The Whatnot

The goblins were breathing hard, gasping as much from the thick air as from excitement.

“Did you see their faces?” the shorter one exclaimed, in a sort of breathless chuckle. His skin was cracked and brown like the bark of a tree, and he wore a red leather jerkin with copper bottles clinking all along the belt. The bottles were labeled such things as Soldier Illusion, Needlewoman Illusion, Weeping Waifs Illusion. …

The other goblin grunted. He was gaunt and pointy, the precise opposite of the short one. “Made ’em scared right enough,” he said, leaping a tangle of wire. “It’s what we came for. If’n we get out of here before the servants come, it’ll all be a good night’s work.”

The short goblin chuckled again, then wheezed. “A good night’s work, he says. A good night’s work. I should say it was a good night’s work. All those puffed-up pigeons, all pinned up with bottle caps. Won’t be going off to battle so happily, will they be? Not so happily at all.”

The goblins skidded around a corner and pounded down a flight of steep, worm-eaten stairs. The walls went from brass and gleaming wood to damp, mossy stone. At the bottom of the stairs was a long, dripping cellar, disappearing into blackness.

The short goblin wouldn’t stop talking. “The Sly King’ll be very pleased with us, don’t you think? Don’t you, Nettles? Most all of London’s up there. All the important parts, at least. All frightened so bad the wax in their whiskers melted. Shouldn’t wonder if the Sly King pays us a small fortune when we get back. Shouldn’t wonder.”

The goblins dashed to the end of the cellar and into a vaulted room, footsteps echoing. Wine barrels lined the walls. Somewhere high above in the house, they could hear a commotion, banging and thuds and raised voices. Then screams.

“Oh, the Sly King, the Sly King, in his towers of ash and wind,” the short goblin sang under his breath. “How much d’you think he’ll pay, Nettles? How much d’you—”

The goblin named Nettles spun and knocked the shorter one firmly on the head. “Don’t count your frogs before they’re hatched. Nobody knows what the Sly King’ll do. Nobody sees. We’ll know what we get once we’re safe on our way. Milkblood?” His voice was suddenly loud, booming under the stone vault. “Milkblood, get us out of here!”

Slowly a small, hunched shape slid out of the shadows.

“Has all gone well?” it whispered. “Will he be pleased with us?”

Knuckly branches grew from its head instead of hair. At first it seemed to be a child, all bones and huge, hungry eyes. But as it approached, the lines became visible around its mouth, the grooves in its corpse-white skin. It was an old woman. An ancient Peculiar.

The short goblin shuddered in disgust. Even Nettles darkened, his brows pinching.

“Not if we’re caught,” he growled, and opened his mouth wide. One cheek was swollen, the inside pressing against the rows of teeth. A box had been mounted there, grown into the red flesh. Both his hands went for it, and he fiddled with it, coughing. A small glass bottle rolled onto his tongue and he spat it out. It was filled with a dark, luminous liquid. He sent it spinning through the air. “Drink. Fast. Get us away from here.”

The Peculiar’s hand shot out, snatching the bottle. Her fingers were filthy. All of her was filthy, slicked with a layer of grime. Her bare feet stuck out from under a ragged ball gown. Her arms were stamped with wriggling red lines, like tattoos.

“He’ll be pleased with me. Oh, he’ll be pleased with me.” She sounded as if she were begging.

She uncorked the bottle and gulped it down. Black liquid dribbled over her chin. When there was nothing left, she took a deep breath, dragging in the air. Then she smashed the bottle to pieces at her feet.

Nettles glanced over his shoulder, shifting from foot to foot. They would be searching soon—servants, lords, Englishers, leadfaces. They would search the house, corridor by corridor. They would come here. He barely blinked as an inky line began to trace itself along the pale woman’s form. It whispered all the way around her. Then it pulled away. The air shivered, as if being beaten by invisible wings. A door appeared, a very small one, only a foot wide on either side of her. Nettles could just glimpse a seascape behind her, black cliffs and rolling, white-capped waves and a midnight sky full of stars.

“By stone, you’re getting worse by the day,” the short goblin said. “Soon we’ll be crawling into the Old Country on hands and knees.”

“Shut up, Grout,” said Nettles, but his scowl went even deeper.

The woman made a pitiful face, twisting her hands through the soiled lace of her gown. “Yes, watch your mouth. Watch who you’re speaking to.”

Grout spat. “Oh, and who’s that? You’re just a slave. You’re worse than a slave. You’re a Peculiar.”

“I am the King’s servant!” the old woman cried. “Show me the dignity!” But that only seemed to goad Grout further and he started prancing, rattling his bottles.

“You’re just a sla-ave!” he sang, hopping around her. “Just a slave, just a slave, just a rotten slave.”

The pale woman looked to Nettles, her eyes drooping and watery. “Make him stop!” she said.

“Slave, slave, slave!” Grout screeched.

The old woman’s eyes became imploring. “I used to be his favorite.”

That was that. Nettles’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Well, you’re obviously not anymore,” he said, and it was as if he had slapped the old woman.

She drew back, staring. “How dare you?” she said. “How dare you both?” She began to shake. She was so small and old, but she was trembling with fury.

And then suddenly a door banged open at the far end of the cellar and voices echoed, loud as gunshots. Lamplight danced along the walls, coming closer.

“I’ll show you,” the pale woman snarled. “I’ll show you what I can do.” She stepped toward the goblins.

“No!” Nettles barked, but too late.

A cold wind whipped into the cellar. And suddenly the space was filled with wings. They slashed past Nettles’s face. With a lurch, the door expanded.

“Enough!” he screamed over the flapping wings. He dashed forward, through the door, onto the cliffs. “Come on, both of you, or we’re all dead!”

The old woman started to walk. “Say you’re sorry!” she shrieked. “Say you’re sorry!” With every step she took, the door grew, the feathers whirling wilder and darker. The blackness had reached the ceiling. Bits of dust and stone sifted down. The stars of the Old Country shone into the cellar, glimmering in the puddles on the floor.

“Now, you dimwits! D’you want the whole house coming down on our heads? Get in!”

Shouts. The glow of the lamps grew, spreading. Shadows appeared on the walls. The shadows began to run.

Even Grout looked frightened now. “I—I didn’t mean nothing by it! I didn’t, I’m sorry!”

But the pale woman wasn’t listening. “I used to be his favorite,” she said. “I am the Door to Bath. I am the greatest door of the age. He’ll be pleased with me again.”

She began to run, straight toward the oncoming English.

“Come back!” Nettles shouted. “Come back!”

The wings swelled, darker than night. The ceiling gave a wrenching grunt. Grout leaped onto the cliffs.

A deafening screech filled the cellar. It came from Wyndhammer House above and the hall full of heat and dancers. Feet, hundreds of them, battered the floor, pounding on and on like thunder.

Wyndhammer House began to fall.

The bells of St. Paul’s were tolling thirty-five minutes past midnight, but Pikey was not even thinking about going to bed. He scratched through the ankle-deep mud, his shoulders up around his ears to keep them from freezing. He didn’t count the strikes of the bells.

There was no moon in the sky. The clouds drifted, black and endless, snagging on the spires of St. Paul’s, on weather vanes and gable tips. It was so dark.

Only dead folk and the fay come out on moonless nights. Dead folk and those soon to be dead. Anyone wanting to keep the blood inside his veins and the coat on his back would not be found alone in the streets after eleven o’clock. But Pikey didn’t have a choice. He needed to find his patch.

After the fall of Wyndhammer House he had fled straight back to the square in front of St. Paul’s. He had searched for hours, bent double, picking through the muddy cobbles like an old farmer seeding a field. He was on his seventh time now. The cold was sinking into his bones. His legs had gone stiff as posts. But he couldn’t find his patch. It was gone, taken away or trampled deep. When a gang of draft dodgers came, whooping and shouting into the square, Pikey ran off in a fright.

He limped toward the warren of alleys that led to Spitalfields, rubbing his hands to keep the dull ache of the cold away. He tried to stay in the shadows, darting from doorway to doorway, running whenever he heard footsteps. He didn’t know what had happened at Wyndhammer House, but he would bet his boots it had something to do with faeries, and he was beginning to be afraid. What if someone had seen him there? What if they were following him, right now? He couldn’t be caught like this. Not with his bad eye in full sight.

He tried to go faster. The city became a beast after dark; the streets were its throats and the graveyards were its bellies, and ever since things had started going rotten between the English and the faeries the beast had gotten hungrier. The leadfaces had appeared first, hired by Parliament to chase the faeries from the city and then gather soldiers to fight them once they’d fled. After them had come the highwaymen and gunslingers, the thugs and ruffians and faery hunters with their iron teeth and packs full of knives and nets. Since the Ban had been declared they had been popping up in London like mushrooms. They set about in the night, searching for any fay that had not already left. Sometimes they found one. Just last week Pikey had heard of a whole colony of nymphs and water sprytes discovered in the Whitechapel sewers, hiding in the green and stagnant water. Where they were now Pikey didn’t know, but he did not want to join them.

He was just turning the corner at Glockner’s Inn, shuffling along the edge of the gutter, when he saw the girl.

His heart stopped, just like that, as if it had frozen stiff.

She was standing about ten feet away, staring at him. But she was not in the street. Not with the cobbles under her feet and the houses and blackened chimneys of London at her back. Behind her were trees and snow. Moonlight.

“Wot the—” Pikey breathed. In all the time he’d had the clouded eye, he had only ever seen three things through it: a long wooden staircase with a guttering light at its top; a gray-and-peeling face, leaning close, leering with red-coal eyes; and snowy woods. There had never been a girl before. Never a child in only a nightgown, standing barefoot in the snow as if it were nothing.

The girl took a step toward him.

Pikey’s brain made an odd, twisting lurch as it tried to grasp what was happening. She seemed to be above him, and he on the ground, looking up. For a second he was not sure if he was standing or falling.

He leaned against the inn’s wall, head down, gasping lungsful of frigid air. When he looked up she was hurrying toward him, her nightgown flapping. She was so pale. She seemed to glow in the darkness. One of her nightgown sleeves was crumpled and pulled up her arm, and Pikey saw that the skin underneath was twined with red lines, like tattoos. He jerked back. She stooped down.

It made him sick all over again. His stomach lurched, and he shut his eyes as hard as he could. When he opened them, she was so close he could see every pore and vessel in her papery skin. She lifted one finger and brushed it over his clouded eye.

He tried to dodge her, scraping his back on the rough stones. He tried to swat her, to tell her to keep her bleeming fingers to herself, but his hand only swept the smoky air of the street.

She was just a child, he saw, even younger than he was. She had twigs for hair, and eyes so large and black they looked like drops of ink, and—

Oh no.

He knew what she was. Not a human child.

“Get out of here,” he said, his voice strangled. “Shove off, before—”

Please, please don’t let a leadface come now. …

The girl reached for him again. He could actually feel her thumb this time, flat against his eye. He lurched forward, fists swinging.

Her hand was still on his eye, but she was not there, not in London. She did not flinch at his onslaught, and though he moved forward several steps she was still in front of him. He gritted his teeth, shouldered toward her, tried to push her. She didn’t even blink.

Then, somewhere behind her in the dark wood, Pikey saw movement, a silent rushing. The girl’s face wrinkled with fear. Her other hand came up, little fingers reaching straight for his eye.

The moon vanished. So did the trees. He was alone again in a dark and empty street.

Pikey ran all the way back to the chemist’s alley, ignoring the pain in his legs. He crawled into his hole and wrapped himself in his old blankets. The air was cold enough to freeze the skin off his cheeks, but he barely felt it. He lay in the dark, shivering and worrying. When he could bear to, he opened his clouded eye and looked out.

The girl wasn’t there anymore. Neither were the woods. All he saw was blackness and the occasional slash of light. He put his hand over the eye again and tried to think of stoves and hams and happy, smiling faces.

Finally he slept.

A sound in the alley woke him. For an instant a deep pit opened in his stomach and he was hearing the feet again, tap-tap, tap-tap, limping toward him across the cobbles. He smelled the frost and the moss and the haunting burned-sugar scent of caramel apples. He saw the blood. …

He shook himself and sat up an inch, careful not to knock his head on the boards. It was still night. He couldn’t have been asleep more than an hour. Keeping his blanket around his ears, he peeked out of the hole. He slept in his clothes of course, in his cap and jacket and three pairs of socks. But he had been cold before he had even woken up. Now he was freezing. All the warm, foul-smelling air slipped from under his bedding in a flicker of steam.

He scanned the alley, shivering. The cobbles were slick with ice, the air clear and frozen. He waited, straining to see what might have woken him.

Suddenly the dark lantern swung over the chemist’s door.

Pikey started. Something was there. Not slow and limping, but quick, moving in bursts of speed, a ragged shadow on the wall, then closer, at the newel stone of the shop.

He jerked himself back into his hole. He opened his mouth, ready to shout for the chemist, his wife, the lock picker up the lane, everyone in Spitalfields. But then he saw it.

It was the faery. The faery from Wyndhammer House. It came swooping up to the entrance of Pikey’s hole, inky feathers flowing behind it. It paused, its head snapping to and fro, sniffing. Then it focused on Pikey, and its mouth opened in a smile that was all needle teeth and sickly black tongue.

Pikey sat bolt upright, and this time he did knock his head against the ceiling.

“Boy,” it said. Not a question anymore. A confirmation. It had found him.

“What is it you want?” Pikey hissed, shooting a look at the chemist’s door. The orange light was gone from around it. That meant the fire was out. That meant it was well past four in the morning. The chemist would be waking soon.

“Go away!” Pikey flapped his hands at the creature. “Shoo! If someone sees you here, I’m dead. We’re both dead, and it’ll be your fault.”

He thought of the leadfaces. The chemist with his blunderbuss, and the faery hunters with their mouths full of spikes. A horrid panic began to tighten around his lungs.

The faery didn’t move. It stood in the entrance to the hole, still smiling that ghastly, uneven smile.

“Look,” Pikey whispered, backing up into his blankets. “I helped you at that big house and that’s all fine now, all right? No debts. You don’t have to be visiting.” He lowered his voice even further. “A faery hunter’ll come. If someone sees you, he’ll come, and he’ll put you through a meat grinder. Faeries are banned in London. Banned!”

The faery cocked its head, still smiling. Then it opened one thin-fingered hand and held something out to Pikey.

It was pitch-black in Pikey’s hole. The lantern above the shop door had long gone out, but he didn’t need it. Because the faery held in its hand a gem, large as a goose’s egg, and it seemed to fill the freezing space with its own cold, gray light. Tendrils of silver filigree wrapped around it. Its insides were deep purple, veined and splintered. Its outside was smooth as glass.

Pikey stared at the gem. Oh, that’s worth a dozen pounds, that gleamer is. Or a hundred. He could buy a caramel apple with it. He could buy a bushel of caramel apples. He could march right up to one of those pretty painted carts with the steam curling off it and the apples behind the glass, and he could buy the whole thing, aprons and all.

Pikey reached out and ran a finger over the stone.

“Boy,” the faery said again, and this time it took Pikey’s hand and wrapped it around the gem. Pikey looked from stone to faery and back again. His heart was making odd little bumps against his ribs.

“It’s for me?” he breathed. He could already see it all: running away, finding someplace good, someplace where there were thick warm socks and a stove and people who didn’t only kick at him and shoo him away when he walked too close, and—

Coach wheels rattled in Bell Lane. Iron horseshoes hammered the cobbles. The faery’s smile vanished. It looked at Pikey an instant longer, its mirror-eyes wide and limpid. Then it whirled, black wings sweeping, and disappeared down the alley.