The Peculiar Read Free

to!” He cleared his throat, drew himself up to his full height of three and a half feet, and said, “Mother, may I please, please, please summon a domesticated faery?”
    â€œA what? What are you talking about, child? Who’s that in the Buddelbinsters’ yard?”
    â€œA domesticated faery. It means it lives in houses. I want to invite a faery servant. I’ve read about it here and here, and here it explains how to do it.” Bartholomew lifted a heap of old books from behind the stove and pushed them up under his mother’s nose. “ Please , Mother?”
    â€œLarks and stage lights, would you look at that dress. Barthy, put those books down, I can’t see properly.”
    â€œMother, a faery! For houses!”
    â€œMust be worth twenty pounds, and what does the silly goose do? Marches down here through all this muck. I do declare. Rusty cogs in that head and nothing but.”
    â€œAnd if I get a good one, and I’m nice to it, it would do all sorts of work for us and help pump the water and—”
    His mother wasn’t looking out the window anymore. Her eyes had gone stony-flat, and she was staring at Bartholomew.
    â€œâ€”wind up the wash wringer,” he finished weakly.
    â€œAnd what if you get a bad one.” It wasn’t a question. Her voice drove up between his ribs like a shard of nasty iron. “I’ll tell you what, Bartholomew Kettle. I’ll tell you! If we’re lucky it’ll sour the milk, empty our cupboards, and run off with every shiny thing it can get its fingers on. Otherwise it’ll just throttle us in our sleep. No, child. No. Don’t you ever be inviting faeries through that door. They’re upstairs and downstairs and on the other side of the wall. They’re all around us for miles and miles, but not in here. Not again , do you understand me?”
    She looked so old all of a sudden. Her hands shook against her apron and tears shone at the corners of her eyes. Hettie, solemn and silent like a little ghost, retreated to her cupboard bed and climbed in, closing the door with the most accusing look. Bartholomew stared at his mother. She stared back. Then he turned and slammed through the door into the passageway.
    He heard her cry out after him, but he didn’t stop. Don’t get yourself noticed, don’t let them see. His bare feet were quiet on the floorboards as he fled up through the house, but he wished he could shout and stomp. He wanted a faery. More than anything else in the world.
    He had already imagined exactly how it should happen. He would set up the invitation, and the next day there would be a petal-winged pisky clinging to the top of his bedpost. It would have a foolish grin on its face, and large ears, and it wouldn’t notice at all that Bartholomew was small and ugly and different from everyone else.
    But no. Mother had to ruin everything.
    At the top of the house they lived in together with various thieves and murderers and faeries was a large and complicated attic. It ran this way and that under the sagging eaves, and when Bartholomew was little it had been filled with broken furniture and all sorts of interesting and exciting rubbish. Everything interesting and exciting had deserted it now, the rubbish having all been used as kindling during the bitter winter months or swapped for trinkets from the traveling faery peddlers. Sometimes the women crept up to hang their washing so that it could dry without being stolen, but otherwise the attic was left to the devices of the dust and the thrushes.
    And to Bartholomew. There was one part where, if he was very careful, he could squeeze through a gap between a beam and the rough stone of a chimney. Then, with much wriggling and twisting, he would arrive in a forgotten little gable. It did not belong to anyone. There was no door, and only a child could even stand up in it. It was his now.
    He had fixed it up with odds and ends that he had