Young Holmes

Chapter one: Introducing the Tightrope Walker

She was weird. That was pretty much the only thing you could clearly say about her character. Totally and genuinely weird.

If you ask her, she'll tell you something different, but I'd say, her story, this story, started on a cold September day in a bush in Cardiff. That's where she was hiding when she found the newspaper.

The newspaper itself wasn't in any way special; in fact, it actually was one of those where you did best not to believe everything that was written in it because most things were brutally exaggerated. But, it was a newspaper, and she was extremely bored without any other chances to distract herself from the fact that she was very likely going to be sitting in that bush for at least an hour without being able to move.

Now, she was usually quite good at sitting completely still because she'd distract herself by noticing all details and coming to conclusions about the things she'd see, but she knew the length and age of every single twig of that particular bush by heart.

She'd sit in that bush two times a month, every fifteen days to be exact, every time the orphanage she lived in played the same hide-and-chase game they'd always play. Those who were found and caught before they reached a safe point would have to help with the housework for the next fifteen days. She wasn't a particularly fast runner so she'd always hide in the same bush she'd found to conceal her thick, ginger curls best.

So there she was, reading a rubbish newspaper someone (completely understandably) had thrown into the bush. She only noticed the article when she read it the third time: "World famous detective Sherlock Holmes solves another baffling case" The case couldn't have been that baffling if all he gets for it is a tiny article in a shitty newspaper. She proceeded to read the article. Apparently this Holmes guy had helped the police trace a burglar. Wow. A burglar. How special. How baffling. Still, the way he's quoted in here, he seems about as excited about it as I am. Maybe even less.

"Time out!" The voice of the supervisor leading the game shrilled through the park. She quietly got up, snuck behind some trees so she wouldn't give her ever-the-same hiding place away and made her way back to the others. The younger kids quietly made way for her, looking ridiculously terrified. For some reason they were scared of her. Until she was thirteen years old, she didn't really know why as she had never actually done anything to them but for a matter of fact, she didn't care. It wouldn't have any use for her if they liked her. On the contrary, if they were scared of her they'd actually sometimes do chores that had been assigned to her without her even asking for it. Somehow she had earned the position of a powerful, terrifying superior whose anger no one wanted to attract. The weird thing was that she couldn't exactly remember why. When she had first arrived at an orphanage, back then as a terrified eight-year old herself, she'd told herself to forget everything about her past. When the police had asked her about her story, she told them exactly that. She'd told them, her face more serious than they'd ever seen it on a little child before; the rather deep, stitched up cut through and above her left upper lip giving her something scarily mature and strong; told them she'd chosen to forget because she'd known remembering all that would've severely traumatised her. She'd still remembered her name, Lucia Jane Winters, and basic things like her birthday, but everything else was gone. Buried deep.

Later, when she had turned thirteen years old, she'd gotten interested in what had happened back then. She'd gone to the police wearing a wig and lots of makeup she'd stolen somewhere to cover the scar on her upper lip and pretended to be researching stuff about old, unsolved cases for school. She'd found out that her father had been some kind of infamous drug dealer leading a large criminal network and that he was assumed to have killed her mother, a prostitute whose corpse had never been found. He had been shot dead in a police bust and his daughter, a weird, potentially traumatised child was living in an orphanage now. After that, she'd felt she'd known enough and left. She'd feel like she was walking on a thin rope she'd built above the depths of her memory. Any moment she could fall. She never tried to find out more again.

Now she was fifteen and didn't really care about the weird rumours going on about her. She almost enjoyed the fact that even some of the supervisors were a bit scared of her.

"Where were you hiding this time, Winters?" One of the boys asked her mockingly. He seemed to find it funny that someone as mature and standing-above-things as her would actually hide in the dirt to avoid having to do housework. "In your nightmares." She whispered, her voice rough and slightly deep for a girl, her accent clearly English but with the sometimes unusual pronunciation of someone who'd learned English at the time children usually learned to speak but then hadn't used it for some years. She turned away from him and walked on, straightening the slightly oversized trench coat she was wearing.

Later that day, when she was sitting at the library computer skipping through the day's news on the website of a proper newspaper, she found him again. "Detective Sherlock Holmes tracks down Gower Street burglar" This time he wasn't famous. This time the case wasn't baffling. But, this time there was a link to his partner's blog. She hesitated for a bit, then she opened the link and began to read. The page was full of slightly overdramatic entries about gloriously solved cases. About two hours later she reached the first entry. "Me and the madman. Me and Sherlock Holmes." She couldn't help but smile. The entire thing seemed so surreal. Usually, she tried not to be jealous of other people's lives, but this time she kind of was. Sherlock Holmes. Solving puzzles. As she scrolled back to the top and skimmed through the blog description, she found another link. "This is the link to his website, although I doubt anyone but him can make sense of the things he writes there" She clicked on it. His page was different than Watson's, different than anything else she'd ever read. At first she didn't understand anything. The words seemed mashed together like random shoes. Then, slowly, remembering what John Watson had written about the cases, she began to puzzle the whole thing together. She realised that Holmes was using similar techniques to the ones she'd practise when she was bored and looking at details. What from Watson's perspective seemed like magic was now, from Holmes' and apparently hers, just a big puzzle with different pieces suggesting different things.

A week later, she only realised she'd been sitting in front of the computer again smiling in marvel when the librarian, a nice tiny lady who'd usually known her as a very closed up, serious person; approached her and whispered: "Hey, Lou, found anything nice?" Lou tried to quickly close the page but it was too late. The librarian was already smiling. "Ah, I see. Sherlock Holmes. Pretty interesting job, right?" Don't let her think you find him interesting. She'll tell everyone. The headmistress will end up buying you a deerstalker. "Oh, no. I just found him looking through the internet. I was smiling at something else." "Ah, I see. Clearly." The woman went away and didn't see Lou going red. The thing was, most of the caretakers were trying to solve the problem that the younger kids were scared of her by trying to embarrass her. If she smiled at an internet page, she was sure the next day everyone was going to think she was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and that she'd been stalking him for ages. Which she had. Awkward.

The next week she was only waiting for one of the teachers to mock her. Make her lose the bit of weird authority she'd gained. Make her controllable again. They were probably scared of her starting to bully children. Or starting a riot against the supervisors. (Which she had successfully done in one of the previous orphanages she'd been in. She'd also been in a secret smuggler ring and been falsely accused of burning a school down.)

Then, on Sunday, she was called to the headmistress. That confused her. She hadn't done anything. She'd been to the headmistress quite often already, but then she'd always been able to correctly guess why. (Usually she'd done something weird and potentially illegal like trying to make meth in the school's chemistry lab. She'd actually succeed in that.) Now she didn't have a clue. She quietly entered. She never greeted the woman that kept her here. "So, I heard you're interested in Sherlock Holmes. I've got a surprise for you." Oh shit. A deerstalker. She didn't use the pause the headmistress had clearly made for her to ask what the surprise was. "I contacted Doctor Watson and told him you were really interested in Mr. Holmes and asked if you could stay somewhere in London and help with their work. I told him you had some serious skills in chemistry and deduction. He responded that you could stay with their landlady for two weeks or so. You're leaving tomorrow."