Sherlock Holmes - Adventure of the Lost Boy

by Hambly, Barbara

  “Mary, where’s Holmes?” he demanded, as if it hadn’t been decades since we’d parted. He grabbed my hand, and as he pulled me to my feet I was as we all are in dreams, perfectly healthy and much younger than in real life. “You have to show me where he lives. I need him.”

  He was as he had always been. I was as well, the long blonde hair that had been cut off with my illness (that’s how sick I was) now lying intact again in pigtails on the shoulders of my white nightgown, and my nails chewed off short. (I’d quit biting them the minute I left Mrs. Clegg’s).

  Of course I said yes immediately, and being Peter, he completely forgot about putting fairy-dust on me to fly until we were standing on the window-sill, and then Ten Stars had to remind him: Ten Stars was the fairy he flew with by that time, and much less jealous by nature than her predecessor. Tinker Bell would never have bothered to keep a human – dreaming or not – from crashing to the pavement. To do her justice I don’t think Tink ever really understood why it wasn’t funny.

  We flew over London, something I had always wanted to do. And it was as glorious as I had always known it would be.

  It was not so very late: Big Ben was striking eleven in the distance as we stepped through the window at 221-B Baker Street. We entered through the bedroom that had been John’s, now crammed almost floor-to-ceiling with Mr. Holmes’s books and souveniers. I could hear the strains of Mr. Holmes’s violin from the parlor, smell strong shag tobacco with an intensity I hadn’t experienced since I was a child. By the sudden chill on my bare ankles I knew that Peter and I had stepped from dream into reality, and panic filled me at this thought. Peter, still keeping a grip on my hand, barged through the parlor door saying “Holmes!” but I hung back in the shadows, suddenly shy of meeting, in my changed dream-state, a man I knew as an adult in the cold adult world.

  Holmes had already started up from his chair and the violin was out of his hands – I think he had a pistol tucked behind the chair-cushion – but he saw it was Peter and his eyebrows went up with astonished delight. The next second his glance went to me, still half-hid in the dark bedroom door, and his expression changed, but before he could speak, Peter jabbed a finger at him and snapped,

  “You have to help me, Holmes. I am being accused of kidnapping – kidnapping! – and you must help me clear my name!”

  *

  The boy’s name was Robert Lewensham and his father was the Earl of Wylcourt. Peter didn’t know these things, of course; Holmes looked them up while I poured us all out tea. Peter’s account was only that Bobbie had come with him to the Neverlands twice – “He’s a tremendous sport and the Black Knight of Ravensmire lives in terror of his blade,” – after first meeting him in the bleak fells of Yorkshire, where one of Ten Stars’s relatives had gotten lost and Peter went to find her.

  “This last time, he didn’t get back home,” Peter said. “It isn’t my fault. Bobbie knew the way. Only now his father’s hired men – wizards, some of them quite wicked – to find him, and the King of Dreams is saying, that this kind of thing can not be tolerated, and that if need be he will shut the Gates of Horn and Ivory that lie between this world and the Neverlands, so that no one may cross. He’s always saying things like that,” Peter added sulkily. It was the first time I’d ever heard him mention the King of Dreams. “And it isn’t fair.”

  “It isn’t,” I added, a little timidly. “What about all those children who’ve never gone to the Neverlands, Mr. Holmes? What becomes of them?”

  Holmes glanced across at me, the line between his brows telegraphing his uncertainty. In the shadows he had thought he’d recognized me, but sitting on his sofa before the fire – where so many times I’d sat in my adult life, all dressed up in proper gray delaine with a corset, bustle and husband – I could see he didn’t know why he’d thought so, or who he’d imagined I might be.

  “What indeed?” Holmes remarked drily, and turned back to Peter, who was devouring biscuits left over – like the contents of the teapot - from Holmes’ own tea earlier that evening. “Might your friend have been seized by something that haunts the space between the worlds, like the Gallipoot? There are other things as well—”

  Peter waved impatiently with a biscuit. “We can get away from them,” he boasted – by we, I assume he meant, himself and his Lost Boys. “The Gallipoot only eats people like pirates and Red Indians and black knights.”

  “Does it, indeed?” Holmes had crossed the room to the most recent of his scrap-books, and the newspapers piled on top of it, sorting through the headlines of the past week with swift sureness, as if he knew exactly what he sought, which indeed he did. “I thought this sounded familiar,” he remarked in a moment, and extricated the York Evening Star from three-quarters of the way down the stack. “Robert Lewensham, Viscount Mure – h’rm – heir to the Earl of Wylcourt – born 1885 – police are seeking gypsies – believed to have vanished on the Yorkshire fells three miles from the village of Kethmure – bird-watching – blue jacket, blue cap – A shocking paucity of detail.” He plucked out another newspaper, handed it to me, got another for himself.

  I’d worked with John enough to know what Holmes sought, and located the follow-on article without trouble. “They add little,” I ventured, after scanning the columns. “They do say, Bobbie disappeared on the ninth—” I looked at the date of the paper in my hands, then turned, shocked, to Holmes. “Is the paper you have the day before this one?”

  Holmes nodded, regarding me again with that questing speculation in his eyes. “So the papers – and presumably, the police – didn’t learn of it until the twelfth. Either the boy’s guardians are singularly neglectful, or they had some reason to believe him safely elsewhere for two days. This last time, did Bobbie say he’d been visiting anywhere?”

  “Bobbie never visits anywhere,” replied Peter promptly. “He goes to school in the city, and when he’s at his home he’s alone.” For the first time since I’d known him, Peter’s voice had a note of real distress in it, of concern, not that he, Peter, was being accused of kidnapping children from the real world, but that his friend was somewhere in trouble. And that his friend lived the sort of life that he, Peter, had all his existence fled.

  When he’s at home he’s alone. There was a dismal world of Mrs-Cleggery in those six words.

  “Most interesting.” Holmes pulled another scrap-book from the overflowing shelves. “Do the fairies often get lost on the fells?”

  Peter nodded. “Mostly they find their way back at dawn. Ten Stars’s cousin Cloverberry’s just a little fairy, though, barely more than a bud, and you know how fairies are. Ow–!” he added, because Ten Stars, who was sitting on Holmes’s desk blotter, indignantly threw a collar-button at him. “I met him when I was looking for Cloverberry.”

  “And is this place near a ring of stones?” From between the pages of the scrap-book Holmes extracted one of his vast collection of Ordnance Survey maps, and spread it on the desk. Craning to look over his shoulder, I saw WylCourt Hall marked, and the village of Kethmure.

  “In the middle of one,” affirmed Peter. He couldn’t keep out of his voice the awed surprise of one who sees magic done. A small circle within two miles of Wylcourt Hall was labeled, Stone Circle – Fairies’ Dance.

  “And the boy’s father has hired wizards to find him. Well, well.” From the bottom drawer of his desk – the locked one where he keeps certain poisons and lists of names – Holmes brought out a thick, much-dogeared notebook with a scribbled paper label on it, SPIRITUALISTS-THEOSOPHISTS. Prior to his journey to Tibet, Mr. Holmes had compiled a catalog of known frauds and fake adepts in matters occult, the way he compiled catalogs of every other sort of criminal and confidence trickster he heard of: details cross-referenced in his mind.

  Yet he had returned from those years of travel with a different outlook than he had taken out of England with him. And he had never, even when I first met him, been a close-minded man. I knew – not from John, to whom he never mentioned it, but from Martha Hudson
– that Holmes had continued his catalog with the names given him by his various contacts in that portion of knowledge that lies along the boundary between the world we know and the multitude of worlds that we do not, and it was in this rear section of the book that he now searched.

  “Tell me, Peter,” he said after a time, with his long forefinger resting on a column of names, “is there an ill wizard in the Neverlands, who commands a group of black knights? Faceless knights,” he added, seeing Peter’s hesitant frown. Black Knights are as common as black birds, in the Neverlands, and come in all sizes and varieties. “Knights who do not bleed, when stabbed by a foe.”

  Peter’s eyes widened again. Then he quickly readjusted his features, as if he realized how much like a very little boy he looked, a little boy the first time a birthday-party magician produces a penny from behind his ear. Casually, he replied, “That would be Nightcrow. He has a dreadful fortress at the farthest end of the Neverlands. He seldom ventures forth, but sometimes one sees him—”

  Peter’s voice sank. It was the first time I’d seen him troubled: not frightened, because Peter doesn’t frighten easily, but deeply uneasy. “His island lies within the realm of nightmares. Even the pirates won’t go near it, and they’ll sail just about anywhere.”

  “So I thought,” said Holmes. Looking over his shoulder, I saw – as well as I could make out his strong but nearly illegible handwriting – the entry on the notebook page: Krähnacht, Jakob – 37 Barsham Lane, Deptford – followed by a long series of notations in Holmes’ personal shorthand, which as far as I know only Martha can make out.

  Hesitantly, I asked, “Why would this Mr. Krähnacht wish to kidnap Bobbie, even if he did know where he would come out of the Neverlands? Surely there are children in London—”

  “Obviously,” said Holmes as he drew a half-sheet of paper to him and picked up a pencil, “he was paid to do so. By whom, can be deduced fairly easily once we have the boy himself back safe. Can you bring Peter to this place,” he asked, turning round to me the sketch-map he’d made, “in three hours? It’s down-river a good ways, but I can be there by then in a cab.”

  Mischievously, I said, “Why don’t you fly with us, Mr. Holmes? I’m sure Peter and Ten Stars could fix you up.”

  Peter’s eyes flamed with delight at the thought of Mr. Holmes, Inverness flapping like some vast cinder-hued bird, soaring through the night sky in a trail of fairy-dust. But Holmes shook his head and said primly, “I shall take a cab. Like most adults, I do not travel – at least in this instance – without baggage. I shall see you in Deptford at three.”

  He laid emphasis on these words and met my eye with a look that said, Can you make sure he gets there?

  I gave a tiny shrug and a grimacing nod: I’ll do my best.

  It came to me that he knew Peter as well as I did.

  *

  Barsham Lane lay on the far side of Deptford, far enough back from the river to be half in the countryside still. Number 37 was part of no ribbon-development, but rather lay apart, in its own grounds and about three-quarters of a mile from the last of the suburban villas. It took Peter and me exactly three hours and ten minutes to get there, and we swooped down out of the sky just as Mr. Holmes’s cab was disappearing into the thickness of the river mist, leaving him standing by Number 37’s iron gate.

  As we came down through the fog I asked Peter softly, “Did you know Mr. Holmes before?”

  “Of course I did, silly.” Peter dove in a circle around me, to pull my pigtail. “He helped me slay the dreadful Gallipoot, that haunted Kensington Gardens. You were there.”

  I hadn’t thought Peter had seen me. “I mean before that.”

  “Look,” said Peter, pointing, “there he is. D’you think he’s brought some more of those biscuits in that carpetbag?” For Holmes did indeed have a large carpet-bag at his feet. He wasn’t looking at his watch, but into the fog above him, as if he knew we would take just as long to arrive as he did.

  “Tell him to save me one,” added Peter, and flashed away over the wall in the direction of the house, Ten Stars like a glittering comet-tail behind him. The mud of the drive was very cold and nasty between my toes, and the gravel hurt my feet. I waved to Mr. Holmes but came down on the other side of the gate, lifting the bar there that was heavy to my child’s strength.

  Holmes whispered, “Good girl, Mary,” as he slipped through, and shut the gate behind us. He stood for a moment looking down at me – he stood many inches taller than even my adult, real-world self – and though the fog made it too dark to see more than his outline against the dim reflection from his dark-lantern, when he spoke again I could hear the concern in his voice. “Can you find your way back to your home without Peter?” he asked quietly. “You know that you are not dreaming now—”

  “I know.” I reached out, took his hand – cold, the way they always were, even though his gloves – and pinched his wrist with my fingernails, hard. His hand jerked back and I grinned up at him, then sobered again, when I saw that in my swift smile he almost recognized me. “But I’m not really real, either – or perhaps I’m more real than I’ve been in many years. And I know the danger is real. If something happens to me...”

  I hesitated, not knowing what would become of me – where my self, my true self, whatever that true self was, would go.

  “Peter,” I went on hesitantly, “doesn’t understand. He’s never really lived in this world, not since he was a tiny baby...”

  I glanced back toward the house, invisible in the absolute blackness, save for the swift-moving foxfire glow that was Peter Pan, scouting every window, chimney, and door for signs of occupancy.

  Then I went on, “But we can’t let the King of Dreams... It isn’t just about finding Bobbie Lewensham, you know, though of course he must be rescued. But if indeed some mage in this world has found the way through to the world of dreams – or even through to the borderlands that lie between them – he must be stopped. Even for the good mages of this world to go tampering on its borders is... dangerous. Too many of us need the Neverlands, to let the King of Dreams close its gates.”

  Holmes whispered, “Yes.” I thought he would say something else, but after an intake of breath, he was after all silent.

  Peter came whipping back in a shower of brightness that lit up the fog around him like diamonds. “Cravens! The house is deserted!”

  “Excellent.” Holmes picked up his carpetbag. “Krähnacht is presumably still back in Yorkshire, in whatever place he breached through to the Nightmare Castle when he ambushed our young Viscount upon his emergence from the Neverlands. Whatever that entrance is – almost certainly close by the stone-circle – the Fairies’ Dance – where you first met Bobbie Lewensham, Peter – it will be heavily guarded. But Krähnacht has been in and out of the Neverlands before.”

  “The Wizard Nightcrow!” I cried excitedly. And when Peter looked blank, I said, “Krähnacht is German for...”

  “I knew that,” said Peter loftily. “I’d just forgot.”

  *

  Holmes gave me the lantern to carry (of course Peter sees like a cat in the dark), and, when we drew near the house, the carpet-bag as well. “It’s very heavy,” he warned, uncoiling from it a good twenty-five feet of insulated wire, at the end of which was rigged what I recognized as a crude electromagnetic coil. “But whoever doesn’t carry it has to get near them, and I’d rather that were me.”

  “Get near who?” I asked, hoisting the unwieldly burden and staggering under its weight.

  “The Black Knights,” Holmes said, “of course.”

  Ten Stars – who was tremendously helpful and obliging (unlike some other fairies I could name) – lit on the corner of the bag like a butterfly, and smeared it with fairy-dust, which made carrying it much easier, although it did develop a tendency to want to travel in its own direction and had to be pulled fairly firmly. Still, that was better than carrying fifteen or twenty pounds of electrical batteries all by myself.

  Jakob Krähnach
t had his laboratories on the ground floor, strange rooms filled with crystals and mirrors, and a workshop with a small forge. There was a conservatory creeping with foul-smelling plants, and all the carpets and wallpaper stank of smoke and worse things. Much worse things. Ten Stars refused to go in, when Holmes picked the lock on the side door, but Peter walked just ahead of Holmes in the darkness, calling out softly, “Bobbie? Bobbie, it’s Peter...”

  The darkness thickened, and thickened, until the rays of the lamp couldn’t pierce it, as if a hand of invisibility were slowly closing around the light-source, crushing the glow back in. Peter’s voice ahead of us suddenly sounded a vast distance away, dimming down a long corridor. “Bobbie? We’re here to save you—”

  Holmes stopped. What little light remained showed me a wall ahead of us, dark and seemingly soot-stained. Holmes put out his hand to touch it, yet I could hear Peter on the far side of it, his voice fading, “Bobbie—”

  I said, “We can go through. We only think it’s there.” I’d encountered such walls in the Neverlands. Evil Wizards use them all the time. “Close your eyes—”

  I set the carpetbag down – and it settled with a metallic rattle to the floor – and closing my eyes, walked forward, hands outstretched.

  After perhaps a dozen steps, I could hear the sound of the breakers, far off on Neverland’s shores.