Curiosity Kills

 

            Police headquarters was abuzz with talk about the woman that had been found in a deep freezer. It seemed that there was always something weird happening in Bilbury City, but most of those things turned out to be silly pranks. People were always calling in about robberies and vandalism, but this was different.

            The body had been found in a vacation home, on the outskirts of the city, near the edge of the woods. The owner had gone out to do some fishing near the home, and when he came back to put his catch in the freezer, there was a woman’s body, curled up and frozen solid.

            The police were summoned, and the process started of trying to figure out what had happened. The problem that they ran into immediately, was that they couldn’t identify who the woman was. Her fingerprints, photos, and DNA had been run through every kind of database, and they had nothing.

            That’s why Clarence had been called in. He always ended up with all the really weird cases, and he had an amazing solve rate for them. He had a knack for figuring out the strange and unexplainable things that happened in Bilbury City. Now Clarence was on his way to the morgue to begin his investigation.

            Walking into the building, Clarence flashed his detective’s badge, and was shown to a room where the strange woman’s body was laid out. As soon as the sheet was removed from her face, Clarence knew immediately why her identity was impossible to discover. This woman was actually a wood nymph. Of course she wouldn’t be in any database.

            Clarence saw her wooden skin and the foliage in her hair – both dead giveaways – and knew at once that the case was practically solved. However, Clarence didn’t show any surprise, because he was the only one in the entirety of Bilbury City who was actually a Wood Sprite. Humans couldn’t see magic.

            Bilbury City lay on the edge of Hawthorn Forest, a sprawling wooded area that spanned hundreds of square miles. This was the reason for most of the strange happenings in the city. It was Clarence’s job to protect the forest, and to keep the humans away from it.

            Keeping the humans out of the forest was easy enough, but keeping those creatures that lived in the forest away from the humans was the problem.

            Clarence looked down at the wood nymph and sighed. How did she end up in a freezer? He would have to contact the Queen of the Nymphs, Cornflower, who would definitely not be pleased to lose one of her trees. He would also have to come up with some way to explain to the police what might have happened in a nonmagical way.

            Maybe the wood nymph had crawled into the freezer out of curiosity and later became trapped. Nymphs were curious beings. It seemed likely that that’s what had happened.

            Clarence looked up at the medical examiner as he thought about what he could say. Thank goodness the only thing he saw was a woman’s body. Humans seemed to be terrified of anything different from what they knew. That’s why it was so easy to keep them out of the forest. The mysterious aura and the haunted stories were enough to keep them afraid.

            For the next half an hour, Clarence and the medical examiner discussed the case. Clarence said he would do his best to find out what had happened.

            That night, Clarence entered the forest and sought out Cornflower. He found her in her court, already awash in tears, surrounded by the rest of the wood nymphs. “Oh, Clarence!” she cried, with rivers of water flowing down her face. “Bluebell’s tree is dying, and Bluebell is nowhere to be found!”

            Clarence gazed softly at Cornflower and said, “I believe she’s the one that was found in the human city. She’s dead. I’m sorry.”

            Cornflower let out a fresh wail and said, “I knew that she must be dead, because of her tree. But Clarence, we need her body to be buried underneath her tree. Can you bring her to us?”

            “Of course,” Clarence said consolingly. He left the court and started making plans. Maybe he could pretend to turn the case over to the state and send away the body and all the evidence. He would have to falsify a large number of documents to appease the humans. They really loved their paperwork. However, he was confident that he could get Bluebell to her home in the next few days.

            A Wood Sprite’s job was never dull. Hopefully, the next time he was needed on a case would be the kind of stuff he was usually called in for. He would take a strange robbery over a dead body any day.