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It really was a good thing that the fairies took Sherlock Holmes away instead of John Watson.
Hm. Perhaps I should explain.
As you can clearly deduce, dear reader, this is not a mystery involving crime nor the process of deductive reasoning. If those are more to your liking then you may depart without harming anyone’s feelings.
All right. I shall begin at the beginning. And by the beginning, I mean when Sherlock Holmes and John Watson began their retirement in Sussex.
#
Sherlock Holmes moved into Hyacinth Lodge not long after the century began. Whether it was an old family holding or if he just liked the location and the look of the place is not known. And it wasn’t long before Dr. Watson came to join his old companion – first with weekend visits, and then for longer and longer stays, and before long the two men were sharing a Sussex cottage as they'd once shared a London flat. No one would look at the stocky old beekeeper tending his hives or the grey-mustachioed geezer buying vegetables in the market and associate them with the lean, sharp-eyed sleuth and his steel-true, blade-straight compatriot solving crimes in the old century's London; and that was just how they liked it. The locals still called them "newcomers" even after a decade had passed.
The two men were dear friends, beloved companions, so inseparable that they were indeed clandestinely espoused to each other. They had loved each other for decades. But they still had occasional disagreements or outright quarreled with each other, as two strong-willed people will do, either about Watson's writing or Holmes' habits or the minutiae of village life. The folk who lived at the outskirts of town knew when they'd had such a row because that would be when Mr. Holmes would go outside and play his violin – his sweetest and loveliest pieces. If he was especially cross after an argument, he'd seek out the few wild spots that still stood here and there, and express his anger in solitude.
Then in early April of 1912, Holmes and Watson both just… vanished. They disappeared so thoroughly that rumors spread that they'd been aboard the Titanic and had gone down with the ship like so many others.
No, that's not what happened.
#
One morning in early April a letter arrived from Sherlock Holmes' older brother. But instead of an invitation to dinner or tea, it asked his sibling to take up espionage work in America. Effective immediately. Precarious. Of unknown duration. Holmes could be gone for months or years, if he was not killed by the work. Yes, the work was important, and could temper the wind rising in the East; he would be briefed in full should he accept the assignment. Respond with all speed.
Holmes' mind leapt at the thought of what he could do to slow or stop the whispers of war coming from Europe. But Watson's heart was frozen with fear and aflame with anger at the thought of losing his life's companion yet again.
Watson pleaded with Holmes to refuse the request, and Holmes snapped that England needed him more than the local vicar needed a few jars of honey.
"You've spent a lifetime serving your country and your king!" Watson thumped the table. "Can you not leave this century's troubles to this century's men?"
"I can still use my brain and my wits! And who are you to speak of modern troubles when you write ridiculous stories about prehistoric reptiles and medieval knights!"
They stared at each other, angry, silent.
"I'd hoped we could live in peace here." Watson's voice cracked even on a whisper.
"There's precious little peace in the world right now, John – not even in this room." Holmes seized his violin case and strode out the door. "I need quiet."
Watson spent a miserable evening alone in the silent cottage, dining on a ham sandwich and cup of tea and unable to write a single new sentence in any of his current work. When he did not see nor hear signs of Holmes returning, he made sure the door was left unlocked and finally went upstairs, where he made himself sleep for a few hours in the solitary bed.
But Sherlock Holmes was not in the bed when Watson awoke the next morning. Nor was he sleeping on the sofa downstairs. The door was still unlocked.
He's left me already –
Without his clothes? No sign of packing? Not so much as a note?
Watson opened the door to the outside. The dew on the grass was untouched. No footprints toward the shed where his spouse kept his beekeeping tools and supplies. None toward the garage. The buzzing was the only sound. It had been so damned quiet…
So quiet. In the past when they'd had a row, he could hear, faintly, the sound of the violin. He'd heard nothing the night before.
Watson put on his coat and took up his walking stick. He was a writer now more than he'd ever been a doctor or a soldier, but his lifetime of learning from his brilliant sleuth did not desert him.
There. Where the bedewed grass had been flattened by his lover's footsteps last night. Past the hives already humming with morning activity. Across the downs. Along the cliffs. Ah, Sherlock had been angry indeed to have left such a clear trail for John to find, and for him to find the remotest and oldest copse in the area for his playing.
Into the woods.
And there was his violin case, lying open on a large rock between two immense gnarled trees.
Forcing himself to hold utterly still as a stag in autumn and look at the area instead of running forward in a blind panic (Switzerland, John, remember Switzerland), Watson remained where he was by one of the ancient oaks. He looked up and across and down and around.
Surrounding that rock was a faint outline of a ring, made by the caps of small, pale blue mushrooms. And despite the woods being full of small lives, not a single beetle nor butterfly nor bird was to be seen within that ring; not even an ant crawled upon the stone.
It was impossible that Sherlock Holmes would leave John Watson even in anger without a single trace. He'd left a goodbye note when he was going to be murdered, for god's sake.
Eliminate the impossible.
John Watson looked at all the evidence, and his face set in rage.
1) There were fairies in these ancient woods.
2) Sherlock Holmes had been taken by the Fair Folk.
#
Now, reader, you see why it's a good thing that Holmes was taken away rather than Watson. Sherlock Holmes, in a thousand years, would never have arrived at that deduction had Watson vanished into thin air leaving behind that same blue ring. He would still be blundering through those ancient woods looking for rational explanations until the grief drove him mad.
And that's also why it's a very good thing that it was John Watson left behind to deduce what had happened there. For while Watson certainly knew his way around a human body in the way of a medically-trained man of science, he had also grown up listening to his grandmother.
#
His music. His playing must have attracted their attention, and he'd been so preoccupied with his brother's note and their quarrel that he'd dismissed the forest anomaly of the lifeless ring. And the angrier Holmes got, the sweeter his playing became, as if he was trying to soothe his own ruffled feathers.
Conclusion: Sherlock Holmes had walked into the oldest part of Sussex, sat in the middle of a fairy ring, and played some of the most beguiling mortal music in existence on the monarch of violins. Quod erat demonstrandum
John Watson wanted to scream into this copse, demand the Folk return their captive to him now, unmolested, to curse their cold immortal hearts. But that was dangerous, and if they were bored or insulted they could kill him outright.
No, it had to be something else they craved, something of the mortal world that they did not have as their own. That was the way to get their attention.
For a moment he whimsically considered dragging the old upright piano from the cottage and regaling the People of Peace with his mediocre renditions of Gilbert and Sullivan. No, Sherlock was the musical genius of the family, not he. Music was not what Watson could use to gain entry. What were his skills? He could write (ridiculous stories, apparently), garden, knit, fire a revolver, repair and drive a car, throw together a decent lamb curry…
He nodded.
He turned and hobbled back to the cottage as if he'd just been taking a morning stroll. All the while he quietly murmured a prayer – not against the forces of long-forgotten pagan gods, but that there was enough sugar and butter for what he had in mind.
#
In the story of Sir Orfeo, the famed bard regains his stolen wife Heurodis from the elf king by playing his harp as could no other mortal man, cheering the stony hearts of the Folk and winning her back to his side.
Dr. Watson was no master of any musical instrument. But he knew the Fey.
#
And how was Sherlock Holmes doing? the reader may ask.
Not well, poor fellow. For the same reason that he'd have been going mad had Watson gone missing. He was surrounded by evidence that should have been eliminated first from his mind and which now overwhelmed him.
The woods looked as they had when he'd sat on the rock to play. But a pale glow like moonlight had risen from the ground. He'd exclaimed in dismay and tried to leave the clearing, only to have the woods whirl around him as if he were spinning, and he found himself walking in the direction of the boulder again. He tried again at a run (or as fast a run as a walking stick will allow), and again the horizon twisted and he faced the boulder. He closed his eyes and walked away and barked his shins on the rock, almost falling over.
The blue light surrounded him. As did a crowd of winged people that hovered around him, each about the size of a child's wooden soldier. Their eyes were dark and shining as an owl's, and as inhuman. Play, the word echoed in his mind over and over, in different tones and registers as if spoken by different people – people with lovely voices which clearly revealed a history of murder. Play.
Play. He'd just started playing one of his pieces when the blue light had appeared; he'd nearly dropped the Stradivarius. He looked down at the instrument still in his hands and back up to the pitiless shining eyes.
In all his past dabblings in mind-altering substances – morphine, cocaine, opium, absinthe, brandy, tobacco, sleep-deprivation, inanition – he had never experienced a hallucination or vision such as these tiny winged people. A self-administered pinch to his forearm eliminated dreaming.
Had he been drugged? Was that blue mist some horrid gas being developed by the War Department? It was a relief to find a rational explanation.
The eyes of the strange little delirium tremens glittered. Play. Play. Play. Play.
He'd … he'd done some of his best music while deep in the throes of a narcotic or hallucinogen. This could be his mind doing this to him.
He lifted his violin to his chin and raised the bow.
If he played for a while, perhaps this gas would disperse enough to leave him clear-headed enough to leave the woods.
Bach.
The eyes glittered brighter at the sweet tones, but did not warm by a fraction.
#
Watson set the pans in the oven. He went off to pack a few things, and returned to make himself eat something.
The Fair Folk had their weaknesses. Every story made that clear. There were parts of mortal life that they desired, things they could not make for themselves. Violin music was one of them, as God had gifted that instrument alone with free will. Other things included human infants to join their ranks since they had no children of their own (not a problem for two men, Watson couldn't help thinking wryly). Some farmers left bowls of milk or cream out as bribery to keep them from harming or abducting livestock – though most of those losses were actually anthrax or neighbouring chieftains at work. The immortal creatures of the woods also loved mortal breads, for they did not cook or bake themselves.
By the time he was ready, it was early afternoon. It was dangerous, so dangerous, to venture into fey woods as night approached.
Then I'd best be quick about it.
He shouldered his bag; with the covered tin in one hand and his walking stick in the other, he passed the beehives for the third time that day. Leaving Holmes another night in their hands was not an option.
He went back to the cliffside copse and walked straight to the rock where the open violin case still lay. The rock was still surrounded by a perfect ring of pale blue mushrooms. Already the silent woods were darker than when he'd been there that morning.
He set everything down on the rock and took several deep breaths after unlading himself. Then he released the latches that held the tin cover in place and lifted it off the plate beneath. He set down the cover and picked up the plate in both hands. "I have a gift for you," he said.
The plate grew ice-cold. A pale blue mist arose from the mushrooms, surrounding him and obscuring the woods beyond the first trees in the clearing. He set his teeth and locked his knees and held fast.
And if John Watson had had any final doubts about his gut-feeling regarding Holmes' fate, the sweet violin music he heard the next moment vanquished them. He could not see Sherlock. But oh Lord that was his dear man's playing.
Small people with wings, eyes glittering, hovered before him. Mortal! A voice inside him as if his inner thoughts became an angel choir screaming in harmonious rage.
He met their eyes as coldly as he could even though he was sure they could hear his pounding heart. He was on a battlefield. Show no fear.
#
His fingers were growing sore. He'd been playing so long and wanted to stop. He'd had quite enough of this experiment or hallucinogen. He'd go home… if he could walk away from this rock without walking into it again. Or he could keep playing while he tried to sort all this out.
Strange smell of this gas. It smelled like honey – like his honey, the honey his bees produced. No, that was definitely his honey. And vanilla. A hint of cinnamon. Under that – butter, sugar.
He was too far from the cottage to smell John's baking. Was he fever-dreaming in bed while John coaxed his appetite?
But his fingers were sore on the violin strings; his neck and chin ached. No dream nor fever. Why did he smell John's honey cake? And, under that, the familiar scents of John himself? An umpteenth glance around the misted clearing showed only the winged people. No sight nor sound of John. But his nose knew differently.
#
They whirled around him like large angry bees. They wanted to snatch away what he held. But they couldn't, and that made them angrier.
"You have something of mine." Watson spoke as if reminding George Tobias to return his hedge-trimmer. "I would like it back. Perhaps we can make a trade."
Give us. Give us. Again the angry angel-choir in his head.
They wanted that cake. They wanted that mortal concoction so badly. But while it rested on its current serving plate – a (thoroughly washed) steel hubcap from the car – they dared not touch it, nor the man who bore it.
"Give me your captive."
He walked into our circle.
Watson looked around at the trees that formed the misty-walled palisade. "Such a tiny remnant of an old woods. Yet no lore at all about people disappearing here. Which there would be if you took all trespassers captive. You didn't take him away for walking in here, or even for sitting in your circle unawares. You took him because he played his violin." Again he held up the tantalizing pastry and their wings took on the pitch of a swarm of hornets. "I have a gift you crave, too. But to get this, you must release your hold on the other man."
The angel chorus became angrier. He is ours. Ours. Foolish mortal man! If we keep him, he will live forever.
Watson tightened his grip on the cake-plate to still his trembling hands. Oh, that phrase pierced him to the heart.
Their fight. What had their fight truly been about? Sherlock had been … enthused about this spy-work Mycroft wanted. He'd seen it as a chance to be useful to his country, to be patriotic, even at his age. How could an old Army veteran not recognise that feeling? For the first time in years, the game was afoot and the old hound pulled at the lead, eager to be released at the halloa.
And how had he, John, reacted? With anger. He'd wanted to hang on to Sherlock, to keep him in Sussex all to himself.
If I keep him, he will not be endangered, will not die.
Foolish mortal, indeed.
Lose him to the Fey, or lose him to an American's bullet?
No. It was not Watson's place to keep or lose Holmes, but to let the man make his own choices.
At least this time he told me that he was thinking about disappearing...
First, he had to free him from this unnatural prison.
He glared into the pitiless eyes of the flittering creatures. "Let me see him." He blew softly across the freshly-made cake to waft the tantalising scent to them.
They agitated, angry and greedy. They clustered together close before him, blocking his vision for a moment, then parted ways. And there was Sherlock Holmes sitting on the big rock, bow-arm flying back and forth as Vivaldi now filled the clearing.
Relief and joy flooded Watson that almost made him go limp. He seized the icy cake-plate harder before it nearly tumbled from his hands, shaking at how close he'd come to losing his bargaining chip. He wanted to shout the man's name, run to him, embrace him with relief. But age and experience once again reined him in. He stayed still and silent, watching and listening to the man play, and employing his lover's methods to see how he fared.
Sherlock Holmes played with no acknowledgement of Watson so close by; he very likely couldn't see or hear him at the moment. He looked haggard and tired – had he been playing all night? His fingers moved lightly on the neck of the violin but with a twitch known to the man who'd bandaged them more than once, scolding his idiotic musical genius for overdoing.
If this was how he looked after a day and night in this place, their boast of keeping him forever was a lie. With no understanding of mortal limits, these heedless and heartless Folk would keep him playing that sweet music till he dropped dead of exhaustion...
Sweet music. Holmes played sweet music to soothe his own heart when he was angry (or here, under duress). But when he was in a contemplative mood? Or bored? Or mischievous?
Watson scowled to keep back the threatening smile as revelation dawned. More lore of the Folk; another arrow in his quiver.
Again he faced the Fey. "Let me speak to him." He held up the cake for a moment and nodded.
They hated bargaining with mortals. They hated a mortal getting the better of them. But they loved mortal sweets more.
#
"Sherlock."
John's voice was right beside him, behind and to the right, as if he'd been here all along.
He started, and his bow skittered across the strings as he turned to look at the man.
#
The momentary screech of the violin strings sent the creatures flitting and crying out in distress. Just for a moment.
But a moment of split-second observation is all one needs, if one is the world's foremost master of the art of observation and deduction.
Again, John Watson scowled down a smile.
#
John was here. Now the horrible little hallucinations were bothering John. But that string-scrape had driven them away for a second.
Good. He was tired and his hands hurt. This would come to him very easily right now. He raised his bow again, and began.
#
Watson set his teeth and gripped the ice-cold steel of the cake plate for dear life instead of stopping his ears.
Nothing – not the loudest bagpipe, not the most out-of-tune piano – matches the physical pain of hearing a violin played poorly. Sherlock Holmes outdid his most contentious fiddle-scraping moods at Baker Street, making the priceless Stradivarius screech and peal in anguish.
In as much anguish were the fey, whirling in panicked circles around both men. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
"Let! Us! Go!" Watson shouted over the squealing, screeching cacophony. Knowing, as Sherlock Holmes did not, that not only did the Fair Folk have a craving for mortal baked goods, but they could not bear loud, discordant noises.
One last, enraged whirl around them both, and … they were gone. The pale blue mist lifted. The violin noise (thank GOD) stopped.
Holmes blinked and stared at Watson. "John."
They were still on a battlefield. "When we're out of here, I'll tell you everything. Come with me."
"I-I couldn't leave. The fog, some kind of drug…"
"You can leave now. Get up."
Hissing at his tender fingers, Holmes locked the Strad away in its case and stood.
"A moment." Watson stepped forward and carefully tilted the steel-hubcap cake plate to slide the confection onto the boulder where Holmes had been sitting. A deal was a deal. "Now we leave. Hold these." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of nails.
Holmes took them and exclaimed at the icy touch. Watson smiled. "They can't take you now even if they wanted to – and after that last performance they won't want to."
They walked out of the pale-blue mushroom circle, and – they were in an ordinary copse of ordinary trees on an evening in April that threatened rain. Holmes exhaled in relief.
Watson turned to face the circle, and Holmes cried out in distress for a moment, one hand reaching out. John took his hand and smiled. "No, darling, I'm safe. I'm not going back in. I just want to make sure any other passers-by stay safe also. Wait here."
Watson had more nails in his pack – enough for him to push into the earth all the way around the outside of the mushroom ring. When that was done he pulled out a box of salt and made a small thin, unbroken line around the outside of the nails.
And only when he was done did John Watson finally embrace his lost spouse. They clung for a long moment, shaking.
"I'll tend these when we get home." Watson picked up a hand and brushed a kiss on the puffy fingers. "You must be exhausted. Can you walk? If not, I can go get the car–"
"No, I can walk." For a moment there had been a panicked look in Holmes' eyes. "Just stay with me."
Smiling, Watson handed the man his walking-stick and took up his own. "I'm not going anywhere."
The hobbling walk back was slow but steady; they entered the cottage only a few minutes before the rain started. Switching on the electric lights, Watson sat Holmes down at the kitchen table and put a large brandy in his hand: "To hell with what your doctor said."
Holmes finished the snifter and devoured the food set before him before almost melting in the chair. Watson tended and bandaged the man's raw fingertips and got him upright again, nearly carrying him up the stairs. When Holmes was abed, Watson collapsed beside his spouse and was just as deeply asleep in the next minute.
#
You see, then, how very lucky it was for both parties that Sherlock Holmes blundered into the fairy ring and that John Watson was the one to get him out. In such a place, cold logic is no substitute for cold iron.
#
They talked a good deal when both were up and about again. This time they listened to each other, too.
"John, I apologise for the rude things I said about your writing. You clearly entertain your readers even if I am baffled by the subject matter."
"And I'm sorry I questioned your patriotism, Sherlock. It was purely selfish. I'd wanted us to stay here and leave the outside world to its own destruction." John would have had the pair of them living in their own enchanted, never-changing circle like those heartless creatures. He summoned the courage he'd needed to face down the immortals. "Tell your brother what you truly wish to do."
"I will, dear." Holmes looked out across the ocean to the far-off shore of France. "If we can prevent the world's destruction, or even lessen it a little, we ought to do so."
Watson nodded. "I will miss you terribly and fear for your life, of course. Perhaps I can find something useful to do here in the meantime."
Holmes looked at Watson. "You are not staying behind. I have already telephoned Mycroft and told him what I told the King of Bohemia. His response: 'If he wills.'"
The former soldier's heart leaped and pounded – this time with eagerness and fear. "America? Both of us?"
"Both of us." Holmes smiled tenderly. "If the previous forty-eight hours has taught me nothing else, John, it is that I would fare badly in a foreign milieu without my Boswell along."
That… that changed everything. He'd been terrified of once again enduring the loss he'd already felt for 3 years. But this – dangerous work, but together – this set his own blood racing and he felt himself pulling at the traces, eager for the release and the cry.
"We must leave immediately and tell no one, nor give a hint." Holmes looked downcast. "I'm afraid my bees will die, but needs must."
Watson beamed. "Oh, as to that? Sherlock Holmes, do you want to see what happens when you step into a fairy circle and defeat them?" He gestured to his partner to come outside. "I discovered this on our way home."
Puzzled, Holmes followed the other man out to the bee-field. To his surprise and consternation, Watson walked straight up to the hive-boxes. The bees flew toward Watson and swarmed around him. He merely looked around at the whirling insects, in a situation that normally would have panicked Watson even with a veil and gloves on.
Then the bees flew to Holmes and encircled him the way the flitting creatures had. And he heard another chorus of voices in his mind – but instead of a cold and pitiless beauty it was brisk and feminine and curious, like a squad of factory workers speaking to their foreman. You are well? You are well?
Watson smiled. "No, darling, you're not imagining that. I hear them too. I told them we were both well and to continue their excellent work."
Holmes smiled broadly. Of course they would survive, accomplish their mission, and come home safely. If the immortals were helpless before the two of them, mere Chicago gangsters were hopeless.
He looked around at his bees. Ladies. I am well. But I am going away for many lifetimes, or even forever. You must all tend yourselves, or follow the Queen and find a new home, until we return. When you smell us again in this household, you may come back.
We will. We will. We will. The bees flew back to the hive boxes.
#
The bees were the only ones Holmes and Watson told, so to the rest of Sussex the two men just vanished into thin air. Left an abandoned cottage and empty hive-boxes, but they themselves were gone.
The War soon put everything else out of folks' minds, of course. And after Armistice those two didn't so much come back one day as just reappear in the usual places – Watson at the market and Holmes rebuilding hives that once again hummed full of bees. They never did talk about where they'd been or what they'd done, but by then that was normal for everyone.
One afternoon while Watson was having a pint, the vicar wanted to show him something. It was a book his sister's eldest had sent home, acquired from a soldier who'd been with the Entente on the Pacific coast. The book was all in Japanese characters, but the cover featured a slavering dog and the silhouette of a man in a deerstalker smoking a pipe. And Watson just laughed. "They wanted to make him immortal, but I've already done so." And he never did explain that one.
Oh, me? Who am I and why do I know so much about what really happened? Well, a secretary sees and hears things that most people don't, my work during the War made me an expert at keeping secrets, the only things I chatter about are boring subjects like typewriter ribbons and strange shorthand, and I have deduced a thing or two from my own observations of my employers. Dr. Watson's new stories about fairies are full of enchanting details that sound like firsthand experience. And Mr. Holmes talking to his bees is just him being eccentric and unremarkable – but when the bees respond to Mr. Holmes there's something afoot.