The Peculiar

Mr. Jelliby came up beside him. His eyes narrowed. “What on earth. .”

“It’s the wings,” Bartholomew said quietly. “They’re leaving.” Oh Hettie, he thought. Please be safe.

Mr. Jelliby saw the change in his face. “Come now,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get your sister. We’ll get her back.” He smiled then-not his wide, Westminster smile, but a real one. “Though if we’re to go off adventuring together, I think we should know each other’s names, don’t you?” He held out his hand to Bartholomew. “I’m Arthur. Arthur Jelliby.”

Bartholomew didn’t move. He stared at Mr. Jelliby, then at his hand. Then, very cautiously, he took it, and they shook.

“Bartholomew,” he said.

Together they turned and hurried down into the darkening city.

CHAPTER XVI

Greenwitch

The train’s pistons plunged, once, twice, and Mr. Jelliby was asleep.

Bartholomew had hoped he might say something, discuss their plans, or tell him more about the lady in plum, but he didn’t. Oh well. The air was warm, and the seat was plush, and so Bartholomew snuggled into it and pressed his nose against the cold window. The city swam by below in a blue-dark blur, towers and rooftops gone so quick he barely saw them. They crossed the river, chugged among the soaring black flues of the cannon foundries. Then, in the blink of an eye, the city was behind them and they were slicing through the green fields of the country. In a few minutes Bath was only an inky stain on the horizon, growing smaller with every breath.

Bartholomew looked back and felt an odd ache grow in his chest. He was leaving. Leaving all the few things he had ever known. Going who-knew-where with a gentleman who didn’t eat when there was food to be had and who shook hands with changelings. Somewhere back in that shrinking spot was Mother, asleep in an empty flat. And Hettie. . Hettie was somewhere. Not there, but somewhere.

He turned his attention to their compartment in the No. 10 to Leeds. Mr. Jelliby had bought first-class tickets just as he always did, and Bartholomew was not so far out of sorts that he didn’t notice how terribly swish everything was. Small framed paintings hung above the seats-happy, comfortable scenes of richly dressed people at tea, or outdoors, smiling vacantly into shop windows and fishponds. On the paneled walls, two lamps were mounted, each with a flame faery imprisoned inside. The one on Bartholomew’s side tapped the glass to catch his attention and began pulling its glowing face into a parade of rude expressions. Bartholomew stared at it a while. When he turned back to the window, the faery set to pounding its fists against the inside of the lamp and spitting little angry bursts of flame. Bartholomew glanced back. It promptly resumed making faces at him.

Some time later Mr. Jelliby woke up. Bartholomew dropped his head against the window and pretended to be asleep, watching the gentleman through half-closed lids. Mr. Jelliby looked at him once. Then he began unfolding his newly acquired map, spreading it leaf by leaf throughout the compartment.

Arthur Jelliby’s fingers ran across the thick white paper, bouncing as the train rumbled under him. The map was somewhat different from what he was used to. The English Isle was called “The Withering Place.” London was labeled “The Great Stink-Pile,” and North Yorkshire, “The Almost World,” but he understood it well enough. The train would take them to Leeds in Yorkshire. The coordinates on Mr. Zerubbabel’s scrap of paper were not in Leeds, though. In fact, as far as Mr. Jelliby could tell, they weren’t anywhere in particular. The spot he had marked on the map was not a city, or a hamlet, or even a single farm. It was simply empty open country.

He frowned at the map, turned it upside down, folded it up, and reopened it. He read the coordinates again, recalculated longitude and latitude. It was all no use. The place refused to move anywhere sensible.

When the train stopped in Birmingham, an elderly lady in a silver fur pelisse entered their compartment to sit down. She took one look at Bartholomew’s masked face and the pistols on Mr. Jelliby’s belt and turned around in something of a flurry, sliding the door closed behind her. No one disturbed them for the rest of the journey.

It was well past midnight when they arrived in Leeds. At the loading docks, they were able to bribe a stagecoach driver to abandon his scheduled passengers and take them as close as he could to the point Mr. Jelliby had marked on the map. No roads led within five miles of it. They would have to do some walking that night.

They left the city by moonlight. The coach was drawn by a pair of unnaturally large grasshoppers, and they ran with reckless abandon, dragging it across stones and ruts until Mr. Jelliby was afraid it would jolt to pieces. A chill wind blew through the chinks in the sides of the coach. Branches tapped against the windowpanes. Soon Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby were blue with bruises, and cold to the bone. After an hour, the stagecoach stopped. They climbed out blearily.

“Now then,” the driver said, hunching into his greatcoat and peering out at them with glinting eyes. “Here’s as close as I can get you. There’s an inn about a mile back. The Marshlight. I’ll wait for you there.”

Mr. Jelliby nodded and glanced at the surrounding country, running his hatband around and around through his fingers. “Don’t speak of us to anyone, will you? And if we’re not back by dawn you may assume that. . that we’ve found another way. Good night.”

The driver grunted and cracked his whip. The grasshoppers broke into a run and the stagecoach thundered away down the road. Bartholomew watched it go, shivering.

Mr. Jelliby consulted his compass. Then they set out across a wet green field. A thin mist hovered over the grass, soaking their trousers to the knee. Before long it began to drizzle. Bartholomew’s head buzzed with sleepiness and Mr. Jelliby was limping, but neither of them said anything. On and on they walked, through field after field, over hills and trickling brooks until there was not a muscle in their bodies that did not ache.

Mr. Jelliby heaved himself over a low stone wall, one eye still locked on the compass. “We ought to be getting there shortly,” he said, and brushed the dirt from his knees. “Wherever ‘there’ is. . ”

“There,” as it turned out, was a knot of trees in the middle of a wide empty field. It was not a forest. It might have been a forest once, when there were still forests in these parts, but all its arms and legs had been cut down, and now it was simply a great clump of oak and elm rising out of the rolling grass. Mr. Jelliby paused at its edge, staring up into the vaulting branches. Then he walked in, Bartholomew close behind him.

The air under the trees was damp, but not like in the fields. It was a musty, living damp, heavy with the smell of bark and wet earth. Moss blanketed the ground, and although the trees grew very close together, it was not difficult to walk. After no more than twenty paces, they found themselves in a small clearing. The rain rustled down, and the grass grew tall here. A heap of charred sticks sizzled under the water droplets. And in the center of the clearing, cheery and welcoming as could be, stood a round-topped wooden wagon. It was painted red, with yellow daffodils and primroses on the door and round the spokes of the wheels. Smoke curled up from a tin funnel on its roof. A single window looked out of its side, and scarlet curtains were drawn across the inside of the panes. Warm light shown through them, casting glowing squares on the grass.

Bartholomew and Mr. Jelliby looked around them uncertainly. There were no monstrous contraptions here, no small graves, or black-winged sylphs whispering in the branches. What could Mr. Lickerish possibly be interested in here, that his bird should fly all this way? Bartholomew hoped, desperately hoped, that Hettie was in that painted wagon. He felt suddenly incredibly impatient.

Mr. Jelliby climbed the steps to the door at the back of the wagon and knocked twice. “Hullo!” he called, in what he hoped was a commanding voice. “Who lives here? We must speak with you!”

Something smashed inside. A quick, sharp smash, as if someone had just had a dreadful fright and let a cup or a bowl slip straight from her hands. “Oh, no. Oh no, oh no, oh no,” a frail voice cried. “Please go away. Go away. I have no money. No money anywhere.”

Mr. Jelliby glanced at Bartholomew, but he didn’t look back. He was watching the door intently.

“Madam, I assure you we do not want any money,” Mr. Jelliby said. “I received your address from one Xerxes Ya- From a mutual acquaintance. And I need to speak to you. Madam? Are you all right in there?”

A small shutter snapped open in the door, and a face appeared. Mr. Jelliby stumbled back. It was a gray, wrinkled face framed by a shower of wispy birch branches. An old faery woman.