The Peculiar. Stefan Bachmann

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      ARTHOLOMEW’S eyes snapped open. The air was foul. He was in his own bed and sunlight was pouring through the window. Mother was standing over him. Hettie clung to her skirts, staring at him as if he were a wild beast.

      “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 had forbidden him to invite a house faery, but she didn’t know everything. She was just afraid of faeries, had been ever since their Sidhe father had danced off into the night and never come back. That was different though; Bartholomew wished she could see that. His father had been a high faery, sly and selfish, and had whisked Mother away from her theater troupe when she was young and pretty and full of life. Mother had given everything up to be with him. And then, when her pretty face was gone, and her hands were cracked from the lye, from drudging to feed their children, he had simply left. Mother hadn’t spoken to a faery since.

      Bartholomew’s fingers found a slip of ribbon in the box, and he lingered a moment. Memories of his father were dim, but he knew he had been afraid of him, of those black eyes always turned toward him with disgust, and perhaps the hint of a question. One time his father had spoken to him in a strange language, on and on for what seemed like hours, and when he had finished and Bartholomew had simply stood there, dumb and wide-eyed, his father had flown into a rage and thrown all Mother’s dishes against the wall. House faeries weren’t like that, Bartholomew told himself. Nothing so cold and flighty. They were more like animals, he decided, like very intelligent birds.

      He looked darkly at the items before him, trying to ignore the pain in his arms. The faery wouldn’t throttle them in their sleep. It wouldn’t. Scratched out in black ink in one of Bartholomew’s books was a tiny shimmery creature, barely as tall as the candlestick it stood by. The faery wore a cap with a feather in it and had snowdrop petals growing out of its back. It looked nice.

      Bartholomew picked up one of his twigs and then threw it down again. Why did Mother have to go and forbid things? It just made everything worse. She was wrong. She would see that soon enough when the domesticated faery became the end of all their troubles. Once Bartholomew had the faery whisper away the red lines and tell him things and play hide-and-seek in the attic, he would make it work. It could help with mending, and run errands, and stoke the potbellied stove for the wash kettle. Mother wouldn’t have to work so hard, and maybe someday they could get out of the faery slums СКАЧАТЬ