The Sweet Far Thing

  Fowlson puts his knife into his mouth and pulls off an apple slice with his teeth. We’re trapped here. There’s nowhere to go but into the Thames.

  “The way I see it, I take you bof in, I’m a hero.” He points his knife at Kartik. “You’re a traitor to the brotherhood, and you”—he shifts the blade toward me—“you ’ave the answer to all our problems.”

  “Can you jump?” Kartik whispers to me. He flicks a glance toward the boat anchored behind us. I nod.

  “Wot’re you luvbirds whisp’rin ’bout?” Fowlson asks.

  “On three,” Kartik whispers. “One, two—”

  I’m too frightened to wait. I leap on the count of two, dragging him down with me, and we fall to the bow of the ship below with a thud that shudders through my entire body.

  “I said three.” Kartik gasps as if his lungs are broken.

  “S-sorry.” I wheeze.

  Fowlson shouts at us from the wharf, and I see him readying to jump.

  “Let’s go.” Kartik yanks me up, and we hobble to the stern, where the boat abuts another, smaller vessel behind it. There’s a small gap between them, but in the dark with the Thames lapping below, it seems a mile. The boat shifts, making it even more precarious.

  “Jump!” Kartik calls. He leaps across the divide, dragging me along with him. “What the devil!” a surprised sailor shouts as we careen into his boat.

  “Surprise inspection!” Kartik calls, and we’re off and running again.

  Another jump and we’re on the embankment. We race over the slick ground at breakneck speed, trying not to tumble. Fowlson and his thugs are close behind. There’s an opening under the street. A sewer.

  “This way!” Kartik shouts, and his words echo. The sewer is so malodorous I want to vomit. I press the back of my hand to my nose.

  “I don’t think I can,” I say, gagging.

  “It’s a way out.”

  We creep into the foul, stinking hole. The walls trickle with moisture. A wash of filth floods the bottom of the tunnel. It seeps into my boots and coats my stockings and I have to fight the bile rising in my throat. The tunnel is alive with movement. Fat black rats scurry on their tiny legs, squeezing suddenly out of small breaks in the walls. Their squeaking cries raise gooseflesh on my arms. My very skin crawls. One bold fellow pokes a nose out near my face and I scream. Kartik clamps a hand over my mouth.

  “Shhh,” he whispers, and even that echoes in the fetid sewer.

  We stand, huddled together in the moist, foul tunnel, listening. There are a constant drip and the hideous scuttle of the rats’ claws. And something else.

  “’Ello, mates. We know you’re in there.”

  Kartik keeps moving, but up ahead, the sewer darkens, and it fills me with dread. I can’t go on.

  “Just close your eyes. I’ll lead you,” he whispers. He comes beside me and wraps his arm around my waist.

  I stand firm. “No. I can’t. I’m—”

  “Gotcha!” Quick as a wink, Fowlson’s men are on us. They grab Kartik, bending his arm behind his back till he grimaces in pain.

  “Now I’m quite put out,” Fowlson says, walking slowly toward us.

  “I gave it to the Order,” I blurt out. “You’re right—I lied to you before. But just this morning I met with Miss McCleethy. She prevailed upon me to see her wisdom. I joined hands with her in the realms. The Order truly does have the power now. I swear it!”

  Fowlson’s expression softens. He looks worried, confused. “This mornin’?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  Fowlson’s so close I can smell the apple on him, see his jaw tighten with new anger. “If that’s true, there’s nuffin’ to keep me from cuttin’ Kartik here and now.” He presses the blade to Kartik’s throat. “Poor Brother Kartik. Shall I tell you wha’ ’appened to ’im, miss?”

  Kartik struggles against the knife. “We pulled ’im in. Do you know ’ow long a man can last under our scrutiny?” Fowlson puts his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the heat of his breath. “I’ve broken souls in less than a day. But our Kartik, ’e wouldn’t bend. Wouldn’t tell us wot ’e knows about you and the realms. ’Ow long was it, Kartik? Five days? Six? I lost count. But in the end, ’e broke like I knew ’e would.”

  “I’ll kill you,” Kartik gasps, the knife to his throat.

  Fowlson laughs. “Is that your achin’ heel, mate? Don’t want ’er to know?” Fowlson has caught the scent of Kartik’s fear and he wants blood. He presses the knife hard to Kartik’s throat, but his words to me are harder. “’E went bloomin’ mad in the end. Started seein’ Amar in ’is ’ead. Old Amar ’ad a message for him: ‘You’ll be the death of ’er, brother.’ An’ whatever ’e saw next must ’ave been awful indeed, because ’e screamed and screamed till ’e didn’t ’ave no screams left and there weren’t nuffin’ but air comin’. And that’s when I knew I’d broken ’im after all.” Fowlson’s angry grin spreads. “But I can see why ’e wouldn’t want to tell you that story.”

  Kartik’s eyes are moist. He seems broken again, and I should like to kill Fowlson for what he did. I won’t let Kartik be hurt again. Not while, I can stop it.

  “It’s Achilles’,” I say.

  Fowlson’s knife falters for a moment. “Wot?”

  “Achilles’ heel, not aching heel, you bloody stupid fool.”

  His eyes go wide as he laughs. “Oh, that’s a pretty mouf you’ve got, luv. When I finish wif ’im, I’ll cut it wide open.”

  “No, I think not.” Quickly as a hare, I’ve got my hand on his arm. Power rushes through me like the Thames itself. Fierce light fills the tunnel, catching the look of frightened surprise on Fowlson’s face as we’re joined, his thoughts pulsing through mine.

  His bully rage and cruelty run through my veins for only a second. They are replaced by a fleeting memory—a small boy, a dark kitchen, a pot of water, and a large scowling woman, her lips tight in a sneer. I don’t know what it means, but I feel the child’s dread. Indeed, my stomach tightens in fear. It is gone in an instant, and now the magic is fully alive in me.

  “Yes,” I say. “I lied. And now, I shall have to ask you to remain here, Mr. Fowlson.”

  I harness the magic to shape what’s in his mind and in the goons’ minds as well. You cannot follow. I don’t say it, but the effect is the same. Mr. Fowlson is surprised to find that his legs will not obey his commands. They are frozen in place. The knife falls from his fingers; his hands hang limply at his sides, and Kartik is freed. Fowlson’s hooligans can only look to each other as if they might discover an explanation. Try as they might, they cannot move.

  “Wot are you doing to me, you witch!” Fowlson screeches.

  “You brought this on yourself, Mr. Fowlson,” I reply. “You are to leave my brother alone.”

  Fowlson strains to free himself. “Turn me loose, or I’ll tear you apart!”

  “That’s quite enough. Promise me.”

  He grins, and his defiance infuriates me. “The only thing I’ll promise you is this: I don’t care about any of it now. It’s you and me. I’ll come for you, you little witch. You’ll beg for mercy.”

  The magic sours inside me. I can’t quite feel myself anymore. I feel only a rage so fierce it blinds. I want to hurt him, to bend him to my will. I want him to know who has the power here. You’ll be sorry….

  Fowlson’s eyes open wide with a new fear. Slowly, he falls, his face lowering ever closer to the watery muck on the floor of the sewer. He cannot speak; my rage won’t allow it. My eyelids flutter. Kartik speaks reason to me but I do not want to hear it; I want only to bathe in retribution.

  Something darts across my soul. The boy in the kitchen. The angry woman rolls up her sleeves. The little boy cringes before her terrible rage. You miserable bastard, she curses, I’ll show you respect. I’ll tear you apart. She plunges his head into the pot of water and holds it while the boy thrashes. You’ll beg for mercy! The boy comes up gasping and she plunges him under once more. I feel his fear as he comes
up, again and again. He is near to collapsing, and for a moment, he considers it, considers flooding his lungs with that water to make her happy, to make her right. But he cannot do it. He fails. She pulls his head up an inch, and he manages to sputter one word: mercy. She hits him hard and her ring cuts his cheek. He curls up in the corner, pressing his hand to the deep cut, but he doesn’t dare call out. Tomorrow he will try harder. Tomorrow she will love him. Tomorrow he will not hate her so very much.

  It’s as if I’ve been hit. The magic wavers; I stumble, slamming my palms against the wet wall to stop my fall. Fowlson’s face is an inch from the filthy water. Stop, I tell myself. Stop. The magic settles inside me, dogs circling down to sleep. My head aches and my hands shake.

  Fowlson springs up, gasping and trembling.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice raw. “Your mother…she hurt you. She gave you that scar.”

  Fowlson struggles to speak. “You shut it about my mother! She were a saint!”

  “No,” I whisper. “She was a monster. She hated you.”

  “You shut it!” he screams, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” I protest. “Believe me.”

  “You’ll be sorry for that, luv.” He turns to Kartik. “I ’ope you learned a lot during your days wif us, brother. You’ll be needin’ it.”

  Fowlson swings at me, though I am out of reach. He needs to do it; it’s all he has left. “I’ll crush you, you bitch!”

  I should slap him for it, but I won’t. I can see only that little boy in the corner of the kitchen.

  “The magic won’t last long. An hour, maybe two at most. And once you’re free, you’re not to come after us, Mr. Fowlson, or I shall unleash my powers again.”

  Kartik takes my hand and leads me out of the sewer. We leave Fowlson, swinging and cursing at the dark, behind us.

  Walking along the dirty Thames is a relief. The river air that seemed so foul an hour ago is sweet compared to the suffocating odor in the sewer. The wracking coughs and the tuneless songs of the mud larks float through the fog like phantoms. A sudden shout cuts the mist. Someone has found a lump of coal, and the news is greeted with excitement and a great thrashing of water as every one of the mud larks rushes to find the sweet spot. But it turns out to be nothing more than a rock. I hear the heavy plink as it’s tossed back into the Thames riverbed, that graveyard of hope.

  “I need to sit,” I say.

  We wander down by the wharves and rest for a moment, looking out at the boats bobbing on the river.

  “Are you all right?” I ask after a long silence.

  He shrugs. “You heard what he said. And think less of me for it.”

  “That’s not true,” I say. “Amar said…” I stop, thinking of my recent encounter with Kartik’s brother in the Winterlands. But I’m not ready to disclose that just yet. “In your dream, he said you’d be the death of me. Is that why you’ve kept your distance?”

  He doesn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, that is part of it.”

  “What is the other part?”

  Kartik’s face clouds. “I…it’s nothing.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want to become part of the alliance?” I ask.

  He nods. “If I don’t enter the realms, the dream can’t come true. I can’t hurt you.”

  “You said ignorance wasn’t destiny,” I remind him. “If you don’t go into the realms, you’ll only not have been in the realms. Besides, there are hundreds of other ways to do me in here, if you wish. You could pitch me in the Thames. Shoot me in a duel.”

  “Hang you with the entrails of a large animal,” he says, joining in, a smile forming.

  “Abandon me to Mrs. Nightwing forever so that I might be pecked to death.”

  “Ah, that’s cruel, even for me.” Kartik shakes his head, laughing.

  “You find my imminent death so amusing?” I tease.

  “No. It isn’t that. You bested Fowlson,” he says, grinning madly now. “It was…extraordinary.”

  “I thought you found my power frightening.”

  “I did. I do. A bit,” he admits. “But, Gemma, you could change the world.”

  “That should take far more than my power,” I say.

  “True. But change needn’t happen all at once. It can be small gestures. Moments. Do you understand?” He’s looking at me differently now, though I cannot say how. I only know I need to look away.

  The ships’ masts press against the fog, letting us know they’re here. In the distance there’s a foghorn. Some vessel is slipping out farther toward the sea.

  “Such a mournful sound. So lonely,” I say, hugging my knees to my chest. “Do you ever feel that way?”

  “Lonely?”

  I search for the words. “Restless. As if you haven’t really met yourself yet. As if you’d passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt—“Ah! There I am! I’ve been missing that piece!” But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it.”

  He nods, and I think he’s appeasing me. I feel stupid for having said it. It’s sentimental and true, and I’ve revealed a part of myself I shouldn’t have.

  “Do you know what I think?” Kartik says at last.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.”

  And with that, he leans forward as I do. We meet in a kiss that is not borrowed but shared. His hand cups the back of my neck. My hands find his face. I pull him closer. The kiss deepens. The hand at my neck slides down my back, drawing me into his chest.

  Noises come from the docks. We fly apart, but I want more. Kartik grins. His lips look slightly swollen from our kissing, and I wonder if mine do as well.

  “I shall be arrested,” he says, nodding toward my trousers and noting my boyish appearance.

  Big Ben’s commanding chime reminds us that the hour is late.

  “We’d best go,” Kartik says. “That enchantment won’t last forever, and I shouldn’t like to be standing here when Fowlson and his men are free.”

  “Indeed.”

  We pass by the pools, where the mud larks sift. And for only a few seconds, I let the magic loose again.

  “Oi! By all the saints!” a boy cries from the river.

  “Gone off the dock?” an old woman calls. The mud larks break into cackles.

  “’S not a rock!” he shouts. He races out of the fog, cradling something in his palm. Curiosity gets the better of the others. They crowd about trying to see. In his palm is a smattering of rubies. “We’re rich, mates! It’s a hot bath and a full belly for every one of us!”

  Kartik eyes me suspiciously. “That was a strange stroke of good fortune.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “I don’t suppose that was your doing.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I say.

  And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.

  Freya takes us toward Spence. The new moon offers us little help, but the horse knows the way and there’s not much for us to do but ride and rest after the adventure of our evening.

  “Gemma,” Kartik says after a long while, “I have upheld my end of the bargain. Now you must tell me what you know of Amar.”

  “He spoke to me. He said I should give you a message.”

  “What was it?”

  “He said to tell you to remember your heart in all things, that it is where your honor and your destiny will be found. Does it mean anything to you?”

  “It is something he would say from time to time—that the eye could be misled, but that the heart was true.”

  “Some part of your brother remains, then.”

  “It would have been better if it hadn’t.”

  We settle into quiet again. The road smooths. I’m so tired my head nods against Kartik’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, yawning.

  “It’s
all right,” he answers softly, and my head eases against his back again. My eyes are heavy. I could sleep for days. We pass the graveyard on our left. Crows perch on the headstones, and just before my eyes shut, I think I see a faint glimmer. The crows disappear into it, and everything on the hill goes dark and still as death.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  * * *

  THE MORNING BREAKS WITH A FUROR. LOUD SHOUTING comes from the lawn. There is trouble, and trouble draws us in as a carnival barker would. When I open my window and stick my head out, I count at least a dozen others poking from other windows, including Felicity’s. It is so early that Miss McCleethy is still in her dressing gown, a cap upon her head. Mrs. Nightwing wears her customary dark dress with that preposterous bustle at the back. I’ve no doubt she sleeps in it. For all I know, she was born in full corsetry.

  Mr. Miller has Mother Elena’s arm in one hand; in the other is her bloody pail.

  “We found the vandal, and jus’ like I said, it’s one of them!” he shouts.

  “Here now, Mr. Miller. Unhand her at once,” Mrs. Nightwing commands.

  “You won’t be so quick to say that, m’um, when you hear what she done. She’s the one wot painted the hex marks. And who knows what else besides.”

  Mother Elena’s face is gaunt. Her dress has grown bigger on her. “I try to protect us!”

  The Gypsies stream over the lawn from the camp, drawn by the clamor. Kartik hurries behind, pulling up his suspenders, his shirt half undone, and warmth pools in my stomach.

  One of the Gypsy women steps forward. “She is not well.”

  Mr. Miller doesn’t let go of Mother Elena’s arm. “No one’s goin’ anywhere till them Gyps tell me where to find Tambley and Johnny.”

  “We did not take them.” Ithal marches down the lawn, pushing up his sleeves as if he would fight. He takes hold of Mother Elena’s other arm.

  Mr. Miller tugs hard on the old woman, making her stumble. “What sort of people travel round all the time?” he shouts. “People what can’t be trusted, that’s who! No better than jungle savages! I’ll ask you again: Where’s my men?”