The Peculiar

Crouched on the floor of his ruined sanctuary, Bartholomew Kettle made up his mind. That night he would catch his rebel faery. He would confront the little beast and whether it be good or bad, force it to do what he had called it to do. It didn’t want to be his friend, and there was nothing he could do about that, but it thought it could play tricks on him. It thought it could break his treasures, and frighten Hettie, and Bartholomew wasn’t going to stand for that anymore. At nightfall, when it came slipping in with the shadows and the moonlight, he would be ready.

But someone else came first that evening, and Bartholomew was forced to postpone his plans. Heavy boots shuffled in the stairwell, a lantern lit the edge of the door, and Agnes Skinner from the house down the way dropped in for a cup of tea. Bartholomew and Hettie were shooed into the tiny room Bartholomew slept in, and the door was locked behind them.

Settling against the clammy wall, Bartholomew waited for the voices in the kitchen to become louder. He dreaded company. He thought it was foolish, letting people in, like letting a wolf into a room full of birds. But wolves could be interesting, too. Sometimes he would hear a fragment, or a single word, and he would think about it for days. Sometimes he wished he could sit in the kitchen, listening and drinking tea.

As long as the wolf doesn’t ask questions.

Only a few people knew of Betsy Kettle’s two children, and Agnes Skinner was one of them. Don’t get yourself noticed, and you won’t get yourself hanged. It wouldn’t take much to get noticed-a glimpse of too-white skin, or bad luck and a goose that didn’t lay. Then people would stop bidding Mother good morning in the passage. They would creep past the Kettles’ door like it was cursed. And then. .

Hettie was the worrisome one. It hurt her when Mother tried to clip the branches from her head, and nothing short of a blindfold could hide her black-glass stare. Mother had sewn her a deep green hood so that she could go into the courtyard to scratch for sand, but she was never allowed to speak to anyone, never allowed up the stairs or into the street.

It was a delicate balance Mother had to strike, and Bartholomew felt a little bit proud when he thought how well she managed it. Too open, and they would be discovered; too secret and people would start to talk, filling in all the things they didn’t know with their own ugly suspicions. So she kept a few friends, gossiped with the neighbors, and brought violets to folks when there was a death in the family. Agnes Skinner was one of her oldest friends. She was a widow and a thief, with a hard staccato voice that pried and poked into everything. She did ask about the children now and then, sometimes so pointedly Bartholomew wondered if she suspected. And every time she came he sat in the dark and worried, a little bird, and the wolf just beyond the door.

The kitchen filled with talk as the women pattered about. The kettle began to whistle, and Bartholomew smelled brewed tea leaves. He heard a cork being pulled free with a wet plop.

That would be the spirits. A tall, cut-glass bottle of blackberry cordial sat on a high shelf in the kitchen. It was a relic from the time when Bartholomew’s father still lived with them. He had gone away often, without warning, sometimes for months at a time, and then the door would open and he would be back. Sometimes he came back dirty and travel-stained, sometimes clean and polished, with lace at his cuffs. He always brought something when he returned. One time it was ribbons, one time cabbages. Once he had brought a ham and a string of pearls stuffed inside his shirt. The blackberry cordial was one of those fleeting gifts, the only one Mother hadn’t sold or traded. Bartholomew didn’t know why she kept it. Still, the only reasonable excuse to use it was for company, and so she had the habit of lacing the tea with it.

It was not very long before the two women were quite merry in the other room. Every so often, a burst of giggling would erupt, and the voices would become so loud that Bartholomew could hear every word.

“Did you see she’s planted roses?” Mother was saying, and he heard wood straining as one of them leaned back in her chair. “Roses, Aggy! As if she wants to make that ugly yard all beautified.” She laughed, a trifle bitterly. “They won’t grow, you know. The dirt’s rotten out here with the factories going day and night, and even if it weren’t, roses won’t help that wretched house a bit. Not that one. She’d have been better off making jam out of the hips if she insists on buying such frivolousnesses in the first place. Or tea.” Her voice became wistful. “Rose-hip tea does taste lovely. . ”

Mrs. Skinner made an incoherent sound of consolation. “I wouldn’t know, Betsy, but I wager it doesn’t even compare to yours. Why, it warms my bones, it does. Every time.”

Bartholomew could almost see Mother preening at the words, trying to be dainty, trying to be prim, flapping her work-worn hands as if they were the soft white fingers of a gentlewoman. “Nonsense, Aggy. But do have some more, won’t you? There now, mind you don’t snort it up when I tell you what Mr. Trimwick did last-”

The voices dropped low again. Bartholomew could hear nothing but a murmur through the wall. He sank to his knees and scooted silently across the floor, feeling in the dark for Hettie. He found her at the far end of the room. She was crouched under the window, playing silently with her doll. Its name was Pumpkin and it had a checkered handkerchief for a dress. It had a checkered handkerchief for a head, too, and handkerchief hands and feet. It was really nothing but checkered handkerchief.

“How does he look, Hettie?” Bartholomew’s voice was the tiniest whisper. Mrs. Skinner mustn’t hear them. Mother had probably told her they were asleep. “Hettie, what’s the raggedy man like?”

“Raggedy,” she said, and danced her handkerchief into a different corner. Apparently she was not about to forgive him for leaving her under the stairs.

“Shhh. Keep quiet, will you? Look, Het, I’m sorry. I already said I was, and I shouldn’t have run off like that. Please tell me?”

She eyed him from under her branches. He could practically hear the cogs whirring inside her head, debating whether to ignore him and give him what he deserved, or to enjoy the satisfaction of telling him something he desperately wanted to know.

“He doesn’t stand straight,” she said after a while. “He’s all crooked and dark, and he’s got a hat on his head with a popped top. I can never see much of him, and it sounds like he has bugs in his throat when he breathes, and. .” She was having trouble putting it into words. “And the shadows-they follow him about.”

No petal wings, then. Not nice at all. What a fool he’d been. “Oh. All right. Did he tell you anything? What are his songs about?”

Even in the dark Bartholomew could see her gaze go hard and flat. “I’m not going to talk about those,” she said. She turned away again and hugged her doll to her cheek, rocking it like a baby.

Bartholomew felt a horrible guilt at that. This was his fault. The faery and all its tricks. And Hettie was the one suffering for it, more than him. The guilt turned to anger.

“Well, did he tell you who he was? Did the little beast tell you anything at all?”

Too late he realized he had said it louder than he had wanted to. It was quiet on the other side of the door. He heard Mother clear her throat.

Mrs. Skinner spoke. “How are your children, Betsy?” Was Bartholomew imagining it, or did her voice hold an unpleasant edge? “Mary says your boy’s been up in the attic an awful lot lately. And nobody’s seen nothin’ of the girl all summer.”

“They’ve been ill,” Mother said sharply. For a long moment no one spoke. Then the cork popped again and there was a trickling sound, and Bartholomew could tell from Mother’s voice that she was smiling. “But it’s naught to fret about. They’ll be up and running in no time. Now, let’s hear about you. Business has been right fair lately, if I’m not mistaken?”

Bartholomew let his breath out slowly. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding it. That was good, he thought. Agnes Skinner loved nothing more than to talk about her “business.”

“Ah, one can’t complain is all I say. Though there was a tender morsel slipped right through my fingers a few weeks back.” Mrs. Skinner sighed. “All in purple velvets she was, and weighted half to the ground with gemstones. I wanted to bag her on her way out, but she never came. I s’pose someone else got her first.”

Mother must have answered with something funny because the two women started laughing. Then the conversation was flowing again, drowning out all other sounds.

Hettie touched his arm. “He asked me a heap-load of questions,” she whispered. “The raggedy man did. About you and me and Mummy, and who our father was. And when I didn’t want to answer him anymore and pretended to be asleep, he just stood there and watched me. He stands so still in the dark. He just stands and stands until I can’t bear it.”

“And Het, he is a faery, isn’t he?”