people tell me you have alpha blood, and you’re in danger here. A lot of it, I would wager, if the rumours are true.”

  Not a word of his explanation made sense, but the word home played on a yearning deep inside her.

  “And the way to this place is in this courtyard?”

  He was circling the fountain, and when his hand met with something concealed beneath the surface, he glanced up at her and almost smiled. There was a trembling, groaning sound of metal and stone shifting as he turned some sort of wheel beneath the surface, and Ilsa stepped back, out of the way of the passage opening in the ground beneath her. The head of the fountain itself was revolving as the slabs around it fell away like dominoes to become a spiral staircase leading down into the earth. When Fowler had completed a full revolution of the fountain, he was stood on the topmost step.

  So, it was true. The devil’s earthly realm was real, and here underneath Westminster Abbey was its gate. Ilsa heard a sound from the gaping, black entry – the hiss of a draft, or was it the whispering of a demon or ghoul? She didn’t want to find out. “I won’t go down there.”

  Her captor’s jaw set, and he let out a slow breath. It was the only sign that she was trying his patience. When he spoke, his voice was patient and calm. “The portal only appears to lead down.”

  Still, Ilsa shook her head. With three slow strides, he came to stand in front of her, and took her bound wrists in his hands.

  “I will be met with questions if I turn up in your quarter with a Changeling as a prisoner, so I need to untie you. When I do, I would appreciate it if you would not make me manhandle you down that staircase.”

  “Them things what killed Martha, and this evil magic you’ve tied me with, and you.” She was struggling to maintain some dignity amidst her fear. “P’raps I don’t want to go home if where I belong’s the devil’s realm.”

  Fowler let out a breath that might have been a chuckle. “My lady, if I told you where we were going was a pleasant, safe place – a home to be proud of – I would be lying. But it is not the devil’s realm. We call it the Witherward, and this, the Otherworld. And there are far worse horrors this side of the coin, believe me.” As he spoke, he unwound the strange cords from her wrists until she was unhampered. The second they fell away, her power answered, swelling alongside a relief so intense that for a moment nothing else mattered. She tested her magic, turning her hair red, then fair, then dark again, the curls bunched in a shaking fist before her face so she could be sure; she could cheat the universe again.

  When she could breathe she looked up to find Fowler had retreated to the staircase. She was free to make a break for it if she chose; he was far enough away that she could be out of his reach in time, high above the cloisters.

  But he hadn’t harmed her. In fact, he had saved her life. And now he was taking her to the people who had paid him to; her people, if what he said was true. Ilsa pictured the milky white eyes of the four who had ripped Martha’s life away. She pictured more of them, creeping into the boarding house while she slept. Beings who knew what she looked like and where to find her. Fowler extended his hand to her and her instincts told her to take it. It didn’t matter if she trusted him. She had never trusted another living soul, not completely, but her instincts had kept her alive all the same.

  She took shaking steps towards the staircase and let him lead her down. As they descended through the portal underneath the abbey, she shed Jeanie’s skin and became Ilsa again; the Ilsa who had never belonged in the world above.

  II

  THE GREY WOLF

  Canis lupus

  Native to the wilderness of the Northern hemisphere, the grey wolf – the ancestral canine of humankind’s closest friend – is a social animal with strong familial bonds. They live and hunt in packs.

  5

  Ilsa fell.

  Or at least she thought she did. After only a dozen or so steps, the dark stairwell shifted and her stomach lurched. It was like the feeling of being seconds from sleep, and then jolting awake as you fall off the edge of the world. Somehow, she landed on her feet.

  She had taken several steps more before she realised they were ascending, and above them, around the bend, there was sunlight.

  “You called this a portal,” she said, her voice quaking.

  “Slipping from one world into another is not as simple as geography,” Fowler replied as they emerged into the same quadrangle they had left below – or above. Ilsa was blinded by the sun high overhead, and suddenly burning up, as if someone had opened the door of a raging furnace. A stupid, heedless fear told her this was not the quadrangle at Westminster Abbey; that she was dead and this was hell, just like she’d been promised. A metallic rumble split the air. Ilsa cast wildly about for the source, her eyes finally coming to rest on the clock tower striking one. It swayed before her eyes as the ground swayed beneath her feet. Was stepping through a portal into another realm supposed to feel like this?

  As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw they were surrounded. Eight or ten people had stirred at their arrival and closed in on them. They weren’t armed, but their manner and the way they positioned themselves told her they were guards or soldiers. This was a whole other world – there was no telling the ways they could hurt her. “No,” she said weakly. The fish market flashed before her eyes; Martha’s blood leaving her, the crates pressing in on all sides.

  Someone grasped her hand and pressed something into it. Ilsa willed her gaze to steady, and found Fowler in front of her, cool grey eyes on hers, a frown marring his brow. He was holding her fingers around a flask. “Drink,” he commanded. “Get your wits about you.”

  The promise was tempting, but Ilsa tried to push the flask away. “I don’t want it.”

  “The choice is yours, my lady, but the trials of this day are not yet at an end for you.”

  Ilsa tried to stop her despair showing as she took the flask, unscrewed the top, and sniffed. Scotch. She took a deep drink, then another. All she could taste was blood, but the burn numbed her throat, and as the alcohol started coursing through her, it promised to numb everything else, too.

  Her escort turned to face the soldiers surrounding them and raised his hands.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  A man came forward, braced as if he might pounce at them. “What’s your business here, captain?”

  “I’m in the employ of Alpha Hester,” said Fowler. He produced a folded document from the inside pocket of his coat, and added in an embittered tone, “I’d hoped she would be good enough to tell you.”

  The guard took the document from him, and as he read it, Fowler turned slowly and took in the other guards. Every man and woman he locked eyes with shifted their weight a little, but none faltered. Ilsa gripped the flask with white knuckles as she imagined witnessing another death match.

  Whatever the captain’s piece of paper said, it made the guard’s head snap to Ilsa in red-faced astonishment. He turned his incredulous eyes on the captain, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Stand down,” he commanded the others, and they all relaxed their stance. The guard handed the document back, and lowered his head to Ilsa in a bow. “My lady.”

  Captain Fowler plucked the flask off her and tucked it away. “This way,” he said, and before Ilsa could raise any questions, he had rounded the guard and was heading for a door in the cloisters. Ilsa dragged herself after him, through a short passage, then another, and out onto a wide, bustling junction – the same junction.

  It was London, yet this was not the city she had left behind in the night. The buildings were the same. The horses and carriages and people on the pavement were all identical. A young man was selling newspapers at the corner of an office building, and some of the men comin
g in and out were having their shoes shined by a man on the steps.

  There were also two chimpanzees, little bigger than babies, wrestling on the pavement. Ilsa came to a jolting halt before them. No other pedestrians paid them any notice, and she wondered whether her mind had finally broken, or whether she had made a very poor decision in drinking Fowler’s whisky. Not even the captain looked concerned; he was watching Ilsa’s reaction with quiet humour.

  A harried woman pushed her way through the crowd towards the chimps, scolding them as she approached. As she got close enough to make a grab for one of them, they both transformed into laughing human boys, and darted through the foot traffic away from her.

  Ilsa found she wasn’t breathing. Suddenly, she had an answer she had sought her whole life. She turned wide eyes towards the captain.

  “Changelings,” he said.

  Yes. That is what he’d called her. A changeling.

  “Welcome to Camden Town,” said Captain Fowler, turning north, “the territory of the Changelings.”

  Ilsa was fast learning how little she knew, but if this London was like the one she had left behind, she knew its geography. “Camden’s north of here.”

  “The borough, yes. The Changeling quarter that shares its name is vaster. Though it’s small compared to all the others.”

  The Changeling quarter; the home of people like her. Ilsa’s heart was hammering hard enough to break free.

  They crossed the street and found a group of three more guards ahead. Each wore a red sash or neck scarf or armband, as had those at the abbey; a makeshift livery. They shot wary glances at the captain, even when he lowered his hood to appease them, and as Ilsa and the captain came level, the guards stood across their path.

  “What business?” said one, as the others spread out to surround them. Again, they were all unarmed, but their tense, ready stance and squared shoulders were intimidating.

  The captain scowled as he withdrew the document. “Read it quick,” he snapped. “At this rate, it’ll be a miracle if we reach the Zoo by dusk.”

  The guard scanned the page, then returned it with the same astonished chagrin as the man in the abbey. “Apologies, captain. Take Whitehall. There are fewer wolves that way.”

  “We will.” And they were on their way again, Ilsa taking two steps for every one of his.

  Through the descending whisky haze, she tried to arrange her scraps of knowledge so they made sense – another London, an “Alpha Hester” who was looking for her – but each new piece of information only left her more at sea. “Wolves?”

  “Camden’s militia. Look for the men and women marked with something red.”

  A memory tugged at Ilsa – a wolf somewhere in her childhood – but she dismissed it. “Who’d they work for?”

  The captain thought for a moment, then laughed mildly. “I suppose they work for you.”

  As far as understanding went, this was a step in the wrong direction. “Me?”

  “While I said I would try to explain, there are some gaps in my knowledge about Camden business. You shall have to ask Alpha Hester who the wolves answer to these days.”

  Ilsa was trying to decide on her next most pressing question when a glaring difference between this world – the Witherward – and the other became apparent.

  “There ain’t no Big Ben!”

  “Who?” He followed her line of sight. “Ah, the clock tower. The Otherworld have their parliament. We have the Trade House, the only neutral ground in the city.”

  Indeed, the missing clock tower was not the only difference to the Palace of Westminster. The building was similar, but it was like someone had taken the frame and finished it with bigger windows, steeper roofs and gilt moulding. It had an imposing stateliness that reminded Ilsa of religion instead of law, but certainly not of trade.

  “What ’bout Buckingham Palace?” Ilsa asked. “St Paul’s? The Tower?”

  “Some of those places exist,” said the captain. “Few serve the same purpose.”

  As they walked, Ilsa continued to spot Changelings in animal form. The frequent enormous wolves, she took to be the militia. Then there was a man who transformed into a monkey to climb a lamppost and find his wandering young son in the crowd. A woman waiting to board an omnibus was whispering seductively to a black snake draped around her neck. The driver charged her for two fares without batting an eye, but Ilsa struggled to look away.

  She had never dared imagine a place where she could shift freely. In all the stories she had told herself about how she got her magic, she was an outcast. To find she was so very normal in this other realm was so hard to fathom, she was tempted to run the other way; back to the “Otherworld”.

  She attributed her fierce overheating to this anxiety – and the long walk. That is, until they reached the southern perimeter of Regent’s Park, where the grass was lush and green, the trees were cloaked in frothy foliage, and the hydrangeas were in full bloom. The warmth suddenly made sense in a backward way.

  “It ain’t winter here, is it?” she said.

  “When are we – early February? This is the hot season. We have a few weeks left before the leaves start turning.” He suddenly snatched Ilsa’s elbow and drew her closer. “Just keep walking.”

  She followed his line of sight to a figure among the pedestrians ahead of them, and her blood chilled. She was young, and frail-looking, but she had the orb-like, white eyes and sickly pallor of the beings who had slain Martha.

  She did as the captain said and kept walking – partly because he was dragging her along even as she slowed, and partly because the girl looked so powerless. She swayed slightly as she stumbled along, and even with her empty eyes, it was clear she was nearly oblivious to her surroundings. Other pedestrians gave her a wide berth, or turned their faces like she wasn’t even there.

  They passed close by her, and she paused in the middle of the pavement and cocked her head to one side. Some kind of awareness had struck her; awareness of them.

  “Keep walking,” repeated the captain.

  Ilsa did, but she watched the girl over her shoulder as they retreated. She tracked them with her empty eyes like she was following their scent. After a moment, she turned around again and stumbled on.

  “Was that an Oracle?” said Ilsa.

  “Yes.” He released her arm.

  “But I thought you said this was the Changeling quarter.”

  He shot her a look. “You ask tenacious questions for one in your position,” he said, eyes travelling to the blood spatters on the hem of her dress: to her dishevelled curls and the lazy sway in her step. He offered her the flask a second time – perhaps an attempt to quiet her – but Ilsa refused it. Fowler put it away with a sigh. “It is the Changeling quarter, and it’s wise to keep one’s eyes down and hands at one’s sides in another people’s territory. Plenty would take you for a threat just for being there.”

  Ilsa looked over her shoulder. A man sneered and spat on the ground as he veered out of the girl’s path.

  “And Oracles can see your future?” Ilsa said, mining her knowledge of the occult.

  “Theoretically, they can see anything that can be observed, regardless of time or space.”

  Ilsa wasn’t sure what that meant. She only knew they had tried to kill her. “Ain’t they dangerous?”

  “Immeasurably. But whether they pose any threat is another matter. I assure you the weakest, most wretched beings you meet here will be Oracles. They have little loyalty, little capacity. The only thing they’re good for is keeping the wrong people in power by falling to their knees for their precious opiates.”

  “What ’bout them four what attacked Martha and me?”

  “Acolytes. The militia of the Docklands.”

  What did a militia force of Oracles want with her? And why had the very ruler of Camden thought to rescue her? Ilsa wondered if she’d missed a step – if the whisky had dulled her mind too much – but the questions kept coming to her.

  “And what kind of sol
dier are you, captain?”

  “A different kind,” he said. “My faction is the North, but I belong to the highest bidder.”

  That was three types of soldier in one town. Ilsa sped up to get in his line of sight. “You know, this ain’t looking to me like a better place than the one you took me from.”

  Captain Fowler sighed. His expression darkened and he said quietly, “Granted, London is not what it was meant to be. Not yet. But I told you the truth.”

  “You told me your opinion.”

  “An opinion then,” he said. “It is my opinion that we can not only live in accord but better one another. It’s why we were put here together in the Witherward.”

  “In your opinion,” added Ilsa. He shot her a look. “And on the condition you can stop attacking each other.”

  “We need only decide we want to,” said the captain.

  Ilsa looked back over her shoulder, but the Oracle girl had vanished around the bend.

  “These acolytes. Why’d they want to kill me?”

  The captain studied her meaningfully. With his hood lowered and the sunlight on him, Ilsa saw he was younger than she’d thought. “Revenge,” he said solemnly. “They were provoked.”

  With that, he picked up speed again until Ilsa was trotting to keep up.

  6

  Ilsa never had the money to spare for transport. She loved to fly, though it was a strain, but a girl could miss a lot of hidden magic when she was up in the air, so Ilsa was used to traversing the city on foot.

  But that was on a normal day. By the time they had been walking for an hour, the steadying effect of the scotch had burned off. She wasn’t sure if she could really smell blood, or if seeing the floor of the fish market painted with it was irreparably burned onto her conscious mind. She was weak from tensing every muscle in her body. The day was hot, but she was dressed for a winter’s night, and the heat made her feel like she couldn’t breathe.

  There was so much she wanted to ask, but every step took more energy than the last, and by the time they reached a grand white house set in the northeast corner of the park, she was swaying like the Oracle girl they had passed. Ilsa thought the place was different in the London she’d grown up in, but she was too disorientated to be sure.