The Peculiar

claws of rats, no hands but what it twisted together out of fat brown rats’ tails. Its misshapen face seemed to be stretched across their matted hides like a mask.

Mr. Jelliby snatched Bartholomew’s arm and pulled him down behind a huge iron winch, just as the creature’s gaze swept toward them.

“Hide,” Mr. Jelliby mouthed. Bartholomew nodded, and they both sidled back into the ravine of crates.

No use running, boy. I can feel you.

Bartholomew kept his eyes on the ground and walked. Whoever it was propped up on the chair at the end of the passage, he didn’t want to know anymore. He could smell the death in the air and it terrified him.

Naughty boy with the iron coal scuttle. Should be out cold like the rest. Is Arthur Jelliby with you? It would save me much trouble if he were.

Bartholomew’s arms began to throb. He looked down and saw red light bleeding through the thin fabric of his sleeves. The lines were glowing again.

Ahead of him, a crate stuck out further than the rest. He dashed around it and slid down, eyes shut. Mr. Jelliby tried to drag him back up, but Bartholomew shook his head.

“You have to go,” he whispered. “It’ll find me no matter where I hide. It’s got me marked. Get my sister, Mr. Jelliby. Get her, and I’ll try to find you later.”

Do I hear whispers? Little lying whispers sneaking in the dark? Didn’t your mummy ever tell you it’s not nice to whisper behind other people’s backs?

Mr. Jelliby looked at Bartholomew gravely. He nodded once. Then he patted Bartholomew on the shoulder, and with a final halfhearted smile, crawled toward the slouched shape of Dr. Harrow.

Oh, but of course, the voice rasped. Your mummy is sleeping, isn’t she. Don’t worry, she will wake up in a few days’ time, absolutely starving and practically dying of thirst. And she’ll think she slept a thousand years, so changed will the world be. Her darling children. Children Ten and Eleven. How she’ll miss them. Because they will be changed, too. Oh, yes. Quite changed.

Bartholomew closed his eyes even tighter and pressed his cheek against the rough wood of the crate. Mother won’t miss us, he thought. She won’t have to. Claws rattled on stone somewhere close. We’ll go home, Hettie and me. We’ll go home, we’ll go home, we’ll go home. .

“No,” the voice spat. It was no longer in his head. It was on the other side of the crate, sharp as nails. A hand, fingers of knotted rat tails, curled around the edge. Then a face appeared, teeth bared. “No, Bartholomew Kettle, you will not.”

A little hunchbacked gnome stepped into Mr. Lickerish’s study and bowed, sweeping so low his bulb-brown nose was only inches from the rich carpet.

“Mi Sathir will permit me to speak, yes? Mi Sathir will listen? A great black cat has been found in the warehouse below. It is a very strange cat with too many teeth. It has a bottle round its neck. We suppose it is from the greenwitch, yes?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Lickerish, allowing a smile to creep across his features. “My lunatic little witch has been busy then. I was beginning to worry we would have to wait yet another day. Bring it to me. The bottle, I mean. Shoo the creature away.”

Almost half an hour was counted by the brass hands of the clock before the gnome reappeared. His face and hands were traced with scratches. He was clutching a perfectly round glass bottle to his chest. The bottle was filled with a dark liquid. Eyes fastened to the ground, the gnome scuttled up to the desk, deposited the bottle, and without a word, backed out of the room.

Mr. Lickerish waited until the lock clicked. Then he picked up his handkerchief and began to polish the bottle with it, smoothing the thick glass until it shone. The liquid inside was very beautiful. It was not black or blue or purple but something in between. He held it up against the lamp to admire the colors. He peered closer. Something was floating inside the bottle, something barely visible at the center of the liquid.

His eyes went wide. It was a feather. A perfect metal feather, its quill still hung with the broken cogs of a clockwork sparrow.

Bartholomew and the rat faery were traveling up into the sky in a steam-engine elevator. It ran up the cable that anchored the airship to the warehouse, pistons banging. The elevator had no walls-only railings and a metal grille floor-and the higher it went the colder the air became. The wind flew through Bartholomew’s hair, straight through his cloak and shirt, icy-cold against his skin. The rat faery’s hand was coiled around his wrist. It was just as cold as the wind.

“You might have lived, you know,” the faery said, drawing the tails so tight they pinched. “You escaped me in Old Crow Alley. You escaped me in Bath, and in the police station. And then you came all the way to London, all this way after your sister. Just to die.”

I’m not going to die, Bartholomew thought. And neither is Hettie. But he didn’t say anything. He shut out the rat faery’s voice and pressed himself back from the railing. The elevator was so high up. He could see all of London laid out below him, a black smoldering carpet of roofs and chimneys, sprawling away for miles. In the distance, the spires of Westminster. A little closer, the great white dome of St. Paul’s like the thumb of God.

Bartholomew looked up to where the airship was slowly looming. It was so vast, its black canvas swallowing the sky. A huge cabin hung below, grand as any house, two floors high with rows of mullioned windows reflecting the somber clouds. Written in curling silver letters on the prow of the cabin, beneath an ornate explosion of sculpted black wings, were the words The Cloud That Hides the Moon.

Bartholomew clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. What a silly name for an airship. He closed his eyes. Mr. Lickerish had better be keeping Hettie up there.

By the time the elevator pulled into the belly of the airship, he could barely feel his fingers. The luxury of the place wrapped around him like a fur coat. The air turned warm. The wind was gone. Paneling and woodwork glimmered all around, gas lamps lending them a coppery sheen. Indian carpets covered the floor. On the ceiling, a great mural had been painted of a black bird-a raven or a crow, Bartholomew didn’t know which. It held a bottle in its beak, and a child in its talons, and there was a little wooden door in its feathered breast. Bartholomew stared at it.

“Stop your gawping,” the rat faery snapped, jabbing him up a sweeping staircase. “Don’t act like you’ve never seen this place before.”

The staircase brought them into a narrow corridor, brightly lit. The rat faery pushed Bartholomew down it. At the very last door they stopped. The faery knocked once and, without waiting to be invited, entered.

Bartholomew’s eyes widened. It was the room. The beautiful room with the painted lampshades and the bookshelves, the ring of chalk on the floor, and the clockwork sparrows. The same one he had stumbled into from the whirling black wings. Only this time someone was sitting behind the desk. A wiry white faery dressed all in black, eating a brilliant red apple.

The faery looked up sharply as they entered. Juice ran down his chin, and flecks of the apple’s red skin clung to his lips.

“I have him, Lickerish. Now what of Melusine?”

The Lord Chancellor said nothing. He touched a handkerchief to his lips and fixed his eyes on Bartholomew, watching him keenly.

The rat faery pushed Bartholomew toward the desk, dozens of tiny mouths nipping at his shoulders, the backs of his legs, compelling him on. Still the Lord Chancellor said nothing. He folded the handkerchief. He set it aside. He picked up a tiny metal feather and began twirling it slowly between thumb and forefinger.

When Bartholomew was only inches away, Mr. Lickerish stopped. “Ah,” he said. “Here you are again.”

Bartholomew gritted his teeth. “I want my sister,” he said. “Give her back. Why can’t you open your stupid door and leave Hettie be?”

The feather snapped in two. “Leave Hettie be?” The faery politician breathed. “Oh, I’m afraid I could never do that. Hettie is the most important part. Hettie is the door.”