The Return of the Witch (36 page)

Erasmus gave a sigh. “Perhaps our bodies were not designed to be so used when they are of such tender years.” He reached out and placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. It was a small act, but one of great tenderness. It struck me, not for the first time, that Erasmus, like myself, must have known true loneliness. His singular existence did not allow for wife or children of his own. Despite being somewhat set in his ways, and clearly having had little or nothing to do with children, he was a man of compassion. I believed he would have made a very caring parent.

“I dare not leave him,” I said. Of course, we had already had this particular debate. The moment I found Aloysius I had excitedly told Erasmus that I knew where Gideon must be hiding Tegan. It all made sense, somewhere secret, somewhere away from prying eyes, somewhere deep underground, which could very well interfere with my ability to sense her. The mouse could not have traveled a great distance, surely, which meant that Tegan could not be far from the place where Nipper had his accident. Erasmus had argued that the boy could have found Aloysius days earlier, somewhere else entirely. I was all for sending for Lottie to take us to where Nipper worked, but Erasmus was adamant that we should have more information before we went blindly running around what was known to be a vast network of tunnels. He might not have persuaded me, but it did not matter. I could not leave the child while he hovered between life and death. I might be able only to offer little hope, but it might make the crucial difference. I would stay with him until he was out of danger, or no longer needed me, one way or the other.

Tegan's mouse was sitting on the table next to Nipper's bed. He looked remarkably well for such an aged rodent who had successfully Time Stepped twice, and had now, presumably, escaped from a subterranean prison and found his way to me.

I must have looked particularly weary or distressed, for Erasmus moved his hand to place it over mine. He smiled at me.

“He is fortunate to have come into your care, Elizabeth. If anyone can mend him, it is you. And then we will question him, and his answers will lead us to Tegan.”

There was such tenderness in the way he looked at me, such sincerity in his words, I had to resist the temptation to lift his hand to my lips and kiss it. Such an impulse both disturbed and astonished me. This was surely not the time to be acknowledging that my feelings toward Erasmus could be deeper than I had allowed myself to realize up to this point. But the strength of them, the force of my own unexpected desire to show him how I felt, was something wonderful. Something uplifting in a moment that was otherwise full of confusion and turmoil.

I kept my voice as level as I was able. “You make it sound so simple.”

“There is every chance it will be, so let us rely upon that.”

“Upon chance? It seems a flimsy thing to support all our hopes.”

“Chance, fate, destiny, call it what you will. I believe when one strives sincerely toward something, something decent and right, well, destiny, like time, is not rigid or fixed; we have the ability to influence it.”

Nipper began talking, even though he had not woken up, whispering urgent words that were hard to make out.

Erasmus leaned closer to him, smoothing the boy's hair from his forehead. “What is it, little chap? What is so important that it troubles you even now?”

“It sounds like he's saying ‘star' something. ‘Stardust,' possibly,” I said, frowning. “One would think someone so shut away from any sight of the sky would not be concerned with such things at all.”

“The stars are on my own mind a great deal, too,” said Erasmus. “Gideon's plans are written in those astrological charts, I'm certain of it. Can you think of nothing else Tegan spoke of that might make the link?”

“We only had a short time together at Willow Cottage before Gideon took her. She had been so busy, traveling the world, studying with all manner of witches … five years is a lot of time to catch up on.”

“Let's go through them again.”

“Again? Erasmus, I am exhausted, and I have searched my memory over and over…”

“Again!” he said firmly, letting go my hand and getting up to pace the room. “Now, you said she spent time on an island off the coast of Wales.”

I rubbed my aching neck and forced myself to focus. “That's right. She followed the Wiccan calendar for a year, and observed Celtic rituals and traditions as best she could on her own. I can't see how it fits with anything…”

“Where else did she go?”

“America, for several months, mostly in the Southern states, I believe.”

“And?”

“Siberia, I know I've told you all this. She worked with a Yakuts shaman.”

“Yes, I recall. Where else?”

“I don't know, I don't know!”

“There must be something.”

“She mentioned she'd traveled to a desert, just before I returned.”

“Which one?”

“Does it matter?”

“My dear Elizabeth, of course it
matters
. Which desert?”

“I think it was the Sahara.”

“You think?”

“Very well, I'm certain. Yes, she told me she'd just come back from there. But we didn't have time to talk about it, I don't know who she met there.”

“The Sahara, the Deserts of the Dead!”

“I've never heard it called that. Where are you going?” I asked as he hurried out of the room.

“To my books, where else?” he called back as he disappeared.

I continued to watch over Nipper. The boy looked so very small and so very frail, his still, grubby face looking up from the fine linen pillows. Lottie had told Erasmus that he had no family that anyone knew of. He could not have been older than six, yet he lived entirely by his own wits, working with the wagon ponies, sleeping in the stables with them at night. It made my heart ache to think that he had no one to care for him, no one to love him. I would not let him fade away, his little life stopped before it had properly begun. I stood up and recited an incantation, imploring the Goddess to have pity on this lonely child, to lend him her strength, to heal him. I breathed in very slowly, deeper and deeper, pulling into myself all the oxygen from the room, all the energy from it, letting it fuel my magic, making it swell and strengthen. I held that breath, waiting until my own healing powers were charged by it to their fullest. Then, as I slowly exhaled, sparks of magic dancing out into the air about us, I leaned over and kissed Nipper's brow.

“May the Goddess bless you, may the Green Man renew you, may the ancient magic of my sister witches heal you and make you live again, a child of the craft, beloved of this witch, who welcomes you to her family.”

Nipper stirred slightly and then started to move in a more agitated manner. He turned his head from side to side and flung his arms this way and that so that I feared he might damage the makeshift cast with which I had set his hand and arm. Suddenly his eyes sprang open and he sat up, gasping.

“It's all right, Nipper. You are safe! I'm here.” I sat on the bed and slid my arms around him. For a moment he stared up at me, his eyes wide and terrified, but then he began to relax. I felt him go heavy in my embrace and he rested his head upon my shoulder. When I laid him back on the pillows he was asleep again, but this was an altogether different manner of rest. His skin looked pink with health instead of flushed with fever. His breathing was steady and calm, and I knew he was past the worst. He would live. In time his hand would heal. The poor boy had a future, though what sort of life it might hold for him was another matter. I could have left him then; could have slipped away quietly without giving Erasmus the chance to stop me, and gone to the tunnels to search. And yet I found I could not. Not while he was still so weak and had not properly woken, nor been given words of comfort and reassurance. The child needed me, and I would wait a little longer. As always, it seemed, I must be pulled in two directions, must choose between the welfare of a person I loved and that of one whose need was every bit as great and a good deal more urgent. The frail human in me yearned to follow my heart, the witch in me raged at the injustice of the situation, but it was the healer in me, the one who could not turn away from suffering, who won out. It was scant comfort to tell myself that this was what Tegan would have me do.

As if making that decision was a spell in itself, Nipper opened his eyes again. This time he came to consciousness slowly and softly. He looked about him, taking in the unfamiliar room, the comfortable bed and fine bedclothes, and me.

“Hello, Nipper.”

He had not yet found his voice, but tried to sit up. In doing so he moved his broken limb and cried out in pain.

“Hush, now.” I helped him, propping him up against the pillows. “You were in an accident and your hand is hurt. Don't be afraid. It will mend, but you must give it time.”

“Where am I?” he asked then, and his voice gave away how very young he was.

“You are at the home of Mr. Erasmus Balmoral, the bookbinder. Lottie and her friends brought you here because they knew I could help you.”

“Are you a doctor, missus?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Nipper gasped, having caught sight of Aloysius. He reached out his good hand and the mouse sniffed it. The boy giggled as whiskers tickled his skin.

“I can see you two are friends. Nipper, do you remember where you found this little white mouse?” I tried not to let my anxious hope reveal itself as I asked the question.

Nipper frowned. “I've never seen 'im before, missus. Ain't he yours?”

I felt my whole body sag with disappointment. If Nipper had not found Aloysius, then he could not know where he might have come from. “It seems he hitched a ride in your pocket,” I explained.

“Did 'e? Cor, 'e was lucky 'e weren't crushed when the wagon tipped.” A thought suddenly made the boy start. “Stardust!” he cried, his eyes filling with tears. “What about Stardust?”

“Who do you mean?”

“The pony what I looks after, missus. Was him pulling the cart. Was 'e crushed? 'e went down with such a thump … I 'as to get back and see 'e's all right.” He struggled with the bedclothes, trying to hold his injured hand aside while climbing out of the bed.

I gently but firmly tucked him back in. “You are not yet well enough to go anywhere, Nipper.”

“But missus…”

“You tell me exactly where to find Stardust, and where it was the accident happened. I shall get Lottie or one of the boys who brought you here to show me, and I will ask after the pony for you. I'm sure she will be well cared for.”

“But it's me what looks after her. I'm her stable lad. There's no one else knows her like I do. She'll be wondering where I've got to.” In his distress the child's breathing became quite ragged. I encouraged him to sip some water with a few drops of laudanum in it. Soon he was calmer again. As I watched him, I tried to work out how Aloysius had come to be in his pocket. If Nipper had not seen him it meant that he could only have got into his pocket after the accident. But why would he risk scrambling onto a boy who must have been in the midst of a fair amount of shouting and excitable people. What made the mouse think he could get to me via this particular child, whom I had never seen before. If he had been one of the children who had come to me for treatment earlier in the day it would have made more sense. And then I remembered.

“Robin!”

“What's that, missus?” asked Nipper drowsily.

“I used my scarf to bind Robin's broken finger. And it was Robin who lifted you from under the cart.” I understood then. Aloysius must have recognized both my human scent and the imprint of my witch's magic on that scarf. If Tegan had sent him to find me, which is exactly what I would have done in her position, the mouse would have been drawn to anything that was connected to me. It must have been Robin whom he traveled with from the tunnel, and then he hopped onto Nipper as the older boy was about to leave. I stroked the tiny rodent fondly. “What an intrepid little fellow you are,” I told him. He must have known he was needed, for he jumped onto my hand, ran up my arm, and sat himself upon my shoulder.

I squeezed Nipper's hand. “I have to leave you for a short while,” I told him, “but you will be safe here, and I will be back just as soon as I can. Nipper, I need to go to the place where the wagon turned over, but more than that, I need to go deeper into the tunnels. Someone very dear to me is lost, and I think that is where I might find them.”

He shook his head. “Them's awful dark, missus, those tunnels. There's miles and miles of 'em. You could get lost and never find your way out. Let me come with you…”

“You are not well enough yet. I promise the first thing I will do is have someone take me to see Stardust. I'll even take her a carrot. Would she like that, d'you think?”

“She's not good with strangers,” he told me, and though he was clearly upset I saw a subtle change in his expression. His mouth was set in a determined line as he fought to hide his feelings. How many times, I wondered, had the solitary child had to overcome his emotions in order to survive in a harsh and dangerous world on his own?

The moment was interrupted by the sound of Erasmus's customary gallop up the stairs and along the corridor before he came bursting into the room again.

“Here,” he said, excitedly holding up an open book bound in green leather, jabbing at the page with his finger. “It's all in here. Just as I thought … Oh! Our young friend is awake, I see.”

I nodded. “Weak, but safe,” I said.

“Excellent! Nipper, you may assist us in solving the puzzle. Where was I? Ah, here, let me read … ‘The Deserts of the Dead are what we now know as the Sahara. The nomadic peoples of the region, specifically the Tuareg and Berbers in general, do not consider the place a single desert but a collection of many'—none of which conform in any way to modern political borders, of course. ‘The belief systems of the area are also many and various. Among these are the followers of the Sacred Sun, about which little is known, save that their magic is legendary, their potential for inflicting injury upon their enemies great, and the secrecy surrounding their sect profound. What is known, however, and is a key factor in their continuing to live in such a harsh environment, is that they are rendered almost entirely power-
less
when deprived of sunlight.'” He snapped the book shut and beamed at me.