The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden (10 page)

“That's why you won't help. Deadnettle told me.”

“Would you?” he asked.

“No.”

So surprising was her answer that Thomas looked her full in her clever, now smiling face. “You wouldn't?”

“Let someone use me after I'd been cast out as useless? 'Course not. That just sounds silly. Besides, I don't think you can. Deadnettle is desperate not to die here; it makes
him foolish. If Thistle couldn't do it, I don't think anybody can.”

Thomas got to his feet. “Show me the rest of them,” he said. “I want to see.”

Marigold made a great show of gathering her scraped, muddy books and pulling a threadbare scarf from around her neck. “You'll have to cover your face, in case any are awake.”

Because they thought he was already dead. Of course. Even Marigold had been shocked, and she'd known of him. She'd
met
him. He held out his hand for the scarf. It smelled of moonlight and thunderstorms and ancient words.

“Wait,” said Thomas. “Mordecai thinks I'm dead, too, don't he? That's why Deadnettle wrote I shouldn't speak to no one, and I should wear a cap, in the note he left?”

Unexpectedly, she smiled. “Deadnettle'll like that you worked that out. He was very pleased that you did as he said and didn't speak to anyone.”

“Only 'cause I fainted,” Thomas admitted. “I'd been planning it.”

“You're quite like Thistle,” she said, gazing at him before leading him back to the street on which they'd met and down the alley to a door.

“Why does he let you leave at all?” he said.

“Because he knows we have nowhere to go and what will happen if we let other humans see us. He believes he is kind.” She helped him wrap the scarf about his head, leaving only the thinnest slit for his eyes. Even so, she put her hand in his. Her skin felt delicate as moth wings.

Down a staircase they crept, slimed brick on either side of their shoulders. Marigold released him to open another door, one into a large, open room.

Large, but not big enough to give the faeries within room to properly breathe, or live. Thomas gazed from corner to corner and along the walls, over the filthy floor covered with mattresses just as dirty. To think he'd once looked at the rooms he'd shared with Silas and Lucy as unfit. Lucy'd get down on hands and knees and scrub this place within an inch of its life before resting her head here.

But it seemed the faeries hadn't much choice. They themselves were clean and quiet. Most were asleep, or resting at the least. A few were gathered around stubs of tallow candle, the flame licking their faces. One opened its mouth, and Marigold put a finger to hers, shaking her head. It said nothing.

“That's Milkweed,” she whispered, pointing. “Violet. Teasel. Whitebeam . . .” She named them all, and somehow it was terrible, knowing their names.

Thomas had seen enough. This and Marigold's tales of
what happened above were too much to bear. He ran back down the room and up the staircase, gulping in the shards of light that fell through the keyhole. He let himself out, back into the world of real, pleasant things.

If only he could forget what existed below.

She climbed up after him and stood close as he leaned against the rough brick wall. “All right,” he said finally. “I'll help. Dunno how, mind you, so don't ask me. But I'll help.”

Strangely, the first hint of faery he'd seen from her came with her wide, brilliant smile. No human could look quite like that when they smiled, all aglow, like a fire had burst to life within them.

“I knew you would,” she said. “You
are
like Thistle. Thank you.”

Thomas felt his face go red.
My pleasure
didn't seem the thing, somehow.

“Meet us where you met Deadnettle,” she said, saving him from having to answer at all. “Tonight, when the bells chime ten.”

It'd just gone five.

He left her there, a sad thing itself, but by the time he was out of sight, he was running. It took some time to cross the river and some more after that to find the familiar, grubby face.

“Charley!” Thomas called.

“Back so soon, old friend?” Charley hopped off the crate on which he'd been perched. “Lucy 'n' Silas will be glad to see you, though truth be told Silas was mighty glad of those coins, too.”

Thomas shook his head. “You must come with me, Charley. You won't believe it. Not sure I do.” Charley could be trusted with anything that wasn't a quid, and Charley'd pinch him if he was dreaming, if Thomas pointed at the faeries when they weren't really there. But why would Thomas dream of faeries speaking to him? “Just come. You'll see.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Second Test

T
HIS TIME TWO CLOAKED FIGURES
stood at the meeting place. They both turned at the sound of footsteps, much sooner than Thomas thought they'd hear them. The taller of the two, which must be Deadnettle, seemed about to run, but the other grabbed his arm.

Thomas's belly turned over when he and Charley neared enough to see Deadnettle's stony face, rage setting the green eyes to flame.

“Wotcher,” said Charley. “Are you Thomas's family, then? Your eyes aren't half-strange.”

“What is this?” Deadnettle hissed. “You foolish boy!”

“I am
not
,” said Thomas. “You've got each other, you
and Marigold and the rest of you. Marigold was there when Thistle was trying, weren't she? I want my friend here. 'Sides, if you're going to show me all about being a faery, I'm going to show you that humans aren't all awful. You'll see.”

Charley's eyes darted back and forth. “Human?” he whispered to Thomas. “Faery? What's this about, Tom?”

“It's a bit of a tale,” Thomas began.

“I'll tell him!” said Marigold. Deadnettle was casting his gaze between the three, but his anger appeared to be melting away a bit. More than anything, Thomas thought he looked like he could use a good sleep. A week's worth.

“Fine,” said Deadnettle grimly. “Thomas, we must test you.”

“Better you than me, chum.” Charley clapped his hand on Thomas's shoulder as Marigold tugged him away to sit on the grass. “I never was one for that schooling lark.”

“Lucy used to set me tests, for my numbers and letters and whatnot.”

“These will be . . . different,” said Deadnettle. “Did you sleep last night, or were you digging up a grave? This will be easier if you are rested.”

Thomas remembered the soft feather bed with no small degree of guilt, now that he'd seen where the faeries slept. “Yes,” he mumbled.

“Good. We do not know what you are capable of, if anything. For a long time I believed that what Wintercress did with yourself and Thistle was known only in theory to be possible. Certainly no one had attempted it in living memory, and we live for a very long time.”

“How long?”

“A few hundred years, on average.”

“Will I live a long time? Longer'n a human?”

“I cannot say,” Deadnettle answered. “Perhaps. Let us start.”

“Um,” said Thomas. “All right. What do I do?”

“The very basest, easiest of our magic. The wind is coming from the east; try to change it. I am not particular about direction.”

“I beg your pardon?” Thomas asked.

“We may change the weather, if we wish. Your human stories of us discuss this sometimes, though one should never believe the stories—”

Thomas glanced to where Charley and Marigold sat. She was talking; he looked as if he'd been smacked with a fish. A great big trout from a barrel down at the market.

“
I
heard you do dark magic and steal human children.”

Deadnettle's eyes burned with fury. “Dark magic? Do we seem evil to you? And as for the other . . . I can assure you I took no human infant when I left you in that
graveyard. You are, indeed, a changeling, but humans have always been wrong about what that is.”

“Always been wrong?” Thomas asked. “Does that mean I'm not the first?”

“There was a rumor of another, long ago. Very long ago. Because of you, I now believe it to be true. Now we return to the weather. It is not from the flapping of our wings—which clearly we do not have—but the elements of nature can be manipulated, very simply because we are elements of nature ourselves. In the faery realm, where we have the full might of our magic, it could snow on a summer's day or be the first crisp days of autumn for a year, if it struck one of our fancies. Concentrate and attempt it.”

“Show me.”

Deadnettle flinched and took a breath.

“Here,” said Marigold, hopping easily to her feet to approach them. The winds changed, blowing into Thomas's face. “See? It's possible. Just try.”

“Cor,” said Charley.

“Give me another go,” said Thomas.

“At your leisure.”

Thomas tried, and tried, and tried again. It didn't seem to matter how often the old faery told him to concentrate, to picture what he wanted to happen. He grew warm with the effort and shame, for with each failure came a deeper
frown from Deadnettle. The bells in the distance chimed eleven, then a new day. Overhead, the moon shone thinner than it had the night before, or the one before that. Several times, Thomas saw Deadnettle raise his eyes to it and lower them again, sadder than before.

It was no use. Thomas couldn't so much as twitch a leaf in the other direction. He wanted to. He
wanted
to help the faeries go home, but if a breeze was too much, how would he do anything else?

“Enough,” said Deadnettle. “We will try again tomorrow. Marigold? We must go.”

“I want to stay with Thomas. Just for a bit, please, Deadnettle?”

“We have been gone for hours. I cannot . . . The iron, Marigold. Come.”

“You go, then. Mordecai will be sleeping, and I'll come back before sunrise. I promise.”

They exchanged a very long look, which Marigold won. This Thomas knew. Lucy could silence even Silas when she chose to. Deadnettle nodded.

The three watched him leave, cloak sweeping over the grass. Thomas, and Charley, too, he guessed, quickly lost sight of him, but Marigold watched until he was surely out of the park and on the grimy London streets.

“So, is that all you folk can do? Change the weather?”
Charley asked. “I don't mind saying, I'd be happy with a year of Julys.”

“It's the simplest. We start with that, and then the other skills come. I've always been a bit rubbish at weather, really, but I'm good at other things.”

“What else can you do?” Thomas was curious, and it was easier to ask Marigold than Deadnettle. Indeed, there were many things he'd have liked to know, but asking her about Thistle might make her sad, and she was smiling.

“Watch.”

And watch they did, as she silenced the birds in the trees with a blink and plucked a mushroom from the earth to turn it into a rose. Her ears twitched and she laughed—the queen, in her palace a mile away, was tickling one of her children. Marigold gathered a pebble from the ground and, in her palm, it turned to silver.

“If I could do that, I'd've been living on strawberry tarts my whole life,” said Thomas, agape.

“Not if you didn't know you could do it, and you'd have to spend it quick. It changes back soon enough. It's simple.” She blew on the pebble and a fine, glittering dust sprinkled the ground.

“Blimey. What can't you do?” Charley asked. His customary grin was in place, but Marigold's smile slid away.

“Touch iron, stand near to church bells, tell lies, harm
another living creature. Well, we
can
do those things, but they cause us terrible pain and make us weak and sick. Deadnettle says he's seen faeries die of it.”

“You can't fib? Truly?”

Marigold nodded.

“Right.” Charley clapped his hands. “I'm proper funny, aren't I?”

Thomas laughed. Marigold did too. “Yes,” she said.

“And handsome. The handsomest to be found in London town.”

“No.”

“Oi!”

The laughter carried them along the path that led out of the park. Marigold slipped her hand into Thomas's, just as she'd done at the market when they'd shared a raspberry ice. Thomas and Charley kept up with their questions until Thomas felt he knew everything about being a fairy, 'cept, you know, how to actually
be
one and do what they did. He was most intrigued—and repulsed—by how they came to speak with the dead, or rather, let the dead speak through them. Their kind had always been able to do it, she said, but they were not born with the gift. It arrived slowly, in dreams at first most times, when some particularly loud or irritable spirit was looking for a way into the world. Soon, they learned to control it, so the spirits came only when called.

“D'you like to do it?” Thomas asked. “I mean to say, when you're not in a cage under a table?”

“I think people should be allowed to sleep,” she said. Thomas remembered the theater and agreed with her. “
I
like to sleep.”

“So you need sleep, then,” said Charley.

“Oh, yes. We think that's where the story of us stealing into people's homes to sleep in their beds comes from, but we would never do that. Deadnettle always says people make up stories that are the opposite of the truth because it's the easiest thing. Anyway, he couldn't do that. He snores. And Thistle was a proper chatterbox. Said more asleep than awake. Pity it never made sense.”

Somehow, that made the old faery seem more, well, human. Not quite so scary. And it made Thistle feel more real. A missing part of Thomas. Marigold released Thomas's hand. “I must go back now,” she said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Charley. Thomas, we will try again tomorrow.”

•   •   •

Smoke rose over London. There was no fire, but how Deadnettle wished there was. Gleefully he would set a torch to its rooftops and draperies and wooden doors and let it burn to ash, were it not for that he and the other faeries would be trapped inside. The boy seemed rested. Good.

He thought of Thomas asking whether he would live longer than a human. It was optimistic to believe the boy would live out the next week, and a week was just about what they had. Deadnettle examined Thomas's face for the familiar lines he had inherited from Wintercress. Odd that he had never done so with Thistle, but he had watched Thistle grow quickly from a squalling hatchling to an energetic fledgling and, finally, to a young but undeniably powerful faery.

And yet Thistle had failed.

“Marigold,” Deadnettle said quietly. She heard him easily, fifty yards away, her hands full of the pebbles he had asked her to collect, and walked over. Once, she would have run, or skipped. He should stop bringing her on these outings, keep her away from the iron and preserve her strength, which was clearly being sapped from her. He certainly should not have let her stay out without him. Thomas, however, seemed more at ease in her presence, and Deadnettle could scarcely blame him for that. Iron was poison, but the silver of mirrors was not; he was aware of how he looked, or must to a human.

Not that Thomas was human. But nor was he a faery, precisely. He knew nothing of their ways, their customs. Every moment Deadnettle was near him, he could see the boy's eyes brimming with questions. Some he dared ask,
some he did not, and Deadnettle was not going to prompt him. He would not lie—would not weaken himself further for such a useless purpose—but he would wait until questioned. At least Thomas had not brought the human boy along this time, and Thomas would soon be too occupied with other things.

“What first?” Marigold asked.

“The wind.”

“Show me again?”

Deadnettle flinched and took a breath. He could do this yet, if he must. The leaves quivered in the still night for a scant few seconds. Deadnettle's shoulders slumped.

It would have been nice to pity the boy. A blush rose in the young cheeks, and his eyes squinted in concentration. For Deadnettle, a great many years ago, this had been easy, easy as taking a breath of the air in the faery realm. Pure, clean air, not the stinking soup of London. He had simply thought about it, desired it, and the wind had done his bidding. Now, as he watched Thomas clench both teeth and fists, it was almost possible to regret having asked this of him in the first place.

Almost.

And Deadnettle knew that before this business was done, he would regret far more than this trifling challenge.

“It seems . . . not,” said Deadnettle, stopping him, unable
to hide the disappointment in his voice, though he would have kept it there even if he could. It might merely be a case of practice, of trying harder. Thomas
must
try as hard as he possibly could.

The night breeze blowing through the park was scented with embers and lily of the valley and iron. Iron that smelled of blood and sting. Church bells marked the quarter hours, making Deadnettle and Marigold cover their ears each time. Her ears were more sensitive than usual too, Deadnettle noted. He truly must make her rest more. A deep, long sleep, or as much of one as could be achieved in the cellar at the Society.

“My head aches.”

“Something else,” Marigold suggested, pushing herself from the tree against which she had been resting. “I showed him some of the other things, Deadnettle. Let him try one of those.” Searching the ground, she soon came up with a pebble, and Deadnettle knew what she was suggesting. So, clearly, did Thomas, but she demonstrated the gift, the stone taking on a dull sheen.