The Peculiar

neat row on top of his desk. When he had completed the task to his satisfaction, he rang a servant’s bell and ordered a glass of milk from the hunchbacked gnome. The milk arrived in due time, but instead of drinking it, Mr. Lickerish swept the apple seeds into his palm and dropped them into the glass. Then he went to the window and looked out, black satin cuffs crossed behind his back.

A faint tinkling made him turn. The room was empty. A clockwork bird stared out at nothing with its beady eyes. In the cup, a film had formed on top of the milk the way it always does when milk is mildly fresh. As Mr. Lickerish watched, the film turned into a skin. The skin grew thicker. And all of a sudden the glass tipped over and a blue-white gobbet of milk plopped out onto the smooth top of the desk. It jiggled toward the edge. Mr. Lickerish caught it in his hand and held it up to his face. His mouth stretched across his sharp teeth in a gleaming smile. Faintly he could see the apple seeds in the center of the milk, little veins and lungs and a heart all sprouting out from them. Then two seeds popped forward as its eyes, and it tottered up on a pair of stemlike legs. It had a huge mouth that hung open, wide and bare and empty.

“Charming,” Mr. Lickerish said, still smiling. “You will be my eyes for a little while, imp. Hurry down to the warehouse and keep watch. Whatever you see, I will see, and whatever I say, you are to say. Do you understand that?”

The gobbet of milk stared at Mr. Lickerish, its apple-seed eyes somewhat mournful. It nodded slowly. Then it hopped down from the faery’s hand and wobbled off across the floorboards toward the door.

Mr. Jelliby found Bartholomew in the airship’s hall, trying to hide himself under the carpets. The hatch was open. It was a clear, cold night, and the city spread away forever. The streets made a glowing spider’s web, Mayfair and High Holborn bright with the fierce lights of flame faeries, while the poorer streets were only gaslit threads, dim and flickering, or not lit at all. The river cut it all in half, sluggish and black, broken only by the occasional lantern of a corpse boat.

“Bartholomew! What are you doing? Get away from the edge!” Mr. Jelliby hissed, tiptoeing across the hall. “The faery butler is with Mr. Lickerish as we speak. He has your sister, and he’s getting the potion and he’s going to take her down in the elevator.”

Bartholomew sat bolt upright. “Hettie? You saw her?”

“Yes! With my own eyes! But we must hurry.” He ran to the edge of the floor and reached out for the elevator, looking it over rapidly.

“There. See those metal bars underneath? We can squeeze down there, I think, and then leap out when the butler’s alone in the warehouse. Quick now! In with you.”

Without another word, Bartholomew scooted off the edge of the floor and onto the metal bars. The warmth of the hall was gone in an instant. Wind and frozen ash blew around him freely, but he barely noticed. Mr. Jelliby has found her. She is here and she is alive.

The space under the elevator was barely a foot high and utterly open. Only the widely set bars kept him from falling into the dark. It’s the luggage rack, he thought. It was where the trunks and hatboxes would have been packed had the dirigible been used for anything ordinary.

Mr. Jelliby dragged at the cable, and the elevator sank a foot. The luggage rack dropped below the lip of the hatch, hidden. Then he, too, swung down.

Not a moment too soon. Mr. Jelliby barely had time to arrange his arms and legs before the first tread of feet sounded on the stairs.

“Come on!” the faery butler’s whine drifted into the hall. “By stone, you are the most tiresome creature! The other nine weren’t half as bad.”

There was a scuffling sound as he pulled Hettie along and she hurried to match his pace. Then the elevator swayed as they stepped aboard. Bartholomew could see a little through the metal grille of the floor. He could just make out the shadows of Hettie’s bare feet, the great long soles of the faery butler’s shoes. And there was something else, too. Something small and round that never stayed still, and made an odd sound like water in a jug.

Bartholomew held his breath. Hettie was so close. Inches above him. He wanted to climb up and grab her, and tell her that he had found her and they’d be going home soon. Only a little longer. .

The elevator began to descend, creaking down through the night. The only light came from the faery butler’s green eye. Mr. Jelliby prayed he wouldn’t look down. He would see them instantly if he did, lying there under the floor. His mechanical eye would pierce metal and darkness and-

The faery lifted his nose and sniffed the air. Mr. Jelliby stiffened.

“I smell rain,” the faery said, looking at Hettie curiously. “Rain and mud.”

Hettie said nothing.

The faery butler tapped his fingers against the railing. “It has not rained in London for days.”

For several heartbeats the only sound was the wind. Then, without warning, a jagged blade descended from the faery butler’s sleeve, and he slashed it down through the air, driving it through the floor. Its tip came to a halt, ringing, inches from Bartholomew’s eye. He screamed.

“Barthy?” Hettie cried, pressing her face to the grating.

Mr. Jelliby dragged himself off the bars and hung from them, legs flailing forty feet above the ground. “Get out! Get out, Bartholomew, he’ll kill you!”

The blade came down again, over and over, slicing Bartholomew’s arm, drawing blood. The elevator had reached the roof of the warehouse. The air turned warm as they sank into it.

“Now!” Mr. Jelliby shouted, from where he clung. “Let go! It’s not far anymore!”

Bartholomew saw the blade hurtling down toward him, glimmering like a streak of rain. It would kill him this time. It would meet its mark, go clean through his heart. But just as its tip bit into his skin, he slipped between the bars and fell, down, down into the warehouse.

The impact smashed the breath from his lungs. His knees buckled under him and he rolled, over and over, until he came to rest against a wall of crates. He heard the elevator clang against the floor. Then the patter of Hettie’s bare feet, the faery butler’s heels ringing on stone. When he opened his eyes he half expected to see the creature standing over him, knife poised to snuff him out.

But the faery butler seemed to have lost all interest in him. Nor was he paying any attention to Mr. Jelliby, who had dragged himself into the sea of crates and sat crouched there, gasping. With quick, efficient movements, the faery forced Hettie’s feet into the charred shoes and set to knotting the shoelaces, over and over, until there was not the slightest chance she could step out of them.

She tried to lift her feet, kick his hands away, but the shoes were hammered fast to the floor. His long fingers tugged at the knots, testing them. She scratched at his head, tried to pick at the laces herself, but the faery swatted her away.

Bartholomew began crawling toward her on hands and knees. Still the faery took no notice of him. The butler rose and took the greenwitch’s elixir from his coat. He placed it to Hettie’s lips, tipping up the bottle. She spluttered once, spat, but he clenched her little face in his hand and forced it skyward, and there was nothing she could do but cough the liquid down in great gulps.

When the bottle was empty the faery flung it aside. Without another word, he strode back toward the elevator.

Mr. Jelliby leaped out from among the crates, swinging a metal hook before him like a rapier. The faery didn’t even flinch. He dodged it gracefully, sliding around it like a snake, and spinning, he struck Mr. Jelliby a vicious blow to the side of the head. Bartholomew watched Mr. Jelliby stagger and then scrabbled toward Hettie. I’ll get her to the window. We’ll climb out while the faery butler’s distracted and-

He froze. The faery butler did, too. Mr. Jelliby dropped the hook.

A gentle breeze had sprung up out of nowhere, carrying on it the smell of snow. And something was happening to Hettie. A black line had begun to trace itself along her skin, starting at the top of her head and slithering down over her shoulders, down her arms and her legs.

“Barthy?” she said, her voice cracking with fear. The pale skin around her mouth was stained blackberry-dark. “Barthy, what’s happening? What are you looking at?”

The instant the line reached the nailed-down shoes, they disintegrated, turning to delicate flakes that scudded over the floor. The breeze became a wind, stirring the branches of her hair. And suddenly there was no longer a wall behind her, or crates, or a warehouse, but a great, dark wood extending into the distance. Snow lay