Mr. Jelliby was pretending to be a corpse. He sat on the chair, drowned in shadows, not daring to move, not daring to breathe, waiting for Bartholomew and the rat faery to leave.
A minute later and he knew it had fallen for his trick. He lifted one eyelid. The faery’s voice echoed in the vastness of the warehouse, then was lost in an explosion of mechanical clanks and hisses. Mr. Jelliby opened both eyes wide and stood up. Edging around one of Dr. Harrow’s shoes, the scuffed and muddied tip of which just stuck out from a crack between two crates, Mr. Jelliby stole out of his hiding place.
He had not gone ten paces when a booming noise sounded above him. Dim light flooded the warehouse, as a great portion of the roof slid open, baring the sky and the airship hanging in it. Night was approaching. A gear-work elevator was rising, swinging gently on the anchor cable. The elevator was not closed in, and Mr. Jelliby could still see its two passengers clearly. The rat faery stood, arms and legs and appendages that had no name wrapped around the railing. Next to him, crouched on the floor, was Bartholomew.
Mr. Jelliby darted out from among the crates. He could see the inside of the warehouse clearly now, dank and dripping, the mountains of crates touched with moss, cranes and hooks hanging down over the dark water that lapped at the far end. At the center of the warehouse, a pair of leather shoes sat. They were small-children’s shoes-and blackened. Scorch marks radiated from them like a charred sun. Their soles were nailed to the floor. Close by, the huge heap of the elevator’s cable dwindled away, uncoiling into the sky. The elevator was already thirty feet above Mr. Jelliby, and getting farther away by the second.
Rushing forward, he gripped the cable with both hands. Just don’t look down, he thought. If the rat faery saw him, he didn’t suppose it could do much. At least not until Mr. Jelliby arrived in the airship.
The cable pulled him into the air. The cold metal bit into his hands. He tried to support himself with his feet, but the tips of his shoes kept slipping and he had to claw with all his might to keep from falling.
Higher and higher he rose, through the open roof and into the sky. The warehouse shrank away beneath him. The wind growled, cold and fierce, swinging the cable. His fingers went from stiff to unfeeling. Above, the elevator whirred, and he caught snatches of the rat faery’s voice jeering at Bartholomew.
He closed his eyes. He didn’t dare look down at the city. But he didn’t dare look up either. If he saw how much longer he had to endure before reaching the safety of the airship, he thought he might give up then and there. He pressed his forehead against the cable, feeling the sharp frost against his skin. Safety. There was nothing safe where he was going. Mr. Lickerish was almost certainly up there, along with who-knew-how-many of his faery minions. Even if Mr. Jelliby survived the journey, he would only have gone from bad to worse.
The air became colder still as the dirigible cast its shadow across him. He opened his eyes. The airship was huge, filling everything, a giant black whale swimming in the sky. Mr. Jelliby had taken Ophelia on a pleasure flight in an air balloon once. He remembered how they had both stared at it in wonder as they approached it across Hampstead Heath. Its colors-the colors of a tropical bird-had been poison bright, brighter than the trees and the grass and the blue summer’s day. So bright that it had been impossible to look at anything else. It could have fit inside this one’s cabin.
Mr. Jelliby’s arms felt ready to snap. He could feel every cord in them, every tendon and muscle straining against his bones. The cable pulled him higher, up and up. He could make out the vessel’s name now, picked out in silver filigree on its prow.
The Cloud That Hides the Moon.
His shoulder gave a violent twitch. For a horrible moment he thought his arms would simply give way and he would fall down, down, down into Wapping. Moon? This was the moon? The moon in the sparrow’s note. The moon Melusine had been speaking of. She hadn’t been mad. It was an airship.
A hatch began to open in the underbelly of the cabin. Mr. Jelliby caught a glimpse of a hall, all aglow with warmth and yellow light. The elevator rose into it and came to a halt. The cable stopped too. Three hundred feet above London, Mr. Jelliby looked around him uncertainly.
God in heaven. His eyes swiveled up to the hall. The rat faery had dragged Bartholomew out of the elevator and disappeared. The hatch started to close.
“No,” Mr. Jelliby gasped, and his lungs scraped as if coated with ice. “No! Stop!”
But even if someone in the airship had heard him, they were more likely to give the cable a sharp shake than to rescue him.
He began pulling himself upward, inch by inch. The hatch was closing slowly, but it seemed so far away, miles and miles up. He could barely feel the pain in his arms anymore. They just felt dead, solid. .
No. He set his jaw. He wasn’t going to die up here. Not frozen to the cable like some foolish insect. Fifteen more feet, that was all. He could manage fifteen feet. For Ophelia. For Bartholomew and Hettie.
He struggled on, hands and legs and feet all trying to push him upward. The hatch continued to close. If it shut completely there would be nothing but a small hole where the elevator cable went into the hall. Not nearly large enough for a man. Five more feet. Four more feet. Only a little longer. . With a final surge of strength, Mr. Jelliby forced himself through the opening. The metal cut into his ankles, clamping. He jerked his feet up with a cry, scrambled away, lay shivering and gasping on the floor. The hatch clanged shut. Then all was still.
He would have liked to just lie there. The carpet was soft against his cheek. It smelled of lamp oil and tobacco, and the air was warm. He would have liked to just sleep there for hours and hours, and forget about everything else. But he willed himself to get up, and blowing on his chapped hands, hobbled toward the stairs.
Keeping himself pressed to the wall, he stumbled up them. A corridor was at the top. It was long and brightly lit, strangely familiar. He saw no one and heard nothing but the hum of the engines, and so he crept down it, pausing at each door to listen. He felt sure he had been here before. Sometime not so long ago. He came to the end of the corridor. The last door looked newer than the rest, smoother and more polished. And then he knew. Nonsuch House. The lady in plum flitting down the gaslit corridor. The faery butler’s words when he had caught Mr. Jelliby. “Come away from here this instant. Come back into the house.” The hallway was in the airship. That day of the ale meeting he had unwittingly wandered into Mr. Lickerish’s secret place. Somehow they were connected, the old house on Blackfriar Bridge and the dirigible in the sky. Some faery magic had knitted them together.
Voices were coming from the other side of the door. The voice of Mr. Lickerish. The voice of Bartholomew, quiet but firm. And then another door began to open some ways up the corridor.
Mr. Jelliby spun, fear welling in his chest. He was trapped. No place to hide, no place to hide. The hall was bare, just lamps and paneling. The doors were all locked. All but one. One had a key in its keyhole. He ran to it, twisted the key. A well-oiled bolt clicked open. He slipped in just as a small brown gnome emerged into the corridor.
The room in which he found himself was pitch black. Drapes had been pulled across the window and all he could see was a splinter of red light from the setting sun, bleeding in.
Someone else was in the room. He realized it suddenly, paralyzingly. He could hear breaths-small soft breaths close to the floor.
His hand reached for the pistols on his belt, and he cursed silently when he remembered they weren’t there. He pressed his back to the door, fumbling for something to turn on the lights. His fingers found a porcelain dial and he turned it. Lamps flared to life along the walls.
He was in a small sitting room. It held a wardrobe, and a Turkish sofa, and a great many carpets and tasseled pillows strewn across the floor. And there was a girl. Curled up on a cushion of jade-green silk was a changeling. She had a sharp, pointed face. Branches grew from her head. She was asleep.
Mr. Jelliby’s hand fell from the dial. “Hettie?” he whispered, taking a few steps toward her. “Is that your name, little girl? Are you Hettie?”
The child did not stir at his voice. But it was as if she could sense she was being watched, even in her dreams, and after a heartbeat or two she sat up with a start. She looked at Mr. Jelliby with wide black eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he said, going down on his haunches and smiling. “Bartholomew’s here, too, and we’ve come to rescue you. You needn’t be afraid.”
Her face remained taut. For a moment she just stared at him. Then, in a small frantic whisper, she said, “Put out the lights. Quickly, sir, put them out!”
Mr. Jelliby looked at her, confused. Then he heard it, too. Footsteps snapping quickly along the corridor. Not the dancing footsteps of Mr. Lickerish, or the shuffling ones of the hunchbacked gnome. Something heavy and strong was out there, coming straight for the door to the sitting room.
Mr. Jelliby leaped up and wrenched the dial all the way around. The lamps fizzed out, and he flew across the room, plunging into the drapes that hid the window. Someone stopped outside the door. A hand was laid on the key. Then it was taken away again and there was a pause. The door banged open.
Mr. Jelliby could just see a figure come into the room before the door closed again. Whoever it was did not turn on the lights. But the figure had a lamp. A small green orb floated in the darkness. It made a ticking noise, snick-snick-snick, like a clock. It expanded slightly. Suddenly the lamps blazed again. There stood the faery butler, his mechanical eye fixed on the far side of the room, a slight frown creasing his brow.
“Little girl?” he asked, in his oozing, whining voice. “Little girl, tell me something. Can you walk through walls?”
Hettie didn’t look at him. “No,” she said, and burrowed into her pillow.
“Oh.” The faery butler’s frown darkened. “Then why was the door unlocked?”
Mr. Lickerish extended one long finger and touched it to Bartholomew’s chin. Then he crooked his finger sharply, jerking Bartholomew’s face up with it. Bartholomew gasped and bit his tongue to keep from crying out.
“Changelings are of both worlds, you see,” Mr. Lickerish said. “A child of man with blood of the fay. A bridge. A door. Don’t suppose I will explain my plans to you, though, because I shan’t. You’re far too stupid to understand them.”
“Just tell me why it has to be Hettie,” Bartholomew said, twisting against the rat faery’s grasp. He knew this was the end. He would be lucky to leave the room alive. There was no point being timid anymore. “Why wasn’t it one of the others? Why wasn’t it the boy from across the way?”
“The boy from across the way? If you mean Child Number Nine then it was because he was a flawed, degenerate creature just like the eight before him. Descendants of low faeries, the lot of them. Sons and daughters of goblins and gnomes and spriggans. The door did open for them. It did work. But it was such a small, weak door. And it opened inside them.”
The fire crackled in the hearth. Mr. Lickerish laughed softly and released Bartholomew’s chin, settling back into his chair. “Perhaps you heard that the changelings were hollow? Surely you did. The papers made such a fuss over it. What did they have to be shocked about, I wonder. Some faery, going about his business in the Old Country unsuspecting as you like, found himself suddenly confronted with a heap of steaming changeling innards. They were not enough, those other nine. They were too common. Too faerylike, or too human. But Child Number Eleven. Hettie. She is the daughter of a Sidhe. She is perfect.”
Bartholomew swallowed. “I’m her brother. He’s my father, too. I’ll be the door.”
“You?” The faery politician sounded as if he were about to laugh. But then he paused, and gazed at Bartholomew. Bartholomew thought he saw surprise in those black eyes. “You want to be the door?” the faery asked. “You want to die?”
“No,” Bartholomew said quietly. “But I want Hettie to live. I want her to go home. Please, sir, I’ll be the door, just let Hettie go.”
Mr. Lickerish looked at him a long while. A smirk played at the corners of his mouth. Finally he said, “Oh. What a foolish thing to want.” And then, turning to the rat faery, “Take him back down to the warehouse and dispose of him. I thought he might be dangerous. He is not dangerous. He is not even strong. He is simply peculiar.”
The rat faery peered at Mr. Lickerish, rats slithering and squeaking. “Melusine,” he said quietly. “What of Melusine?”
“The warehouse, Jack Box. Now.”
The rat faery pushed Bartholomew toward the door.
“Where is Hettie?” Bartholomew shouted, struggling against the rat faery’s grip. “Where’s my sister?”
But Mr. Lickerish only took a great malicious bite out of his apple and gave no reply.
Mr. Jelliby remained perfectly still behind the drapes. The swaths of black velvet wrapped around him, stifling him, smothering him with their odor of old wax and withered petals. Sweat broke across his forehead and the drapes stuck to his face, hot and itching. He pressed himself farther back into the window well, all the way until he felt the cold panes against his cheek. Drat. The door had been locked from the outside. It was dead proof someone else was in the room.
On the other side of the drapes, the faery butler’s green eye began to flick back and forth along the walls, clicking and buzzing as it focused on everything. The wrinkle in the carpet, the indents in the pillows, the fingerprints on the porcelain dial. .
“Troutbelly? Are you here? Little girl, did that degenerate gnome come in?”
Hettie gave no answer, and the faery butler didn’t wait for one. He strode across the room, looking into the wardrobe, opening drawers, kicking at the plump silk pillows.
“Jack Box? Selenyo pekkal! This is no time for games!”
The faery butler was directly in front of the drapes. Mr. Jelliby could hear his wheezing breaths, feel his presence like a weight on the other side of the velvet. The faery butler’s green eye narrowed. He reached forward, ready to throw open the drapes. Mr. Jelliby had his hands in fists. One second more and he would leap out, swinging like a maniac. But then a speaking machine rang from the wall, shrilling and rattling like an angry bird.
The faery turned abruptly and picked up the mouthpiece.
“Mi Sathir?”
The rat faery was very quiet as it herded Bartholomew down the corridor. No taunting, no threats. Bartholomew had expected it to begin the moment they were out of earshot of the study, but Jack Box’s mouth remained clamped shut.
They walked down the curving staircase, toward the hall of the airship. The rat faery moved behind Bartholomew, claws scuttling, pinning his arm to his back.
“Mr. Lickerish isn’t going to help you, you know.” Bartholomew’s voice was sharp. “I don’t know why you think he will. I don’t know what’s wrong with the lady in plum, but Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care. He just keeps you to do things for him.”
“Shut up,” the rat faery spat, and yellow teeth pinched into Bartholomew’s back, his wrists, and shoulders. “Shut up, boy, you don’t know-”
Bartholomew wanted to cry with the pain, but he didn’t. “He’s not going to help you, can’t you see? You’re going to die when that door opens. You’re going to die just like everyone else. Mr. Lickerish doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
All at once the rat faery threw Bartholomew against the banister and collapsed, rolling and tumbling down the steps. Bartholomew watched it come to rest at the foot of the stairs, a wretched trembling mass.
He glanced back up the stairs. Should I run? Someone might be watching. Some little pisky peeking down from the chandeliers, or a wooden face inside the wainscoting. And where would I run to?
Bartholomew approached the rat faery slowly.
“What is wrong with Melusine?” he asked. He tried to make his voice gentle. “If we stop Mr. Lickerish you can help her. That’s the only way you can help her.”
The rat faery looked up at Bartholomew. Its face twisted in surprise, then suspicion, then confusion. Bartholomew thought it would say something, but its mouth just opened and closed over its uneven teeth.
“Who is she?” Bartholomew asked, stooping down next to him. “Who is Melusine?”
There was an instant when some of the rat faery’s hardness came back into its face. Bartholomew flinched, sure it was going to get up again and drag him on. But the hardness was gone again as quickly as it had come, replaced by something Bartholomew had never seen in a face so inhuman. A wistful look, sad and faraway.
“I met her in Dublin,” it said, and its voice was a rasp in its throat. “She was shopping for ribbons on Nassau Street, and she was so fair. So fair. And I so ugly, watching from the shadows. I cast a spell on myself, a powerful glamour that in a wink made me the most handsome creature in all the world. I strolled up beside her and told her how pretty the purple ribbons would look with her hair. We began to talk. She introduced me to her parents and I was invited to dine with them. .
“We were going to be married in May. But the stupid maid. . Silly superstitious thing with an iron ring on her finger night and day. Or perhaps not so silly. She saw through my magic from the start. She saw me for what I was, a horrid knot of rats slinking at her mistress’s side. For a while she thought she was mad. Then she confided in the footman. The footman told the cook, the cook told the housekeeper, and eventually the tale reached the ears of Melusine’s father. He was always such a kind man, even to me, and he loved his daughter very much. The rumor disturbed him. A faery hunter was sent for from Arklow, to divine whether there was magical deception at work in the house, and Melusine’s father called her to him, told her of his fear. But I had spoken to her first. I turned her mind against him. She called him a liar and a heartless monster, and we fled together into a gathering storm, taking the ponies across the hill.”
There was a pause, and the airship went very still. The flames in the gas lamps flared and dimmed silently. Only the hum of the engines made any sound at all.
Bartholomew’s mind was racing. I don’t have time for this. I need to find Mr. Jelliby, find Hettie before she is turned into some horrible door. He wondered how strong the rat faery still was, what it would do if he tried to run. His fingers wrapped around a spindle in the banister. He could wrench it out, he thought, and beat the rats with it.
But then the faery was looking at him again, and its eyes were wet and deep and unbearably sad.
“We went to London,” it said, not really to Bartholomew. Not really to anyone. “We sold her jewels for wine, and danced until our feet were sore. I thought everything was going grandly, but not Melusine. Not my fair, fair Melusine. She missed her parents. She missed Ireland, and the high green hills. She is such a young thing, after all.” Bartholomew let his hand slip from the spindle. “And I knew then that she would never really be mine while the deception lasted. She didn’t love me. The thing she loved was an illusion and a lie, and so one day I shed my glamour. I showed her what I was.”
The rat faery looked away. When it spoke again its voice was choked. “And she hated me. She hated me for my ugliness. She ran. Ran to the door, crying and screaming, but I couldn’t let her go. I couldn’t. I knew it would kill her. I knew the rats would eat into her and she would never be the same again, but how else was I to keep her with me? I couldn’t let her leave me!” The rat faery jerked on the floor, as if all its many legs were hurtling in different directions. Then it curled around itself like a snail, hiding its head. “I met Mr. Lickerish then,” it whispered. “In the street in the night. He told me of his plan, how he needed someone to fetch him changelings. If the faery door were opened, he said, all would be well again. Magic would be strong in England and I would be able to keep Melusine from dying. I would be able to cast a glamour so strong and deep that not even the maid’s iron ring could help her see through it. And all this. .” He raised a rat-tail hand, and waved it blindly. “All this would seem like an evil dream. And so I did it all. Everything he asked of me.”
Bartholomew said nothing. He didn’t like what he had heard. He wanted to find Hettie and he wanted to hate Jack Box. He wanted to think him a monster for all the pain he had caused. But a nasty voice had crept into Bartholomew’s head and was saying, A monster? But he’s just like you. Just as ugly, just as selfish. You’re no different from him. Wouldn’t you kill a million people to save Hettie?
Bartholomew closed his eyes. “But Melusine,” he said, trying to sound calm. “She’ll live now that you’ve left her. Bath is so far away. She’ll be safe now.”
“Safe.” The faery’s voice was a bare, rattling whisper. “Safe from me. Safe forever.”
Bartholomew stared at him.
“No one helped her. Not the police, or Mr. Lickerish, even though I begged him and did everything he asked of me. One day, she lasted, perhaps two. And then she died, all alone on that chair, in that white room under the earth.”
Mr. Lickerish spoke quickly into the brass speaking apparatus, excitement glimmering at the edge of his voice. “The greenwitch’s elixir has arrived at last. Take Child Number Eleven down to the warehouse and give it to her. Make certain she drinks every drop. And then hurry. The sylphs will come quickly. You will have only minutes before the door begins to destroy the city. Hurry back to the Moon, and do not delay. I will need you in the world of tomorrow.” He set down the mouthpiece, nibbling thoughtfully at the end of his silk watch ribbon.
“Sathir?” the faery butler’s voice crackled through the device. “Sathir, are you there? Is there anything more you wish to say?”
Mr. Lickerish picked up the mouthpiece again. “Yes. Yes, I believe there is. Jack Box has become. . unstable. He is on his way down to the warehouse as we speak. Make sure he stays there.” And without waiting for a reply he slammed the mouthpiece into its cradle.
The faery butler replaced the speaking apparatus slowly.
“Very well,” he said to no one at all, and shooting one last suspicious look about the room, he took Hettie by the hand and pulled her toward the door.
“Come along, half-blood. Are you thirsty? I imagine you must be parched.”
“I’m sorry she’s dead,” Bartholomew said softly. In an odd way he really was sorry. She had always seemed a phantom and a witch, a symbol of all the evil that had intruded into his life. She had started it, walking into the alley and whisking away the Buddelbinster boy. But it hadn’t really been her at all. When he had edged up to her under the eaves of the house on Old Crow Alley, that was when he had met the true Melusine. He had heard her soft voice and silly notions of valets and peaches and cream. He would never forget the shining pain in her eyes when she had seen the rat faery, racing across the cobbles toward her. Tell Daddy I’m sorry, she had said. Tell Daddy I’m sorry.
If Bartholomew lived long enough, he would tell her father. He would find him and tell him how much Melusine had loved him in her last days, how much she had wanted to be home again.
Bartholomew knelt down next to Jack Box. He almost reached out and touched him. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He knotted his fist, and said, “You don’t have to listen to Mr. Lickerish anymore. You don’t have to hurt people. Do you know where my sister is? Could you take me to her? Please, sir. Please help me save her?”
For a moment Jack Box said nothing. His face was lost in the seething mass of hides and tails. The rats seemed to sense something was wrong. They were crawling over each other, eyes rolling back in their heads, yellow teeth chattering. For a moment Jack Box said nothing. Then, his voice muffled, “Why should I help you? Why should I help anyone now?”
Bartholomew dug his nails into his palms. “Because. .” he stammered, but he didn’t have an answer. Not then. All he could think of was Hettie, and her hand in his, and her stupid, unsnippable branches. “Just please help me? Please, please won’t you help?”
A clank sounded in the hall and the hatch in the floor began to open, tearing a gaping hole in the warmth. Wind flew into the room, whistling around Bartholomew’s ears. Then a door opened and closed in the corridor above. Footsteps beat the carpet.
Someone is coming. Bartholomew half rose, ready to run. We have to leave. We have to leave now.
But the rat faery only sat up a little and stared at Bartholomew, his black eyes pleading.
“You have to help me!” Bartholomew repeated desperately. “I don’t know why, you just have to! My sister is going to die! Please won’t you help?”
Jack Box looked away. The rats were stirring into a frenzy, but the faery’s face had gone very still, almost calm.
“No,” he said. The little word dropped like stone from his mouth. And then, dragging himself to the edge of the hatch, he slipped over it into the night. Bartholomew did not watch him fall. He stopped his ears against the cries of the rats and turned his face to the wall.
Mr. Lickerish had finished his apple. He set the core down and began picking out the seeds, placing them in a neat row on top of his desk. When he had completed the task to his satisfaction, he rang a servant’s bell and ordered a glass of milk from the hunchbacked gnome. The milk arrived in due time, but instead of drinking it, Mr. Lickerish swept the apple seeds into his palm and dropped them into the glass. Then he went to the window and looked out, black satin cuffs crossed behind his back.
A faint tinkling made him turn. The room was empty. A clockwork bird stared out at nothing with its beady eyes. In the cup, a film had formed on top of the milk the way it always does when milk is mildly fresh. As Mr. Lickerish watched, the film turned into a skin. The skin grew thicker. And all of a sudden the glass tipped over and a blue-white gobbet of milk plopped out onto the smooth top of the desk. It jiggled toward the edge. Mr. Lickerish caught it in his hand and held it up to his face. His mouth stretched across his sharp teeth in a gleaming smile. Faintly he could see the apple seeds in the center of the milk, little veins and lungs and a heart all sprouting out from them. Then two seeds popped forward as its eyes, and it tottered up on a pair of stemlike legs. It had a huge mouth that hung open, wide and bare and empty.
“Charming,” Mr. Lickerish said, still smiling. “You will be my eyes for a little while, imp. Hurry down to the warehouse and keep watch. Whatever you see, I will see, and whatever I say, you are to say. Do you understand that?”
The gobbet of milk stared at Mr. Lickerish, its apple-seed eyes somewhat mournful. It nodded slowly. Then it hopped down from the faery’s hand and wobbled off across the floorboards toward the door.
Mr. Jelliby found Bartholomew in the airship’s hall, trying to hide himself under the carpets. The hatch was open. It was a clear, cold night, and the city spread away forever. The streets made a glowing spider’s web, Mayfair and High Holborn bright with the fierce lights of flame faeries, while the poorer streets were only gaslit threads, dim and flickering, or not lit at all. The river cut it all in half, sluggish and black, broken only by the occasional lantern of a corpse boat.
“Bartholomew! What are you doing? Get away from the edge!” Mr. Jelliby hissed, tiptoeing across the hall. “The faery butler is with Mr. Lickerish as we speak. He has your sister, and he’s getting the potion and he’s going to take her down in the elevator.”
Bartholomew sat bolt upright. “Hettie? You saw her?”
“Yes! With my own eyes! But we must hurry.” He ran to the edge of the floor and reached out for the elevator, looking it over rapidly.
“There. See those metal bars underneath? We can squeeze down there, I think, and then leap out when the butler’s alone in the warehouse. Quick now! In with you.”
Without another word, Bartholomew scooted off the edge of the floor and onto the metal bars. The warmth of the hall was gone in an instant. Wind and frozen ash blew around him freely, but he barely noticed. Mr. Jelliby has found her. She is here and she is alive.
The space under the elevator was barely a foot high and utterly open. Only the widely set bars kept him from falling into the dark. It’s the luggage rack, he thought. It was where the trunks and hatboxes would have been packed had the dirigible been used for anything ordinary.
Mr. Jelliby dragged at the cable, and the elevator sank a foot. The luggage rack dropped below the lip of the hatch, hidden. Then he, too, swung down.
Not a moment too soon. Mr. Jelliby barely had time to arrange his arms and legs before the first tread of feet sounded on the stairs.
“Come on!” the faery butler’s whine drifted into the hall. “By stone, you are the most tiresome creature! The other nine weren’t half as bad.”
There was a scuffling sound as he pulled Hettie along and she hurried to match his pace. Then the elevator swayed as they stepped aboard. Bartholomew could see a little through the metal grille of the floor. He could just make out the shadows of Hettie’s bare feet, the great long soles of the faery butler’s shoes. And there was something else, too. Something small and round that never stayed still, and made an odd sound like water in a jug.
Bartholomew held his breath. Hettie was so close. Inches above him. He wanted to climb up and grab her, and tell her that he had found her and they’d be going home soon. Only a little longer. .
The elevator began to descend, creaking down through the night. The only light came from the faery butler’s green eye. Mr. Jelliby prayed he wouldn’t look down. He would see them instantly if he did, lying there under the floor. His mechanical eye would pierce metal and darkness and-
The faery lifted his nose and sniffed the air. Mr. Jelliby stiffened.
“I smell rain,” the faery said, looking at Hettie curiously. “Rain and mud.”
Hettie said nothing.
The faery butler tapped his fingers against the railing. “It has not rained in London for days.”
For several heartbeats the only sound was the wind. Then, without warning, a jagged blade descended from the faery butler’s sleeve, and he slashed it down through the air, driving it through the floor. Its tip came to a halt, ringing, inches from Bartholomew’s eye. He screamed.
“Barthy?” Hettie cried, pressing her face to the grating.
Mr. Jelliby dragged himself off the bars and hung from them, legs flailing forty feet above the ground. “Get out! Get out, Bartholomew, he’ll kill you!”
The blade came down again, over and over, slicing Bartholomew’s arm, drawing blood. The elevator had reached the roof of the warehouse. The air turned warm as they sank into it.
“Now!” Mr. Jelliby shouted, from where he clung. “Let go! It’s not far anymore!”
Bartholomew saw the blade hurtling down toward him, glimmering like a streak of rain. It would kill him this time. It would meet its mark, go clean through his heart. But just as its tip bit into his skin, he slipped between the bars and fell, down, down into the warehouse.
The impact smashed the breath from his lungs. His knees buckled under him and he rolled, over and over, until he came to rest against a wall of crates. He heard the elevator clang against the floor. Then the patter of Hettie’s bare feet, the faery butler’s heels ringing on stone. When he opened his eyes he half expected to see the creature standing over him, knife poised to snuff him out.
But the faery butler seemed to have lost all interest in him. Nor was he paying any attention to Mr. Jelliby, who had dragged himself into the sea of crates and sat crouched there, gasping. With quick, efficient movements, the faery forced Hettie’s feet into the charred shoes and set to knotting the shoelaces, over and over, until there was not the slightest chance she could step out of them.
She tried to lift her feet, kick his hands away, but the shoes were hammered fast to the floor. His long fingers tugged at the knots, testing them. She scratched at his head, tried to pick at the laces herself, but the faery swatted her away.
Bartholomew began crawling toward her on hands and knees. Still the faery took no notice of him. The butler rose and took the greenwitch’s elixir from his coat. He placed it to Hettie’s lips, tipping up the bottle. She spluttered once, spat, but he clenched her little face in his hand and forced it skyward, and there was nothing she could do but cough the liquid down in great gulps.
When the bottle was empty the faery flung it aside. Without another word, he strode back toward the elevator.
Mr. Jelliby leaped out from among the crates, swinging a metal hook before him like a rapier. The faery didn’t even flinch. He dodged it gracefully, sliding around it like a snake, and spinning, he struck Mr. Jelliby a vicious blow to the side of the head. Bartholomew watched Mr. Jelliby stagger and then scrabbled toward Hettie. I’ll get her to the window. We’ll climb out while the faery butler’s distracted and-
He froze. The faery butler did, too. Mr. Jelliby dropped the hook.
A gentle breeze had sprung up out of nowhere, carrying on it the smell of snow. And something was happening to Hettie. A black line had begun to trace itself along her skin, starting at the top of her head and slithering down over her shoulders, down her arms and her legs.
“Barthy?” she said, her voice cracking with fear. The pale skin around her mouth was stained blackberry-dark. “Barthy, what’s happening? What are you looking at?”
The instant the line reached the nailed-down shoes, they disintegrated, turning to delicate flakes that scudded over the floor. The breeze became a wind, stirring the branches of her hair. And suddenly there was no longer a wall behind her, or crates, or a warehouse, but a great, dark wood extending into the distance. Snow lay on the ground. The trees were black and leafless, older and taller than any English trees. Far back among them, Bartholomew could see a stone cottage. A light was burning in its window.
Hettie wrapped her arms around herself and looked at him, eyes wide.
“It’s working,” a voice lisped from the ceiling. Bartholomew glanced up, whirling, and saw a small white shape in the gloom, perched at the end of one of the dangling chains. It was staring at the woods, at Hettie. Its mouth was wide and empty, and somewhere inside its cold, wet voice was the echo of Mr. Lickerish’s whispery one. “The door is opening.”
Bartholomew spun back to Hettie. The door was opening. Slowly the black line expanded, stretching into a ring, like a black flaming hoop for a tiger to leap through. And as the door grew so did its frame, until it was no longer only a thread but a writhing chain of angry, flapping wings. They looked like the wings that flew around Jack Box and Melusine wherever they went, only stronger somehow, blacker. And whatever they touched, they destroyed. The stone slabs of the warehouse floor curled and snapped as they brushed them. The crates nearest them exploded in showers of wood. And still Hettie stood rooted to the spot, a small figure against the woods and snow of the Old Country.
“Yes.” Mr. Lickerish’s voice came through the milk imp’s mouth, soft and sibilant. “Child Number Eleven. You have opened.”
The faery butler lurched toward the elevator, but Mr. Jelliby was upon him again, kicking and punching with all his might. Bartholomew started toward Hettie. He felt the wind, smelled the ice and rot of the ancient woods. The door was not very large. Mother always said the one in Bath had been the hugest thing the world had ever seen.
“Go to her, boy,” the milk imp said from the ceiling. “Go and get her and bring her home.” Its voice held a sly edge now, like silk wrapping a sharp knife. “Don’t worry. The sylphs won’t hurt you. Not one of their own.” The imp leaned down off its hook. “Go on,” it coaxed. “Go get her.”
Bartholomew did not need to be told twice. He broke into a run, dodging Mr. Jelliby and the faery butler. Then Hettie was in front of him and he was pulling her to him.
Hettie flew out of the black wings of the doorway. Her feet touched the stone floor. Bartholomew had her hand, was already starting to dash for the window, out. Behind them the door gave a horrible jolt. With sickening speed the wings shrieked outward, devouring everything in their path. Bartholomew felt them scrape against his skin, rough feathers and bones. But the imp had not lied. Whatever faery creatures were hidden inside those wings, they did not hurt him now.
“Bartholomew!” Mr. Jelliby screamed, ducking as the faery butler’s knife whizzed over his head. “Put her back! Put her back or you’ll kill us all!”
In a panic, Bartholomew pushed at Hettie, but the damage was done. The door had almost reached the warehouse roof, a vast tornado of wings swallowing everything in sight. The wind buffeted his face, sharp with snow. The forest seemed to fill the whole space, growing dark out of the crates and the river. Feet pounded the stone floor close by-Mr. Jelliby’s or the faery butler’s-but he didn’t see anyone.
Hettie was trying to reach him again, her hands grasping for his shirt. On the other side, the forest was no longer empty. Something had emerged from the cottage in the distance. The light was still there, but it blinked on and off as a figure darted in front of it, now hiding behind trees, now rushing forward, coming closer. Behind it, other shapes were approaching through the woods, dark and quick, curious eyes glinting in the moonlight.
The faeries. They were coming.
“Don’t you want your sister?” the imp mocked. “Oh, dear little Hettie, do you see? Your brother doesn’t like you anymore. He doesn’t want to save you.”
Bartholomew looked at her desperately. He wanted nothing more than to save her. He had traveled hundreds of miles, braved the Bath police and the Goblin Market and the rat faery to find her. But Hettie was peering at him, eyes round and uncertain.
“You know, if you push her back-if you shove her into the Old Country and that dark winter’s wood, with those wicked, wicked faeries approaching from all sides, the door will begin to shrink. Wouldn’t that be grand? Wouldn’t that be smashing? It would become unbalanced. It would implode. I’m not lying. Try it. Abandon your darling sister for a world you don’t care a pennyworth for.”
The imp’s words sparked something in Bartholomew’s memory. In a flash, he was back in the greenwitch’s clearing, walking away from the painted wagon and the cheery light of its window. I don’t care about the world. That’s what he had said, growling under his breath as they trudged into the night. No one else did either. The faeries didn’t care. The people didn’t care. They had other things to worry about, like coins, and bread, and themselves. Bartholomew could let them all die. He could pull Hettie away, and the wings would sweep out across that cruel, hateful city. They would destroy everything, topple churches and houses and palaces of government. Mr. Jelliby would turn to dust. And Bartholomew and Hettie would walk away, hand in hand, across the ruins. It would be so easy.
You’re no different, that nasty voice had said, and it was saying it again, louder and harsher than ever. You’re no different from the rat faery. No different from Mr. Lickerish, and the greenwitch, and all the other people you thought you hated.
But Bartholomew was different. He knew he was. He was frail and ugly and not very tall, and he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care if the faeries hated him, or the people feared him. He was stronger than them. Stronger than the rat faery had been, stronger than Mr. Lickerish ever was. He had gone places and done things, and he had done them not for himself but for Hettie and Mother and Mr. Jelliby, who had taken him with him when Bartholomew was standing alone in the alley. They were what made him belong. Not the faeries, and not the people. He didn’t need to be like them.
Bringing his face up to Hettie’s ear, he began to whisper, quickly and urgently, his hand tight around her fingers. “Don’t listen to him,” he said, through the wind and the wings. “He’s all lies. Don’t be afraid. You’re going to have to go in there for a short while, but as soon as the door is as small as it gets, leap back to me. Leap with all your might, do you hear me? It’ll work, Het, I know it will.”
“Barthy?” Hettie’s voice was shaking. And then the wind howled around them and he couldn’t hear her anymore. But he knew what she was saying. Barthy, don’t make me go in there. Don’t let the faeries get me.
Bartholomew tried to smile at her. His face wouldn’t move. Even the tears were frozen, aching behind his eyes. He hugged Hettie to him, hard and fierce as if he would never let her go.
“It’ll work, Het. It’ll work.”
Very gently, he pushed her through.
Her bare feet sank into snow. Wind whipped through her branches, her clothes. For an instant the wings became still, as if soaring through open sky. Then they seemed to turn, shrieking inward.
“What?” the milk imp spat, clutching at its chain and staring. “What are you doing, you wretched child. Pull her out! Pull her out or you will never see her again!”
I will. But Bartholomew knew there was no point answering. He kept his eyes fixed on Hettie, waiting to shout, to tell her it was time, and she could jump.
The door was shrinking quickly. The smaller it became the faster the wings spun, until suddenly a pillar of blackness burst upward, screeching along the elevator cable toward the airship. The imp gave a whine and was consumed. From somewhere high above came a deep, rolling boom.
The wings filled the door, blotting out everything. Bartholomew could see only snippets of the woods beyond, little glimpses of Hettie’s frightened face, the cottage, the snowbound forest.
“Now!” Bartholomew shouted. “Now, Hettie, get out! Jump!”
She wasn’t moving. Someone was standing behind her. A tall, thin, shadowy figure, a pale hand resting on her shoulder.
Bartholomew lunged forward. His arm went through. He felt Hettie, her dirty nightgown, her twig hair. He fumbled for her hand, trying to drag her to him, back to London and the warehouse. Home.
“Come on, Hettie, now! Jump!”
But the wings were everywhere, battering him, shutting him out. Hettie’s hand was wrenched from his grasp. He was thrown back, flying through the air until he struck a wall of crates. He slid to the floor, head spinning. Something warm trickled across his brow. His tongue tasted blood.
Hettie, he thought blearily. Hettie needs to jump. Slowly, painfully, he forced himself up, forced himself to move. “Hettie,” he called. “Hettie, you have to-”
Everything was still. The wind had stopped, the noise too. The wings were frozen in midair; splintering crates, hooks and chains all hung suspended. The door was a perfect ring at the center of the warehouse. And framed inside, standing small and lonely among the vaulting trees, was Hettie.
She looked at Bartholomew, her black eyes full of terror. Tears were streaming down from them, dripping over her sharp cheekbones. She raised her hand.
Then there was a sound like a violin string snapping. The spell was broken. Everything was in motion again. Rubble rained down from all sides-wood from the crates, stone from the walls, propellers and burning canvas from the airship. The door vanished.
Bartholomew gave a savage cry. He ran to the place where it had been, clawed at the air, clawed at the stones.
“Jump!” he cried. “Jump, Hettie, jump, jump!”
But it was too late for that.
Above him, there was a tremendous crash. Chunks of roof and burning beams collapsed around him, caging him in. Somewhere in the roiling smoke, an explosion. He fell to the floor, crying and screaming, and blackness enveloped him.
He didn’t know how long he lay there. It might have been a year or a day. It would have been all the same to him if he were dead and this were the end of the world. Sounds echoed toward him from far away. Water, icy cold, stung his skin. The black and silver of fire fighters’ uniforms glimmered dully through the fog of his vision. Then people were crowding around him, talking all at once.
“A Peculiar,” they said. “Half dead. Should we leave him? Leave him here?” And somewhere Mr. Jelliby was being angry, shouting, “You’ll get him to the carriages, is what you’ll do! You’ll rush him to Harley Street, and if it takes you the rest of your lives, you’ll save him! He saved you. He saved all of us.”
Go away, Bartholomew thought. Leave me alone. He wanted to sleep. The darkness was there again, rolling beneath him and beckoning him. But before he let it take him, he opened his eyes and looked up. He could see the sky through the ruined roof. It was dawn. The sun was just rising over the city, piercing the heavy clouds.
“I’ll come find you, Hettie,” he whispered as strong hands lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him away. “Wherever you are, I’ll bring you home.”