The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachman

  The Peculiar

  Stefan Bachman

  Stefan Bachman

  The Peculiar

  Prologue

  Feathers fell from the sky.

  Like black snow, they drifted onto an old city called Bath. They whirled down the roofs, gathered in the corners of the alleys, and turned everything dark and silent, like a winter’s day.

  The townsfolk thought it odd. Some locked themselves in their cellars. Some hurried to church. Most opened umbrellas and went about their business. At four o’clock in the afternoon, a group of bird catchers set off on the road to Kentish Town, pulling their cages in a cart behind them. They were the last to see Bath as it had been, the last to leave it. Sometime in the night of the twenty-third of September, there was a tremendous noise like wings and voices, creaking branches and howling winds, and then, in the blink of an eye, Bath was gone, and all that remained were ruins, quiet and desolate under the stars.

  There were no flames. No screams. Everyone within five leagues disappeared, so there was no one left to speak to the bailiff when he came riding up the next morning on his knock-kneed horse.

  No one human.

  A farmer found him hours later, standing in a trampled field. The bailiff’s horse was gone and his boots were worn to nothing, as if he had been walking many days. “Cold,” he said, with a faraway look. “Cold lips and cold hands and so peculiar.”

  That was when the rumors started. Monsters were crawling from the ruins of Bath, the whispers said, bone-thin fiends and giants as tall as the hills. On the nearby farms, people nailed herbs to their door-posts and tied their shutters closed with red ribbons. Three days after the city’s destruction, a group of scientists came down from London to examine the place where Bath had been, and were next seen in the crown of a gnarled oak, their bodies white and bloodless, their jackets pierced through and through with twigs. After that, people locked their doors.

  Weeks passed, and the rumors turned to worse things. Children disappeared from their beds. Dogs and sheep went suddenly lame. In Wales, folk went into the woods and never came out. In Swainswick, a fiddle was heard playing in the night, and all the women of the town went out in their bed-gowns and followed it. No one ever saw them again.

  Thinking this might be the work of one of England’s enemies, Parliament ordered a company of troops to Bath at once. The troops arrived, and though they found no rebels or Frenchmen among the tumbled stones, they did find a little battered notebook belonging to one of the scientists who had met his death in the oak. There were only a few pages of writing in it, badly splotched and very hurried, but it caused a sensation all over the country. It was published in pamphlets and newspapers, and limed up onto walls. Butchers read it, and silk weavers read it; schoolchildren, lawyers, and dukes read it, and those who could not read had it read to them in taverns and town squares.

  The first part was all charts and formulas, interspersed with sentimental scribblings about someone named Lizzy. But as the writing proceeded, the scientist’s observations became more interesting. He wrote of the feathers that had fallen on Bath, how they were not the feathers of any bird. He wrote of mysterious footprints and strange scars in the earth. Finally he wrote of a long shadowy highway dissolving in a wisp of ash, and of creatures known only in tales. It was then that everyone knew for certain what they had been dreading all along: the Small Folk, the Hidden People, the Sidhe had passed from their place into ours. The faeries had come to England.

  They came upon the troops in the night-goblins and satyrs, gnomes, sprytes, and the elegant, spindly white beings with their black, black eyes. The officer in command of the English, a well-starched man named Briggs, told them straightaway that they were suspected of great crimes and must go to London at once for interrogation, but it was a ridiculous thing, like telling the sea it must be judged for all the ships it had swallowed. The faeries had no intention of listening to these clumsy, red-clad men. They ran circles around them, hissing and teasing. A pale hand reached out to pluck at a red sleeve. A gun fired in the darkness. That was when the war started.

  It was called the Smiling War because it left so many skulls, white and grinning, in the fields. There were few real battles. No great marches or heroic charges to write poems about later. Because the fay were not like men. They did not follow rules, or line up like tin soldiers.

  The faeries called the birds out of the sky to peck the soldiers’ eyes. They called the rain to wet their gunpowder, and asked the forests to pull up their roots and wander across the countryside to confuse English maps. But in the end the faeries’ magic was no match for cannon and cavalry, and the rows of soldiers that marched among them in an endless red tide. On a great slope called Tar Hill, the British army converged on the fay and scattered them. Those that fled were shot down as they ran. The rest (and there were very many) were rounded up, counted, christened, and dragged away to the factories.

  Bath became their home in this new country. It grew back a dark place, pressing up out of the rubble. The place where the highway had appeared, where everything had been utterly destroyed, became New Bath, a knot of houses and streets more than five hundred feet high, all blackened chimneys and spidery bridges wound into a ball of stinking, smoking dross.

  As for the magic the faeries had brought with them, Parliament decided it was something of an affliction that must be hidden under bandages and ointments. A milkmaid in Trowbridge found that whenever a bell rang, all the enchantments around her would cease, and the hedgerows would stop their whispering, and the roads would lead only to where they had led to before, so a law was passed that commanded all the church bells in the country to toll every five minutes instead of every quarter hour. Iron had long been known as a sure protection against spells, and now little bits of it were put into everything from buttons to breadcrumbs. In the larger cities, fields were plowed up and trees chopped down because it was supposed that faeries could gather magic from the leaves and the dewdrops. Abraham Darby famously hypothesized in his dissertation The Properties of Air that clockwork acted as a sort of antidote to the unruly nature of the fay, and so professors and physicians and all the great minds turned their powers toward mechanics and industry. The Age of Smoke had begun.

  And after a time the faeries were simply a part of England, an inseparable part, like the heather on the bleak gray moors, like the gallows on the hilltops. The goblins and gnomes and wilder faeries were quick to pick up English ways. They lived in English cities, coughed English smoke, and were soon no worse off than the thousands of human poor that toiled at their side. But the high faeries-the pale, silent Sidhe with their fine waistcoats and sly looks-they did not give in so easily. They could not forget that they had once been lords and ladies in great halls of their own. They could not forgive. The English might have won the Smiling War, but there were other ways to fight. A word could cause a riot, ink could spell a man’s death, and the Sidhe knew those weapons like the backs of their hands. Oh yes, they knew.

  CHAPTER I

  The Most Prettiest Thing

  Bartholomew Kettle saw her the moment she merged into the shadows of Old Crow Alley-a great lady dressed all in plum-colored velvets, striding up the muddy street with the bearing of a queen. He wondered if she would ever leave again. In the corpse man’s barrow perhaps, or in a sack, but probably not on her own two feet.

  Bartholomew closed the book he had been reading and pressed his nose against the grimy window, watching her progress down the alley. The faery slums of Bath were not kind to strangers. One moment you could be on a bustling thoroughfare, dodging tram wheels and dung piles, and trying not to be devoured by the wolves that pulled the carriages, and the next you could be hopelessly lost in a maze of narrow streets with nothing but gaunt old hous
es stooping overhead, blocking out the sky. If you had the ill luck to meet anyone, chances were it would be a thief. And not the dainty sort, like the thin-fingered chimney sprytes of London. Rather the sort with dirt under his nails and leaves in his hair, who, if he thought it worthwhile, would not hesitate to slit your throat.

  This lady looked very worthwhile. Folks killed for less, Bartholomew knew. If the half-starved corpses he had seen dragged from the gutter were anything to go by, folks killed for much less.

  She was so tall, so strange and foreign in her finery; she seemed to fill every nook of the murky passage. Long gloves the color of midnight covered her hands. Jewels glimmered at her throat. A little top hat with an enormous purple flower in it sat on her head. It was perched at an angle so that it cast a shadow over her eyes.

  “Hettie,” Bartholomew whispered, without turning from the window. “Hettie, come look.”

  Feet pattered in the depths of the room. A little girl appeared next to him. She was too thin, her face all sharp bones and pale skin, tinged blue from lack of sunlight. Ugly, like him. Her eyes were huge and round, black puddles collecting in the hollows of her skull. The tips of her ears were pointed. In a pinch Bartholomew might still pass as a human child, but not Hettie. There was no mistaking the faery blood in her veins. For where Bartholomew had a mess of chestnut hair growing out of his scalp, Hettie had the smooth, bare branches of a young tree.

  She pushed a wayward twig out of her eyes and let out a little gasp.

  “Oh, Barthy,” she breathed, clutching at his hand. “It’s the most prettiest thing I’ve seen in my whole life.” He went onto his knees next to her, so that both their faces were just peeking over the worm-eaten wood of the sill.

  Pretty indeed, but there was a wrongness about the lady outside. Something dark and unsettled. She carried no baggage or cloak, not even a parasol to shield herself from the heat of late summer. As if she had stepped from the shadowy hush of a drawing room directly into the heart of Bath’s faery district. Her gait was stiff and jerking, as though she didn’t exactly know how to work her appendages.

  “What d’you suppose she’s doing here?” Bartholomew asked. He began to gnaw slowly at his thumbnail.

  Hettie frowned. “I dunno. She might be a lady thief. Mummy says they dress pretty. But isn’t she far too splendid for a thief? Doesn’t she look like. .” Hettie glanced at him, and a flicker of fear passed behind her eyes. “Like she’s looking for something?”

  Bartholomew stopped chewing his nail. He peered at his sister. Then he squeezed her hand. “She’s not looking for us, Het.”

  But even as he said it, he felt the uneasiness curl like a root in his stomach. She was looking for something. Or someone. Her eyes, half hidden in the shadow of her hat, were searching, studying the houses as she moved past them. When her gaze fell on the house they lived in, Bartholomew ducked down under the sill. Hettie was already there. Don’t get yourself noticed and you won’t get yourself hanged. It was perhaps the most important rule for changelings. It was a good rule.

  The lady in the plum-colored dress walked the full length of the alley, all the way to the corner where it wormed into Black Candle Lane. Her skirts dragged over the cobbles, becoming heavy with the oily filth that covered everything, but she didn’t seem to care. She simply turned slowly and made her way back down the alley, this time inspecting the houses on the other side.

  She must have gone up and down Old Crow Alley six or seven times before coming to a halt in front of the house directly across the way from where Bartholomew and Hettie watched. It was an ancient, sharp-roofed house, with chimneys and doors that poked through the stone in odd places. Two larger houses stood on either side, pinching it in, and it was set a little farther back from the alley, behind a high stone wall. An archway was set into the wall in the middle. The twisted remains of a metal gate lay on the ground. The lady stepped over it and into the yard.

  Bartholomew knew who lived in that house. A family of half-bloods, the mother a faery, the father a bellows worker at the cannon foundry on Leechcraft Street. The Buddelbinsters, he’d heard them called. Once they’d had seven changeling children, and Bartholomew had seen them playing in the windows and the doorways. But other people had seen them, too, and one night a crowd had come and dragged the children away. Now there was only one, a frail-looking boy with thistle-hair. Bartholomew and he were friends. At least Bartholomew liked to think they were. Some days, when Old Crow Alley was particularly quiet, the boy would steal out onto the cobbles and fight invisible highwaymen with a bit of stick. He would catch sight of Bartholomew staring at him from the window. The boy would wave. Bartholomew would wave back. It was utterly forbidden-waving at people through windows-but so wonderful to do that Bartholomew forgot sometimes.

  The lady in the plum-colored dress stalked across the rubble-strewn yard and rapped on the door nearest to the ground. Nothing happened for what felt like an age. Then the door was yanked open to the end of its chain, and a thin, sour-looking woman poked her head through the gap. It was the father’s old-maid sister. She lived with the Buddelbinsters, minded their business for them. That included opening the doors when they were knocked on. Bartholomew watched her eyes grow round as saucers as she drank in the sight of the exquisite stranger. She opened her mouth to say something. Then she seemed to think better of it and slammed the door in the lady’s face.

  The lady in the plum-colored dress stood very still for a moment, as if she didn’t quite understand what had happened. Then she knocked on the door again, so loudly it echoed out of the yard, all the way up Old Crow Alley. A few houses away, a curtain twitched.

  Before Bartholomew and Hettie could see what would happen next, the stairs outside the door to the rooms they lived in began to creak noisily. Someone was hurrying up them. Next, a red-cheeked woman burst in, huffing and wiping her hands on her apron. She was small and badly dressed and would have been lovely with enough to eat, but there was never enough to eat, so she looked somewhat wilted and bothered. When she saw the two of them on the floor she clapped her hands to her mouth and shrieked.

  “Children, get away from the window!” In three steps she had crossed the room and was dragging them up by their arms. “Bartholomew, her branches were sticking right up over the sill. Do you want to get seen?”

  She shooed them to the back of the room and bolted the door to the passage. Then she spun on them. Her eyes fell on the potbellied stove. Ash flitted out through the slats in its door.

  “Oh, would you look at that,” she said. “I asked you to empty it, Barthy. I asked you to watch out for your sister, and wind up the wash wringer. You’ve done nothing. .”

  In an instant Bartholomew had all but forgotten the lady in plum. “Mother, I’m sorry I forgot about Hettie’s branches, but I found something out, and I had a very good idea, and I need to explain it to you.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” his mother said wearily. “I want you to do as you’re told.”

  “But that’s just it, I won’t have to!” He cleared his throat, drew himself up to his full height of three and a half feet, and said, “Mother, may I please, please, please summon a domesticated faery?”

  “A what? What are you talking about, child? Who’s that in the Buddelbinsters’ yard?”

  “A domesticated faery. It means it lives in houses. I want to invite a faery servant. I’ve read about it here and here, and here it explains how to do it.” Bartholomew lifted a heap of old books from behind the stove and pushed them up under his mother’s nose. “Please, Mother?”

  “Larks and stage lights, would you look at that dress. Barthy, put those books down, I can’t see properly.”

  “Mother, a faery! For houses!”

  “Must be worth twenty pounds, and what does the silly goose do? Marches down here through all this muck. I do declare. Rusty cogs in that head and nothing but.”

  “And if I get a good one, and I’m nice to it, it would do all sorts of work for us and help
pump the water and-”

  His mother wasn’t looking out the window anymore. Her eyes had gone stony-flat, and she was staring at Bartholomew.

  “-wind up the wash wringer,” he finished weakly.

  “And what if you get a bad one.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice drove up between his ribs like a shard of nasty iron. “I’ll tell you what, Bartholomew Kettle. I’ll tell you! If we’re lucky it’ll sour the milk, empty our cupboards, and run off with every shiny thing it can get its fingers on. Otherwise it’ll just throttle us in our sleep. No, child. No. Don’t you ever be inviting faeries through that door. They’re upstairs and downstairs and on the other side of the wall. They’re all around us for miles and miles, but not in here. Not again, do you understand me?”

  She looked so old all of a sudden. Her hands shook against her apron and tears shone at the corners of her eyes. Hettie, solemn and silent like a little ghost, retreated to her cupboard bed and climbed in, closing the door with the most accusing look. Bartholomew stared at his mother. She stared back. Then he turned and slammed through the door into the passageway.

  He heard her cry out after him, but he didn’t stop. Don’t get yourself noticed, don’t let them see. His bare feet were quiet on the floorboards as he fled up through the house, but he wished he could shout and stomp. He wanted a faery. More than anything else in the world.

  He had already imagined exactly how it should happen. He would set up the invitation, and the next day there would be a petal-winged pisky clinging to the top of his bedpost. It would have a foolish grin on its face, and large ears, and it wouldn’t notice at all that Bartholomew was small and ugly and different from everyone else.

  But no. Mother had to ruin everything.

  At the top of the house they lived in together with various thieves and murderers and faeries was a large and complicated attic. It ran this way and that under the sagging eaves, and when Bartholomew was little it had been filled with broken furniture and all sorts of interesting and exciting rubbish. Everything interesting and exciting had deserted it now, the rubbish having all been used as kindling during the bitter winter months or swapped for trinkets from the traveling faery peddlers. Sometimes the women crept up to hang their washing so that it could dry without being stolen, but otherwise the attic was left to the devices of the dust and the thrushes.