The Peculiar

first see where the bird flew. He knew that clockwork things of that sort could only travel to and from a single point. Their whole being was constructed for one route, their wings the proper length, their cogs and insides the proper size for one stretch, and one stretch only. The newer ones, he knew, had tiny battery faeries to propel them. They were equipped with a sort of mechanical map that assured they did not run into church steeples or trestle bridges. The bird still had to be sent off from the correct place, from the correct height, and in the correct direction. Then it would simply fly until its spring wound down. That must be why Mr. Lickerish had launched it from the clerk’s office high up in Westminster. Any lower and the bird would probably have crashed through someone’s attic window.

A group of raggedy children came running up among the tables, all shouting and begging at once, trying to get some pennies before the waiters drove them off. One came up to Mr. Jelliby, hand outstretched, so dirty a little garden could have grown from it. Mr. Jelliby offered the urchin the green-paint drink, but the child just made a face and ran on.

He turned his attention back to the task at hand. All he had to do was find the bird’s trajectory across London’s rooftops. Then he could simply choose a point along its path and wait for it to arrive. He pictured himself balancing on a chimney somewhere, swinging wildly about with a butterfly net. It was not a nice thought. He hoped no one would be there to see it.

Leaning down from his chair, he poured the sluggish green concoction into the gutter. Then he set off for home, drifting through the city streets at an aimless pace, eyes to the cobbles, hat pulled down low over his face. Crimson lips, unmoving in a white face. Plum-colored skirts. The little top hat, casting a shadow over her eyes. He was so deep in thought that he was already stepping up to the front door of his house on Belgrave Square before he realized it had begun to rain and he was soaked to the skin.

The next morning, after a good breakfast of sausage and buttered toast, Mr. Jelliby pedaled himself to Westminster on his bicycle and got off on the bridge in a place that gave him a view of the river-facing windows of the new palace. He leaned the bicycle up against a lamppost and crossed his arms on the railing, watching the rows of windows carefully. They barely ever opened. When they did, Mr. Jelliby would crane his neck and squint very determinedly, but the only things that came out of them were hot, flustered faces and once a gentleman’s tailcoat. It fell into the river and was fished out by a boatman who put it on sopping wet.

The flower sellers next to Mr. Jelliby began shaking their heads at him. A police officer shot him ever more suspicious looks each time he stalked by. After six hours, Mr. Jelliby could take it no longer and cycled home, tired and humiliated, just as the flame faeries were beginning to flare in the streetlamps.

It took six days of this. Six days of watching the windows of Westminster like a madman before one finally opened, high up near the roof, and a little bead of clockwork and brass flittered out across the river.

The moment Mr. Jelliby saw it he set off running. He left his bicycle, he left his hat, he left the flower sellers hooting and twirling their fingers next to their ears, and he tore away across the bridge.

Just as before, the bird was flying straight toward the forest of garrets and chimney pots on London’s east bank. Mr. Jelliby careened into the traffic on Lambeth Road, ignoring the blaring horns and angry shouts. A steam carriage whizzed past inches from his nose, but he barely flinched. He mustn’t lose sight of the bird. Not now.

Fortunately for him it was not a real sparrow. Its metal wings made it heavy and slow no matter how frantically they flapped, and it didn’t swoop after worms and insects lodged in the stonework the way regular flesh- and-feathers birds did. Mr. Jelliby could very nearly keep pace with it when he ran his fastest.

Unfortunately, his fastest was not overly impressive. He hadn’t run properly since a fox hunt several years ago at Lord Peskinborough’s country estate; Mr. Jelliby had disagreed with his horse over which direction to take, and the horse had left him to go whichever direction he pleased.

He sped into a side street, feet jarring against the cobblestones. His chin was pointed skyward, eyes blind to everything but the metal bird high above. Someone quite literally bounced off him as he ran, and he heard that someone thump against a shop window. People began shouting after him, laughing and jeering. A rough-looking man with metal teeth grabbed his arm and spun him around. Mr. Jelliby shook him off, only to collide violently with a plump lady holding a parasol. The lady screeched. The bundle he had taken to be a muff revealed a mouth and yelped, and a shower of colorfully wrapped packages tumbled around him. He didn’t stop.

“Excuse me! I must get through! Do forgive me!” he cried, swatting a soot-blackened chimney sweep out of his way.

There it was. A glimpse of brass and clockwork, as the bird shot across the slit of sky between two roofs, and then it was gone again.

He had to get on different street. Blast it, this one was leading him in the wrong direction!

He spotted an alley, sinuous and dark, leading into a thicket of buildings, and hurled himself down it. Washing, sour with lye, lashed his face. Street children scattered shrieking before him, disappearing into various recesses like so many beetles before a broom. A fallen piece of gutter very nearly ended his chase then and there, but he leaped over it and burst out into the brightness of a wider street.

The bird! Where is the bird? He stopped, panting, whirling to scan the rooftops.

There. He was ahead of it. It was flying along the tops of the houses toward him, leisurely as could be. He dove into the cool shadow of an archway, sending a legless faery scrabbling for safety, and burst through a door. Up some stairs, down a hallway, up some more stairs that were so rickety he felt they might collapse under him at any moment. Third floor, fourth floor. . He had to get to the top of the house, find a window, and snatch the bird right out of the air. It was the only way.

The stair ended at a low crooked door, painted with now-peeling whitewash. He hammered on it, and it was shaken off its bolt. It yawned open. A pretty room lay beyond. A tiny room under a sloping roof, clean and neat, with china in the cabinet and a snowy cloth on the table. An elderly woman sat in it, bent over an embroidery hoop. She looked up languidly when he burst in, as if his intrusion were the dullest thing in the world.

“Do forgive me, madam, I’ll be along in a moment, this is most embarrassing, just one moment, may I open your window?”

He didn’t wait for her answer. In two strides he had crossed the room and was flinging the window wide. Its panes shivered in the frame as it knocked against the wall of the gable. He thrust his head out.

There was the bird. It was coming, coming up the street. In three seconds it would be past, fluttering on over the smoking city. But he could reach it. If he leaned all the way out and stretched his fingers as far as they went, the bird would fly straight into his hands.

He flailed out over the sill, over the street below. Fifty feet down, people stopped and pointed. Someone screamed. Mr. Jelliby saw the bird approaching-it looked suddenly rather frightening up close-and then. . Ow! It was strong. The wafer-thin metal of its feathers chopped at his fingers as the wings continued to flap. He jerked it toward him, throwing himself back into the old woman’s garret. The bird wrenched itself from his grasp and flew across the room, harsh and foreign in the lavender softness of the flat. It smashed against the wall, was hurled to the floor, and there it lay, skittering frantically.

Mr. Jelliby watched it, wide-eyed, his breath scraping in his throat.

“Herald?” The old woman was at his side, her hand on his sleeve. “Herald, deary, you’re very late,” she said. “It’s time for tea.”

She led Mr. Jelliby to the table. He didn’t resist. The tea things were all there, laid out and waiting-two cups, two saucers, a creamer, a sugar bowl, and a gooseberry tart, as if he had been expected all along.

And so they drank tea, side by side, watching silently as the metal bird convulsed to pieces at their feet.

When it could flap no more, it gave a pitiful mew, and its beak opened and it coughed up a drop of golden light that sputtered and spun, before winking out like a star being covered up.

“Oh.” The old lady said, setting down her cup. “It’s dead now. Herald, be a sweet and take it outside in the dustpan. I’d want it didn’t go bad on the rose-print rug.”

CHAPTER IX

In Ashes