The Wizard of London Read Online Free PDF Page A

basket tomorrow!”
    “Thankee,
Sarah Jane,” Nan called back, belatedly; then, just in case these strange
creatures would think better of their generosity, she made the basket and
herself vanish into the night.
    ***
    Isabelle
listened to Sarah’s version of the meeting at the gate, and nodded
gravely. She had already gotten Karamjit’s narrative, and the two
tallied. Both Sarah and Karamjit sensed nascent Talent in the child; this must
have been the Talent that she herself had sensed a day or two ago, and had sent
out a gentle lure for. It looked as if her bait had been taken.
    Probably
the little girl in question had very minimal control over what she could do; in
her world, it would be enough that she had the sense of danger before something
happened to her. That might well be enough… for the short run, at any
rate. But her own husband had been a street boy collected from a sad and
dead-end life by another Talented benefactor, and if this child was just as
salvageable, Isabelle would see to it that she was taken care of as well.
    “Thank
you, Sarah,” she told the child standing before her. “I’d
like you to make friends with this little girl, if she will let you. We will
see what can be done for her.”
    Sarah
beamed, and it occurred to Isabelle that the poor little thing was very lonely
here. So far, she had made no close friends. This chance encounter might change
that for the better.
    Good.
There was nothing like catching two birds with one stone.
    ***
    Nan
came earlier the next day, bringing back the now-empty basket, and found Sarah
Jane waiting at the gate. To her disappointment, there was no basket waiting
beside the child, and Nan almost turned back, but Sarah saw her and called to
her before she could fade back into the shadows of the streets.
    “Karamjit
is bringing the basket in a bit,” the child said, “There’s
things Mem’sab wants you to have. And—what am I to call you?
It’s rude to call you ‘girl,’ but I don’t know your
name.”
    “Nan,”
Nan replied, feeling as if a cart had run over her. This child, though younger
than Nan herself, had a way of taking over a situation that was all out of
keeping with Nan’s notion of how things were supposed to
be
. The
children of the rich were not supposed to notice the children of the poor, except
on Boxing Day, on which occasion they were supposed to distribute sweets and
whatever outworn or broken things they could no longer use. And the rich were
not supposed to care if the children of the poor went to bed hungry, because
being hungry would encourage them to work harder. “Wot kind’o place
is this, anyway?”
    “It’s
a school, a boarding school,” Sarah said promptly. “Mem’sab
and her husband have it for the children of people who live in India, mostly.
Mem’sab can’t have children herself, which is very sad, but she
says that means she can be a mother to us instead. Mem’sab came from
India, and that’s where Karamjit and Selim and Maya and Vashti and the
others are from, too; they came with her. Except for some of the
teachers.”
    “Yer
mean the black feller?” Nan asked, bewildered. “Yer from
In’juh, too?”
    “No,”
Sarah said, shaking her head. “Africa. I wish I was back there.”
Her face paled and her eyes misted, and Nan, moved by an impulse she did not
understand, tried to distract her with questions.
    “Wot’s
it loik, then? Izit loik Lunnun?”
    “Like
London! Oh, no, it couldn’t be less like London!” Nan’s ploy
worked; the child giggled at the idea of comparing the Congo with this gray
city, and she painted a vivid word picture of the green jungles, teeming with
birds and animals of all sorts; of the natives who came to her father and
mother for medicines. “Mummy and Papa don’t do what some of the
others do—they went and talked to the magic men and showed them they
weren’t going to interfere in the magic work, and now whenever they have
a patient who thinks he’s cursed, they call