Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

Elyn poked about the village a bit more and found that Granny’s opinion of the old man was universal. No one liked him. Everyone had a story about his penny-pinching and attempts to cheat them. Everyone also admitted that they did their level best to cheat him back. It was a point of honor among the young men to try to steal fruit from his orchard or poach his fish or game. There was no way of telling who had begun the acrimony, but at this point there was going to be no putting an end to it.

She managed to meet the suspect striplings and couldn’t make up her mind whether or not they would be capable of the sheer amount of work and ingenuity that the “haunting” would take. They weren’t stupid, but they also didn’t show the level of intelligence of, say, Rod, much less Alma—and that was what such a task would take, if it was a purely mischief-making endeavor and not the unconscious breaking out of some sort of Gift.

They also all seemed as genuinely terrified as their parents. Elyn was fairly good at telling when she was being lied to even without the use of the Truth Spell, and she didn’t get that impression now.

But when she met up with the rest back at the threshing barn, she discovered that Rod had already made up his mind about one thing.

“We can’t just huddle in here like a lot of scared children,” he said firmly. “And I don’t for a moment think that these are demons or ghosts. I think it’s people. In fact, I think it’s some of the villagers. Maybe some of the younger ones.”

“But, Rod!” Laurel exclaimed indignantly. “I told you that story they told me, and you still don’t think it’s disturbed spirits?”

“Wait, wait, what story?” Elyn demanded.

Laurel looked both excited and apprehensive as she turned toward their mentor. “Some of the older boys told me that around early apple harvest time, they went up to the old man’s orchard to steal fruit, like always. They heard the sound of someone digging! At night! And then they didn’t think anything more about it, except that the next day, Stony Rill was as red as blood! And it was that night that the hauntings began! They think the old man was looking for treasure and dug up a burial mound! And now the spirits are angry!”

“All the more reason to think it’s them,” Rod snorted, as Alma got an extremely thoughtful look on her face. “What a ridiculous story!”

“It’s not ridiculous!” Laurel stamped her foot and crossed her arms angrily over her chest. “You just don’t like it because they didn’t tell you!”

“I don’t like it because it’s not logical.” Rod’s chin looked even more granite-like than usual. “If it was spirits that were disturbed because the old man was digging their bodies up, why haunt the village? What did the villagers do to them? Why not haunt the old man?”

“Well, maybe they are! And they just spread out! Or maybe they are trying to get the villagers to do something about the old man!” Her eyes flashed with anger. “Just because you don’t believe in ghosts—”

Behind them, a couple of the Companions whickered as if laughing.

“Then they’ve got to be stupider in death than they are in life,” Rod countered. “Because you’d think it would be a lot easier to just appear in front of people and say politely, ‘That old man is robbing our graves, and we’d hate to have to make you miserable because of what he is doing, but if you don’t make him leave us alone, we’ll just have to make all of you as unhappy as we are.’ Instead, they’re getting nothing done except to make people terrified at night!”

Arville’s head swiveled back and forth between them, as if he were watching a game. Ryu just lay flat on the ground with his ears over his paws.

“Oh!” Laurel said, driven to speechlessness with anger. “Oh!”

“Anyway, you just stay here in the barn and tell Elyn what you think of me,” Rod said ungallantly. “I’ll be outside with Arville and Ryu and the Companions laying a trap. Because it’s not ghosts, it’s people, and I am going to catch them!”

“Wait, what?” Arville replied, looking panicked.

“If you don’t need me,” Alma said carefully. “I do have something I need to check in here.”

:Mayar?: Elyn thought.

:He asked us, and it’s a good plan. Certainly better than Laurel’s idea of holding a séance to find out what the spirits want. If it’s people, we will catch them. If it is demons, well, you will find us stampeding into the barn fast enough. And if it is spirits, we can try Laurel’s idea.: Mayar seemed quite satisfied with whatever it was that Rod had decided.

Well, she was supposed to be getting them to think and plan for themselves, wasn’t she? And they had certainly plunged into this, not only with enthusiasm, but with some forethought.