“Of course. It’s a city.”
“And the streets are so wide.”
“In this part of town, yes, but it varies greatly.”
“The last time I was here, it was one of the largest cities in the world. Now it is so much bigger.”
She let him take everything in for a moment. “I remember when I first came to the country from the city. It was as though all the color was stripped from the world, leaving only gray. I could understand that the country was better for my health, but it was dull compared to life in town.”
“You lost your mother in the city,” Thornwood said.
Mouse nodded. “When I was a child. She was ill for a long time. We knew it was coming. She wrote my uncle a letter begging him to take on Roger, to raise him as an aristocrat. Roger was eight at the time. I was six. The letter was enough, and a week after my mother died, Roger went to live at Thistlemarsh.”
“But you remained with your father.”
Mouse pulled her lips into a tight smile. She could feel the edge of her teeth behind them, waiting to bite.
Instead, she said, “I was not the heir, so yes, I remained with Father until we came to Thistlemarsh together when I was twelve.”
A wave crashed over Mouse: memories of Roger, of her mother, and of her time alone at Thistlemarsh when her father was dead. When her mother died, their family crumbled, and Mouse was too young (too late) to save it. Under the barrage of painful memories, Mouse abandoned the story.
“We had better get on. We are losing time, and our return ticket is for this evening.”
London wrapped them up in its flow, delivering them to the Underground with insistent hands. Once on the carriage, Thornwood watched the tunnels go by with wide-eyed wonder.
As the train raced under the city, Mouse noticed that Thornwood’s skin paled and then grayed against his traveling clothes. At first, shebelieved it was a trick of the light, but as they threaded through the tunnels, Mouse saw that he was truly gray, almost transparent. The touch of his blinding glamour faded. He swayed slowly, and when he moved, it was as though every step took an immense effort.
“What’s wrong?” Mouse whispered as the train stopped.
“Green,” was all he said back. “I must get to somewhere green.”
Mouse threw his arm over her shoulder and elbowed her way through commuters clogging the platform. She did not let her thoughts rest on any of the passersby until she spotted a man in a dark uniform stationed by a stairwell leading up into the London air. A newspaper shielded his upper body. He lowered it as Mouse approached, but his eyes followed the words on the paper rather than fixing on her face.
“Where is the nearest park?” she asked.
The man looked Thornwood up and down. “He drunk?”
“No. He fainted in the carriage—he needs fresh air. The nearest park, please.”
The man did not look convinced, but he gave her vague directions to a “patch of green” a few blocks from the exit.
“They serve coffee just outside, should he need a bit of a pick-me-up,” he said before returning to his paper.
Mouse supported Thornwood up the stairs into the city. The small park the man suggested was merely a grove of trees around a statue and muddy grass, enclosed by an unlocked spiked steel fence, but Thornwood collapsed into it in relief.
He pressed his face into the earth, and the grass rose around him and pulled him down into it. It glowed where the blades touched his skin. Each edge left a slight impression on him, as thin as a strand of hair.
A little red coffee stand leaned against the park fence. Luckily, the attendant faced the houses and could not see the Faerie face down in the luminescent grass behind him. Mouse was unsure if thepeople in the houses overlooking the square could see Thornwood through the trees, but it was not something she could control, so she tried to put it out of her mind.
Mouse bought two coffees from the attendant, one with cream and sugar and the other black. By the time she returned to Thornwood, he was sitting up. He stared at the statue of a Faerie man (Oberon, Mouse presumed from his medieval attire) dominating half of the small garden. A swath of red paint ran from the statue’s head to his feet and down the pedestal.
“Feeling better?” she asked, handing him his cup. He took a large swig, closing his eyes as he swallowed, and shuddered.
“Yes,” he said. His voice had thickened as though he was talking over a sore throat. He looked back at the statue. “Did a human do that?”
Mouse followed his gaze to the red mark down the statue’s body. “I assume so. No one has seen a Faerie in—”
“Over a hundred years, I know,” Thornwood cut her off. “But why the paint?”