“Oh …”
“Do you want to know what I suspect?”
“There isn’t any salt left.”
“No. I suspect a kelpy got him and dragged him down into his bottomless puddle.”
Bartholomew turned away before he could hear his mother’s reply. She wasn’t really thinking about the salt. She was thinking about where he might be hiding, where she hadn’t searched yet, and why he hadn’t returned. He felt cruel suddenly, slinking around outside their door while she worried inside. Soon she would start to panic, knock on the neighbors’ walls, and go into the night with the last fifteen minutes of the lamp oil. He had to be back before then.
Tiptoeing the rest of the way downstairs, he scraped himself along the wall toward the alley door. A goblin sat by it, fast asleep on a stool. Bartholomew went past him and brushed his hand over the door, feeling for the bolt. The door had a face in it—fat cheeks and lips and sleepy old eyes growing out of the gray and weather-beaten wood. His mother said the face used to demand beetles from folks who wanted to come in and spat their shells at folks who wanted to go out, but Bartholomew had never seen it so much as blink.
His fingers found the bolt. He pulled it back. Then he slipped under the chain and onto the cobbles.
It was strange being in the open again. The air there was close and damp. There were no walls or ceilings, just the alley splitting into other alleys, on and on into the great world. It felt huge, frightening, and endlessly dangerous. But Bartholomew didn’t suppose he had a choice.
He scurried across the alley to the low arch in the Buddelbinsters’ wall. The yard was dark, the crooked house as well. Its many windows had been thrown open. They looked as if they were watching him.
He leaped over the broken gate and pressed himself to the wall. The night was not cold, but he shivered anyway. Only a few hours ago, the lady in plum had stood here, so near where he was standing now, luring his friend to her with blue-gloved fingers.
Bartholomew shook himself and moved on. The circle the lady had poured onto the ground was still there, a few steps to the right of the path. From his attic window Bartholomew had been able to see it clearly, but up close it was very faint, practically invisible if you didn’t already know it was there. He knelt down, pushing aside a tuft of weeds to examine it. He frowned. The ring was made of mush-rooms. Tiny black mushrooms that looked like no sort of mushroom he would want to eat. He plucked one up. For a moment he could feel its shape, soft and smooth against his fingertips. Then it seemed to melt, until it was only a droplet of black liquid staining the whiteness of his skin.
He stared at his hand curiously. He waved it over the circle. Nothing happened. One more hand and his forehead. Still nothing. He almost laughed then. It didn’t work anymore. They were just mushrooms now.
Standing up, he dug his bare toe into the cold soil inside the ring. Then he stomped a few of the mushrooms. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a soft titter at that, like a crowd of whispers, far away. Without another thought, he leaped up and landed in the middle of the mushroom ring.
A hideous screeching erupted all around him. There was a burst of darkness, and wings were every-where, flapping in his face, battering him. He was falling, flying, a fierce and icy wind tearing at his hair and his threadbare clothes.
“Idiot!” he screamed. “You stupid, stupid, what were you thinking, you—” But it was too late. Already the darkness was subsiding. And what he saw then was not Old Crow Alley or the Buddelbinsters’ yard. It was not anything in the faery slums. Flashing through the wings like scraps of sunlight was warmth, luxury, the gleam of brass and polished wood, and heavy green drapes stitched with leaves. A fire was somewhere nearby. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there, crackling.
With a desperate lunge, he tried to throw himself free of the wings. Please, please put me back. The magic couldn’t have taken him far in those few seconds, could it? Maybe a few miles, but if he hurried he could find his way back before the faeries and the English filled the streets.
The wings slashed past his face. Gravity seemed to become unsure of its own laws, and for a moment he thought his plan might have worked; he was soaring, weightless. And then the wings were gone. The screeching stopped. His head thudded against smooth wood, and the air was knocked from his lungs.
Bartholomew propped himself up on his elbows dizzily. He was on the floor of the loveliest room he had ever seen. There were the green drapes, drawn against the night. There, the fireplace and the flames. Woodsmoke drifted from the grate, making the air warm and hazy. Books lined the walls. Lamps with painted silk shades threw a soft glow about them. A few feet away from where Bartholomew had fallen, a circle had been carefully drawn with chalk on the bare floorboards. Rings of writing surrounded the circle, thin twining letters that seemed to spin and dance as he looked at them.
That was where I was supposed to land, he thought, feeling the bump that was growing on his head.
Shakily, he got to his feet. The room was a study of some sort. A heavy wooden desk took up most of one end. It was carved with bulbous frogs and toads, and they all looked to be in the process of eating one another. On top of the desk, in a neat row, were three mechanical birds. They were each a slightly different size, and were built to look like sparrows, with metal wings and tiny brass cogs that peeped out from between the plates. They sat utterly still, obsidian eyes staring keenly at Bartholomew.
He took a few steps toward them. A little voice at the back of his mind was telling him to run, to get away from that room as fast as he could, but he was feeling dull and silly, and his head still hurt. A few minutes wouldn’t make any difference, would they? And it was so pleasant here, so shiny and warm.
He walked a little closer to the birds. He had the strongest urge to reach out and touch one. He wanted to feel those perfect metal feathers, the delicate machinery, and the sharp black eyes…. He uncurled his fingers.
He froze. Something had shifted in the depths of the house. A floorboard or a panel. And then all Bartholomew heard was the clip-clip of feet approaching briskly from the other side of the door at the far end of the room.
His heart clenched, painfully. Someone heard. someone heard the noise, and now he was coming to investigate. He would find a changeling in his private chambers, a pauper from the faery slums clearly breaking into his house. A constable would come, beat Bartholomew senseless. Morning would find him swinging by the neck in the hot breath of the city.
Bartholomew flew across the room and wrenched at the doorknob with desperate fingers. It was locked, but the person on the other side would have a key. He had to get out.
Racing back to the chalk circle, he leaped and landed squarely in the middle. His heels struck the floor, the force jarring his legs.
Nothing happened.
He threw a frantic look back at the door. The foot-steps had stopped. Someone was right there, right on the other side, breathing. Bartholomew heard a hand being placed on the knob. The knob began to turn, turn. Click. Locked.
Panic slithered in his throat. Trapped. Get out, get out, get out!
For a moment the person outside was silent. Then the knob began to rattle. Slowly at first but becoming more insistent, getting stronger and stronger until the whole door was shivering in its frame.
Bartholomew stamped his foot. GO! he thought desperately. Work! Take me away from here! His chest began to ache. Something was pricking the back of his eyes, and for a moment he wanted nothing more than to sit down and cry like he had when he was little and had lost hold of his mother’s hand at the market.
The person outside began to beat viciously against the door.
It wouldn’t do any good to cry. Bartholomew ran his hand over his nose. A crying thief would still be hanged. He looked down at the markings all around him and tried to think.
There. A section of the chalk circle was smeared across the floor. The ring didn’t go all the way around anymore. He must have