The Whatnot (22 page)

Bartholomew whirled, hurling the knife at the Sly King. The faery smiled wider. He raised a finger and the knife stopped, midflight.

“It's too late to stop her. She is going to destroy London. She is going to destroy your entire kingdom, and she is doing it for
you.
Because she wants to save you.”

Slowly the knife turned in the air. “But she can't.” It pointed to Bartholomew. It shot forward.

Bartholomew ducked. “Run!” Pikey shouted, but the beaked ladies were moving in again, surrounding them. Florence La Bellina was on her feet.

Bartholomew stooped. He began fiddling with his boots.

“You idiot, stop—” Then Pikey saw.

The buckles. The silver feather buckles on Bartholomew's boots. They were sparking, and Bartholomew was pressing them and twisting them and mumbling frantically. Then he lifted them, two fistfuls of glinting metal feathers, and they seemed to struggle out from between his fingers. He tossed them. They exploded into hissing puffs, and when the steam cleared they were delicate clockwork creatures, like insects. Each had a stinger, and each stinger carried an emerald bulb of poison at its tip. They swarmed the beaked ladies and the Sly King.

Before Pikey could see what they would do, Bartholomew snatched his arm, and he and Pikey pelted away along the cliffs.

Ahead was the hole into England. Behind them, shouting. And then a tinkling as the stinger-insects dropped to the stones. Pikey looked over his shoulder. The Sly King's hands were raised, his mouth moving. Florence and the beaked ladies were flying after Pikey and Bartholomew, leaping along the cliffs like deranged marionettes. Pikey saw the hole ahead, a black speck among the rocks. He reached it. He dove in, headfirst. He didn't wait for Bartholomew. He pushed deeper and deeper, felt the old roots coiling, and the endless weight of stone and dirt above him.

The first thing he smelled of London was the burning, and a wind heavy with smoke and coal.

 

The faery prisons were almost free of the trenches. They rolled up the banks slowly—a thousand tons of iron and spikes—and the faeries pushing them screeched in anguish. Guns bombarded them. Aether cannons shot sprays of greenish-black orbs, compacted gases that burst into gales of fire upon impact, but the globes never faltered. They eased up onto the lip of the trench. Soldiers scattered. Faeries whooped and yelled as English guns were ground into the muck. The globes began to roll. Slowly at first, but quickly gaining speed, thundering over the winter fields.

High overhead, a tiny clockwork bird flapped. It flew straight and true, a dull gleam of brass over fields, then rooftops, to Westminster Palace. An old gentleman stood in one of the upper windows. The bird alighted on his hand. Behind him other gentlemen waited, lords and dukes and the last brave members of the Privy Council. Mr. Jelliby was there. His face was gray, but his jaw was set. They all saw the brass capsule attached to the bird's leg. They all knew what was inside. The old man took out the slip of paper and read it silently. He handed it to the others. They read it, too. Some looked grave, some fearful, some determined. Then they all shook hands and began to descend to the street, one after another.

The window was left open. The paper lay discarded, drifting over the floor. There were only three words on it, scrawled in splattered ink:
We are lost.

 

Hettie was on a road into North London, walking as fast as she could. Her eyes were pinched shut. Tears seeped from them, but she didn't try to stop them anymore. A barn shattered behind her. Wood flew by her face, puffs of white feathers that might have been chickens, and splinters of metal as long as daggers. She did not flinch. She did not open her eyes. On and on she walked, stumbling toward the sooty skirt hem of the city.

Something in the city was on fire. She could smell it, and when she opened her eyes she could see the orange flames dancing on the clouds above. Ahead was Bishopsgate. Broken wagons and discarded furniture made a barricade in front of it. As if that could stop her. Beyond were the crooked streets and leaning houses of London. And somewhere was Wapping and an old, burned-out warehouse. Once, in that warehouse, a faery by the name of John Wednesday Lickerish had tried to do just what Hettie was doing now. He had tried to destroy all of London. Hettie had been afraid then. Afraid because the wings had been so loud and the wind so cold. How different she had been then. How small and empty-headed.

Do they lead home? she had asked the faery butler, that night on the boat. Do all these horrid things lead someplace good?

And the faery butler had said,
Perhaps, if we make them to.
But she couldn't. She couldn't make them to, not now, not for her.

She climbed over the wagons, under the stone archway, and into High Street. Behind her, Bishopsgate blew up in a shower of stone.

 

The globes were hurtling toward the city, churning the new snow into mud.
Fifteen miles, fourteen miles.
The smoke of the city came into view, then the first houses, already smashed beyond repair. The globes picked up speed.

 

Pikey burst from among the roots of the tree, into the court behind the butcher's shop. He spun, expecting to see Bartholomew clawing up after him. He waited, heart thudding. Wind whispered across the roofs. Somewhere in the distance, a roaring.

“Bartholomew?” he called, as loud as he dared. “Barth?”

No answer.

“Barth?” With a stab of panic, Pikey went down on his knees and began scrabbling back into the hole.
“Barth!”

He felt a hand, hot breath against his face.

“Pikey.” It was Bartholomew. His fingers tightened around Pikey's wrist. “Pikey, something's got my leg. Go get Hettie. She's here and she's alive; go get her.”

“No!” Pikey dragged at Bartholomew's hand, wrenching him up.

“Go,” Bartholomew gasped. “Go, please!”

“No, you have to get out. She's
your
sister, and she needs you, not me.”

Bartholomew was halfway out now, his whole upper body in England. They both saw the feathers at the same time.

They scudded down into the court like black snow. The distant roaring grew. Pikey saw the wings, a vast cloud of them, boiling up in the distance, over the gable of the butcher's shop, darkening the moon.

Bartholomew started shouting. “Hettie! It's Hettie, she's opened the door!
Hettie!
” Pikey joined in, and they yelled until their voices were hoarse.

But there was no way she could have heard them. She could have been a mile away. And suddenly Bartholomew was jerked back underground. Pikey saw a pale hand in a red sleeve wriggle up Bartholomew's neck and clamp over his eyes.

“Pikey, she's opened the door! She'll destroy the whole city!” Bartholomew clawed at the hand. He was slipping, disappearing back into the hole. “Stop her. Tell her not to, no matter what. Tell her I'm all right. I
will
be all right.”

All Pikey saw of Bartholomew now were his fingers, stark against the black coiling roots.

“Pikey?” Bartholomew's voice was muffled. His hands scrabbled frantically. “Pikey, GO!”

Pikey let out an angry cry and shot to his feet. He looked up. The wings were pouring across the city, seeping over the rooftops and slithering between chimneys, crumbling them. They would kill him. He had heard enough stories of Bath and the faeries to know that. He spun back to the tree. Bartholomew was gone.

“No,” he whispered. He took a few steps toward it. He felt the wind plucking at his cloak. “No!” he said louder.

But he had to move. They had such a slim chance, Hettie and Bartholomew, and that chance was him.

Pikey stood for a second, looking up at the inky storm of wings. He closed his eyes . . . and leaped.

 

A dog was tearing through Leadenhall Street, whimpering. Hettie followed it. Furniture littered the cobbles. Sofas and desks and shattered portraits. Envelopes and nightgowns spilled out of drawers, wafting over the wreckage. A steam coach had overturned coming around the corner of an alley and lay abandoned now, its door open, pointing to the sky. The people of London had fled in a panic.

Somewhere ahead was the river. After that was more London, then villages, and then, Hettie imagined, winter fields.

It's not the right way! It's not the way to go!
the voice in her head screamed, and she knew it wasn't, but it was the only way she could see. She passed the Bank of England, Cannon Station with all its engines gone, and the clock frozen at eleven o'clock. An automaton stood slumped at the loading curb, its eyes watching her as she went by. The wings swallowed it.

Suddenly Hettie stopped, staring up the street. For a second she imagined she was in Old Crow Alley. It was full of broken furniture, too. The sky was black, and the stars were falling, and a wild laughter was on the icy wind. Miserable, angry faery faces looked down at her from the broken windows, their branch-hair growing into the walls and knotting them to the earth.

The image faded. She was back in London.
Cross the river,
the Sly King had said.
Cross the river, or you'll die.
But she was dead either way. Even if she did everything he said, she would never see Mother or Bartholomew again. She would be a Belusite then, and after she had destroyed the whole city and brought the faeries into England, she would join all the other Belusites and wander about in beautiful clothes, working schemes for the Sly King. There
had
to be another way.
I wish I could see it,
she thought.
I wish I knew.

And then she heard the shout. A word, echoing louder even than the wings. Was somebody calling her? She took a few steps back the way she had come.

“Bartholomew?” The wings formed a wall in front of her, filling the street, gutter to gutter.
“Barthy?”

 

The flood of wings almost smashed Pikey sideways. He fought his way forward, desperately, one foot after another, headfirst into the screaming wind. Fingers pinched him. Something cold and stinging slid against his bare hands, but he didn't stop. He wasn't dead—not yet—and he wasn't going to stop.

“Hettie?” he shouted into the blackness. “Hettie, where are you?”

Whispers filled his ears. He felt strange suddenly, hazy, and when he looked down he saw that the ground beneath his boots kept flickering between London cobbles and the shattered stone of a gray ruin. He was
in
the door, right in between, in the Old Country and England both. Somewhere he heard a steady beat, like the marching of soldiers, coming toward him. He heard the wings and the whispers. And then, above it all, he heard a voice. A child's voice, shrill as a whistle.

“Bartholomew?” It was faint, whirling among the feathers. “Barthy?”

Pikey switched directions, following the sound. “Hettie!”

“Bartholomew?”

Ahead Pikey saw a break in the wings. He hurried toward it. And then he was out of the blackness and hurtling toward a small, pale child. She stood in the middle of the street, next to a red chair. Her back was toward him.

“Hettie!” he shouted. She turned. Her eyes widened. The chair billowed away in a flight of ruby-bright flakes.

Pikey rushed to her, gasping and swatting at the feathers. “Hettie,” he said, “I'm Pikey, and I'm your brother's helper, and you have to stop this. You have to stop those faeries.”

Hettie stared at him. “What?” Her cheeks were wet, and Pikey saw that her eyes were dark and dripping. “My brother? Bartholomew?”

“Yes! I was just—”

“Is he all right?” Hettie took a step toward Pikey, but it was as if something were holding her back, as if hands were dragging at her. “They said they'd kill him, but he's not dead, is he? He's safe?”

For an instant everything became silent. A piece of paper curled overhead, so calmly Pikey could see the picture on it—pen-and-ink, an illustration of a summer country and a cottage just peeking over the hill.

Yes,
he almost lied.
He's safe. He's just sitting, waiting for you.

But of course Pikey didn't know if Bartholomew was safe. He didn't know how he possibly could be, wounded and dragged back under the Gallows Tree. And Pikey was done lying.

A gust of roof tiles whirled passed them, and the silence shattered. “I don't know!” he shouted. “I don't know if he's safe, but we've got to hope he is, right? We've got to hope for it. Me and him, we got away from the Sly King and we got to London, and he said he'd be all right, and if Barth says something he means it. So you need to stop all this. You need to, because no one else can and nothing'll be all right if you don't get rid of these blinkin'
faeries
!” The wings rose into a gale along with Pikey's voice, almost drowning him out.

Hettie stared at him, not moving.

“Can you?” he shouted. “You're the only one who can, so you can't say no!”

“I don't know!” she yelled back. They were inches apart, but the black feathers made a pillar around them. They could barely hear each other. “I don't
know
if I can!”

“Yes, you do! You can, because you've
got
to!”

And all of a sudden it was as if he could see through those huge dark eyes into a quick and clicking mind. He saw sadness, then doubt, then wonder and determination. “All right,” she said, and she wasn't crying anymore. “But you have to leave now. You have to run, and you can't stop. Go that way! Go!”

And then she shoved Pikey, and he went stumbling and leaping away down the street. Fingers and wind pulled at his cloak, then let go. The wings fell away behind him. Ahead was the river, a bridge, and the great, silent city.

 

Bartholomew kicked free of the roots and limped over the scattered cobbles, gripping his cloak with both hands. The red woman had cut him. He had felt a knife, or a jagged fragment, cold as iron. And then, all at once, she had let out a terrible cry and had lost her grip on him. He limped faster. Behind him, he could still hear her shrieking. The black wings were everywhere, flooding over him. Feathers scraped his skin and fingers prodded, but he felt no pain. The sylphs would not kill him. Not a Peculiar and a faery-touched.