The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden (17 page)

He was less worried by such voices than he'd once been. “None of your business, so mind it!” he shouted back.

“Why, you—”

Thomas began to run. He knew the graveyard ahead, beyond the magical barrier with which Mordecai trapped the faeries in London. He'd been there with Silas many a night, shovel over his shoulder just as it was now. Night was falling, but slowly, the sun reluctant to give way to the sliver of moon.

But light enough to read the stones by, as he'd always done, marking their names. Thomas grasped the iron gates and pushed.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Find Your Bones

I
T WAS TIME TO FIND
his bones.

And once again, they were truly his—bone and blood and family. Here, in this place, where the human man had buried the faery woman he loved so that he might remain close to her. Over the grass and along the paths, he moved through the graves, quickly enough for Marigold, slowly enough to read the names.

He'd always been comfortable in graveyards.

“Where are you?” he whispered.

Here,
answered a voice in his head.
Come and find me. Come and speak to me.

Thomas spun, twisting an ankle, and saw. Burning pain shot up his leg, but he ran regardless, down toward the
very edge and the hazel tree that grew all funny, two trees really, joined together with a space between. A single grave rested beneath, its stone so worn he could scarce make out anything in the dusk. Wouldn't have been able to if he hadn't known exactly what he was looking for.

“Hellebore,” he read from the whorled, spiked letters.

Greetings.

“Hold up.” The shovel's blade hovered an inch above the overgrown mass of weeds that tangled across the plot. “You can hear me.”

Yes.

“But—”

But the moon was rising in the sky, pulling the faery realm farther away. He would ask Deadnettle about this later, if he got a second's chance. He had to hurry!

“Will this hurt you?” The iron glinted dully.

Not any longer.

He began to dig.

And dig.

And dig.

Whoever'd buried her hadn't wanted to make it easy. Six feet he dug, then eight. Muscles ached and calluses burned. At the ninth, blade struck bone, her shroud long since rotted away. Thomas put the shovel far away against a tree and climbed down, scrabbling at the wall of the hole,
tearing fingernails on rocks and twigs caught in the earth.

He had to be so careful now.

It was in my hand.

Inch by inch, Thomas found his bones, loose and tumbling through his fingers. He sifted through the soil, feeling, gripping every likely thing between thumb and forefinger before dropping it and moving on to the next.

This? No. Not that or that, either. He didn't look at what he was touching, just moved from bone to bone.

It had fallen from her hand, no great surprise. Under a last surviving scrap of rotten cloth, Thomas's fist closed around the iron ring.

“Thank you,” Thomas said, holding it up to the moonlight. “Thank you.”

Be careful,
said Hellebore.
Touching it brought me to my death, but you have not joined me yet. I wish you luck.

It tingled as Thomas slipped it over his finger, tingled as the barrier had done, not with pain, but with magic. Faery magic. Hand over fist, he clawed himself from the grave and looked down into it. He would return to cover her. She would understand that now there was no time. He must get back to Marigold and the others.

As was the way of such things, it felt as if returning took less time than the finding, and he was lighter now. He'd left the shovel, but the iron ring weighed heavy on his finger.

He was gasping when he reached the gates to the park. Blood dripped from his hands, unnoticed before now, the cuts he had made in the last attempt reopened and weeping. Dizzied, he could not remember when he had last had a wink of sleep, and he was tired. So tired he felt as if he should like to sleep forever.

Soon enough. Not much farther now.

Deep in the park, the hazel tree stood tall. Through the gap, a distant lamp winked. The faeries were gathered, shielded in their cloaks with Charley and Jensen before them, and one on the ground, motionless as death.

“Stay back!” Thomas ordered, holding up his hand, the ring a black line darker than the night. “Is she alive?”

“Barely,” answered Deadnettle, but his shoulders slumped in relief. “You have it. We are going home.” His head tilted to look at the moon, pointed teeth bared in a smile.

“If it works.”

“Do you know what to do?”

Thomas didn't, but he knew who would. She had been trying to help him all along, speaking in his sleep, dreams he scarcely remembered when he awoke. But he was awake now, and he knew he could do another thing the other faeries could not.

“Wintercress,” he said, concentrating. “Help me.”

He waited for her voice. Waited and waited. And when one came, it was not hers. One of the faeries stepped forward and drew back the hood of its cloak with a dead, charred hand.

“So close and yet so far,” Mordecai said with a wicked grin. “Did you think I would let you leave?”

Charley stumbled as Mordecai pushed him out of the way. Deadnettle caught him by the arm.

“It doesn't hurt me any more than it hurts you.” Mordecai came closer, closer to the iron ring around Thomas's finger. It felt cold and dull and heavy. “We are much the same, young changeling. I did not realize what you were, at first. I believed until recently your fanciful story that you had been brought back from the dead. But then I remembered a tale, an old tale, handed down as my own was, of one such as you, made before the two worlds were forced apart. I am amazed Wintercress achieved it; I thought I had weakened her enough.”

“You hadn't,” said Thomas coldly. “Here I am.”

“And here you'll stay. You, none of you, will see your rightful home again.” Mordecai raised his arms.

Fear struck through Thomas like lightning, like bells. “Help me,” he whispered again.

The word came to him in his head. Jackrabbit quick, far faster than the sorcerer expected, Thomas pushed him aside
and ran through the cluster of faeries, cut hands slamming to the bark of the tree, blood and iron meeting the wood as he screamed the spell in the ancient faery tongue.

The moon flickered. The world shook.

And the gateway opened.

“No!”
Mordecai roared. Fingers closed around Thomas's throat, squeezing, squeezing. He felt the faeries try to pull him free, but Mordecai's grip was too tight, and they were too weak. Spots danced before Thomas's eyes.

He had no clue what'd happen, but there was nothing else for it.

Thomas stepped through the gap.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Homes

T
HOMAS MARSDEN WAS TWELVE YEARS
old when he succeeded in opening the gateway to the faery realm.

The grip on his throat loosened straightaway. He heard Mordecai fall with a thud behind him. Heard, but not saw. A gray mist surrounded him, a fog like soup, too thick to squint through.

Other sounds came. Voices. “Thomas,” said Deadnettle, and Thomas felt the weight of a hand on his shoulder. “You did it.”

“Doesn't look like much to me. This fog'd put London to shame.” Relief bubbled through him as laughter. “This is your wonderful faery realm?”

“It is yours, too. Perhaps more yours than anyone's.”

“But I'm not a faery, not truly. Not like one of you. I can't see a blind thing in here, and I'll reckon you can see for miles.”

“That isn't what I meant, which I suspect you knew.” A hint of a smile graced Deadnettle's voice, and warmth flushed through Thomas. “You have a particular kind of human mind. Cunning and guile most of us do not possess, although I think too much time reading books has made Marigold cleverer than she perhaps needs to be.”

Thomas laughed. Elsewhere, the faeries were laughing too, joyful and bubbling.

“You think of things as a human does, Thomas,” Deadnettle continued. “Faced with the problem of the gateway, Wintercress sought a solution of magic, of blood. Faced with the problem of a locked door, you sought an iron tool with which to smash it down. You are very human, but you are very much a faery, too. And you are our faery king.”

Thomas stared down at shoes he couldn't see. “Dunno about all that,” he mumbled. “Well, p'raps the king part. That has a certain something.”

It was Deadnettle's turn to laugh. A strong, healthy laugh.

“Please do something for me. Sit, just here. Sit and wait.”

Deadnettle helped him to the soft grass.

“What's s'posed to happen?”

“I am not certain. It's been so long, and never like this . . .”

Thomas curled his hands, gasped. “I'm still wearing the ring. Here! Move back!”

“It's all right. Wait.”

Too weary to argue, Thomas waited. One by one, or so he assumed, the faeries came and touched the top of his head, big hands and small ones. His eyes closed of their own accord, as if the iron was sapping his strength to keep them open, like the faeries in the cellar for so long. His head felt full up, of the past few days and everything that had happened, and a hundred thousand memories . . .

Memories that were not his. Cellars and cages and a night when everything went dark.

He opened his eyes.

It was as beautiful as Deadnettle had always told him, fields and valleys and a wide blue river.

“A place of great healing,” said Deadnettle calmly, and Thomas remembered the fortune-teller.
Broken.

“I am . . . both halves again? Fixed?”

“Very nearly stitched back together. I could not be sure, but I hoped. And I believe Wintercress knew. I believe she knew everything, and kept it from me to keep us safe. If Mordecai had asked the wrong questions, which is to say, the right questions, we would have been in such danger. More than we were.”

“Did you know?” Thomas asked. He did not say it to Deadnettle.

You have realized what else you can do that the others cannot,
said Wintercress. The words swept through his head like a voice in a dream.

“I can speak to you,” he said.

You can. A gift given only to rare, precious changelings. And yes, Thomas, I knew. I knew you would save us, and you now have some of the magic of our kind and some that is entirely your own.

“Wintercress,”
whispered Deadnettle, and Thomas wished, for an instant, that he could pull the voice from his head and put it inside the old faery's. But only for an instant. She was his, and he had a great deal to ask her. The idea of speaking to the dead, or rather, letting them answer, no longer seemed as repulsive as it once had.

Tell him I am happy.

Thomas did. The last of the shadows of worry and pain faded from Deadnettle's face as Thomas watched.

“I could stay here.”

“Indeed, you could.”

A movement caught the corner of his eye. Marigold skipped over, smiling. “You should! We'd have such fun.” She paused. “Thistle?” she asked quietly.

“Yes?” It was Thomas who spoke.

She gazed at him for a long, long time. Thomas saw tears welling at the corners of her eyes, yet she still smiled, as she almost always had, every time he'd seen her.

“I miss you,” she said. “But I like Thomas better.”

Too right,
thought Thomas. He would miss her, too, a great deal, but he could not stay here. On the other side of the doorway was Charley, his friend for near as long as he—or part of him, leastways—had known Marigold. There was work to be done, not least covering Hellebore in her grave again. And despite Deadnettle's assurances, he wanted to take the iron away. Pushing himself to his feet, he walked to the hazel tree. “I'll come back to visit,” he promised, and stepped through.

The world seemed exactly as he'd left it. Jensen and Charley waited.

“And here, too?”

Anywhere you like.

Some of the magic of the faeries and some of his own. He turned the iron ring on his finger. It was a funny old world, wasn't it, and there was more than one of 'em. He'd seen no end of strangeness in his life, that being a hazard of grave digging, but nothing would ever be so odd as these past days. His accidental afterlife was over and ahead lay his future one, ready to be filled to the brim like a glass of the freshest, cleanest water. Well, he had a proposal for Jensen, one that would make them both richer than Mordecai. He'd be able to buy Lucy all the onions she needed, and Silas'd never have to lift a shovel again.

Nor would Thomas. For he had found his bones.