Starlight & Strange Magic: Epilogue

The train pulls into Paddington at half past two, sounding its whistle in a few short, important blasts, and as they hiss and grind to a halt, Lucy glances out the window and recalls her first sight of this city, from an arriving airship at the Greenwich docks. It never changes much, except to grow larger and smokier and full of more steel and steam and invention; she’s fascinated by all of them, by just what this increasingly modern magical world is going to look like. In the last two years, there has been an explosion of new prototypes and designs, an unprecedented amount of access to scholarly archives. It turns out that Rittenhouse was strictly embargoing almost all of them, and now that they’re gone, there has been a wave of reform and liberalization in popular education and attitudes to magic. Oxford has even reluctantly instituted a magical history and theory course (they insist that it is not for practical use, much to the disappointment of countless enterprising undergraduates) that you can get into without having been born a baronet. (You still basically have to have attended Eton or Harrow anyway, so there’s not much difference, but baby steps.) It is April 1889, and England is afire with dreams of science and sorcery.

Lucy grins to herself, then gets to her feet, waiting for Flynn to reach down their bags, which he does. It is useful to have a tall man on hand to accomplish these sort of tasks, among others, and at least she no longer receives scandalized looks as a Purveyor of Moral Looseness when she rides the train, though she’s not sure that’s an upgrade. This world does, after all, have problems.

The train door opens, they join the queue, and Flynn offers Lucy a hand to step down and out into the station. A boy comes running at the unconscionable sight of a well-to-do-couple carrying their own luggage, but Flynn curtly waves him off, though he does toss him a bob for his trouble. They maneuver through the crowd and out to the vaucanson rank, which Flynn also gives the fish-eye, but he seems to decide that the clockwork carriages pass muster. He helps Lucy up into the nearest one, shuts the door, and orders, “Number twelve, St. James’ Square.”

There’s a whir and a click as the gears start to run, and the vaucanson rolls away from the curb and into the throng of midafternoon London traffic. This one appears to have been programmed by an especially daring individual, since it zooms toward slow hansoms or hackneys or costermongers as if determined to make them move or run them over, and Lucy can see her husband visibly regretting his transportation choices. She lays a hand on his arm, partially in an attempt to lower his blood pressure. “We’re not going to die, you know.”

“If this blasted tocker doesn’t stop driving like a maniac, we might.” Flynn throws a black look at the machine in question. “I knew there was a reason I still hated them.”

Lucy raises an eyebrow. She can’t blame him for his residual dislike of automatons, since they also give her a jolt when she catches sight of one unexpectedly, but at least it’s less of a start than it used to be. Honestly, she’s more worried about the fact of being out with Flynn in public, in London. The charges have been dropped, he was even given a medal with the others for his service in saving the world from disaster (now that was an interesting event, with Victoria looking like she wished he would drop dead as she pinned it to his lapel and he threw out the world’s sassiest, “Thank you, Your Majesty”), but people don’t just forget overnight, or in two years, that you were a major and terrifying crime boss. His face is still burned into collective memory from the broadsheets and the wanted posters. What if someone – ?

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“the sokolovs walked lucy down the aisle”

Starlight & Strange Magic, Chapter 24: In Which We Enter A Strange Land

Lucy wakes slowly, rising from deep unconsciousness to filmy awareness in a way to make her think that she must have been asleep for a hundred years, and she is alone among the briars and the brambles of an overgrown, ruined castle. She lies there with her eyes closed, unable to remember how to open them, with pale light etching shadows on the inside of her eyelids. She vaguely recalls that she was stabbed, but she does not feel any pain. She’s not immediately sure where she is or how she got here, or how long it’s been. It could be a century, as she just thought, or it could have been a few moments. It could have been forever, or nothing at all.

After several more minutes, Lucy ventures to open her eyes, which takes a lot more effort than she is used to. The light falls full in her face, and she is tempted to clap them shut again straightaway. But as her sight returns, she can make some sense of her surroundings. She is lying on a huge bed, which is draped in white coverings like fine spidersilk and hung in a gauzy canopy, with tall posts of pale wood and curtains tied with gilded bands. It’s very comfortable, and she is almost engulfed in pillows covered with intricate silver embroidery. The bed is set in a large, airy room that looks medieval in its architecture, with gothic columns and fluted ogives, but the stone is twined with flowering vines that have slightly changed in color and appearance each time Lucy looks back at them. The floor opens out onto a sweeping balcony, and the windows are diamonded, letting in more of that bright, indeterminate light. She has a vague memory that it was night when she got here. She must have been out for a while.

Lucy glances around the room, which is quiet except for a faint rush and sigh like distant wind or waves. There is a silver goblet of water on the side table, a white rose, and a glass bell jar that flickers on and off with a sun-like glow. The air has a thin, fragile translucence to it like much-washed linen, and Lucy raises a hand as if to catch trailing filaments. Then she reaches down to touch her chest, finds that there is no stab wound or other injury of any sort – even her battered feet and legs have been completely restored – and she is wearing an insubstantial gown made of the same white silk as the bedclothes. It falls low on her shoulders, and swirls like clouds.

Thus far, Lucy has not seen anything to disprove the asleep-for-a-hundred-years-in-a-ruined-castle hypothesis, though this does not look like some windswept, derelict wreck in the middle of nowhere. The water has been left for her, at any rate, and the place is clean and well-kept and otherwise appealing. If she thought she might wake up in some craggy, desolate black tower under a jagged fork of lightning, that is assuredly not the case. That, or –

Wait. Why would she think that, what did she expect? She knew she was taken here by someone, someone whose color scheme and general aesthetic tended toward the dark and dramatic end of things, and this does not quite match with that. Matija, Matija Korvin. Is this is his castle, is that where she is? Is this Faerie?

Where – where is Flynn?

Lucy slides to the side of the bed and stands up a little too fast, causing a head rush. The wood of the floor is silken beneath her bare feet, and one of the vines grows a few more flowers before her eyes, which open their petals with a soft, fragrant perfume. Clothes have been laid out for her on a nearby chair, so she makes her way over to investigate. It is a deep midnight-blue dress worked with crystals like small stars, and a matching cloak fastened by a band of diamonds. It is definitely more expensive than anything she has ever worn, and looks custom-made.

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Starlight & Strange Magic, Chapter 15: In Which Both Parties Regret Everything

Lucy works brutally hard for the next several weeks. She’s finally teaching again, which is surreal enough on its own, and while she doesn’t know what will come of inspiring gently bred young Victorian ladies to burn down the patriarchy, she also doesn’t care. She can’t do it openly, of course, but her lectures quickly develop a reputation as shocking, which is at least good for attendance. Looking at these debutantes with their upswept hair and lace collars and cameo brooches, staring back at her in fascination, horror, or both, Lucy feels ever more like a curio on show, a traveling magician here to astound the locals in a way much deeper than her obvious Americanness. And yet, she feels incredibly protective of these sheltered girls, half of whom have only been allowed to attend Somerville because their families think it will be useful for attracting a husband if she can display her intellectual refinements. They will not grow up in her history, in her world, but she is going to fight for their future anyway.

Then again, it’s not just Lucy’s lectures that have acquired a reputation. Her irregular marital situation is also the subject of whispered campus gossip, which she really can’t disprove at this point without getting herself into even more trouble. Obviously, people did overhear the argument with Flynn, and since Lucy already told Sophia about and introduced her to “Mr. Preston,” she’s basically stuck with the lie. Madeleine Shaw is a little confused why Lucy never mentioned a husband in any of their correspondence, so Lucy has to come up with a story about it being a recent marriage, which clearly leads half of them to suspect that she indecorously got herself in the family way and had to take urgent steps not to be totally disgraced. They also strongly suspect that her husband is a swine – if not for the shouting, since a man has the right to chastise his wife, blah blah misogyny blah, then certainly because he is incapable of using doors and windows for their God-given purpose, and the numerous, numerous other ways in which his visit breached the all-important etiquette. Oh lord. It is for the best that they don’t know the half of it, but that won’t stop them making it up.

For her part, Lucy has absolutely no idea what to think about that any more. It took a few days for the effects of the revenant to fully wear off, and yet it left her feeling even worse. From the perspective of somewhat more objective hindsight, she can admit that Flynn wasn’t wrong to think it was a dangerous and unwelcome diversion from their purpose of fighting Rittenhouse – and she was the one who recruited him for that first, after all. She had somehow gotten used enough to him to tell him about Amy and other sensitive details of her past, expect that he would help her do something about it, and – admittedly after he told her she was expendable first – tell him to help out or hit the highway. Blamed him for being stubborn and headstrong and utterly unwilling to listen to advice or just objections, which yes, yes, he is. But for that matter, so is she. She’s gotten used to working alone, of deciding on a course and following through, and she, Rufus, and Jiya were always in essential agreement anyway. She’s never had someone like Flynn, who is on the same side of the war but so far away from automatically following or supporting her. It’s unsettling and unpleasant, but it’s also a wake-up call, like a slap across the face or cold water over the head. Is she doing the right thing? Would she even know?

Lucy knows that it might be another effect of the revenant to trick her into wanting to help it, instead of stopping it, and she dutifully tries to adjust for this possibility in her plans. Maybe before she does anything either way, she should go back to London, find Priscilla, and see if she can contact Amy again. Maybe Amy can tell her more about her situation, and selfishly, Lucy longs with her entire being to have a real conversation with her sister. But she can’t. Not yet.

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