The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden (14 page)

“Move back, far's you can,” he ordered through the wall. No sound came back, nothing to do but hope they'd heard, hope they'd been woken by the noise of the digging. The iron would likely still hurt them, but leastways he could make sure they didn't get too close.

Brick by brick, Thomas, Silas, and Charley chipped away at the mortar. Quieter now, with lighter strikes, so's not to reach Mordecai's ears or harm the faeries'. “Remember,” Thomas told them, “you can never tell a soul about this, hear? Not even when it's said and done.”

“Whatever you say, Thomas,” said Charley, grinning. It was plain on his face that he, like Silas, didn't trust the story Thomas'd told them and was waiting to see what was truly on the other side of the wall. All manner of riches, perhaps, gold and silver and jewels. Thomas bided his time, working away at the tough, aged bricks. They would see.

The first one was pried away; it fell with a clatter and broke neatly in two. On the tips of his toes, Thomas stretched to see, but the space was too high. Silas loomed over him and his shovel fell away.

“Well, I'll be . . .”

Fast as they could, the three made a hole large enough for a man—or a faery—to slip through. In the Society's cellar, the faeries were crouched along the opposite wall, fearful and cringing from the iron, but Thomas smiled and looked at their work. He'd made one gateway. He'd make another. Casting his shovel aside onto the pile of earth, Thomas stepped inside. He turned to make sure Silas and Charley did the same before they followed.

It was not so easy for human eyes to adjust to the gloom here, but slowly enough, they did. Silas blinked.

“Oi,” he said, pointing. “I know you.”

Deadnettle rose, unfolding to his full, tall height. “Yes,” he agreed. “You do.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

An Unheard Voice

Y
ou were so close, Thomas!
So close to what I left for you. You are awake. Why won't you listen to me? Just like something from a story, yes. Remember that. Listen to me, and remember!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Tales and Truths

Y
OU BROUGHT HUMANS HERE?”
Deadnettle
demanded of Thomas. “It wasn't bad enough that you brought that one”—he pointed to Charley—“to the park?”

Thomas stood tall. “I did. I trust 'em, and you should, too.”

Deadnettle stared at him. Thomas stared right back until the faery's shoulders drooped slightly. “All right. This is in your hands—and on your head. What do we do next?” He gestured to the hole in the wall. “There is nowhere for us to go. He will find us wherever we are.”

He asked the questions lightly, but Thomas could see it wasn't so light as in his thoughts.

Deadnettle'd been luring him around, telling him what to do for days now, but he, Thomas, was the faery king. Wintercress's son, though he'd never known her. And Deadnettle had lured him out for a reason. Deadnettle's plans, his attempts, had failed. It was high time to do things a different way.

This whole time, Deadnettle had hastened to tell Thomas that the faeries were nothing like the stories told of them, that they were honest and gentle creatures. They didn't thieve babies from their cribs; they didn't thieve anything.

But stories, thought Thomas, couldn't get everything wrong, not always. And he had a hint, a flicker of memory . . .

“When you visited Silas and Lucy to give them the coins, did you leave anything else?” Thomas asked. “And why not simply put the coins in the grave with me?”

Deadnettle licked his lips. The split at the corner was still there, open and oozing. “I wanted to be sure they would take you in out of kindness alone, no matter what Wintercress's orders. In life, I had never defied her, but . . . But no, I left nothing else. We had nothing else to give you.”

“Right. You lot stay here. We dug this now seeing as there might not be much time later. That spiritualist is prob'ly still sniffing around, and Mordecai might realize what's true, and there's that two-worlds business. If
anything 'appens while we're gone, get out, go to the park, but we won't be long. Promise.”

“Thomas, what are you planning?”

“I'll tell you if I'm right,” said Thomas. “Seems to me . . . Seems to me you've been hoping about all the wrong things for too long. Just wait. I'm coming back,” Thomas said to Silas. “Marigold, will you come too?”

“Of course.”

It would be better to take Deadnettle, but Thomas could see himself the faery was still weakened from the iron chains, and Marigold was far more cheerful besides. Just in case Mordecai ventured down to the cellar again, unlikely as that seemed, the four of them made quick work of slotting the bricks back into place. They'd fall free at a push, but it was good enough to pass muster in the darkness. Thomas saved the split one for last, wedging each perfect half back into the gap with his fingertips. They crept up through the empty house, Marigold the most light-footed of all, her toes kicking up hardly any dust.

All the way to the river, Silas and Charley walked behind, carrying the shovels with their iron blades, but Marigold's pace slowed, and she tripped on the edges of the cobbles.

A
clank
rang over the water, the shovels banging together as Silas gave the two he carried to Charley and
scooped Marigold up onto his back. Thomas stared.

“Don't gawp, lad. You'll catch flies.”

Marigold giggled. “Thank you,” she said, and Silas smiled gruffly.

“Never let it be said I wasn't a gentleman.” He trotted ahead, making her laugh even harder, and Charley bumped his shoulder to Thomas's.

“'S not so bad, see?”

At the door of the house, Silas set Marigold gently to the ground again and gave her an odd, jerky little bow before opening the door.

“Oh!” said Lucy. Dark circles ringed her eyes. The clock tower at Westminster had struck three of the clock as they crossed the bridge. But that great bell was not a church bell, and Marigold had not stopped laughing at Silas. “And who might this be?”

“This is Marigold,” Thomas said, but introductions were not the important thing now, manners or no. “You used to read to me at bedtime, 'fore I was old enough to take a shovel. You had a whole sheaf of faery stories.”

Thomas had remembered this when
old ones, old ones, old ones
rang in his ears, back when he'd asked Charley what that meant. And Marigold, still a fledgling, looked as close to a normal girl as made a difference, but at a nod from Silas, Lucy's mouth opened. From a small shelf, torn
cloth and cracked spines in a row, she took down a slim blue book.

“Where did you get it?”

Lucy set her hands to her hips and thought. “Now, you know, that's a strange tale in itself, if I's honest. We 'adn't found you yet, and I remember that, as it was so odd. I'd been out to market, you see, and stopped for a bit of a rest on my way back to cook Silas his supper. A woman came up, sat down next to me. Pretty, she was, with big eyes and long dark hair, as pretty as she was tall. I'd never seen a woman so tall as when she stood. And big with child, so's I was sure two would come out, like the Robertson girls, and told her so.” Lucy's voice softened, remembering. “She asked me as I had any little ones, and I said no, but I hoped, perhaps . . . and she took that book from her sack and gave it right to me. Told me to read the stories to the son she was sure I'd have. And then, a month later . . . Oh, Thomas.”

“Does that sound like her?” Thomas asked Marigold. “Like Wintercress?”

“As if it were Deadnettle speaking.”

Thomas reached into his pocket. He couldn't recall when he'd stopped worrying they'd clink together, but two heavy silver faery coins sat in the bottom. He held one up to the firelight, the flames glinting off the face there. Lucy
put her hand to her lips, nodded, turned away.

His finger already marked the tale he half remembered, but Thomas flipped the pages, thin as butterfly wings, to the front. He'd seen it, sometimes, in the other old books Lucy gathered for him to read and learn, bought for a ha'penny from a table at the market, messages from names he didn't recognize, belonging to folks he'd never meet.

The letters spiked across the page.

To the changeling,
they said.

Once upon a time, there was a human boy who lived between a great forest and a greater city. The city he could see growing even as he watched, taller and wider, as the forest shrank away, the trees cut down for firewood and timber. The last tree to be left standing was a strange one, indeed, and as the boy grew, he would sometimes go to sit in its shade on a hot day, leaning his back against the trunk.

But, as I say, this was no ordinary tree. Sometimes two trees grow so close together that they join, and the only way it is possible to tell that it was once two trees and not one
is that there is a gap left at the bottom, and sometimes, this gap is large enough for a man to step through.

Without knowing why, one day, this was exactly what the boy did. He was nearly fully grown, nearly a man, and he had to push and squeeze his way through, the bark scraping at his skin and tearing his clothes. On the other side was not the field where the forest had once been, but a beautiful valley, with a beautiful river flowing at the bottom, and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen sitting on its bank. As he watched, the cuts on his arms healed, and he knew he was in a very magical place, indeed, and that the girl must be magic too, to live there.

He did not speak to her that day, or the next. He returned home, but every day he went back to visit, and soon the two spoke and fell in love. She wished him to stay in her land forever, where she was a princess, but he could not. There was work to be
done, and so he took her back to his land instead.

They were happy for a time, though her skin was less pink, her eyes less bright than they had been when he had first seen her sitting by the water. She grew weary easily, poisoned by the iron all around, and when the church bells rang, they seemed to hurt her badly.

Because of this, the people called her a witch, or a demon, and claimed that she must have put a great magic on the boy to make him fall in love with her.

They had a child, and the people grew ever more worried that the child would grow to be like his mother. Desperate to prove that she was good, the girl had an iron ring forged and laid a spell upon it that would allow it to break any enchantment. She named it the Ring of Dispel, because such things need names, and called the people around to tell them of what she had done.
If he were truly in her power, the ring would set him free. She picked up the ring, but no sooner had she put it on his finger than the girl fell to the ground, never to rise again.

Thomas looked up from the page. Every one of the faeries was watching him. One or two wiped their eyes.

“I had heard the tale,” said Deadnettle. “Her sister—Wintercress's mother—came through the gateway to learn what had become of her, and returned with the story. She used it as an excuse to seal the faery realm from humans, claimed no more would come and steal us away. Of course, that turned out not to be true. It was a very long time ago. Such things take on the stuff of legends, you know. It is far more likely that Hellebore simply touched iron for too long and died.”

“Why wouldn't you believe her, if you can't tell lies?”

“Because she died soon after, and Wintercress became queen. I have heard it was assumed that the lie was what sickened her, too badly for even the faery realm to heal.”

“So you don't think it's true?” Thomas asked. A rising hope ebbed away.

“I think it is . . . unlikely. And even if it were true, where would the ring be now? Long destroyed or lost. I have told
you before: Do not believe the fables of us; they are never right.”

“But this one might be,” Thomas insisted. “If it wasn't, why did Wintercress leave me the book?”

The crack of Deadnettle's neck as he snapped his head to gaze at Thomas echoed around the cellar. “What did you say?”

“She left him the book, Deadnettle,” said Marigold. “Gave it to Thomas's—to Lucy. Heard her myself. She described Wintercress, same as you always do. Or used to.”

“When was this?” Deadnettle's eyes glowed in the gloom.

“A moon before you left Thomas on the grave.”

A deathly hush fell over the room. Deadnettle paced back and forth, along the walls and across its width. Thomas couldn't figure what he was thinking, but he must've been thinking hard, to raise his hands to his head like that.

“Some of us did not survive the first year after the Summoning,” Deadnettle whispered. “She told me she was dealing with our dead, as Mordecai permitted us to do. I tried to insist, but she said she was our queen and she had failed to protect us. That it was her task.”

Thomas nodded. He understood that, right enough.

“And then she told me she was going to have a
hatchling, which takes a great deal of strength. Much more than for humans, so I understand. The process is much faster, and thus takes more energy, energy she did not have. I begged her to stay here and rest, but I could not watch her every moment. Mordecai made me take my hours in the cage.”

“You didn't know what she was going to do with Thistle 'n me.”

“No. And that spell took the very last of her strength, as I've said. But in the moments before she left us, when the one had become two, she made me promise to take you to Silas and Lucy. I was too distraught to ask her why. Why ensure you live at all—my apologies—or why they must be the ones to care for you. I simply did as she asked.” Deadnettle strode the length of the cellar once more, and back again. “She must have had a purpose to it.”

A quiet muttering rippled through the faeries, surprising Thomas enough that he looked away. He'd not heard them speak much. Other than when he'd first met them, they were always asleep, or near to it, or else just too hopeless to bother. Now they were agreeing that they'd always heard Wintercress to be wise and kind, never without reason.

It struck Thomas anew that not a one of them, save
Deadnettle, had known her. He could not ask them what she had been like. Same, he could not ask more than he had of the faery realm; Deadnettle had told him what he knew, but it was a whole land seen through only one pair of eyes.

“Deadnettle,” said Marigold slowly. The book was folded open on her lap, and Thomas remembered that the first time he'd set eyes on her she'd had books then, too. She liked them. Her finger ran over the letters, reading the words easily as if they were written in the strange, spiky faery letters.

They were good with tongues, Deadnettle'd told him from the start. They had to be, for their mouths to form words in so many when the dead spoke through them.

Thomas shook himself and paid attention to Marigold. “Deadnettle, what would happen if a human tried to enter the faery realm? Now? Since it was sealed?”