The Peculiar

couldn’t do anything. What could I have done?” She asked it almost pleadingly.

Bartholomew looked up from his boots. He was glaring. “What d’ you mean, what could you have done?” The greenwitch turned to him in surprise. He hadn’t spoken in hours and his voice was rough. “You could have done nothing, that’s what you could have done. You could have stopped helping him. He has my sister now, did you know that? She’s next, and it’s your fault. It’s your fault as much as anybody’s.”

The old faery stared at him a moment. The firelight danced in her eyes. When she spoke her voice was soft. “It wasn’t my fault. Oh, it wasn’t. Mr. Lickerish was the one doing the killing. All I did was stir my little pot in my little clearing. Won’t think about it. Won’t think about it!”

Mr. Jelliby started to rise. The greenwitch jerked around to face him. She smiled again. “But in the end I suppose it is my fault, isn’t it. Oh, I am sorry. Do you know? When I first learned of John Lickerish’s plan, I thought, ‘Why not?’ Why should I care what happens to London? It’s about time the faeries broke free, about time the English learned their lesson. But I changed my mind. Would you like some more tea? I decided that Mr. Lickerish was not doing it for the faeries. He’s not doing it for anyone, really. No one but himself. He says he doesn’t like walls and chains, but he really does. As long as he builds the walls and makes the chains. Because you see, when the faery door is opened he isn’t just going to let it go. He’s going to guard it like a great watchdog, and it will be his. It will always be open, but he’ll decide what goes in and what comes out.”

Bartholomew stared at her. What is wrong with her? It was as if her mind were twisting and shoving and telling itself lies. She kept gazing at Mr. Jelliby, little twitches under her eye and in her fingers, that ghastly smile on her face.

“A great many creatures will die when it opens,” she said. “Humans and faeries, all dead in their beds. Twenty thousand perished in Bath. A hundred thousand in the aftermath. Do you remember the Smiling War? Tar Hill and the Drowning Days? Of course you don’t. You’re too young, and too well fed. But I remember. Years and years after the door opened, and there was still nothing but confusion and bloodshed. It’ll all happen again. New faeries will come, and they’ll be wild and free, and they’ll dance in the guts of the people and the silly, tired, English faeries. Because the faeries who are already here won’t know what to do. They don’t remember how they once were. I think they’ll all die, don’t you? Die along with everyone else. And Mr. Lickerish will watch it all from some safe place.” She looked at Mr. Jelliby adoringly. “But you’ll stop him, won’t you. . ”

Mr. Jelliby pushed aside his teacup. “I don’t know,” he said shortly, and took from his waistcoat pocket the scrap of paper Mr. Zerubbabel had given him. “I have one more address from Mr. Lickerish’s messenger bird. The address is in London somewhere. It’s the place, isn’t it? Has he told you? I believe the messenger birds connect Mr. Lickerish to all the points of his scheme-Bath and the changelings, you. Then back to London.”

The old faery’s smile turned sly. “Oh, you are clever. So clever and tall. How did you get your hands on the Lord Chancellor’s messenger bird, hmm? If he ever finds out he’ll have you killed.”

He already tried, Mr. Jelliby thought, but he said, “Look madam, we haven’t time for nonsense. Tell us what the door looks like and where we’ll find it, and we’ll leave you be.”

“Oh, but I don’t want you to leave me be! Don’t go! I can’t tell you those things. I can’t, it would be bad, so bad. Or perhaps I could. Perhaps a little. My memories of the last one are very dim, that’s all. So dim and faraway. I woke in my bed in the crown of a tree, and. .” The greenwitch’s eyes clouded over. “Mama. Mama was packing bags. She was telling us to hurry because there was a great wonder under way by the City of Black Laughter. And I remember walking, walking. I was very young then. It seemed to me we walked a hundred nights, but it couldn’t have been long at all. And then there was a door in the air. It was like a rip in the sky and its edges were black wings flapping. Feathers fell around us. We went through it, but I don’t remember how it looked from the other side. I didn’t look back, you see. Not once. Not until it was too late. The door could have been huge or it could have been tiny. Thousands of us fit through it at a time, but it was all magic, that door; it might have been no bigger than my nose.” She wiggled her nose. “The London door could be anything. Anywhere. It could be a mouse hole or a cupboard. It could be the marble arch in Park Lane.”

She smiled, wistful, her thumb rubbing the chip in the rim of her teacup. “I want to go back, you know. To the Old Country. Home.” She looked at Bartholomew, her blue eyes faint and watery. Then she set down her cup and put her hands to her ears. “Best not to think of it. Best not. Won’t think about it! Nothing good will come of Mr. Lickerish’s plans. Not for me. Not for me, and not for anyone.”

The wagon was silent for a minute. The fire crackled inside the little stove. Outside in the trees, an owl hooted mournfully.

Then Mr. Jelliby stood. “Indeed. We’ll be leaving now. Thank you for the tea.”

The greenwitch began to speak again, stumbling out of her chair, trying to keep them a little longer, but Mr. Jelliby was already unlatching the door. He stepped out into the night. Bartholomew followed, pulling his hood down low.

Out in the clearing, Mr. Jelliby took a deep breath. He turned to Bartholomew. “Cracked as an egg, that one. Let’s be off then, if we’re to save the world.”

They trudged out of the circle of warmth from the wagon, out into the heavy damp of the wood.

“I don’t care about the world,” Bartholomew said under his breath. “All I want is Hettie.”

The old faery climbed down from her wagon and watched them go, gazing after them until long after they had been swallowed by the night.

Hours passed. She stood so still she might almost have been mistaken for a tree herself. Finally a clockwork sparrow swooped down into the clearing and alighted on the dewy grass by her feet. She scooped it up. Cradling it in her palm, she undid the brass capsule from its leg and took out a message.

Rejoice, sister, it read, in Mr. Lickerish’s familiar, spidery handwriting. Child Number Eleven is everything. Everything we hoped her to be. Prepare the potion. Make it your strongest yet and send it to the Moon. The door will not fail this time. In two days’ time, when the sun rises, she will stand tall and proud over the ruins of London, a herald to our glorious new age.

And a symbol of the fall of man.

The sun will not rise for them.

The Age of Smoke is over.

The old faery’s face split into that wide, wide grin. Slowly, she rolled the note back into the capsule. Then she took a gun from under her apron. It was new, Goblin Market-bought, one of a pair. The other was in the wagon, hidden quickly behind the stove. She raised the gun, pointing it at the place where the two figures had disappeared into the woods.

Boom, she mouthed, and giggled a little.

CHAPTER XVII

The Cloud That Hides the Moon

“Mi Sathir, they have her!” A small bearded man stood in front of Mr. Lickerish’s desk. The man’s nose was bandaged and his face was paper white, but he looked otherwise quite calm, completely at odds with the ragged, desperate voice that had spoken. “They have my Melusine!”

Mr. Lickerish did not answer at once. He had a game of chess laid out in front of him and was carefully touching black paint onto the ivory pieces with a little brush.

“Who?” he asked at length, barely glancing at the faery’s new guise.

“The police. They caught us. We-”

“They caught her. You, apparently, have escaped. That is good. Is the other half-blood dead? Our little visitor?”

The faery inside Dr. Harrow’s skull hesitated. For a full minute the only sound in the room was the ever- present thrumming noise and the faint scritch-scritch of Mr. Lickerish’s brush bristles against the chess piece.

“No,” he said at last. “No, Child Number Ten is still alive. And so is Arthur Jelliby.”