The Whatnot (16 page)

The Sly King had had so many of those necklaces, hanging inside his coat. And he was a king. They were important, then. Perhaps they were magic. She thought of how hers always made her feel braver and better when she held it, and how it never went cold, even in the winter wood and the painted halls of Piscaltine's house. Perhaps the Sly King really did want her for a Door, and perhaps Piscaltine hadn't known about any of it and had simply kept Hettie as a pet as she had always supposed. But if it
was
the necklace they wanted . . .

Hettie slipped the chain from around her neck and hurried to the side of the boat. If it was what they wanted, then they could have it. She could live without it. She could live without a lot of things if it meant she could escape this place. She leaned over the railing and dangled the necklace above the green-black waters.

The ugly old Hettie stared up from the waves, from a broken, mossy boat. Something dark and hairy swayed from her hands. Hettie ignored it. She looked toward the river's edge. The Belusite was riding, her head turned toward Hettie at an unnatural angle. Their eyes met. Hettie took a deep breath. Then she let the necklace fall. It tumbled toward the water. It struck with barely a sound and sank beneath the waves.

CHAPTER XVII

Puppets and Circus Masters

P
IKEY fell flat on his stomach, and the birds shrieked overhead in a deafening gale. He clapped his hands to his ears, but the shrieking only seemed to get louder. The wings flapped on and on. Any second he expected to feel talons sliding into his cloak, beaks pulling his skin.

Something gripped his arm. He cried out. He tried to wrench away, but it was only Bartholomew, dragging him to his feet and shouting, “Come on! Back to the woods! There's nothing we can do here!”

Pikey stumbled, almost fell again.
The woods? The
faery
woods?

Bartholomew was already running, back across the fields the way they had come. The birds were no longer overhead. Behind him, Pikey heard a horrible, desperate wail. He looked back over his shoulder.

The birds were on the hill. They covered it now in a black swarm, glistening in the early winter light. He couldn't see the soldiers anymore. But he heard them.

“Barth!” Pikey screamed, setting off after him. “Barth, the soldiers!
They're being killed!”

Bartholomew didn't slow down. “We can still get through!” he shouted back. “The gas will have gone off. The faeries will all be asleep, or fleeing. We can still make it!”

But then Pikey heard another sound, beyond the wailing and the flap of wings—a heavy beat, echoing in the earth.
Marching.

“Barth!”

To the left, he saw soldiers, row upon row of them, tramping across the field toward them. To the right, hundreds more. The regiments from Siltpool were creating their bottleneck, setting the trap for the faeries.

Only nothing was leaving the woods.

“Bartholomew!”

Bartholomew was twenty strides ahead, feet flying. The trees stood silent in the distance, the shadows between the trunks deep as oceans.
What's in there?
Pikey thought.
What's in those shadows?

The gap between Bartholomew and the trees was narrowing swiftly.
Five hundred strides.
Pikey had almost caught up with Bartholomew.
Four hundred fifty.
The forest loomed. Was something moving in there? Was that a thin shape he saw, drifting back into the dark?

And then Pikey's foot caught on something hard and sharp and he fell face-first into the grass.

Bartholomew spun. He ran back.

“Get up! Get up, Pikey, it's so close. We can still make it if we—”

Bartholomew froze. The sound of marching came closer, boots crunching in frosty grass. He remained motionless, staring at the thing Pikey had tripped over.

Half-hidden in the winter grass was a clockwork beetle. It lay on its back, spiked feet pointing toward the sky. Its belly had been torn out. A tangle of gears and sparking wires spilled onto the ground. And bolted to the insect's back were two glass canisters, pale green gas still pressing against the walls. The canisters were full.

Bartholomew let out a pained little cry. “No,” he said, turning to Pikey, as if Pikey could do something about it. “No, no, it's not. The gas, it couldn't have—”

“It never made it,” Pikey said. “The faeries are still in the woods. They're all awake.”

The troops were only a hundred strides away now, on either side of the hill. The first rows shouldered their muskets, eyes trained down the barrels. Pikey looked to the woods, then back at the approaching soldiers.

“We have to go, Barth,” he said.

General Haddock was riding out across the field toward them, his horse throwing up clods of frozen earth. Bartholomew didn't move.

“Who goes there?” the general bellowed. “Friend or fay?”

“Barth?” Pikey spun on Bartholomew. “Barth, we have to
go
!”

But they didn't go. Pikey and Bartholomew stood in the field beside the beetle's gutted carapace, and General Haddock bore down on them, his horse letting off shots of steam in the cold air. A handful of soldiers rushed forward to surround them.

For a second there was distraction: the birds were whirling off the hill, into the sky in a great black plume. They flew overhead, and the soldiers pointed their guns to the skies in a panic. But they needn't have bothered. The birds passed over and settled again in the branches of the faery wood. The fields were silent. The hill was very, very silent.

General Haddock leaped off his horse and stormed over to Pikey and Bartholomew. His boots were deafeningly loud in the sudden stillness. Pikey pulled his hood down low and hoped the general wouldn't notice his bad eye. He saw the ruined beetle at the grass by his feet. He stepped away from it abruptly, but not before the general saw it, too.

“Treachery,” General Haddock said. “
Faery
treachery!”

Pikey glanced at Bartholomew.
Say something,
he pleaded silently, but Bartholomew didn't say a word.

“We—we ain't faeries, sir,” Pikey stammered. “We didn't do nuthin'.”

“They knew!” General Haddock shouted, turning to the soldiers. He began to pace, striding across the grass, spinning, then back again. “They knew we were coming. The faeries in the woods, somehow they
knew
.”

“It weren't us! I swear it weren't,” Pikey said, but he felt so sick and desolate. The words sounded like old washing, sodden in the rain.

“Silence!”
General Haddock roared. “Another word from you and I'll shoot you where you stand. Haversack! Lacewell! Take them to the nearest faery prison and see that they are locked up. I will deal with them later. Arvel! Surgeons and nurses to the hill this instant.”

And with that the Second Battle of Tar Hill ended. The surgeons and white-bonneted nurses climbed the hill, and two boys were dragged across the fields toward the waiting iron prisons.

 

Pikey and Bartholomew sat slumped inside a holding cell in the Birmingham Faery Prison. Pikey was crying softly, his head against the wall. Bartholomew stared blankly into nothing. Chains were bolted around their ankles. The cell was one in a row of small iron boxes, gates at their fronts, leading onto a hanging walkway. The boxes were very high up, and the wind never quit blowing, in the barred window and out through the gate, freezing them.

Officers and soldiers were hurrying up and down the walkway outside, but none of them noticed the new prisoners. Their faces were drawn, their heads bowed in the shadow of their hats. When they spoke it was in urgent whispers.

After a while Pikey sat up and wiped his nose. “All right,” he said. “No use just sitting around. How are we figurin' on getting out of here?”

Bartholomew didn't look at him. He hadn't looked at anyone since seeing the broken beetle in the grass. He hadn't spoken.

“We still can, Barth,” Pikey said, sliding over to him. “We can get out and find a way into the faery wood. Even without the gas! We can!”

“No,” said Bartholomew. His voice was bare. Hopeless. “No, we can't. There must be an army of faeries in those woods. The trees are full of birds. We're not going into the faery wood. We're not going anywhere.”

Pikey stared at him. “We're not even going to try?”

Bartholomew turned his head to look at Pikey. His eyes were bloodshot. “I
have
tried,” he said. “I've tried for so, so long. I left Mother alone in Old Crow Alley, and I spent Mr. Jelliby's money hand-over-fist with not so much as a thank-you, and it didn't hurt because I was looking for Hettie and I thought if I could get her back, all would be well again. But it isn't ever going to be well. Everything is horrid, and I don't even know if Hettie is alive.”

“She is alive,” Pikey said, “She is, she just
is
.”

“But we don't
know
!” Bartholomew snarled, and it was so sudden and savage that Pikey jerked back. Bartholomew stared at him a second longer, his eyes huge and liquid. Then he sagged again, as if all his strength had been spent.

The cell was silent. The only sound was the moaning wind and the drum of feet, deep in the globe. Then, his voice so hoarse and quiet Pikey could hardly hear it, Bartholomew said, “When I found you in that prison, I felt I would know, finally. I felt I would know where my sister was and how she was faring and even if it took the rest of my life, it wouldn't be so bad, because I would know she
was
somewhere and I could find her. Well, I don't know anymore. Perhaps I never did.”

With that, Bartholomew Kettle wrapped his fingers around his chains and did not stir until long after night had fallen and the moon hung fat and pale in the sky.

 

Pikey woke with a start. His faery eye hurt, stung, as if something wet were sliding against it, as if rain were splashing straight into it.

“Bartholomew!” he said, feeling about in the dark. “Bartholomew, my eye!”

He felt the panic rising in his throat. In the blackness it could be anything, or a bit of smoke, or a flea, or something bad enough to kill him.

Bartholomew mumbled from his corner of the cell, but he didn't move.

“Wake up, it's
hurting
!” Pikey put his fist to his good eye and opened his clouded one wide. What he saw made his blood run cold. He dropped his hand, gasping.

He was underwater. Everything was tinged green, eerie and slow moving in the half-dark. Bodies floated in the water. Pale ladies in gowns, men in armor holding shields and swords. They floated silently, eyes closed, lips white and sealed. Wisps of seaweed rose from the murk below and tangled with their feet and ran through their hair. Each of the bodies had a chain around its ankle, disappearing into the depths.

Pikey slapped his hands over both eyes, but even then he saw. He could not block it out. He sank past the bodies, past the still, white faces.

“Bartholomew!”

Now Bartholomew was awake. Pikey heard the slither of chains. “What? What is it?”

Pikey didn't answer. The water was becoming darker and darker. He sank past pointed shoes, a little sharp-faced boy, clutching a knife. It looked like the boy was sleeping. The ground rose to meet Pikey. Silt and stones and a tangle of chains and weights. He saw jewels in the silt, trinkets and faded ribbons. The faery eye went black.

“What d'you see? Can you see Hettie?” Bartholomew whispered. He had pulled himself out of the corner and was crouched next to Pikey.

Pikey let his breath out slowly.

“No, I—” He tried to focus on the cell again, on England. Five days. Five days, and he hadn't seen finger or branch of her. She could have drowned, drifting with all those other bodies in the dark green deep. And if that was the case, everything
was
over. For Pikey, for Bartholomew. They would both be shot, or hanged, and if Pikey had ever been any use, it wouldn't matter, because nothing good had come of it. For a little while he had thought he might be important, not just a sniveling boy from a cracker box, not just a faery-touched.

He barely thought about what he said next. Ignoring the ache in his eye, Pikey steadied his voice. “Yes,” he said. “I saw her.”

Bartholomew's eyes went so wide Pikey could see his own face in them.

“She's safe,” he went on. “She's just sitting. Eating pie. I don't know why my eye started hurting. It's gone now.”

 

Out on the hill, the nurses in their white bonnets stood very still though it was well past midnight. The surgeon's aprons were spotless, no gore or stains from tending the wounded. The night wind whistled around them.

The soldiers were on their feet as well. Their uniforms hung in tatters, and some of the men bore scratches and signs of a struggle. But they were all alive. Blood pumped in their veins. Their eyes were open, staring at nothing.

A tall, thin shape walked among the figures on the hilltop. His long fingers brushed them as he passed. “Make them dance, my friends,” he said. “Make them sing.”

“Mi Sathir,”
they answered, though not one of them opened his mouth.
“Isdestri mankero.”

Then the clouds shifted overhead and the moonlight sluiced down, showing the hill and everyone on it in stark relief. The nurses' hands were frozen to claws. Their satchels lay overturned in the grass. The soldiers' eyes were black, their faces unnaturally pale. And on the backs of every one of their heads was another face, a dark, twisted one, with sharp teeth and too many eyes.

There were no wounded on top of Tar Hill. No bodies. Only the English and their faery puppet masters.

The thin figure whispered a word.

Six hundred soldiers went sliding and jerking down the hillside toward the sleeping prisons.

 

The moment the lie left Pikey's lips he felt the guilt, a horrible weight, like a stone against his heart.
Just don't lie to me,
Bartholomew had said, that very first day in the prison.
Ever.

“You saw her?” Bartholomew asked. “She's alive?” The corner of his mouth started to wobble, and Pikey was afraid he was going to cry. But he didn't. Instead he stood up and went to the gate that separated them from the walkway, dragging his chains with him. He leaned against the bars. He pressed the lock, weighing its strength. “We'll get out,” he said in his old, quiet, determined voice. “You and me, Pikey. They took everything out of my cloak, but we'll find a way. We'll get into the Old Country and we'll get Hettie back.”

We.
“All right,” Pikey said, trying to keep his breath from shaking. “But—but we can't go through the woods. The birds and all the faeries, they're just waiting there.”

Bartholomew shook his head. “We won't. It was a daft idea from the start. I thought we could do anything then. But there's still Edith Hutcherson. I know I said we'd never find her, but she's our only chance now. We'll look for Edith Hutcherson just like the faun said, and she'll tell us the way in.”