Mercedes Lackey - Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

“Did that pack of scum send ye up here?” he spat. “I got no use fer them. I don’ need their help, and I don’ want their company. Did they send ye here because I run off their brats? I got my rights! They was tramplin’ all over my property! Thievin’ brats, stealin’ fruit, honey, an’ ’shrooms, poachin’ my game, aye, I ran ’em off! I’ll do it again too, at th’ end of a pitchfork!”

“No one sent us here to disturb you, sir,” Elyn said soothingly. “We’re investigating some rather strange goings-on, and although the villagers did send for us, they don’t know we intended to come up here.”

“Ye want strange goings-on, ye look no futher than them brats o’ theirs!” he spat. “I don’ put no mischief past ’em!”

Rod and Elyn exchanged a look. :We didn’t consider that it might have been the children,: Mayar said thoughtfully. :That sort of thing is known among younglings first coming into a Gift.:

:Yes,: she thought back. :And in those with no Gift at all.: It would not be the first time that bored youngsters terrorized a community by manufacturing “supernatural” goings-on.

“Well, we won’t bother you any further sir,” Elyn said.

“An’ ye won’t be settin’ foot on my land neither!” he snapped. “Gerroff wi’ ye! An’ tell that lot down at th’ Stone that they kin keep their devilment t’thesselves!”

There didn’t seem to be anything much more to say, so Elyn turned around and began picking her way back down the stream. Ryu and Arville were only too happy to do the same, quickly overtaking and passing her. Laurel shivered as she glanced back at the old man, still standing guard at his boundary marker. Rod just shook his head.

But Alma looked very thoughtful.

“I don’t know why we didn’t consider the youngsters,” Rod said, as soon as they were out of earshot of the old man. “That should have been the first place we looked.”

“But don’t you think that if it was the younglings, that nasty old grump would have been the first target they went after?” Alma countered. “Instead, it was the youngsters themselves that were scared out of their favorite swimming place. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe it’s just one or two loners who were getting even for being left out of things,” Elyn suggested, as Alma stooped again, scooping something out of the stream bed.

“I dunno about you, but that stuff last night didn’t sound like a couple of kids!” Arville protested.

“Remons!” Ryu seconded. “Rosses!”

“Roses?” Rod exclaimed, looking askance.

“He means g-g-ghosts,” Arville stammered. “It s-s-sure sounded like that to me!”

Elyn pulled thoughtfully at her earlobe. “Still ... I think we should concentrate on the villagers next. Especially the youngsters. Getting the entire village in an uproar—we’ve studied and heard of that sort of thing before.”

Rod nodded, with a satisfied look on his face. “Even if we can’t find out something directly, I bet I can find a way to catch the troublemakers,” he said.

“I don’t think it was kids,” Arville retorted weakly, scratching his head. “How could kids be making those ... howls?”

“I wouldn’t be so sure it was youngsters either,” Alma said, with an enigmatic look. “I don’t think it was demons—but I don’t think it was youngsters.”

They argued about it all the way back to the village—where they finally shut up, belatedly realizing that whether Rod, Arville, or Alma was right, it wouldn’t be very productive for them to be talking about it in front of the very people they were going to be investigating.

Elyn meanwhile separated herself from the rest and, with Mayar, went in search of the likeliest person to know everybody’s business, the village midwife.

She spent a good couple of candlemarks with that worthy, using the incident the night before as the opening wedge for conversation. “Well,” Granny Merton said, judiciously, “I’d be lying if I didn’ tell ye that fair curdles me blood o’nights. An’ it’s been a nuisance too. The wimmin as is close t’their time, they’ve taken t’ demandin’ I bide w’ them every night. Cause if babe should decide t’come at night, ye ken, how’m I d’be fetched wi’ that howlin’ aroond th’ doors? ’Tis on’y been two, thus far, but a ’ooman my age likes th’ feel of her own bed benights!” She patted the thick stone walls of her tiny cottage complacently. “No demon be gettin’ through these walls, no, an’ I brung too many inter th’ world, and seen too many out of it too, to be afeared of ghosts.”

Gradually Elyn let the conversation drift, until it ended up as such conversations always did, with the Granny’s assessment of every soul in the village.

And that was where Elyn’s speculations and investigations ran aground. Because there were only five youngsters about the right age to be the one—or ones—behind the “haunting,” and none of them fit the pattern of the sort of child that did this sort of thing. Their personalities were all open; they were neither show-offs nor shy and withdrawn, they were not picked on or bullied, they were all five very close friends, and in general were happy youngsters. Or they had been until the “hauntings” began. Now they were just as terrified as the rest of the village.

And insofar as their ability to sneak out and perpetrate the hauntings as a group—that was impossible, because all five of them spent their nights huddled together in one or another of their respective houses, in the main room, with the rest of whichever family they were spending the night with. Out here, a house was just a place to sleep and eat between chores and no one thought much of private rooms or single beds. There were witnesses to every moment of their time when whatever it was howled outside the walls.

This was pretty much what all of the village youngsters were doing; the parents had discovered that if they could be with friends, they withstood it all better. So the children got rounded up after supper, divided up by age groups, and bedded down in a huddle.

Nevertheless, she asked Mayar to go snooping about and see if he could detect any incipient stirrings of a Gift. The Companions in general were much better at that sort of thing than she was.

“Who’s the old man that lives up above the pond at Stony Rill?” she asked, as if it were an afterthought. “Shouldn’t he be brought down here for safety?”

Granny snorted. “Old man Hardaker? He has no friends down here. Stingiest old rooster that was ever born. Squeezes every groat till it squeaks, goes into a fury if a crow steals so much as a grain of his, counts everything, living or dead, on his land as ’is own property. Fights the squirrels for the nuts, ’e does. They say ’e killed his wife with overwork, treated her like a slave; that I can’t speak for, it was afore my time. Sure he got no children on ’er, so I suppose he reckoned t’get work out of ’er instead. If I was a haunt, I’d stay clear of ’im. Give half a chance, he’d find a way t’bind a spirit and make it work for him, and count himself lucky that ’e wouldna have to feed and clothe it!”

Elyn smiled wryly. “He didn’t seem to be aware that there was anything amiss here in the village.”

Granny made a face. “Never believe it. ’E knows. ’E knows, and if ’e’s being haunted too, ’e’ll never let on. Gives nothin’ away, that one, not even a thought. But ’e can’t do wi’out us. We’re the only village near enough t’buy what ’e grows, an’ the only craftsmen near enough for him t’get what ’e needs. ‘E’d never leave his land t’take ’is goods t’ market, an’ never trust one of ’is ’ands t’ do it for ’im.” She cackled a little. “No doubt, that makes ’im even more sour, the ald sack!”