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Come now, come now, the fairy said
come to my humble home
Its gates are spun of silver-web
and finest dragon-bone.
I toss’d a coin up to the sky
I gave you the key
The winding road that leads to me
starts by the hanging tree.
The Castle of Forget-me-do
is built upon a cloud
Blind beetles and autumn leaves
make up its banners proud.
He’s lost between the pages
and the time is all too short
Take up the path of dreaming dared
to the mad fairy’s court.
”What?” cried Childermass. He glared at Vinculus who was cleaning his toenails with a pen-knife. “What did you say just now?”
“Ooh, now he listens. After days of telling me to be quiet, sit there, don’t do that, that is not for eating, he deigns to regard me. However shall I survive?”
The living legacy of John Uskglass collapsed from his cross-legged position to his back and appeared for all intents and purposes to have been slain by this honour. Childermass prodded at him with his foot.
“The song, you charlatan. The one you sung.”
A blue eye peeped at him through dirty fingers.
“It's one of them new ones. I think it is somewhere here…” Vinculus started to remove another ancient stocking and squinted at the blue writing twining round his ankle. “Here! This one came up a week ago.”
“A week, and you said nothing!”
“You were busy with all those high and mighty dispatches from London.”
“How am I supposed to keep up with you if you go on changing like that?” Childermass grumbled and sat down on the narrow bed to have a closer look at the offending limb. “And how come you know what it says?”
“I heard the tune and the words came with it. Sometimes it happens like that.”
At that moment something knocked on the window. The urgent knocking was accompanied by the sound of cracking glass.
“Oh, for the love of –”
Childermass rushed to the other end of the small attic room and opened the window. A burst of white feathers tumbled in and landed on the desk, knocking over an inkwell. The barn-owl looked distinctly disoriented. In its beak it held a rolled-up message which was sealed with a red, important-looking seal and tied with a silk ribbon.
Childermass picked up the message, and the owl screeched at him once accusingly and then took off. The tips of its wings shook ink-spots all over his notes.
He opened the message, read the contents and threw it on the table with a huff.
“Damn them and their hedge-magicians. They have no bloody sense in their heads. Sending messages by birds? Next time it will be a choir of rats.”
“Is it the fancy folks in London begging you to find Strange for them because they are afraid of fairies?”
Childermass did not confirm this nor did he deny it. He closed the window and tapped carefully on the glass to see if it still held. Then he drew the yellow curtain (a colour which seemed to delight Vinculus in particular) and turned the mirror to face the wall. For good measure, he moved the night-stand so that its leg covered a suspicious-looking mouse-hole. Then he sat down to regard his notes with a frown.
“You would do it if it wasn’t them telling you to,” Vinculus said in a sing-song voice.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“You miss him, magician.” The ragged man gave him a knowing look. “He regarded you like an equal, and you liked it.”
Childermass’s frown deepened as he leaned back in his chair.
“Being both Norrell and Strange for England is not all one could hope it to be. I do not want it, for one thing. Government folks bother me day and night. Suddenly I am responsible for every magical incident in England!”
“You wish to be left in peace to read your book?”
“Indeed.”
Then his countenance darkened for he realised who he sounded like, and he turned his back to Vinculus in a very bad temper.
This did not change the fact that Vinculus was right. Childermass was clever enough to admit that, if only to himself.
After the disappearance of Norrell and Strange, Childermass had found himself in a peculiar position. Having lost his employer, he had also lost his source of income. He had in his possession a book of unimaginable value which could in no way be turned to money. He was both highly regarded and looked down upon by the magical societies. The government did not know what to make of him, so they addressed him like a servant or a soldier in their pay. Having been both, he took no particular fancy to this. When he was offered a position in the newly founded Department of Magical Reconnaissance, he took a certain pleasure in turning them down.
Understanding and interpreting the Book was his singular focus, and the Book was written in the Raven King’s letters in several fairy dialects dead and living. Childermass and Vinculus travelled up and down the land in search of scholars who claimed a proficiency in the philology of the Other Lands, or ordinary folk who were said to have been whisked off to Faerie and returned without remembering a word of English. They lived a vagabonding life and often relied upon the hospitality of the societies. Sometimes they stayed at Starecross Hall until Childermass and Segundus’s debates got too heated or Vinculus wreaked havoc in the wine-cellar – an inevitable occurrence despite Mr Segundus’s best efforts to hide the door by magic.
Much of Childermass's time was spent in keeping an eye on Vinculus, for he was a most troublesome book: changes appeared in his text without any warning, and he had the unfortunate habit of wandering off whenever he grew bored. Childermass transcribed everything painstakingly in his notebooks and thanked his fortune that he did not have to rely on the backs of bills and shopping lists anymore.[1] The bits and pieces he was able to decipher hinted at great wonders past and future – the fate of England itself, if only he was able to read it. He was equally often left full of wonder and frustration.
Childermass would have been content had the government not thought it appropriate to pester him about every fairy-related crisis which upon the return of magic to England had greatly increased in number. He rather suspected Mr Segundus had given them some hints about his whereabouts and intended to have a word with him about it.
He also had a lot to say about the manner in which they contacted him, for when good old-fashioned Stern Letters shewed no effect, the task was delegated to the Department of Magical Reconnaissance. The Department employed a flock of aspiring magicians with little skill or subtlety, and Childermass was subjected to Threatening Visions and Dreams of Impending Catastrophe. Messages were carried to him in beaks and paws. Writing appeared on mirrors and upon cutlery. All of these Childermass countered with ever-thinning patience.
When a choir of rats did appear in the middle of a street in York and started singing a solemn hymn to him in high and whining voices,[2] he turned on his heel.
“This is it,” he was heard scowling, “this is bloody it!” and he stormed off to look for Strange.
Although Childermass had been reluctant to take up the search on the bidding of others, it was the kind of thing that generally appealed to him. Mr Norrell had often told him to get to the bottom of one thing or another, and the hunting down and uncovering of secrets always made his eyes a little bit brighter and his crooked grin a little bit more pronounced. He had impersonated everything from woodcutters to milliners – on one memorable occasion he had been an uncouth Professor of Natural History newly arrived from the provinces and unaccustomed to the strong spirits served at London parties. It could be argued that on occasion he had gone above and beyond of what could reasonably be expected in the performance of his duties. No amount of servile spirit would explain it all, and to everyone who knew him it was uncomfortably clear that John Childermass did what he did for one reason only: because it amused him.
Now here was a task which promised to be both challenging and interesting. The rewards, too, might be worth the trouble. Strange was the only one who had seen through his shadow-tricks (perfected through years along with a set of other less than respectable skills) with shocking ease. It would please Childermass greatly if he were the one to puzzle out Strange in turn.
First Childermass did what he always did when he was perplexed about some thing or another. Under Vinculus’s always-laughing eyes he laid out his battered cards of Marseilles and read Strange’s fortune. But the cards did not reveal anything to him. He laid them out three times, and each reading contradicted the others. It was as if the subject of the reading did not exist.
He then filled a silver basin with water and performed a spell of finding he had learned from Norrell long ago quite without the magician’s notice. But Heaven, Hell, Earth and Faerie all refused to come up with Jonathan Strange.
He tried every spell he could remember or come up with, including a few he had deciphered from the Book of John Uskglass. None of them had any effect whatever.
Vinculus observed all this and offered unwelcome commentary.
“You won’t find him with spells like that. Not if he does not wish to be found.”
“What would you know about it, Book?” Childermass said, very much irritated.
But the Book only whistled a merry tune at him and refused to be interrogated further. Childermass gave Vinculus some money to spend at the tavern to get some peace and suspected this had been the man’s purpose all along.
Fortunately, magic is not the only way to find a misplaced person. Indeed it may not be one of the best. From his connexions Childermass learned that Arabella Strange was living in Italy with Flora Greysteel and Lady Pole with whom she had become fast friends. He wrote to her and received a letter promptly without any magical assistance. Arabella told him that she had not heard of Strange in years, but she assured him that Strange had most likely buried his nose in a book and forgotten the passing of time. “For time passes differently in the fairy lands, does it not? And he never was much aware of it anyway whenever he got interested in something. I would not worry if I were you, Mr Childermass.”
Why Arabella Strange thought Childermass worried was a mystery. But the letter made him anxious despite its reassuring quality, for it told him two things: that Strange was likely lost somewhere in Faerie, and that Arabella did not hold out much hope of seeing her husband again. Childermass did not know whether she had received some communication from Strange, but she seemed content with the life she had established on the continent in female company.
The winter turned to spring while Childermass exhausted all his methods for finding an errant magician. Many times he cursed the loss of Norrell’s books. No one seemed any more informed of the present whereabouts of Strange and Norrell than Childermass himself.
“At least you know the particulars of their disappearance,” Mr Segundus offered in a consoling manner over a cup of tea.
Segundus and Honeyfoot had invited Childermass to stay with them at Starecross Hall when they heard he had taken up the search for Strange. Childermass was annoyed to learn that Segundus was indeed in contact with someone who knew what he was up to. But when he put it to the question, he was parried with “I am merely a magician who knows his Duty to his country, sir” and a reassuring smile which deflected all harsh questions.
Presently Childermass stared into the fire which burned with a sooty orange flame in the fireplace.
“Aye. They went up to the sky in a great cloud of black.”
“You told me it was the work of the – of the Raven King.”
“That is what Vinculus says. That the two magicians were a spell spun by the Raven King to bring magic back to England.”
Segundus hesitated. “And do you have any idea what he intended to do with them afterwards?”
Childermass smiled. “I know my King, and I know that kings, especially those of Faerie, often forget things which are no longer convenient for them.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to advise you –”
“On with it, Mr Segundus.”
“Might it not be worth your while to talk to the last personages who saw Jonathan Strange?”
Childermass frowned. He had already got his answer from Arabella. “Mr Segundus, do you suggest I go talk to the trees and flowers?”
Segundus’s face coloured. “And to the sky, yes.”
Childermass gave that a moment’s thought. “That makes perfect sense.”
Leaving his teacup nigh-untouched, he put on his greatcoat and went out at once without heeding the cold spring rain battering on the windows. The air smelled fresh and sharp, and it made him feel sure he was about to get his answer. He knew a spell to the right effect, and these stones and trees, every thing in the landscape was familiar to him.
He walked upon the moor and asked the rocks. The rocks told him that Jonathan Strange had neither walked upon them nor been buried under them.
He asked the rivers, and they tugged at his ankles and splashed on the tails of his coat. The rivers told him they had neither borne the man away nor swallowed him.
He asked the sky, and it told him it had last seen Jonathan Strange on a day in March when the King had done his magic and parted the skies.
Childermass returned in a sour mood. He put his clothes to dry without noticing the efforts of a servant to do this for him, which resulted in a great deal of tip-toeing.
“I cannot find him,” Childermass said to Mr Segundus who was taking his breakfast; it had taken Childermass all night and part of the morning to return. Rainwater was running in little rivers from his hair, and his eyes were distant, as though he was accustomed to talking to personages far vaster than a man sitting on the other side of the table.
Mr Segundus tried to console him with an offering of tea and fried herrings, but Childermass shewed no interest in them.
“I must have missed something.” Mr Segundus was not certain Childermass even cared that he was in the room. “I have tried every possible thing – aside from summoning a fairy, and that is bound to be more trouble than it is worth.”
Mr Segundus agreed with him heartily. “After all, most of our past troubles were caused by a fairy – and by your former master. I have quite forgiven you, of course.”
But Childermass was not listening.
The next day, John Childermass made a deal with a fairy.
He had put some thought into which fairy he should summon, for clearly being vague in this regard could result in disaster. He was not even certain whether the gentleman with the thistle-down hair was truly destroyed, or whether some part of his spirit lingered on, full of malice. In the end he had chosen Tom Brightwind, the loud and brash fairy hero of many a tale of whose fictitiousness was debated.
Childermass knew several spells of summoning but was of the opinion that in these matters it was often better to stick to the old. He had gathered the three elements required for a good old English summoning spell: an engraving of the fairy bridge in Thoresby (built by Tom Brightwind) to find him,[3] a little hand-mirror to show him the path, and Julius Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico as the gift to bind him to come. These Childermass arranged on the desk along with a candle as was the tradition. He made sure he was alone in the room and the door was locked.
Then he lit the candle and did the magic.
And sure enough, before Childermass had even finished he heard the gentle sound of water and felt the touch of sunlight on his face. For a moment he imagined that he was standing on a great bridge surrounded by the sound of foreign voices; but then he blinked and was again in the guestroom at Starecross Hall, and another person was regarding him with a look of surprized indignation on his face.
“…the sheer audacity of it – the sphynx’s tears weren’t even real pearls but round little pieces of sugar – so naturally I ate them all and was then plagued for a week by dreams of deserts and falling stars. Oh, good afternoon.”
That the person was a fairy was immediately clear. He was too handsome, too glowing and altogether too remarkable to be anything else.
“Good morning to you, Tom Brightwind.”
“Morning or noon, it is all the same to me. Do I know you?”
Then the set-up on the table drew the fairy’s attention, and he exclaimed excitedly over it.
“Such quaint little magic! I have not seen one of these for a hundred years.[4] And it even worked! Only because I was not expecting it, mind you.” He arched a perfect fairy eyebrow at Childermass. “Your spell plucked me right out of Untold Blessings where I had good hopes of seducing the virgin son of general one-or-the-other. It is all part of a civil war. Delightfully tragic.”
Childermass apologized for this, and Tom Brightwind seemed to accept it with good grace.
“What do you want, magician?” he then asked like a stage-actor delivering a line. He squared his well-formed shoulders and lifted his chin in arrogant disdain completely at odds with the laughter in his eyes.
“I want you to find a man called Jonathan Strange and bring him to me.”
“A traditionalist,” the fairy said with some disappointment. “That would be very easy for someone of my skill and charm, that is true.”
Childermass’s hopes were raised, but he remained wary. “What do you want in exchange?”
“A year of your life,” Tom said happily. “Since we are doing everything the old-fashioned way. Whatever I will do with it I do not know, but something is sure to come up.”
Childermass weighed this for a moment. “Which year?” he asked.
Tom looked at him with his head tilted. His long chestnut hair almost brushed the table-top.
“The year of the tower when the Obstinacy of Constables caused great destruction for little black thieves. The year-that-looked-on when the fever took your mother and the yellow paper ships all drowned in the River Abus.”
Tom was never very good or very interested in reading other people, and Childermass was not willing to be read, so the slight pained quirk of his mouth went unnoticed.
“Very well.”
Tom Brightwind bounced on the balls of his feet (he was tall anyway, and this way he towered over Childermass, which pleased him very well). He snapped his fingers once and stared expectantly into the empty air.
After a good while Childermass cleared his throat.
“Why can I not find him?” Tom Brightwind mused aloud. “I see his memory but cannot find his grave. Who is this man who refuses to come when I call him? Did you make him up?”
Childermass sighed wearily. “No, but I wish I had.”
“Then I suppose I should let you keep your year, on the condition that you mention this to no one.”
Childermass nodded, and even the fairy could see that he was a great deal relieved.
“It is a shame, really,” Tom Brightwind said. “You would have been happier without it.” Fairies cannot understand why even the bitterest of memories can be dear to us.
“Thank you for your assistance.”
Tom shrugged. “I really must get back. I was in the middle of something important.” He held the candle-flame between his long fingers.
“Good luck with the general’s son.”
“Who?” asked Tom Brightwind and put out the flame. He was gone in a shimmer of honey-warm light and a peal of far-away laughter.
Mr Segundus was very cross when he found out that fairy magic had been performed under his roof. Childermass had taken care to return all the ritual articles to their proper places, but he had not considered Segundus’s peculiar sensitivity to magic. Even though he had not been at the house when Childermass had summoned the fairy, he claimed he had heard the tinkling of a silver bell and felt the most peculiar urge to visit Italy.
“By foot, Childermass! Had I not known something was amiss and refused to comply, my feet would have tried to walk me all the way to Rome!”
Childermass said something about a fairy and a borrowed bridge. He asked whether Segundus had felt any ill effects from the magic. Segundus admitted that he had not, but he felt it was beside the point.
“It is as I thought,” Childermass said. “I always felt sick from fairy magic before but did not know why it would be so. Perhaps it is to do with the character of the fairy. Or maybe the summoner will not feel the effect. But if that was the case then you would have felt it…”
Mr Segundus did not care if Childermass had consorted with a fairy of good character. The fact remained that fairies had been summoned. As a responsible schoolmaster of a School of Magic he could not very well endanger his young and reckless pupils by condoning the use of such magic, etc., etc. Childermass enquired whether Segundus, too, intended to make magic respectable by removing every useful thing from it, whereupon Mr Segundus became exceedingly polite.
The long and short of it was that it became once again prudent for Childermass and Vinculus to leave Starecross Hall.
Childermass strode through the courtyard with his long black coat whipping about his legs. He was looking for Vinculus, but Vinculus refused to be found. He was not in the wine-cellar (the first place Childermass looked), nor in the pantry (where Childermass took the liberty of borrowing some things for the road), nor on the roof drinking and singing rude songs (which had happened more than once).
In the end he entered the stables and saw Vinculus’s stockinged feet pointing out from a stall. The stall belonged to Childermass’s horse Brewer, and Vinculus was peacefully sharing a pile of hay with the animal. He was stretched out on his back and chewing on a grass stalk with no care in the world.
Childermass was about to rouse him when he heard that the man was softly reciting something to himself in a rat-rustle whisper. I toss’d a coin up to the sky, I gave you the key. The winding road that leads to me starts by the hanging tree.
He stood rooted on the spot. He remembered that a long time ago he had meant to ask Vinculus about a song, but with all the unwanted disruptions he had given the Book less and less thought of late. Now he cursed himself for a fool.
Vinculus opened his eyes. “You are finally here,” he said with a grin.
“The song, now, if you please,” Childermass said, as though he had not been the one who had forgotten all about it.
Vinculus winked and obliged him. He had a rather pleasing singing-voice, albeit noticeably hoarse after his hanging. After the four stanzas he paused to draw a breath which became a silence hanging in the air.
“That is your song for you,” he said.
Childermass closed his eyes and pressed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. The mad fairy lost between the pages in his castle of Forget-me-do. It sounded like a hundred improbable fairy songs and stories, but the details tugged at him. Madness, books, forgetting. It was said that Strange had driven himself mad like the Aureate magicians of old. Lost between the pages – had Arabella not mentioned something to that effect? And it certainly seemed like Strange wanted to be forgotten.
If the song was not nonsense – if it held a message – the message was clear. Come now, come now, the fairy said. The time is all too short.
He had already wasted too much time.
They left Starecross Hall that evening. It turned out that Vinculus had packed his bundle before Childermass even came to get him. Once again the man’s premonition gave Childermass pause, but he supposed it was one of the upsides of being used for royal writing-paper.
Childermass thought everything over as they rode. It was all there in the song. An invitation and instructions on how to pursue it.
A coin in the sky – even a child knew that was the moon.
I gave you the key – Strange had given him nothing but his regard. On the same occasion he had let Childermass see Arabella’s drawings of the fairy roads.
The road starts by the hanging tree – there was only one tree that could be. A lonely hawthorn tree on the moor not far away.
What fairies had to do with it all he did not know, but he felt sure he was about to find out.
If the song was truly a prophecy of the Raven King, then Childermass was also meant to hear it. This was both reassuring and unsettling at once. He did not have to read his own fortune to see which way the signs pointed. He wondered when Jonathan Strange had become so important that he was willing to even consider what he almost certainly knew he would do. He supposed it was the long search that had done it.
The sky had already turned black when they reached their destination. Childermass shivered at the sight of the tree. He knew what kind of fruit it had borne; he had cut it down. Something had always bothered him about that particular memory, and now that they were here the feeling grew stronger. Vinculus did not acknowledge the gruesome place in any way. When he noticed Childermass looking, he shrugged.
“It was not the tree’s fault,” he said.
Childermass supposed that was true. Now that they were here, he was not sure what he would do. He had vague ideas in his head, scrambled like snatches of song, waiting to be put together. He got off from Brewer’s back and approached the tree. As he walked on, the thin clouds withdrew their shroud from the moon and pale light fell on the skeletal branches of the tree. Childermass saw that in each gnarl and knot of wood there was a tiny keyhole, and a silver light shone from within.
Wordlessly he handed Brewer’s reins to Vinculus. When he peered into the keyholes, he saw nothing and had to blink silver sparks from his eyes. But as he cautiously laid his hands over the keyholes, he could feel what each of them was about. His head was filled with images of far-away countries: cities of eternal sunshine where the streets were pawed with emerald-green glass, mysterious kingdoms in the bottom of the sea, proud citadels of impossible hopes and dreams. Each of those places was more wonderful than the last. He felt a twist of unsatisfied longing – a weakness shared by every being capable of dreaming. But that was not where he wanted to go. Finally his fingers landed on a small keyhole and he heard wind rushing through the empty ruins of the fairy roads. They promised a long journey fraught with peril. Childermass smiled.
He let his hands drop from the tree and glanced at Vinculus.
“I trust you to look after Brewer for me. I do not know how long I will be about it, but if I find out you have sold, bartered or eaten him while I’m away…”
“Don’t worry, Mr Childermass. England will still be standing when you return.”
“What will you do in the meantime?”
“Oh, I have been away from London too long. I miss my tent with the yellow curtains. Maybe I’ll teach Brewer to count sums and read letters!”
Childermass let out a laugh. “As a teacher I am sure you will be one of a kind. You think you will be able to reach London with all the trouble that is going on down south?”
“The trouble won’t care about me. I am too ugly and too mad for them.”
“Then I wish you a good journey.”
“Good luck! I was wondering when you would go prancing off to fairy lands. It doesn’t do for a magician to get too provincial.”
“If I need advice, I’ll bloody well ask for it,” Childermass said sourly and turned his back on Vinculus.
The street-magician looked on as Childermass laid his hands on the bark and bowed his head for a moment as though he was listening for something. Then he put the nail of his little finger into the tiny keyhole and turned it. There was the bright sound of a key turning, and then there was no one standing by the tree.
“That was that,” said Vinculus and scratched his head. He threw a salute to the tree which had once been an accomplice to his murder. It was an ordinary, scraggly tree once more; there were no keyholes in sight. He turned and led Brewer away and left John Childermass to his fate.
Some say that time as we know it does not exist in the fairy lands. Some say it changes from realm to realm, prone to wilful twists and turns. Some say time does not matter; others say nothing matters more. Be that as may, it is not far from the truth to say that one day in the season of falling meteors a dark traveller arrived in a little country beyond the Bitter Lands on the far side of Hell. Its inhabitants did not know its name, but they all agreed on one thing: that the only thing worth seeing there was the castle on the cloud, and they were so adamant about this that it bordered on threatening. “Something new,” they whispered as they directed him towards their hot air balloons with their paws and claws, “something dark, something sure to interest him. He won’t leave us then. He will stay with us forever.”
The traveller shewed no alarm and let himself be steered. He seemed like a man long since resigned to the currents and shifts of fate.
The island city in the sky had many names. Once it had been Lost-sense, and all of its shutters were closed and cats ruled the streets with the ruthlessness of thief-kings. Then it became Forget-me-do, and the smell of pale blue flowers and opium filled the air with yellow despair. Lately it had turned into Flights-of-Fancy, and whimsical vessels of all sorts carried emissaries and visitors from the Lands Below or Behind the Stars to marvel at it.
Above the winding streets, which ran in never-ending spirals unless one knew how to press that cornerstone or shake the hand of this statuette, rose the Castle of Damnable Curiosity. Its pencil-thin spires disappeared into the clouds which threatened to swallow the castle whole. Everything was damp and a bit gloomy; now and then a flash of golden light illuminated the arches of the gates which looked like the teeth of some enormous creature. They were painted with bright colours, perhaps to lessen their resemblance to war trophies, but everything was always running and dissolving in the sky city. It looked like the pillars were standing in puddles of blood.
The traveller strode up to the door and banged on it with a huge brass knocker. He was let in and led to a large round hall. It was warm and swathed in gentle late-autumn sun trapped in a hundred clay lanterns. The air was dry like paper, and it made him cough. The traveller was not subjected to riddles or duels, although it would have been good manners to do so. He was only asked where he came from.
“From Yorkshire,” he said, and that sent the servants in their green liveries off in a flutter of excitement, because they had never heard of a kingdom by that name (or if they had, they had forgotten all about it).
In the centre of the room blazed a fire which seemed to burn without smoke or fuel. He waited by it in a cloud of mist which rose from his damp clothes and hair and looked about. For a fairy dwelling it seemed rather comfortable and sensible. Long, cushioned benches circled the room, and above them shelf upon shelf was filled to overflowing with a curious collection of items – stones and leaves, teapots and magic lamps, weapons and odd mechanical constructions. The geometry of the room was pleasing – he did not suddenly find himself walking on the ceiling or run into invisible walls.
He observed the people in the room – or rather what he had grown used to thinking of as people, for there were many tails and whiskers and furred faces. A little fox-like fairy came up to him and offered him a cup of tea. The teacup was carved out of a knot of wood, and it sat on a golden platter, surrounded by little purple pinecones. But the taste of the tea, just right, burst in his mouth like a pleasant memory. Black animal eyes stared up at him, full of worry.
“Is it all right? Would you have liked a piece of Old Times Sakes with that, or a drop of Watered-down Regrets?”
“It’s fine,” the traveller said.
“Oh! I can never get it right! He always complains about one thing or another.”
“Do you mean the lord of this place?”
The fox-person sniffed.
“Jon Longwind. We call him that on account of him being so long-winded.”
“Indeed,” said the fairy who had entered the room at that moment.
It was one of those moments which beg to question the nature and inclinations of time, for the space of one breath seemed to stretch on endlessly. The little servant squeaked; the fairy lord began to raise an eyebrow; and a triumphant fire was lit in the traveller’s eyes.
Jon Longwind had the air and bearing of a fairy prince, which means knowing one is the most impressive person in the room. He had an excellently sardonic set of eyebrows which slanted sharply upwards, and there was something at once delicate and strong in his face. A cloud of gently curling hair reached down to his back and seemed to float of its own accord. He was dressed in a smoking jacket the colour of remembered spring, and like the other inhabitants of the house, he was wearing no shoes. If there was a slight dusting of hair on his face, it only served to highlight his good sides. A light from some pleasant place fell perpetually on him.
There were still crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes (light and changeable, stealing sparks from the lamps and flames). He had known time and sorrow in a way fairies do not.
He was not a fairy at all; or rather, he was not some unknown inhabitant of Faerie.
“Jonathan Strange,” said John Childermass. “I have been looking for you.”
The fairy’s eyes became very large, and his eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hair.
“Childermass! What are on earth are you doing here? And what are you wearing?”
It was such a useless question that Childermass began to laugh. He shrugged from his shoulders a cloak the colour of burnt souls and embers, and with it clattered to the floor a collection of weapons and a whole lot of worry.
“It was a souvenir from the King of Hell.”
Strange – for the more Childermass looked at the fairy the more it felt like the pieces of a puzzle were fitting together – whistled at that.
“I take it you took the long way round coming here.”
“You could say that.”
Indeed Childermass looked a great deal more gnarled and weathered than before his descent to the fairy roads. He was wearing an ink-blue tunic under an arming coat of scaly leather, and about his head he had wound a scarf so intricately any street-sorcerer would have been proud of him. Around his waist was a collection of belts and trophies which clinked and clattered as he moved, unless he wished them to be quiet. There were new scars on his knuckles and on his forearms. Upon one of his palms was a circle of blue writing, but this he covered with a glove and shewed to no one.
The fairy’s bright eyes took in all of this. It felt uncomfortably like he was seeing more than Childermass wished him to see.
“I am very flattered, of course.” The self-satisfied expression on the fairy’s face was familiar, if perhaps more pronounced and not tempered by any remnant of Christian modesty.
“If you feel I have taken too long, you could have left more specific instructions,” Childermass said.
“What instructions? How did you find your way here? I would very much like to know what roads you took and how you negotiated your way through the Bitter Lands. And what about the terrible beast of…”
They left the hall because Strange wanted to shew him everything and introduce him to everyone. Childermass lost count of startled fairy faces which stared at him openly or from behind pillars and stairs. All the while Strange went on, walking so fast and pointing out so many things – the star-gazing room, the cellar for explosives and spirits, the balcony of pensive pacing – that Childermass soon lost his bearings. The corridors and stairs seemed to shift and shuffle along with Strange’s thoughts.
“He never stops talking,” the fox whispered to Childermass like it was a great secret.
“He is mad. He always talks of human things. He talks of books!” complained a tall fairy with eyes like black round stones and a coat of magpie feathers.
“He locks boring people in the cellar and won’t let them out until they come up with something interesting,” piped a small fairy with mouse-like ears.
“No, he just tosses them out of the tower window into the sea,” said a haughty fairy courtier who had very long, elegantly curled whiskers.
“I hear he uses them as bait as he hunts for bats with nets on the roof,” said a young girl with glow-worms in her hair. She sounded approving.
“But at least there is dancing and drinking.”
“You must dance with us.”
“And drink. Elderwine and forgetfulness, that is the trick.”
“I am sure he has come up with a new dance. In any case we have forgotten the old.”
Then they reached the library doors and Strange pushed them shut before the multitude of curious faces. He threw himself into a threadbare armchair and gestured at Childermass.
“A moment’s peace at last! What do you think of my library? Is it not the finest library this side of Hell?”
Childermass had not seen many libraries on his travels in Faerie, but he looked about him and was astonished indeed. Shelves and nooks had been carved into the living wood of the walls all the way up to the high domed ceiling. But for a library he saw precious little books. The shelves were filled with stones and roots and dried leaves. He glanced at Strange – that new face of his always made him look like he was quietly laughing at something – but he seemed earnest enough.
Then Childermass covered one of his eyes with his hand, and immediately he saw a forest of leather spines and dried-up parchment. The library was filled to the brim with books. From rafters on the ceiling hung nets and sails of cloth, and even more books had been crammed into them. The smell of them hit him all at once, magical and intoxicating as it can be for one who loves books. Some of the books still had raven feathers stuck between their pages. This library was bigger than the library at Hurtfew. This was where the books of Hurtfew had fled.
“It is very fine,” Childermass said quietly. His fingers lingered on the dusty spines. “Tell me, Mr Strange, how exactly did you come to be here in your present… situation?”
“Oh. You mean the fairy thing.”
Childermass waited.
“Well. It turns out my mother’s side of the family is not averse to the old ways. The Erquistounes of Edinburgh were always rather liberal. Apparently I have fairy blood in my veins.” His perfect eyebrows drew together in a frown. “This really begs me to question the reasons for my father’s dislike for me.”
“And how did you find out?” Childermass asked before Strange had time to get lost down that path.
“I think the proximity to Faerie brought it out. At first the change was quite subtle, but Mr Norrell soon grew uncomfortable around me. We argued, I’m afraid. Being trapped in a house under a curse did not appeal to me, so I started experimenting with spells of transformation. It is very complex and the consequences of mistakes can be catastrophic. But in the end I succeeded in turning myself into a cat.”
“Why a cat?” Childermass had crossed his arms and made himself comfortable against a bookcase. Despite all the wonders and dangers he had faced on his journey, a conversation with Strange still did not fail to amuse him.
“One has to start somewhere. At any rate, it seemed logical at the time, but that might have been due to the madness tincture.”
“Remember to tell me about that sometime, and why you thought it was a good idea.”
Strange’s beautiful features twisted into a grimace. “I would rather not dwell on the particulars. That was not a good time for me.”
“As you wish. What happened with the transformation?”
“Everything went very well, except that I felt compelled to hunt down a rat. Uncooked rat does not taste pleasant, I assure you.”
“It does not,” agreed Childermass.
Strange blinked at that but went on.
“In any case, the problem was turning back. The spell worked perfectly, but it did not return me to a human form. This the shape I have been stuck in ever since.” He gestured elegantly at his all-around fairy perfection.
“A hardship, I’m sure,” Childermass muttered under his breath. This time Strange gave him a sharp look.
“That was the last straw for Norrell. I told him there was nothing I could do about it, but he refused to accept the facts. He even went so far as to make certain pointed criticisms upon my parentage. We did not part in cordial terms.”
“I take it the fairy’s curse was specific to your person.”
“And since my person was fundamentally altered, it ceased to have an effect upon me.”
“That explains why my finding spells did not work. Your new name threw me off even further. What about Mr Norrell? What happened to him?”
Strange shrugged. “I do not know. I doubt he has tried leaving the house.”
“That would be like him. And how did you come upon a castle of all things?”
Strange smiled. “Doesn’t everyone have mad Scottish relatives leaving them impractical castles?”
“No,” said Childermass who did not know any of his relatives and doubted they wanted to know of him.
“I had to fight for it, of course. A battle of wits, a long-lost grandson coming to claim his legacy. I quoted Milton to great success. Everyone in the audience was weeping black tears.”
Childermass was silent for a while. He took in the quiet magnificence of the library, the homely chaos of scattered papers and discarded ink bottles, the scent of dust and knowledge. He also saw the wistful look which stole now and then on Strange’s face when he looked at Childermass, thinking he was not noticed.
Childermass sat down on a pillow on the floor next to Strange and thought carefully on how to proceed.
“You have done well for yourself,” he said.
“Thank you,” Strange said absently. He ran his fingers through his overgrown hair. “It is all very well, of course. I have no reason to complain.”
“It is a shame, really. I had hoped you might be persuaded to return to England with me.”
Strange raised his eyes. Some unknown emotion flickered in them.
“To England?” he said faintly, as if he had only now remembered the existence of such a place. Childermass was suddenly very glad to have arrived when he did, for in time Strange might have forgotten his human life altogether.
“But now that I see how matters stand, I understand very well that you wish to stay.”
“Quite right,” Strange murmured. Then his face brightened. “But you might as well tell me why, as I doubt you came all this way just for my company.”
Childermass shrugged. “Oh, there is a fairy army camped outside of London. They have resurrected Napoleon from the dead.”
The appearance of the ghostly troops had caused great alarm in Westminster. One morning the city of London found itself surrounded. The fairies had put up their round tents in the night and grown an impenetrable thicket of brambles as their fortifications. No one knew what they were about since they spoke a language no one could understand. They made no move to attack; they played eerie music on their harps and flutes and paraded their soldiers in long-forgotten formations; they blocked roads and trade routes in a seemingly haphazard manner. Emissaries sent to them returned wild-eyed and unable to speak of what they had seen.
Worst of all, the enemy had with them the deceased Emperor of the French whose pale countenance and burning eyes upset even the most hardened politicians.
“He is the worst fear of the English. It makes perfect sense,” Strange said.
“To you and fairies perhaps, but not to the Duke of Wellington,” Childermass said. “I hear the Duke is beside himself with fury. He had in his house a great marble statue of Napoleon which the government gave to him as a present, and he's had it carted off to the front lines. ‘We have a Napoleon too,’ he says, ‘and he is just as dead as yours!’[5] The soldiers think he has gone mad.”
Strange smiled for he had always rather liked Wellington. “I am not the least bit surprized.”
“The ministers in London have begged me to get you to come and shoo them away. I have been bothered by messages in writing and magic night and day. Their new department of Magical Reconnaissance keeps hounding me. So here I am. The message has been delivered.”
Strange was quiet for a while. “The situation seems clear enough,” he said slowly. “But there is one thing I do not understand.”
He turned to look at Childermass, and once again Childermass had the disquieting feeling that he was a book and someone was reading between the lines. “I do not know why you came to me. I daresay you could have fixed the trouble yourself, magician. I hear you are good friends with kings.”
“I do not see what you mean,” Childermass said warily.
“Here, on your cheek.” Strange reached out to touch the faint silver scar. “Someone cut your face open out of spite. The King’s touch still lingers there.”
In that moment Strange did not look human. His eyes had changed again, to the green of an ocean battered by a storm which drowns ships and men; the shadows on his face dug in deeper; there was danger hiding in his smile. Childermass grasped for something to say.
“I do not much care for London,” he ground out, and Strange’s hand fell away from his face. For a moment Childermass breathed easier. “The North will always fend for itself. It remembers the old treaties. People still swear by the Book and Bell, although it is not quite the same once one is acquainted with the Book. I am sure you understand.”
“The Book!” Strange exclaimed and was at once more like his old self again. “You found it, then? You must tell me all about it!”
“He can do it himself,” Childermass said. “If you agree to come with me, that is.”
He was glad Strange had accepted the change of subject, although he was not sure why he should feel so relieved.
“Well. It is all rather tempting. I must admit I have been feeling bored of late. A court of one’s own is good and well, but I have no one to clash words with. With fairies it all degenerates to duels and blood-feuds and long, dull civil wars.”
“I can guarantee you there will be no lack of infuriating people in England.”
Privately he thought Strange was the most infuriating of them all, but unfortunately also the most interesting. He still felt unmoored from the unexpected touch and the weight of the fairy’s eyes.
“How could I refuse an offer like that?”
The fairies of the Castle of Damnable Curiosity lamented their lord’s departure and held long funereal processions through the labyrinthine corridors, but soon they forgot the purpose of their banners and songs and began a new feast they called the Party of the Long Night which emptied the cellars of wines and explosives alike. Jon Longwind passed into stories of his own: tales of a mad fairy obsessed with books.
The great fairy incident of 1822 was depicted in many paintings, the most famous of them being The Seelie Siege of London by an unknown painter with a penchant for alliteration.[6] In the painting pale, wraithlike armies have suffocated London: the skies are filled with their misty spears, their tents are a forest around the city. From the city walls (a freedom taken by the artistic spirit) the people of London look on in a blur of white frightened faces. On the foreground is the commander of the fairy armies and his chariot drawn by four winged lions. Cowering beside him is a rather ghastly Napoleon who is trying to hide his gilded crown of laurels. And facing them, surrounded on all sides by eerie, malicious faces, stands Jon Longwind with his dark hair askew and a mocking smile on his quicksilver face.
“You laughed at them and they went away,” Childermass said to Strange as they sat in the foul-smelling twilight of the Pineapple tavern over tankards of spiced ale.
“Well, actually I told them how ridiculous they looked coming here with all their pomp and circumstance and a poor dead Frenchman who would not scare a fly. I told them we tell jokes of Napoleon as bedtime stories to our children. The commander was incensed; he had paid good fairy gold to get his hands on The Greatest Fear of the Englishmen. I told him he had been fooled. Of course I did it all in an obscure Sidhe dialect I learned from some cousins on my mother’s side.”
“And that was that?”
“Well, I also laughed at them. They threatened to challenge me to a duel, but in the end they were too embarrassed.”
Childermass took a long swig of his ale. “Was that really Napoleon’s corpse?”
Strange shrugged. “Who knows? The poor thing could not even talk. It might as well have been an empty sack enchanted to look like a man.”
“Did you ever find out what they wanted? I am sure the ministers would be very keen to know.”
Strange lifted an eyebrow, and Childermass could momentarily see right through the spell which for now disguised the magician’s otherlandish appearance.
“Who knows the minds and wants of fairies? They might have wanted to scare us. They might have wanted to avenge the gentleman. Perhaps they wanted to declare a war on the Raven King.”
“A fairy war in England? That is not something I thought I’d see in my lifetime.”
“And perhaps you shan’t. Doesn’t your Book tell you?”
“My Book is currently traipsing all over Yorkshire after having sold my horse to a Methodist preacher who made me listen to a sermon while I was buying him back.”
Strange laughed and run a hand through his hair – a curious gesture for someone who did not see the way his long hair threatened to spill into his tankard. Magic still clung to him, impossible not to see for anyone who was at all that way inclined. Childermass felt the odd urge to reach out and touch him like he had stroked the spines of books in a library in a far-away country.
“What will you do next?” Strange asked.
“I want to learn the King’s Letters. I want to know what it says in his Book.” Childermass tugged at the fingerless glove covering his left hand. On his palm was inked a good start on the Raven King’s alphabet.
“And what if it turns out the book is one elaborate fairy joke?”
“Then I’ll have learned something too,” Childermass said gravely.
Strange laughed at him again, but Childermass had grown so accustomed to it he found he did not mind overmuch.
“What are you going to do?” Childermass asked.
Strange looked pensive for a moment. “England does not feel like home anymore. I suppose I went and changed, and it has stayed the same. Besides, there are so many countries to see between the fairy lands and the Sea at the End of It All that it feels quite impossible to settle for one tiny island, however dear it may be.”
“You will go back to Faerie.”
“Yes. Do you disapprove? You went to some trouble to get me back.”
“Well, let us say that the chase was worth the trouble.” That was true: Childermass had learned more than he had ever dreamed or feared. “What will your wife say?”
“Arabella will always be dear to me, but she has her own life now. She says she is very happy. That is what I told her: to be happy and not to wait for me. It would be rather hypocritical of me to object now.”
"I see. Life in a fairy court has changed your views on marriage."
"For the better, I daresay."
There was a moment of silence. A question weighed on Childermass's tongue, and he cursed his inability to give it voice.
“You could come with me,” Strange said. His eyes reflected the light of the smoking tallow candles, and the smile playing on his lips was not easy to read.
Fortunately reading him was one of the things Childermass had learned along the way.
“And what would I be, Jon Longwind? A fairy’s servant?”
“You would be what you have always been. My equal.”
Strange held out his hand (the fingernails were rather long and sharp at the tips), and Childermass took it. For once it did not look like the dark man was laughing secretly on the inside. It was all on the outside plain to see in the delighted crook of his smile.
In a barn somewhere in Yorkshire the Book of John Uskglass scratched at his ankle where blue writing wound up and down like the tune of a song.
“I have one more prophecy for you, reader, though you are too far away to hear it.” The ragged man croaked in laughter at some private mirth. “Perhaps you would have liked to know it earlier, but that is what you get for going away in such a hurry.”
He crooned the last bit of the song to an audience of field-mice and bats.
Take care, dark traveller, lest you fall
for a pocketful of charms
You’ll find a secret you sought not
in the mad fairy’s arms.