The Whatnot (23 page)

He looked back over his shoulder. Florence was dragging herself out from under the tree, like a ghoul climbing from a grave. Her face was cracked, and she looked oddly disheveled, She stood. Behind her, the tree opened. Its branches swayed and writhed, and inside stood the Sly King.

“Florence!” the King cried, but she did not look at him. Her empty eyes had grown into huge, round pits. She was facing north, her hand extended, as if reaching for someone who was not there. The wings swooped around her, up the tree. The Sly King lunged out of it. A second later, it was uprooted. It whirled into the air. The branches lashed. And then the tree smashed down again, full force, and the cobblestones leaped.

The tree had fallen exactly where Florence La Bellina and the Sly King had been standing.

Bartholomew did not wait to see the aftermath. He dashed from the court, into the street, stumbling and fighting through the wings. Houses were falling around him, tipping forward like packs of cards. The cut hurt. A pain in his stomach, slowing his steps.

“Hettie?” he shouted. “Pikey?”

The wind swallowed his voice. He took a few more halting steps. Then he collapsed under an archway. The house it belonged to groaned and went down. Only the arch stood, Bartholomew under it clutching his stomach and pulling his legs away from the thundering rubble.

The last thing he saw was the blood seeping between his fingers, dripping like claret onto the cobbles.

 

Outside of London, the snow in the fields had begun to tremble. It shifted and shook across the frozen earth, a thunder cracking the still air.

Slowly a body tipped out of a huddle of apple trees. The body struck the snow with hardly a sound. Florence La Bellina lay faceup, her pale skin a web of cracks. Her eyes were wide and her hand was reaching, up and out toward London, grasping for her other half, grasping for her sister. Then the globes came and the trees were gone, and so was she.

 

Hettie looked at the mass of wings towering above her, arching over the whole city, and she knew what she had to do.

We've got to hope,
the boy had said. Well, Hettie was going to hope she could stop the Sly King until she
had
stopped him. She was going to hope Bartholomew was alive until she saw him again. But she didn't have to hope she was strong and brave, because just then she knew she was.

She whipped around and began walking back the way she had come, quick and purposeful. She thought of the great lady, proud and lovely, looking at her out of the mirror. She thought of Piscaltine, always trying to keep her small and telling her what she wasn't. But once, just once, Piscaltine had told the truth.
This is the creature that is your soul,
she had said, and it was. The hideous old Peculiar in the water hadn't been her. It might have been, but she wasn't going to let it. Hettie was the one in the mirror, even if no one else knew.

“Stop!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, to the wings and the door and the writhing darkness. She could see the faeries in the distance, marching rank upon rank. They carried weapons, swords and clubs and long, cruel spears with tips like the claws of beasts. The first ones would be in London soon.

Only they wouldn't.

It was her door. She
was
the door, wasn't that what Mr. Lickerish had said? Well, then she would make it do as she said.

“Stop!” she shouted again, and this time she sensed a response.
Surprise? Fear?
The whispers of the sylphs grew louder, swirling around her. She walked faster. “Stop!”

She felt the door, a thousand feet high, as if it were her own skin. She twisted her hand and high above her the sylphs twisted, too, screaming. She began to run. The Old Country was behind her suddenly, and she was pulling it, dragging it in the direction of the wide open fields. The wings skimmed the rooftops, sending tiles flying like flocks of crows. She labored back up High Street, now only a thread of cobbles between the rubble. She clambered over a sofa, over the tumbled stones and broken wagons of Bishopsgate. She was almost there. The faery army was close at her back now, so close she could hear the jingle of their armor and the scrape of steel. Her legs pumped over grass, over the flattened boards of the barns she had destroyed. And then she stopped.

Ahead, twelve massive iron globes loomed. They were coming at full speed, straight for London. Straight for her. They would be upon her in seconds. Ten. Five.

You were wrong, Sly King,
she thought.
Maybe I am a Whatnot, but I'll stop you cold.

She planted her feet and lifted her hands. There she stood, one small girl in front of twelve great globes. Behind her, the army neared. Ahead, the globes bore down on her, deafening. She spread her arms. The door went wide, shooting out a mile on either side. She felt its edges far, far away, as if they were her fingertips. The globes' shadows fell across her. The wind thrashed her twigs and tore at her nightgown. And then the globes whirled past, so close she might have touched one. They rolled straight through the door, into the Old Country—twelve faery prisons, rattling away over the rubble. The faery army shrieked and scattered. They dropped their weapons. They dropped helmets and armor and fled back to their great houses and hollow hills.

Hettie didn't know how long she stood there. She didn't know how long she held the door and pressed it open. Vaguely she glimpsed faeries passing her, some going in, some going out, soft and sly and merry in their strange faery way. There were families of goblins and gaggles of piskies and solitary spriggans in waistcoats and hats. They touched her as they passed, her branches and her face, and some of them smiled, wide, toothy smiles, but Hettie wasn't afraid.
Thank you,
the faeries said.
Thank you, thank you.
And after the moon went down and up and down again, after she felt she had done her job, she let her arms fall and watched as the great door dissolved in a wisp of ash.

Epilogue

T
HEY met outside London, in that wide winter field. Bartholomew and Pikey climbed down from a carriage and set off across the snow. Hettie hobbled, her feet dragging through a hundred thousand black feathers.

They all went as fast as they could, but their steps were weighted by wounds and weariness. They did not call out to one another as they approached.

Hettie looked different from when Pikey had seen her last. She had been small then, and frightened. She was still small, but she didn't look frightened anymore. And her branches . . . They were no longer bare and smooth. They had bloomed sometime in the night, little white flowers as soft as milk. They were beautiful.

“Hello, Hettie,” Bartholomew said when they were face-to-face. His voice was low. He looked different, too. He was dressed in fine clothes, a velvet coat and gray woolen stockings. A bandage was wrapped around his midsection.

“Hello, Barthy,” Hettie said.

They stood there a while, just staring at each other. Pikey hung back, shuffling. Then, without a word, Bartholomew picked Hettie up so that her feet went right off the ground and hugged her. Hettie started to cry and then to laugh, and then Bartholomew started laughing, too. Even Pikey laughed a little bit, and then wiped his face quickly.

Behind him, he heard the creak of a hinge—Mr. Jelliby stepping from the carriage, standing by it and smiling somewhat sadly. Pikey looked toward the carriage and looked toward the road, a shattered road leading into the winter sunlight. Bartholomew had set Hettie down. They were murmuring to each other, saying all the things Pikey supposed brothers and sisters would say after years and years. He began to back away. He still had his cloak. He still had his boots. It had been a good adventure.

He started to walk. But he hadn't gone far when he heard a shout. Bartholomew and Hettie were hurrying after him, hand in hand.

“Where are you going?” Bartholomew yelled across the field. “You can't wander off now!”

“I can!” Pikey shouted back, but he stopped.

They caught up. “No,” Bartholomew said, slightly out of breath. “I said that when we'd found Hettie we'd all go back to Bath, and I meant it. You did it all. I don't think anything would have been the same without you.”

Hettie nodded. “People should say thank you to you. All of
England
should say thank you.”

Pikey imagined that for a second—all of England saying thank you to the boy from the cracker box. He felt a glow filling him from the top of his head to the bottom of his boots. He grinned at Hettie and Bartholomew. They grinned back.

“Come on,” Bartholomew said, taking Pikey's hand. Hettie snatched his other one. Together, the three of them turned toward the carriage. “Let's go home.”

 

 

THE END

About the Author

STEFAN BACHMANN
is a writer and musician. He was born in Colorado and now lives with his family in Zurich, Switzerland, where he attends the Zurich Conservatory. www.stefanbachmann.com

 

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Credits

Cover art © 2013 by Thierry Lafontaine, Imaginism Studios

Hand-lettered display type by Ryan O'Rourke

Cover design by Paul Zakris

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used to advance the fictional narrative. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

 

The Whatnot

Copyright © 2013 by Stefan Bachmann

 

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bachmann, Stefan, 1993–

The whatnot / by Stefan Bachmann.

pages  cm

“Greenwillow Books.”

Companion book to: The Peculiar.

Summary: Bartholomew Kettle, unable to save his sister, Hettie, when she was pushed into the faery Old Country, promised he would find her but sinister forces are still at work and he must rely on Pikey, who would do almost anything to escape his past, to help find her.

ISBN 978-0-06-219521-0 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-06-228630-7 (intl. bdg.)

Epub Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780062195234

[1. Fairies—Fiction. 2. Changelings—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. England—Fiction. 5. Fantasy. 6. Youths' writings.] I. Title.

PZ7.B132173Wh 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2013015023

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CG
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RRDH
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FIRST EDITION

 

Greenwillow Books