The Wizard of London

ISABELLE Hellen
Harton waited on the dock beside the gangplank for the last of the steamer
passengers from Egypt and Africa to disembark. She was not the only person
waiting there; there were a number of friends and relations, eager to greet
returning soldiers posted to distant climes, tourists, hunters, adventurers,
businessmen, and assorted missionaries. But she was one of a small handful of
quiet, soberly-dressed folk who were waiting for some very special passengers
indeed.

The
vast majority of the passengers had come from Egypt; it was a popular
destination for those English who could afford it, especially in the winter.
There were not many soldiers; they generally returned on troopships. Those who
disembarked from this passenger liner were pale, thin, sometimes missing a limb
or an eye; invalided out and sent home by the transport that they could get on
first—or best afford.

For
those who were returning under happier circumstances, there were the usual gay
greetings, crowds swirled, made noise, and left. And at last, the final
passengers made their solemn way down the gangplank.

A
little gaggle of children, none older than ten, all very quiet and subdued,
were accompanied by their guardians; three young English nannies, none pretty,
all as subdued as their charges.

Isabelle
fingered the letter in her pocket; she didn’t have to read it again to
know what it said. And what it did
not
say in words written on the
page, but in those hopes and fears scribed between the lines, in thought and
emotion.

Dear
Mrs.Harton: As terrible as it is for us, we must send our daughter Sarah out of
the dangers of Africa and back to the more healthful climate and safety of
England. As we have no relatives with which to entrust our child, we cast about
for a school, and yours has come highly recommended by those we trust. She is
our only child, and very dear to us. We have been told that you are kind and
caring, which speaks more to us than that you have French tutors and dancing
masters
.

Not
mentioned, of course, was that the Harton School was not expensive either. A
pair of missionaries would not be able to afford a great deal.

So—
I
suspect they must have asked about a great many schools before they came to us
.
There was a dusting, a faint glow of true Magic about the letter; not that
Isabelle was a Magician herself, but she was sensitive enough to detect it in
those who were. The writer was no Master of any Element, but was surely a
practitioner of Earth Magic. Not surprising, in one who had gone to Africa to
be a Healer and serve at the side of another.

And
the father—Doctor Lyon-White—was he, too, Magician as well as
Healer? That hadn’t occurred to Isabel until now, and as she waited, she
brushed her fingers across the surface of the envelope and under the first
faint trace, discovered another, fainter still. Yes, another Earth Magician,
and this one, a Master.

But
if this little daughter had been so gifted, the parents would have sent her to
another Elemental Mage to be schooled.
So as she is not an incipient
Elemental Mage, and they have little money to afford the only school that has a
reputation for training the otherwise gifted among the other Elemental Mages,
they must have been quite desperate
.

Once
again, it was what was not written in the letter that resonated to
Isabelle’s own finely-tuned—and “extra”—senses.

Sarah
has gifts we cannot train
, the letter whispered to her.
Nor can anyone
we know. Those we trust tell us that you can
—

But
they could not put that into words, of course; they were writing to a stranger,
who might
not
be as they had been told, who might think them mad for
saying such things.
Rumors of our special students at best among their set;
and among missionaries and the like, only the assurance that we are kind and
gentle
. They could only be sure of this: that those who ran this school
would be good to a little girl who had been sent so far away from everything
she knew and loved.

Isabelle
wondered just what it was that little Sarah Jane
had
been gifted with,
then dismissed it. Whatever it was, she would find out soon enough.

Down
the gangplank at last came the line of little girls and boys, two by two, with
one nanny leading and the other two following, all of them quiet and round-eyed
and apprehensive, subdued, perhaps, by the gray northern skies, the smokes, the
looming dark city that was so completely unlike Cairo or Timbuktu.

Isabelle
had eyes for only one of them, a slender, big-eyed child in a shabby coat a
little too large for her, who looked with reserve, but no fear, all around her.
Not pretty, brown-haired and brown-eyed, a little wren of a child. This was
Sarah Jane. She knew it, felt it, and felt something under that surface that
told her that Doctor and Mrs.Lyon-White had been very wise in sending their
child to the Harton School for Boys and Girls.

So
it was Isabelle, of all of those waiting for their charges, who stepped forward
first, and presented her credentials to the leading nanny. “I am
Mrs.Harton, and I am here for Sarah Jane Lyon-White,” she said in a firm
voice as the nanny looked the letter over with hesitant uncertainty. And before
the nanny could say anything more, she turned to the child she had singled out,
and held out her hand, and put all of the welcome and love she could into her
voice and gaze. “Come along, my dear. Your parents asked me to meet
you.”

The
child’s eyes lit up as she met Isabelle’s gaze with her own. There
was relief there, too, a relief that told Isabelle how lonely the poor thing
had been on this journey, and how much she had hoped to find a friend at the
end of it.

Without
asking for permission, she left the group and took Isabelle’s hand
trustingly.

There
was some fuss about getting the child’s things sorted out from those of
the rest of the children, and then a bit more nonsense with getting a cab.
During the entire time, Sarah did not say more than ten words altogether, but
she was good and patient, despite a growing fatigue that showed in her pinched
face and shadowed eyes. Finally, they were settled in the cab, and alone at
last. As the horses drew away from the curb, Isabelle put her arm around the
child, and immediately felt the girl relax into the embrace. For her part, she
felt her own heart respond without reserve to the trusting child.

“My
dear, you are welcome with us,” Isabelle said softly. “I
won’t insult your intelligence by saying I’ll be like a mother to
you, and that you’ll never miss your home. You don’t know me, and I
don’t know you. But in my school, besides learning our lessons, we set a
great deal of store by taking care of each other, and being good to each other,
and I
do
say that you’ll have friends here. I hope you’ll
be happy. If you are not, it will not be because the rest of us have not tried
to help you be as happy as you can be so far from home.”

Sarah
looked up at her. And hesitated a moment. “My mother said—”
she began, then swallowed, and went on. “My mother said you might be able
to teach me things. The kind of things M’dela was teaching me?”

With
that name came a flash out of Sarah’s memory, of a very black man with
all the usual accouterments of a shaman… a man, as seen through
Sarah’s eyes, with an aura
and Talents
and possessed of great
wisdom.

And
Talents…

“Yes,
my dear, I can.” She tapped Sarah’s nose gently. “And we will
begin by teaching you how to keep your thoughts and memories out of other
people’s heads unless you
intend
for them to see such
things!”

Sarah
gaped at her a moment and then laughed, and Isabelle smiled. So. It was well
begun.

***

Isabelle
sat in her office, reviewing the progress of each student in the day’s
lessons. The Harton School was not all that large, and she liked to know where
each of her pupils stood in his or her studies on a daily basis, in no small
part because if any of the teachers fell ill, it would be Isabelle who took
over the class until the teacher was well again. She felt it, the moment her
husband crossed the threshold, of course, the moment when everything inside her
relaxed and said, “Yes, my other self, my other half, is at my side
again.” Her heart rose, as she looked up from her work, feeling him draw
nearer with every moment.

Her
door was open—it was never closed, unless she was having a private
conference—and he limped in. Frederick Harton was a fine figure of a man
despite his limp, with broad shoulders, the unruly wheat-colored hair of the
Cockney street urchin he had once been, and merry blue eyes. “Well, my
angel,” he said, with that open grin she cherished, “How is your
newest imp?”

“Not
an imp at all,” she replied, getting up and coming around to his side of
the desk to nestle unself-consciously in his arms. “Truth to be told,
she’s a little dear. A touch of telepathy, both receptive and projective,
I believe, and as young as she is, it may get stronger. I can’t tell what
else. She has the most remarkable set of tales about a pet of hers that she
left in Africa that I hardly know whether or not to believe, however!”

At
his look of inquiry, she told him some of the stories little Sarah Jane had
imparted to her about her Grey Parrot. “I know
she
believes them
to be true—I am just not certain how much of it is imagination and how
much is real.”

Frederick
Harton looked down at her somberly. “This shaman gave her the bird in the
first place, did he not?” he asked.

She
nodded.

“And
he said the bird was to be her protector?”

“He
did. And I see where you are going.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully.
“Well, in that case, I think we should assume the tales are true. I wish
she had been able to persuade her mother to allow her to bring the bird
here.”

“If
the bird is meant to be with her, a way will be found,” he replied, and
kissed the top of her head. “And I believe if a way
is
found,
little Sarah will prove to have more interesting Talents than merely a touch of
telepathy!”

He
let her go, and rubbed his hands together. “Now, I am famished, my love!
I trust Vashti has prepared one of her excellent curries?”

She
had to laugh at that and reached up to ruffle his hair. “How fortunate we
are that your tastes are so economical! Yes, of course she has, and she is
waiting in the kitchen to spoil her favorite man!”

***

The
object of their discussions was tucked up in bed in her own room, although it
was a room that had another empty bed in it, feeling very mixed emotions. She
was horribly homesick, and longed for her parents and her parrot, Grey, and her
friends among the African tribe that had adopted the little family with an
intensity that was painful—but she was not as unhappy as she had been on
the journey here. In fact, there was a part of her that actually felt as close
to happy as she had been since she left. Mem’sab Harton was everything
Mummy and Papa had promised, and more, kind and warm and always with a
comforting hug for anyone who looked in need of one. The journey from Africa to
London had been sheer misery. Once alone with the children, the nannies had
been horribly standoffish and cold, scolding anyone who cried or even looked as
if they wanted to. The children had had to share the tiniest of cabins, two to
a bunk. The food had been bland and mostly cold. The other children had not
been particularly nice, and one of the boys, Nigel Pettigrew, had three older
brothers who had made this trip before him and he was full of stories about
“schools” and how terrible they were until all of the children were
ready to weep with fear as they got off the ship.

For
Sarah, at least, the nightmares had vanished like morning fog, and now she felt
sorry for the others, who were not being sent to the Harton School, even though
some of them had looked down their noses at her because she wasn’t being
sent to a “first-class academy.”

When
Mem’sab had determined that Sarah’s tummy wasn’t going to
revolt, she’d done her best to give her a supper like the ones she was
used to, the same as the grown-ups were getting. Most of the children and both
cooks were from India rather than Africa, so it was, at best, an approximation,
and she had milk for the first time in as long as she could remember (milk
tended to go “off” very quickly in the Congo). She’d never
had a “curry” before, but it all agreed with her, and if it tasted
strange, it also tasted good, and didn’t make her feel half starved like
the watered-down tea and toast and thin broth and gruel which was all the three
English nannies seemed to think suitable for children on the ship. Now she was
in a soft bed, with enough blankets to make a tropic-raised child finally feel
warm again, and with a little fire in the grate to act as a night light. She
sighed, and felt all of her tense muscles relax at last.