The Peculiar

by Stefan Bachman

  Bartholomew went cold all over. Fished out of the river, all dripping and cold. Empty, floating like cloth in the swill. No guts! Ha-ha! No guts!

  The changelings were dead. His friend, and. . No. No, not Hettie. Hettie couldn’t be dead.

  Panic gripped his neck with bony fingers. “Please, sir,” he whispered, looking Mr. Jelliby in the eye for the first time since their meeting. “The lady took my sister.”

  Mr. Jelliby looked uncomfortable. “I’m sure I’m very sorry,” he said.

  “I have to get her back. There’s still time. She wouldn’t have killed her yet, would she?” It was a plea, really, more than a question.

  “Well-well, I don’t know!” Mr. Jelliby was becoming flustered. He had come too late. The lady had been and gone, and there was nothing to do now but go to the next of Mr. Zerubbabel’s coordinates and hope he would find something. He didn’t want to hear the grief of the child’s brother. He didn’t want to know how much his failure had cost.

  “It was only a few hours ago,” the boy was saying. “She might still be close. Have you seen her?”

  Somewhere in Mr. Jelliby’s mind a little bell rang. The coffeehouse on the corner of Trafalgar Square. A glinting brass capsule and a note dashed with ink. “Send it to the Moon,” it had read.

  “Your sister is on the moon,” he said. “Whatever that means. Good luck. I need to go now.” He began to walk.

  Bartholomew kept pace with him. “She’s not dead then?”

  “I don’t know!” Mr. Jelliby walked faster.

  “Will you help me find her? Will you take me with you?”

  Mr. Jelliby stopped. He wheeled around to face Bartholomew.

  “Look, boy. I’m very sorry. I’m sorry for your loss, and all your troubles, but I can’t be bothered with them now. Evil machinations are under way and I fear I have very little time to stop them. Finding the lady is the only way I know how. Now, if you know where she is staying, do not hesitate to tell me. Otherwise kindly leave me alone.”

  Bartholomew wasn’t listening. “I’d be hardly any trouble at all. I could walk behind you, and half the time you wouldn’t even know I was there, and then when we find Hettie-”

  Mr. Jelliby began to turn away, a look of apology on his face.

  Horrid, aching panic seized Bartholomew when he saw it. “You can’t go,” he cried, grasping at Mr. Jelliby’s sleeve. “She’s with the lady in plum! If we find her we’ll find my sister! Please, sir, please take me with you!”

  Mr. Jelliby stared at Bartholomew in alarm. He couldn’t take a changeling with him.

  “Your mother,” he said. “Your mother will never allow it.”

  “I told you. She’s asleep. I don’t know when she’ll wake up. But if she does and I’m here and Hettie’s not, she could never bear it.”

  Mr. Jelliby didn’t like the way the child spoke. There was something tired and sad and old about it. “Well, surely you have lessons,” he said, somewhat more sharply than he had intended. “Lessons are very important, you know. You must attend to them diligently.”

  Bartholomew gave Mr. Jelliby a look that said he thought him very stupid. “I don’t have lessons. I don’t go to school. Now will you let me come with you?”

  Mr. Jelliby made a face. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked up at the sky and over his shoulder. Finally he said, “You will have to disguise yourself.”

  Bartholomew was gone in an instant. Three minutes later he was back, wearing a shabby woolen cloak and hood of forest green. It was a hobgoblin’s cloak, taken from the cupboard of the sleeping doorkeeper. On Bartholomew’s feet was a pair of knob-toed boots, much too big for him. He had wrapped a strip of cotton around his face, over and over again, until only a narrow slit was left for him to look through.

  Mr. Jelliby thought he looked like a leprous dwarf. He sighed.

  “Let’s be on our way, then.” The faery slums had wasted enough of his time already. Even by rail, the next of Mr. Zerubbabel’s coordinates lay many hours’ journey from Bath.

  He set off down the alley, and Bartholomew clumped after him.

  They had barely gone seven steps when something caught Bartholomew’s eye. He paused, looking up. The sky between the roofs was the color of pewter. A single black feather was drifting down, down. . It looked like a flake of dark snow, falling from the angry clouds above. Slowly, it spiraled toward him.

  He turned to Mr. Jelliby. “Run,” he said. And a moment later the alley was filled with wings.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The Ugliest Thing

  They ran, fighting their way out of the shrieking wings and pounding down the alley. Bartholomew threw a glance back over his shoulder just in time to see the tall form of the lady in plum sweeping out of the blackness. Her face, half hidden in the shadow of her hat, turned toward him. Then he was around the corner, running with all his might after Mr. Jelliby.

  “Why are we running?” Mr. Jelliby yelled as they dashed across a little court, under the branches of a gnarled old tree. “Changeling, what were those wings? What is happening?”

  “The lady,” Bartholomew gasped, trying to keep up. “The lady in plum! She’s back, and she wouldn’t come for noth-”

  I know you’re here, a dark voice said, sliding silken into his head. Child Number Ten, I can feel you.

  A searing pain exploded in Bartholomew’s arms, tracing like the tip of a knife along his skin. He almost collapsed in his tracks.

  “The lady in plum?” demanded Mr. Jelliby, stopping short.

  Bartholomew collided with his back. Wrenching up a sleeve of his cloak, he saw that the red lines were swollen, raised, pulsating with a ruddy light.

  You are running, half-blood, the voice said, mildly surprised. Why do you run? Are you afraid of something? A snicker echoed in Bartholomew’s skull. Surely you don’t have something to hide from me.

  “But that’s excellent!” Mr. Jelliby was saying. “I’ve been searching for her for weeks! And your sister is with her, you said! I must speak to her at once.” He gave a resolute stamp and turned on his heel.

  Bartholomew ran full force at Mr. Jelliby, shoving him into a doorway. “You don’t understand,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arms. “She’s not the same all the time. She does dreadful things. Don’t you see, she’s the murderer!”

  Mr. Jelliby frowned down at him. “She asked for my help,” he said. Then he shook Bartholomew off and began walking back the way he had come, shouting, “Miss! Oh, miss!”

  “You can’t do this!” Bartholomew cried frantically, running after him. But it was too late.

  A gust of black wings filled the mouth of the street and there was the lady in plum, velvet skirts swirling around her. Something twitched under her skin when she caught sight of Mr. Jelliby. Something like a tiny snake wriggling through bone and sinew.

  “You,” the voice said, and this time it was not only in Bartholomew’s head. It slithered up among the houses, prickled in his ears. The lady began to move.

  “Miss!” Mr. Jelliby called. “Miss, I must speak with you on a matter of great urgency! You asked for my help, remember? In Westminster? I was in the cupboard and you-”

  The lady did not slow down. Lifting one blue-gloved finger, she slashed it viciously through the air in front of her. Mr. Jelliby was swept off his feet and hurled against the wall. Bartholomew spun back into the doorway just as something like a swarm of invisible birds rushed past his face.

  “How did you survive?” the voice spat at Mr. Jelliby. The lady’s finger was still pointing at him, pinning him to the wall. His feet dangled several strides above the cobblestones. “Why are you still alive? No one has ever survived that magic before!” Mr. Jelliby began to gag, his hands clawing at his collar.

  Quickly and stealthily, Bartholomew crept out of the doorway and pried a loose cobblestone out of the street. Then he moved toward the lady’s back, weapon raised.

  There was a warning cry. The lady reached behind he
r head and parted her hair. Mr. Jelliby crumpled to the ground. Bartholomew froze.

  The other face, the tiny leathery one, was looking straight at him, its eyes glittering points inside the folds of flesh. Thick brown tentacles writhed through the lady’s hair. It opened its mouth in a sneer.

  “Child Number Ten,” it said. “The boy in the window.” Bartholomew hurled the cobblestone.

  A howl of pain tore through the alley, so loud it sent a flock of jackdaws wheeling into the sky. The lady raised three fingers, no doubt to finish them both off, once and for all, but Bartholomew was already running, skidding around the corner at Mr. Jelliby’s heels.

  The next alley was wider. Bartholomew had the briefest impression of people stopping their business to stare at them, a casement banging open, a butcher shop with offal running black into the gutter. Then they were out in the open again, out among the rattling trams and the crowds. Washing blew in the breeze overhead. The air was full of smoke and voices. Bartholomew thought he smelled boiled turnips, just like in the upstairs of their house in Old Crow Alley.

  “We have to get to the train station!” Mr. Jelliby shouted, shoving his way between a peppermint-water seller and a faery with mouths where its eyes should have been. “Keep watch for a rickshaw, boy. There should be a blue chap somewhere hereabouts.”

  Bartholomew peered out from between the strips of fabric. All around he saw nothing but legs. Legs in suits, legs in rags, legs in cotton, gray and dove colors, hurrying in every direction. So many people. The thought was accompanied by a stab of panic. Don’t get yourself noticed. Don’t let them see. They were all around, fingers and eyes so close and dangerous. And then, among the legs, he spotted a flicker of purple; plum-colored velvet clutched in a midnight-blue hand.

  “She’s here,” Bartholomew hissed to Mr. Jelliby.

  Mr. Jelliby stole a glance over his shoulder. Sure enough, there was the lady in plum, advancing steadily through the crowds. She stood a head above the endless flow of drab coats and hats, her shadowed face fixed. Stiff as a marionette she walked, no more than twenty paces behind them, and the gap was closing swiftly.

  Without a word Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby slipped into a doorway and down a gray stone passage that looked out over a vegetable garden. The passage led into a bustling kitchen and then out again into a narrow shop-lined street. They paused to get their bearings.

  “Why does she want to kill me?” Mr. Jelliby said, halfway between a whisper and a shout. He was turning circles on the cobbles, running his fingers through his hair. “She asked for my help! My help, for goodness’ sake! And now that I’ve finally found her she very well near murders me!”

  Birds croaked along the roof gutter. Bartholomew was trying to find a way to lace up his boots.

  “She asked for your help, did she?”

  It was not Bartholomew who had spoken. Mr. Jelliby spun. There, not six steps away, stood the lady in plum, lips unmoving in her face. Slowly, she began to turn. The second face came into view, leering out at them through a curtain of hair. Black liquid dribbled down its chin from a horrid gash across its mouth.

  “Melusine, you little traitor.” The voice was sickly sweet, but it shook, a razor thread close to snapping.

  Mr. Jelliby gaped at the face. It stared back, cracked lips trembling, little black eyes twitching like beetles.

  Bartholomew saw his chance. Sidestepping into the kitchen, he began to run again.

  Mr. Jelliby watched him go, and his heart sank. There’s the gratitude for my charity, he thought bitterly. The little devil boy’s abandoned me. And then the lady in plum lifted a dainty finger, and Mr. Jelliby was swept off his feet and hurled across the street.

  He smashed through a shoemaker’s window into the closed-up shop behind it. For an instant he floated in the center of the room, surrounded by boots and darkness. Then he was dragged out again, back across the street, smashing into a door so hard the metal studs split his skin.

  Something snagged the fabric of his coat and rent it side to side. A shard of glass caught him in the hand. He saw the droplets of blood fly down through the air, ruby-red and glistening.

  This was the end, then. The thought came to him idly as his head rapped against a painted signboard. This was the end. He would die now.

  But something was happening in the street below. He heard commotion, a flurry of feet on the cobbles, followed by the desperate shout of, “There she is! Help him! Help him, she’s going to murder him!”

  Boy? He forced himself to open his eyes. He was about eight feet above the ground, tangled in the metalwork of a blacksmith’s sign. Below, two uniformed officers stood, looking from him to the lady in plum and back again with the most befuddled expressions on their mustached faces. Their confusion seemed to last an eternity. Then they ran at the lady, arms outstretched, prepared to snatch her up like a child.

  The lady in plum did not even flinch. Still holding Mr. Jelliby suspended with one hand, she swept the other one about and pointed it, palm outward, at one of the policemen. His face flattened, as if against glass, and he reeled back, clutching his nose. The other one was almost upon her when he too stopped short. He began marching like a wind-up soldier and walked straight into a wall.

  Mr. Jelliby was airborne again. Something had pulled him from the sign, and he was flying, the howl of wings and wind filling his ears. He was dragged as high as the rooftops, then dropped, then snatched up again inches before he smashed to the cobbles. He swooped past the lady. His fingers brushed hair and shriveled skin.

  He had only a split second. A split second to think and even less to strike, but he did. His fist caught the little face in the mouth. The lady in plum went reeling forward, and suddenly nothing was holding Mr. Jelliby anymore and he plummeted.

  A frightful, pain-filled wheezing filled the alley. Mr. Jelliby collapsed into the gutter, and the wheezing went on and on, scratching at the inside of his bones. The lady began to whirl like a dancer on a stage. The edges of her skirt and the tips of her fingers were turning to black feathers, glistening and sparkling in the light. Then the officer with the bloody nose leaped toward her and seized her. The two figures struggled, black wings pouring around them. The lady shrieked and thrashed, but it was no use. The flapping weakened. And all in an instant it was over. The wings were gone. The rushing wind as well. The street became utterly still.

  Bartholomew, the lady, the officers, all stood as if turned to stone. Then the noise of the city enveloped them. Shouts and steam horns-warm, familiar sounds.

  The police were the first to move. They clapped metal cuffs across the lady’s wrists, and one of them began leading her away.

  Mr. Jelliby crawled out of the gutter, aching and winded. Bartholomew made a move to disappear down the stone passageway, back into the close-packed crowds of the wider street, but the other officer caught him by the hood of his cloak.

  “We’re not finished with you, hobgoblin. And I’m afraid with you neither, sir. It looks like we’ll all be taking a pleasant jaunt down to the station.”

  The Bath Police of precinct eight were established in a squat brick building directly below the smoke and falling sparks of an iron bridge that vaulted up into the new city. The windows were sooty, the floors unswept, and everything from the file cabinets to the lampshades smelled strongly of opium.

  Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby were made to sit down in a cold little office, in the presence of an incessantly scowling secretary. Mr. Jelliby’s head flopped about now and again, and Bartholomew was afraid he might tip forward onto the floor. After a long while, a young woman in a red-and-white cap came in and bound up all Mr. Jelliby’s various wounds in clean gauze. She was cheerful enough to him, but she looked at Bartholomew nervously and always pulled her apron a little tighter around herself when she moved within reach, as if she were afraid Bartholomew was going to pluck at it. After a time, she left again. They waited another age. The secretary scowled at them. An old metal clock hung on the wall, and its clacking
hands seemed to slow time down rather than count it.

  Bartholomew’s foot tapped the floor. He wanted to move, to get out of the building and run until he found Hettie. How much time do I have? Not long. Not long before she was like the other changelings, quiet and dead. He saw her in the water suddenly. A white shape bobbing in the dark. Her branches wilted, limp in the currents. Hettie. Bartholomew pinched his eyes shut.

  “Thank you for coming back for me,” Mr. Jelliby said suddenly, and Bartholomew jumped a little. The man hadn’t raised his head. His eyes were still shut. Bartholomew didn’t know what to say. For a long moment he just sat there, trying to think of something, anything at all. Then the door burst open and an inspector came in, and Bartholomew wished he could sink into the shadows of his cloak and never be seen.

  The inspector began asking Mr. Jelliby a great many questions. Mr. Jelliby was tempted to tell him everything. All about Mr. Lickerish, and the changeling murders, and the clockwork birds. Then they could handle it. They could do all this. But he knew it wouldn’t do any good. Mr. Zerubbabel hadn’t believed him. Not even Ophelia had believed him.

  Once the inspector had convinced himself that Mr. Jelliby knew very little about anything at all, he too left and was replaced by a small bearded man in a tweed coat. The man was very plain. His face was plain, his bald head was plain, and his wrinkled necktie was plain. All but his eyes, which were a startling, frigid blue, like glacier water. It looked as if he wanted to eat you up with them.

  “Good day,” he said. His voice was soft. “I am Dr. Harrow, head of Sidhe studies at Bradford College. The lady who attacked you today is possessed by one. A faery, that is, not a college. Now. If you would be so kind as to recount to me every detail you can remember of her actions, her re-actions, the sound of her voice, and the character of her thaumaturgic abilities, I would be much obliged.”

  Mr. Jelliby nodded glumly from under his bandages and began a lengthy description of being attacked and pursued and thrown about alleyways. Then, when he thought he might dare, he asked, “Might I be allowed to speak with her? Is it safe? I’m sure I’d only need a moment.”