Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

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!”

Well, so much for the old man. If he, too, was suffering from the haunts, he was probably blaming it on the village and would not give them the satisfaction of knowing he was afraid. Nor would he ever ask for help. And even if he did, it was unlikely anyone here would give it to him.

Elyn poked about the village a bit more and found that Granny’s opinion of the old man was universal. No one liked him. Everyone had a story about his penny-pinching and attempts to cheat them. Everyone also admitted that they did their level best to cheat him back. It was a point of honor among the young men to try to steal fruit from his orchard or poach his fish or game. There was no way of telling who had begun the acrimony, but at this point there was going to be no putting an end to it.

She managed to meet the suspect striplings and couldn’t make up her mind whether or not they would be capable of the sheer amount of work and ingenuity that the “haunting” would take. They weren’t stupid, but they also didn’t show the level of intelligence of, say, Rod, much less Alma—and that was what such a task would take, if it was a purely mischief-making endeavor and not the unconscious breaking out of some sort of Gift.

They also all seemed as genuinely terrified as their parents. Elyn was fairly good at telling when she was being lied to even without the use of the Truth Spell, and she didn’t get that impression now.

But when she met up with the rest back at the threshing barn, she discovered that Rod had already made up his mind about one thing.

“We can’t just huddle in here like a lot of scared children,” he said firmly. “And I don’t for a moment think that these are demons or ghosts. I think it’s people. In fact, I think it’s some of the villagers. Maybe some of the younger ones.”

“But, Rod!” Laurel exclaimed indignantly. “I told you that story they told me, and you still don’t think it’s disturbed spirits?”

“Wait, wait, what story?” Elyn demanded.

Laurel looked both excited and apprehensive as she turned toward their mentor. “Some of the older boys told me that around early apple harvest time, they went up to the old man’s orchard to steal fruit, like always. They heard the sound of someone digging! At night! And then they didn’t think anything more about it, except that the next day, Stony Rill was as red as blood! And it was that night that the hauntings began! They think the old man was looking for treasure and dug up a burial mound! And now the spirits are angry!”

“All the more reason to think it’s them,” Rod snorted, as Alma got an extremely thoughtful look on her face. “What a ridiculous story!”

“It’s not ridiculous!” Laurel stamped her foot and crossed her arms angrily over her chest. “You just don’t like it because they didn’t tell you!”