Chapter Twenty-Five
Rosemary’s Green was two or three acres of rolling fields dotted with trees and bushes. A few humble houses stood nearby, a quiet neighborhood toward the outskirts of town. One wide stretch of the perimeter shared a fence with the churchyard and its rows and rows of granite gravestones. On the far side of the expanse rose untamed hills. I was unsure how anyone knew exactly where Rosemary’s Green ended and the wilds began. This place was on a threshold of its own, with the world of men behind us and proper nature ahead—singing birds and buzzing bees to the right, and a stony, silent boneyard to the left.
There was something quietly stoic and important about Rosemary’s Green, as if the whole expanse were one giant mossy cathedral. Jackaby pressed forward over the grass. He moved with focus and purpose.
“Do you know what we’re looking for, sir?” I asked.
“I think so. I’ve been here before,” he said. These were the first words he had spoken since leaving the house. “I investigated this field the month I arrived in New Fiddleham. Lines of force for miles around intersect near the southwest corner, but I could never discern anything further. Having come together, the channels of power simply stopped. I’ve always suspected something of significance lay just beyond my reach here, but I’ve never had the means to penetrate the barrier. There are very few things in this world I cannot see. I suspect, Miss Rook, that we are approaching a portal to the Annwyn.”
“The Annwyn?” Finstern perked up. “I know the Annwyn. Welsh?”
Jackaby looked back over his shoulder, surprised. “That’s right.”
“I know all the stories,” Finstern said. “And about the sídhe mounds in Ireland, too.”
“Huh.” Jackaby looked legitimately impressed. “That’s a rather unexpected facet of your education.”
“I am a skeptic, but I am a scientist first. Never dismiss the possibility of forces beyond our comprehension. I’ve read the Mabinogion and the old Arthurian legends. I’ve been to Stonehenge. You can never exclude that which has not yet been proven. That’s the essence of inquiry. The Annwyn is an intriguing theory. Interdimensional overlap, a converging of realities.” His darting eyes lost focus for a moment as he stared at the trees in front of him. “If you had lived my childhood, Detective, you might have sought for other worlds as well.”
“My childhood brought the other worlds to me,” Jackaby replied. “Whether I wanted them or not. You may have had the better end of that deal.”
“Pardon me, sirs,” I piped up. “There are those of us present who have not spent our lives developing a lexicon of obscure mythologies.”
“The Annwyn is one of many names for the infamous other side,” Jackaby said.
“So, the afterlife?”
“No. Not exactly. But I believe that our entryway to the underworld might lie behind a barrier of another sort. There are worlds beyond ours—the domains of creatures who once shared the earth openly with us. There are places where the veil is thin and a few places where it has been rent clean through, but it stretches to all corners of the globe.”
Finstern twitched. “Globes are spherical. No corners.”
Jackaby ignored him and continued. “The Annwyn exists all around us, but it is one of very few things that even I have never seen.”
“Then how can you be certain?”
“If a native Parisian told you that France was a real place, would you doubt him? I’ve met residents of the Annwyn, Miss Rook, many times. Call them immigrants or visitors or whatever you like—there are a great many beings in our world who hail from the Annwyn. The craftsmen who reconstructed my third floor were from a domain of the Annwyn that the Norse call Alfheim. Here we know them as elves.”
I blinked. “You had elves do your remodeling?”
“Can you think of a more practical way to fit an entire functional ecosystem in a single story of a New England colonial?”
“I really can’t.”
“The duck pond on the third floor is much deeper than the ceiling on the second,” he said. “They overlap without either losing any space. It’s a neat trick.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
“Well then. The Annwyn works in a similar way,” Jackaby said. “It’s here, all around us, but mere mortals like us can never pierce it. The Seelie Court has taken it upon themselves to maintain the barrier at all times. The portals are theirs alone to open.”
“What exactly are they protecting behind their barrier?” Finstern asked.
Jackaby came to a stop at last. We were looking at a great grassy mound in the earth. It was nothing more than a rather geometrical hill, as though an oversized globe had been half buried and then covered in sod. “Us,” Jackaby replied, setting down the satchel. “They’re protecting us.”
“How are they protecting us,” Charlie asked, “if they’re the ones who can come and go as they like and we’re the ones locked out?”
“Not every creature can come and go,” Jackaby answered. “The Seelie Court are peacekeepers by nature. The Unseelie Court are . . . not.” He glanced to Owen Finstern, who was circling the mound, transfixed. Lowering his voice, he added: “Your own ancestors, Mr. Barker, were born of a marriage between humans and Seelie fae. Werewolves, in contrast, were born of a marriage between humans and the Unseelie. That might be part of what makes you an exceptional officer of the law and what makes them monsters. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“So the barrier keeps all the bad creatures inside?” I said. “It doesn’t work very well then, does it? We’ve got redcaps and vampires and all sorts of things running around New Fiddleham.”
“The barrier is not perfect,” Jackaby said. “It is to be expected that a handful of creatures slip through each year. Too many recently, it’s true—but a fraction of those that lie beyond. It is the duty of the Seelie Court to seal the cracks as they occur. Think of that pond suspended above your bedroom on Augur Lane. Those creatures are like the tiniest drips beginning to form. They are nothing compared to the deluge that would await should the whole barrier ever collapse.”
“That doesn’t make me feel especially comfortable about our poking about here,” I said. “Or about my sleeping arrangements, for that matter.”
“I—I can feel it!” We all looked up. Finstern was nearly at the top of the mound when he flew back as though slapped by a giant invisible hand. He tumbled gracelessly, head over heels, until he landed, half-dazed, at the bottom of the hill.
“Mr. Finstern?” I rushed to his side.
“Observable phenomenon. Measurable reaction. Quantifiable.” The inventor sat up, swaying slightly. He was smiling madly. “It’s real.”
My employer clambered up the mound. It was not overly large—ten, perhaps fifteen, feet from its base to its highest point. He stood where Finstern had been and felt the air all around him.
Nothing happened.
“I can’t feel it. I still don’t see anything.” He looked down at the inventor with a critical eye. “Your father,” he said. “What did your mother call him again?”
“Her magic man.” Finstern sneered. “You can’t feel it? It’s in the air. I can feel it from here. It’s humming like a generator.”
Jackaby slid back down the mound. “No,” he said. “I don’t feel it. This mound is both a door and a lock, but neither one is meant for me. You, on the other hand . . . Whoever your father was, Mr. Finstern, I do believe the barrier exists to thwart his kith and kin.”
Finstern pushed himself to his feet. “You’re saying my father was part of your Unseelie Court?”
“I’m sorry,” Jackaby said. “He may have been your mother’s magic man after all; just not necessarily a good one.”
“Good. Bad. Subjective,” said Finstern coldly. “He made a bastard of me and left my mother ruined. You don’t need to apologize to me for calling him a monster. How do we get inside?”
Jackaby nodded thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said. “Charlie, do you feel anything?”
Charlie stepped forward. “I don’t know what I should be feeling, sir.”
“Why don’t you give it a try? Just there.”
Charlie pulled himself up the grassy slope, reaching out in front of him as he climbed. Finstern’s eyes narrowed as he watched. “I don’t feel anything,” Charlie said. “The Om Caini have always been neutral, sir. I’m sorry, but I don’t think—” Charlie’s outstretched hand suddenly vanished up to the elbow. He pulled it back abruptly. “Mr. Jackaby?”
We climbed up the mound behind him. Charlie reached forward again, and the air rippled like a mirage around his hand, swallowing it up to the wrist.
“There.” Jackaby said. “Try to open it.”
“Are we sure that’s advisable?” asked Charlie.
“Nothing about my line of work is advisable,” said Jackaby. “There are questions I need answered, and the people to answer them cannot be reached through standard channels.”
“I don’t know how,” Charlie said. “I have no idea what I’m doing, sir.”
“Please, Mr. Barker. Try.”
Charlie took a deep breath and closed his eyes. For several seconds nothing happened, and then the hole in midair grew larger. It pulsed, stretching wider inch by inch. A wave of warm air washed over the mound, dancing through the tall grasses. It smelled sweet, like burnt sugar. Charlie’s hand was suddenly lit from behind with sparkling sapphire and emerald light, and for a moment I feared we had opened a hole under some great magical lake, but then my eyes adjusted and I realized I was looking into a thick, vibrant wood.
“I really don’t think I can—” Charlie opened his eyes and staggered back. Jackaby caught him before he tumbled down the hill. The portal was an archway now, rounded smoothly at the top and as tall as a church door. I stepped around it. From behind it was nothing at all. I saw only the dumbfounded faces of my companions gazing into thin air. I came back around to the front.
Finstern, in spite of the jolt it had given him earlier, was the first to step through the door. “Wait!” Jackaby called after him, but the inventor went on ahead, peering to the left and right.
“Charlie,” Jackaby said, “I need you to stay here.”
“Not a chance,” Charlie replied. “You have no idea what you’re walking into.”
“What I know is that I’d like to walk out of it again. Do you know what heroes who enter the Annwyn are most known for?”
Charlie shook his head.
“Staying there,” said Jackaby. “Whether they wanted to or not. Neither Miss Rook nor I can open this portal, Mr. Barker, and there’s no telling if even you will be able to reopen it from the other side after it closes. I need you to maintain the doorway for all of us. You’re the only one who can.”
Charlie’s eyes hunted for any alternative, but they found none. He turned to me, instead. “You know it isn’t safe,” he said. “You don’t have to go.”
I leaned forward on my toes and kissed his cheek. “We’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
Jackaby stepped through the opening. “One more thing, Mr. Barker,” he called back. “Try not to let anything out.”