The Whatnot (17 page)

And what if Hettie's dead?
Pikey felt a stab of fear.
What if she's at the bottom of a river, even though I told you she was alive?

He was so close to opening his mouth again, to telling Bartholomew he had lied and he didn't know, he didn't know anything at all. “Barth—” he started, but he never said any more.

Sounds were echoing up through the floor, out of the depths of the globe, clanks and frantic shouts. Then the unmistakable crack of gunshots. Something hammered against the door at the end of the walkway.

Pikey scrambled to his feet.

Bartholomew moved in front of him, head down, shoulders hunched like one of the pit fighters in Angel Street heading into a fight. “If something comes through, we let them unlock the gate, but we can't let them open it. We keep it between them and—”

A handful of loose bolts went rolling into a ventilation grate in the corner. Then, far, far below, a scream went up from ten thousand faery throats.

With a great, straining groan, the Birmingham Faery Prison began to move.

CHAPTER XVIII

The City of Black Laughter

O
NCE, when Hettie was very small, she remembered sitting with Bartholomew under the window in the kitchen in Old Crow Alley, watching a storm brew outside. Rain was beginning to flick against the panes, and Mother hadn't come home yet. She had gone out to find supper, and Hettie was worried. So was Bartholomew, but he was pretending not to be. He said, “Het, I'm going to tell you a story, and by the time it's done Mother will be home.” Hettie knew he was going to make it up and that it might not be a very good story, but she nodded anyway and burrowed into him, listening for the sound of footsteps in the alley below.

“There was once a huge castle,” Bartholomew started, looking out the window. The sky was dark, the clouds heaping. “It stood in a sunny land, and the castle, oh, it was the grandest castle you ever saw. It was built of chocolate and it had rooms just full of food, just so full it dribbled out the windows.”

More rain struck the glass. A wind howled up the alley. Hettie curled up in the crook of Bartholomew's arm, listening to the rain just as much as to Bartholomew.

“I'm hungry,” she said.

Bartholomew ignored her. “One of the rooms,” he went on, “was made out of green peppermint, and another was out of taffy, and another was of licorice, and another was rock candy, all different colors. It had rooms full of toys, too. And dolls and books and pillows.”

The door to the alley banged open. Hettie tensed, straining to hear if it was Mother. It wasn't. It was a faery, shuffling up the stairs, its skin, or perhaps its clothes, rustling along the spindles like leaves. Both Hettie and Bartholomew held their breath as the heavy feet passed their door. Then Bartholomew continued, a little softer.

“There was only one way into this castle. It was a great big front door carved with . . . carved with sausages. And one day the enemies of the castle said, ‘We want that castle. We want all of it.' So they sent a witch to trick the queen of the castle. The witch came up to the queen, who was very grand and wore a dress sewn out of stained glass, and the witch said, ‘The enemy! The enemy is coming and they will conquer you! But I can help. I will give you a powerful magic that will protect you, and in return . . .'” A gust of wind rattled the window. “‘In return I ask only one small thing from your castle, and it will be so small it will fit in this box.' And here she held up a tiny box. And the great queen thought,
Oh, it's such a small box. Not even my smallest jewel would fit in there.
So she said, ‘Anything, anything! Hurry! Give me the magic.' Because by this time the enemy was already marching, and the queen could hear the footsteps tramping up the road up to her castle.

“‘Very well,' said the witch, and she gave the queen . . . gave her . . . oh, gave her a glove that would turn her into a wild, savage wolf. Then the witch went to the great front door and took one nail out of the hinge and put it in the box. The queen was shocked, but even then she didn't quite understand. She didn't really see how important the little nail was, you see. I mean, no one really likes nails. They get hit over their heads with hammers. But if they weren't there, people would be in trouble. People would know what awfully important things nails are. But the queen didn't. The queen put on the glove and turned into a wolf, and she slobbered and growled and sharpened her claws, and the enemies came up to the castle. And they walked right in because the hinge was loose on the door and it wouldn't close properly, and they shot the wolf-queen with forty-seven arrows so that she looked precisely like a pincushion.

“Now, while all this was happening, the witch was going down the path from the castle, holding her little box. But the witch didn't know everything either. Because in
fact,
the nail was the true queen who had been enchanted. Her name was Hettie, by the way . . .”

“No, it wasn't!” Hettie sat up, laughing. “What was it actually?”

“It was! Her name was Hettie, and she had the same sort of branches you have, except probably not as messy, and not now because she was a nail and—”

The door to the alley creaked open again. It was a tiny, quiet, rusty-metal sound, but both Hettie and Bartholomew heard it. “Hurry,” whispered Hettie. “Finish the story.”

Bartholomew sat up. “And as soon as the nail was out of the castle, Queen Hettie turned into her real self, and destroyed absolutely all her enemies, including the witch, and became queen again, and everyone was much kinder to nails after that.” Then Mother slipped in, smiling and shaking the rain from her hair, and Hettie and Bartholomew helped her set the table and boil up the cabbage stew while the storm raged outside, and Hettie remembered thinking
that
was the most marvelous story anyone had ever told her.

 

The river was becoming wider. The water was deeper now, darker, flowing swift and silent toward some greater body. After a while the fog lifted. The grassy banks turned to stones, then ruined towns, then bleak gray fields and chalk-white trees.

Hettie watched it all with growing dread. They were so far from Piscaltine's house, so far from the woods, getting farther with every passing moon. She felt as if she were tied to England by the flimsiest of threads, and it was wearing thinner and thinner.

The Belusite still followed them. She flew along the shore on her empty-eyed steed, her red cape streaming behind her. She did not sleep. She did not slow. And every night, through the dark and the moonlight, Hettie heard the hooves pounding along the shore.

Hettie had thought Florence would give up after Hettie dropped the necklace into the river. The Belusite had seen it fall. Her eyes had widened into black moons and her mouth had opened. But she had not stopped. She galloped on along the river, and Hettie began to wonder if perhaps it wasn't the necklace she wanted after all. She began to wonder about the doorway again and what the faery butler had said. And the more Hettie wondered, the more worried and alone she felt.

She wished she had the mask again. She had felt so brave wearing it. When she strode into Piscaltine's masquerade, everything was possible. Everyone had looked at the ground as she passed, or bowed so low their noses touched their shoes. If she had the mask again, she felt sure she would know what to do now.

She wandered along the deck, imagining the wood turning to stone under her feet and walls rising up. The distant sound of pipes and a fiddle filled the air. Faeries made of shadows surrounded her, all sweeping low and whispering. She felt the cold power again, welling up inside her.
I was so beautiful, then. I was so brave.

In her imagination, one of the shadow-faeries broke away to ask her for a dance. She ignored him, glided straight for a huge, black-pitted door. It stood open. Beyond the door was a field, then a wood, then a cottage, and beside the cottage was Barthy, waiting for her. . . .

She walked to the boat railing. She stared into the water, and the hideous Hettie was staring back at her, eyes sharp and flinty. It tilted its head. A fat black centipede slid out of its mouth and disappeared into its ear.

Hettie stumbled back, pinching her eyes shut. The reflection in the water seemed to become uglier with every passing day. Hettie had on several occasions wondered if she should leap out of the boat and escape before it went any farther. She didn't know how to swim, and Florence La Bellina was on the bank, but that was not what stopped her. It was the thing in the water, with its mouth full of bugs and its horrible, wrinkled face. Sometimes it seemed to whisper to her. She didn't really hear it, and yet somehow she always knew what it was saying.
We're too ugly,
it said, its voice in the wind and the lick of the waves.
We won't escape, not us. Ugly things are useless. Ugly things are weak. Everyone has forgotten us at home, and we'll never find the way on our own.

“Shut up,” Hettie hissed. She turned away, her hands balled into fists.
I'm not you
.
Barthy's still looking for me. I'll get home one day.

She dropped down and huddled against the mast, her back to the faery butler. She pushed away the thought of Barthy. She tried not to think of him very often. If she did, she would think of Old Crow Alley, and her cupboard bed, and she would wonder if perhaps Barthy and Mother thought she was dead. She would wonder if they were going about their day, washing clothes and cranking the wash-wringer and living their quiet, dangerous lives without her. It would make her heart want to snap in two.

 

After a while the river became a bay. The boat slid into it, and Hettie hurried to the stern to look back at the land. Florence La Bellina had turned along the shore and was galloping west, her horse sending up a plume of dust from the stones of an old road. Hettie looked over the desolate fields. She saw hills in the distance, round and bare like old men's heads. She glimpsed faery houses, too, little crooked dwellings with broken roofs and beams sticking up like snapped ribs. Scratches and faded lines showed where other roads and causeways had once led. They became more and more prominent, stitching ruined house to ruined farm to ruined town.

She hurried to the other side of the boat. That was when she saw it––a great city rising from the farthest part of the bay. It was all towers, stone needles pricking the sky. The clouds were low and seething overhead, purple-gray.

“The City of Black Laughter,” the faery butler said, crawling up beside her. “We're almost there.”

Hettie looked back to the shore, searching for the Belusite. She was a bead of crimson, riding straight for the city.

“She's going to be there soon,” Hettie said. “Just as soon as us, and then what are you going to do? What if she catches us again?”

“She won't catch us.” The faery butler straightened, seven feet of bony limbs uncurling into the air. “Not as long as she is alone. I will be able to keep you well away from her until I can hand you to the Sly King.”

Hettie frowned, but her stomach squirmed with worry. Because she wasn't going to be handed to the Sly King. She wasn't going with these faeries. She was going to run. Before the faery butler could hand her over. Before she even saw the Sly King.

She only hoped she could run fast enough.

The boat neared the city. The towers were listing and old, and the roofs drooped like wizard hats. The windows were black specks, like flies on the walls.

Hettie's knuckles tightened around the rail. It was too quiet. Old Crow Alley had never been this quiet. Not even at night. There were no other ships in the harbor. She listened for shouts or whistles, the noises one would expect from the docks of such a great place. The water lapped against the boat, but there was nothing else.

“Doesn't anyone live here?” she asked, edging a little nearer to the faery butler. “If it's the capital, shouldn't there be faeries everywhere?”

“No.” The faery butler gripped her hand. The boat approached a wharf and grew onto it, the white tentacles wriggling like roots around the stone. “The Sly King had it emptied. The capital was for the greatest of the Sidhe, the lords and ladies of Summer and Winter and Fall and Spring and all their courts, but there aren't many great Sidhe left. They have been dwindling away. Tales have it he did away with them, sank them in rivers and ponds until all their lives were spent. The last of them were at Piscaltine's. Even the lowercase cities are empty now. He has gathered all who are left outside the city. To wait.”

To wait?
Hettie looked back at the bay.
To wait for what?
The shoreline extended away in a vast crescent toward the horizon. Nothing stirred. The whole country, for miles and miles, was dead and empty. The Sly King had ruined it all. But why?

They set off along the wharf. High up in one of the towers, a knotted strand of dead vine snaked out of a window, like a hand, waving gently.

“A tower of ash and a tower of stone,” the faery butler said under his breath. “A tower of blood and a tower of bone.”

“Stop it,” Hettie whispered at him. “You're just making everything worse.” The faery butler closed his mouth.

Hettie looked about. They were on a long, wide street. Metal fixtures stuck out of the stone here and there where signboards might have hung once. Alleys opened off on all sides, doorways to slip into and galleries to flee down.

“Where are we going to go?” she asked, and at the same time gently slipped her hand out of the faery butler's.

He didn't notice. “Someplace high,” he said, scanning the buildings. “We need a vantage point of a good portion of the city, but the towers are the King's, so we must not risk—”

Hettie wasn't listening. She would have to hurry once she was away from him. She had to get out of the city, and then her troubles were only starting. Florence would still be hunting her. There would be wild faeries in the countryside and the butler would not be beside her with his great, long knife. But she could follow the river again. At Piscaltine's house, she would go into the woods.

Taking a deep breath, she peered about for a suitable direction. The faery butler was several steps ahead, still speaking. Hettie slowed.

I'm sorry your plan won't work,
she thought.
I hope the Sly King won't be very angry at you.

Ahead, the street forked. To the right was an archway shaped like a curled stone tree. It led into a dark courtyard. Beyond, Hettie just glimpsed another street, twisting away. They were almost there. She tensed, preparing to run. And then Florence La Bellina strode out of the left fork, straight toward them. She was flanked by four Belusites, four creatures in dragging ball gowns and puffed breeches, all arms and claws and strange metal appendages. Her black-and-white face had arranged itself into a sharp, square smile.