“You’re CIA,” said Peter, not unreasonably. “Couldn’t you just have commandeered something more reliable on the grounds of national security?”
“We are supposed to be keeping our heads down,” said Honey. “I start throwing phrases like that around, and the local authorities will be all over us. Now get on board, or I’ll have you keelhauled, or something equally nautical and distressing.”
“Should never have given them the vote,” muttered Peter, slouching on board.
I looked over Honey’s shoulder and studied the instrument panels set out before her. They looked reassuringly up-to-date and mostly functional.
“You sure you can run this thing?” I said, trying hard not to sound too dubious.
“What’s the matter?” said Honey, grinning broadly. “Is there something here the high-and-mighty Drood field agent can’t operate?”
“I can drive anything modern,” I said defensively. “But have you seen this tub’s engines? Wouldn’t surprise me to find they ran on coal. Or clockwork.”
“I could pilot this tub through the Bermuda Triangle and out the other side,” said Honey. “She’s sound. Nothing to it. Easy peasy.”
Walker sank into a battered old leather chair, which creaked noisily with his every movement. “Then let us get under weigh, Captain.”
“I’m still waiting for Peter. Peter! Where are you?”
“I’m here, I’m here!” He slouched into the cabin, peered about him, and sniffed miserably. “I hate boats and I hate the water. In particular, I hate the way boats go up and down when they travel across the water. I just know I’m going to be unwell. I really enjoyed my dinner, and I was hoping not to see it again anytime soon.”
“The water is perfectly calm,” Honey said patiently. “And there’s not a cloud in the sky. If the surface was any flatter, you could Roller Derby on it.”
“It just looks that way,” Peter said darkly. “It’s planning something. I can tell.”
“Don’t worry,” said Walker. “I know an infallible cure for seasick-ness.”
“Really?” said Peter.
“Of course. Sit under a tree.” He chuckled at the look on Peter’s face. “Ah, the old jokes are always the best.”
We left the Philadelphia docks at a steady rate of knots, heading out to the middle of the river. The
Hope Street
chugged along cheerfully, the engines reassuringly loud and steady. Peter clung grimly to the arms of his chair, but the water remained calm. Honey stood happily at the wheel, whistling a sea shanty, her captain’s hat pushed back on her head. I did my best to give her a proper heading, but really all I could do was point her in the direction where I’d seen the
Eldridge
disappear into the green mists, back in 1943. It was entirely possible the soft spot had . . . drifted since then. Still, Honey aimed the
Hope Street
in the right direction, and we all mentally crossed our fingers.
We hadn’t been out on the water long when dark clouds appeared in the sky out of nowhere. The wind whipped up, and the waters became distinctly choppy. Honey glared at the instruments before her.
“Weather reports didn’t say anything about a storm. Supposed to be calm and sunny all day. Well, that’s weather for you. Brace yourselves, everyone. We’re in for a bumpy ride.”
“Told you,” said Peter miserably.
“It’s you, Peter,” Walker said calmly from his chair. “All your fault. You’re a jinx. Or maybe a Jonah. If I see a whale, you’re going overboard.”
I used my Sight, without my armour. This close, I didn’t need it. The soft spot was hanging on the air dead ahead, strange magical forces churning around it like a vortex. Something in our approach had activated it; perhaps my torc, or the changes Blue had added to his torc. The doorway was forming, becoming more solid, sucking us in. Just its presence in our world was enough to disrupt the weather patterns. The closer we got, the more I could See, and the less I liked. This wasn’t just a soft spot or a natural opening; someone had fashioned a proper door here and wedged it open just a crack against all the powers of this world to heal itself. Someone intended this door to be used.
A growing tension filled the
Hope Street
’s cabin as we drew steadily closer. We could all feel it: a basic wrongness in the warp and weft of the world that raised ancient atavistic instincts and grated on our souls. The tension grew worse, like an ax hanging over our heads, like a danger we could point at but not identify. It felt like walking the last mile to our own execution. Give Honey credit; she never flinched, never changed course, never even slowed our approach.
I could See the gateway hanging on the air ahead, waiting for us, drawing us in with bad intent. A convoluted spectrum of forces, as though someone had taken hold of space and time with a giant hand and . . . twisted them. And the closer I got, the more I realised it wasn’t an actual door, as such; more a
potential
door. That’s why my family had never suspected its existence. It wasn’t . . .
certain
enough to set off our alarms and defences. As though the elves had set this up and then walked away . . . waiting for just the right person to come along and activate it . . . and walk into their trap.
Had to be a trap. It’s always a trap, with the elves.
Wisps of green mist appeared around the
Hope Street
, materialising out of nowhere; long green streamers twisting and turning on the air as the boat rose and fell on increasingly violent swells. The mists thickened steadily; elf magic, summoned into being by our proximity to the doorway. The thick green fog was cutting us off from our world, bending the rules of our reality to make easier the transition to the Land Beneath the Hill. Walker and Peter scrambled up out of their chairs and hurried over to join Honey and me at the wheel. We all felt the need for simple human contact.
The boat was thrown all over the place; the fog was all around us. Honey struggled to hold the
Hope Street
on course. It felt like . . . leaving all certainty behind us, losing everything we’d learned to depend on. As though the ship itself might fall apart and disappear into the green mists . . .
“We’re almost there,” said Walker. “I can feel the doorway right ahead. Feels like staring down a gun barrel.”
“I don’t feel that,” said Honey. “I don’t feel anything. Except that it’s really cold in here, all of a sudden. And my skin’s prickling, like the feeling you get right before a lightning strike. And I’m not sure I’m steering this boat anymore. The wheel’s stopped fighting me, but it’s not answering me, either. I think . . . this boat knows where it needs to go.” She took her hands off the wheel, and nothing happened. The
Hope Street
was still on course.
“The storm’s getting worse!” yelled Peter above the howl of the rising winds outside. “Listen to it!”
“I don’t think that’s the storm,” I said. “The door is opening.”
“So we’ll be safe once we’re through the door?”
“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t go that far . . .”
“I want to go home,” Peter said miserably.
The green fog was boiling all around us now, thick bottle green mists that isolated and insulated us from the outside world. Strange lights flared and sputtered inside the cabin. They smarted where they touched my bare skin, making it crawl with revulsion. There was something basically unclean about the green fog. It smelled of sulphur and blood and strange animal musks. It was getting hard to see anything, even inside the cabin. The
Hope Street
pressed on, not bucking or heaving nearly so much now but travelling faster and faster, like a runaway train.
“One problem,” I said.
“Only one?” Honey said immediately. “I can think of hundreds!”
“Getting through the door isn’t going to be a problem,” I said. “I think it recognises my torc. But getting back again . . . might prove a little tricky.”
“Terrific,” said Peter. “Why don’t we all just throw ourselves overboard and swim back?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Walker. “I’m pretty sure we’re no longer in our world, as such. No water, no sky; just green mists. We’re in the soft place now, the in-between place. And it smells really bad.”
“Throw yourself overboard here,” I said, “and there’s no saying where you might end up.”
“I may cry a little, if that wouldn’t upset anyone,” said Peter.
“Stand tall, man,” said Walker. “You show weakness in front of the elves, and you’ll be carrying your testicles home in a goody bag.”
“You’re really not helping,” said Peter.
“It’s not as if we’re going in there alone,” said Honey. “I’m CIA, remember? I can call on serious backup and resources and dirty tricks even elves have never thought of.”
“They won’t care,” said Walker. “I speak for the Nightside. I have powerful friends, and enemies, who’ll come if I call or who would avenge my death. But the elves will still kill us if they have reason to, or even if they don’t. They are creatures of whim and malice and have no care at all for consequences.”
Honey looked at me. “But you’re a Drood, Eddie. You even ran your family for a while. They wouldn’t dare touch you.”
“Elves dare,” I said. “It’s what they do. My family would certainly avenge my death, might even do terrible things to the Sundered Lands . . . but still the elves will do what they will do, and no one can predict or punish them. And, as I said, the elves do have good reason to want me dead. Or worse.”
“Maybe we should have left you behind,” said Walker.
“You’d never get in without me,” I said.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Peter.
“So,” said Honey. “No backup and no threats we can use to enforce our position. Not really what I wanted to hear.”
“Have the CIA ever had any direct dealings with elves?” said Peter. “Not because I particularly care, you understand; I’d just like people to keep talking to distract me from thinking about all the terrible things still to come.”
“Quite understandable,” said Honey. She gave the wheel a good turn, and then watched it sway back and forth, not affecting the
Hope Street
in the least. “If the Company ever did have direct dealings with elves—which is possible on the grounds that the Company has had dealings with far worse in its time, when necessary, and no, I’m not going to go into details—it would all have taken place on a much higher level than mine. I’m only ever told what I need to know, when I need to know it.”
“Trust me,” I said. “Elves are powerful creatures, yes, but at heart they’re just another bunch of aristocratic snobs who think they’re better than anyone else. And I’ve been talking rings around creeps like that my whole life. I’ll get us in, and I’ll get us back home again, and I might just get us the keys to the city and a big box of chocolates to take home with us while I’m at it.”
“That’s it,” said Peter. “He’s delirious.”
“Trust a Drood?” said Honey. “Things aren’t that desperate. Not yet, anyway.”
“Getting damned close,” muttered Peter.
“Shut up, Peter,” said Walker, not unkindly.
The green fog filled the cabin now, thick and unrelenting. I couldn’t see the cabin. Couldn’t see anything except Honey and Walker and Peter. We linked arms and held hands to make sure we wouldn’t be separated. We were all breathing hard, as though there was less and less air in the fog. It smelled like the crushed petals of flowers from other worlds, like the breeze off unknown alien seas, like the stench of piled-up bodies of creatures that could never have thrived in our world. It smelled of elves. The stench raised the hackles on the back of my neck, tugging at all my deepest fears. As though my very DNA remembered elves and cringed at the thought of encountering them again.
All perfectly normal and sensible. Any sane man would be afraid of elves. But I had been here before, walked in the Fae Courts before, and I knew how to handle them. If I could just stay alive long enough.
The
Hope Street
dropped suddenly, as though the water had been snatched out from under her, and we all fell sprawling, crying out to each other as we were forcibly separated. The green mists rushed away in all directions, revealing the gateway hanging open and beckoning before us. I couldn’t look at it directly; it hurt my eyes and my mind. It wasn’t real, as we understand real things. It was an insult to everything humans understand about how our universe works. Elf magic; elf thinking.
I subvocalised my activating Words, and the golden armour slipped around me in a moment, hugging me tight like a friend or a lover, determined to stand between me and all danger. I picked myself up and made myself look at the doorway directly through my golden mask. It still hurt like hell, but I could stand it, perhaps because the torc’s strange matter was just as unnatural as the elves’ construct.
We weren’t moving. The boat was hovering, held where she was on the edge of the event horizon, as though the door was waiting for . . . something. I reached out with a golden hand and thrust it into the energies pulsing before me. I took a firm hold, and then pulled with all my armoured strength. The boat surged forward, and we were on our way.
The doorway unfolded before me over and over again, like some great alien flower blossoming in endless iterations, until finally it swallowed us up, and we passed through, leaving the world behind.
And so we came to the Sundered Lands, the Land Beneath the Hill. The world the elves made for themselves, when they left the Earth behind. No one’s really sure why. The elves certainly didn’t leave for the good of humanity or because they recognised any human authority over our world. Some say we just outnumbered them, crowding them off their land, because we bred so much faster than the long-lived elves, and their pride would not allow them to take second place. Some say the elves fought a war against someone or something they still won’t talk about. They fought a war and they lost, so they ran away to somewhere safer . . . And some say the Droods found that safe haven for the elves, which is why they still respect and hate us.