Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  A movement in the earth of the box alerted him to the fact that the boggart was back. It crawled its way out of the dirt, brushed off its leather garments, and dropped a dirty bag at its feet. “Got bones,” the boggart said, in a strange voice that sounded like an unoiled hinge.

  He merely nodded. It wasn’t an outstanding performance, so did not warrant a great reward. He flung it a bit of power; it sucked the stuff down greedily and eyed him for more. When more wasn’t forthcoming, it looked disgruntled for a moment, then its face assumed its habitual sneer.

  Richard restrained an impulse to punish the wretched thing. That would be counterproductive. Instead, he merely collapsed the magic about the boggart, forcing it back to where it had come from, rather than dismissing it. It was a peculiar effect; the sphere of sullen, ruddy smoke shrank, like a child’s balloon deflating, growing more opaque as it shrank, until there was nothing but a pea-sized sphere of darkness lying atop the earth. Then that, too, vanished.

  There was no sign that the boggart had ever been here but the bag of bones. Richard examined the bag carefully, looking for some sign that the boggart had left an unpleasant surprise for him among them. But no, it was just a bag, containing around twenty indexfinger bones.

  He took those to his workbench and looked them over too, to make sure the boggart hadn’t cheated him by gathering the bones from only one or two individuals. Despite his suspicion, it had given him exactly what he asked for.

  He extracted one for each of the servants, picking the smallest, which would likely be children. Children were the easiest to manipulate.

  This time he did away with the circles and protections altogether. He didn’t want to frighten these revenants, after all. Instead, one by one, he forged a tie between bone and spirit, as a more powerful extension of the tie between revenant and its full body. Then, one by one, he reeled them in.

  When he had them, he fed them—not much, just enough to waken them a little more. As it was, they were wispy little things, so weak that they didn’t even really have faces anymore, just suggestions of faces. When he thought they were sufficiently alert, he gave them their orders.

  “I want you to haunt my servants,” he told them. “I want you to walk through their dreams, speak to them there, and ask them a question.” He paused. “And that question is this: Where is Susanne? They will know what that means. All you have to do is get an answer from them. Do you understand?”

  The little things nodded awkwardly.

  “Good. Now go.” He had everything he needed, of course, from the servants themselves. It was child’s play for his boggarts to nip into their rooms at night, cut a lock of hair, and bring it back to him. He tied a strand of hair to each of the fingerbones so the revenants would know whom they were to haunt.

  “Go now,” he told them. “Return when you have my answers.”

  He heard the results of his work almost immediately, moans and groans coming faintly from the bedrooms below. Having a spirit walk through one’s dreams always caused nightmares.

  He smiled with satisfaction. The wretches were going to pass an uneasy night, which they roundly deserved for allowing Susanne to escape.

  He sat himself in his most comfortable chair and waited for the revenants to return.

  One by one, they did so, but each time it was with the same result.

  No one knew where Susanne was, and, amazingly, no one had helped her escape. The servants were all genuinely bewildered that she would run away. They could not imagine how she could give up the favored position he had granted her. The two youngest had been absolutely pathetic in their dreams, from what he learned from the two ghost-children he had sent to them. They had desired those gowns and furbelows with a passion he would never have suspected they were capable of.

  And with Susanne gone, they secretly hoped the gowns would be given to them. They had, in fact, been dreaming that very thing when the spirits came walking through their minds. In their waking state, of course, they knew this was utterly impossible, which made their dreams all the more pathetic.

  He did not unbind the ghosts when they had finished; instead, he commanded them to linger nearby, removed the strands of hair, and put the bones in a very safe place. He might well need them again, and soon.

  He wanted to rage, break things, kick the box of earth over and trample it. He did none of these things. He was disciplined. He had to be.

  So he put everything away in its proper place, exited the Work Room, and made sure the lock caught behind him.

  Then he went to his favorite chair and flung himself down into it, his emotions seething all over again.

  He simply had to get Susanne back. There was no better vessel. He could not bear the thought of trying to find another. His stomach knotted, his teeth hurt from clenching his jaw, and he had a furious headache centered right between his eyebrows. He closed his eyes and tried to will it away, concentrating so hard that when the housekeeper spoke up from the middle of the room, he actually jumped. He opened his eyes to see her squinting to make him out against the draped window, twisting her hands together in her apron.

  “Master Richard, sir?” she said timidly. It sounded as if she were afraid he was going to blame her for this. He couldn’t, of course,

  But she doesn’t know that. He decided he liked having that sort of hold on her.

  “Yes, what do you want?” he asked gruffly.

  “It’s about Mistress Susanne, sir.” She in her turn was concentrating very hard as well, trying to keep the “Yorkshire” out of her words. “I wonder, had you taken thought to hiring one of them detective persons to find her?”

  The words sounded as if they were being spoken in a foreign language for a moment, and they took him completely by surprise. “Eh—what?” he said, startled. “What do you mean?”

  “There are these detective persons, sir. You read about them in stories in the papers all the time,” she replied, sounding both apprehensive and eager. “You hire them. They can find things for you. Like heirs, and runaway children, and servants. Sometimes they can find stolen things, too. I can bring you the papers. They put advertisements in them.”

  Hire someone? Hire a person to hunt down Susanne? Not rely on magic?

  The sheer novelty of the idea made him feel disconnected for a moment.

  “You’d need a picture of her, of course. So he would know who he was looking for,” she continued. “I don’t suppose you have a picture?” Doubt had crept into her voice now.

  No, I don’t suppose—he thought savagely, angry that hope had been held out in one hand to him and snatched away by the other.

  And then, suddenly, it was given to him all over again.

  “Wait,” he commanded, and went to a locked cupboard that he hadn’t unlocked for . . . years. Decades. He took the key from his waistcoat pocket on a ring with several others and put it in the lock. The key resisted, then turned stiffly.

  He opened the double doors, and there, on the shelf where he had left it, was the thing that had been such a novelty, such a delight, to Rebecca in the year of their engagement and the first year of their marriage.

  It was a fat, leather-bound volume with thick pasteboard pages. He took it down, blew the dust off of it, and opened it.

  And there they were, the photographic portraits of Rebecca and himself, separately and together. He had obtained a box camera and had undertaken to document their engagement, teaching her to use it as well. He had also hoped to document the Earth Elementals, but that was not a success; they would see the camera and flee, no matter how carefully he moved in on them or tried to ambush them with it. Still, here was Rebecca, looking even more like Susanne, in all seasons, in portraits posed and natural, at the fairs, at the races, at picnics, any place he could take the camera. In the middle of the book were the professional photographs of their wedding, and then came the ones he had taken afterward for about a year. But then they had both grown tired of the toy, and he had put it away, intending to take it out again
to document the growth of their children.

  He had no idea where the camera was now. Perhaps he had even smashed it in those first weeks of unrelenting grief.

  But the pictures were here. And they were perfect for his purposes.

  He paused for a moment. There was a problem with this. If he hired an outsider, someone outside this household would know he had a daughter and that she had run away. This could prove inconvenient when he invested Rebecca’s spirit into Susanne’s body.

  Or not. Because he had already decided, had he not, on certain matters.

  He extracted several photographs from their pasteboard frames and put the book back in the cupboard. Then he went to his desk and wrote out a substantial check. He gave both to the housekeeper. Her eyes widened at the size of the check, and widened still further at the photographs.

  “When did you—how did you—”

  He was pleased. Clearly she did not realize that she was holding pictures of Rebecca, not his daughter.

  “I leave this in your hands,” he said brusquely, in tones that conveyed he would answer no questions. “Hire this man. Hire more than one if need be. Just bring my daughter back. But do not tell him she is my daughter.” He paused. “I don’t want her shamed; I do not want her name in the papers.”

  After a moment the woman nodded. “What shall I say, sir?” she asked timidly.

  He thought a moment. “Tell him—tell him that she is the daughter of a distant relation who left her in my care.”

  “Aye, sir.” She nodded. “Perhaps, I could hint she might not be thinking too clear?”

  Well, showing some initiative! Evidently guilt had a stimulating effect on the mind. “That is a good suggestion,” he replied. “Or, well, you could say she is a servant that took something unspecified.”

  That made her look uneasy, but again she nodded.

  “I leave this in your hands,” he said finally.

  And with that, he turned his back on her, giving her the clear message that the interview was over. She hesitated, then said, “Immediately, sir,” and went away, closing the door behind her.

  He closed his eyes. The headache was gone. It had been replaced by a feeling of rampant satisfaction.

  13

  “NOW,” said Peter genially. “Let’s try this again. Why is it that to call up a faun you’d use the same sigils you’d use to call up a gnome?”

  He and Susanne sat at the tiny table in his cottage, across from each other with a candle between them. A little of her dark hair had escaped from her severe chignon, and her expression was serious indeed. There was a book on the table as well, a book of magic theory. She had expressed shock on seeing it; evidently, she had never realized there was such a thing.

  Susanne thought about that, very hard. “You’d only do that if you wanted a forest gnome. Then you’d use the same sigils because the sigils describe the place where you find what you are looking for, so forest creatures are called up using the same set of sigils. You’d make the difference in whether it was a gnome or a pixie or a dryad by what you put inside the circle.”

  Neither of them was speaking with much of a Yorkshire accent. Peter wondered if she realized this. He certainly did. It told him something else about her; it was hard to get rid of that accent if you had been accustomed to it from the time you were an infant, and it was comparatively easier to pick it up and drop it again if it was something you had heard all the time but not, so to speak, your “native tongue.”

  Someone had gone to considerable effort when she was a child to be sure that the first things she learned to say were not in broad Yorkshire.

  “I do believe you are getting the sense of this,” he said, approvingly. “You’re doing very well. Not that Robin taught you poorly, of course!”

  “Oh, aye, but he taught me to go on what I felt.” she replied. She shut the book he had lent her and looked at him earnestly across the little table. “That’s good, when all that’s to do is take care of the land.”

  “Feelings and instincts,” Peter nodded. “And the care of the land is, of course, the Puck’s first concern. But once you go beyond merely tending to the land, you need fundamentals and logic. You need to know why you use things as well as how. Now, if you were to have to defend yourself against a boggart, what would you do first?”

  “Get into the open,” she said immediately. “And then . . . well, he’s earth, so he’s my element. Any protective circles that I can cast should hold him out. He’s a house creature, so he won’t like the forest, so I should enlist the forest Elementals to help me against him.”

  “Good.” They had been working together for some time now. Susanne had a good mind, and a quick one, and he thought she had come to trust him. “Susanne, would you say I am your friend?”

  She blinked at him, then laughed. “Of course, tha’ great loon!” she replied, slipping into broad Yorkshire again. “If tha’ weren’t my friend, tha’d not be spending hours and hours setting me aright!”

  “Then at this point, I think I have the right to know,” he said, letting a little steel creep into his voice. “Just who are you, Susanne-the-dairymaid? Where do you come from, who are your people, and what in heaven’s name were you running from when we found you in the stable?”

  She stared at him for a very long time, her face still and without expression. Then she sighed, and it was almost as if she were putting a tremendous burden aside. “Tha—You’re right, Peter. You do have a right to know.” She clasped her hands together on top of the book. Before she did so, he could see they were trembling a little. “My name is Susanne Whitestone. I come from across the moor from the house of the same name; it was about three days afoot.”

  Whitestone? That sounded familiar. Very familiar. He pummeled his brain. Trying to think where he had heard that name.

  “My family is prosperous and my father is the local squire, but I spent most of my life doing the work of a servant. My mother died when I was born, and my father did not even want to see me until a few weeks ago,” she was continuing. “Housekeeper and Cook raised me. I spent my life with the servants and did what they did, and when I came early into my power, Robin taught me the magic. My father never left his rooms. I never even saw him until just after May Eve. Then suddenly, as if he had just discovered that I existed, he wanted to make it all up to me . . .” She faltered and grew a little pale.

  Peter leaned forward over the table and patted her hand, all the while thinking, Whitestone . . . where do I know that name? And the story sounds familiar. “I take it that there was something more going on than just an old man’s remorse,” he said quietly.

  “It just didn’t feel right,” she whispered. “I didn’t know why, but it all just didn’t feel right. He set me to lessons, all sorts of lessons, and kept telling me that I had to learn all these things to be fit for my place, that I had to remember I wasn’t just a servant. He knew I hadn’t been properly educated, and I didn’t know all the things that girls of my age and class should. He said when I was ready that he was going to send me off to school, even University. He bought me all new clothing, and he corrected my lessons himself. But he didn’t seem to realize that I had magic at all.”

  “Wait—he knows about magic?” Peter interrupted.

  She nodded. “He is an Earth Master. He was the one who should have been tending to the land, not me.”

  Earth Master . . . Earth Master. I should know this.

  She had grown very pale, and her obvious distress distracted him from what he was trying to remember. “I cannot explain what was so wrong. It was as if he wasn’t ever really looking at me, just at something he wanted to be there, something he . . . owned. As if I were a thing and not a person.” She took a deep, shaking breath. “And he was watching me. All the time. Even when I slept. Even when I did things that couldn’t possibly interest him, he was watching me. I didn’t understand why. But then I found out he had a secret room, and I got into it and that—”

  She gulped, and her fac
e went red and white by turns. “The first time, he had books and things in there, and the books were . . . they felt wrong. I couldn’t read them properly, but in my hand, they felt wrong. The second time, he was there already, and I heard him, saw him. He had a picture of me in there, and he was talking to it, and he was saying—he was saying things, horrid things. Things no one should ever say to a daughter.”

  Peter blinked, puzzled. “I’m afraid I’m being a bit thick,” he apologized. “What sort of things now?”

  She hung her head. “Things . . . things you should only say to a wife. Things you plan to do to her . . . with her . . . when you’re alone together. It was horrid, horrid. I mean, that’s all right and good and proper if it’s your wife, but . . . Why would he want to do those things with his daughter?”

  “Eh?” said Peter, then “Oh!” as it dawned on him. He flushed with anger. “By Jove, did he?” If I ever find him, I’ll thrash him within an inch of his life. He patted Susanne’s hands. “And so you ran. Sensible girl. Well you’re safe enough here, now.” He tried to keep his tone light to avoid frightening her further. She looked up at him and managed a tremulous smile.

  “I don’t understand how he could be like this,” she continued. “He used to be the Earth Master for thereabouts, I mean, really, truly, the Earth Master. Robin said so, that he not only tended the land, but he did things for the Chief Master in London—”

  “He what?” Peter interrupted. Whitestone! That’s where I remember the name! Richard Whitestone, the one Alderscroft was telling me about, the recluse!

  “He used to be the Earth Master, and it was his duty to see to the land all about Whitestone Hall,” Susanne said, and a touch of irritation came into her voice. “The land needed him! But when my mother died, he just threw it all away, he completely neglected his duty to the land. He closed himself into his rooms and never left, and the area all around the Hall just died. It’s worse than neglected, it’s blighted. I had to enclose it to keep the blight from spreading farther. And you would think, wouldn’t you, that a Master would notice that someone had taken over his duties? Would notice someone had shielded the area around the Hall? And you would think it might come to him that the person might be his own daughter . . .”