Gaslight Grimoire_ Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes - Barbara Hambly [10]
I know that we do not look the same to others, when we encounter them in dreams.
I put my finger to my lips, and slipped away.
Holmes and Peter met a number of times that summer, usually in Kensington Gardens, where Holmes would go walking when all of London slept. Peter did get his knife back within two days, for as Holmes understood from those strange — and sometimes very ancient — accounts of mysteriously-appearing children over the centuries, time spent in that other world is notoriously elastic, and bears no relation to the seasons by which we live.
As my illness ran its course I would dream of them, when sleeping under the influence of my medicines. Holmes taught Peter boxing and single-stick on the fringes of the lake by moonlight, and the intricacies of baritsu throws, in exchange for whatever Peter could tell him of the worlds that lie beyond our own. Peter, for his part, was fond of displaying his knowledge. Though his accounts varied wildly from interview to interview, still I think Holmes gleaned sufficient information to unlock certain clues in those cases that he never told John about. I know that it was from Peter that he learned the secret behind the events at Rowson Priory, and the riddle that saved his life and John’s, years later, during the affair of the Covyng Stones.
But about such matters as Red Indians and pirates, Peter found Holmes shockingly obtuse. And Holmes had enough of Peter in himself, to take umbrage when a boy who didn’t quite come up to his elbow scoffed at his researches into the habits of the Cherokee and Sioux. “They’re not Sioux, they’re Indians,” Peter almost shouted at him. “And they’ll scalp any white man who comes in their midst!” I think they finally parted over Holmes’ contention that the giant ants that lived on one island of the Neverlands archipelagoes could not exist because it was scientifically impossible for them to breathe. “You’re wrong,” cried Peter. “You’re wrong, I’ve seen them — I’ve slain one with my knife!”
He stamped his foot, and the impact launched him glittering into the air. He was gone before Holmes could speak.
I think Peter would have cheerfully made up the quarrel, had he remembered to go back to the Gardens, but he didn’t. Peter does forget things, and people, too, alas. Nearly a year went by, in which Holmes would patiently walk the byways of Kensington Gardens, looking for the paths that had once led him to the belvedere beyond the willow circle — paths that were no longer there and never had been. Holmes continued elsewhere his education in the lore of the Beyond Realms through other connections in London: through a strange young antiquarian who had a house on the Embankment, and the white-haired proprietor of a junk-yard at the end of Fetter Lane.
It was Peter who came to me, for help in finding Holmes again.
I was delighted to see him again. My illness weighed heavily on me just then, made worse by the fact that I knew John was nearly frantic, between the costs of caring for me, and fear that I wouldn’t pull out of it, and the sheer insanely mundane burden of running a house. I had dreamed more and more of the Neverlands, hearing in the distance the pounding of the surf on their shores, and the singing of the mermaids among the rocks, but this was the first time Peter appeared in one of the dreams. It wasn’t in the Neverlands, either, but in my own bedroom — John had taken to sleeping on the couch in his study, for fear of disturbing me — and when Peter swooped in through the window I could see he was almost incandescent with rage.
“Mary, where’s Holmes?” he demanded, as if it hadn’t been decades since we’d parted. He grabbed my hand, and as he pulled me to my feet I was as we all are in dreams, perfectly healthy and much younger than in real life. “You have to show me where he