The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  “That doesn’t mean we’re going to give up, Byerly,” John Watson said firmly. “It just means that now that we are sure the children are alive and being held somewhere, we’ll use other methods to find them. Some of which will involve what Sherlock Holmes taught me. Don’t despair; I know they’ve been gone a long time, but the mere fact that they are still alive means that they are in shelter and being fed, which is more than you knew this morning. We’re staying at The Rock Hotel in Yelverton. If we discover anything—” John paused for a moment, obviously unsure what to say next.

  “If we learnet aught, chell send Black Bird ’ere with letter,” Nan said, reaching up to ruffle Neville’s feathers, showing which Black Bird she meant, ending John’s uncertainty. Neville bobbed his head enthusiastically, but did not speak—probably because in the bird’s judgment, the Byerlys had had more than their share of the “uncanny” today and did not need to be confronted with a talking raven. “’E can be ’ere an’ back t’me faster nor moor pony at gallop. I’ fact, chell send ’ee letter ever’ second day, so’s ’ee knowed usn’s bain’t forgot ’ee.”

  “You’d do that?” Maryanne said, lifting her tear-stained (still beautiful!) face from her husband’s shoulder.

  “Black Bird bain’t cost a penny-stamp,” Nan said shrewdly, which startled a weak laugh out of both the Byerlys.

  And at that moment, poor Roger’s stomach gave an audible growl.

  Both of them flushed. I think they’re both really, really hungry, Suki said, speaking up in Nan’s mind. I bet they haven’t eaten much because they were so worried.

  Or because they haven’t much to eat in the first place, Nan reminded her.

  Can we share our lunch? Suki begged. They can have all my cakes.

  “It do be ’round ’bout nummet,” Nan said, as if she had not heard Roger’s stomach proclaiming its emptiness. “Usn’s brought enough an’ more. Usn’s admire if tha’d share an’ bile oop water for tea.”

  “Capital plan!” John exclaimed heartily, and forestalled any objections by getting up and going out to the horses. He returned with the packed (and bulging) burlap bags that had been slung behind his and Mary’s saddles, went straight to the table, and began to unpack them, leaving Maryanne no choice but to bring out wooden and pottery plates and cups, and put an ancient, much-patched kettle full of water over the hearth.

  Fortunately, the hotel kitchen had either grossly overestimated their appetites, or had anticipated that they might be feeding guests. Out came sausages, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, ripe plums, radishes, a packet of tea, another of sugar, four big loaves of bread, and two tins of digestive biscuits. Maryanne ran out with a cup and came back with just enough milk (presumably from the goat) for everyone to have milk in their tea. Roger brought a pot of homemade coarse mustard out of the cupboard. Watson and Mary took turns in urging the Byerlys to “try this,” and “do have some more sausage,” and Suki pushed an entire tin of biscuits to their side of the table and refused to take any for herself. Nan ate just enough to keep from feeling hungry on the way back, and she was fairly certain she was not the only one refraining from eating too heavily. Neville took himself out to the garden, where they heard him chortling. Evidently he was wreaking havoc among the insects. Grey very politely ate digestive biscuits.

  There was even a generous amount of leftovers, which Watson insisted the Byerlys keep. “Those eggs will surely go bad on the trip back,” he said mendaciously. “I know the bread will go stale, and I’ve no wish to be smelling of sausages when we dismount at the hotel. Smelling of horse will be quite bad enough.” Flushing a little with gratitude and a little with embarrassment, Maryanne put the food away in their cupboard. Nan couldn’t help but wonder how long she’d make it last.

  After that, there was nothing more to be done. It was just a matter of saying goodbyes, collecting their mounts, and heading back to Yelverton.

  * * *

  When the trace joined the larger track, and once they had passed through Sheepstor without stopping, John waved all of them to come up and cluster around him. A breeze had sprung up, enough to make all the ladies tie their hats firmly down. “This is as good a time for a palaver as I can think of,” he said. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere, no one can eavesdrop on us, and I very much doubt that whoever is behind this, they have any notion that we are even here, much less that we are on their track and out on the moor at this spot. So, what should our next move be?”

  “Mary should send her Air Elementals out searching for Helen and Simon,” said Nan. “Being in a place invisible to magic will not prevent the Elementals from spotting them visually if they are out of doors. I know exactly what they look like; I got that from Maryanne’s mind and I am fairly certain I can impart that to the Elementals. I should send Neville out looking for cottages past Sheepstor, in case they are being held at a cottage, and we can note those on your map for further investigation.”

  “We should find out where the abandoned mines are, too, and if there are any caves,” said Sarah. “The children might be hidden in a mine. That’s what I would do. Nobody wants to go near those things for fear of falling in, and that’s an excellent place to keep people you don’t want escaping. You just lower them down, pull up the ladder, and there you go. They could call and cry with all their might, and the only thing anyone would hear they would probably take for a hawk or a kite calling.”

  “I think we all know why a magician would kidnap children with magic,” Mary said grimly. “To feed off them.”

  “Yes, but the good news is that this magician, either by accident or design, is not draining them to death,” John countered. “But there is quite another reason why a magician might take children with magic. Such children are much more susceptible to coercive magic than children without, and could easily have been lured into a trap that way. In fact, now that I am thinking about it, I would guess that the magician hasn’t taken them to drain them. He—or she—has taken them as a labor source.”

  “What now?” Nan asked, then looked over to Neville, who was bobbing his head furiously. “A labor source?”

  “Suppose one of the mines still had tin veins?” John replied. “What better labor force to use than children, who won’t fight back, won’t demand wages, and are small enough to crawl down small tunnels? That would account for everything. Why they haven’t been seen. Why none of them have escaped. Even where spirits are, if any of them have died! The ghosts wouldn’t know where they were, so if they didn’t pass to the other side, they’d haunt the mine, not anywhere else!”

  “John, that’s diabolical—” Sarah said, aghast.

  He shrugged. “No more diabolical than employing poor souls afflicted with dwarfism for a similar reason, as we found on one of Sherlock’s cases.” Then he paused. “Well . . . actually, you’re correct. It is more diabolical. It’s using unpaid, stolen children to do the dirty, dangerous work. But if that’s the case, then using coercive magic to catch them is all the magician would need to do. Once he got them into the mine, work or you don’t eat and work or you get beaten would certainly suffice. Why, out here on the moor, there is even a ready supply of moor ponies to carry off the ore to a smelter!”

  Sarah shivered. “We should definitely check all the mines for signs of activity, then.”

  “Neville can do that without arousing any suspicions,” Nan replied. “All right. We have some things we and Sherlock can do immediately. When we leave our notes for him, I’ll ask him to find out of there are any smelters with a new source of ore in the last four years. He can do that faster than we can. And that gives me something I can send the Byerlys in their letter in two days. I intend to dole out the information we have carefully, so they get some sense of progress, rather than letter after letter of ‘no news yet.’”

  “That’s an excellent strategy,” John agreed. He appeared lost in thought for a moment. “There is a technique Mary and I might try
that involves pendulum dousing to see if we can find ‘magically null’ spots on a map. I’ve never done it, and neither has she, so I have no idea whether we’ll have any luck at it, but it’s certainly worth trying.”

  They had to stop at that moment, to let a young shepherd drive his flock across the track. The sea of wooly backs with the myriad of legs beneath it did not look anything like any cloud that Nan had ever seen, which made her wonder briefly why it was that poets were always comparing clouds to flocks of sheep. They brought with them the smell of dust, lanolin, and trampled grass. The young shepherd was in a bit of a hurry, although Nan could not tell what made the other side of the track better than the one he was on, and the sound of what must have been a hundred or more sets of hooves on the ground was punctuated by protesting baas and the clank of the bells on the bellwethers’ necks.

  The horses were clearly used to this, and waited patiently, even when the flock inexplicably decided to divide in the middle and flow around them. When the path was clear again, the horses picked up their pace, probably understanding now that the humans on their backs were definitely heading to the home stable, where hay and grain awaited them. They were definitely moving more briskly than they had been this morning.

  “So,” Sarah said. “I can’t think of anything more we can do right now. Does there seem to be any great urgency about this? Shall we proceed methodically and carefully, or—”

  “If the children are still among the living at this point, I think it’s fair to assume their captor has no wish to kill them,” Watson replied. “Methodical is our best approach. When we arrive back at the inn, I will apprise the chief constable of the more ordinary aspects of our investigation, while you and Nan, Sarah, write notes to be left for Sherlock. Mary, you send out your sylphs while there is still daylight for them to see by. Although they will be of limited utility, I’ll have my undines see what they can discover, if anything.”

  “What can I do?” Suki demanded.

  John moved his horse over beside her pony. “You, my dear, should go make friends with the village children. The ordinary ones, best of all, the ones who are working rather than playing. You know what to do.”

  Suki grinned up at him. “Investigate!” she said gleefully. “Nan can show me what Helen and Simon look like. I can arst—ask—about them. See if any of the other children know about ’em. An’ see if there’s any stories goin’ about—if there’s supposed t’be witchery goin’ on!”

  “Exactly. The adults are probably not going to talk to us about that sort of thing. The upper-class ones will pretend such things don’t exist, and the working-class ones will avoid anything that makes them look—” John sought for the most diplomatic way to phrase things.

  “—makes them look like a lot of superstitious country bumpkins,” Mary supplied, not at all diplomatically. “The children will have no such concerns, which makes them our best source of information local to Yelverton.” She smiled as Suki looked back at her. “You’re going to be absolutely vital to us, Suki. Use all the training you’ve had with the Irregulars.”

  “Not all of it,” Suki said thoughtfully. “I don’ think I’ll need t’ threaten t’ stick anyone.”

  They divided up as soon as they reached the stable, John setting off afoot immediately, Mary, Nan, and Sarah going up to their respective rooms, and Suki sauntering off down the street in search of the children of the village, after a brief pause for Nan to set the images of Simon and Helen into her mind.

  Grey and Neville flew to their perches. Sarah took the desk; Nan sat down on her bed with paper and a book to use as a temporary desk, and they both wrote out everything they could remember as concisely as possible. They didn’t bother to consult with each other beforehand or afterward. Sherlock had taught them both that it didn’t matter if they repeated information, as independent observations of the same event were of great importance to an investigation. They finished at about the same time. “Do you think the Post Office will still be open?” Sarah asked, as Nan folded her sheets and passed them to Sarah to be put in the same envelope.

  Nan consulted her watch. “Just, I think. I have longer legs. Let me run out, and while I am out, I’ll get another map like John’s.”

  She ran down both the hallway and the stairs and while she did not run in the street when she reached it, she managed to walk so fast it was almost a run. She reached the Post Office just in time before it closed.

  The Post Office was in a newish building, probably built to accommodate all the new villagers who worked in Plymouth; two-storied, with the Post Office on the bottom floor and living quarters for the Postmaster and his family on the upper floor. Spacious and modern-feeling, the public area was the size of an average store, with a counter across the middle. She bought a stamp for the letter, and an Ordinance Survey map, and left the letter for Holmes to pick up. Fortunately the cheerful young lady at the counter was not annoyed at having to wait a few minutes past the technical closing time. That certainly would not have been the case at a London Post Office! In fact, she remarked in quite a friendly manner that Nan was obviously a visitor, and asked a little bit about her.

  Bearing in mind the story they had concocted, Nan supplied her with the gossip fodder she obviously desired. “My sisters and I are here on a painting holiday with our married friends, a doctor and his wife,” Nan replied. “We’re at the Rock. We have a friend who’s here on a walking tour of Dartmoor; that’s who the letter is for. He asked us to keep him apprised of our own sightseeing so that he won’t miss anything interesting.”

  “Oooh, a sweetheart?” the girl asked, giggling coyly. Nan smiled and uttered a completely genuine and hearty laugh, since the notion of Sherlock Holmes as her sweetheart was absolutely absurd.

  “Goodness gracious no,” she laughed. “He’s far too old. Perhaps I should have said ‘a friend of my late parents.’” She wondered if she should elaborate on the letter she was leaving for Holmes, but decided against it. There was such a thing as inventing too much information. “But I’m keeping you from closing up—thank you very much, and I’m sure I’ll see you again soon!”

  Back at the hotel, Nan popped into the kitchen to ask for raw meat trimmings, which the cook (having been warned to expect her) very readily gave her, and some cooked barley, raw chopped carrots, and shelled peas. Just as she got the two cups, she heard a very plaintive Supper? in her head from Neville. Coming, she replied, and hurried up to the room.

  Both birds greeted her with wingflaps of joy and anticipation. She emptied the two teacups of food into the respective tin cups fastened to the perches, emptied and refilled their water cups, and gave herself a quick wash at the basin and tidied her hair. Suki came in a moment later and did the same.

  Sarah, of course, had made her own preparations for dinner and was sitting quietly, reading a book. “Shall we go down and start without the Watsons?” she asked, looking up.

  “I’m not so starved I’m ready to eat my own leg off,” Nan replied, with a glance at Neville, who was greedily wolfing down bloody scraps of meat, and Grey, who was beak-deep into the warm barley and succulent peas.

  “I am!” declared Suki. “There’s treacle tart! I smelt it!”

  Nan laughed and gave in. So they were already into the bread-and-butter course by the time John and Mary joined them. The bread was warm and fresh, and good enough Nan would have been quite ready to make an entire meal out of just that.

  They were surrounded by other diners, so John kept up the pretense that the girls were here to paint by waxing eloquent on the quaintness of Sheepstor, the picturesque old church, the distant moor ponies, and the young shepherd and his flock. They returned the favor by remarking on the colors and “light” on the moors. Both of them had been hanging about Beatrice Leek’s artist friends enough to be able to babble about such things quite as if they actually were painters. It’s a good thing there don’t seem to be any actual artists
here at this hotel, however, Nan thought ruefully. I really don’t know what I would do if I was asked to produce my sketchbook.

  Suki got her treacle tart, in no small part as a reward for her forbearance at lunch, and when the last plates had been taken away, Nan realized that all of them were blinking with that sort of numb-witted glazed gaze that hinted at satiation combined with a very tiring day.

  “I don’t know why riding should tire one out so,” Mary said, suppressing a yawn. “The horses did all the work.”

  “Not so much, my love. Your own muscles do quite a bit of unaccustomed work just staying in balance with the horse,” John replied. “I suggest an adjournment until morning. I don’t think I’m quite up to a discussion of the day over a pint in the parlor.”

  “A pint would put me to sleep immediately,” Nan retorted. “John, may I borrow your map briefly? I just got one of my own and I want to copy your notes onto mine.”

  “Certainly. Let’s go up, shall we?” John looked across the table at Suki, who was blinking like a sleepy little owl. “Before we have to carry Suki up there.”

  “’M awake!” Suki protested, but did not object to heading upstairs. Sarah and Suki went straight to their room. Nan went on to the Watsons’ room and got John’s map.

  She returned it a half hour later; the long day was really catching up with her, and she’d asked Sarah to make sure she’d made all the notations correctly. She was really yawning by the time she returned to their room, and a bed had never looked so good.

  Sarah was already in her nightdress, and Suki was face-down in her pillow when she entered their room, but Sarah’s raised eyebrow at her yawn reminded her that they were going to have to make a visit to the spirit world before she could actually sleep. There were things they could see in the spirit-world version of the Byerlys’ cottage that they had not had time to look for during their brief visit.