Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven

by Mercedes Lackey

  Memsa’b bit her lip, and thought for a moment.

  “Sarah,” she said, finally. “Get me your return tickets. I’ll have Sahib run them over to the station and get them changed for tomorrow. Nan, there are two bicycles in the shed that Gupta and Agansingh use to get around the grounds. Tell them you are borrowing them, and ask them to take them and put them in the cart. If things are at a difficult pass, you’ll need transportation you don’t need to wait for. I’ll get your traveling things together. Quickly now!”

  They all moved—very quickly. Rather than wait on the morning train, they managed to catch the last train into London, and from there, took the earliest out to Wales—changing into a set of bloomer-dresses on the last train to Criccieth. The whole way, they discussed what might be done.

  The problem was, as Alderscroft explained, that no one had ever been in quite this situation before, and the one and only Water Master that Alderscroft could find for them at short notice, a Lord James Cliveden Almsley, confessed himself to be at a complete loss. All he could do was to offer them some books of folk-tales as compiled and annotated by Elemental Masters—books that the girls had anxiously gone through, without coming to any actual conclusions.

  “Well, the main thing is to make sure that wretched constable—” Nan was saying, when suddenly, Sarah went absolutely white.

  “I think we’re a bit late for that,” Sarah said, voice tight with fury, and pointed.

  Nan looked where she was pointing. At the station rain-barrel, which currently contained so many water-creatures that it looked like a barrel of sardines. And all of them were gesturing frantically at the girls, clearly in a state of near hysteria.

  “They weren’t there a second ago,” Sarah said. “I was looking right at the barrel and there was nothing in it but water. Something horrible has happened, and you can bet that Constable Ewynnog is right in the middle of it!”

  At just that moment, the station-master came up with the bicycles, looking both dubious and a bit disapproving. At any other time they would have paused to soothe his nerves… but not now.

  Instead, they turned the birds out of their carriers, tied carriers and their own small bags on the backs of the bicycles, thanked him and sped off as fast as their legs could pedal.

  The road to Clogwyn had never seemed so long.

  17

  NAN and Sarah had arrived barely in time to keep Mari—who had gone from hysterical weeping to hysterical rage and actually gotten her hands on a pair of wicked knives and the ax—from going after the constable to murder him.

  So far as Nan was concerned, that part was something of a blur. She was certain they had both flung themselves off the bicycles while the contraptions were still in motion, and it was a wonder they both hadn’t broken their necks. She thought she had probably gone into her Celtic warrior self before it was all over. She knew Neville had certainly done his startling transformation into something ever so much more powerful than a large black bird. At least the girl had finally seen sense, and allowed herself to be led back into the cottage. Once there, they brewed a pot of the strongest tea they could manage, made her eat and drink, and when she seemed somewhat sensible again, they told her the little they knew.

  Nan expected her to drop straight into despair again, but instead… her face took on an expression of calm fury.

  “Then we need two plans,” Mari said, surprising Nan, and from Sarah’s expression, Sarah as well. “We need to get Da away from that constable before anything worse happens, and we need to get Idwal and my babies back. And we need to do both at the same time, or nearly.”

  “Once we have Idwal and the babies, the constable won’t have a crime,” Sarah pointed out. But Nan shook her head.

  “No, Mari is right,” she countered. “We need to get Prothero away from the constable and get him into hiding, and we need to do that first. Now. Otherwise he could be sent to Criccieth or even farther away, and into a proper prison, and we’ll have a cursed hard time getting him out even with Lord A’s help, because until we can get hold of Idwal and the babies, he’s going to be charged with murder. And who knows how long it will take to get Idwal and the children?”

  Mari shut her eyes, clearly thinking extremely hard. Then she got up, and poured a bowl full of water and set it on the table. Nan and Sarah couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing—they couldn’t see the magic—but after several minutes, Mari said out loud, “I know you’re lurking, Tylwyth Teg. I’m about to give you leave to do mischief on that human in the blue coat, so you might as well come out.”

  At first, there only seemed to be an odd little mist on the water, as if it was heated, though of course there was no fire beneath the bowl. But after a moment, an odd little apparition condensed out of the mist; a mostly-naked little wench, clothed in little more than her long green hair and some water-weed, with eyes that danced with malevolent glee.

  Oh! said a musical little voice in their heads. And what is it ever that I can be doing, then? I thought you were going to ask me to fetch home your Selch and his pups, and that I cannot do.

  “The blue-coated blowhard,” said Mari, with carefully contained wrath, “has taken my father, as you no doubt know. I will have my father free so that I can spirit him away to safety, and I will have it done with as much trouble and turmoil for the blue-coat, and the least danger and difficulty to myself, as possible. You are the queen of trouble and turmoil, my pretty. What is it that we might be doing, and how can you be in on the doing of it?”

  We-ell, a pretty problem… The spirit grinned. I do think, though, it may take the very Aspect of Mischief himself to help with this.

  For the first hour, Mari had been too grief-paralyzed to move. For the second hour, she had been ready to cast herself into the sea, and only the fact that she could not seem to get the strength to do so had kept her from going into the waves to drown. She could not see a way out of this. The authorities would never believe her. The best she could hope for was that they would decide that her father had bullied her and done it all himself without her knowledge. He would hang. She would be alone. She would never see her father or her love or her babies again.

  What was there to live for?

  And with that, she had somehow had the crazed notion that if she had nothing to live for, she might as well die trying to set her father free. She had gotten weapons, and she had started out after the constable, prepared to do her best to cut him up like a salmon, when out of nowhere, like a pair of mechanized angels, Sarah and Nan had come flying down the hill toward the cottage and the sea.

  She was still crazily determined to go after her father, but after a little bit of a struggle, and a lot more weeping, some half-coherent explanation and a great deal of tea, she finally, and suddenly, as if waking from a stupor, found herself with a clear head.

  She was still aching with grief and despair, but both of those things were pushed to the back of her mind right now. Her da was going to hang. She and Nan and Sarah were the only ones who could save him. Nothing else mattered.

  She didn’t have much of an idea, but she did know this: she had to get her father free. And then she had to go after Idwal. The Water spirits probably would not help her much with the second, but there was at least one who loathed the constable as much as she did, and would likely help her with the first.

  So she called up that malicious little creature that had taken such joy in tormenting the wretch. She was mightily tempted to summon the Elemental, but that would be a mistake, and she knew it. She might get away with such conduct with one of the friendlier Elementals who would understand her and probably forgive her, but the malicious one would resent it, hold a grudge, and do all that she could to undo what Mari needed done.

  Of course, offered the opportunity for free rein with Constable Ewynnog, well… the malicious one could hardly wait to get started.

  She came when called because she was curious. Mari had never actually called her before, and she had to have felt all the grief an
d despair coming from the cottage. Perhaps she even knew exactly what was going on; that wouldn’t surprise Mari at all. “You are the queen of trouble and turmoil, my pretty,” Mari told her, which made her preen as if Mari had flattered her. Perhaps, in her eyes, Mari had. After all, she was a small thing, and made small mischiefs, but to be given such a title implied that she could do far worse things, and small troubles very much enjoyed being given an importance far beyond their true stature.

  And when told Mari needed her help with plaguing Constable Ewynnog, well, it was clear that Mari had just presented her with her heart’s desire.

  And oh, how she rewarded such regard!

  It was, by Mari’s reckoning and by Sarah’s pocket-watch, a half an hour to midnight. The sky was overcast, and there was a damp bite to the air. Being as it was Saturday night, and the good people of Clogwyn would be breakfasting as soon as the sun rose, and in chapel as soon as they had breakfasted, the little pub, though officially open until midnight, had closed about ten. There were not enough hard drinkers or less-than-righteous in such a small village to warrant keeping it open. This was unlike Criccieth, where the hotel bars and several pubs and a population of church-goers (who did not need to put in an appearance until the scandalous hour of ten in the morning!) could stay open up until (and sometimes unofficially after) the legal closing time.

  The people of Clogwyn had been asleep in their beds for two hours at least, which meant there was no worry about being seen sneaking into the village. In fact, they didn’t need to sneak at all.

  Whispering, however, was advisable, as was walking very softly. At least for the three humans. Although Robin Goodfellow had laid an enchantment of sleep over the village, it was a light one, and it was possible that anyone with a touch of magic in him would resist it. The three girls moved carefully; without a lantern it was hard to tell exactly where they were and which buildings were which.

  “We could never have done this in Criccieth,” said Puck, looking about himself, as if it were broadest daylight. “Too much cold iron. I can abide it, but none else. Here ye be, sweet Sarah; churchyard is right here.”

  “I’m glad you can see better than I can,” Sarah whispered, and gingerly made her way up the little path to the chapel, and from there into the graveyard that surrounded it on three sides.

  Nan, Mari, and Puck went on, making for the cottage that the constable had tacked his jail cell onto. When they reached it, they carefully skirted up the street and around to the back, climbing across the hillside behind the row of houses, where the ugly, windowless jut of his addition stood out starkly as the moon finally came out from behind the clouds. Puck gave a little whistle.

  Nan managed not to yelp as a tiny faun jumped up from the grass practically at her feet. How now, Captain? the faun said cheerfully, giving him a jaunty salute.

  Puck chuckled. “How now, spirit? Are you and your fellows ready to play your pranks?”

  Not so easy inside, the faun replied. Iron on the windows, iron on the doors, iron shackles and iron in the kitchen.

  “Then go dancing on the roof, lad, and make all the noise you can,” Puck advised. “Tap at the windows, knock at the doors, and like bean-fed goats, make you merry until the human inside cannot sleep! Let’s make the fool of this crab-faced manikin, until his neighbors think him mad!”

  The faun didn’t have to be told twice. He went skipping and dancing over to the cottage, and the closer he got, more other creatures popped up out of the grass and the hedges that divided one yard from the next. Meanwhile, Puck, with a few gestures, laid a spell of deeper sleep on the inhabitants of the houses around this cottage, so that no matter how much noise there was, the neighbors would be ready to swear they heard nothing.

  Soon the Earth Elementals and fae creatures were rollicking around and over the cottage like boys turned loose from school early, and as Puck made a further gesture to keep the inhabitants of the other dwellings further away soundly slumbering, his Elementals worked their will on their victim.

  The back door flew open, and the constable emerged with a yell in his nightshirt, a cudgel in one hand, looking wildly around for this tormentors.

  But of course, there was nothing to be seen. And the night held only the sound of ocean and wind.

  The constable searched all over the back yard, then from the sound of things, went out to the street-side door and searched there. He went inside and berated Daffyd Prothero, waking him from the sound sleep that Puck had kept him in, demanding to know if “his conspirators” were behind the mischief. Daffyd protested sleepily.

  “What noise?” he demanded. “I was sleeping, hard as it is to sleep in your stone box, without a window! I didn’t hear any noise. Maybe you dreamed it. Or maybe the Lord Almighty is giving you a bad conscience for imprisoning an innocent man.”

  The Constable cursed, and gave over pestering Daffyd. Finally, after another search, he went back to bed, grumbling to himself. The Elementals gave him a few minutes, then began their games all over again.

  Four times they stirred him up, with him getting angrier and less controlled each time, waking Prothero and getting cursed for it. There might have been a fifth time, but that was when Sarah reappeared.

  “Oh, well done, sweet Sarah!” Puck exclaimed. “And what have we here? Wait a moment, let me strengthen them.”

  He made a “giving” sort of gesture, as if he was scattering sweets before children, and four disparate figures condensed out of the darkness and night air behind Sarah.

  Two were children, one was a woman, and one a man. They looked like chalk sketches written whitely on the dark night. The two children seemed to be in their nightshirts, the woman in the traditional dress of a Welsh woman complete with kerchief and tall hat. The man was harder to see, more like a blurred outline, but it was clear he wore nothing modern. Puck regarded them all thoughtfully. “I remember you,” he said to the children, who held each other’s hands. “And bad luck to the preacher who frightened you with his stories of hellfire when you were sick five years ago. Come, my sweetings, come talk to the Puck.”

  “You see who he is,” Sarah told them softly, as they hesitated. “Such as he would never harm a child. Go to him.”

  At Sarah’s encouraging nod, the children edged closer, the girl sticking her finger in her mouth. “Now, I am an honest Puck, and I tell you that you’ve naught to fear,” the Land-Ward told them. “Has Miss Sarah explained what we’d like you to do?”

  The two nodded silently.

  “And will you be so very kind as to do it?”

  They nodded again. The girl took her finger out of her mouth long enough to whisper, “Constable is a nasty man. He frighted our mum. He should be frighted.”

  “And so he should.” Puck nodded approvingly. “Well then, off you go. Give him a frighting. When you hear Miss Sarah call, come back, and we’ll show you the way to leave this dreary place, and I promise, there is no hellfire waiting for you. Only flowers and sunshine and good things.”

  The little boy’s lower lip quivered. “Our mum has forgot us,” he whimpered. “She give our toys to the new baby…”

  “Ah sweet ones,” Puck said, and drew them close to him, somehow managing to embrace them even though they were spirits—and they cuddled trustingly to him after a moment of resistance. “She hasn’t forgot you. She would never forget you. But she thinks you are in the good place, waiting for her, and that is why she thinks of the baby that needs her now, and not of the children she thinks are happy and smiling all the day. Believe me.”

  The boy searched his face, then managed a little nod.

  “Now then, go and give Constable a good fright, and come when we call you.”

  The two child-spirits drifted off through the back of the building, and Puck turned his attention to the woman.

  “And you—” he said.

  “I have a debt I cannot pay,” the woman sobbed. “I wronged Gwyneth Dyas, and her husband left her for me, and he spent all his money on me,
and then drowned, and she went on the parish with her babies and they sent her to the workhouse.” With every word her sobbing grew louder and choked off her words until finally she could not speak.

  “And well it is that you have found yourself at this pass,” Puck told her sternly. “And so you, too, are afraid of hellfire? Well we are giving you a chance that few spirits get. You ruined the lives of a man and his wife and their babies. I give you the chance to even the scales, and save the lives of a man and his wife and their babies, and her father to boot. Now, go you into that house, and think on your sins, and weep and wail until we call you back.”

  Like the children, the woman passed through the wall of the house and entered it. That left the man.

  He was dressed in strange, rough garments, and he gazed at Puck in wonder. “Oh Oldest Old One, I have been wandering lost for so many years! The black-robed priests of the White Christ had spread across the land, my kin buried me in strange ground, with strange rites, and there was none to show me the way to the Summer Country—” he said hoarsely, sounding as if he might cry.

  This time it was Puck who hung his head. “And the shame be upon me for not doing so,” replied the Elemental.

  “Nay—nay—opening the way is the work of mortal Druids and the Ladies of the Goddess,” the ancient one contradicted him. “Can this little wench with you do that thing? Her thoughts say she can.”

  “So she can, but we beg a boon of you first,” Puck told him. “It is cruel to make you wait and work—”

  But again the ghost interrupted him. “I have waited long, long years to pass into the Summerland, what is a night more? And the Selch-kin needs her mate and her babes. I will do this.”

  And like the others, he drifted into the constable’s cottage.