Air Apparent

MYSTERY

Wira was uneasy. Her husband Hugo had been absent half an hour, and it wasn’t like him to stay away longer than he said. Especially not this night.

For tonight, after seventeen years of marriage, Hugo’s father, Good Magician Humfrey, had finally removed the Spell of Hiding that kept the storks from being aware of Wira no matter how ardently she summoned them. She was fifty-five years old chronologically, thirty-three physically, and her thyme was starting to wilt. If they waited much longer, the storks would never deliver to her, regardless of any spell. This time the signal would go out. She knew that Hugo was eager to send that signal, and so was she.

Where was he? He had gone to the cellar to fetch a celebratory bottle of Rhed Whine. That should have taken no more than ten minutes, and he would hardly have dawdled. Something was wrong.

Wira got off the bed, donned a nightrobe and slippers, and made her way out of their chamber. She pattered down the familiar stairs to the ground floor, and thence to the cellar. She knew every crevice of the castle, of course, and made no misstep.

But as she reached the cellar floor, she experienced a faint tinge of uneasiness. Her magic talent was Sensitivity, and though it normally applied to people, plants, and animals, it could sometimes attune to situations. This situation was uncomfortable.

“Hugo?” she called tentatively.

There was no answer.

The tinge became less faint. In fact it intensified into a wary semblance of dread.

“Hugo, where are you?” she called less tentatively.

There was definitely an untentative silence.

Something was wrong. Not only was Hugo absent, there was something else in the cellar. She smelled its misty essence.

She snapped her fingers. Little magic echoes bounced off the cellar walls and floor, verifying its dimensions. Except for a muffled place on the floor, the vague shape of a man lying down.

Had Hugo fainted? But this wasn’t Hugo. The shape was vaguely wrong, and of course the smell.

She squatted and reached forward to touch it. Her fingers encountered a clammy kind of flesh. It was definitely not quite alive.

Wira screamed.

The Gorgon, Humfrey’s Designated Wife of the Month, and coincidentally also Hugo’s mother, was the first to respond. “Wira, dear,” she called from the head of the cellar stairs. “What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“Oh, Mother Gorgon, there’s a dead man here, and I think he’s not quite human. And Hugo is gone.”

There was half a pause. “This bears investigation. Let me fetch a lamp.”

Wira waited by the body while the Gorgon got the lamp. Wira did not need light, of course, as she was blind. She had always been that way, and really did not mind it as long as she was in familiar territory. But others had some kind of problem with darkness.

She heard the returning footsteps, smelled the curling vapors of the lamp, and felt its slight warmth. There was also the faint sibilance of a small nest of snakes. The Gorgon was back and ready to take charge.

Wira had always gotten along well with the Gorgon. That was partly because the Gorgon’s face tended to turn others to stone, but Wira could not see it, so was not at risk. That enabled them to be friends without precautions. The Gorgon was actually a very nice person, but strangers tended to be prejudiced by her magic face, and were nervous about her snake hair. The snakes were normally friendly, and could be good company on a dull day.

“It is definitely a body,” the Gorgon said. “It’s not breathing and it’s cold, so it must be at least halfway dead. But who killed it, and what is it doing here?”

Wira had a horrible thought. “Oh Mother Gorgon, you don’t suppose Hugo could have—have—”

“Of course not, dear. Hugo doesn’t have a murderous bone in his body. Not even a stiff one, as far as anyone knows. When are you two going to signal the stork?”

“Tonight,” Wira said, blushing. Sometimes the Gorgon’s language was a trifle serpentine. But she had reason: her sister the Siren was long since a grandmother. She seemed to have forgotten about the stork-hiding spell.

Now the Gorgon had a nasty thought. “You don’t suppose he could have gotten cold feet, or whatever?”

“Never,” Wira said positively. “He wanted to—to do it. To be a father.”

The Gorgon sighed. “He’s so young.”

“Mother, he’s forty-three.”

“Exactly.”

Wira didn’t argue the case. Technically she was a dozen years older than Hugo, but she had been youthened to sweet sixteen to marry him, so seemed a decade younger. Mothers always thought their sons were too young. “He wouldn’t have left without word to me. Especially not tonight. Something must have happened to him.”

The Gorgon was focusing on the body. “I have another foul thought. Maybe somebody killed this poor man, dumped the body here, and abducted Hugo to frame him for the murder. That would explain everything.”

“Except where Hugo is, and who the victim is, and who the real murderer is,” Wira agreed.

“Yes, there may be a detail or three to fill out. We’d better get Humfrey in on it.”

“But it’s nighttime,” Wira protested. “He gets grumpy when disturbed at night.”

“He gets grumpy any time,” the Gorgon said. “You don’t see much of it because you have an ameliorative effect on him. I think if he’d been half a century younger he would have married you himself.”

“Mother Gorgon!” Wira exclaimed, horrified.

“Oh come on now, girl. You know he’s taken with you.”

“Because I’m his daughter-in-law.”

“That, too. Anyway, he already has about five wives too many; he certainly doesn’t need any more. Now I’m going to get him up, grumpy or not, and bring him down here to fathom the situation. It will give him another pretext to bury himself in the Book of Answers.”

“Oh, I hope the Answer is there!” Wira breathed. “I miss Hugo so much!”

“He’s been gone only half an hour, dear.”

“Yes, and it’s awful.”

The Gorgon gazed at her. Wira could tell when someone was looking at her; there was a certain subtle mood. “You really do love him, don’t you, dear.”

“Yes!”

“And that is why I am taken with you, Wira. Without you he’s pretty much a rotten-fruited gnome.”

“He is not!”

“Of course not, dear,” the Gorgon agreed, smiling knowingly. Wira could also tell when a person was smiling; it curled up the corners of the voice. Then the Gorgon went off to roust out the Good Magician.

Wira remained in the cellar, uncertain what else to do. She knew the Gorgon meant well, but the woman sometimes unnerved her. Meanwhile, there was this awful situation to deal with. Could someone really have tried to frame Hugo for the murder? To make it seem that he had committed a terrible crime, and fled the scene? But how could such a thing have been done here, in the Good Magician’s Castle? The castle was enchanted to exclude all but the most powerful magic.

Yet something of the sort had happened. That was frightening in itself.

She checked the shelves along the cellar wall, just in case there was some indication that would help resolve the mystery. She knew the stored potions by the shapes of their bottles and faint odors. The first shelf held bottles of pills from pharm-assist plants that a pill pusher had harvested for the Good Magician long ago. The pills lent certain temporary talents to those who swallowed them. There were gra-pills that enabled folk to wrestle well, purr-pills that caused folk to turn reddish blue while feeling very satisfied, and ap-pills that kept doctors away. Also princi-pills for those lacking in ethics, sim-pills for those with too much intellect, and pill-fur coats for those who didn’t mind stealing clothing. All was in order, undisturbed.

The next shelf contained assorted gloves or mitts reserved for particular Challenges: an amity, which made a person very friendly; an enmity, which had the opposite effect; a hermit, which was a solitary lady’s glove; an imitate that enabled a person to copy things; a comity that made the wearer courteous; an emit that caused a stink; an omit that somehow had been left off the list; a submit that could be used underwater; a permit that allowed almost anything; and an admit that added a glove and also let a person into the castle. At the end of the shelf was a vomit that she knew better than to touch. None had been disturbed. The problem seemed to be confined to the (ugh) body.

“Ludicrous, woman,” Humfrey’s voice came grumpily from above. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

“Do you want poor Wira to stay in the cellar all night?” the Gorgon’s voice retorted.

Wira had to smile, wanly. The Gorgon was using her to make Humfrey mind. It was true that the Good Magician liked her, though Wira was sure it was not in the way the Gorgon had implied. Wira was sensitive to his moods, and so could manage him to an extent. And of course she was helpful around the castle. That was important, as the castle needed constant attention. The assorted Wives came and went every month, and Hugo wasn’t much for detail work, so that left it mostly up to Wira. Fortunately she liked details.

The Good Magician arrived at the scene. “That’s not exactly a dead body,” he said immediately. The situation had temporarily abolished his grumpiness.

“What is it, dear?” the Gorgon inquired.

“A mock-up of some sort. Possibly it’s a transformation of a body, to mask its identity. I will have to look it up in the Book of Answers. Meanwhile, put it away somewhere.”

“But won’t it stink?” the Gorgon asked. Wira winced.

“No. It’s in stasis. It won’t change at all, until we discover the magic binding it and nullify it.”

This was interesting. Frozen animation? Not ordinary magic indeed.

Humfrey went up to his study to look in the Book. Wira and the Gorgon took hold of the body, which was surprisingly light, and dragged it to a dusty alcove. The Gorgon put a sheet over it, covering it like old furniture. That should do until they got to the bottom of this mystery.

Then they went up to the Good Magician’s study to learn what the Book of Answers said.

“Bleep!” Humfrey swore. “Bleepity bleep!” Wira felt the curtains singeing. This was a stage or four beyond mere grumpiness.

“What is it, dear?” the Gorgon asked, alarmed. Even her little snakes were hissing with concern.

“The Book’s been scrambled!” he said, outraged. “It’s useless.”

This made both Wira and the Gorgon pause, precisely together. How could the sacrosanct Book of Answers have been changed?

“Let me see, dear,” the Gorgon said. “Oh, my! The entries are in random order.”

“Exactly. The first entry is on Earl the Pearl, whose talent is to create peril. The second is on the sisters Katydid and Katydidn’t. It’s all out of order.”

“You’re right, dear, as always: the Book of Answers has been ruined. Whatever are we going to do?”

“There is only one thing to do,” he said grumpily. “I must put it back in order.”

“Of course, dear. How long will that take?”

“Several months.” He was so angry he seemed about to explode like an overripe pineapple.

“Then we had better leave you to it. Come Wira; we have other things to do.”

“But Mother Gorgon, I need to find my husband! Who knows what mischief has befallen him?”

“Trust me, dear.”

And of course Wira did trust her. The Gorgon had something in her sinuous mind.

They went downstairs, where the Gorgon fixed Gorgonzola cheese and slightly stoned biscuits. They were very good; she had had decades of practice using her talent to make interesting delicacies.

“You know we can’t wait months to rescue Hugo,” Wira said.

“Neither can we tolerate Humfrey’s royal grumpiness for that period,” the Gorgon agreed. “So we simply have to leave him to his chore and do something ourselves. Perhaps the other wives will help. They don’t want to deal with unremitting grumpiness either.”

“But what can we do?” Wira asked despairingly. “We have no idea who did what or why!”

“It’s a mystery. We must do what folk always do with mysteries: We must solve it. As I see it, there are four parts: Who, why, where, and how.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Who did it. Why did he do it. Where is he now. And how did he bollix the Book. That would have required some very special magic.”

“So it would,” Wira agreed, appreciating the significance of it. No one but Humfrey really understood the Book, let alone had the ability to affect it.

“Some of it we can fathom on our own. Obviously the murderer knew that Humfrey would know his identity immediately, so he fixed it so Humfrey wouldn’t: by scrambling Humfrey’s reference. But murderers always leave some inadvertent traces that a good detective can fathom.”

“They do?”

“Yes. It’s in every mystery novel. I have read a pile of them. The trick is to find the traces and figure out their meaning. It’s never easy, but always possible, for the right detective.”

“You are a detective?”

“By no means, dear. That will be your duty.”

“Mine! But I know nothing of such things. I can’t even go out beyond the castle.”

“Well, certainly I can’t. I’m here only a month at a time, by special arrangement. The rest of the time I have my movie career. You, in contrast, are here continuously, and you also have excellent reason to solve the mystery and recover Hugo. So that task naturally falls to you. I confess that your liability may be a problem.”

“Let’s skip the euphemism. I’m blind. I would fall into the next hole in the ground if I walked out far beyond the castle. I do well here only because I have memorized every cranny of the castle.”

“That is a problem,” the Gorgon agreed. “Yet no one would suspect you. It’s the perfect cover.”

“The perfect disaster, you mean! I’d be helpless. I was fully functional only with Hugo at my side, and now—” The realization that he was gone suddenly overwhelmed her, and she wept.

“I understand, dear,” the Gorgon said. “I really do. He’s my son. I’m only trying to devise a way to get him back soon.”

“Yes, of course,” Wira said bravely, stifling her tears. “I’ll do what I can. But I can’t do it alone.”