A Peculiar Peril, page 43
“And yet it was your watch.”
“I saw nothing. I don’t know why,” Mack said.
Perhaps the shadow knew.
All she’d asked in return from Napoleon was to accompany them to Prague and serve the Order against Crowley. The very Crowley he said he hated. Yet at midnight five days after they’d arranged to pick him up, there loomed the headless body, a thicket without a point, atop a horse they no longer needed. Symbolic of something. Perhaps the state of things within the Order.
“Calm as could be. The horse,” Kristýna said. “Not spooked. Not startled. Imagine that.”
“Let us concentrate on what we’re doing now,” Mack said. “And save this for later.”
“Right. Mack, no knife and no truck. No truck with questions, rather.”
But she laid off him for the moment, their quarry turning a corner, and them both having to quicken the pace without seeming to. She was reminded of ages-old ballet classes, of sidles and sneaks and intrigues so ancient now it made her tired to think of them.
* * *
The bulky, tall figure had proved adroit at avoiding all sorts of obstacles—sudden cats, dogs, children, old men. Would of a sudden pirouette and be past, almost seeming to invert its shape or to draw in its gut in a spectacular and preternatural fashion. Always sticking to darkness so as to mute the effect. But Kristýna saw it. How the top of the figure’s head at times quivered and divided into four pieces, came back together again. Which might have startled a younger soul.
How, too, in the aftermath of this … quiver … a passerby hugging a stone wall or leaning in an alleyway might have disappeared, never to be seen again. Was it their quarry’s fault? Or a trick of the light? Or both?
“Did you know, Mack, that a woodpecker’s tongue wraps around its brain?”
Mack said nothing.
“Although this is to say nothing of the local cuckoos,” she continued on grimly, “which lay their eggs in the nests of the red-faced imperial nuthatch, laying with them plots against those species’ ambitions, and the imperial birds none the wiser as they sit atop eggs that will hatch into babies that do not have the ambition of their own species but of another entirely—”
“Interesting,” Mack said, interrupting, because he must feel compelled to say something in the face of so much detail. If only to stanch the flow. Especially as these ridiculous words had also been delivered by the one they stalked, if not as coherent, the past couple of days. And had been known to come from Napoleon’s mouth, or something similar, the short time he’d been atop a horse and beside them.
“Tell me, Mack, how do you think this … person … we’re following knew the sign code?”
“Ask Napoleon.”
“I can’t ask Napoleon.”
Mack shrugged. “It is a common-enough saying.”
Kristýna opened her mouth, bit her tongue. The “person” had a poor command of Czech, kept talking, when greeted, in specific phrases, including the woodpecker one. Which is how the “person” had been brought to their attention, having talked about woodpecker tongues to the wrong Czech magician.
The figure ahead of them, the one that weirdly resembled a schoolmarm, stopped in front of a wall of posters, backlit by a huge public fountain full of flaming mead. The fountain was surrounded by the balloonicles and floats for a prewar carnival: The next morning there would be a parade of giant red bunnies, porcupines, and bears, precursor to drunken reveries. One last hurrah before getting serious. Children jumped into the honey mead, came out with their cups full, which were given over to their parents. The place was flush with the thick smell of the honey and abuzz with night bees sneaking a sip from derelict cups.
“You Czechs are strange,” Mack said, his face on fire from the glow.
“No. We are just very human.” She decided not to remind him she wasn’t Czech. Not really. Because she was proud of the Czechs, often wished she was one.
“No one is sober around here.”
She laughed, but her eyes had never left their quarry. Mack had never understood the Czech tolerance for alcohol. “Later, you will dive for honey mead for me.”
The schoolmarm figure had been facing a wall plastered with posters for upcoming cultural events, most of which had been canceled. Now it appeared to disappear into the fabric of the low wall to their left. But they could not quicken their pace, had to walk past as if common citizens of the city.
Yet Kristýna could tell the creature was truly gone.
They walked up to the wall, as if out for a quiet stroll, held hands to complete the illusion, stared at the poster the creature had perused with such intensity.
The Fester Growley Book Club, meeting at the Twisted Spoon Bookshop, midafternoon, in three days’ time. The Czechs did have a talent for satire, it was true.
“Can you feel it?” Mack asked. “The residue?”
“Yes. Of course.”
The poster exuded magic. Not the magic of animals or trees, but of a Celestial Beast. A Beast could disguise almost every part of its essence, but most were too powerful to be truly invisible.
“Were we tracking a Beast?”
“Or did a Beast put up the poster?”
The idea made her snort. A Celestial Beast putting book-club posters up all over the supernal burgh.
Such fairy-tale rot. Then she sobered.
“The Council must be told about this.”
She meant the Council of Czech leaders and their Republic advisers that ruled Prague, given the state of their king. The Prague magicians would spearhead the defense of the city, and they, too, were part of the Council. Kristýna was among the members of the Order who advised the Council … on the matter of peculiar doors.
Mack shook his head. “I say no. I say we pursue it ourselves.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know what it is yet. We don’t know where it comes from.”
“No, because we do know what it is yet, and we must not hide anything from the Council.”
“At least keep it to the Order, not the Council.”
She pondered that, sidestepped for the moment. Mack could keep what he wanted to himself. She was free not to follow his advice. Especially here.
“Shall we attend, then. This book-club meeting?” It wasn’t a question.
“Absolutely,” Mack said.
That settled at least one issue. So it was time for the next thing. What she’d been putting off.
Appropriate to have waited until on the hill above the castle, where many things banished from the city proper came out to play.
Even the common doors there shared an uncommon resilience out of necessity, lined with spells and varieties of ivy not entirely natural. Sometimes, the ivy in such places seemed to laugh at passersby, a peculiar green laugh, dry and yet deep, as if below the ivy lay buried some plant-beast and the vines were merely its searching limbs. Sometimes, the ivy scorned the drunken stumblers spilling out from golden light, bewildered, to the streaking swirl of stars framed by the reaching arms of the trees.
So she meant to use the natural properties of the place for an intervention. But the whole point of intervention was surprise; it allowed for nothing that resembled permission.
Mack in the mead-light stood upon the cobblestone street. But his shadow shone across a thicket of bushes. Such a lush, thick shadow. So intelligent and self-aware and dangerous.
It was a moment’s work, but a wrenching, exhausting thing nonetheless.
In the blink of an eye, the thicket’s thorns became more than just part of a plant. They reached out, clung to and pierced the shadow, which writhed there in surprise and pain. Like a marmot pooling into black liquid.
While Kristýna pushed Mack away, toward the fountain. Ripping the shadow from him. Ripping it right good off him, in such a way he cried out, which she covered up by drawing him close and kissing him on the lips. Hoping maybe the kiss would replace the shadow in his mind, in such a way that nothing would change.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mack’s shadow still writhing in the thorns’ embrace. This would not last long. But it would last long enough if she was quick.
She pulled Mack close, as best she was able, stared up at him, stern, unyielding.
“Trust me, my love? Time to run, Mack no truck. Time to run if you don’t want a marmot’s shadow to find you again.”
Mack, in shock. Mack wild-eyed, wrenched out of himself, as if she’d pulled out his spine, not his shadow. The stare he gave her made her wince. Betrayal. Uncertainty. Laid bare to her. Ah, this game was not for the faint-hearted. Not for the weak.
“Mack! Wake up! Wake up now!”
The betrayal faded, and he nodded, and he let her take his hand. There, above the castle, among so many people whose business required secrecy and who lingered in impromptu pubs and beer gardens hidden within mazes of alleys or behind hedge walls, or on the edges of cemeteries with headstones without names or dates.
They ran, together, his rough hand in hers, which was just as rough. Past the fountain and its cheery crowds. Down the quaint cobblestone streets, up high and higher still, gasping for breath in time, but she driven by a kind of mania and sense of loss, Mack by sheer terror. She could feel it. He hadn’t known about the shadow. Hadn’t understood what his clandestine meetings might mean for him.
Mack shadowless. He shivered uncontrollably as they fled, as if it were cold, which is how people reacted at first when they had no shadow of their own. How they reacted when they learned the “people” they trusted didn’t trust them.
Would that be enough for him to tell her the truth?
Chapter Fifty
RETURN OF A KING
Dr. Lambshead. Grandfather. Alive. Much, much larger than life, in fact. Not dead and preserved in an urn back at the mansion. Not murdered by Crowley.
“Why is he a giant now?” A little suspicion in the back of his mind, but it wouldn’t come into focus.
“Never mind that, he’s lucid now. Go talk to him.”
Jonathan should have felt something other than just shock. Relief or joy. But he felt nothing. Nothing but a further hope, a kind of sickness, he knew, this hope, and it was his first question, blurted out without thought.
“Is my mother alive, too?”
“I don’t know,” Crikey said. “Only Dr. Lambshead might know. But he drifts in and out. He has dementia. We keep him comfortable here. We feed him. We keep him hidden. Not even all marmots of the meadows know he is still here. Not all would approve of the risk. But I am a loyal member of the Order.”
“I really must know why he is so enormous. Before I keel over from the shock that he’s alive.” Holding on to that question for dear life, like a flotation device against drowning.
But Crikey got cranky. “Never mind that, I said. He may not be in his right mind for long. Go talk to him.”
Crikey shoved him toward a tall, stout ladder that led up to the coffee table next to Dr. Lambshead. He could just see a huge magnifying glass atop the table, which was more like a dais, at that size.
“So he faked his own death. And my mother came to see him?” It sounded so normal to say those words and yet so weird, too.
“Something like that.”
Jonathan opened his mouth, closed it. All right, then, drown it was. He’d climb. But then he hesitated on the steps, looked back at Crikey. Who was looking up, still irritated.
“And what about—”
“Get on up there. He’s lucid and he’s right there. Ask him yourself.”
Why was he delaying? Perhaps because the gigantic figure was intimidating. Perhaps because until a few seconds ago he had been convinced his grandfather was dead. But Crikey was right. He didn’t have time to adjust. Even as now he felt so very, very small.
He got onto the ladder, had one last question.
“Why do I—?”
“So he can see you, of course. So he can see you, naturally! He can’t see very well. Shout up at him. He can hear well, but you’re tiny. But don’t stay under the magnifying glass very long. You’ll burn up even with no direct sun on it.”
Great. Certainly would not help Dr. Lambshead’s mental state to peer down just in time to see a tiny version of his grandson burst into flames.
“And what about—”
“No time,” Crikey said, and shoved him farther up the ladder.
Jonathan looked back at Crikey, opened his mouth, closed it again. Time to climb.
Soon enough he was up on the dais and Dr. Lambshead’s face was vast and concave and distorted in the lens. He did not seem inclined to notice that Jonathan stood there.
“DR. LAMBSHEAD!” he shouted. “DR. LAMBSHEAD! IT’S YOUR GRANDSON, JONATHAN!”
Dr. Lambshead turned this way and that, then stared down and spotted Crikey. “Is that you, Crikey? Come to visit?”
Good god, but the man’s breath was sour and came swirling down like wind, thankfully broken and diluted by the magnifying glass.
“YES, IT IS CRIKEY!” Crikey shouted, from the side. “BUT, DR. LAMBSHEAD—LOOK AT THE MAGNIFYING GLASS. YOUR GRANDSON HAS COME TO VISIT!”
“The magnifying glass, you say?”
“YES, DR. LAMBSHEAD. JONATHAN LAMBSHEAD IS HERE.”
The great man’s head swiveled down to stare through the magnifying glass. One bloodshot eye shone down upon Jonathan along with the warm wind of his grandfather breathing on him.
“Is that a marpot?”
“NO, IT’S ME, GRANDFATHER!” Jonathan shouted.
“MARPOTS FLOAT AND HAVE FUR,” Crikey shouted. “REMEMBER?”
“Oh, quite right, Crikey. Quite right. Foolish old me.” Dr. Lambshead drew his shawl around himself and shivered. “Hot but cold. Cold but hot. Can’t ever get it right for this old sod. Nothing like the jungles of Borneo and yet exactly like the jungles of Borneo.”
“It’s me, Grandfather,” Jonathan said, not bothering to shout it.
“You’re not Jonathan. Jonathan doesn’t have a beard.”
“It’s still me,” Jonathan insisted.
But then something clicked on behind that bloodshot eye and Dr. Lambshead leaned over and took a better, longer look, other eye squeezed shut to concentrate.
“That is you, Jonathan, isn’t it? Under all that … beard. I believe it is. What an unexpected and delightful surprise. Goodness, I hope Crikey has been a good host. This place can be a bit blonkers at times, if you catch my meaning.”
“OH, I AGREE. IT’S BLOODY BLONKERS. I AM SO GLAD YOU’RE ALIVE.”
“Well, not bloody, I hope,” Dr. Lambshead said, frowning, and ignoring the other half of what Jonathan had shouted. “That’s more the château’s style, wot?” His frown deepened, and some of the age fell away from his features. “But what, really, are you doing here, Jonathan? Stimply was meant to keep you safe, and away from all of this. Places like this. No one is supposed to know I’m here.”
“TOO LATE, GRANDFATHER. MUCH TOO LATE. I’M IN TOO DEEP FOR THAT.”
It was true, and he hadn’t really seen it before. But he was. In too deep. Couldn’t get out.
“BUT I LOST THE WOBBLE.”
“What?”
“I LOST THE WOBBLE.”
“Wait a moment, dear boy. Let me get my hearing trumpet. That will make things better.”
Whereupon Dr. Lambshead pulled out an ancient, huge hearing trumpet that looked more like a Swiss musical instrument. He tapped it and dozens of nectar deer tumbled out and flew away, then he put it to his ear.
“You were saying, Jonathan? Something something gobble?”
“You’ll still have to shout, I’m afraid. That trumpet doesn’t work that well,” Crikey said.
Jonathan sighed. “I LOST THE WOBBLE.”
Dr. Lambshead laughed. “Wobble, my boy. Wobble wobble wobble. Sound a turkey makes in the woods. Or the sound a hunter after a turkey makes. Wobble wobble wobble. Ha ha ha.”
“ER, YES, RATHER,” and Jonathan stole a glance at a worried-looking Crikey.
But in a moment, Dr. Lambshead was back from wherever he’d gone. “I stole it, you know. Might be people—bad people, not even really people if I’m honest—coming for it eventually. Once they realize it’s gone. Stole it from the château, if I’m truthful. Just fine so long as it never comes back.” Dr. Lambshead seemed to shudder at the thought.
“THE CHTEAU PEPPERMINT BLONKERS?”
Dr. Lambshead looked perplexed. “What other château could I possibly mean? Or did I? Steal it from them, I mean? So long ago now. Well, beware the Blonkers, I always say. Coming into focus, that dreadful place. I can feel it in my bones. Your grandmother always used to say ‘What you feel in your bones is the future, not the past.’ Quite right.”
Questions, what questions should he ask? It had never crossed his mind that his grandfather was alive, so he’d not engaged in that particular fantasy. The one where he had questions. For his mother, questions galore. And the two questions he had to ask his grandfather, he could not ask yet.
“WHO SHOULD I TRUST?” A sad question, really. A question you’d ask a fortune teller. He regretted it as soon as he said it.
Dr. Lambshead laughed. “Is that a riddle? Isn’t it clear, my boy. Trust yourself.”
“I DO. BUT WHO ELSE?”
“Well, not this bucktoothed wonder here,” Dr. Lambshead said, pointing at Crikey and chuckling. “Oh, of course I don’t mean that. Crikey’s right as rain. Crikey’s a good old sod. For a burrower. But don’t trust the Wobble. Don’t trust the haunted mansion. Don’t trust anyone whose name is ‘Adolf.’ Also, marpots aren’t much in the trust department, wot? Adorable as they are. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But you have all my telephone messages. Surely I’ve been clear? And the Allies List?”
