Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes Read Online Free PDF Page A

sign of human agency, in Kensington Gardens or elsewhere.
    Peter said, “They’re my friends. Wendy is to be my mother, and take care of me, and look after my Lost Boys in a secret house below the ground.”
    Holmes nodded gravely. “You are renowned for looking after your friends,” he said, as one recalling a legend — or a set of instructions, as to what one must say to a dragon or a fairy — “in the face of any and all danger to yourself.”
    Peter smote his chest proudly. “I am.” Peter never could resist renown.
    “Then promise me this,” said Holmes. “When the Darling children return home — as return they will, one day — promise me that you will see to it, that they will do so on the day after they departed. That way,” he added, “you will have your knife back in only two days.”
    The fairies were gone, and the moon sinking, as Holmes walked back toward the paths of the more populated parts of the Gardens. In the shadows of the willow circle he stopped, as if at a sound, and turning his head his eyes met mine. He had encountered the fairies, and Peter — not to mention the fearsome Gallipoot — without a blink, but now his eyes widened, first startled, then filled with shocked grief. “Mrs. Watson?” he asked softly.
    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