Happy Holidays, vulgarweed!

[goe_mod]

Dear giftee, it was an honor to write for you! It has been a dream to write a Victorian AU for Good Omens, so thank you for giving me the chance to do so! Happy Holidays!
Rating: General

 Victorian Omens

or

The Observation and Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, on the End of the World (Which Was Never Meant to Happen in the Nineteenth Century in Any Case)

 

               He’d slept right through most of the nineteenth century…

 

               Everyone has their time. The time in which they thrive, when the world was made for them, and them for it. There are times when one can only struggle, when every challenge seems made specifically to require strengths one doesn’t have, to appeal to exactly those weaknesses which will break a person. But everyone, also, does have their time.

               Some people simply weren’t alive during theirs.

 

******************************************************

 

Aug. 22, 18—

Mr. Fell,

               Pertaining to our Arrangement, I am writing to you only out of absolute necessity. It is, as you no doubt will perceive, of vital importance that we meet to discuss the matter I am about to relay to you in person. An incident has occurred, involving, I must begrudgingly inform you, myself, that touches upon both our duties within our respective occupations. It is an incident that will shake the very foundation of our lives. Dare I say that the time we have long awaited has arrived, in spite of ourselves, sooner than we could possibly have anticipated? To put it succinctly, Things Are Afoot.

               Do not think that I have forgotten your last words to me on the manner of my letter-writing, or lack thereof. I trust that you will recognize the gravity of the situation at hand and thereby understand the urgent tone of this brief missive.

               We need a place to convene. I recommend St. James’ Park, by the new Duck Island Cottage, and hope to see you there in three days’ time. As always,

 

Yours associate,

A.J. Crowley

 

******************************************************

 

               It was a dark and stormy night. Actually, it was a dark and stormy afternoon. Most afternoons were dark and stormy in early Victorian London, even in the small paradise of St. James’ Park, and one could hardly have drawn any conclusions about the activities of the forces of evil because of this fact alone.

               One could have perhaps attributed a sense of foreboding to the gentleman dressed in dark clothes and strange glasses that covered his eyes, lingering near the edge of the water with a scowl on his face, instead.

               Several ducks eyed this new stranger warily from the pond.

               After he had been lingering and scowling for a while longer, he kicked the grass by his feet and stalked away.

 

               The storm had grown wilder as the day turned into night. When Crowley arrived at the large stone house, the candles in its windows illuminating the countryside like a beacon of hope, the doors that opened to him emitted such a glow and such warmth that it was almost as though the gates of heaven had opened to welcome him in from the torrent.

               The angel who stood breathless in the doorway improved the image.

               He gasped, his expression a mixture of bewilderment, hanging between delight, confusion, and uncertainty. “Crowley? You’re here! I didn’t expect you. I—I didn’t invite you.” His face fell at this last observation.

               “Of course you didn’t,” Crowley snapped. “I’m not here for the ball, or whatever it is you’ve got going on in there. Why didn’t you answer my letter?”

               “I didn’t invite you because the last time we spoke, you said, ‘Good night, for at least three months, or until the end of time’,” Aziraphale said peevishly. Then he frowned. “What letter?”

               Crowley ran a hand down his face, which was still streaming from the rain. “That bloody pigeon. She must’ve gotten lost. Why do you have to live out in the middle of nowhere? London is where things happen, angel.”

               “Not according to you these past few years. And I’m not that far. The ride is only—” He stopped himself. His eyebrows raised. “You didn’t ride here on—?”

               “She’s in your stables,” Crowley said grimly. “Look, can we talk?”

               The angel wavered between the desire to express his continuing disapproval, and his impulse to be polite. A crack of thunder made both of them jump, and he melted, ushering the demon in.

               “I’ll just tell the guests I have business to attend to,” Aziraphale said. “Be back in a tiff. And it’s not a ball. I don’t throw balls.”

               Crowley stood with his arms crossed, dripping in the entrance hall. He grumbled. The walls were lined with paintings, not of people—no family or ancestors to display, here—but of places, temples and idyllic arches that would have made Heaven jealous, had those Upstairs actually had any taste at all.

               Crowley tapped his toe on the dark carpet. Then he edged down the hall a ways to look into the first room he came to—not the one that held all of the chattering people, but one that lay empty. Its walls were entirely lined with bookshelves, filled to the brim with dark green and red and blue tomes. He smiled.

               Aziraphale was back a few minutes later. He brushed off his pastel pink waistcoat. “Right then,” he said. He still sounded irritated. “What was so urgent that you felt the need to ride across the stormy night on your pitch-black steed to tell me?”

               “Well.” Crowley leaned against the wall. His glasses reflected the light of the candles in the sconces across from him. “You remember I told you I’d planned on sleeping until the end of time.”

               Aziraphale nodded, looking thoughtful.

               Crowley shrugged. “I only woke up about a decade early. C’mon. You’re going to want something to drink.”

 

               Somewhere else in England, a carriage was arriving in a small town, depositing there a family who had just grown in number by one. The exhausted parents took their newborn child out of the carriage. He’d been born while they had been traveling. They’d had to stop at the house of a strange country midwife who, ironically, had also been tending to another birth at the same time. The three of them entered their home. The child started to cry. His small face distorted itself with his wails

               It was a face that didn’t belong in the eighteenth century.

 

               The night had grown later, and the members of the dinner party were beginning to leave the house. They hadn’t noticed their host leaving them hours earlier, as though memory of him had vanished from their minds. They trailed out of the entrance hall into the night, where their carriages waited to take them home.

               Inside the house, in a much smaller study, Aziraphale and Crowley slouched by the fire.

               “Why now?” Aziraphale groaned. “I mean, why now? Things were just—” he hiccupped, “—just looking up.”

               “’Looking up?’” sneered Crowley.

               “Well,” sighed the angel. “Seems an arbiturtle—arbi—random time for ending th’world, to me. Eighteen hundreds. Couldn’t even of—of waited till we’d been here a nice round number?”

               “Oh, yes, two hundred more years of this,” Crowley said. “That’s what we need.”

               Aziraphale leaned forward. He had undone his vest, and the buttons shone in the firelight. “You don’t want it all to end,” he said, pointing at Crowley. “Don’t try an’ tell me you do.”

               Crowley snorted. He’d untied his cravat, but he still felt as though he were choking. “Course not. S’why I’m here, innit?”

               “Why are you here?” Aziraphale said. He leaned back again, eying him suspiciously. “You skilamalink serpent. Not playing more of Hell’s plot, are you?”

               “If I was doing that, d’you think I’d be here? I came to you for—” Crowley stopped. Made a face. Scowled. He was too drunk for this. “For—because—because we have to stop it.”

               Aziraphale crossed his arms. In spite of the fact that his jacket and breeches were both the same gentle powder blue, and he was entirely disheveled, he looked almost formidable. “I cannot simply disod—not do what ‘m told.”

               “You weren’t told to travel around France all last century going to every new café that popped up,” Crowley said. “Were you told to tell everyone who would listen about some new kid named Mozart who was clever with a piano, or to suggest that kite-flying was an all-weather type of pastime to Benjamin Franklin? I s’pose Upstairs must have told you that the best way of blending in with humans was to dress several decades out of fashion.”

               Aziraphale slumped. Crowley shifted in his chair guiltily.

               “My point,” the serpent went on, “is—”

               “I know what your point is,” Aziraphale said. He rubbed his temples. Crowley squirmed again.

               He had stood out, came the voice, blearily, through the haze of alcohol. Always does, these days, in cities and at balls, in that pale blue ensemble that makes him stand out like the only light in the room, at the opera or in coaches flying across the countryside, always in that powder blue that brings out the light in his eyes.

               “I did give up the periwigs,” Aziraphale said sadly.

               “Hair’s cuter anyway,” Crowley mumbled. He realized he had spoken out loud. “Curlier,” he corrected. It was too late.

               Aziraphale had turned pink enough to match his vest. He might as well still have been wearing the rouge of the century before.

               “Anyway,” said Crowley, snapping back into focus, at least as much as his muddled brain could, “the point is—the point is—” He frowned, thinking. “The point is, if you’re tryin’ to thwart me, then it’s not disobeying. And I’m supervising the raising of the antichrist. So, if you’re there, too…”

               “It might balance out.” Aziraphale pondered this. He winced. “I think—I think—I need to sober up.”

               Crowley nodded glumly. He shut his eyes tightly as the alcohol left his system. When he opened them, the fire swirled in front of his vision. It remained, even when he looked away from it.

               “Why now,” Aziraphale said again, softly.

               “Why not?” Crowley said, shrugging. “The world has never been smaller. Empires and trade, ships and technology, we’re all connected now—humans are—and what do they do with it? Fight each other. There’s a new war every year, feels like. And the cities? ‘Blowing up’ is hardly hyperbole. Factories and mining, they’re tearing the Earth apart. There’s no food anywhere, but there’s disease to spare—and they still haven’t figured that stuff out. Why not now? No better time, really.”

               The two of them sat, contemplating this. The fire was starting to die down. The silence was broken only by the sound of Crowley’s messenger pigeon arriving, finally, and flying straight into Aziraphale’s closed window. Aziraphale walked over to the window to open it. Crowley produced some birdseed from out of his pocket. The poor befuddled bird hobbled over to peck at it.

               “I don’t like it any more than you,” Crowley said once Aziraphale had sat back down. “But it’s better to have a plan than nothing, isn’t it?”

               “Then we’ll watch the boy,” Aziraphale said, nodding. “Perhaps I can balance out some of the influences of Downstairs in him. Perhaps he’ll see this great big new world, and decide to do something good with it. Who knows? Maybe he’ll be become enchanted with all of this human progress.”

               Crowley watched the angel for a moment. Then he stood, stretching his legs, which had grown cold and stiff. “It’s settled, then. We’ll each do our part, and we’ll meet, every now and then, to compare notes?”

               “Quite so,” Aziraphale sighed. “No more napping for you, I’m afraid.”

               Crowley grunted. He hated that, when you had planned on sleeping in, but ended up waking up only eleven years before the great universal alarm clock was set to go off.

               Well. No point in going back to sleep now.

 

Eleven years later

 

               The Dowling estate was bustling with activity. The young master was to celebrate his birthday today. His childhood had been as was to be expected, full of servants and tutors and subservient adults who tried to insinuate ideas into his young, formidable mind, but who often found themselves playing the horse in his games of foxhunting instead. Now, everyone stood around the manor with the vague air of unease. Footmen held their noses in the air less for the sake of looking presentable than for avoiding having to witness what was to happen next. Warlock was about to come into an alarming degree of power.

               All boys as wealthy as him did with each year that they grew closer to adulthood, in those days.

               In fact, Warlock Dowling and the entire estate seemed incredibly normal.

               Too normal.

               The only thing that really stood out as strange amidst the people bedecked in black and white, garish emerald and startling sapphire dresses, was the bright, warm, red tartan vest worn by the curly-haired man looking around nervously at it all.

               It wasn’t out of style. In fact, he was wearing the height of fashion, far more so than anyone else there was. For the first time in millennia, Aziraphale stood out for looking too modern.

               He also stood out because of the pigeon who sat on his shoulder. Crowley had sent her with a message for the angel about the date of the young Warlock’s birthday party. Fortunately, Aziraphale was already at the house when the pigeon finally found him, ten minutes after the party had started.

               Aziraphale was wringing his hands. Crowley, in black, approached the angel, who looked so warm, in his red vest and brown jacket, and the way he simply always did. The serpent held out some birdseed, and the pigeon hopped from the angel’s shoulder to his hand.

               “Tartan?” Crowley hissed as the pigeon pecked away.

               “It’s completely stylish,” Aziraphale said. He looked Crowley up and down. “Even if it isn’t your style, Mr. Gas-pipes.”

               “Honestly, angel, the things that come out of your sauce-box these days.”

               “My what?”

               Crowley changed the subject. “The boy’s too normal.”

               “I’ve been thinking that myself.” Aziraphale’s eyes were dark now with worry. “Shouldn’t we have seen some signs of his power by now? Some attempts at shifting the world around him, you said? The other day while he was playing at hoop rolling he was so absolutely dismal that I almost miracled the hoop to stay up, but no matter what fits he might throw, he couldn’t seem to do a thing.”

               “He has to have his powers,” Crowley said, pacing. “And the hound has to come to him. I had to cover Bentley’s eyes with cloth so she doesn’t lose her mind when it shows up. You don’t want to see what that horse is like when she’s startled. But there’s no sign of it.”

               “No powers. No hound.”

               Crowley glanced at Aziraphale. The angel’s eyes widened.

               “No antichrist.”

 

               Well, then, where was he?

 

               Adam Young was exactly where he always was, in the peaceful country village of Tadfield, walking down the road with his friends.

               Wensleydale walked to his right, keeping his hoop rolling perfectly straight with ease. To his left was Pepper, who had freed her hair from its bonnet the first chance she’d gotten, and whose dress was caked knee-high with mud. And then there was Brian, looking like a bit of the dusty dirt road had risen and taken human form.

               The children were celebrating Adam’s birthday. He had just turned eleven.

               “Can’t believe you got a dog,” Pepper was saying. “Just like you said you would.”

               “He’ll be a great rat catcher,” Adam said. He didn’t sound surprised at all. He patted Dog on the head. Dog’s tail moved faster than the speed of light.

               “You should’ve gotten one of those dogs for hunting foxes,” Brian said. “Then you couldn’ve gone up an’ joined the ‘rostocracy.”

               “Actually, you couldn’t,” Wensley said, “because that’s actually quite difficult.”

               “Besides, Adam doesn’t want to join the ‘rostocracy,” Pepper said. “They have to go to fancy balls and stuff. And participate in the season.”

               “Might not be bad being in Parliament,” Adam said. “I could make rules and stuff. But I’d have to wear a wig.”

               The four of them nodded, as though that settled it. It was much better that Dog had been small and scruffy.

               They were headed towards the site of the new factory that was being built on the edge of town. It hadn’t got started yet, but some of the workers must have been there working on it, as there was a strand of smoke drifted up from one of the chimneys that they could see just over the top of the hill. The streak of black curled into the bright blue sky.

               The Them stopped as they reached the top of the hill. They looked down at the road below them that led up to the village. They squinted.

               Something was coming up the road.

               They watched it.

               It was a rather odd thing for visitors to arrive in Tadfield. It was a very small village. What was approaching was an even more odd thing. It appeared to be some sort of contraption, all circles and metal bars, and, what was even more fantastic, there seemed to be someone riding it.

               They waited as the figure on the contraption made her way, huffing and puffing, up the hill, and then pulled to a stop next to them.

               “’Scuse me,” said Adam. “But what’re you sittin’ on?”

               “Oh, hello.” Anathema gasped for her breath, then gave the children a smile. “It’s called a velocipede.”

               “Why are the wheels that way?” Wensleydale said. “One in front of the other, instead of side-by-side?”

               “It’s how velocipedes work,” the new stranger replied. “They’re a grand new invention, you know. Actually, they’ve been around for a while, but they still haven’t quite caught on. They’re making new improvements every decade—”

               Brian sputtered out what had been baffling him into silence up until this point. “You’re wearing trousers.”

               Anathema looked down at her legs. She looked back at the children and gave them a grin. “Well. Yes. Sort of. They’re bloomers.”

               Pepper’s eyes were aglow. “Brilliant.”

               “’Scuse me,” Adam said again. “But we don’t normally get ladies wearing trousers and riding vlossopods around here.”

               “I’m not surprised.” Anathema put her hands on her hips. “In a small place like this. You’re much less likely to see women breaking social codes, or new inventions, than in London.” She didn’t mention that you were only about point-five percent more likely to see such a thing in the multitude of the city, too. “Although, with that new factory that’s being built here, your village might start seeing some changes soon, anyway.”

               “D’you come from London?” Pepper asked. Her fears concerning the season had blown over. If there were women like this in Town, the place didn’t seem so bad.

               “London’s nothin’ to Tadfield,” Adam scoffed. “We’ve got loads of new inventions. It’s much better than dirty ol’ London.”

               “Oh, you’re right,” Anathema said. Her eyes had grown round. “You’re absolutely right. I’m actually flabbergasted that it’s all supposed to happen here, but Agnes is very clear—but—well—never mind that. You lot are much better off here than in London, anyway. You must be, what, eleven, twelve? You’d have been working in some factory for years by now in London. Hopefully they won’t finish that one until you’re older.”

               “We’d be making loads of money,” Brian said cheerily. “Adam, now you’re ‘leven, you could work full time and earn lots.”

               Adam considered this. It might be nice to be able to buy a set of real skittles.

               “You could earn some,” Anathema said seriously. “If you wanted to work twelve hours a day, in dangerous conditions, then walk all the way home, only to live someplace horrible, then walk all the way back again before the sun had even thought of rising.”

               Adam’s face fell. “Is it really like that in London?”

               Anathema nodded. Pepper had walked to her side to get a closer look at the ‘trousers’. She pulled on the leg of one.

               “Do ladies really wear these there?”

               “Not most,” Anathema admitted. “Actually, most women in London these days are more concerned with the size of their waist than proving once and for all that we do, in fact, have legs, and we can use them, too.” Anathema frowned. “Er. You know what I mean.”

               Adam was thinking over all of this. “Actually, I think maybe I’ll stay in Tadfield,” he said. “I’m not sure London sounds all that great, even with vlossipods, with all the borin’ factory work and starvin’ ladies and stuff.”

               Anathema was climbing back onto her velocipede. “Good thinking. Other children like you aren’t that lucky, there. We just have to hope all this industrialization doesn’t ruin beautiful little country towns like this one.” If there’s a future for them to ruin them in, she thought darkly. “By the way. You all haven’t spotted anything strange going on in the past few days, have you? Any weird animals or beasts? Strange weather patterns?”

               The children told her they had not. The strange woman sighed and started to work her trousered legs upon the contraption. It started to gain speed as it went down the hill towards the village. The Them watched her go.

               “Strange lady,” Pepper said. “All right. What shall we do next?”

               But Adam was still squinting after her, thinking about all of the London children in factories.

 

               Hastur and Ligur had wrecked the Dowling carriage, carrying the very pregnant Lady Dowling, near a small village, eleven years ago. That was how they had been able to make the switch. The antichrist had been given to the midwife, who had—

               —apparently placed him someone-knew-where.

               Aziraphale stared at the gig dubiously.

               “You get in, sit down,” Crowley was saying. “I’ll drive.”

               “You’re going to drive this thing?”

               “Course. What, d’you think we’d both fit on top of Bentley? She’s a strong old girl, but even that might be a bit much for her.” I’d fall off, anyway, like I always do, and then you’d be left having to deal with the beast, Crowley thought.

               “But have you ever actually driven one before?”

               “I bought the thing,” Crowley said, cleverly avoiding the question. “Look at it. It’s a real beauty.”

               Bentley snorted and stomped her hoof. It was a halfhearted stomp. A real one would have shaken the cobbles out of their place in the street.

               Aziraphale ran his hand along the side of the, admittedly, beautifully crafted vehicle. “It’s certainly a pretty gig.”

               “I’d say it’s more handsome than a hansom cab.”

               “Har har. But, will it still be so beautiful, I wonder, when you crash the both of us into the Thames?”

               “Stop worrying so much, angel. It’s not the end of the world. That’s not for a few days yet.” Crowley’s voice sounded a brittle kind of bright. He clambered onto the driver's seat of the gig.

               “It’s just, my dear, I don’t want you careening over the top of the thing—”

               “I have to be on the outside, anyway,” Crowley said. “Or else she can’t hear me.”

               “What on Earth do you say to that poor horse?” Aziraphale exclaimed. “You don’t threaten the thing, do you?”

               “Threaten Bentley? Are you mad?” Crowley gave a wild laugh. “Besides, that ‘poor horse’ is a hell-horse, need I remind you?”

               “And you’re a hell-person,” Aziraphale said matter-of-factly. “Yet here I am.”

               “It’s not the same—we’re not made of the same—the same stuff—look. I don’t threaten her, all right? I—I—I sing.”

               “You what?”

               “She likes music!” Crowley ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He grumbled, “Bloody horse rides like murder if I don’t sing her something soothing.”

               “And what do you sing to her?” said Aziraphale, whose strangled voice betrayed too much delight to make it seem as though he really was trying very hard to not laugh at him.

               “Oh, you know. All the Queen's favorite hits. Mozart, mostly. Don’t laugh!”

               Bentley was the kind of horse people noticed in the street. Daring men, and often foolish ones, would sometimes offer Crowley money for her, or attempt to bet him that their steeds could beat her in a race. Crowley could be wicked, but not that cruel, so he always refused the money, and the look Bentley gave them from her must-be-brown-but-almost-seemed-to-have-a-red-gleam-to-it-didn’t-it eye, and the must-have-been-steam-from-the-warm-breath-hitting-the-cold-air-but-looked-more-like-smoke that came out of her nostrils when she huffed at them, was enough to cancel any bets. She was jet-black and pure muscle, towering over every man, leaving cracks in the road wherever she went. Her favorite musician, so far, was Chopin.

               “But Chopin gets her too worked up,” Crowley said miserably. “It’s the emotion. Makes her want to canter. At least with Mozart, she usually does a gentle trot.”

               Aziraphale climbed into the gig with unease. He felt the whole thing shake as Crowley got himself settled in the driver’s seat. The angel might have said a quick prayer, if it hadn’t been Heaven’s plans they were trying to circumvent. Instead, he gripped the seat beneath him as tightly as he could as he heard the demon shout the signal for the neighing beast to set off.

 

               Constable R.P. Tyler was on patrol. He wore his belt high with pride, his buttons shiny, and his rounded hat taller upon his head than one would have thought possible had they known less about the size of Constable Tyler’s head. His chin-strap didn’t go all the way under his chin, but he had been assured that it was supposed to be that way. He strolled down the main street of Tadfield with his hands behind his back. It was looking to be a good day.

               His luck was just about to change.

               “Oi, you there, boy!”

               Adam, caught in the criminal action of being a young boy in a small village, slunk reluctantly over to him.

               “What are you doing?” Constable Tyler asked.

               “Nuthin’” said Adam, the perfect human response.

               “Nothin’, ey?” said the Constable. “Is that what you say? You know what I say? I say you’re up to somethin’.”

               “Oh, that’s a crime now, is it, Constable?” Adam said. “I s’pose it’s a crime to be up to anythin’, say, up to goin’ to church? Or is it a crime to be ‘up’ to helpin’ an old lady up some stairs, is it? Sorry, Constable, I didn’t mean to be ‘up’ to anythin’, I’ll just go back to doin’ nothin, if you don’t mind.”

               “Just you watch yourself, young Mr. Young!” the Constable said as Adam started to slink away. “There’s bad sorts around here just waiting to corrupt a good-for-nothing young mind like yours. Just yesterday I saw some—some lady—though I use the word generously, some I’ve heard might even call her a witch—wearing trousers.”

               “She’s a witch?” Adam gasped.

               “Don’t be preposterous, boy! Witches aren’t real! She’s just a bloody city woman with ‘modern ideas’. Next thing you know, she’ll have all the women in town wearing trousers. It’ll be legs, as far as you can see! Nothing but legs!”

               “I’ll just be on my way, then,” Adam said, but the Constable was too riled up to notice.

               “I mean, what’s become of this nation?” he said. “This great empire, shining its glorious light upon the whole world, and yet we can’t even keep our women’s legs in one complete fabric cylinder? Are we savages? Witchcraft, boy? Who need fear myths like witches when the world is being turned upside down under our very noses? Who need fear witches when modern ‘science’ itself threatens to destroy everything we hold dear? Women like that, spreading ridiculous ideas and conspiracies. What will become of good, honest tradition? What will become of the youngsters like you, young Mr. Young, with this as your example?”

               He looked, but Adam had already run off, wishing he had one of those velociraptor things to get away with even more quickly. Constable Tyler scratched his chin beneath his chinstrap nervously.

               He hoped the boy hadn’t gone off to see that witch. Who knew what sort of dark magic—or worse, ideas—he could fall victim to.

 

               “And ten-hour work days for all!” Anathema finished. Her eyes burned with determination. “They say it’s mad, but I believe if we limit the workweek to only five days, we can be just as productive and reduce work-related deaths. Not to mention what would happen to poverty levels if women were paid more. And—and I really need you to open your mind on this one, Adam, if you can trust me—children should not be working such dangerous jobs. In fact, we should value the lives of children, even as much as we value the lives of grown men!”

               “You are mad,” said Adam, who was loving it. “What else do witches want?”

               “It’s not technically a witch thing,” Anathema said, not wanting to mislead him. “Just something normal, rational, compassionate people want. But it could happen! We just need to combat the podsnappery of the wealthy men in charge and get them to admit that we have a problem!”

               Adam grinned as he looked around the witch’s cottage.

               Though the witch was wearing trousers, and she was much younger and prettier than Adam had expected a witch to be, the cottage itself looked the perfect picture. There were dried herbs hanging in bundles from the ceiling. A cauldron bubbled in the corner. Several cats roamed the building, and the air smelled both bitter and sweet.

               There were also periodicals and pamphlets everywhere.

               “S’cuse me,” Adam said, pointing to the cauldron. “Is that a potion?”

               “I’m boiling my clothes,” Anathema said. “Agnes said it kills the demons that make people ill.”

               Adam was disappointed to hear that giving you a runny nose was the most fun evil ploy demons could think of, and also secretly thought that if the fires of hell couldn’t kill them, then some hot water probably wouldn’t, either, but he thought it polite to say nothing.

               “People used to believe in the humours in my great-great-great-great-great grandmother’s day,” Anathema was saying. “But it’s actually tiny, tiny demons that hide in things and get you. If you stay clean, they won’t hurt you. Not that anyone listens. Now they believe illness is caused by ‘toxic vapors’. Miasma. Bad air. It’s just yet another excuse to blame everything on corrupted morals and poor people instead of the horrid way we’re treating this world.”

               “As though your asma could poison the whole place,” Adam said defiantly, shaking his head at the ridiculousness of it all.

               Anathema opened her mouth to correct him, but decided not to. “Agnes also wrote that something very important was going to happen here,” she said seriously. “So if you can think of anything, anything at all out of the ordinary, please do tell me.”

               “I dunno, miss,” Adam said. “Nothin’ much happens here. Not like in rotten ol’ London. Do kids really lose their fingers in those machines?”

               “They lose their lives, too,” Anathema said seriously. “And many more will suffer from the factories, if we don’t do something. You know the smog in the air in London is so thick, people can hardly breathe? In winter, you can hardly see your own hand in front of you, the smoke is so bad. And what’s going to happen when we run out of all that coal?”

               “You can’t run out of coal,” Adam said, bewildered.

               “Don’t think it can’t happen. The world is getting smaller, Adam Young. People are killing it. And what’s worse, we’re spreading it. Does anyone ever think, ‘Gosh golly, perhaps we shouldn’t be attempting to conquer the entire world when we can barely support our own people?’ No, say something like that and you’re radical, treasonous, in league with the devil. The devil’s got nothing to do with it, Adam. It’s humans that are destroying the world. Humans, and their machines.”

 

               The sky above London was deep, deep grey. The deadliest of seas during a torrent sent from Hell would have resembled the swirling, suffocating currents of smoke and smog that drifted above the countless chimneys and factories, strangling the life below.

               Worse, the sky was falling.

               The smoke crept through the air, downward, towards the mouths of the people living on the city’s surface. Women rushed to and fro with handkerchiefs covering their mouths. Men’s eyes wept from the bitter air. One could hardly see, could hardly hear over the sound of children coughing.

               One could hardly hear the sound of strange, thin wheels rolling over the cobbles.

               “It’s not the same as hoofbeats,” said a voice, thin and hollow.

               “We’ve got to keep up with the times,” said another voice, sickly and rough.

               “And what times they are.” The last voice, sultry and proud, belonged to a woman, whose flaming red hair was the first to be seen as the smoke cleared around the three of them.

               The Horsepersons greeted each other with smiles.

               “At long last,” said War.

               “Been a long time, Pestilence,” said Famine to his friend. “What have you been up to?”

               “It was tricky going for a moment, there,” said the old man, nodding his poxed head with a yellow grin. “But there is always room for—invention.”

               “Plague,” Famine said lovingly. “And starvation. It’s a beautiful, beautiful world.”

               “Not to mention, empires.” War’s teeth gleamed, the only white surface in the city. “The world, united, under one strong front—”

               She threw back her head, and the three of them laughed. Famine ended up coughing.

               “Not to mention,” he said, waving his hand through the air, “all of—whatever—whatever this is?”

               “Could it be—him?”

               “No,” Pestilence said. “He said he would meet us in the end.”

               “He meets everyone, in the end,” War said, smiling.

               “No,” Famine said, looking around. “All this—all this beautiful destruction—this is—this is something else—this is—”

               “Hello, gentlemen.”

               The three of them turned at the sound of the new arrival. A young man, hair as white as snow, even under the drifting rain of ash, stood before them. The newcomer smiled.

               “And lady,” he said, addressing War with a nod. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Pollution. I believe I may be able to assist you.”

               The three of them whispered to each other hushed questions. They hadn’t heard they were to be joined by anyone else. Still, this young man was clearly not human. And he was powerful.

               Pestilence glared at him. “There are only four Horsepersons,” he said. “What makes you think you could join us?”

               “The more, the merrier?” Pollution grinned. “That’s what I always say. More people, coming to join this city, always more people—and look at how glorious it has become!”

               “I must say, I do admire your work,” War purred.

               “But—five Horsepersons? Could we really do that?” Famine asked.

               Pollution spread his arms in a wide, all-encompassing gesture. “The world has never been bigger. Besides—it’s going to end soon. Who would stop us?”

               Pestilence looked around in discontent. “I don’t know. All these changes. Modernizing. I mean, we don’t even ride horses anymore.”

               Famine gave his new mode of transport a kick. The spokes jangled. “I’m not so sure about these, either,” he said. “I know velocipedes are the new thing, but really—the four velocipeders of the Apocalypse? Doesn’t really have the right—ring.”

               “I like them,” said War, who had painted hers red.

               “We’ve got to keep up with the times,” Pollution said, his voice like air escaping through a broken pipe. “You said it yourself, sir.” He bowed to Pestilence, who gave him a small nod back. “After all, time is getting faster. And it’s running out. There’s change in the air, and that’s not all there is.”

               He grinned, and the four of them looked out at the London sky as it grew darker and darker by the minute.

               “Soon,” Pollution whispered, “it’ll be enough to suffocate the life out of every living creature on Earth.”

 

               “And that’s exactly what happened to the dinosaurs,” Anathema said. “Agnes wrote it all down.”

               Adam was staring with his mouth ajar. Anathema smoothed out her blouse and cleared her throat. She’d gone a bit off track, but once she got started, it was hard to stop.

               Adam, it seemed, was not displeased. “Dinosaurs?”

               “Oh, yes. Great big beasts. They’ve dug up their bones. Of course, you probably didn’t learn about them in your school, because nobody teaches science these days.”

               “What’s the good in learnin’ about Latin and all that,” Adam said, “when there are dinosaurs?” He’d much rather learn about great big long-dead beasts than boring old long-dead people who wrote a lot.

               Anathema smiled. She reached for a pamphlet. “Here. I’ve got lots more to tell you about how the Earth used to be, and how it’s becoming. You can read all about it here. Evolution, mass extinction, revolution, human rights. All the things they don’t want you to hear about.”

               Adam had been hearing things ‘they’ wanted him to hear his whole life. He was looking forward to these new revelations.

               “You can read, can’t you?” Anathema added with a frown as Adam took the pamphlets.

               “Oh, yes,” Adam said. “My dad taught me.”

               “Good for him.”

               “He’s a cobbler,” said Adam. “But he says it’s still important I learn how to read.”

               It was Mr. Young’s one progressive idea. Mr. Young repaired shoes, all of them in the village, including his own, which must have been rather a difficult task, considering the fact that his feet were always planted firmly on the ground. He said there wasn’t much point in shoes if you couldn’t read the signs telling you where to walk with them.

               “Are people really killin’ the whole world?” Adam said, fixing the witch with a look. “Are they really spreadin’ across it like a disease?”

               “I hope not,” Anathema said. “But—Adam—we might not have as much time to fix it as we think.”

               As Adam was leaving, Anathema glanced to the book on her table, the one she hadn’t offered to let him borrow. It was time she get back to her important reading. She opened it with a sigh.

 

               Newt opened his box of matches with a sigh.

               “This is important, laddie. The end is nigh!”

               “I know it is,” Newt said. “I mean, yes, Sergeant!” he added as an afterthought. He really wasn’t cut out for this military business. It was why he hadn’t joined any ordinary militia. This particular army had been the only one that would have him.

               In fact, they’d recruited him.

               “There’s nae better place for your talents to make a mark on this rotten Earth,” Sergeant Shadwell said. “Colonel Smith’ll be proud of you when yoo’re done, and there’s no greater honor.”

               One of the best inventors in London, Newt thought, and I end up working for a bunch of quacks.

               The problem was, Newt was a genius.

               There was no one in London who was better with fire. He could fix your chimney so that it ran on fifty percent less coal. He could build a bonfire the size of a small house in a matter of minutes. There was something about the power of the flames that came naturally to him. He never understood it. He had never even been interested in fire, not really. Now, lightning, that was fascinating. If someone could harness the power of lightning, but use it in small, precise measurements, they could change the world. If only he was anything but hopeless with math, with numbers, then he could get it. In the meantime, he’d made contraptions and machines that harnessed the power of fire, and had built up a bit of a reputation for himself. Lightning would have to wait. Newt was good with fire.

               And fire, coal, steam—that was what ran the Victorian world.

               Everyone had their time.

               Newt was spending his sitting in a grungy military barracks that only housed five other soldiers, in what must have been the smallest army in the world, preparing for a witch-hunt.

               In the nineteenth century. Really, one would have thought they’d have died out by now.

               “Our scouts have reported some veery suspicious goings-on in this village,” Shadwell was saying. “These modern witches are tricky. Once we find her, we’ll have to act fast. That’s where you and your fire pair thingies come in, boy.”

               “Fire matches,” Newt said. “Friction matches, actually. And they’re not really mine. These are Lucifers—”

               “Lucifer!?”

               “—made by Samuel Jones,” Newt said quickly. “Er. Sorry. Just a brand name.”

               “You don’t think they’ll do the devil’s work and swallow us whole with their flames of hell when we use one?” said Private Smith, one of the other five members of the army that Newt had met. His dusty pale face, hair, and uniform color were almost indistinguishable from each other. When Newton had first arrived, he had been introduced to Sergeant Shadwell, and Privates Smith, Jones, Brown, and Smith. There were a lot of Smiths in the Witchfinder Army.

               “No,” Newt said. “I don’t think so. At least, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

               “That’s what he’s here for, men,” Sergeant Shadwell said. “Once we catch that witch, Private Pulsifer here’ll set her aflame, and then that’ll be one fewer minister of darkness upon this Earth.”

               The privates gave an uncertain whoop of enthusiasm. Newt ran his hand over his brow.

               “Come on, then, men.” Shadwell gripped his bell in one hand and his book in the other. Private Pulsifer would take care of the candle. And this time, its light would shine with the glory of righteousness, and their brave army would be victorious. It would be a story to tell all twenty-four of its members when they had the chance to convene once more.

               “Coo-ee.” The door to the makeshift barracks opened. Mrs. Potts, who lived in the cottage next door, poked her head in. “I thought you nice boys might like some pudding before you go out on your great expedition. Or perhaps some apples for your horses before the journey?”

               Shadwell groaned, throwing a hand to his face.

               “Dick Turpin might like one, if you don’t mind, madame,” Newton said.

               “Which one’s he, dear? Is he the—er—”

               “Yes,” Newt said, begrudgingly.

               “Awae wi’ ye,” Shadwell said. “We’ve business to attend to.”

               “I’ll just be off, then,” Mrs. Potts said. “The spirits are restless today, but I’ll soon sort them out, don’t you worry, love. And Mr. Smith, I’ll have that charm for you first thing tomorrow.”

               “Sergeant,” Newt whispered as the motherly woman left. “Er. Correct me if I’m wrong, but, er, aren’t charms witchcraft?”

               “Mrs. Potts is no witch,” Shadwell said with a scoff. “She’s a cunning woman. Ye’d best learn the difference, Private. Now, onward we march!”

               Newt wasn’t sure he understood, and he wasn’t sure the sergeant truly did, either. Still, he was rather glad. He wouldn’t have wanted to have to ask the kind woman to stand still so he could set her dress on fire.

               What have I gotten myself into?

 

               “Crowley,” came the muffled shout from the gig below his seat. “You can’t go this fast through London!”

               “M’not trying to!” Crowley shouted back. “It’s bloody Bentley! She won’t slow down!”

               After having ridden all the way out to the tiny village where the Dowlings had given birth, and the baby switch had occurred, they were back in London, with no more than a book from that woman that Bentley had nearly trampled, and absolutely no leads on where the real antichrist could be.

               Bentley could sense peoples’ emotions. She was sensing quite a lot from Crowley. For an infernal beast weighing considerably over a thousand pounds, she could be skittish, even towards smaller creatures, even towards Crowley, who was himself a rather skittish infernal creature who still resembled a snake just enough to make their relationship tense.

               The mare blew through Town like the wind.

               Crowley started singing.

               “Da-da-da, tra, fa-la-la—”

               “Is that from the last opera we saw together?” shouted Aziraphale.

               “What?”

               “I said—” shouted Aziraphale, and then he stopped. Yes, he recognized it now. The sound of him repeating himself loudly over it brought back the memory perfectly. They really needed to find a better place to discuss important matters. There just weren’t many places in London that weren’t just as noisy. Or that had food worth eating. Aziraphale hadn’t been dragging his feet in moving there for nothing. What it needed was one really good restaurant. Until then, the angel was staying in the country.

               Bentley began to calm. The gig slowed to a steady, less teeth-jarring pace.

               “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Crowley said. “I’ve got some people who can look for the boy. This sort of thing is right up their alley. I’ll just send them a message—use a, a messenger pigeon, or something—and they can keep searching while you and I try and think of something to do once we find him. All right? Angel?”

               He looked at the passenger seat. The angel had his nose stuck in that book. Crowley dropped the reins in his lap—Bentley rarely paid them any heed, regardless—and turned to face him.

               “Angel.”

               “Sorry, chuckaboo,” Aziraphale said, still not looking up from the book. “What were you saying?”

               Crowley felt a familiar rage growing within him. One that came from the world being nearly the way he wanted it, in so many ways, and yet somehow still entirely off, as though it were on a tilt. Well, it was. He remembered seeing it for the first time. But it was still all out of alignment.

               He glared at Aziraphale.

               The angel didn’t notice.

               It was something about this century. You spend all day freezing outdoors, haven’t seen the sun in decades, then you go inside only to burn your face sitting too close to the fire trying to defrost yourself. Your feet hurt from the cobbled streets, your eyes hurt from the smoke in the air, no matter what kind of glasses you wear, and the best thing to eat is a potato that isn’t completely covered in dirt, that is, if there are still potatoes around. Crowley could have gone anywhere in the world after France had blown up. Let’s try England, the angel had said, I hear lots of important things are going on in England. And it’s not like he’d asked Crowley to follow him, it wasn’t like they’d planned it, but Aziraphale had somehow done so well in the eighteenth century, he’d known exactly who was going to be significant or brilliant, he’d known where all the best parties were going to take place, and so Crowley had gone with him. Or, not gone with, but gone after him, keeping a wary eye on his adversary. Well, of course he had, they always did, had been for centuries, only this time Aziraphale had to live in some big house in the countryside where he invited all his favorite authors and where people loved him because he was that kind of person, he fit into this century, with its obsession with tea and manners and propriety and everything Crowley couldn’t stand, and it was all so boring, and now, now it wouldn’t even let him sleep through it all.

               Crowley stopped the gig. Bentley listened to him right away. That should have given the angel plenty of warning.

               “Angel.”

               “I’m just—”

               “Put that bloody book down.”

               The book snapped shut. Less-than-angelic eyes glared at him over the top of it.

               “We have things to do,” Crowley hissed. “Or have you forgotten?”

               “I haven’t forgotten. Did it ever occur to you that what I’m reading might actually be useful?”

               “Of course it hasn’t, why would it if you’d never told me? I was just assuming you had your nose buried away somewhere, lost in your own world, so you could avoid thinking about what’s actually going—”

               “Excuse me?”

               It was really something about this century. Crowley couldn’t stop himself. Bentley scratched her hoof against the road nervously and gave out a small whinny. Some street urchins who had been watching the strange cab started to run off—and it took quite a lot to get those kids to leave any sort of entertainment behind.

               “Forgive me for disrupting you,” Crowley said, “but there is business to attend to. We have jobs to do. Maybe if you’d been less focused on playing whist and attending Schubertiades—”

               “What? The world wouldn’t be ending?” Aziraphale stood up. The gig shook. “Are you saying this is my fault?”

               “No, I—”

               “Because I’ve been enjoying myself for once? Forgive me, my dear, but you almost sound jealous.”

               Crowley glared at him. It had started to rain. Soot mixed with waterdrops as they fell, clouding the air between them.

               “Well, I’m sorry you haven’t been having as much nanty narking as you did during the Renaissance,” Aziraphale said. “But if you’re going to sleep through everything, then of course it’s boring to you. What happened to you? You used to take an interest.”

               “And where’s your interest now?” Crowley snapped. “You think you’re ‘being involved’ by pretending to be some lovable country squire? You think that’s ‘keeping up with things’? People are dying in this city, angel, and you aren’t even here to look at it.”

               “I remember the fourteenth century.”

               Crowley’s jaw dropped open.

               “I remember you in the fourteenth century,” Aziraphale went on stalwartly. “You stayed in the cities then, Crowley. You saw what happened, ‘kept up’ with things. And I remember what it did to you. So don’t act like I’m running away out of laziness, or, or not caring. Besides, what’s running away more than going to sleep?”

               Crowley stared at him. Aziraphale calmly sat himself back in his seat. Bentley pawed at the ground once more. Aziraphale looked at him expectantly. The worst part was, Crowley couldn’t even tell if he really was angry. If he had ever really cared enough to be.

               “I think,” Aziraphale said, “you had best take me back to my home, now.”

               “We don’t have time.” The pitch of Crowley’s voice heightened. “We don’t have time to be riding all over the place, back and forth from London to your house.”

               “Then perhaps we ought to split up.” Aziraphale shrugged. “We could cover more ground that way. Besides, it’s like you said. We both have people we can put on the case.”

               Crowley slowly detwisted himself back to face forwards again. Bentley’s tail flicked in anticipation. The demon picked up the rains. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. But don’t blame me if your whole house comes tumbling down when you try and stuff yet another book onto your shelves. Or if I don’t show up until a week later, because that’s how long it took to get word to me.”

 

******************************************************

 

               That night, Adam slept.

               He dreamt of the things Anathema had shown him, the things she had spoken on. The wondrous, terrible things…

 

               Newt crept through the shrubbery. He’d always known this sort of thing was involved in being in the army. He just hadn’t expected the shrubbery he’d have to creep through to be the garden of a small cottage in a village with a population under one hundred.

               “Privates Jones, Smith,” Shadwell hissed into the night air. “You two head south. I’ll take the north entrance. Brown, with me. Get yer pins ready, men. Private Pulsifer, you all right?”

               Newton had found an especially large shrub. He thought, maybe, if he tried really hard, he’d be able to blend into it. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to go through with this. Unfortunately, his skills and craftmanship had made anonymity impossible for him ages ago. What he wouldn’t give to be nobody special, to be able to walk down the street and have not a single person notice him. No one asked nobodies to sneak into women’s cottages, or burn witches—

               He pushed deeper into the shrub.

               He came out the other side, and was face-to-face with a monster.

               The creature stared at him. Newt didn’t breathe.

               It’s a dragon, was his first thought. A fat, oddly square, wingless dragon. But, no. This large, scaled creature looked more real than that. It didn’t look like it would breathe fire. It did look like it might bite someone’s head off.

               “Nice lizard,” Newt whispered, breathless.

               “Private Pulsifer?”

               Newt cursed under his breath. He began, as slowly as he could, to back into the shrub again. The creature watched him.

               “Nice—dragon—scaly bear—spiny—horned—thing.”

               Newt made it into the bush. He turned around and positively ran out the other side of it. By the time he caught up with the others, he had already vowed not to tell them about it, thinking he must have lost his mind, but also thinking it might be best to avoid returning to the most terrifying creature he had seen in his entire life.

               He needn’t have worried so much. The dinosaur, surprised to find itself alive and suddenly very cold, was not overly concerned with the furless creature in front of it. It was wondering where all its feathers had gone. And why its thumb now appeared to be sprouting from its nose.

 

               Adam dreamt…

 

               And London was on fire.

               Aziraphale had hired a cab. Crowley looked up into the air. The smoke had never been this bad before. You could practically still see embers flying in it. The rain had stopped, but the falling ash hadn’t. Several factories around town had started to burn simultaneously.

               It was starting.

 

               “Three!”

               At the sergeant’s signal, Private Brown kicked down the door. Newt winced, waiting for the scream.

               None came.

               Shadwell scratched his head. “Ay, she’s a crafty one, this witch. Pulsifer, your lights.”

               Newt gulped and nodded. His fingers were shaking as he fumbled with the friction matches. Normally, he could always get them on the first try. This time it took three attempts.

               Just long enough for Private Brown to enter the cottage.

               And trip over a nearly invisible thread that had been tied across the door.

               One down.

               Shadwell barked orders as the other privates charged the building. Newt, carefully stepping over the thread, followed them, holding aloft the match. It wouldn’t stay burning for long.

               There was a roar as Private Smith slipped on a wet rag that had been left on the floor, exactly where he had placed his foot.

               Two.

               “She’s in here somewhere,” Shadwell growled. He prowled around the room, looking under blankets and behind bundles of dried herbs.

               Private Jones screamed as a bucket of something fell on his head.

               Three.

               Newt took one step backwards, back across the threshold of the cottage.

               “Excuse me,” said a woman’s voice.

               Newt managed not to shriek, which he thought was very soldierly of him. He turned, and came face-to-face with the witch.

               “Shh,” she said, her eyes glowing in the light of the match, the flame of which had reached Newt’s finger. He yelped and dropped it.

               Shadwell was still bumbling around the completely dark cottage. Anathema calmly closed the door. She turned back to Newt.

               “Are you the one who’s good with fire?”

               Newt nodded dumbly.

               “Agnes wrote about you.”

               “We’re here to burn you,” Newt said suddenly, all in a whiny sort of whisper. “Only I don’t want to, not really, I’m dreadfully sorry, miss, we need to get you out of here!”

               “Yes, Agnes wrote about that, too.” Anathema looked around into the night. “Well. I don’t suppose you walked here?”

               “Oh.” Newt blinked into the cool night air. “We can take Dick Turpin!”

               “Is that your horse? Is he strong enough to carry both of us?”

               “Strong, yes,” Newt said, taking her arm and leading her in the right direction. “Er. Horse, not exactly—”

               He stopped in front of four very frightened horses, who would clearly be too jumpy to ride, and one very unconcerned mule.

               “Ah,” Anathema said.

               “It’s either that, or be burned for being a witch,” Newt said apologetically.

               “Not exactly. But I do have somewhere very important to get to. Can he go quite quickly?”

               “Oh, yes,” Newt said. “Provided I don’t want him to.”

               “Then don’t want him to. After all, you’ll be abandoning your duty. Come on.” Anathema hoisted herself up onto Dick Turpin. The mule flicked its tail and gave Newt a steady stare. Anathema smiled down at him sweetly. “Are you going to help me escape, or what?”

               Newt nodded and got up onto Dick Turpin, in front of the witch, for propriety’s sake. He told Dick Turpin to move. Anathema, behind him, told the mule in a different, much more kind but nevertheless effective way. The mule set off.

               And the witchfinder helped the witch escape, although really, it was perhaps more like he was escaping with her, which she was already doing perfectly well. In fact, what could really be said to be happening was that Anathema was helping Newt escape from having to burn her.

               This was perfectly fine with him.

 

               Adam dreamt. He dreamed of tiny demons spreading illness. He dreamed of people refusing to listen, refusing to pay attention to those small demons, as they grew and grew.

               He dreamt them away.

               One by one, those little germs of disease, they faded out of existence. Adam eradicated them, in his sleep, as best he could. Slowly, but surely…

 

               Meanwhile, Pestilence was being petulant.

               “I don’t see why the new boy gets all the glory,” he grumbled. “We’ve been preparing for this day for six-thousand years.”

               “Well, not quite,” Famine reminded him. He grinned as he finished off perfecting one more blighted crop for the East. Most of his work had been done earlier in the year—the Apocalypse in the nineteenth century took just a little preparation—but the fields and fields of dead plants helped to contribute to the effect. “A few centuries less,” he said.

               “Nearly six-thousand years,” Pestilence snapped. “I am perfectly capable of destroying humanity without him.”

               “You two ought to work together,” War said. Then she laughed. It sounded like the sound of blades clashing. “Oh, that wasn’t like me, to say that.”

               Pestilence looked out across the dying world. Crops were dying, people in search of gold and glory were killing each other. It was already perfect. They didn’t need all the fires, the smoke and ash, too. He was perfectly capable of taking care of anyone who slipped through the gaps.

               He smiled. Well. They wanted him to embrace the new age? He would give them what they all expected of him.

               Pestilence raised his blistered arms into the air. From his stained hands, a vapor began to rise. It swelled until it formed a large cloud. A miasma. Air of death.

               He let it grow.

 

               Crowley, opening the window in his London home, saw it.

               He also saw the definitely-not-a-carriage being parked by his front door. It was pulled by four horses who would have frightened even Bentley, had she not been safely in the stable down the street. The figures climbing out of the carriage were worse.

               Crowley stepped away from the window.

               I am absolutely alone, Crowley thought. I have no backup plan. He had been giving some thought to insuring himself against this sort of thing, perhaps even acquiring some holy water, somehow, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. I should never have let Aziraphale leave.

               I should have gone with him.

               There was the sound of crunching wood as his door down below was blown in, then the rattle of footsteps coming up the stairs. Crowley paced back and forth, trying to think. Bloody nineteenth century. What can I do? How can I contact him? The post would never get to him in time.

               “Crawlee,” came a horrible, guttural voice.

               Crowley stopped beside his window. He looked out. It was a far drop down, but he was a demon. Physical form was malleable. Dealing with four hell-horses would be unpleasant, physical form or no.

               His door was kicked in. Ligur entered first, chuckling in satisfaction. He was followed by Hastur. The demons grinned at him. “Hello, Crawlee.”

               “Er,” said Crowley. He flashed them a smile. “’Ello, guvnah.”

               The dukes approached him as Crowley backed against the window. He could feel the draft of London air, warmer than it ever should have been, against his neck. He snuck a hand into the pocket of his jacket.

               “Time’s up, serpent,” Hastur growled.

               Crowley reached his hand behind him, out the window, and opened it. He kept talking as though nothing here was really happening. “It’s this century,” he said. “Just can’t seem to get anything right, y’see.”

               “Clearly,” Ligur spat.

               Crowley waited. The dukes crept closer and closer. He could smell them. Hastur reached out a hand, fingers curved like claws. Still, Crowley waited. He listened.

               There was a small coo.

               “I really don’t fit in,” Crowley said. He shrugged, then smiled. “Maybe I’m just not the right shape.”

               Crowley leaned backwards, the demons roared, and a snake dropped itself out of the window.

               Into the talons of a pigeon.

 

               Bentley was unhappy.

               Sure, she was used to smoke. Fires didn’t frighten her the way they did other horses. But one thing about this place she had really liked was the oats. The oats here were miles better than Hell’s oats.

               They, along with much of the rest of the produce in the world, had become moldy and rotten.

               A bird flew into the stable.

               Bentley sniffed her bag of oats, then snorted and tossed her head, disappointed once more.

               The bird flew above her.

               Something dropped onto her back.

               Bentley was still horse-shaped, and there are some things that horse-shaped beings simply will not tolerate without a healthy modicum of terror.

               “Sorry, old girl,” Crowley hissed.

               The horse reared back on her hind legs, trying to knock the snake off. He wrapped himself around her reins and clung on tight. Bentley smashed through the stable and took off into the night.

               “Hi-yo,” hissed Anthony Crowley.

 

               “What—are they?”

               Newt and Anathema stood next to Dick Turpin, looking down the hill at the construction for the new factory below. There were four velocipedes parked outside of it. Standing around beside them were four figures.

               Four—people?

               No.

               “We need to get down there,” Anathema said. “We need to stop them.”

               “And—er—how, exactly, are we going to do that?”

               Anathema was scanning her surroundings. She was a witch. She always came prepared, even for the end of the world.

               But she had seen the auras of those beings.

               “I thought you said that factory wasn’t set up to work yet?” Newt said.

               “They must have started it.”

               “I don’t understand. It’s just one factory. But that cloud—it’s like—it’s like—”

               “Like one tiny village symbolizes the whole world, and the events happening here are somehow growing, happening everywhere, spreading to London to Paris to China and the Americas and all around the globe, like a microcosm of humanity and its weaknesses and evils growing and growing to consume us all, and it’s all starting from this one source?”

               Newt blinked at her.

               “I was afraid you’d say that,” Anathema said.

               “But, how could they be doing this? There are only four of them.”

               “Four is enough,” Anathema said. Then, she put a hand above her eyes and squinted. “Wait. No. Five.” She groaned. “Oh, no. Not five. Five is too many.”

 

               Down below, Death had arrived.

               He dismounted from his brilliant white steed. The four others greeted him with salutes. Death looked around, eying—presumably eying, facing towards them the part of his skull where his eyes would have been had he had any—the velocipedes lying scattered around the ground.

               IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT HORSES WERE STILL RIDDEN BY HUMANS THIS CENTURY.

               “Got to get with the times,” Famine said.

               HMM.

               “Yes,” Pollution said, looking up at Pestilence’s miasma with glee. “Your modern world, it’s a thing of beauty.”

               “Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” said War. She began to laugh, and as she did, her clothes transformed. Her red dress transmogrified into a uniform, all crisp angles and golden braids. Badges that had been won in no battles on Earth ornamented the jacket. Gold buttons gleamed atop red. War lifted her sword and grinned into her reflection on the blade. Ready for Battle.

 

******************************************************

 

               Adam was awake.

               The Them had fetched him at the first hint of sunrise. Children woke up early, those days. There was something wrong. Each of them had felt it instinctively. They had gone to the house of their friend to fetch him, to fetch help, only to find him changed.

               They stood on top of the hill, the one overlooking Tadfield, and also the surrounding countryside. They could see the black sky above, where the sun should have been starting to rise. They could see the orange flowers in the distance, fires in towns and cities far, far away, all across the country.

               “What’s going on?” Pepper shouted.

               “It’s better this way,” said Adam. His eyes looked different. There was something set about his face. His friends backed away. “It was all too much. It was destroying the world.”

               “But it’s burning,” cried Brian. He looked down below. The factory there was burning, too. He started to head for it.

               “Let it burn,” said Adam, and Brian stopped, automatic. Adam’s eyes matched the fires below. “Let them all burn. It’s better this way. You’ll see.”

 

               “’Ye shall finde the beast in Taddes Field…’” Aziraphale slammed his hand down on the table and looked up from the book triumphantly. “I knew it! He was in Tadfield!”

               He looked around the empty room. Most of the candles had burned out by now. Only the one on his desk was still lit, and the puddle of wax in the holder was nearly as tall as the wick. It cast gloomy shadows around the dark tapestries that hung around the room.

               Aziraphale sat staring ahead of himself, feeling lost. He had no idea what was to happen now.

               The candle flame reached the wax, and burnt itself out, in a tiny puff of smoke.

               Aziraphale sat in the darkness.

               Oh, well done, he thought. You know where he is. You have no idea what to do about it, and how to get there. And you’re all alone.

               I should never have left Crowley.

               He thought on this for a minute.

               He ran out of the empty house as though the place was on fire.

 

               “But, Adam,” said Pepper. “The fires are what’s destroying the world.”

               Adam blinked.

 

               “Fix it,” Anathema said.

               Newt gawked at her. “What?”

               “You’re an inventor,” said the witch. “Agnes said so. You said so. You can.”

               Newt stared at the factory. Black ooze leaked from the walls. The fire inside coughed out black smoke that hung heavy around it. It was a mess. And, Newt thought, I actually can.

               “It might take me a while,” he said, already starting down the hill. Anathema followed. “I may need a distraction.”

               Anathema saw, to their right, running down that same hill, four younger figures. “I think you’ll have one. And, Mr. Pulsifer?”

               “Yes?”

               “You have all the time in the world.”

 

               Aziraphale had never felt so lost. He had run from his house out into the night, but with no idea how to get where he needed to go. The wind had picked up and was tearing leaves and small branches from the trees, whirling them towards him so that he had to hold his arm up to shield his face. He could only stumble forward, glancing up every now and then at the bright moon that hung low over the hill above.

               Something crested the top of the hill.

               A shadow cut across the light of the moon. Aziraphale gasped. He would recognize that dashing figure anywhere. It was the silhouette of Bentley, pawing at the ground. She raised her head and let out a whinny loud enough to hear over the wind.

               Aziraphale ran up the hill as she ran downwards, towards him, the mare of midnight and her rider, come to rescue him.

               The angel caught up with the horse.

               There was nobody riding her. At least, there was no human. There was not even a human-shaped being.

               Only a small snake, wrapped around the reins, clinging to them for dear life.

               Aziraphale, who had been mid-swoon with his hand raised to his forehead at being rescued so gallantly, changed speed, scooping up the serpent and cooing at him.

               “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said. “I shouldn’t have abandoned you. But, the book did have the answers! Er, some of them, at least.”

               Aziraphale gently set Crowley back on the horse’s neck, where the snake clung to her mane. Then the angel started to climb up onto the horse. Bentley was highly alarmed by this, but the sheer unflappability of the angel cancelled out even the skittishness of a horse who had once lived somewhere far more frightening than Earth.

               “We’ll—oof—we’ll get you sorted out on the way. Agnes Nutter mentioned someone who might be able to—ouch—sorry, Bentley—to help. But we need to get to Tadfield!”

               Aziraphale straightened himself out upon the saddle as well as he could, which was not very well, then sat up as primly as possible.

               He gave the horse a gentle pat. “Right then, my dear. On we go.”

               The serpent coiled more tightly around the reins. If snakes could sweat, this one would be.

               “Hmm,” Aziraphale said. “What was it you mentioned, Crowley? Singing? Very clever, really, very inventive, but I’ve brought something along that I think might help a bit.”

               The angel reached into his coat pocket and extracted a small box. It was a music box. He turned the key and opened it, and it started playing, a nice, tinkling melody. Bentley’s ears turned back. She gave a small neigh. Then she set off at a calm pace, trotting with the gentle melody.

               Then Aziraphale smiled.

               In spite of what Crowley may have thought, the eighteenth century wasn’t all tame. And Aziraphale had been friends with more musicians than Schubert.

               “I think perhaps,” he said, “I might be able to give her something more driving to listen to. You might enjoy it yourself, my dear. I did try to tell you that not all concerts were what they used to be.”

               The angel held the music box in one hand, then, with his other, snapped his fingers.

               The box started playing.

               “Dundundundunnn…”

               “Symphony number five,” Aziraphale said.

               “Dundundundunnn…”

               Bentley’s ears swiveled. She started to walk a little faster.

               “Beethoven,” the angel explained.

               The music box played. It didn’t just sound like a small mechanism, a marvel of invention, but small, nonetheless. Nothing about this symphony sounded small. A whole orchestra could have fit inside the sound that was coming from the box.

               Bentley’s eyes widened. Her nostrils flared. She tossed back her head and whinnied, then cantered. She went faster and faster. This was what a horse needed. Not stables and gigs and music the Queen liked to listen to. She needed to be free. She needed Beethoven.

               She was having the time of her life.

               Aziraphale and Crowley held on with all their might.

 

               Anathema watched Newt work. It was amazing. Tools she had never seen before flew in and out of his hands. He raced around the innards of the half-constructed factory like it was on fire—which it was—and, one by one, the fires were put out. Proper ventilation started to occur. A reduction of waste was established. Efficiency was increased by at least five hundred percent.

               Anathema wasn’t normally all that impressed by men being good at things that they had simply had more opportunity than women to learn, but there was something about the way he looked absolutely terrified as he did it all that was somehow endearing.

               He ran up to her after nailing something into place that somehow made the temperature in the area drop ten degrees instantly. He wiped sweat off of his brow as Anathema gasped in relief.

               “Is it working?”

               Anathema poked her head out of one of the unfinished walls. “It’s incredible. Those things must have been fueling all of their power from here. It’s helping, it’s definitely helping.”

               And, as she watched the five dark figures outside, illuminated by the morning sun that was just starting to peak through the clouds, she saw four more, smaller figures approaching from the distance.

 

               The Them had arrived.

               They didn’t try to hide their approach. The day was almost as dark as night, but they were still visible as they made their way towards the Horsepersons. They had been expected, anyway.

               “There’s too many of them,” Brian said, voice hushed in awe.

               “We can take them,” Adam said. He had scared his friends. He’d made them think he was going to let the world burn, just because it wasn’t perfect, and he’d almost done it, too. He had to make it up to them. “This isn’t the end.”

               “We could maybe each distract one of them,” Wensley said.

               “But what do we do about the fifth?” Pepper said, looking at the last figure to have arrived, the one who had ridden the horse.

               But when she said ‘fifth’, Adam looked at the one in white. The youngest one. Somehow, he knew who the real latecomer was. “It’s just the same old problem,” Adam said. “They say it’s all too much, all these new problems. But they’re all the same. It’s all connected. That’s all we have to do. We take them all on—together.”

 

               As the sun rose in a furious blaze above the horizon, the mare thundered towards the village.

               She no longer looked like a horse, not even if you only saw her out of the corner of your eye. Bentley’s black coat was streaked with flames. Embers glowed around her hooves, which struck sparks as they hit the ground. Her mane and tail were ablaze with brilliant red and gold, and her eyes shone the color of molten lava. Smoke flared from her nostrils as she ran.

               The last notes of the symphony played as she entered the town, finally slowing to a mortal speed. Atop her back, the angel coughed and gently pulled on the reins. The hell-horse stopped.

               Constable Tyler gaped up at her.

               “Pardon me, good sir,” Aziraphale said. “I seem to be a bit lost.”

               Constable Tyler gawked.

               Aziraphale patted out one of the horse’s ears, which now merely smoked, and coughed again. “Erherm. Would you happen to know where the site of the new factory is located?”

               Constable Tyler pointed. He simply couldn’t tell the man, Your horse is on fire. Surely, he must know.

               And, he didn’t want to offend the beast, who was eying him the way normal horses often eye small creatures upon whom they are about to stamp.

               “I thank you, good sir,” Aziraphale said as he turned the horse about. The last thing the constable saw, before heading off to hand in his resignation, was the serpent draped about the man’s neck, flicking its tail at him in gratitude.

 

               Bentley was forced to stop on the outskirts of town. The music had died, but the damage was done. She was a creature of the Earth no more. No matter how he tried to get her to go on, just a little farther, Aziraphale could not convince the hell-horse to move.

               “Oh, dear, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, holding the snake in his arms and looking sadly at the blazing creature, who was starting to resemble a skeleton, not that she felt any the worse for it. She shook her fiery mane and whinnied. She hadn’t felt like this since the fourteenth century. “What are we going to do now?”

               “Coo-ee.”

               Aziraphale turned around. A middle-aged woman with a warm face was walking towards them from her cottage.

               “Now, I’m not a witch, love,” said Mrs. Potts. “So don’t you worry yourselves on that account. But I am a cunning woman. And I must say, that is the strangest familiar I have ever seen.”

               Aziraphale looked down at Crowley. “Oh,” he said. “He’s not really—well, he’s not—”

               “Transformation spell gone stuck, has it?” said Mrs. Potts, not unkindly.

               “Er. Something like that.”

               “I’m sure I should have something that’ll fix him up.”

               “Really?” Aziraphale said, hopeful. Then his expression sank. “Actually, my dear woman, I’m not entirely sure that this sort of magic is—”

               “Magic? Hooey.” Mrs. Potts leaned down until she was eye-level with the snake in the angel’s arms, which didn’t require her to lean down by much. “Cunning’s got nothing to do with that. All you have to do, my dear, is believe in yourself.”

               “Erm,” Aziraphale said.

               Mrs. Potts stood up to her full height, hands on her hips, and smiled, her head tilted knowingly.

               Aziraphale found himself holding a man-shaped Crowley in his arms.

               “Ah,” Crowley said. “Sssorry.”

               Aziraphale set him down quickly but gently.

               Crowley turned to face Bentley. She pawed at the ground, sending embers flying. “You were there for me, in the end, old girl,” he said to her, his eyes watering. It could have been from the smoke, but then again, it might not have been. He ran his hand down her nose a few times. “But you’ve got to go back, now, haven’t you?”

               The horse nodded. She walked over to Aziraphale and nudged him in the side. Aziraphale quickly patted out his jacket, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the music-box.

               “Yes, of course,” the angel said, attaching it to her saddle—or what of it hadn’t been burnt to a crisp. “Beethoven will always be there for you.”

               Crowley stood by Aziraphale’s side, blowing his nose surreptitiously, as the horse turned and started to run. Away, she went, until a tear in space opened up before her. She rode on, into the flames, back towards home.

               The tear in reality closed, and she was gone, with only the ting of one horseshoe, rolling around and around, until finally it fell onto the ground, left behind.

               Crowley walked over morosely to pick it up. It was the only horseshoe in the world that, if hung above a door, would bring good luck to the demon inside and protect him from the harmful outside influences of innocence and piety.

               Aziraphale turned back to Mrs. Potts. “I say,” he said sheepishly. “You don’t happen to have any horse of your own, do you?”

               “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Potts said brightly. “I’ve got a lovely little pony.”

               “Ah. And would this pony of yours happen to be above, say, waist height?”

               “Well—”

               “Nevermind,” Aziraphale said. “I suppose a few more miracles won’t hurt, at this point. Don’t worry about your pony. I’m sure it will be a marvelous adventure for him.”

 

               Aziraphale and Crowley, along with Mrs. Potts and an injured Shadwell, now covered in healing balms, whom they had picked up on the way, arrived just in time to see the Them send the Horsepersons back to wherever they had come from. Death was, of course, the last to leave. He was gone with a wink. Anathema and Newt came out of the factory just in time to see it happen. The ten of them stood, blinking at the world. The sun was coming out. The air was clearing up. They couldn’t know what it meant for the plants and crops of the rest of the world, of course, but even the grass was looking greener.

               Aziraphale put his hands on his hips. “Well,” he said, satisfied, “it’s like I always say—”

               “It’s not over,” said Crowley.

 

               Adam faced them down. Representatives from Heaven and Hell, the Metatron and Beelzebub, stood before him against the backdrop of grass waving on the hills, the sounds of people heading out to their farms in the background, ready to start a new day. The night might have been one to remember, but most people worked the farms, in those days, and that wasn’t a job you could take a day off from.

               “It’s not ready yet,” Adam said. “I mean, it’s not the right time. In fact, it might not ever be the right time. The way I see it, I mean.”

               The Metatron and Beelzebub glared at him. At least, presumably. It was a glare that was more palpable than visible.

               “See, people always think the world’s changin’,” said Adam. “S’not, really. Or, it always is. But that’s not the point. You don’t have to speed it up or slow it down or try an’ stop time, an’ all that. Cause you can’t. You don’t have to stop it all happening, either. That’s the worst.”

               “But the Plan—”

               “I don’t know ‘bout your plan,” Adam said casually. “Maybe that’s another thing that’ll just sort of happen, like all this ‘progress’ everyone’s talkin’ about, but I don’t think I can force it. I don’t want the world to grow up too quickly.” He looked around at his friends. “It’s not so bad, bein’ young.”

               “The world must be destroyed,” Beelzebub said.

               “You can do it,” the Metatron added. “You must.”

               “I dunno about the world,” Adam said. “But I think Tadfield’s all right, and that’s enough for me.” It might not be the most modern place, he though. It might not be the innocent, idyllic image of the past that some people thought it was, either. It was a place out of time. It was home.

               Aziraphale stepped forward and cleared his throat. “About that Plan,” he said.

               Crowley looked at him in astonishment. Then, he grinned, and stepped forward with him.

               Then, a man in a red tartan vest, and a man in black gas-pipes, together, gave the most ineffable speech the world had ever known.

 

               But it was never quite enough.

               “He’s coming,” Crowley said. “His infernal father.”

               “There are people here,” Aziraphale said. “We can’t leave them.”

               Crowley looked around for a weapon. All he had was one horseshoe.

               “Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

               Crowley looked up at him.

               “I’d just like to say,” the angel said. He paused.

               They had known each other so long. It had been almost six thousand years.

               “I—” Crowley said. He faltered.

               So long. Almost long enough.

               But not quite.

               “Good luck,” Aziraphale whispered.

               Crowley nodded. He turned to face the scene in front of them. Aziraphale stood by his side. The two of them started to walk forward, Crowley gripping the horseshoe, trying to imagine Lucifer’s horns as the biggest pair of stakes in horseshoe history.

               He didn’t get the chance.

               Adam walked forward to greet his real father. Mr. Young, the cobbler, with his feet firmly planted on the ground.

               The still, cool ground, of the calm, living Earth.

 

Later

Or, the first day of the rest of their lives

 

Dear Aziraphale,

               I know, another letter. Twice in less than half a century, now, is that often enough for you? As you can perceive, I am rubbish at writing them. Can we please meet in person instead? You set the date and time, that way I’ll know the pigeon hasn’t gone amiss again.

Yours,

Crowley

 

 

               An angel and a demon stood by the new Duck Island Cottage in St. James’ Park.

               The park was more crowded than usual. Still, Aziraphale and Crowley had managed to find a relatively secluded place, for the moment. Only one duck had spotted them, so far, and was brave enough to approach them. Aziraphale wished he’d brought some bread to give it.

               “You all right, then?” Crowley asked.

               Aziraphale gave him a look. Crowley was staring away from him, at the water, a tall, dark silhouette from his top hat to his snakeskin shoes. There was no reason for him to have asked. Aziraphale was, as always, fine. He hadn’t been turned into a snake and had his horse return home to hell without him. Crowley was asking, presumably, because he always did.

               “Tip-top,” Aziraphale said. His voice sounded tired, but only a little sad. “So, Bentley still gone, then?”

               “Yeah. The boy set most things right, but it was better for her to go home, really. She didn’t belong here.” Crowley tossed the duck a bit of seed he kept in his pocket for the pigeon. It wandered forward slowly, warily. It snatched up the seeds, then retreated.

               “I’m sorry for your loss,” Aziraphale said.

               “It’s all right. Who knows? Maybe they’ll invent some way of travel better than horse-drawn everything. Some—” Crowley scrunched up his nose, “—miniature, one-person trains, or something.”

               The two of them stared into the water. Across the way, a tall person was feeding the ducks, and they gathered around him, quacking.

               Crowley glanced at the angel. “Your people been in touch?”

               “No,” Aziraphale said. “Unless, of course, the celestial pigeons are lost again.”

               The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched. Aziraphale beamed at it. But Crowley wasn’t looking at him anymore.

               “Yeah. S’pose that’s it, then. Everything’s—back to normal.”

               “Yes,” Aziraphale said, laughing nervously. Don’t go back to sleep, he thought. ‘Don’t you go back to sleep’—just say it. He stuttered out, “I almost feel as though I don’t know what to do with myself.”

               “Oh, you’ll go back to having a ball,” Crowley laughed, “just like you have been.”

               It was something about the way he said it. He laughed, but it sounded snide. It hurt. Especially because it was true. Aziraphale had been having a ball. And he’d been proud of himself—maybe even thought Crowley would be a little impressed, too—but he made it seem so petty. Like he’d been wasting his time having fun, instead of—well, instead of what, he didn’t know. But something about it hurt more than he’d like to admit.

               “I suppose you’ll be going back to bed, then,” the angel said, using that elevated tone of voice that came more naturally to him than he cared to think about. “Since you’re so opposed to socializing.”

               “Much as I’d enjoy seeing you be the belle of the ball—”

               "Enough!" Aziraphale snapped. He rounded on Crowley, and the snake’s eyes widened visibly behind his glasses. The duck, who had just been warming up to him, waddled away, flapping its wings as it went in agitation. “Why is it so bad that I had a nice time? You weren’t there!”

               Crowley, who had taken a step back, reached behind him for support, at the same time as he mentally reached for the same support he’d always fallen back on. Only this time, while the tone was scathing, he hadn’t given himself enough time to mask his words. “That’s the point!”

               Aziraphale cried, “What is it about me enjoying myself without you that makes you so—?”

               And Crowley thought of the truth. He thought, I think about all the good times you had, and wish I was there, but instead, something else came up. Something he hadn’t been planning on saying and hadn’t even fully formed in his thoughts before now, rising like bile in his throat, and he said, “Because thinking about you having a good time without me makes me afraid.”

               Aziraphale leaned back abruptly. Crowley, as though pulled forward by the angel’s movement, stopped falling backwards and regained his balance.

               “What are you afraid of?” the angel said. He sounded, genuinely, perplexed.

               “I’m afraid,” said Crowley, miserable, “you might not need me.”

               Aziraphale let out a small breath. He looked so warm, in all that red and brown, in the middle of the green park. He said, softly, appeasing, “Would it possibly be enough if, instead of needing you, I wanted you?”

               Crowley stared.

               “Around,” Aziraphale finished lamely. “I wanted you around when all this was going on.”

               The two of them looked at each other, standing in the middle of a human park as if they had any right to be there, the day after the world had almost ended, shouting at each other.

               So Aziraphale made certain his voice was quieter—although he couldn’t quite keep all of the heat out of it—when he said, “Do you know how infuriating it is to finally be someone worth knowing, to finally be confident and interesting and popular, to be somebody for the first time in centuries, and to still not be enough for the person you truly want to impress? Do you understand how frustrating that is? There I was, mingling with the best and brightest, all these brilliant humans, feeling like a star among them, for the first time in millennia, and you weren’t around? Not even to see it? To see me be—impressive, for once, no, you were never even there to be impressed—”

               “You wanted to impress me?” Crowley said, his voice raspy, but the angel soldiered on.

               “All the centuries I was a stuffy old nobody, oh, certainly, then you were there to see, when I was lost and left behind by the changing times, when I felt as though I was stumbling blindly through the years, hardly able to keep up—”

               “But I’ve felt like that!” Crowley said, holding up his hands. “And you’ve been there, all those times! The ninth century. Do you remember me in the ninth century? Or in China a few millennia ago. I was a loser. I had to hide just to survive. Everyone hated me, Aziraphale. I’m sure you wanted to shun me, too. Don’t you remember all the times I was completely pathetic?”

               Aziraphale’s surprise showed plainly on his face. “I never thought you were pathetic.”

               “And you act like it’s you who’s been some sort of social castaway—what?”

               “I never thought you were pathetic.”

               Crowley frowned at him. It was yet another go-to response. Across the pond from them, the tall stranger, who had been watching awkwardly and decided that this was not a matter in which he ought to intervene, said his goodbyes to the ducks and got back on his horse.

               “Having a rough time of it, certainly,” Aziraphale said. His tone was rational. As he always was, he was simply explaining how he felt. “A bit down in the dump some days. But I just thought you were in a bit of a slump—it was always the social setting we were living in, really. It had nothing to do with you. The people simply didn’t understand you then. I’d always remember how you’d been, before. Sure that you’d get out of it in a century or two and find your spot in the sun again. You always did.”

               “You—you never thought it was pitiful?” Crowley winced at his words, and all the confessions thereof, but then, the day before, he had nearly burnt to a crisp while riding a hell-horse on his way to fight Lucifer. You survived. Even telling the truth. “Not even a little?”

               “Don’t be absurd,” said Aziraphale, who had also ridden a hell-horse, and who had not been shaken by it in the slightest, as he would continue to refuse to do now, even by telling the truth. He said to him, “You’re the serpent. You’re—you’re Anthony Crowley. I know you. You always land on your feet. When you have feet, that is.”

               “And you—” Crowley squinted. Something was happening around his mouth that may have been edging towards a grin, but was, as of yet, still far too dubious. “You wanted to impress me?”

               Aziraphale was suddenly grumpy again. “Look, it’s no secret that you’re better with people than I am. You’re—you’re flashier, more outgoing, more—adept. You can hold a conversation. I can hardly remember which level of intimacy and emotional expression it’s ‘in’ to display at any given decade. It doesn’t help. Compared to you, most of the time, I’m just an old—an old—fuddy-duddy.”

               “But it’s just the same,” Crowley said. “You have your off yea—er, decades. Centuries, even.”

               Aziraphale very nearly glowered at him.

               “But you’re not a—a—a fuddy-duddy.”

               He had said it with a completely straight face. Aziraphale softened. “Oh, come now. I’m no you at a party.”

               Crowley was definitely half-smiling when he said, “And I’m no you at a ball. Look, I do know what other people think of you. Sometimes they think you’re brilliant. Sometimes a bit odd, but overall charming. And I know there are times they might think you’re not the fanciest spoon in the tea set. I just happen to know better.”

               “That’s—” The angel struggled for words. “That’s—almost, kind of you.”

               “Great,” Crowley said. “I’m going to have to start buying even darker clothes, so people don’t get the wrong idea.”

               “Well, I’m not joining in on this all-black fashion trend,” Aziraphale said, determined. “I’ve moved on to tartan, and that’s enough change for me. I’m sticking with this for a while.”

               Crowley looked at the patterned vest, and thought, At least it wasn’t paisley. “All right, all right,” he said. “Just as long as you don’t mind showing up at your next social gathering with a man in gas-pipes and the oddest pair of spectacles anyone there has ever seen.”

               Aziraphale beamed at him. Crowley waved him off.

               So the two of them stood, for a while, in the park. The duck from before had decided to give them a second chance. This time, he had brought friends. The two were soon surrounded, and Crowley passed some of his pigeon-feed to the angel, to be shared amongst them all.

               “Just you wait, Crowley,” Aziraphale said. “One of these days, you’ll find something that’s so in style, that you absolutely love—and you’ll keep it for decades until it’s entirely out of fashion.”

               “It might be out of fashion,” Crowley said. “But I’ll always have style.”

               “Quite so, dear boy.”

               “And, angel?”

               “Yes.”

               “When tartan does go out of style—and when you can’t keep up with the current trends, and you use slang from the seventeen-hundreds, and still call your hands ‘daddles’, and are far too friendly and polite for people to think you’re fashionable, because that’s not ‘in’ anymore, and when the world wants you to do something absolutely ridiculous and you refuse to because you simply won’t ever change, not even for the times—”

               He paused. The two of them walked through the park. The sun was shining brighter and more warmly through the clear London skies above them than it had in decades. Crowley glanced to the angel at his side, who glanced back at him, patiently.

               “—you’ll always be worth knowing.”

               Aziraphale smiled at him. “Both out of our time, aren’t we, my dear?”

               Crowley grinned. “No. No, you and I, we have all the time in the world.

Comments

[vulgarweed]

Oh my GOSH secret writer, this is absolutely incredible! You've really gone above and beyond with this, and I'm over the moon with how much I love it! All the detail work, the cleverness, the little details (Bentley the hell-horse! The Queen's favorite hits!) and the delightful relationships between the characters. I'll leave a longer comment later after I've absorbed it a few more times but I just want you to know right now how much I adore it and how happy it makes me! THANK YOU! <3

[secret_kraken]

Thank you so much! I did get a bit carried away--I know I COULD have just written a few scenes, but I have no self control--but I hope you don't mind. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I also have to say I love your account picture :)
Happy Holidays!

[(Anonymous)]

I did not take notes as I read and I seriously regret not taking notes because remembering everything I loved is probably impossible at this point. High level notes?


Mirroring another person's writing style is super hard and if you had given me this and said "hey, guess what was just released from the NeilAndTerry archives" I would have completely believed they wrote this. It feels like I'm reading the story - just set in a different time.


There were a couple of lines that were just ow my heart. The thing about Crowley living in the cities during the 14th Century and how it broke him just - oh that poor sweet baby. How much he cares. <3 And the line about how Aziraphale didn't want to need Crowley but wanted to want him. I was [swoon]. I'm not choosing you because I don't really have a choice; I do have a choice and you're the one that I want. (no song reference intended).


The Them's dialogue and portrayal was fantastic. They felt fully formed in their time, and yet they were also the Them that we know and love. And Mr. Young being a cobbler! That is so fitting for him. (was the line about the shoes knowing where you are a shout out to Vimes' boots?) Also the Them's interactions with Anathema where she's teaching them about the problems of the world she wants to solve were probably some of my favorite scenes in this.


I need to do better about taking notes. This was awesome! (From Ri)

[secret_kraken]

Thank you for this wonderful comment!

The boots thing wasn't a conscious shoutout to Vimes, but I WAS reading Men at Arms while I was writing this, so now that you mention it, I'm sure that's where it came from! And also probably how I absorbed Pratchett's writing style--I'm a shameless thief when it comes to that, but I'm glad it worked in this case, thank you so much!

I haven't written the Them much and I was nervous about this, but honestly, they just fit right into the Victorian era! Part of me really wanted to make them street urchins in London, but you just can't take the countryside out of these kids :)

Thanks again!

[improbabledreams900]

What a creative retelling of the book!

It was really interesting to see which parts of the story you simply translated into the new time period (like the Bentley being a hell-horse and Pestilence and Pollution both being around) and which parts changed the shape of the story altogether (like the drama around Crowley's nap, and almost six thousand years being not /quite/ long enough).

I especially laughed at "Yours associate", tartan actually being stylish, "All the Queen's favorite hits", and Bentley's (un)lucky horseshoe. Anathema's modern ideas were also a good way to ground the time period, and took me back to my days learning about Industrial London. :D

And I learned lots of new words, like skilamalink and podsnappery!

Lastly, I'd like to commend you on the tone—there were certain lines in particular that were so reminiscent of the book, and particularly those parts with Terry Pratchett's influence, I think. Because of that tone, the story was able to preserve some of the unique humor of the book, even while the events transpired quite differently.

[secret_kraken]

Thank you for commenting! Honestly, the drama around Crowley's nap was something I'd thought about before even considering this fic, and I wanted to put it somewhere...plus I can't resist adding a bit of A/C into the story :)

I'm so glad you caught "Yours/associate", I wasn't sure the HTML was going to work :D And I was DELIGHTED that tartan can be stylish at last! Not that it ever ISN'T...

A friend sent me a link to Victorian slang words at exactly the perfect time for this fic :D

Thank you very much!

[hsavinien]

What a great job you did! That's a very fine time-shift, friend.

I was particularly amused by "The dinosaur, surprised to find itself alive and suddenly very cold, was not overly concerned with the furless creature in front of it. It was wondering where all its feathers had gone. And why its thumb now appeared to be sprouting from its nose." because I've seen how the Victorians built dinosaur skeletons and dearie dearie me.

[secret_kraken]

The dinosaur was partly a reference to the TV show, but also I read this book "Spiny, Spotted, Feathered, Frilled" which gave a great history of our 'knowledge' of dinosaurs. I needed something for Adam to be amazed by other than aliens, so it seemed like a good step :)

Thank you!!!

[sonnet23]

That was a really great retelling and so brilliantly written! I guess it must be quite difficult to make such kind of stories engaging, because, well, everyone knows what's going to happen next and what the end will be; but you managed to fill it with such wonderful details and reinvent some of the moments in the Victorian way so unexpectedly that it always kept being interesting. :)

I absolutely loved your Anathema and her conversations with The Them.
And Newt! Oh, I'm so glad that you made him a genius - he absolutely deserves it.

This line warmed my heart: "but there was something about the way he looked absolutely terrified as he did it all that was somehow endearing." << It characterizes both of them so well!

Bently-The-Horse is amazing. Probably my favourite character in the fic. I hope she will be happy in Hell with Beethoven! :D And this was where I almost cried a little:
"Crowley walked over morosely to pick it up. It was the only horseshoe in the world that, if hung above a door, would bring good luck to the demon inside and protect him from the harmful outside influences of innocence and piety." <<< Aaaaaw! <3<3
I love it that though Crowley is terrified of hell-horses, he had such an incredible relationship with this one.

There were so many brilliant moments and lines, it's hard to mention all of them.

This one made me laugh:
"Aziraphale, who had been mid-swoon with his hand raised to his forehead at being rescued so gallantly, changed speed, scooping up the serpent and cooing at him." XD

And the conversation in the park was a very good the ending for this story! It added some drama, and also some development of their relationship. One of my favourite story elements is when A&C argue because they can't express how much they mean to each other, so I was delighted to get it here at such an important moment of the story. <3

Thank you so much dear secret author!

[secret_kraken]

I'm glad you appreciated Anathema and Newt! Newt really does try hard and he's so sincere, he's just a bit out of his element, so I think you're right, he deserves a break!

Oh, my goodness, I didn't even think about the fact that Bentley can now meet Beethoven himself....oh they're going to have some good adventures together :D

The conversation in the park was one I'd imagined them having before, but couldn't find a fic to put it in, so I put it here hoping it would fit...I'm glad you think it ended things well! That, about them arguing because they can't express themselves, is exactly their dynamic, yes!

Thank you for commenting! I hope you're having a happy New Year!

[edna_blackadder]

Wow, just wow.

Echoing a commenter above me, if this were attributed to Pratchett and Gaiman, I would believe it. It's spectacularly written and the most perfect retelling/adaptation imaginable; I just kept nodding "yes" at every single decision you made. Anathema enthralling Adam with very real tales of what a nightmare factories are, her rescuing Newt from having to burn her, Crowley's escape via pigeon, Bentley's horseshoe (!), and that perfect, wonderful ending...I can't say enough good about this fic. I'd quote favorite lines, but that would mean copying and pasting every single line. Brilliant performance, Secret Author.

[maniacalmole]

Thank you so much!!! That means a lot :D Your fic was one of my favorites, too!