Natural light vanished almost immediately, as they passed from the glass-paneled roof arching over the station into a proper tunnel. The air was indeed foul, though now and again the train ran through an open cutting, houses rising high to either side, to ventilate the track. Cyma found the noise and motion deeply unpleasant, but so long as she did not dwell upon the terrible mass of iron that was dragging her along at such speed, her fear faded; she did not need Mr. Harding’s hand very much after all.
She wished, though, that he would not persist in extolling the virtues of the underground railway. The movement of cargo into and across the city did not interest her in the slightest, and every time he spoke approvingly of slums razed by the construction, she could not help but think of the Onyx Hall. What would Mr. Harding say, if he knew about that?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself, staring fixedly at an advertisement for bicycles posted on the far side of the carriage. Soon enough, you won’t have to worry about any of this any longer. And that was why she’d come: to face the thing she feared, and to know its power over her would not last.
The train carried them through Kensington, through Westminster, into the Embankment that now chained the great Thames. That, at least, was one improvement she could applaud; the construction of sewers to prevent human waste from flowing into the river was beneficial even to fae. But as they departed Temple Station, she found her hands tightening upon her parasol once more.
Was the shudder that went down her spine her imagination at work? Or did it strike at the exact moment when the carriage passed the buried River Fleet, crossing the line of the old City wall and entering the precincts of the Onyx Hall?
Cyma found herself peering out the window as if she would be able to see the faerie palace in the shadows. An absurd thought; the picks and shovels of mortals would never breach the enchantments, even crumbling as they were. But the rails that now carried her were the ones breaking those selfsame enchantments: them, and the iron pipes for gas, and the loss of the wall itself. But the railway most of all.
Mr. Harding led her out again at Mansion House Station, having explained the situation to a conductor and paid the difference on his own ticket for Charing Cross. They emerged into the heart of the City, a stone’s throw from the Bank of England, as if all the intervening miles of London had vanished. “Will you be all right?” Mr. Harding asked her.
“Oh, yes,” Cyma said, smiling at him with so much cheer he must think her deranged. “Thank you so much for accompanying me. I don’t want to keep you from your business any longer—”
When he was safely on his way back to Charing Cross, Cyma let out a tremendous exhalation of relief and sagged against the blackened wall of the station, not caring if she made her dress filthy. I did it. Faced the demon—rode it—and here I am, alive still.
Perhaps tomorrow she would do it again, and laugh at the thing she had so recently feared.
Made bold by that thought, she stepped toward the road, hand outstretched to wave down a hansom cab. The sun was setting; it was time to go claim her freedom.
Cromwell Road, South Kensington: May 8, 1884
Eliza counted the days like a clock counting down to midnight: twelve days until the next meeting of the London Fairy Society. Ten days. Seven. Four. Three days until she would leave the Kitterings behind forever, and go seek Owen’s salvation elsewhere. She would give her notice the day before the meeting, and shake the nonexistent dust of Cromwell Road from her shoes.
The morning she was to give notice, Eliza went upstairs, as usual, to clean the cinders from the various grates.
Miss Kittering was already awake.
The drapes were thrown wide, and the young woman had what looked like all her garments out of the wardrobe and draped across every piece of available furniture: the unmade bed, the chair, even the writing desk. It might have suggested she was about to run away for good, except that when Eliza entered, she was smiling delightedly into the mirror, holding her least favorite walking dress against her body. More than anything, she seemed like a young girl who had gotten into her mother’s jewels, and was trying them all on with abandon.
Some of her delight faded when she saw Eliza in the mirror. Clutching the dress with a faint air of guilt, Miss Kittering peered across the room as if trying to study her face, then said, “Oh. It’s you. What do you want?”
“Ah…” Eliza was startled enough that she almost answered in her natural voice. Even now, she couldn’t risk others hearing it. When she was certain of her accent, she said, “I’m here to clean the grate, and lay a fire, and open the drapes, miss. Is—is there something you need?”
“Oh, no, I’m quite well—you can go about your work.” Miss Kittering waved her hand vaguely in Eliza’s direction, then hesitated, as if she were not sure of the answer she’d just given.
Was she drunk? Eliza supposed she might have sneaked some of the brandy from the library. Miss Kittering was humming as she sorted through the dresses. She never hummed.
Unsure of what to think, Eliza knelt and began her work on the grate, casting glances over her shoulder when she thought Miss Kittering wouldn’t notice. The third time, Eliza spotted something shoved underneath the bed—something that looked a great deal like a rope made from knotted sheets.
So not the brandy from the library, then. Gin, perhaps, from some gambling hell, that she’d sneaked off to in the middle of the night?
“What are you doing?”
Eliza jerked, thinking Miss Kittering had noticed her staring under the bed. But no; the young woman was looking in perplexity at the grate, where Eliza had begun the task of rubbing in black lead. “I’m polishing the grate, miss,” she said, even more baffled.
“Do you do that every day?”
The clever course of action would have been to answer her questions, and hopefully draw out her reasons for asking them. But Eliza was so unsettled by the oddity of the entire encounter that she said what actually came into her head. “Why in the name of the Blessed Virgin do you care?”
Miss Kittering flinched back. Then she went very still, eyes wide; then she laughed, and in that sound was an unmistakable note of nervous relief. “Oh, I—I suppose I don’t. Carry on.”
It was inexplicable—or so Eliza thought, until an explanation came into her head. An explanation so outlandish, it should have been utterly impossible; and so it would have been, to any young woman not convinced her love had been stolen away by the faeries.
She watched Miss Kittering move about the room, playing with the strands of her golden hair, and saw the way the girl peered at things; and Eliza knew that none of it, from the curiosity to the way she walked, was anything Miss Kittering would ever have done.
Hand gripping the brush so tight it hurt, Eliza thought, That is not Miss Kittering.
She had been stolen away—and replaced by a changeling.
The Goblin Market, Onyx Halclass="underline" May 9, 1884
Fae did not dream. It was one of many things for which they envied mortals: the ability to experience strange fantasies as they slept, whether born of fears or their dearest wishes come true. Fae could imagine; under certain conditions they could hallucinate; on rare occasions, they could receive visions, whether of the past, the future, or something happening in a distant land. But when they slept, their minds filled with nothing more than a black absence of thought.
So when the world began to tremble around Dead Rick as he lay in his secret refuge, he knew at once that it was real.