The Case of the Spellbound Child

by Mercedes Lackey

  She opened the windows wide, got into her most comfortable, lightest gown, and prepared the desk for the task at hand. Neville watched with interest.

  While she and Neville worked, Mary’s sylphs and John’s undines would be doing the same for them. Nan wasn’t sure if they were going to use the same technique that she was, which required that she “ride” as a kind of passenger in Neville’s head, or if they were just going to send the Elementals out and have them trace what they found on John’s map. She rather thought it would be the latter, though. There was nothing she knew about other Elemental Masters that suggested they could do what she and Neville could. “Here’s your letter,” she said, handing it to Neville, who took it carefully in his beak.

  Neville hopped to the windowsill, then flew out into the morning. Suki got into her oldest clothing, so as not to stand out too much. She would continue her interrogation of the local children, looking for anything of interest.

  And Sarah was going to go out and try a bit of interrogation of her own. She had a knack for getting people to talk to her, and she was going to start with that fount of all local gossip, the wife of the priest of Yelverton Parish. If there was ever anyone who would know practically everything about anyone in a village, it was the preacher’s wife. It was too bad Father Shaw had been a bachelor; Sarah could have gotten a lot out of the wife.

  Besides, Sarah had a secret weapon when it came to preachers and their wives. Her parents were missionary doctors, and she knew all the right things to say when she was talking to a priest, a minister, or a vicar. That very fact opened many, many doors to her. She was just going to have to remember to say that her aunt and uncle were missionary doctors, and not her parents. Her parents, after all, were supposed to also be Nan’s parents. Their mother was supposed to be dead, Suki’s mother—who would have been their stepmother—was also supposed to be dead, and—

  “Oh lord,” she groaned, as Sarah set her hand to the doorknob to go out on her own mission. “How many wives is our father supposed to have had?”

  “Three,” Sarah said promptly. “Two died; the first died having me, the second died having Suki. The third is an heiress who spoils us rotten, which is why we get painting holidays with Suki. That explains everything.”

  Nan sighed with relief. “It does, nicely. Well done. Off with you. Find out as much as you can. And you know, if you have time after you get done with your parish gossip, try seeing if there are other hotels here and who frequents them. That might come in useful.”

  “I shall. Have fun flying!” Sarah and Suki whisked out the door, leaving Nan to settle into the chair at the desk, compose herself, and “join” Neville.

  Neville was already back from taking the letter to the Byerlys, waiting on the roof of the inn, with a fresh-killed mouse from the stableyard. Sensing her in his head, he gulped it down quickly and launched himself into the air.

  Ravens were laborious flyers, rowing through the air like muscled watermen. The view from Neville’s head was truly remarkable when Nan thought about it. The position of his eyes gave her a much wider field of vision than she got as a human. His eyes were much sharper, too. There wasn’t much he missed; he could spot a mouse from a truly remarkable height, for instance. He would have no trouble spotting hidden cottages or overgrown mine shafts.

  When he found a column of rising air, he switched from rowing to soaring, using it to gain even more height with a lot less effort.

  Not that Nan was merely sitting there passively. She had to keep part of her concentration with him, and part of it on her map, with her pencil in her hand, adding details to the map that the surveyors had deemed irrelevant. Copses of trees, combes, cottages, ruins, all the variable things that the surveyors had not noted because they were changeable. Trees and brush could be cleared, after all. Only actual topographic elements were static and reliable. They might have noted walls, but there were almost no walls on the moor except for those that were around gardens to keep wandering ponies and sheep out.

  It was very hard work, but it was vastly interesting too; Neville’s point of view was fascinating, and it was even better than flying in the spirit world. Everything was so bright, and there were colors she did not even have a name for, only that they were more than purple. If anything moved, anything at all, things as small as a beetle or a cricket, Neville spotted it. This was by no means the first time they’d flown together like this, so she wasn’t distracted by the novelty, but if they hadn’t been searching for lost children, this way of seeing the moors could have had her entranced for days.

  And then Neville spotted a dead lamb. Pleeeeeeeease! she heard him begging her. Hungry!

  Fortunately, it was at just that moment that she felt a beak gently close on her left hand index finger.

  It was Grey, who, having gotten her attention, looked up at her and said, “Hungry now.” And she realized that she herself was both hungry and very thirsty. And stiff. And a little sore from sitting so long.

  All right, she told Neville. Lunchtime for everyone. Just watch out for angry shepherds. They’ll assume you killed that lamb.

  She sensed Neville’s amusement at the idea that any shepherd could harm him, and reminded him of the existence of shotguns. When she was sure she had impressed on him the need for caution, she detached herself from his mind and looked down at Grey.

  “What would you like?” she asked.

  Grey cocked her head to the side, and thought. “Beans,” she said. “Brown bread.”

  “Those should be easy enough,” she replied, stretching. She really felt very stiff; she’d been sitting a long time—four hours, by her watch.

  “How hungry are you?” she asked Grey—and then remembered the tin of digestive biscuits they had in their room to stave off a growing child’s neverending hunger. She fetched it and gave Grey one, refilled her water bowl, and went down to the public room to get herself—and Grey—proper lunch.

  When she came back and gave Grey the beans and brown bread she’d asked for, Neville had gorged himself and was ready to fly again. She settled back into her chair.

  At some point she was aware that Suki had returned and was reading quietly on her trundle with Grey on her knee, but the child knew better than to disturb either of her guardians when they were working, so she kept right on with her task.

  Finally Neville made it wordlessly clear that he’d had enough, he was hungry again, and he wanted something besides some beakfulls of dubious sheep. She told him wordlessly that he’d done a capital job and to come back for his reward, and separated herself from his mind.

  Suki was playing with jackstones and a ball on the floor, and Sarah was back sitting on her bed and giving Grey a good cuddle. When Nan stretched, both of them looked up.

  “Done for the day?” Sarah asked. “John says he has more information from the chief constable, and he’s gotten another map he wants us to fill in with everything we know to pass on to Sherlock.”

  “Well, that sounds like an evening’s work,” Nan told her, with a wry smile. “I must admit, when we began this business of helping Alderscroft, the one thing I never envisaged was that it would involve filling out tedious detail on maps. But Neville has done a circle with Yelverton in the middle, and he’s got well past Sheepstor, so we’ll call this a good day.”

  “Apparently John’s information will give us a better direction to aim our searches,” Sarah told her. “He has a list of all of the last known locations of all the missing children that he knows about.”

  * * *

  Quiet night sounds came in through the window. Nan sipped a cooling cup of tea. “It’s a good thing we already know that at least two of the children are not dead, or we’d be asking the police to drag the reservoir,” Watson said a bit glumly. “Because the general center of our missing children is the reservoir.”

  They were all in the Watsons’ room, since it had more space than the
girls’ did. Or rather, it had the same amount of space, but only had the one bed, not three. Instead of a second bed and room for the trundle, there was a table with four chairs they could use while Suki sat cross-legged on the floor, listening attentively. They’d left the birds back in their own room on their perches; Neville was already asleep. He’d had quite the strenuous day and Nan didn’t want to tire him further.

  “It isn’t the exact center,” Sarah pointed out. “It isn’t even close to the exact center.” She contemplated the map, tracing an irregular line with her finger from red dot to red dot. “You know, if this were a penny-dreadful, the villain would turn out to be that nice Father Shaw. Though what he would be using the power stolen from children for I cannot imagine. He’s harmless as a dove and poor as a churchmouse.”

  “He wants to live forever?” Mary Watson suggested, though Nan could tell she was making the suggestion purely in a spirit of mischief.

  “Good Gad, like that?” Sarah giggled. “Presiding over the endless wranglings of this and that Ladies Circle full of people who made poor Maryanne Byerly unwelcome because she was pretty and had a posher accent than they do? Teaching Sunday school to a handful of squirming children who would much rather have been larking about on the shore of the reservoir? Running back and forth between an out-of-tune piano or wheezy old organ and the pulpit? The man is either a saint, or this is his Purgatory!”

  “He didn’t have so much as a hint of magic about him, either,” Nan reminded them.

  “Maybe it’s his housekeeper,” John suggested, entering into the spirit, as Suki grinned. “And secretly she has a hidden room in her house full of forbidden pleasures like—”

  “Chocolates and hampers from Fortnum and Mason?” Nan countered. “She looked more likely to succumb to bonbons and pheasant than anything else. Or perhaps she has an opium habit? Or do you propose that she is a classic witch from the Dark Ages and is gathering the power for her master, Satan?”

  “Maybe she’s turning the children into sheep to supplement her flock,” John put in. “There’s a nice, practical application of traditional witchery for you.”

  “She also had not a hint of magic about her,” Nan reminded him. “In fact, so far, the only magic we’ve found was the weak magic displayed by the Byerlys, and they are genuinely stricken with grief and loss.”

  This reminder of the seriousness of the situation put a damper on the levity.

  “But this is very useful,” Nan continued, tapping the map that sat in the middle of the table—John’s copy, since Nan had folded up and stored hers, and tucked Sherlock’s away into an envelope to be left for him at the Post Office tomorrow. It’s a good thing we are supposed to be on a painting holiday. Those colored pencils Alderscroft supplied are exceedingly useful on the maps. Blue dots for “haunted places,” red dots for “the last known locations,” and there was still a nice variety of pencil colors for other purposes. “Knowing they were last seen in a limited area means I won’t have to send Neville haring off too far in a direction that seems impractical.”

  “It could be much worse,” Sarah observed as she sipped her own now-cold tea without seeming to notice it had gone cold. “At least we won’t have to search the whole of Dartmoor. We’d be here months.”

  Suki had already given them her budget of information—the locations of every place the children could reach that was said to be haunted, a veritable Grimm’s compendium of local legends, and the name of every woman, old or young, said to be a witch. The last, they had agreed to eliminate for now, on the grounds that whoever was doing this was almost certainly doing her (or his) best to keep from being noticed at his (or her) work. And having every child in Yelverton and the surrounding countryside calling one a witch was certainly not going unnoticed. . . .

  Except that Nan suddenly got an idea that made her groan.

  “What is it?” the other four all asked at the same time.

  “Well . . . the missing children are being ignored by both the authorities in Tavistock and all the locals because they’re nonentities or worse—the poor about to go on the parish, Travelers, itinerant workers, the children of outsiders. Well, what if our villain actually is one of these local witches, who’s using power extracted from captives to help all her local people? She’d think she was doing right! These children don’t matter to anyone, according to her lights. Plus, even if she is keeping them prisoner—even if she’s killing them eventually—while she has them she’d have to feed them, house them, probably in better conditions than they had on their own or with their parents. You saw how close to the bone the Byerlys lived for yourself, Sarah. It would be easy to justify using up a few children no one wanted, whose own parents couldn’t feed them, in the interest of healing people she knows, and bringing them prosperity.”

  She looked around the table and saw that even Suki was struck by the logic of her argument.

  “And there goes the argument against Father Shaw—” Sarah said, then corrected herself. “No, it doesn’t. He’s not magical and neither is his housekeeper.”

  “And the only person we know of who was, in or near Sheepstor, was the Byerly mother and grandmother.” Mary Watson tapped a finger on the map. “But we need to find out where all of the purported witches that Suki found out about live and eliminate them.”

  “Parish records, somehow get access to the Postal records, or once more see if the chief constable can help me, then, tomorrow,” said John. “It’s a good thing that I’m quite the hand at tedious tasks. On the other hand, I’m quite sure our Elementals can help there, particularly the sylphs. They’ll sniff out any hint of magic in a moment, and can move on to the next potential target.”

  “I can do better than that,” Mary told him. “I can tell you that today my sylphs found neither a trace of any form of counter-magic within Yelverton, nor any place where they could not go, which would be one of those protected spots where a magician could hide. So unless your witches are living out on the moor somewhere, we’ve eliminated that much.”

  “Some of ’em are,” Suki said. “Or in little places like Sheepstor.”

  “Searching the empty moor would be faster,” John Watson grumbled.

  “I could play bait,” Suki offered. “I done it in Lunnon.”

  “And in London you had all of the Irregulars and Sherlock or Lestrade waiting to swoop in and save you when the bait was taken, Suki,” Sarah reminded the child. “It’s a very brave thing of you to suggest, but until we have some idea where to look, we can’t have you wandering about, shields down, playing the honeypot.”

  Suki sighed, looking crestfallen, and looked down at the hands clasped in her lap. Nan sympathized. Suki lived for the adventures she’d become involved in.

  “Suki, I am absolutely keeping your offer in mind,” John promised. “And if we do have a situation where we have a potential villain we have to draw out, and all four of us—five, if we can bring in Sherlock—waiting to pounce, then we may well make that sort of use of you.”

  By this time, Suki was a seasoned enough member of the team that she took that as it was meant—that the adults considered her a valuable asset, and she would be given the opportunity for very material help, if the situation warranted. She looked up at John gratefully.

  “Well, the sylphs will expand their search tonight and report to me in the morning, and—oh! John, I just realized something!” Mary exclaimed. “You can easily simply talk to an undine or a nixie tonight to find out if there are bodies in that reservoir! Then at least we’ll know one way or another if someone has been using it as a dumping ground.”

  John made an exasperated sound. “Well done, my dear. I should have thought of that myself. I was so focused on the land that it never occurred to me. Although, my love, you have come a very long way since I first met you. The young lady I courted would never have casually used the words dumping ground for bodies. She likely wouldn’t even h
ave considered such a thing.”

  Mary patted his hand. “Do I make your blood run cold, my love?” she asked.

  “You make me grateful that I have a true partner,” he countered. “And you make me feel very sorry for Sherlock that he hasn’t anyone like you.”

  “But he has,” she contradicted him. “He has his Watson. And you have yours. I simply don’t chronicle your adventures—not because you don’t deserve it, but because it would be a very bad idea.”

  There was not much more to discuss that night, and the girls all returned to their room shortly thereafter. When they had all prepared for bed, rather than fling herself down on hers, Suki sat up cross-legged and looked from Nan to Sarah expectantly. “Are you going to the spirit world?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nan said frankly. “I’m not sure what we can accomplish. I’m tired, but Sarah probably is not.”

  “We should check the whole of the reservoir, just in case,” Sarah replied after a moment of thought. “We didn’t get near it before, and if someone is drowning children, there should be at least one ghost. That shouldn’t take too long, and it will be good ‘flying’ practice for you. Neville is tired, but Grey should be additional protection enough.”

  Nan nodded, and the three of them composed themselves in their beds.

  It took a moment for Suki to “pop” in—probably because, although she had made no complaints, she, too, had had an active day. She had probably covered as much ground afoot today as she usually did on her most active days with the Irregulars.

  It was very useful having Suki with them; Nan and Sarah could take the north and south banks of the reservoir, and Suki could cover the middle. If there were spirits haunting the place—well, they would all be very recent, since the reservoir itself was very recent. There could not have been many—if any—accidental drownings yet. Not like London, where every body of water from the Thames down was thronged with restless spirits. Even the Serpentine had its share, from murder victims to suicides to people who had merely fallen in drunk at night and drowned by accident.