For all the answers, you would have to speak to my mother. But of what I know...
Rack did not take Amanda from us by violence, or by walking into the camp with no subterfuge and simply taking her when we were not looking, as you seem to believe, Pete. We were not that careless... perhaps we were stupid, but in a certain sense only. The man was intelligent enough and had resources enough to make it look official, for long enough to suit his purposes.
He came to the camp as others had before him, smartly dressed and in a car, with identification "proving" him to be a representative of the local Social Services, and paperwork allowing him to serve a compulsory care order and take Amanda away. As I said, this was not the first time local authorities had removed a child from our midst "for their own good", and we had no reason to believe this was not just another example of that. None of us had ever seen Rack before.
Believing it was an official decision, my mother fought the best way she could. If Rack had been who he said he was, defying him would have brought the police down on our heads and risked getting all the camp's children taken into care and the adults, perhaps, arrested for wilful endangerment or worse. So my mother, though not without argument and distress on all our parts, finally let them go. The next day, and for many days after that, she and my father went straight to the local government offices and made their presence felt.
It took three weeks before someone, wanting no doubt to get rid of them, finally looked up the family name and told them there was no record of any child by that name being legally removed from her parents. And then my mother turned to other means.
She does have some magic, you see, though I doubt she is as powerful as Romany and I know she is not as powerful as Amanda... or Rack. If she had known the truth when Rack came to us, she would have fought him with everything she had to prevent his getting his way. But as it was, all she could do was use all the ways she knew to find someone magically. By then, of course, Rack and Amanda were long gone, and we had no hint of where they might be. So she tried locator spells, and scrying, and other ways...
All failed. And she tried them again, and again, and again, every day for years, without results. I believe, now, it is because Rack knew she was not without power, and had acted to block her attempts. But please do not say that we did nothing to try to find her.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: You know...
Date: 2004-12-22 07:15 pm (UTC)Rack did not take Amanda from us by violence, or by walking into the camp with no subterfuge and simply taking her when we were not looking, as you seem to believe, Pete. We were not that careless... perhaps we were stupid, but in a certain sense only. The man was intelligent enough and had resources enough to make it look official, for long enough to suit his purposes.
He came to the camp as others had before him, smartly dressed and in a car, with identification "proving" him to be a representative of the local Social Services, and paperwork allowing him to serve a compulsory care order and take Amanda away. As I said, this was not the first time local authorities had removed a child from our midst "for their own good", and we had no reason to believe this was not just another example of that. None of us had ever seen Rack before.
Believing it was an official decision, my mother fought the best way she could. If Rack had been who he said he was, defying him would have brought the police down on our heads and risked getting all the camp's children taken into care and the adults, perhaps, arrested for wilful endangerment or worse. So my mother, though not without argument and distress on all our parts, finally let them go. The next day, and for many days after that, she and my father went straight to the local government offices and made their presence felt.
It took three weeks before someone, wanting no doubt to get rid of them, finally looked up the family name and told them there was no record of any child by that name being legally removed from her parents. And then my mother turned to other means.
She does have some magic, you see, though I doubt she is as powerful as Romany and I know she is not as powerful as Amanda... or Rack. If she had known the truth when Rack came to us, she would have fought him with everything she had to prevent his getting his way. But as it was, all she could do was use all the ways she knew to find someone magically. By then, of course, Rack and Amanda were long gone, and we had no hint of where they might be. So she tried locator spells, and scrying, and other ways...
All failed. And she tried them again, and again, and again, every day for years, without results. I believe, now, it is because Rack knew she was not without power, and had acted to block her attempts. But please do not say that we did nothing to try to find her.