Chapter 17 #2
Mouse stared at him, stunned. Finally, she spoke. “A pinky finger for a house, but an eye for a few hours of persuasion?”
“Using magic to manipulate a living thing takes much more energy than using it against something inanimate.” He held up his hand to stop her before she cut in.
“Think of it as though I am borrowing your eye for as long as the enchantment holds. A precaution, so I can watch what is happening between you and the solicitor.”
“You would not misuse my eye?” Mouse asked, teetering on the edge of self-disgust. Once she had been so scornful of those who bargained with Faeries, and here she was, seriously considering a second deal.
Thornwood laid a hand over his heart. When he spoke, his words and tone were solemn. “I promise I will not misuse it.”
She swallowed, looking down at her hands. “And it will not be permanent, like my finger?”
“No, I will only take it for as long as you need to use my persuasion spell.”
They had little time left to repair Thistlemarsh. She needed any help she could get.
“I accept,” she whispered.
There was a sharp pain behind her eye, but then it was gone, leaving only a faint tingle.
Thornwood wrapped his fingers around Mouse’s clasped hands, squeezing them once.
The sleeping woman slumped further down in her chair.
Mouse avoided glancing at her own reflection in the train car window, afraid of what she might see.
The train pulled into Victoria Station. Although it lacked the country charm of Tithe’s Spring Festival decorations, it sported a more glamorous display. Thousands of flowers twined around the arched metal beams above the tracks.
People rushed along the platform and into the city. Noise blared from every direction, from the screech of the trains to the chattering crowds to the cars bustling on the street beyond. Mouse’s skin tingled with excitement. More things happened in a city in a day than in a century in Tithe.
They followed the flow of people out onto the street. Thornwood lagged, and she had to pull him along after her several times. As much as she wanted to be annoyed at him for being distracted—they were on a mission, after all—she could not help but enjoy his wonder at the modern marvels.
He gasped at the first car they passed.
“With such a fine automobile of your own, I’m surprised you’re so interested in the common or garden varieties here,” Mouse teased.
“You know as well as I do that mine is a spell,” he groused. “I saw a photograph of a Rolls-Royce in one of your newspapers and modeled it after that. It uses an enormous amount of magic, but luckily it is a self-sufficient spell.”
“And your driver? He is an interesting fellow.”
“Did you try to speak to him?”
“Of course I did. I brought him coffee and biscuits as well.”
Thornwood laughed. “I’m sure his response shocked you.”
Mouse did not deign to answer, but her silence was clear enough.
“Rest assured: He is not a captive. On the contrary, he volunteered his services.”
Mouse wasn’t sure she wanted to know more.
“You like cars. Are there any other mortal inventions that catch your eye? After all, your parents were interested in our world, correct?”
Thornwood smiled. “My father was fascinated by anything mortal, especially the sciences. The ingenuity to achieve something, on command, that should only happen through magic or miracle fascinated him.”
“And your mother was more interested in the arts?” she asked.
“Yes, she always admired the most bizarre artists in London and Paris, like Aphra Behn and Joseph Ducreux.” He shook himself. “I suppose the other human invention I enjoyed was the coffeehouse. I spent most of my time in them before my banishment.”
“With a den of mortal revolutionaries?” Mouse asked lightly.
“Faeries, mostly, although we had a fair share of mortal artists and scientists. Much to my father’s despair, I inherited my mother’s love of art, although I was not quite as partisan as either of them regarding my interests.”
“I don’t know why, but the idea of Faeries being fascinated by humans amuses me. Considering how much work we mortals put into daydreaming about you, it is not what I would imagine.”
“I suppose we are attracted to each other’s strengths. Mortals long for magic, while Faeries long for technology. But neither of us can handle the other.”
“So, you build motorcars out of sticks and stones.”
“And you generate magic with engines.”
“I never thought of it that way. Imagine what would happen if we joined forces now.”
“I shudder to think,” Thornwood said, and Mouse laughed, but secretly she was beginning to agree.
The city opened before them into a series of ever-splitting passages.
“There are so many sounds,” Thornwood said, his voice as soft as falling sand.
“Of course. It’s a city.”
“And the streets are so wide.”
“In this part of town, yes, but it varies greatly.”
“The last time I was here, it was one of the largest cities in the world. Now it is so much bigger.”
She let him take everything in for a moment. “I remember when I first came to the country from the city. It was as though all the color was stripped from the world, leaving only gray. I could understand that the country was better for my health, but it was dull compared to life in town.”
“You lost your mother in the city,” Thornwood said.
Mouse nodded. “When I was a child. She was ill for a long time. We knew it was coming. She wrote my uncle a letter begging him to take on Roger, to raise him as an aristocrat. Roger was eight at the time. I was six. The letter was enough, and a week after my mother died, Roger went to live at Thistlemarsh.”
“But you remained with your father.”
Mouse pulled her lips into a tight smile. She could feel the edge of her teeth behind them, waiting to bite.
Instead, she said, “I was not the heir, so yes, I remained with Father until we came to Thistlemarsh together when I was twelve.”
A wave crashed over Mouse: memories of Roger, of her mother, and of her time alone at Thistlemarsh when her father was dead. When her mother died, their family crumbled, and Mouse was too young (too late) to save it. Under the barrage of painful memories, Mouse abandoned the story.
“We had better get on. We are losing time, and our return ticket is for this evening.”
London wrapped them up in its flow, delivering them to the Underground with insistent hands. Once on the carriage, Thornwood watched the tunnels go by with wide-eyed wonder.
As the train raced under the city, Mouse noticed that Thornwood’s skin paled and then grayed against his traveling clothes.
At first, she believed it was a trick of the light, but as they threaded through the tunnels, Mouse saw that he was truly gray, almost transparent.
The touch of his blinding glamour faded.
He swayed slowly, and when he moved, it was as though every step took an immense effort.
“What’s wrong?” Mouse whispered as the train stopped.
“Green,” was all he said back. “I must get to somewhere green.”
Mouse threw his arm over her shoulder and elbowed her way through commuters clogging the platform.
She did not let her thoughts rest on any of the passersby until she spotted a man in a dark uniform stationed by a stairwell leading up into the London air.
A newspaper shielded his upper body. He lowered it as Mouse approached, but his eyes followed the words on the paper rather than fixing on her face.
“Where is the nearest park?” she asked.
The man looked Thornwood up and down. “He drunk?”
“No. He fainted in the carriage—he needs fresh air. The nearest park, please.”
The man did not look convinced, but he gave her vague directions to a “patch of green” a few blocks from the exit.
“They serve coffee just outside, should he need a bit of a pick-me-up,” he said before returning to his paper.
Mouse supported Thornwood up the stairs into the city. The small park the man suggested was merely a grove of trees around a statue and muddy grass, enclosed by an unlocked spiked steel fence, but Thornwood collapsed into it in relief.
He pressed his face into the earth, and the grass rose around him and pulled him down into it. It glowed where the blades touched his skin. Each edge left a slight impression on him, as thin as a strand of hair.
A little red coffee stand leaned against the park fence.
Luckily, the attendant faced the houses and could not see the Faerie face down in the luminescent grass behind him.
Mouse was unsure if the people in the houses overlooking the square could see Thornwood through the trees, but it was not something she could control, so she tried to put it out of her mind.
Mouse bought two coffees from the attendant, one with cream and sugar and the other black.
By the time she returned to Thornwood, he was sitting up.
He stared at the statue of a Faerie man (Oberon, Mouse presumed from his medieval attire) dominating half of the small garden.
A swath of red paint ran from the statue’s head to his feet and down the pedestal.
“Feeling better?” she asked, handing him his cup. He took a large swig, closing his eyes as he swallowed, and shuddered.
“Yes,” he said. His voice had thickened as though he was talking over a sore throat. He looked back at the statue. “Did a human do that?”
Mouse followed his gaze to the red mark down the statue’s body. “I assume so. No one has seen a Faerie in—”
“Over a hundred years, I know,” Thornwood cut her off. “But why the paint?”
She grimaced. “When Faeries left, they took their magic with them, and the benefits that it afforded us mortals. Technology advanced very rapidly afterward, as people were accustomed to a certain lifestyle, but when it did, many others were angry.”
“Angry at the technology or the Faeries?”
“Both, I suppose.” Mouse shrugged. “The need for weavers was replaced by the need for machine attendants, et cetera. Of course, people were angry about losing their way of life.”