The Whatnot (6 page)

Money room, my
foot.

Pikey turned to tell the gentleman exactly that, and then Mr. Millipede shoved him. Pikey flew forward, banging to his knees. The door slammed behind him and the key clanked in the lock.

“Hoy!” Pikey shouted, whirling and beating his fists against the door. “Hoy, what— Help! Kidnappers,
help me
!”

He kicked and yelled and rattled the handle. The ladies would hear. They were such a little ways away. They couldn't possibly
not
hear him.

He leaned his head against the door, listening. No sound. No sound of ladies hurrying down the corridor to rescue him. No shrieks, or shouts of shock and outrage. The only thing he heard was the whirr of the speaking machine as Mr. Millipede cranked its handle, and the brass
ping
as the call went through.

“Yes. Yes, Mr. Millipede's, Number 41, Dover Street.” The gentleman's voice had lost all its politeness. It was brisk and businesslike, and it made Pikey want to punch the jeweler in his horrid, false face. “A guttersnipe brought it in. . . . Lady Halifax's . . . stolen . . . Come right away.”

Then Pikey wanted to punch himself.

Idiot.

He slid down the door and closed his eyes.

Idiot, fool, boggle-eyed fish-brained
dunderhead.

Of course it was stolen. That black-winged faery had snatched it somewhere and given it to Pikey, likely as a joke. And Pikey had fallen for it. He thought he could march in and sell a gem that was worth all of Spitalfields and several streets of Fenchurch as well, a gem worth more money than most men earned in their entire lives? What had he expected? That the jeweler would believe him? That Pikey could strut and put on a deep voice, and everyone would ignore his filthy clothes and his smell of mud and frozen alleys?

Well, now he
was
in for it. Now he was dead. Forget caramel apples. Forget his stupid dreams. The officers would come. They would see his eye, and the war was starting soon. A faery-touched boy in the middle of London would be spirited away in a blink. To the lockup, or the workhouse, or worse . . . a faery prison.

The mouthpiece clattered into its cradle. Footsteps receded down the corridor. Pikey heard a high flutter of giggles. Then nothing.

He leaned his head against the door, his hair sticking unpleasantly to the cold wood. He knew he should move, look for a weapon, look for a way to escape, but he barely felt he could. He had been so close. For three days he'd had a path laid out in front of him, a gem in his pocket and a spring in his step, and suddenly the happy voices and the warm stove had seemed very near indeed. But now Mr. Millipede had dropped the gem into his waistcoat pocket, and that was where it would stay until Pikey was well on his way to being locked up and to disappear and—

Disappear.
The word brought him back with a sharp twist of panic. That would be the end, then. He would be dead, and that would be all.

He pushed himself off the floor and glanced about. The lock on the door was strong and old, and he had never been good at picking locks anyway. The only other way out was the window. He looked up at it. Veins of lead crisscrossed it, and it was high above his head. But not too high.

He snatched one of the rickety chairs and dragged it up under the window. He clambered onto it, careful to keep his feet on either side of the brittle straw seat. Then he pulled his sleeve over one hand and knocked it against the glass. The panes were thick. So thick they distorted the alley outside into bluish waves and whorls. Well, he didn't have a choice. He balled his fist to smash it—

“Don't,” said a voice.

Pikey froze.

The door had not opened. No one had come in. The voice had been soft, and dark, and spoken with the faintest hint of a laugh.

Slowly Pikey turned to face the room. The chair wobbled under him.

A tall, thin figure stood in the shadows, next to a stack of canvasses and empty picture frames. Pikey couldn't see its face or eyes—only a silhouette—and for a moment he wondered if it was a statue and he had imagined the voice. But then a long-fingered hand unfurled from the shadows, and the voice spoke again: “Come to me. Come quickly. We mustn't have you in trouble.”

Pikey leaped off the chair and backed up against the wall, his hands flat on the stone. “Stay away,” he hissed. “Who're you? Stay away!” His voice sounded small and sharp, a little boy's voice.

“They will catch you.” The thin figure laughed softly. “They will
kill
you.”

Beyond the door, the jeweler's shop was no longer silent. Bells jangled, long and insistently. Then heavy footsteps, in the shop, in the corridor.
Boots.
They were coming for him.

“Do you want that? Do you want them to make you disappear like you never existed? They will see your eye. They will drag you to one of their faery prisons in the wilds, and no one
ever
comes back from those. No one like you, at least.” Another laugh, so quiet it was just a breath. “Take my hand.”

Pikey looked at the hand, then at the figure in the shadows. He couldn't see its face. He couldn't see
anything.

The boots had reached the door. A key clicked into the lock.
Turning, turning.

The figure flicked its fingers, beckoning him. The door opened with a squeal
.

Pikey gripped the hand.

It was cold. Cold and stiff as a dead man's hand. It pulled Pikey into the dark.

Behind him he heard a shout. The figure clutched Pikey. It whispered under its breath, and the shadows seemed to fly like ravens out of the corners and wrap around them. Leadfaces were in the room, hurling picture frames, poking into everything, but suddenly the sound of them was far away, as if on the other side of a velvet curtain. Mr. Millipede stood in the doorway, his mouth agape. Pikey saw it all. Then the thin figure said another word, and Pikey was swept forward, past the jeweler, out the door, carried on an invisible wind. They flew out of the shop, up the street, faster and faster, and no one seemed to see. Houses sped past, steam coaches and automatons, and hundreds of people in hats and hoop skirts. They crossed the river, so quick Pikey didn't know if they had been on a bridge or if they had simply floated right above the water. And then the figure let go of his hand. Everything screeched to a halt.

Pikey gasped, wobbling on his legs. He looked about. He was back in the squalor of Spitalfields, in a little court behind a butcher's shop. An old, old tree called the Gallows Tree arched over him, its branches gnarled and black.

“Now,” the tall figure said. “Do not be foolish again. You are no use when you are dead.”

It did not wait for a response. It spoke another word, and the Gallows Tree seemed to untwist and open like a gaping mouth. Wind flew at Pikey. Not the heavy, ash-filled wind of London, but a sharp, wet wind that smelled of salt. It ruffled his hair, dampened his lips. Through the tree, as if through a telescope, he saw a seashore, dark cliffs and waves crashing over a bone-white beach. It was all so close; he could practically feel the spray flying up around him and spattering his cheeks. The figure gave him a wink and a nod, and stepped into the tree. There was a snapping sound. Pikey felt a pain in his head, a dark, sharp spark stealing his vision. And when he could see again he was alone in the court. The Gallows Tree stood silent and still, just as it always had. Only the slightest hint of a laugh hung in the air, fading into the snow.

Pikey did not go back to the chemist's shop. He didn't know where to go. He spent the night in the corner of a frozen alley, covered with a few issues of
The London Standard,
and wondered what would become of him.

 

Pikey woke the next morning surrounded by glittering things.

He sat up slowly, rubbing the grit from his eyes. They were all around him, scattered over the cobbles in wide circle. Diamonds and opals and poppy-red brocade in crumpled rolls. A complete set of silver flatware, a cup wrought with leaves, a wooden box spilling pearls. A mantle of frost lay over everything.

Pikey squinted, blurring his vision to see if it would all fade into the smoke and frozen grime of the alley. It didn't. Everything was sharp and clear, sparkling in the cold. A single black feather fluttered, caught in the prongs of a silver fork.

Pikey sat up with a start.

Oh no.
Stupid faery. Stupid, stupid faery
—

But it was too late to run. And someone was there. Several someones. In the alley. Standing over him. Three leadfaces.

“Got you now,” one of them spat, so close Pikey could see the spittle strike the cobbles. “Now you're in for it.
Thief
.”

CHAPTER VI

The Belusites

H
ETTIE soon learned a few things, traveling through the woods with the company. She learned that laughing and smiling did not necessarily mean the Sidhe were pleased about anything. She learned that some words left them sulking, and others made the darkness pool around them like a drenched cloak, and still others made them turn odd, shadowy, and gaunt and glare at one another with glinting eyes. But mostly Hettie learned to disappear. She sat on the back of the snowy-haired horse, trying to make herself as small as possible, trying not to make a sound lest one of those long, pale faces turn to look at her. In Old Crow Alley, she had barely ever left Mother's kitchen; she hadn't been allowed to be seen, because to be seen meant she would die. And now she was riding with an entire company of faeries into some strange country, on her way to some strange place. . . .

It'll be all right,
she told herself over and over.
Don't be afraid. Don't be a baby.
But she was afraid. The faery butler had been her kidnapper. He had been a wicked, snappish creature who would never stop walking when she told him to, and—well, she had known him, at least. Back in England she had known him. He had been like a piece of that place, like a colored thread that coiled all the way back home. Now even that was gone.

Hettie knotted her hands into her nightgown.
The cottage.
She wouldn't be there anymore when Barthy came. He would call for her, but she would be far away. He would go into the cottage and find everything silent and empty. Perhaps he would see the blood on the snow and leave again, and not look for her any longer because he thought it was her blood and she was dead.

Hettie sat up so straight her steed wrenched its neck about and glared at her.
No,
she thought fiercely.
Not my brother. My brother won't ever give up. I'll get home one day.

 

After what felt like hours of riding, they entered a darker, deeper part of the wood. The great trees formed a tunnel around the company, the branches thick as chimneys. Hettie saw they were on the remains of an ancient road, bits of paving stones sticking up like broken teeth out of the snow. The ground became softer. The hooves of the horse-people sank in farther than before, releasing with a wet sound instead of a sharp one. And then, all at once, the snow was gone. The horses' hooves were squelching through turf and moss, and the trees were no longer black, but green and leafy, their trunks rough with cracked bark.

A faery riding close to Hettie let out a sigh. “Ah,” she said. “At last. We are out of Deepest Winter.”

Hettie looked back over her shoulder. The snowy wood had simply ended. As if it were an entirely different world. As if there were an invisible line, and everything on one side was desolate and dead, and everything on the other side was alive and growing.

“I do detest it,” the faery said to no one in particular.

Hettie peeked at her. She was not as pretty as the fish-bone lady. She had a very round face like a moon, or a dinner plate, and huge watery eyes. Her dress was sewn from giant rose petals. Her skin was still deathly pale, but somehow she didn't look quite as sinister as some of the other faeries. Hettie decided to ask her a question.

Leaning off the back of her steed a little, she said, “What did you say? Where are we now?”

Hettie had meant it to be so quiet that only the petal faery would hear, but she wasn't so lucky.

“Where?” the faery repeated, so loud the entire forest seemed to echo the question. “The ugly one asks where! Why, in Brightest Summer, of course! Silly thing!”

Everyone in the company turned to stare at Hettie. Then they started laughing.

“Hollow head,” said the old crone, her eyes glittering.

“Numbskull,” said the lady in the book dress.

“What a dimwit,” said the fish-bone lady happily.

Hettie shrank into the streaming white mane of her steed and waited for them to be done. They were, after not too long. Hettie remembered how back home she had heard Mother sighing about how faeries had tempers like spring weather, always changing, never good, and perhaps they did, but they certainly did not stay interested in things for long.

When the faeries had all been diverted by one thing or another, Hettie looked about at the new woods.
It doesn't
look
like Brightest Summer,
she thought spitefully.
Not to me.
You're
the hollow heads.
Summer in Bath meant stinking streets, stuffy rooms, and stairs so hot the wood sweated and the nailheads burned when you touched them. Here it wasn't even warm. The air was heavy and wet. It smelled of damp and fog and green things, but it wasn't warm. In fact, there was not a drop more light than there had been before, and all was still shadowy, gloomy, and gray.

They rode through this new wood for some time, under drooping branches and through silent hollows. A mist lay over the ground. Hettie saw that some of the riders had changed as well, along with the trees. The plate-faced lady looked slightly more luminous, the petals of her rose-dress a deeper red. Another lady was covered in sapphire-blue butterflies, all now emerged from the chrysalises sewn to her gown. The old woman—the tiny shriveled-up one who had been sitting so bent—was pale and slender and very young now, fresh as a summer apple. Her black shawls and blankets had become gauzy scarves. The gray coils of her hair were long and corn-gold. Hettie thought she looked very pretty.

At last the company came to the edge of the woods and rode into a dewy green field. It, too, was swathed in fog.

A huge house lay a few hundred strides from the forest. It was nothing like the cottage of the gray-faced faery. It was large and sprawling, and from every angle it looked a bit different, depending on how Hettie turned her head.

One side appeared like a great farmhouse with painted shutters and gingerbread trim. Another side was a soaring castle with towers and battlements and gargoyles watching from around diamond-paned windows. Another side was a palace, all glass and domed winter gardens.

Fog enveloped everything beyond the house. Hettie wondered what the country looked like farther on. For all she knew there
was
nothing. For all she knew the faery world ended here and everything after the house was simply a foggy green field forever and ever. She didn't like the thought of that.

The company stopped in front of a great, worm-eaten door carved with bears. Hettie had half expected them to go to a stable or a barn, but she had forgotten that it wasn't really horses they were riding. Likely the horse-people slept on sheets and ate with forks just like the English did. Below her, Hettie felt the bones of her steed begin to jerk and snap. She gasped. He was shifting, his skeleton making horrid little jolts against his hide. The other horse-people were doing the same. Their riders were set carefully on the ground. Hettie was dropped.

“Ow!” she cried, pushing herself up off the grass. She was about to shout at the glittery-skinned boy and tell him what a wicked, bad-mannered creature he was, but he had already stalked off.

“Ow,” she said again, a little quieter this time.

No one else was paying her any attention either. They had not even bothered to laugh at her fall. The lady in the fish-bone dress stood in front of the great door, and the others were waiting impatiently behind her. She said a single word, sharp as a sewing pin, and the door shook and opened, very suddenly, as if it had been startled.

The riders stepped through first, then the horse-people. No one waited for Hettie, and so she went in last of all, rubbing her back and scowling. She found herself in a dim, dusty room that had no ceiling, but went up and up into the dark. Ropes hung down out of the gloom. Against one wall stood a clock with faces where its numbers should have been, and on the far wall was a complicated red curtain, like a miniature theater curtain, framed in chipped and fading gilt. Nothing else. The room would never have been able to hold the entire company had they waited, but the young woman with her corn-gold hair slipped behind the curtain, and the horse-people skittered up the walls, and soon there was no one left but Hettie, the lady in the fish-bone dress, and three small gentlemen.

The gentlemen were speaking to one another, eyes half closed. The lady had her nose in the air. Her gaze was fixed on the clock, and her hands were picking at a fish bone in her bodice.

Hettie glanced at each of the faeries in turn. Now would be the time to run. The faeries were all very small. Not much taller than herself. Behind her, the door was still open. She could knock them right over and dash back across the green field and into the woods. Then she could eat mushrooms and drink snow and follow the horse-people's tracks until she was at the cottage.
And then
—

Then they would find her. They knew the woods better than she did. They knew the whole country, and they had killed the faery butler though he'd only been protecting her. They would kill her, too. These dreadful little people would as soon lop off her hand as shake it, and if they ever found out she was a Peculiar, they would lop off her
head.
The thought made her angry.

She stamped her foot. “What are we
waiting
for?” It came out in a sort of loud squeak. The three faery gentlemen turned to look at her, their eyes still half closed.

The fish-bone lady did not look at her at all. “
We
are waiting for our passage to be ready,” she said. “And you are waiting for us.”

Behind Hettie, the worm-eaten door closed with a boom. She jumped. And then the clock bonged, and the fish-bone lady reached forward and pulled a golden cord. The red curtain folded upward in ripples, revealing a long, opulent hallway, paneled in white and gold. The faery lady stepped into it. The faery gentlemen followed her, and Hettie followed the gentlemen. She stared about, trying to keep up. There was definitely something odd about the hallway. It was lined with doors, but they were only painted on, even the handles. Up ahead there appeared to be a panel missing in the wall. She passed it, peering through. She gasped. For a second she saw a vast gloomy space, pulleys and wires and little orange lamps extending into the distance. She saw that the walls of the hallway were only an inch thick and made of paste. And then a faery in a harness swooped out of the dark and slammed the panel into place, and the hallway looked real again. Hettie could still hear the creak of the pulleys on the other side of the wall, though. She wondered what sort of strange house this was.

The group walked on, never speaking. Their footsteps tapped dully against the floor, as if they were inside a box. At length the gentlemen disappeared behind doors. Hettie felt odd following the fish-bone lady all alone, especially since the faery seemed to have forgotten she was even there.

“Where are we going?” Hettie asked, just to remind her. “Miss, I have to—”

“Hush!” hissed the fish-bone lady, and looked quickly about, as if someone might be watching.

Finally the hallway ended in a pair of tall, paneled doors. The fish-bone lady opened them, and they entered a long, soaring room, full of shadows. Beams arched overhead like branches. Hundreds of portraits hung from the walls. A high-backed chair stood at the far end. Above the chair were two windows that looked almost exactly like thin slices of lemon. Hettie thought that was clever at first, because the windows made the gray light from outside look warm and lemony as well. But then she saw the bright faces pressed against the yellow glass from the other side.
Lamp faeries.
The windows were false, too.

The lady locked the doors with a toothy key, three ribbons, and a sprig of something green and alive.

“Ah,” she said, when she had finished. “On solid ground at last. Come.” And she practically dragged Hettie to the end of the room and deposited her on a footstool. The faery lady clambered up onto the chair. Then she arranged herself and looked down at Hettie expectantly.

Hettie sat very still and looked at her toes.

After a while the lady clapped her hands together. “I shall call you Maud,” she announced, and giggled. “I always wanted to call someone that.”

Hettie looked up sharply. “I don't want to be called Maud,” she said, before she could stop herself. “I want to be called Hettie. That's my name. Hettie.”

The lady barely glanced at her. “Hettie? Hettie is a dull name. It sounds like broomsticks and straw. Maud, on the other hand, sounds like violets and dust and melancholy. It is far more suitable.”

“I don't like it.”

“Well, nobody asked you,” the lady said, swinging her legs like a child.

Hettie blinked at her.

“Now, Maud, be a darling and bow whenever someone important sees you. I want them to be impressed with me.” Her smile left. The corner of her mouth twitched. “Is that clear?”

Hettie was staring at the picture behind the lady's head. It had begun to move. Figures were emerging from the painted woods in the distance and dancing across a meadow. Something dark was creeping toward them from a bloody patch in the corner.
Something dark and
—

“Maud!” The lady's voice was sharp.

“Oh— Yes, miss.”

“Excuse me, silly thing, I am not a
miss.
I am the Duchess of Yearn-by-the-Woods, Daughter of the Ponds, and Lady of the Hall of Hatpins. You will call me ‘milady.' ”

The faery leaned over. Abruptly her face crinkled into a smile. “But when no one is here you can call me Piscaltine.” She winked conspiratorially. “Oh, we'll be such
friends
.”

Hettie didn't want to be friends with this strange creature, but she doubted it would be a good idea to tell Piscaltine that. “Yes, milady,” she said, and a second later the doors groaned open and an entire crowd of faeries swept into the room.