The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  No help for it, then. It would have to be through the next room and out the front door.

  She moved back to the door, and tested it. It opened the smallest of cracks.

  She put her eye to the crack, peering into the next room.

  The fire in the fireplace burned merrily on. There was no sign of the Dark One anywhere near the hearth. She tried to get a look at the rest of the room, but her range of vision was limited by what she could see through the cracked door.

  Finally, she eased the door open enough to get a good look around to the sound of the rest of the children collectively gasping.

  There was no one in the room beyond.

  There would never be a better chance.

  She slipped through the door and closed it behind her, then dashed across the room and to the door on the other side. The savory aroma of the pease porridge was almost too much to bear after four days of bread and raw vegetables, but she ignored it, and eased open the outer door.

  Sunlight blinded her, and she squinted against it, eyes watering. After a while her eyes adjusted, and what had been a multicolored blur resolved into a neatly tended garden on either side of a straight, short path of beaten earth that ended in a stone wall with an open gate in it.

  She swallowed hard, puzzled by what she saw. Because that was almost certainly the wall and the wooded combe beyond it that she remembered. In fact, she particularly remembered the lightning-struck oak with the deep burn scar down it that stood to the right of the gate.

  But the garden wasn’t the weed-grown place she remembered. . . .

  And yet, there was the strawberry patch, to the left of the gate.

  The Dark One certainly hadn’t cleaned up all those weeds in four days!

  Yet, except for the unkempt state, this definitely was the garden that had lured her and her brother into captivity. This made her head hurt. Was her memory at fault? Had she imagined all those weeds?

  Her mind reeled, trying to reconcile what she knew with what she saw, until she felt dizzy. And for one moment, she was tempted to go back inside, snap the shackle on her own leg, and lie down on her mildewed mattress.

  But if I don’ go—’oo will?

  She clenched her jaw, took a firm grip on the door, and wrenched it open, flinging herself in a headlong dash toward the beckoning gate. There were no shouts. No dark-clad form dashed out of the garden to stop her. With triumph surging in her, she reached the gate and—

  Stopped cold. Stopped so abruptly, in fact, that she tumbled to the ground, right in front of the gate itself.

  Frantic, she scrambled to her feet and flung herself through the gate.

  Or—tried. Because once again, her feet stuck to the ground right at the gate, and then her knees failed and she fell.

  She tumbled backward, and landed on her arse. It was as if her feet had stuck on something invisible, right where the gate closed. And then as if her legs suddenly gave out.

  Sobbing with frustration and confusion now, she got to her feet, and made to leap over the low wall—

  And her legs gave out again, failing her, and she landed in the middle of the patch of beets that was next to it.

  She ran between the rows of beets and made another attempt at the wall, this time from the beans. This time it was only by dint of flailing that she managed to not land on her wounded hand. Once again, her legs went to rubber the moment she attempted the jump.

  Again and again she tried, her panic and confusion growing with every attempt—and discovered during the process that the entire cot was surrounded by the garden, and the wall at the back joined up to a scarp that not even a goat would attempt to climb. Time and time again, she flung herself at the boundary only to find herself sprawled in the dirt. And it wasn’t as if she met some kind of barrier, either. When she ran out of panicked breath and energy, and tried to climb instead of jumping, she discovered that right at the base of the wall her feet stuck fast in the earth and she could not move them, not even to lift them an inch. It was as if her whole body rebelled against what she wanted it to do.

  How was this even possible?

  Finally she found herself at the front gate again, and stared at the open gate, tears running down her face in frustration and anger and growing fear. This was witchcraft! The Dark One was some kind of witch! That was the only possible explanation for why her own feet betrayed her just when she was about to reach freedom.

  She put her face down in her hands and sobbed helplessly. All around her, the birds that had been frightened away by her struggles returned, and began to sing. And it seemed to her as if they were mocking her.

  And just when it seemed as if things could not get worse . . . her sobs were interrupted by the sound of slow applause.

  With a gasp of fear, she dropped her hands and looked up.

  Standing in the forest beyond the open gate was the Dark One, face still hidden in the shadows of its hood. Clapping.

  She froze in absolute terror as the Dark One dropped its hands to its sides.

  “Learnt yer lesson, then?” rasped the Dark One. “No runnin’ off fer ’ee. ’Ee be mine. No gettin’ awa’. An when Es say, tha’ll do. Do ’ee ken?”

  Numbly, she nodded, too terrified to do anything else but agree with what the thing wanted.

  The Dark One stalked to the gate and through it, stood beside her for a moment, and beckoned for her to follow. With a last despairing glance over her shoulder at the false freedom the forest promised, she followed the creature back into the cottage.

  * * *

  What the Dark One wanted of her that was different from what it wanted of the other children, she soon learned.

  The first thing it did when they had crossed the threshold was to thrust a broom into her hands and order her to sweep out both rooms, watching her carefully to see that she got up every speck of dirt. It might be thought by some that a pounded-earth floor would just create never-ending dirt, but that was not the case as long as the floor got regular coatings of linseed oil and wax, and the roof remained intact. The conditions in the prison room might not be the best, but the conditions in the main room were as good as Ellie’s mother could have wished. It was clean, well furnished with a kitchen table, a larder, a big cupboard, two stools, a real chair, and a bed. The fireplace drew well and did not smoke, and there were a flitch of bacon, a couple of hams, and several strings of sausages hanging from the rafters above it to demonstrate the Dark One’s prosperity. Ellie could not remember the last time her family had seen more than a single sausage, much less a string of them and hams.

  The fireplace had ovens on either side of it, so that explained where the bread was coming from. In fact, as she swept, the Dark One began to remove hot loaves with a bread peel, and drop them into the food basket. Then it took eggs from the larder, one for each child, and dropped them carefully into a pot with water in it that it put on the hearth to boil.

  Having swept out the house to the Dark One’s satisfaction, Ellie was then instructed to carry out the slop pail, empty it into the privy, rinse out the pail with water from the rain barrel, and return the pail and a fresh bucket of earth to their proper places.

  “Tha’ll do thet mornin’, noon, an’ night,” the Dark One rasped.

  Next, she was told to check the chicken house for eggs. She had been so focused on trying to escape that she hadn’t even noticed a chicken house, much less chickens, but sure enough, following the directions, there was the shed with four shelves of nests, a total of twenty-eight in all, and there were a dozen eggs in the nests. Two of the chickens were sitting on their eggs and pecked at her, drawing blood, when she tried to reach under them. But she was more afraid of the Dark One than the chickens, and managed to get the eggs without too much damage to herself.

  When she returned to the cottage with the eggs, she found the Dark One prosaically tucking into a bowl of that delicious-s
melling pease porridge and one of the loaves of bread with bacon grease smeared over it. Her mouth watered and her stomach growled audibly.

  “Tha’lt do chickens mornin’ an’ night. Naow. Feed t’others,” the Dark One ordered. “Bring ’em water from pump. Then feed tha’sel’. Tha’ may hev grease on tha’ bread,” it added magnanimously, waving at the dish of carefully saved bacon grease on the table it was sitting at.

  She picked up one basket of bread and the waiting bowl of eggs, and brought them into the other room, reserving an egg and two small loaves for herself. The others looked up at her with varying expressions—mostly of relief that so far the Dark One hadn’t killed her for her escape attempt (or so she supposed), but also some despair that she hadn’t gotten away. Only Simon was unreservedly happy to see her, and hugged her when he came to get his share of the food.

  She closed the door behind her, and stood a distance away from the Dark One, torn between want and fear. She wanted that scrape of bacon grease. It had been a long, exhausting day, she was starving, and the promise of a taste of baconey fat made her mouth water with anticipation.

  On the other hand, she didn’t want to get any nearer to her captor and tormentor than she was now.

  “Well?” it rasped, when she had stood there indecisively for long enough it had finished its own meal, with a long drink of beer to finish it off. “Do ’ee want it or no?”

  It didn’t wait for her to answer. “Put ’un away, then,” he ordered. “Put parritch off t’side t’stay warm. Clean dish an’ table. Bank fire. Put tha’sel’ t’bed. I’ mornin’, there be other chores.”

  And with that, the thing got up and stalked out of the door, closing it.

  She took her two loaves to the table, broke them in half and smeared the halves with fat, and put the bowl of fat away in the cupboard. Only when she had done everything the creature had ordered her to did she sit down and eat her own meal. And she did wonder for a moment if the thing would notice if she helped herself to the porridge . . . but then decided that a hellspawn thing that could keep her own feet from obeying her could certainly tell if she ate its food, and confined herself to her bread, egg, and water.

  And then, with an aching heart, burning eyes, throbbing hand, but a full belly, she opened the door to the prison room, and took her place among her fellow captives.

  “What happed?” asked Robbie.

  She explained as best she could, as the light on the other side of the shutter faded, and they gathered around her.

  “Witchcraft,” spat Colin. “Black witchcraft.”

  “Aye, not like Sam’s. Or mine,” Robbie said wisely. “Tha’s why t’crathur keeps un. T’crathur eats our witchery. But ’ee, Ellie, ’ee got na witchery, so ’ee’ll be th’ Dark One’s slavey.”

  “Did th’ Dark One hev a slavey afore?” she asked.

  “Aye. An’ be keerful an’ do all t’crathur says,” Rose said fearfully. “’Er name wuz Liz, an’ she didn’ do like Dark One said, an’ t’crathur do makeit ’er lie a bier. Snappit ’er neck, like a coney.”

  They all shuddered, Ellie not the least. “Do wut Dark One says, Ellie!” Simon cried frantically, on the edge of tears. “Do wut Dark One says, even if ’tis t’ ’urt me!”

  “Gi’ un yer ’and,” Sam said, cutting curtly through Simon’s hysteria. She did, willingly, hoping he could work that miracle of healing he had earlier.

  Once again, as he cupped her wounded hand in his, a cooling sensation spread from his touch, and the pain of her much-abused finger abated until at last it was down to little more than an ache that she could certainly ignore enough to sleep.

  All the exertion of trying to run away, followed by more work than even Mother had ever put her through, made her feel as if the straw-stuffed sack was like a cloud as she lay back down on it. She was aware of the other children talking softly, but within moments, she was asleep, to wander restlessly in nightmares.

  * * *

  In the morning she woke to the sound of the door crashing open. “Op,” came the rasping voice from the door, and Ellie scrambled to her feet and fetched the bucket of earth and the slop bucket before the Dark One could order her to do so.

  “Good,” it said as it stood aside for her to go out into the gray dawn light and take care of the buckets. She was pretty sure what order she was to do things in, so after bringing the others their food and water, she left her two loaves at the hearth on one of the stools and went to open up the chicken house to let the chickens out.

  Only then did she return to eat her breakfast.

  It was almost more than she could bear to watch and smell the Dark One eating fried eggs, fried bread, and bacon, while she ate day-old bread with nothing more than water. But all it took was to have the thing raise its head and look at her—or rather, have that dark nothingness under the hood be pointed at her—for her to decide that bread was not so bad after all.

  “Sweep oop,” the thing ordered, when she had finished. “Then tha’ll mek bread.”

  “I dunno—” she squeaked in panic.

  The Dark One interrupted her. “Chell tell ’ee ’ow,” it whispered, impatiently. “Naow sweep oop.”

  She swept out both rooms, the eyes of the other children on her the entire time that she worked, and returned to the main room to find that the Dark One had laid out a cloth, a wooden bowl, a sack of flour, a bowl of lard, a bowl of salt, and the crock of bubbling, fermenting stuff Mother always used to make the bread rise on the table by the window.

  “Coom ’ere,” it said, and instructed her, step by step, in the first stage of bread-making. “Nah,” it said, “Tha’llt learnet t’make bread. An’ that’ll be wut tha’llt et, ’ee an’ th’ rest, raw or burnet, dry or doan, so best learn quick.” Trying not to panic, she made several batches of dough, enough to fill the largish table and the window ledge with wooden bowls for the first rise, before it was satisfied.

  “Garden,” it ordered, and she went out with it and the familiar basket to pick ripe produce. It supervised her for a while, then apparently satisfied that she knew what she was doing, left her to fill the basket with whatever was ripe. Except for the cabbages, or, of course, the berries. It told her to leave them alone, then the Dark One picked a cabbage itself and went back into the cot with it.

  She noted the cleverly set rabbit snares among the veg, and wondered how often the Dark One caught conies. And then why it needed to set snares when it had magic—because surely it could catch them easier with the magic.

  When she lugged the filled basket back inside, it was frying chopped cabbage in bacon grease for its luncheon, and the smell nearly drove her crazy. “Feed ’em,” it rasped at her as she entered. “An’ yersel’.”

  She took the last of the baskets of bread into the room after she brought in the basket of raw vegetables. Robbie saw to it that everyone got a fair share of the food, and she took hers to eat sitting next to Simon on her bed. “’As ’e ’urt ’ee, Ellie?” Simon whispered fearfully, when she sat down beside him with her loaves and skirt full of three carrots, some radishes, an onion, and some beans. She was so hungry she ate even the leaves of the root veg, putting them between the two halves of one of her loaves for palatability, and to add a bit of much-needed moisture to the otherwise dry day-old loaf.

  The “loaves” were not actually loaf-size, not a proper pound loaf, but more like a large bun shaped like a round loaf. I could eat a whole pound loaf, I could, she thought wistfully. But then again . . . so far she and Simon had been eating better than they did at home, except for when they were allowed to forage on the moor. Well, and better than they often did even when they were foraging, since there were only a few days every summer when they could eat to gorging and still bring home enough to share.

  When she came out of the prison room, the Dark One had just finished a dish of berries, and she stared with all her eyes at the bit of juice in the b
ottom of the dish when it shoved its luncheon dishes at her to clean. She didn’t dare even stick her fingers in it and lick them, though, not with the creature watching her every moment. No telling what it would do.

  Then as the thing instructed her, she punched down the dough, divided it into little loaves, and laid them out on every flat surface for the second rise, cleaned out the prison room and the buckets for the second time that day, fed the chickens—and that was when she noticed something that set the hair up on her head again.

  As she filled her big wooden bowl with grain for the chickens . . . the amount of grain in the bin didn’t become any less.

  In fact, she could take out a wooden scoop full—and watch the level actually rise again.

  She dropped the heavy lid on the mouse-proof bin and couldn’t get away from it fast enough. Where was the new grain coming from? There was the magic again! Black witchery, for surely he was stealing the grain from someone else, somewhere by magic! Grain didn’t come from nowhere!

  She noticed something else. All of the chickens had the end of one toe missing. And none of them left the garden. Had the Dark One worked the same magic on them as it had on her? Poor chickens! They were prisoners as much as she and the other children were!

  With the chickens fed, it was time to put the first of the loaves into the ovens to bake. The Dark One showed her how, after taking out a pie that was clearly for its own dinner. It was hot work, and she was terrified of the oven. Mother never let them near the oven at home, on the rare occasions when there was fuel to bake things or things to bake. It took down a sand-glass that was on a shelf near the bed and set it on the table with the rest of the waiting loaves. “When last grain runs oot, loaves come oot. Remember, tha’llt be ate it, raw or burnet, dry or doan. Raw kin go back. Burnet is burnet. So make sure ’tisn’t burnet.” And it laughed. “An’ git on wi’ tha’ work a whiles.”