“Oh. Oh, good heavens,” Mr. Jelliby stammered. “Do forgive me, I didn’t mean to—”
“Mr. Lickerish!” the butler screeched. “Sathir, el eguliem pak!” His voice rose to such a desperate height on the final word that it made Mr. Jelliby wince. A door opened somewhere in the house, then another. Footsteps sounded in the passageways, on the stairs, not loud but steady, approaching quickly.
Oh dear, thought Mr. Jelliby.
The faery butler reached him and took hold of his arm, his face so close Mr. Jelliby could smell his putrid breath.
“Come away from here this instant!” the butler hissed. “Come back into the house.” And he practically dragged Mr. Jelliby down the corridor, out of the blazing gaslight, into the solid gloom beyond. Someone was waiting for them there. A whole group of someones. Mr. Throgmorton and Mr. Lumbidule, a wide-eyed Mr. Lickerish, and in the shadows, a huddle of lower faeries, whispering “Pak, pak” over and over amongst themselves.
“It—it was not the water closet,” Mr. Jelliby said weakly.
Mr. Throgmorton gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, the surprise! And yet you broke down the door. Mr. Jelliby, privy doors are locked for a reason, I think. They are locked when they are being used, when they are not meant to be used, or when they are not, in fact, a privy.”
Mr. Throgmorton started laughing again, fat lips quivering. Mr. Lumbidule joined in. The faery folk only watched, faces blank.
Suddenly Mr. Lickerish clapped his hands, producing a clear, sharp sound. The chortles of the two politicians lodged in their throats.
The faery turned to Mr. Jelliby. “You are leaving now,” he said, and his voice made Mr. Jelliby want to shrivel up and fall through the cracks in the floorboards.
Mr. Jelliby couldn’t remember afterward how he came to be back in the hall with the mermaid staircase. All he remembered was walking, walking through endless corridors, head lowered to hide the burning of his face. And then he was at the front door again, and the butler was letting him out. But before stumbling into the streaming misery of the city, he recalled looking back into the shadows of Nonsuch House. And there, on the staircase landing, stood the faery politician, a flicker of white in the darkness. He was watching Mr. Jelliby. His pale hands were folded across the silver buttons of his waistcoat. His face was a mask, flat and inscrutable. But his eyes were still wide. And it struck Mr. Jelliby that a wideeyed faery was not a surprised faery. It was an angry, angry faery.
“Barthy?” Mother’s voice shook. “Well, Barthy?”
He tried to sit up, but pain roared inside his arms and he collapsed, gasping. “Well what, Mother?” he asked quietly.
“Don’t play daft with me, Bartholomew Kettle, who did this to you? Did you see who did this to you?”
“Did what?” His skin hurt. Oh, why did it hurt so? The pain went all the way to the bone, aching and throbbing as if there were maggots underneath, chewing.
His mother turned her face away and moaned into her hand. “Larks and stage lights, he’s amnesiagactical.” Then she whirled back on Bartholomew and practically screamed, “Scratched you to ribbons, that’s what! Scratched my poor little darling baby to ribbons!” She lifted the corner of his old woolen blanket.
Hettie hid her face.
Bartholomew swallowed. All down the front of his body, down his arms and on his chest, were bloodred lines, thin scratches that looped and whirled across his white skin. They were very orderly. They made a pattern, like the writing in the room with the clock-work birds. In a violent, frightening sort of way they looked almost beautiful.
“Oh …,” he breathed. “Oh, no. No, no, I—”
“Were it faeries or people?” There was fear in his mother’s voice. Raw, desperate fear. “Did one of the neighbors find out what you are? John Longstockings, or that Weevil woman?”
Bartholomew didn’t answer. Mother must have found him in the street. He remembered crawling, half-numb with pain, out of the Buddelbinsters’ yard. The filthy cobbles against my cheek. Wondering if a cart would come and roll me over. He couldn’t tell Mother about the lady in plum. He couldn’t tell her about the changeling boy, or the mushrooms, or the room with the birds. It would only make things worse.
“I don’t remember,” he lied. He tried rubbing at the lines, as if the red might come off on his fingers. The pain became worse, so bad that spots blossomed in front of his eyes. The lines remained the same, bright and unbroken.
He looked up. Hettie was peeking at him again. Mother’s face was drawn, her mouth pinched to keep from shaking, the fear in her eyes about to spill over in another fit of hysterics.
“I need to go,” he said. “Mother, I can ask someone. I’ll make everything better.” He got up, swaying a little as the ache struck him full force. He snatched his dirty clothes off the top of the bedpost. Then he made for the door, hobbling as quickly as he could.
His mother tried to stop him, but he pushed past her, out of the flat and into the passage.
“Bartholomew, please!” Mother whimpered from the doorway. “Come back inside. What if someone sees?”
Bartholomew began to run. He was going to summon a faery. He had to. It was clear as rain to him now. A house faery could tell him what the ring of mushrooms was, where it led, and why the little creatures in the wings had written on him. It could keep them all safe, and bring them luck. And it could be his friend. A real friend that didn’t just wave at him through windows.
I’ll make everything better.
He limped up the stairs toward the roof. The house always felt safe in the morning hours, when the passages were empty and the dust motes whirled slowly through the yellow light from the windows. But it wasn’t safe. No one in the faery slums slept past five, if they slept at all, and Bartholomew didn’t want to know all the things that were happening just beyond the rotting walls. A sharp, metallic tang filled the corridor outside the Longstockings’ door, and behind it, what sounded like knives sliding against each other. Piskies were wailing and scampering inside the Prickfinger flat. On the third floor, where the heat rose and the air was thick as blankets, the smell of boiled turnips and musty bedding was strong enough to smother him.
A door opened in front of him, and he only barely managed to skid around it. An old faery matron stepped out. She kicked the door closed.
Bartholomew’s throat constricted like a wire trap. Not this, too.
She was so close. Bartholomew could see every wrinkle in her apron, the blue cornflowers stitched into her faded ruffled cap. For a terrible moment she paused, head raised, as if listening. If she flicked her eyes around, even just a hair’s breadth, she would see him standing there, stock still in the middle of the passageway. She would see his pointy face, the tracery of lines, bloody along his arms.
One. Two. Three …
Finally the old faery sniffed and began lumbering away down the passage. Behind her, a scuffle, then a bang. She stopped midstep and whirled.
But Bartholomew’s heels had already disappeared up through the trapdoor into the attic.
Once inside the secret gable, he pulled an old coffee tin from its hiding place in the rafters and opened it, laying out its contents quickly on the floor.
His mother