The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  “What do you mean, I’ve cursed us?” Watson asked, as they finally found the seats within the arbor and sat themselves down in them. Nan sighed as the coolness immediately penetrated the thin cottons of her skirts and underthings. She much envied Mary Watson’s linen trousers right now.

  “Every time you complain about inactivity, a case finds us,” Sarah replied.

  Nan nodded. “I will bet you the cost of our tea that there is a letter from Alderscroft waiting for us when we return to Baker Street.”

  “There may well be a letter, but the only thing in it will be a reminder of the Hunting Lodge meeting tomorrow night,” Watson retorted.

  “Well, now you’ve certainly cursed us!” Mary exclaimed with a laugh. “John Watson, I believe you did it on purpose!”

  Watson twisted the ends of his moustache and looked impish. “Well,” he countered, “wouldn’t you like the excuse to leave London in this beastly weather? And do so at the Lion’s expense?”

  “He certainly spares no expense when it comes to us when we need to leave,” she replied wistfully. “Even if such expeditions are not precisely holidays, they are certainly comfortable.”

  That was an understatement if ever Nan heard one.

  “And once outside of London,” she added, “I could revert to being Mary again. These trousers may be comfortable, but the rest is certainly not.”

  Oh, of course not, Nan thought ruefully. Good gad, the corset she has to wear to flatten everything must be ghastly in this heat.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Sarah admitted. “And Suki would love it.”

  “As long as it’s not Blackpool, or some other holiday city,” Nan put in. “I do like my fun vulgar, but I don’t like throngs where you’re stepping on someone’s skirt every time you try to move.” She sighed. “I wouldn’t mind going back to Wales, not at all. But our Selkie friends there seem to have matters well in hand. Not a word from them except letters about how the twins are growing in ever so long.”

  “Oh, now don’t go cursing them as well!” Mary said with alarm. “Trouble involving the Selkies would be dire indeed!”

  “I imagine the reason they haven’t written much is because the twins are leading them a merry chase every single day,” Sarah quickly said. “Twins can get into quite enough trouble when they are merely human. Just imagine what they can do when they elect to take a short stroll across the seabed because they can hold their breaths like seals!”

  “I would not wish that fate on anyone,” Nan agreed. “Honestly it might be easier for everyone if the entire family just stayed seals until the twins are old enough to reason with.”

  Grey and Neville had tired of their game and returned to the girls. Both birds hopped into laps instead of on shoulders, and settled in for a long, blissful scratch, for all the world like a pair of feathered cats. Nan was just glad that the birds would hop off and go somewhere else if they needed to relieve themselves.

  A little blond-haired girl darted around the overgrown lilac bushes that half-hid them with a peal of laughter, and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight of the birds in the girls’ laps. “Mama!” she called out in triumph. “Come see! I told you there was a Grey Parrot!”

  Sarah’s brows rose—Nan knew that look. It wasn’t disapproval, it was surprise. A harried woman as golden-haired as the child, holding onto her hat with one hand and her skirts with the other, ran as fast as the tangled undergrowth and her skirts would allow her, and stopped beside her daughter, blushing with shame and chagrin. “Sylvia! I told you not to bother anyone! I beg your pardon, I’ll take her away now.”

  “I didn’t!” the child protested. Nan smothered a grin; this little girl was utterly irrepressible, and Nan was reminded strongly of Suki. But she still didn’t see what made Sarah so surprised.

  “Please don’t go,” Sarah said, with a welcoming smile. “And you didn’t interrupt anything at all.”

  Then Mary Watson—whose expression mirrored Sarah’s—did an astonishing thing. She pursed up her lips and gave a soft whistle.

  Three of the little sylphs that were her primary Air Elementals whisked around branches and through the foliage and came to hover expectantly in front of her, waiting for any requests she might have.

  They were lovely little things, although utterly shameless. The gauzy bits of “fabric” they wore did nothing to conceal any part of their bodies, which were not at all “doll-like” or sexless as the fairies that were based on half-remembered legends of them were. One had the wings of a dragonfly, one the barred wings of a hawk, and one the wings of a butterfly. Nan and Sarah were used to their nudity, but Nan wondered why Mary had called them just now.

  Now it was the newcomer’s turn to look astonished, although the child noticed nothing so far as Nan could tell. She clearly saw the sylphs, looking from them to Mary Watson and back again. “You—you’re an Air Master!” she blurted.

  “And you’re an Air Magician,” acknowledged Mary with a little nod.

  So that’s what Sarah saw! Masters could often recognize other Elemental Magicians on sight. Magicians generally could not.

  “And this little one,” Sarah added, “Is about to be some sort of Earth Mage, when she grows into it.” The mother looked startled, but not exactly as if this were something unexpected. Perhaps she was startled because the child was allied with Earth rather than Air.

  Sylvia, entirely oblivious to all of this, had crept closer to Sarah, eyes fixed on Grey. Nan thought it was rather endearing, how she kept her hands carefully to herself, though her eyes spoke of the longing to touch the parrot. “She’s beautiful,” the child said. “I’ve never seen a bird so close. May I pet her?”

  “You can,” said Grey herself, offering the back of her neck to touch. With her mouth pursed up in a little “o” of delight, the little girl gently petted the back of Grey’s head and neck with a single, careful finger.

  “Oi!” Neville objected. “Me too!” He hopped onto Nan’s knee to shove his head aggressively under the girl’s hand. With a laugh of pure joy, the child petted one bird with each hand. Her blue eyes danced and sparkled with happiness. Nan got the impression from her surface thoughts that this was a very kind and gentle child.

  “My name is Doctor John Watson,” Watson had been saying, while the girl made her enraptured acquaintance of the birds.

  “But I know of you, of course!” the woman replied, blushing again. “My husband is in Lord Alderscroft’s auxiliary—we’re only Magicians, not Masters, so we are not full Lodge members. Once again, I apologize, I’m so sorry Sylvia disturbed you, we’ll just be—”

  “Staying, of course,” Mary said firmly. “It’s ever so much cooler here. As long as Sylvia is playing with the birds she won’t be running you around Robin Hood’s barn, so to speak, and you look as if you could use a rest.”

  “There’s a twin to this bench just behind you,” John added, and the woman searched hastily behind her and found it, dropping down onto the marble with a sigh. “Where are my manners!” she exclaimed. “I’m Sapphire Morrison. My husband is Gerrold Morrison.”

  The rest of them introduced themselves, and they all made some small talk—“small talk” for magicians, that is, which was scarcely like the gossip ordinary folks might exchange—while Nan carefully examined the woman, the child, and the surface thoughts of both.

  Both Sylvia and her mother were dressed in outfits that did not match Sapphire’s careful and cultured speech. Sylvia’s dress, if Nan was any judge, had been cut down and pieced together from larger garments, while Sapphire’s was of good quality . . . but either remade from an older garment in a more modern style, or secondhand. Teacher, she guessed. Or governess. The former seemed more likely than the latter, since most families of the means to employ a governess did not care for said governess to be married.

  After all, in their minds, they were paying for the governess’s att
ention to be on their children, every day, and every hour of the day.

  Both Sapphire and her daughter were wearing light muslin summer dresses, but not white. Sapphire’s was a pattern of blue-gray leaves on gray, with very narrow, conservative flounces, trimmed in white braid and a little white lace. Sylvia wore a dark gray pinafore over a solid blue dress with no frills at all. Neither color would be likely to show stains readily, at least, not as readily as white.

  The woman’s surface thoughts were mostly those of embarrassment that her child had been so forward and mannerless, gratitude that John and Mary and the girls were so kind, and a kind of shyness in the presence of three Masters. Nan got the impression that she was in awe of Elemental Masters in general, but John Watson in particular.

  By this point, Sylvia had Grey on her shoulder and Neville begging shamelessly for chin scratches, and Sapphire had just remembered something Sarah had said.

  “Did—Miss Sarah, did you say that Sylvia was going to be some sort of Earth Elementalist?” she asked in a break in the conversation. By this time the sylphs had gotten bored, and since Sylvia could not see them, had fluttered off.

  Sarah nodded. “Yes, I did. I cannot tell yet if she will be a Master or a Magician, but she is definitely allied with Earth.”

  Now Sapphire went from blushing to pale. “But—that’s—” She seemed overwhelmed by anxiety suddenly. Nan was puzzled, until her next words explained it. “—we cannot afford to leave London!” she blurted.

  Ah, of course! The Earth Magicians cannot tolerate living in London, with all the poisons in the soil, air, and water. The more Sylvia came into her power, the less she’d be able to stand living under such conditions.

  “Which is why I will speak to Lord Alderscroft about a scholarship to the Harton School for Sylvia, now that we know her Element is Earth,” John Watson said smoothly, as if he had been thinking of this all along. “There are several of them available, I believe. The Hunting Lodge has established a fund for such things. The school is outside of London, on one of his Lordship’s estates. One can easily run down there in a few hours.”

  Sapphire’s face reflected her mixed emotions. “That—that is uncommonly kind of you, Doctor,” she managed. “I am incredibly grateful, and I know that Gerrold will be as well. . . .”

  “But it’s difficult knowing you will have to part with her during the school terms,” Mary said with sympathy.

  “Our ward Suki is enrolled there,” Sarah added, with a kindly look. “It was hard at first to part with her, but she so enjoys being able to be among those like her, so that she does not need to hide her powers.”

  Sapphire nodded. “If she had been any other Element, I could have had her enrolled in the school where I teach.”

  “Well, perhaps Memsa’b will be in need of a teacher herself by that time,” Nan put in. “I’ll speak to her about that on your behalf if you like. But I should think she would be overjoyed to find an experienced teacher with powers to match the students. What do you teach?”

  Overjoyed is understating it.

  “English, Grammar, English Literature, and some Latin and Greek,” Sapphire said with a blush. “I know the last are unusual, but Papa was a parish priest and thought all his children should learn the classical languages.”

  Memsa’b will turn cartwheels. “I’ll do more than speak to her, then,” Nan promised. “I’ll write to her immediately. The summer term is nearly over, and if you can get away, you could start in the fall.” She smiled reassuringly. “The position comes with housing, and your husband could go into London on the earliest train, and come back the same way in the evening.”

  A few years ago, that would not have been possible, but it was astonishing to Nan how many people were choosing to live in the “suburbs,” as they were called, and take the now-frequent trains into London.

  Then again . . . certainly in the summer I would not at all mind doing the same. In fact, if Suki had not been adamant about keeping her position among the Baker Street Irregulars, Nan would have been greatly tempted to close up the flat and move to the school for the summer.

  “Here’s my card,” Watson said. Sapphire took it, fumbled in her reticule for a moment, and produced two of her own, as Nan handed over the card she and Sarah shared. “We’ll be in touch, I promise you. Would you care to join us for tea?”

  The look on her face told Nan without needing to read surface thoughts that she did, badly, want to join them. But instead, she sighed a little with regret and said, “Sylvia and I need to start back if we’re to have supper ready for Gerrold. But thank you so much for your kindness! Sylvia?”

  “Yes, Mama,” the child said, giving Neville a final scratch, as Grey flew back to Nan’s shoulder. “Thank you, Miss,” she said to Sarah. “And thank you, Grey and Neville. You are the beautifullest!”

  Neville struck a pose on Sarah’s knee. “Yes, we are,” said Grey, and laughed, as the child giggled. After a few more polite exchanges, the woman tied her hat back on and led the child back out of the tangled garden and out of sight.

  “Well, and that’s the finest show of kindness I’ve seen in a while,” said a very familiar voice from the opposite end of what passed for a “clearing” in this tangle.

  Nan swiveled her head and stared at Robin Goodfellow in shocked amazement—because in all the time she had known him, except for great emergencies, the only time he had appeared to anyone besides herself and Sarah had been to Memsa’b.

  The Great Elemental—or fairy—or Godling, you could take your pick of what he was—stood there, leaning on a spade, in his guise as one of Her Majesty’s gardeners. To the uninitiated, he appeared to be a young, sandy-haired man in his mid-twenties, wearing tough moleskin trousers and a canvas gardener’s smock, with a straw hat jammed down on his head far enough to conceal the points of his ears. But since Nan could see Elemental Magic . . . she actually didn’t look at him in that way, because he was so very powerful it was not unlike staring into the sun.

  “Puck!” Sarah exclaimed, and jumped up to run over and hug him, with no regard for conventional manners. But then, Robin didn’t have any regard for conventional manners either, and hugged her right back, laughing.

  “I trust I don’t need to kneel in your presence, Highness,” John said politely. “I do not think my knee will cooperate.”

  Robin gave Sarah a saucy kiss on the cheek, and grinned at him, going back to leaning on his spade. “I may be the Oldest Old One in all England, but I’m no Majesty, nor nothing like one. No crowns for me!”

  Sarah had gone back to her seat beside Nan, and cocked her head to one side. “What brings you here today, Robin?” she asked.

  “Oh, I just came to play with Suki, told her where you were when I tired her out, and went on ahead of her to pay my greetings,” Puck replied. “And I could not help but listen to the goings-on when I got here. Well done, that. The more especially as we both know there’s no ‘scholarships’ for young’un’s, though there ought to be, and you tell the Lion I said so.” He drew his eyebrows together in an almost-frown. “There’s few enough of you not to tend to the needs of those that haven’t two pence to rub together in their pockets.”

  John looked a bit taken aback, but Nan chuckled. “Next I expect to hear you’ve turned socialist, Robin.”

  Puck just shrugged. “You want magicians gone to the bad? Neglecting ’em young’s one way.”

  “Well said,” Mary put in, decisively. “And we’ll either find scholarship money for that little girl or some other way to get her into the school, I promise you.”

  “You’re uncommonly interested in the matters of mortals today, Robin,” Nan observed.

  Puck rubbed the side of his nose reflectively. “There’s change in the wind,” was all he said.

  Nan wondered what sort of change was coming. Puck was very chary of helping adults—probably because he expected adult mo
rtals to be able to help themselves. Except when matters spilled over into hurting the land itself, as they had when that creature from some other world had attempted to invade this one. If he was warning them . . . it must be because he sensed danger to the land itself.

  “Soon?” she asked anxiously.

  To her relief, he shook his head. “Not even by your mayfly counting,” he admitted, then turned cheerful again. “I’ve run Suki up and down and round about and into a good appetite.”

  “It’s a good thing that we’d planned a hearty tea, then,” Mary laughed. “But thank you for the warning.”

  Robin exchanged a few more pleasantries with them, seeming to focus on John and Mary. Nan had a notion that he was examining them in his own way, and evidently was pleased with what he found. Mostly his careful questions centered around what they expected of him, which they both wisely answered in equally hedged terms, nothing.

  Which makes sense, she reflected. He’s helped us a great deal in the past, but he’s also made it very clear that he doesn’t meddle in the affairs of mortals. I think he’s making sure they aren’t taking that help as a given. In the end, he tugged on his hat, grinned at them, and casually took his leave just before Suki arrived.

  Suki burst into the clearing like the force of nature she was, her hands carefully cupped around an extraordinary butterfly she wanted to show them all before she let it go.

  “I’m fair famished!” she declared once it had been duly admired all around, and Suki nudged it with a finger to get it to leave her hand.

  “Then it’s a good thing we’re visiting the tea shop next,” Nan told her. “Just what we promised.”

  By the time they took the train home, birds riding on their shoulders to the bemusement of fellow passengers, Suki looked as if she was ready to burst, not from all the scones she’d eaten, but rather from all the things she wanted to tell them, and couldn’t because they were in public. Nan was exceptionally pleased with her. Her manners at the tea shop had been so exemplary that even strangers had remarked upon them, and her ability to keep from chattering in public spoke volumes about how trustworthy she was these days.