42.

Georgie's scream echoed throughout the tunnels. Wilkins fell over and sat down in a puddle. Jane stumbled into a wall trying to reach Georgie. Annabel ran into her aunt. John found the wall with his foot. Two large hulking men who were mostly human but tainted by shadow growled when they heard the scream and walked faster.

The person that had stumbled over Georgie nearly fell over, which would have been unfortunate, but steadied himself by grabbing Georgie's shoulder. Georgie opened his mouth to scream again.

"Georgie?" said a voice in the dark. "Is that you?"

And Georgie swallowed his scream. Instead of answering, Georgie grabbed his arms around the person, or, as it turned out, people, and burst into tears.

43.

Sometimes, very small things can mean all the difference between triumph and tragedy.

Some would argue, and certainly in the upcoming days many did, that Jane could have (should have) taken the children straight home because ultimately they weren't needed in the attempt save Michael or Jack, and had been put in needless danger and seen horrors that no child should.

They were wrong, of course. If Jane had simply taken the children home, then everything would have gone absolutely wrong, and this story would have a much darker and far more tragic ending than it does. And sometimes, it's good for children to see monsters, if only to learn that monsters can be defeated.

Jane and Annabel and John stood in the thin glow of Annabel's second match, surrounded by darkness and something darker than even that and, even worse, they had lost their Georgie.

"You…you stay away!" Jane said, her voice shrill.

And, almost as if in answer, the sound of a bell came again. And with it came the light.

It was like a vision; it didn't feel quite real. Bicycles, hundreds of them it seemed (though there were really, at most, fifty) swarmed down the tunnel. And each bicycler held a lit torch, and the firelight danced over the tunnel walls and turned the night into sudden and blinding day.

The dark shadow fled. They never saw it, but all three of them felt it go.

If they had never gone down into the tunnels, if they had gone home, a nanny who had come for a child might have gone after the child and been forced to leave the missing adults for the leeries to find.

If Georgie hadn't screamed in the dark, the leeries would have had to split their forces and take their time when they came to the point where Michael's path ran out and the sewer branched. While the scream echoed horribly and gave no exact location, it did come from a single tunnel.

And if going down that tunnel hadn't had them meet Jane, John, and Annabel alone; had Georgie been with them in the sewer, then no one would have had to say 'We lost Georgie. He ran off down the tunnel and we missed a turning or something and he isn't here.'

And if they hadn't had to say that, then the army of leeries wouldn't have known to split up to search out a hidden byway instead of keeping to the straight path.

Even as it was, they might well be too late.

44.

They found Wilkins near the cell where Jack had been kept, only a little ways further on from Jane, John, and Annabel.

Wilkins was sitting in a puddle, clutching his burnt out lantern as though his very life depended on it. When the leeries came he didn't even try to run. He just shielded his eyes and sat in his puddle and waited for the worst to happen.

"Hey, there's no one in here," a voice called as they tried one of the doors set incongruously in the sewer wall. They opened the second door. There was no cry this time. The person looking inside went very, very quiet.

"What is it?" his friends asked, though they sounded a bit like they were afraid to find out. The first person stepped aside and others moved to look in.

There was a longer moment of silence. Then whispers.

They came for Wilkins, after that.

"What did you do to Jack?" an angry voice demanded. He was bodily lifted from his puddle and shoved hard against the wall, hard enough to bruise.

"Nothing, nothing at all," whimpered Wilkins, his eyes closed, as though not seeing the angry mob in front of him might make them go away. "It was all those…those two barbarians. They kidnapped me and Banks and the lamplighter and they're the ones who broke his arm and it wasn't me!"

There was a long moment of silence. In the silence, there was the sound of footsteps. They sounded like heels against stone.

"William," said a woman's voice, full of disapproval and disappointment. "What have you done."

William Weatherall Wilkins opened eyes and the nanny was in front of him. All this trouble was over her. Mr. Void had wanted to hurt her. And looking at her now, he knew he should hate her. All he felt was a great swell something painful and hot and unfamiliar. It was something he hadn't properly felt since he was a very small child. Guilt. Not embarrassment or humiliation but proper shame in his very being.

"There's a whole torture chamber set up in there!" one of the dirty men who had invaded the tunnel told her. Mary Poppins didn't turn to look at him though, just kept her disappointed gaze firmly on Wilkins.

"They made me do it," Wilkins said, unable to remain silent in the face of that look, and unwilling to accept the blame.

"Who?" asked Mary Poppins, and Wilkins looked around and for the first time wondered where his associates had gotten to and why they weren't also being thrown up against walls.

"Where's Jack?" demanded one of the dirty thugs that was present and was currently trying to force Wilkins' imprint into the wall.

"What do you mean?" Wilkins asked. "I left him…I mean…they kept him in there."

"No one's there," the man answered. Wilkins could see that he wasn't believed, and he rather thought they were going to hurt him and it wasn't fair. He didn't know where Jack was, and he wasn't the one who chose Jack in the first place, and Mr. Void had promised there wouldn't be reprisals and this seemed like the worst sort of reprisal that could have happened and Mary Poppins was still looking at him and she had no right to make him feel like a misbehaving child. If any of this was anyone's fault surly it was her own for making such enemies.

"I don't know!" Wilkins shouted, "I don't know anything, and if you don't unhand me, I'll have you all in prison!"

"You will, will you…" started one, and then, abruptly, Mary Poppins had turned her gaze away, dismissing him entirely.

"Never mind about him," she said. "He doesn't know anything."

That was true, but somehow her saying it made him sound…unimportant, and Wilkins bristled, almost wanting to contradict her and prove her wrong.

He didn't want her to blame him, but she had no right to dismiss him!

She was already walking away, and something inside him felt ready to burst, and he couldn't let her just walk away. He didn't know where the words he shouted came from, just that he meant them more than anything he'd ever said before in his life.

"You never came for me!"

Mary Poppins paused, turned, and gave him a mildly curious look.

"It's not my fault! You think you are so…so perfect, but you don't save everyone. You just come for…for the Banks children and never mind the children in other houses. And people like me grow up in cold houses into cold men and we do horrible things and…and I was a child once, you know. I know I was innocent once, and…you never came for me!"

If he had hoped to shame her, he could see that he had failed.

"You never invited me," she answered simply, and then she turned and she left and he was bound and shoved in a cell and, for a long while at least, forgotten.

45.

No one thought to ask Wilkins why they had found him sitting in a puddle. No one thought to ask him about the figures that had brushed past him in the dark. They really should have, but no one knew to ask.

56.

Before the arrival of the leeries, before Annabel lit her first match, even before Georgie made friends with a rat (though after John had led them all into the sewers), two men lay in a dark cell alone.

"Jack, is that you?" hissed one voice in the dark.

"Course it's me," answered the other.

This discussion raised no alarm in the two listening in. It was likely they assumed the two were seeking reassurance from each other, and not, say, that Michael had been startled when he felt something tugging at the binds to his wrists.

The binds in question had been quite thorough (wrists behind his back and then ropes binding his arms to his torso and his ankles bound as well) but not particularly tight, as the binders were both in a hurry and wary of hurting their prisoner by an incautiously tightened cord. So even someone who was not in the best condition and who only had one good arm with fingers numbed from cold could make short work of them. Jack's arms had been left unbound completely, for how could they without hurting him when one arm was broken? To make up for it they'd done up his legs from ankle to hips, but with similar caution to Michael's knots and so Michael, once freed, could move even quicker with his two good hands to free his friend.

The thugs made nothing of the slight noises these actions elicited. Trembling in the dark, certainly that was all it was.

And when they heard whimpering, it pleased them to think that their prisoner was suffering and they didn't stop to wonder what the two prisoners might be doing to cause the whimpering, considering up to now Jack had done a rather good job at containing it.

Of course, it's rather hard to make no noise at all when someone is attempting to bind one's broken arm by feel in utter darkness when all that is on hand to bind it is said someone's scarf.

So the first moment the two guards realized that something had gone rather wrong was when they heard the cell door open. They knew Wilkins hadn't come back because Wilkins would have brought his light and they'd have sensed that. That just left the prisoners themselves, who were supposed to be too beaten and weary and tied up to realize that their door had no locking mechanism. Not that it needed it, not with two very able guards who had all the advantages of night sight and being rather large and not in any sort of weakened condition as at least one of the prisoners was. At least, that's what they thought right up to the moment that they confronted the escapees.

"Here, where do you think you're going?" demanded the bald one, and they really thought that'd be that and the prisoners would realize they were still prisoners and meekly go back into their cell.

"Home, I think," answered Michael. He was half holding Jack up, but Jack still managed to give them a cocky grin and a short wave with his good hand.

"You just go back in your cell, or I cut you with my knife," threatened the one with straggly hair.

"Go ahead," answered Michael.

The two thugs looked at each other. That wasn't how the script was supposed to go.

"I will do it," warned the scraggly hair one. This was a mistake, of course, because up to then Michael hadn't really believed Jack's words of 'they can't hurt us', but nothing says 'I won't do it' so strongly as having to repeat that you will.

"Then do get on with it," said Michael, with quite a bit more confidence that their unspoken plan might actually work. And he started to move, albeit quite slowly, away from the cell door.

"You want us to cut you?" the bald one asked, baffled by this turn of events.

"Not especially," said Michael. "But then…you can't really, can you?"

Again the two thugs shared a look. This was missed by Michael, who couldn't see a thing in the dark.

"Enough of this," said the bald one, and he bodily took hold of Michael while his partner reached for Jack.

At which point Jack's knee had surprisingly good aim considering its owner only had the feel of a hand and a voice in the dark to go by, and said knee met a very unfortunate location on his attacker's body. And it turned out that Michael's arm that wasn't helping to hold up Jack was concealing a short rod that had been meant as a potential item of torture and so kept in the room with them. And a metal rod can make up for a lot of disadvantages. In fact, it did rather worse than Michael had been aiming for. Being hindered as he was in his aim, both by the dark and by Jack's weight throwing him off, what he had hoped to be a stunning blow actually swept up higher than he'd originally gone for, went one further than stunning and actually knocked the bald thug out cold.

Michael didn't see what Jack managed to do to the second. He thought it involved his knee again and the fact that the first blow had cause the thug to hunch over with his head at a convenient height. He did notice that Jack's limp was worse after, and that their two assailants were now silent and no longer menacing them. Michael and Jack didn't stick around to find out how badly they were hurt.

Not as badly as might have been hoped. Still, by the time the two thugs recovered, both prisoners were well out of sight.

"…Now what?" asked one, clutching a bleeding nose.

"…How much do we still care whether the witch turns up?" asked the other, spitting out a tooth.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…she's already going to be angry when she finds out about all this…and she will in the end…so does it matter? I mean, if we do a bit of maiming? She'll be too late to stop us."

"Boss wouldn't like it. He wants the banker."

"The banker scarpered. Anyway…boss isn't here, is he."

And it probably had something to do with this conversation, that when they found their banker lost in the dark, they brushed past him silently instead of offering aid.

57.

It's very slow going when one is lost in a sewer with absolutely no light and one is half carrying a barely coherent man. Far too slow, really, when one's enemies were only knocked out long enough to give one a head start, but not to escape completely.

If Michael had been alone or, indeed, if Jack had been alone, they might not have managed to get as far as they did. The dark was petrifying in its completeness. There was no getting used to the total loss of vision. Jack kept his blindfold on for that very reason, but Michael had no such crutch.

Michael did, however, have a man who desperately needed help. Jack didn't complain, never complained, but Michael could feel the unnatural heat radiating from his shivering body, hear the faint whimpers the leerie couldn't quite contain, could feel Jack grow heavier and heavier with each step as more and more of his weight fell to Michael. The need to get Jack away from there, to safety, was much stronger than the cold panic at being lost in utter darkness that might otherwise have paralyzed his feet.

And Jack, who might have felt too weak to attempt an escape on his own, would push himself beyond all endurance, would crawl, broken arm and all, if it meant getting his friend free of their prison and back to his family.

They didn't speak, and they didn't stop, and Michael kept one hand against a wall to help them make their way. The direction he chose wasn't quite random; first it had simply been 'away', and then there had been a noise, a squeaking, like a rat. Michael had moved away from it, sensibly, because who would go towards a sewer rat? Which is how they more or less managed to find an otherwise quite well hidden side passage without even realizing they'd gone down it.

Michael felt better when he could no longer hear the rat moving around behind them. Jack didn't seem to care where they went, was likely too out of it to have even noticed their inauspicious company. He just put one foot in front of the other, and felt a bit like he was at once too heavy and that he was about to float away.

58.

"Mary Poppins?"

"Yes, Annabel?"

"How did you know where to find us?"

"A little bird told me."

"Well…how did you know to come?"

"I was invited."

"And you are going to find Georgie, right? And Father and Jack? And they will be alright, won't they?"

There was a long moment when Mary Poppins didn't seem to hear her question. She was looking critically at the leeries. She seemed to want them to move in a very specific formation, and didn't at all seem sure they were up to her standards. When she did finally speak, it was only to ask a question of her own.

"Do you know why light is always stronger than shadows?"

"What? I don't know. Doesn't the light make the shadows? What does this have to do with finding the others? Are they lost in the dark?"

"One can only hope."

Sometimes, getting Mary Poppins's to answer one's questions left one more confused than before they were answered.

59.

"Georgie? What are you doing here? Are you alone?"

"I was following Eek," the boy explained. The dark seemed less scary when Father and Uncle Jack were there, even if Uncle Jack's voice sounded a bit strange.

Oddly, this explanation did not satisfy Georgie's father.

"Who Is Eek?" was the natural follow-up.

"The rat with no tail. John said it couldn't be Eek, but I think it is and he was leading me to you, and look, I found you!"

"Did Eek get away after all?" Jack's voice was strange and hoarse and quieter than normal, but it was still filled with the same delight it generally held.

"You know a rat named…" Michael started to say, then stopped himself. "Georgie, you say you were with John…and…Annabel?"

"And Aunt Jane, of course. We found your drawing that you left for a trail."

"Oh, clever," said Jack's voice. Whether he thought them clever for following or Michael clever for leaving the trail in the first place was unclear. Michael frowned, though of course this was lost in the darkness.

"…Aunt Jane brought you down into the sewers after me?"

"No, John found the trail and we followed after him. And then we met Eek and I wasn't frightened and Aunt Jane said the trail was gone and we had to go back up and fetch a policeman but I knew Eek wanted us to follow him, just like the pigeon, and I followed him, only he got lost in the dark and everyone else did too."

"…Well," said Michael. "Let's just get ourselves unlost, shall we?"

"Why don't you allow us to show you the way," said a voice from the darkness. That definitely was not Jack or Michael or Georgie or even Eek. It was much too menacing a voice for them.