The Wizard of London

don’t see any reason why we have to sit here and wait for trouble to find us, when we can go scout it the way a hunter would and know what’s coming before it gets here!”

Nan blinked. Put that way—She brushed the grass stems off her skirt and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said decisively. “Mem’sab ain’t convinced more trouble ain’t comin’ an’ I don’t know as buildin’ up ‘igh walls and sittin’ behind ‘em is such a good notion.”

Now Neville finally roused from his own indecision and quorked enthusiastically. Grey just sighed. But she didn’t seem inclined to want to stop them, so Nan took that as tacit assent. She followed Neville as the raven flew ahead, in their usual pattern of going to a tree within calling distance, waiting for the girls to catch up, and going on to another tree.

It didn’t take them nearly as long to get to the bridge as it had the first time they had wandered out that far—but the first time, they had been doing just that, wandering, with no set purpose and no real hurry to get anywhere. As they approached the structure, it seemed to Nan that the uneasy feelings began at a point much further away than the first time.

“Was it like this, this far away before?” Sarah asked, in an uneasy echo of Nan’s own thoughts.

Nan shook her head. “Dunno,” she replied dubiously. “Could be ‘cause we’re expectin’ it this time. Could be ‘cause we know what’t’ look for. Could be misrememberin’.”

They stood on the road, in the shade of a giant oak tree, and regarded the bridge carefully.

When you shut off those bad feelings, there was nothing about the bridge to give anyone cause for alarm. It was a perfectly ordinary structure made of yellowish stone, arcing over the river. It had three low stone arches, and ended in four squat, square pillars, two on either side of the span. The river was smooth and quiet, flowing by lazily. There were no sinister shadows in the bright sunlight shining down on it.

But when you let yourself open to those feelings, it seemed as if there ought to be sinister shadows everywhere, and dark forms lurking behind the pillars. Now even Sarah began to look dubious and uneasy, as if she had just decided this had been a bad idea, but wasn’t going to say so.

Nan, on the other hand, was now determined to get to the bottom of all of this. Never mind that she’d been against it before, now she wanted to know just what it was that was at the root of all this.

“I’m gettin’ closer,” she said shortly, and whistled for Neville to come to her. He landed on her outstretched arm and jumped to her shoulder.

She kept her eyes wide open, and pictured herself peering cautiously through a hole in a wall as she approached the bridge one slow step at a time. It was at the third step that she began to make something out.

It wasn’t just memories. There was something there!

The feelings came first, with the sense of a presence.

It wasn’t like the horrible thing in Berkeley Square, though—this was hunger, a great void of need and of loneliness, but not anything that Nan would have called “healthy.” The closest she could come was to those few times when her mother had gotten maudlin drunk and had hugged her too tight and cried about what an awful mum she was, when all the time she wasn’t so sorry that she wouldn’t go right out and spend supper money on gin as soon as she sobered up. And this was to that experience as the sun was to a candle.

Another step, and Nan saw what it was, or saw something, anyway. Woman-shaped and shadowy, draped in veils, and a vast pit of greed and despair so deep that Nan knew if you fell into it you’d never get out again.

And she had something.

She had a little girl.

Not a living little girl, but another shadow shape, like a sketch made in white mist, a little ghost girl. The shadow woman held the girl ghost, who struggled soundlessly against the shadow arms that held her, eyes wide open in panic, mouth open too, and no sound emerging though it looked as if she was shrieking in terror. The shadow woman, horribly, was crooning a lullaby to the ghost girl, and even as Nan watched, the ghost girl began to fade into the shadow woman. It looked as if the shadow woman was devouring it or absorbing it and the ghost girl grew limp and stopped struggling a moment later.

“No!” Nan shouted. She reached down blindly for a stick, and came up with a sword in her hand. As she brandished it, she saw that Sarah had come to stand beside her, with both hands raised over her head, white light coming from them. Neville had flown down to land on the ground between the girls and the shadow, and Grey, grown to four times her natural size, was beside him, feathers fluffed and growling.

The white light from Sarah’s hands lanced out, not to touch the shadow woman, but the ghost girl. The fading outlines of the ghost girl strengthened, and she renewed her struggles.

“You let ‘er go!” Nan shouted again, flourishing the sword. “She ain’t yours, you let ‘er go right now!”

The shadow woman, who had until this moment, ignored the girls, now turned her attention on them. Eyes like coals burned in the midst of her veils, and a terrible wail burst from her, a sound that brought with it fear and anguish that battered against Nan until she could hardly stand.

Sarah did drop to the ground, and the light from her hands went out—but when the wailing stopped, she struggled to her feet again and held her hands above her head, and the light once again shone from them.

Still holding the struggling girl ghost, the shadow woman took one menacing step toward them. Freeing one hand, she made a casting gesture, and Nan felt as if there was a hand seizing her throat, choking the life from her. Neville and Grey shrieked with anger, and flew at the shadow woman, but could not touch her, while Nan tried to shout, and could get nothing out.

She dropped the sword/branch, and clawed at the invisible, intangible hand, as her lungs burned and she tried to get a breath. Her vision began to gray out—

“Not so fast, my unfriend, my shadow wraith!” cried a fierce young voice that brought with it sun and a rush of flower-scented summer wind—and blessedly, the release of whatever it was that had hold of Nan’s throat.

She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath at the same time that she looked to her right. There, standing between her and Sarah, was Robin Goodfellow. He wore the same outlandish costume he’d worn for the play, only on him, it didn’t look so outlandish. He had one hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and Nan could actually see the strength flowing from him to her as she fed the ghost girl with that light, which now was bright as strong sunlight.

The ghost girl thrashed wildly, and broke free of the shadow woman’s hold, and that was when Robin made a casting motion of his own and threw something at the shadow form. It looked like a spiderweb, mostly insubstantial and sparkling with dew drops, but it expanded as it flew toward the shadow woman, and when it struck her, it enveloped her altogether. She crumpled as it hit, as if it had been spun out of lead, not spider silk, and collapsed into a pool of shadow beneath its sparkling strands.

The ghost girl stood where she was, trembling, staring at them.

“She’s stuck,” Sarah said, her voice shaky, but sounding otherwise normal.

Grey waddled over to the ghost girl, looked up at her, and shook herself all over. Neville returned to Nan’s shoulder, feathers bristling, as he stared at the shadow woman trapped in Puck’s net.

“She doesn’t know where to go, or how to get there, or even why she should go,” Sarah continued, pity now creeping into her voice.

“Oh so?” Puck took a step or two toward the ghost girl, peering at her as if he could read something on her terrified young face. “Welladay, and this is one who can see further into a millstone than most… no wonder she don’t know where to go. Hell can’t take her and heaven won’t have her, but there’s a place for you, my mortal child.”

His voice had turned pitying and welcoming all at the same time, and so kindly that even Nan felt herself melting a little inside just to hear it. He held out his hand to the ghost girl. “Come away, human child, or what’s left of you. Come! Take a step to me, just one, to show you trust your dreams and want to find them—”

Shaking so much her vague outlines blurred, the ghost girl drifted the equivalent of a step toward Robin.

He laughed. Nan had never heard a sound quite like it before. Most people she’d ever heard, when they laughed, had something else in their laughter. Pity, scorn, irony, self-deprecation, ruefulness—most adults anyway, always had something besides amusement in their voices when they laughed.

This was just a laugh with nothing in it but pure joy. Even the ghost girl brightened at the sound of it, and drifted forward again—and Robin made a little circle gesture with his free hand.

Something glowing opened up between him and the ghost girl. Nan couldn’t see what it was, other than a