Предуведомление.

Данная книга из серии «Ходячий замок», сделана из двух: «House of Many Ways» и «Дом ста дорог», автор Диана Уинн Джонс.

В данном файле - первая половина книги (8 глав).

Причины такого "обрезания" следующие:

1. Лень, плюс знание о двух последующимх пунктах.

2. Файл из двух книг будет слишком "тяжел" (в некоторых читалках, открываться будет плохо).

3. По своему опыту знаю, что упорства читателя хватит, ну максимум на три главы, но если ВАША сила воли достоточна для прочтения половины книги... то, ВЫ сможете прочитать ее и целиком в оригинале, без подсказок.

Я старался соотнести по смыслу английский текст с его переводом, часто переводчик вводит в текст "отсебятину", но ведь это не "подстрочник", цель переводчика донести смысл... Но отсутствие «разжеванных» ответов, как мне кажется, будет лучше стимулировать мысль учащегося.

Полноценно работать с данным пособием можно на устройстве, поддерживающем гиперссылки: компьютер или различные «читалки» с сенсорным экраном, желательно со словарем.

Успехов!

W_cat.

 

[

2

] Chapter One

IN WHICH CHARMAIN IS VOLUNTEERED TO LOOK AFTER A WIZARD'S HOUSE

[] "Charmain must do it," said Aunt Sempronia. "We can't leave Great-Uncle William to face this on his own."

[] "Your Great-Uncle William?" said Mrs. Baker. "Isn't he-" She coughed and lowered her voice because this, to her mind, was not quite nice. "Isn't he a wizard?"

[] "Of course," said Aunt Sempronia. "But he has-" Here she too lowered her voice. "He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off in order to cure him, you see, and someone has to look after his house. Spells, you know, escape if there's no one there to watch them. And I am far too busy to do it. My stray dogs' charity alone-"

[] "Me too. We're up to our ears in wedding cake orders this month," Mrs. Baker said hastily. "Sam was saying only this morning-"

[] "Then it has to be Charmain," Aunt Sempronia decreed. "Surely she's old enough now."

"Er-" said Mrs. Baker.

[] They both looked across the parlor to where Mrs. Baker's daughter sat, deep in a book, as usual, with her long, thin body bent into what sunlight came in past Mrs. Baker's geraniums, her red hair pinned up in a sort of birds' nest, and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She held one of her father's huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book, and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.

[] "Er…did you hear us, dear?" Mrs. Baker said anxiously.

"No," Charmain said with her mouth full. "What?"

[] "That's settled, then," Aunt Sempronia said. "I'll leave it to you to explain to her, Berenice, dear." She stood up, majestically shaking out the folds of her stiff silk dress and then of her silk parasol. "I'll be back to fetch her tomorrow morning," she said. "Now I'd better go and tell poor Great-Uncle William that Charmain will be taking care of things for him."

[] She swept out of the parlor, leaving Mrs. Baker to wish that her husband's aunt was not so rich or so bossy, and to wonder how she was going to explain to Charmain, let alone to Sam. Sam never allowed Charmain to do anything that was not utterly respectable. Nor did Mrs. Baker either, except when Aunt Sempronia took a hand.

[] Aunt Sempronia, meanwhile, mounted into her smart little pony-trap and had her groom drive her beyond the other side of town where Great-Uncle William lived.

[] "I've fixed it all up," she announced, sailing through the magic ways to where Great-Uncle William sat glumly writing in his study. "My great-niece Charmain is coming here tomorrow. She will see you on your way and look after you when you come back. In between, she will take care of the house for you."

[] "How very kind of her," said Great-Uncle William. "I take it she is well versed in magic, then?"

[] "I have no idea," said Aunt Sempronia. "What I do know is that she never has her nose out of a book, never does a hand's turn in the house, and is treated like a sacred object by both her parents. It will do her good to do something normal for a change."

[] "Oh, dear," said Great-Uncle William. "Thank you for warning me. I shall take precautions, then."

[] "Do that," said Aunt Sempronia. "And you had better make sure there is plenty of food in the place. I've never known a girl who eats so much. And remains thin as a witch's besom with it. I've never understood it. I'll bring her here tomorrow before the elves come, then."

She turned and left.

[] "Thank you," Great-Uncle William said weakly to her stiff, rustling back. "Dear, dear," he added, as the front door slammed. "Ah, well. One has to be grateful to one's relatives, I suppose."

***

[] Charmain, oddly enough, was quite grateful to Aunt Sempronia too. Not that she was in the least grateful for being volunteered to look after an old, sick wizard whom she had never met. "She might have asked me!" she said, rather often, to her mother.

[] "I think she knew you would say no, dear," Mrs. Baker suggested eventually.

"I might have," Charmain said. "Or," she added, with a secretive smile, "I might not have."

[] "Dear, I'm not expecting you to enjoy it," Mrs. Baker said tremulously. "It's not at all nice. It's just that it would be so very kind—"

[] "You know I'm not kind," Charmain said, and she went away upstairs to her white frilly bedroom, where she sat at her nice desk, staring out of her window at the roofs, towers, and chimneys of High Norland City, and then up at the blue mountains beyond. The truth was, this was the chance she had been longing for. She was tired of her respectable school and very tired of living at home, with her mother treating her as if Charmain were a tigress no one was sure was tame, and her father forbidding her to do things because they were not nice, or not safe, or not usual. This was a chance to leave home and do something—the one thing—Charmain had always wanted to do. It was worth putting up with a wizard's house just for that. She wondered if she had the courage to write the letter that went with it.

[] For a long time she had no courage at all. She sat and stared at the clouds piling along the peaks of the mountains, white and purple, making shapes like fat animals and thin swooping dragons. She stared until the clouds had wisped away into nothing but faint mist against a blue sky. Then she said, "Now or nothing." After that she sighed, fetched her glasses up on the chain that hung round her neck, and got out her good pen and her best writing paper. She wrote, in her best writing:

[] Your Majesty,

Ever since I was a small child and first heard of your great collection of books and manuscripts, I have longed to work in your library. Although I know that you yourself, with the aid of your daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Hilda, are personally engaged in the long and difficult task of sorting and listing the contents of the Royal Library, I nevertheless hope that you might appreciate my help. Since I am of age, I wish to apply for the post of librarian assistant in the Royal Library. I hope Your Majesty will not find my application too presumptuous.

Yours truly,

Charmain Baker

12 Corn Street

High Norland City

[] Charmain sat back and reread her letter. There was no way, she thought, that writing like this to the old King could be anything other than sheer cheek, but it seemed to her that the letter was quite a good one. The one thing in it that was dubious was the "I am of age." She knew that was supposed to mean that a person was twenty-one—or at least eighteen—but she felt it was not exactly a lie. She had not said what age she was of, after all. And she hadn't, either, said that she was hugely learned or highly qualified, because she knew she was not. She hadn't even said that she loved books more than anything else in the world, although this was perfectly true. She would just have to trust her love of books shone through.

[] I'm quite sure the King will just scrumple the letter up and throw it on the fire, she thought. But at least I tried.

[] She went out and posted the letter, feeling very brave and defiant.

* * *

[] The next morning, Aunt Sempronia arrived in her pony-trap and loaded Charmain into it, along with a neat carpet bag that Mrs. Baker had packed full of Charmain's clothes, and a much larger bag that Mr. Baker had packed, bulging with pasties and tasties, buns, flans, and tarts. So large was this second bag, and smelling so strongly of savory herbs, gravy, cheese, fruit, jam, and spices, that the groom driving the trap turned round and sniffed in astonishment, and even Aunt Sempronia's stately nostrils flared.

[] "Well, you'll not starve, child," she said. "Drive on."

[] But the groom had to wait until Mrs. Baker had embraced Charmain and said, "I know I can trust you, dear, to be good and tidy and considerate."

[] That's a lie, Charmain thought. She doesn't trust me an inch.

[] Then Charmain's father hurried up to peck a kiss on Charmain's cheek. "We know you'll not let us down, Charmain," he said.

[] That's another lie, Charmain thought. You know I will.

[] "And we'll miss you, my love," her mother said, nearly in tears.

[] That may not be a lie! Charmain thought, in some surprise. Though it beats me why they even like me.

[] "Drive on!" Aunt Sempronia said sternly, and the groom did. When the pony was sedately ambling through the streets, she said, "Now, Charmain, I know your parents have given you the best of everything and you've never had to do a thing for yourself in your life. Are you prepared to look after yourself for a change?"

[] "Oh, yes," Charmain said devoutly.

"And the house and the poor old man?" Aunt Sempronia persisted.

[] "I'll do my best," Charmain said. She was afraid Aunt Sempronia would turn round and drive her straight back home if she didn't say this.

[] "You've had a good education, haven't you?" Aunt Sempronia said.

[] "Even music," Charmain admitted, rather sulkily. She added hastily, "But I wasn't any good at it. So don't expect me to play soothing tunes to Great-Uncle William."

[] "I don't," Aunt Sempronia retorted. "As he's a wizard, he can probably make his own soothing tunes. I was simply trying to find out whether you've had a proper grounding in magic. You have, haven't you?"

[] Charmain's insides seemed to drop away downward somewhere, and she felt as if they were taking the blood from her face with them. She did not dare confess that she knew not the first thing about magic. Her parents—particularly Mrs. Baker—did not think magic was nice. And theirs was such a respectable part of town that Charmain's school never taught anyone magic. If anyone wanted to learn anything so vulgar, they had to go to a private tutor instead. And Charmain knew her parents would never have paid for any such lessons. "Er…," she began.

[] Luckily, Aunt Sempronia simply continued. "Living in a house full of magic is no joke, you know."

[] "Oh, I won't ever think of it as a joke," Charmain said earnestly.

[] "Good," said Aunt Sempronia, and sat back.

[] The pony clopped on and on. They clopped through Royal Square, past the Royal Mansion looming at one end of it with its golden roof flashing in the sun, and on through Market Square, where Charmain was seldom allowed to go. She looked wistfully at the stalls and at all the people buying things and chattering, and stared backward at the place as they came into the older part of town. Here the houses were so tall and colorful and so different from one another— each one seemed to have steeper gables and more oddly placed windows than the one before it—that Charmain began to have hopes that living in Great-Uncle William's house might prove to be very interesting, after all. But the pony clopped onward, through the dingier, poorer parts, and then past mere cottages, and then out among fields and hedges, where a great cliff leaned over the road and only the occasional small house stood backed into the hedgerows, and the mountains towered closer and closer above. Charmain began to think they were going out of High Norland and into another country altogether. What would it be? Strangia? Montalbino? She wished she had paid more attention to geography lessons.

[] Just as she was wishing this, the groom drew up at a small mouse-colored house crouching at the back of a long front garden. Charmain looked at it across its small iron gate and felt utterly disappointed. It was the most boring house she had ever seen. It had a window on either side of its brown front door and the mouse-colored roof came down above them like a scowl. There did not seem to be an upstairs at all.

[] "Here we are," Aunt Sempronia said cheerfully. She got down, clattered open the little iron gate, and led the way up the path to the front door. Charmain prowled gloomily after her while the groom followed them with Charmain's two bags. The garden on either side of the path appeared to consist entirely of hydrangea bushes, blue, green-blue, and mauve.

[] "I don't suppose you'll have to look after the garden," Aunt Sempronia said airily. I should hope not! Charmain thought. "I'm fairly sure William employs a gardener," Aunt Sempronia said.

[] "I hope he does," Charmain said. The most she knew about gardens was the Bakers' own backyard, which contained one large mulberry tree and a rosebush, plus the window boxes where her mother grew runner beans. She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered.

[] Aunt Sempronia clattered briskly at the knocker on the brown front door and then pushed her way into the house, calling out, "Coo-ee! I've brought Charmain for you!"

[] "Thank you kindly," said Great-Uncle William.

[] The front door led straight into a musty living room, where Great-Uncle William was sitting in a musty, mousecolored armchair. There was a large leather suitcase beside him, as if he were all ready to depart. "Pleased to meet you, my dear," he said to Charmain.

"How do you do, sir," Charmain replied politely.

[] Before either of them could say anything else, Aunt Sempronia said, "Well, then, I'll love you and leave you. Put her bags down there," she said to her groom. The groom obediently dumped the bags down just inside the front door and went away again. Aunt Sempronia followed him in a sizzle of expensive silks, calling, "Good-bye, both of you!" as she went.

The front door banged shut, leaving Charmain and Great-Uncle William staring at each other.

[] Great-Uncle William was a small man and mostly bald except for some locks of fine, silvery hair streaked across his rather domed head. He sat in a stiff, bent, crumpled way that showed Charmain he was in quite a lot of pain. She was surprised to find that she felt sorry for him, but she did wish he wouldn't stare at her so steadily. It made her feel guilty. And his lower eyelids drooped from his tired blue eyes, showing the insides all red, like blood. Charmain disliked blood almost as much as she disliked earthworms.

[] "Well, you seem a very tall, competent-looking young lady," Great-Uncle William said. His voice was tired and gentle. "The red hair is a good sign, to my mind. Very good. Do you think you can manage here while I'm gone? The place is a little disordered, I'm afraid."

[] "I expect so," Charmain said. The musty room seemed quite tidy to her. "Can you tell me some of the things I ought to do?" Though I hope I shan't be here long, she thought. Once the king replies to my letter…

[] "As to that," said Great-Uncle William, "the usual household things, of course, but magical. Naturally, most of it's magical. As I wasn't sure what grade of magic you'll have reached, I took some steps—"

[] Horrors! Charmain thought. He thinks I know magic!

[] She tried to interrupt Great-Uncle William to explain, but at that moment they were both interrupted. The front door clattered open and a procession of tall, tall elves walked quietly in. They were all most medically dressed in white, and there was no expression on their beautiful faces at all. Charmain stared at them, utterly unnerved by their beauty, their height, their neutrality, and above all, by their complete silence. One of them moved her gently aside and she stood where she was put, feeling clumsy and disorderly, while the rest clustered around Great-Uncle William with their dazzling fair heads bent over him. Charmain was not sure what they did, but in next to no time Great-Uncle William was dressed in a white robe and they were lifting him out of his chair. There were what seemed to be three red apples stuck to his head. Charmain could see he was asleep.

[] "Er…haven't you forgotten his suitcase?" she said, as they carried him away toward the door.

[] "No need for it," one of the elves said, holding the door open for the others to ease Great-Uncle William out through it.

After that, they were all going away down the garden path. Charmain dashed to the open front door and called after them, "How long is he going to be away?" It suddenly seemed urgent to know how long she was going to be left in charge here.

[] "As long as it takes," another of the elves replied.

Then they were all gone before they reached the garden gate.

 

[

64

] Chapter Two

IN WHICH CHARMAIN EXPLORES THE HOUSE

[] Charmain stared at the empty path for a while and then shut the front door with a bang. "Now what do I do?" she said to the deserted, musty room.

[] "You will have to tidy the kitchen, I'm afraid, my dear," said Great-Uncle William's tired, kindly voice out of thin air.

[] "I apologize for leaving so much laundry. Please open my suitcase for more complicated instructions."

[] Charmain shot the suitcase a look. So Great-Uncle William had meant to leave it, then. "In a minute," she said to it. "I haven't unpacked for myself yet."

[] She picked up her two bags and marched with them to the only other door. It was at the back of the room and, when Charmain had tried to open it with the hand that held the food bag, then with that hand and with both bags in the other hand, and finally with both hands and with both bags on the floor, she found it led to the kitchen.

[] She stared for a moment. Then she dragged her two bags round the door just as it was shutting and stared some more.

"What a mess!" she said.

[] It ought to have been a comfortable, spacious kitchen. It had a big window looking out onto the mountains, where sunlight came warmly pouring through. Unfortunately, the sunlight only served to highlight the enormous stacks of plates and cups piled into the sink and on the draining board and down on the floor beside the sink. The sunlight then went on—and Charmain's dismayed eyes went with it—to cast a golden glow over the two big canvas laundry bags leaning beside the sink. They were stuffed so full with dirty washing that Great-Uncle William had been using them as a shelf for a pile of dirty saucepans and a frying pan or so.

[] Charmain's eyes traveled from there to the table in the middle of the room. Here was where Great-Uncle William appeared to keep his supply of thirty or so teapots and the same number of milk jugs—not to speak of several that had once held gravy. It was all quite neat in its way, Charmain thought, just crowded and not clean.

"I suppose you have been ill," Charmain said grudgingly to the thin air.

[] There was no reply this time. Cautiously, she went over to the sink, where, she had a feeling, something was missing.

It took her a moment or so to realize that there were no taps. Probably this house was so far outside town that no water pipes had been laid. When she looked through the window, she could see a small yard outside and a pump in the middle of it.

[] "So I'm supposed to go and pump water and then bring it in, and then what?" Charmain demanded. She looked over at the dark, empty fireplace. It was summer, after all, so naturally there was no fire, nor anything to burn that she could see. "I heat the water?" she said. "In a dirty saucepan, I suppose, and—Come to think of it, how do I wash? Can't I ever have a bath? Doesn't he have any bedroom, or a bathroom at all?"

[] She rushed to the small door beyond the fireplace and dragged it open. All Great-Uncle William's doors seemed to need the strength of ten men to open, she thought angrily. She could almost feel the weight of magic holding them shut. She found herself looking into a small pantry. It had nothing on its shelves apart from a small crock of butter, a stale-looking loaf, and a large bag mysteriously labeled CIBIS CANINICUS that seemed to be full of soapflakes. And piled into the back part of it were two more large laundry bags as full as the ones in the kitchen.

[] "I shall scream," Charmain said. "How could Aunt Sempronia do this to me? How could Mother let her do it?"

[] In this moment of despair, Charmain could only think of doing what she always did in a crisis: bury herself in a book.

She dragged her two bags over to the crowded table and sat herself down in one of the two chairs there. There she unbuckled the carpet bag, fetched her glasses up onto her nose, and dug eagerly among the clothes for the books she had put out for Mother to pack for her.

[] Her hands met nothing but softness. The only hard thing proved to be the big bar of soap among her washing things.

Charmain threw it across the room into the empty hearth and dug further.

[] "I don't believe this!" she said. "She must have put them in first, right at the bottom."

She turned the bag upside down and shook everything out onto the floor.

Out fell wads of beautifully folded skirts, dresses, stockings, blouses, two knitted jackets, lace petticoats, and enough other underclothes for a year. On top of those flopped her new slippers. After that, the bag was flat and empty.

[] Charmain nevertheless felt all the way round the inside of the bag before she threw it aside, let her glasses drop to the end of their chain, and wondered whether to cry. Mrs. Baker had actually forgotten to pack the books.

[] "Well," Charmain said, after an interval of blinking and swallowing, "I suppose I've never really been away from home before. Next time I go anywhere, I'll pack the bag myself and fill it with books. I shall make the best of it for now."

[] Making the best of it, she heaved the other bag onto the crowded table and shoved to make room for it. This shunted four milk jugs and a teapot off onto the floor.

[] "And I don't care!" Charmain said as they fell. Somewhat to her relief, the milk jugs were empty and simply bounced, and the teapot did not break either. It just lay on its side leaking tea onto the floor.

[] That's probably the good side to magic," Charmain said, glumly digging out the topmost meat pasty.

She flung her skirts into a bundle between her knees, put her elbows on the table, and took a huge, comforting, savory bite from the pasty.

[] Something cold and quivery touched the bare part of her right leg.

[] Charmain froze, not daring even to chew. This kitchen is full of big magical slugs! she thought.

[] The cold thing touched another part of her leg. With the touch came a very small whispery whine.

[] Very slowly, Charmain pulled aside skirt and tablecloth and looked down. Under the table sat an extremely small and ragged white dog, gazing up at her piteously and shaking all over. When it saw Charmain looking down at it, it cocked uneven, frayed-looking white ears and flailed at the floor with its short, wispy tail. Then it whispered out a whine again.

"Who are you?" Charmain said. "Nobody told me about a dog."

[] Great-Uncle William's voice spoke out of the air once more. "This is Waif. Be very kind to him. He came to me as a stray and he seems to be frightened of everything."

[] Charmain had never been sure about dogs. Her mother said they were dirty and they bit you and would never have one in the house, so Charmain had always been extremely nervous of any dog she met. But this dog was so small. It seemed extremely white and clean. And it looked to be far more frightened of Charmain than Charmain was of it. It was still shaking all over.

[] "Oh, do stop trembling," Charmain said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Waif went on trembling and looking at her piteously.

[] Charmain sighed. She broke off a large lump of her pasty and held it down toward Waif. "Here," she said. "Here's for not being a slug after all."

[] Waif's shiny black nose quivered toward the lump. He looked up at her, to make sure she really meant this, and then, very gently and politely, he took the lump into his mouth and ate it. Then he looked up at Charmain for more.

Charmain was fascinated by his politeness. She broke off another lump. And then another. In the end, they shared the pasty half and half.

[] "That's all," Charmain said, shaking crumbs off her skirt. "We'll have to make this bagful last, as there seems to be no other food in this house. Now show me what to do next, Waif."

[] Waif promptly trotted over to what seemed to be the back door, where he stood wagging his wisp of a tail and whispering out a tiny whine. Charmain opened the door—which was just as difficult to open as the other two—and followed Waif out into the backyard, thinking that this meant she was supposed to pump water for the sink. But Waif trotted past the pump and over to the rather mangy-looking apple tree in the corner, where he raised a very short leg and peed against the tree.

[] "I see," Charmain said. "That's what you're supposed to do, not me. And it doesn't look as if you're doing the tree much good, Waif."

[] Waif gave her a look and went trotting to and fro around the yard, sniffing at things and raising a leg against clumps of grass. Charmain could see he felt quite safe in this yard. Come to think of it, so did she. There was a warm, secure feeling, as if Great-Uncle William had put wizardly protections around the place. She stood by the pump and stared up beyond the fence to the steeply rising mountains. There was a faint breeze blowing down from the heights, bringing a smell of snow and new flowers, which somehow reminded Charmain of the elves. She wondered if they had taken Great-Uncle William up there.

[] And they'd better bring him back soon, she thought. I shall go mad after more than a day here!

[] There was a small hut in the corner by the house. Charmain went over to investigate it, muttering, "Spades, I suppose, and flowerpots and things." But when she had hauled its stiff door open, she found a vast copper tank inside and a mangle and a place to light a fire under the tank. She stared at it all, the way you stare at a strange exhibit in a museum for a while, until she remembered that there was a similar shed in her own yard at home. It was a place just as mysterious to her as this one, since she had always been forbidden to go into it, but she did know that, once a week, a red-handed, purple-faced washerwoman came and made a lot of steam in this shed, out of which came clean clothes somehow.

[] Ah. A wash house, she thought. I think you have to put those laundry bags in the tank and boil them up. But how? I'm beginning to think I've led a much too sheltered life.

[] "And a good thing too," she said aloud, thinking of the washerwoman's red hands and mauve face.

[] But that doesn't help me wash dishes, she thought. Or about a bath. Am I supposed to boil myself in that tank? And where shall I sleep, for goodness' sake?

[] Leaving the door open for Waif, she went back indoors, where she marched past the sink, the bags of laundry, the crowded table, and the heap of her own things on the floor, and dragged open the door in the far wall. Beyond it was the musty living room again.

[] "This is hopeless!" she said. "Where are bedrooms? Where is a bathroom?"

[] Great-Uncle William's tired voice spoke out of the air. "For bedrooms and bathroom, turn left as soon as you open the kitchen door, my dear. Please forgive any disorder you find."

[] Charmain looked back through the open kitchen door to the kitchen beyond it.

[] "Oh, yes?" she said. "Well, let's see."

She walked carefully backward into the kitchen and shut the door in front of her. Then she hauled it open again, with what she was beginning to think of as the usual struggle, and turned briskly left into the door frame before she had time to think of it as impossible.

She found herself in a passageway with an open window at the far end. The breeze coming in through the window was strongly full of the mountain smell of snow and flowers. Charmain had a startled glimpse of a sloping green meadow and faraway blue distances, while she was busy turning the handle and shoving her knee against the nearest door.

[] This door came open quite easily, as if it were used rather a lot. Charmain stumbled forward into a smell that caused her instantly to forget the scents from the window. She stood with her nose up, sniffing delightedly. It was the delicious mildewy fragrance of old books. Hundreds of them, she saw, looking round the room. Books were lined up on shelves on all four walls, stacked on the floor, and piled on the desk, old books in leather covers mostly, although some of the ones on the floor had newer looking colored jackets. This was obviously Great-Uncle William's study.

"Oooh!" Charmain said.

[] Ignoring the way the view from the window was of the hydrangeas in the front garden, she dived to look at the books on the desk. Big, fat, redolent books, they were, and some of them had metal clasps to keep them shut as if they were dangerous open. Charmain had the nearest one already in her hands when she noticed the stiff piece of paper spread out on the desk, covered with shaky handwriting.

[] "My dear Charmain," she read, and sat herself down in the padded chair in front of the desk to read the rest.

[] My dear Charmain,

Thank you for so kindly agreeing to look after this house in my absence. The elves tell me I should be gone for about two weeks. (Thank goodness for that!, Charmain thought.) Or possibly a month if there are complications. (Oh.) You really must forgive any disorder you find here. I have been afflicted for quite some time now. But I am sure you are a resourceful young lady and will find your feet here quite readily. In case of any difficulty, I have left spoken directions for you wherever these seemed necessary. All you need do is speak your question aloud and it should be answered.

More complex matters you will find explained in the suitcase. Please be kind to Waif, who has not been with me for long enough to feel secure, and please feel free to help yourself to any books in this study, apart from those actually on this desk, which are for the most part too powerful and advanced for you. (Pooh. As if I cared for that!, Charmain thought.) Meanwhile I wish you a happy sojourn here and hope to be able to thank you in person before very long.

Your affectionate great-great-uncle-by-marriage,

William Norland

[] "I suppose he is by-marriage," Charmain said aloud. "He must be Aunt Sempronia's great-uncle, really, and she married Uncle Ned, who is Dad's uncle, except that he's dead now. What a pity. I was starting to hope I'd inherited some of his magic." And she said politely to the air, "Thank you very much, Great-Uncle William."

[] There was no reply. Charmain thought, Well, there wouldn't be. That wasn't a question. And she set about exploring the books on the desk.

[] The fat book she had in her hand was called The Book of Void and Nothingness. Not surprisingly, when she opened it, the pages were blank. But she could feel under her fingers each empty page sort of purring and writhing with hidden magics. She put it down rather quickly and picked up one called Wall's Guide to Astromancy instead. This was slightly disappointing, because it was mostly diagrams of black dotted lines with numbers of square red dots spreading out from the black lines in various patterns, but almost nothing to read. All the same, Charmain spent longer looking at it than she expected. The diagrams must have been hypnotic in some way. But eventually, with a bit of a wrench, she put it down and turned to one called Advanced Seminal Sorcery, which was not her kind of thing at all. It was closely printed in long paragraphs that mostly seemed to begin, "If we extrapolate from our findings in my earlier work, we find ourselves ready to approach an extension of the paratypical phenomenology…"

[] No, Charmain thought. I don't think we are ready.

[] She put that one down too and lifted up the heavy, square book on the corner of the desk. It was called Das Zauberbuch and it turned out to be in a foreign language. Probably what they speak in Ingary, Charmain decided. But, most interestingly, this book had been acting as a paperweight to a pile of letters underneath it, from all over the world. Charmain spent a long time going nosily through the letters and becoming more and more impressed with Great-Uncle William. Nearly all of them were from other wizards who were wanting to consult Great-Uncle William on the finer points of magic—clearly, they thought of him as the great expert—or to congratulate him on his latest magical discovery. One and all of them had the most terrible handwriting. Charmain frowned and scowled at them and held the worst one up to the light.

[] Dear Wizard Norland (it said, as far as she could read it), Your book, Crucial Cantrips, has been a great help to me in my dimensional (or is that "demented"? Charmain wondered) work, but I would like to draw your attention to a small discovery of mine related to your section on

Murdoch's Ear ("Merlin's Arm? Murphy's Law?" I give up! Charmain thought). When I next find myself in High Yours alluringly ("allergically? admiringly? antiphony?" Lord! What writing! Charmain thought),

Wizard Howl Pendragon

[] "Dear, dear! He must write with a poker!" Charmain said aloud, picking up the next letter.

This one was from the King himself and the writing, though wavery and old-fashioned, was much easier to read.

[] Dear Wm (Charmain read, with growing awe and surprise),

We are now more than halfway through Our Great Task and as yet none the wiser. We rely on you. It is Our devout

Hope that the Elves We sent you will succeed in restoring you to Health and that We will again shortly have the

Inestimable Benefit of your Advice and Encouragement. Our Best Wishes go with you.

Yours, in Sincere Hope,

Adolphus Rex High Norland

[] So the King sent those elves! "Well, well," Charmain murmured, leafing through the final stack of letters. Every single one of these was written in different sorts of someone's best handwriting. They all seemed to say the same thing in different ways: "Please, Wizard Norland, I would like to become your apprentice. Will you take me on?" Some of them went on to offer Great-Uncle William money. One of them said he could give Great-Uncle William a magical diamond ring, and another, who seemed to be a girl, said, rather pathetically, "I am not very pretty myself, but my sister is, and she says she will marry you if you agree to teach me."

[] Charmain winced and only flipped hastily through the rest of the stack. They reminded her so very much of her own letter to the King. And quite as useless, she thought. It was obvious to her that these were the kind of letters that a famous wizard would instantly write and say "No" to. She bundled them all back under Das Zauberbuch and looked at the other books on the desk. There was a whole row of tall, fat books at the back of the desk, all labeled Res Magica, which she thought she would look at later. She picked up two more books at random. One was called Mrs. Pentstemmon's Path: Signposts to the Truth and it struck her as a trifle moralizing. The other, when she had thumbed open its metal clasp and spread it out at its first page, was called The Boke of Palimpsest. When Charmain turned over the next pages, she found that each page contained a new spell—a clear spell, too, with a title saying what it did and, below that, a list of ingredients, followed by numbered stages telling you what you had to do.

[] "This is more like it!" Charmain said, and settled down to read.

A long time later, while she was trying to decide which was more useful, "A Spell to Tell Friend from Foe" or "A Spell to Enlarge the Mind," or perhaps even "A Spell for Flying," Charmain suddenly knew that she had crying need of a bathroom. This tended to happen to her when she had been absorbed in reading. She sprang up, squeezing her knees together, and then realized that a bathroom was a place she had still not found.

[] "Oh, how do I find the bathroom from here?" she cried out.

Reassuringly, Great-Uncle William's kind, frail voice spoke out of the air at once. "Turn left in the passage, my dear, and the bathroom is the first door on the right."

"Thank you!" Charmain gasped, and ran.

 

[

124

] Chapter Three

IN WHICH CHARMAIN WORKS SEVERAL SPELLS AT ONCE

[] The bathroom was as reassuring as Great-Uncle William's kindly voice. It had a worn greenstone floor and a little window, at which fluttered a green net curtain. And it had all the fitments Charmain knew from home. And home has nothing but the best, she thought. Better still, it had taps and the toilet flushed. True, the bath and the taps were strange, slightly bulbous shapes, as if the person who installed them had not been quite sure what he or she was aiming at; but the taps, when Charmain experimentally turned them on, ran cold and hot water, just as they were supposed to, and there were warm towels on a rail under the mirror.

[] Perhaps I can put one of those laundry bags in the bath, Charmain mused. How would I squeeze it dry?

[] Across the corridor from the bathroom was a row of doors, stretching away into dim distance. Charmain went to the nearest one and pushed it open, expecting it to lead to the living room. But there was a small bedroom beyond it instead, obviously Great-Uncle William's, to judge by the mess. The white covers trailed off the unmade bed, almost on top of several stripey nightshirts scattered over the floor. Shirts dangled out of drawers, along with socks and what looked like long underclothes, and the open cupboard held a musty-smelling uniform of some kind. Under the window were two more sacks stuffed full of laundry. Charmain groaned aloud.

[] "I suppose he's been ill for quite a time," she said, trying to be charitable. "But, mother-ofpearl, why do I have to deal with it all?"

[] The bed started twitching.

[] Charmain jumped round to face it. The twitching was Waif, curled up comfortably in the mound of bedclothes, scratching for a flea. When he saw Charmain looking at him, he wagged his flimsy tail and groveled, lowered his frayed ears, and whispered a pleading whine at her.

[] "You're not supposed to be there, are you?" she said to him. "All right. I can see you're comfortable—and I'm blowed if I'm sleeping in that bed anyway."

[] She marched out of the room and opened the next door along. To her relief, there was another bedroom there almost identical with Great-Uncle William's, except that this one was tidy. The bed was clean and neatly made, the cupboard was shut, and when she looked, she found the drawers were empty. Charmain nodded approval at the room and opened the next door along the corridor. There was another neat bedroom there, and beyond that another, each one exactly the same.

[] I'd better throw my things around the one that's mine, or I'll never find it again, she thought.

[] She turned back into the corridor to find that Waif had come off the bed and was now scratching at the bathroom door with both front paws. "You won't want to go in there," Charmain told him. "None of it's any use to you."

[] But the door came open somehow before Charmain got to it. Beyond it was the kitchen. Waif trotted jauntily in there and Charmain groaned again. The mess had not gone away. There were the dirty crockery and the laundry bags, with the addition now of a teapot lying in a pool of tea, Charmain's clothes in a heap near the table, and a large green bar of soap in the fireplace.

[] "I'd forgotten all this," Charmain said.

[] Waif put both tiny front paws on the bottom rung of the chair and raised himself to his full small length, pleadingly.

"You're hungry again," Charmain diagnosed. "So am I."

[] She sat in the chair and Waif sat on her left foot and they shared another pasty. Then they shared a fruit tart, two doughnuts, six chocolate biscuits, and a custard flan. After this Waif plodded rather heavily away to the inner door, which opened for him as soon as he scratched at it. Charmain gathered up her pile of clothes and followed him, meaning to put her things in the first empty bedroom.

[] But here things went a trifle wrong. Charmain pushed the door open with one elbow and, fairly naturally, turned right to go into the corridor with the bedrooms in it. She found herself in complete darkness. Almost at once she walked into another door, where she hit her elbow on its doorknob with a clang.

[] "Ouch!" she said, fumbled for the doorknob, and opened this door.

It swung inward majestically. Charmain walked into a large room lit by arched windows all around it and found herself breathing a damp, stuffy, leathery, neglected smell. The smell seemed to come from the elderly leather seats of carved chairs arranged around the big carved table that took up most of the room. Each seat had a leather mat on the table in front of it, and an old, withered sheet of blotting paper on the mat, except for the large seat at the other end that had the arms of High Norland carved into the back of it. This one had a fat little stick on the table instead of a mat. All of it, chairs, table, and mats, was covered in dust and there were cobwebs in the corners of the many windows.

[] Charmain stared. "Is this the dining room, or what?" she said. "How do I get to the bedrooms from here?"

[] Great-Uncle William's voice spoke, sounding quite faint and far off. "You have reached the Conference Room," it said.

"If you are there, you are rather lost, my dear, so listen carefully. Turn round once, clockwise. Then, still turning clockwise, open the door with your left hand only. Go through and let the door shut behind you. Then take two long steps sideways to your left. This will bring you back beside the bathroom."

[] And let's hope it does!, Charmain thought, doing her best to follow these directions.

[] All went well, except for the moment of darkness after the door had swung shut behind her, when Charmain found herself staring into a totally strange stone corridor. An old, bent man was pushing a trolley along it, loaded with steaming silver teapot, jugs, and chafing dishes and what looked like a pile of crumpets. She blinked a little, decided that she would not do any good, either to herself or the old man, by calling out to him, and took two long steps to the left instead. And then, to her relief, she was standing beside the bathroom, from where she could see Waif turning round and round on Great-Uncle William's bed in order to get comfortable.

[] "Phew!" Charmain said, and went and dumped the pile of clothes on top of the chest of drawers in the next bedroom along.

[] After that she went along the corridor to the open window at the end, where she spent some minutes staring out at that sloping sunlit meadow and breathing the fresh, chilly air that blew in from it. A person could easily climb out of this, she thought. Or in. But she was not really seeing the meadow, or thinking of fresh air. Her real thoughts were with that enticing book of spells that she had left open on Great-Uncle William's desk. She had never in her life been let loose among magic like this. It was hard to resist.

[] I shall just open it at random and do the first spell I see, she thought. Just one spell. In the study, The Boke of Palimpsest was, for some reason, now open at "A Spell to Find Yourself a Handsome Prince." Charmain shook her head and closed the book. "Who needs a prince?" she said. She opened the book again, carefully at a different place. This page was headed "A Spell for Flying." "Oh yes!" Charmain said. "That's much more like it!" She put her glasses on and studied the list of ingredients.

[] "A sheet of paper, a quill pen (easy, there's both on this desk), one egg (kitchen?), two flower petal—one pink and the other blue, six drops of water (bathroom), one red hair, one white hair, and two pearl buttons."

[] "No problem at all," Charmain said. She took her glasses off and bustled about assembling ingredients. She hurried to the kitchen—she got to that by opening the bathroom door and turning left and was almost too excited to find that she had got this right—and asked the air, "Where do I find eggs?"

[] Great-Uncle William's gentle voice replied, "Eggs are in a crock in the pantry, my dear. I think it's behind the laundry bags. I do apologize for leaving you with such disorder."

[] Charmain went into the pantry and leaned across the laundry bags, where sure enough she found an old pie dish with half a dozen brown eggs in it. She took one of them carefully back to the study. Since her glasses were dangling on their chain, she failed to notice that The Boke of Palimpsest was now open at "A Spell to Find Hidden Treasure." She bustled over to the study window, where the flower petals were ready to hand on a hydrangea bush that was one half pink and the other blue. She laid those beside the egg and rushed to the bathroom, where she collected the six drops of water in a tooth mug. On the way back, she went across the passage to where Waif was now curled up like a meringue on Great-Uncle William's blankets. "Excuse me," Charmain said to him, and raked her fingers along his ragged white back. She came away with quite a number of white hairs, one of which she put beside the flower petals and added to that a red hair from her own head. As for the pearl buttons, she simply ripped two of them off the front of her blouse.

[] "Right," she said, and put her glasses eagerly on again to look at the instructions. The Boke of Palimpsest was now open at "A Spell for Personal Protection," but Charmain was too excited to notice. She looked only at the instructions, which were in five stages. Stage One said, "Place all ingredients except quill and paper in a suitable bowl."

[] Charmain, after taking her glasses off to stare searchingly around the room, and finding no bowl, suitable or not, was forced to go off to the kitchen again. While she was gone, lazily and slyly, The Boke of Palimpsest turned over another couple of pages. When Charmain came back with a slightly sugary bowl, having tipped all the sugar out onto a nottoo- dirty plate, the Boke was open at "A Spell to Increase Magical Power."

[] Charmain did not notice. She put the bowl down on the desk and piled into it the egg, the two petals, the two hairs, and her two buttons, and dripped the water carefully in on top. Then she put her glasses on and leaned over the book to discover what she did next. By this time, The Boke of Palimpsest was displaying "A Spell to Become Invisible," but Charmain only looked at the instructions and did not see this.

[] Stage Two told her to "Mash all ingredients together, using only the pen."

[] It is not easy to mash up an egg with a feather, but Charmain managed it, stabbing with the sharpened end over and over until the shell fell to pieces, then stirring so hard that her hair fell down over her face in red strands, and finally, when nothing seemed to mix properly, whisking with the feather end. When she finally stood up, panting, and pushed her hair away with sticky fingers, the Boke had turned over yet another page. It now displayed "A Spell to Start a Fire," but Charmain was too busy trying not to get egg on her glasses to see. She put them on and studied Stage Three.

Stage Three of this spell said, "Recite three times 'Hegemony Gauda.'"

[] "Hegemony gauda," Charmain intoned obediently over the bowl. She was not sure, but on the third repetition she thought the bits of eggshell seethed around the pearl buttons a little. I think it's working! she thought. She pushed her glasses back on her nose and looked at Stage Four. By this time, she was looking at stage four in "A Spell to Bend Objects to the Will."

[] "Take up the quill," this said, "and, using the prepared mixture, write upon the paper the word Ylf surrounded by a fivesided figure. Care must be taken not to touch the paper while doing this."

[] Charmain took up the drippy, sticky feather pen, adorned with bits of eggshell and a piece of pink petal, and did her best. The mixture was not easy to write with and there seemed no way to hold the paper steady. It slipped and it slid, while Charmain dipped and scratched, and the word that was supposed to be Ylf came out gluey and semi-visible and crooked, and looked more like Hoof because the red hair in the bowl came out on the pen halfway through and did strange loopy things across the word. As for the five-sided figure, the paper slipped sideways while Charmain was trying to draw it, and the most that could be said for it was that it had five sides. It finished as a sinister egg-yolk yellow shape with a dog hair sticking off one corner.

[] Charmain heaved up a breath, plastered her hair back with a now extremely sticky hand, and looked at the final stage,

Stage Five. It was now Stage Five of "A Spell to Make a Wish Come True," but she was far too flustered to notice. It said, "Placing the feather back in the bowl, clap hands three times and say 'Tacs.'"

[] "Tacs!" Charmain said, clapping hard and stickily.

[] Something evidently worked. The paper, the bowl, and the quill pen all vanished, quietly and completely. So did most of the sticky trickles on Great-Uncle William's desk. The Boke of Palimpsest shut itself with a snap. Charmain stood back, dusting crumby bits from her hands, feeling quite exhausted and rather let down.

[] "But I should be able to fly," she told herself. "I wonder where the best place is to test it out."

[] The answer was obvious. Charmain went out of the study and along to the end of the passage, to where the window stood invitingly open to the sloping green meadow. The window had a broad, low sill, perfect for climbing over. In a matter of seconds, Charmain was out in the meadow in the evening sunlight, breathing the cold, clean air of the mountains.

[] She was right up in the mountains here, with most of High Norland spread out beneath her, already blue with evening.

[] Opposite her, lit up orange by the low sun and deceivingly near, were the snowy peaks that separated her country from Strangia, Montalbino, and other foreign places. Behind her were more peaks where large dark gray and crimson clouds were crowding up ominously. It was going to rain up here soon, as it often did in High Norland, but for the moment it was warm and peaceful. There were sheep grazing in another meadow just beyond some rocks, and Charmain could hear mooing and bells tonkling from a herd of cows somewhere quite near. When she looked that way, she was a trifle startled to find that the cows were in a meadow above her and that there was no sign of Great-Uncle William's house or the window she had climbed out of.

[] Charmain did not let this worry her. She had never been this high in the mountains before, and she was astonished at how beautiful it was. The grass she was standing on was greener than any she had seen in the town. Fresh scents blew off it. These came, when she looked closely, from hundreds and hundreds of tiny, exquisite flowers growing low in the grass.

[] "Oh, Great-Uncle William, you are lucky!" she cried out. "Fancy having this next door to your study!"

[] For a while, she wandered blissfully about, avoiding the bees that were busy among the flowers and picking herself a bunch that was supposed to be one of each kind. She picked a tiny scarlet tulip, a white one, a starry golden flower, a pale pigmy primrose, a mauve harebell, a blue cup, an orange orchid, and one each from crowded clumps of pink and white and yellow. But the flowers that took her fancy most were tiny blue trumpets, more piercingly blue than any blue she could have imagined. Charmain thought they might be gentians and she picked more than one. They were so small, so perfect, and so blue. All the time, she was wandering farther down the meadow, to where there seemed to be a drop-off of some kind. She thought she might jump off there and see if the spell had made her really able to fly.

[] She reached the drop-off at the time when she found she had more flowers than she could hold. There were six new kinds at the rocky edge that she had to leave where they were. But then she forgot flowers and just stared.

[] The meadow ended in a cliff half the mountain high. Way, way below her, beside the little thread of the road, she could see Great-Uncle William's house like a tiny gray box in a smudge of garden. She could see other houses, equally far off, scattered up and down the road, and lights coming on in them in tiny orange twinkles. They were so far below that Charmain gulped and her knees shook slightly.

[] "I think I'll give up flying practice for the moment," she said. But how do I get down? asked a subdued inner thought.

Don't let's think about that now, another inner thought replied firmly. Let's just enjoy the view.

[] She could see most of High Norland from up here, after all. Beyond Great-Uncle William's house, the valley narrowed into a green saddle glinting with white waterfalls, where the pass led up into Montalbino. The other way, past the bulge of mountain where the meadow was, the thread of road joined the more winding thread of the river and both plunged in among the roofs, towers, and turrets of High Norland City. Lights were coming on there too, but Charmain could still see the soft shining of the famous golden roof on the Royal Mansion, with the flicker of the flag above it, and she thought she could even pick out her parents' house beyond it. None of it was very far away. Charmain was quite surprised to see that Great-Uncle William really lived only just outside the town.

[] Behind the town, the valley opened out. It was lighter there, out of the shadow of the mountains, melting into twilight distance with orange pricks of lights in it. Charmain could see the long, important shape of Castel Joie, where the Crown Prince lived, and another castle she did not know about. This one was tall and dark, with smoke drifting from one of its turrets. Behind it, the land faded into bluer distance full of farms, villages, and industries that formed the heart of the country. Charmain could actually see the sea, misty and faint, beyond that.

[] We're not a very big country, are we? she thought.

[] But this thought was interrupted by a sharp buzzing from the bunch of flowers she held. She held the bunch up to see what was making the noise. Up here in the meadow, the sun was still quite dazzlingly bright, bright enough for Charmain to see that one of her blue trumpet-shaped probably-gentians was shaking and vibrating as it buzzed. She must have picked one with a bee in it by mistake. Charmain held the flowers downward and shook them. Something purple and whirring fell out into the grass by her feet. It was not exactly bee-shaped, and instead of flying away as a bee would, it sat in the grass and buzzed. As it buzzed, it grew. Charmain took a nervous sideways step from it, along the edge of the cliff. It was bigger than Waif already and still growing.

I don't like this, she thought. What is it?

[] Before she could move—or even think—again, the creature shot up to twice the height of a person. It was dark purple and man-shaped, but it was not a man. It had small see-through purple wings on its back that were blurred and whirring with motion and its face was—Charmain had to look away. Its face was the face of an insect, with groping bits and feeler bits, antennae, and bulging eyes that had at least sixteen smaller eyes inside them.

[] "Oh, heavens!" Charmain whispered. "I think the thing's a lubbock!"

"I am the lubbock," the creature announced. Its voice was a mixture of buzz and snarl. "I am the lubbock and I own this land."

[] Charmain had heard of lubbocks. People at school had whispered of lubbocks, and none of it was pleasant. The only thing to do, so they said, was to be very polite and hope to get away without being stung and then eaten.

"I'm very sorry," Charmain said. "I didn't realize I was trespassing in your meadow."

[] "You are trespassing wherever you tread," the lubbock snarled. "All the land you can see is mine."

[] "What? All of High Norland?" Charmain said. "Don't talk nonsense!"

[] "I never talk nonsense." the creature said. "All is mine. You are mine."

[] Wings whirring, it began to stalk toward her on most unnatural-looking wiry blobs of feet. "I shall come to claim my own very soon now. I claim you first."

[] It took a whirring stride toward Charmain. Its arms came out. So did a pronged sting on the lower part of its face. Charmain screamed, dodged, and fell off the edge, scattering flowers as she fell.

 

[

185

] Chapter Four

INTRODUCES ROLLO, PETER, AND MYSTERIOUS CHANGES TO WAIF

[] Charmain heard the lubbock give a whirring shout of rage, though not clearly for the rushing wind of her fall. She saw the huge cliff streaking past her face. She went on screaming.

"Ylf, YLF!" she bellowed. "Oh, for goodness' sake! Ylf! I just did a flying spell. Why doesn't it work?"

[] It was working. Charmain realized it must be when the upward rush of the rocks in front of her slowed to a crawl, then to a glide, and then to a dawdle. For a moment, she hung in space, bobbing just above some gigantic spikes of rock in the crags below the cliff.

[] Perhaps I'm dead now, she thought.

[] Then she said, "This is ridiculous!" and managed, by means of a lot of ungainly kicking and arm waving, to turn herself over. And there was Great-Uncle William's house, still a long way below her in the gloaming and about a quarter of a mile off. "And it's all very well floating," Charmain said, "but how do I move?" At this point, she remembered that the lubbock had wings and was probably at that moment whirring down from the heights toward her.

After that, there was no need to ask how to move. Charmain found herself kicking her legs mightily and positively surging toward Great-Uncle William's house. She shot in over its roof and across the front garden, where the spell seemed to leave her. She just had time to jerk herself sideways so that she was above the path, before she came down with a thump and sat on the neat crazy-paving, shaking all over.

[] Safe! she thought. Somehow there seemed to be no doubt that inside Great-Uncle William's boundaries, it was safe. She could feel it was.

[] After a bit, she said, "Oh, goodness! What a day! When I think that all I ever asked for was a good book and a bit of peace to read it in…! Bother Aunt Sempronia!"

[] The bushes beside her rustled. Charmain flinched away and nearly screamed again when the hydrangeas bent aside to let a small blue man hop out onto the path.

"Are you in charge here now?" this small blue person demanded in a small hoarse voice.

[] Even in the twilight the little man was definitely blue, not purple, and he had no wings. His face was crumpled with bad-tempered wrinkles and almost filled with a mighty nose, but it was not an insect's face. Charmain's panic vanished. "What are you?" she said.

[] "Kobold, of course," said the little man. "High Norland is all kobold country. I do the garden here."

"At night?" Charmain said.

[] "Us kobolds mostly come out at night," said the small blue man. "What I said—are you in charge?"

[] "Well," Charmain said. "Sort of."

[] "Thought so," the kobold said, satisfied. "Saw the wizard carried off by the Tall Ones. So you'll be wanting all these hydrangeas chopped down, then?"

[] "Whatever for?" Charmain said.

[] "I like to chop things down," the kobold explained. "Chief pleasure of gardening."

[] Charmain, who had never thought about gardening in her life, considered this. "No," she said.

[] "Great-Uncle William wouldn't have them if he didn't like them. He's coming back before long, and I think he might be upset to find them all chopped down. Why don't you just do your usual night's work and see what he says when he's back?"

[] "Oh, he'll say no, of course," the kobold said gloomily. "He's a spoilsport, the wizard is. Usual fee, then?"

[] "What is your usual fee?" Charmain asked.

[] The kobold said promptly, "I'll take a crock of gold and a dozen new eggs."

[] Fortunately, Great-Uncle William's voice spoke out of the air at the same time. "I pay Rollo a pint of milk nightly, my dear, magically delivered. No need to concern yourself."

[] The kobold spat disgustedly on the path.

"What did I say? Didn't I say spoilsport? And a fat lot of work I can do, if you're going to sit in this path all night."

[] Charmain said, with dignity, "I was just resting. I'm going now." She got to her feet, feeling surprisingly heavy, not to speak of weak about the knees, and plodded up the path to the front door. It'll be locked, she thought. I shall look awfully silly if I can't get in.

[] The door burst open before she reached it, letting out a surprising blaze of light and with the light Waif's small scampering shape, squeaking and wagging and wriggling with delight at seeing Charmain again. Charmain was so glad to be home and welcomed that she scooped Waif up and carried him indoors, while Waif writhed and wriggled and reached up to lick Charmain's chin.

[] Indoors, the light seemed to follow you about magically. "Good," Charmain said aloud. "Then I don't need to hunt for candles." But her inner thoughts were saying frantically, I left that window open! The lubbock can get in! She dumped Waif on the kitchen floor and then rushed left through the door. Light blazed in the corridor as she raced along to the end and slammed the window shut. Unfortunately, the light made it seem so dark in the meadow that, no matter how hard she peered through the glass, she could not tell if the lubbock was out there or not. She consoled herself with the thought that she had not been able to see the window once she was in the meadow, but she still found she was shivering.

[] After that, she could not seem to stop shivering. She shivered her way back to the kitchen and shivered while she shared a pork pie with Waif, and shivered more because the pool of tea had spread out under the table, making the underside of Waif wet and brown. Whenever Waif came near her, parts of Charmain became clammy with tea too. In the end, Charmain took off her blouse, which was flapping open because of the missing buttons anyway, and wiped up the tea with it. This of course made her shiver more. She went and fetched herself the thick woollen sweater Mrs. Baker had packed for her and huddled into it, but she still shivered. The threatened rain started. It beat on the window and pattered down the kitchen chimney, and Charmain shivered even more. She supposed it was shock, really, but she still felt cold.

[] "Oh!" she cried out. "How do I light a fire, Great-Uncle William?"

"I believe I left the spell in place," the kindly voice said out of the air. "Simply throw into the grate one thing that will burn and say aloud, 'Fire, light,' and you should have your fire."

[] Charmain looked round for one thing that would burn. There was the bag beside her on the table, but it still had another pork pie and an apple tart in it, and besides, it was a nice bag, with flowers that Mrs. Baker had embroidered on it. There was paper in Great-Uncle William's study, of course, but that meant getting up and fetching it. There was the laundry in the bags by the sink, but Charmain was fairly sure that Great-Uncle William would not appreciate having his dirty clothes burned. On the other hand, there was her own blouse, dirty and tea-soaked and missing two buttons, in a heap on the floor by her feet.

[] "It's ruined anyway," she said. She picked up the brown, soggy bundle and threw it into the fireplace. "Fire, light," she said.

[] The grate thundered into life. For a minute or so, there was the most cheerfully blazing fire that anyone could have wished for. Charmain sighed with pleasure. She was just moving her chair nearer to the warmth, when the flames turned to hissing clouds of steam. Then, piling up and up among the steam, crowding up the chimney and blasting out into the room, came bubbles. Big bubbles, small bubbles, bubbles glimmering with rainbow colors, they came thronging out of the fireplace into the kitchen. They filled the air, landed on things, flew into Charmain's face, where they burst with a soft sigh, and kept coming. In seconds, the kitchen was a hot, steamy storm of froth, enough to make Charmain gasp.

[] "I forgot the bar of soap!" she said, panting in the sudden wet heat.

[] Waif decided that the bubbles were personal enemies and retreated under Charmain's chair, yapping madly and snarling at the bubbles that burst. It was surprisingly noisy.

[] "Do shut up!" Charmain said. Sweat ran down her face, and her hair, which had come down over her shoulders, was dripping in the steam. She batted a cloud of bubbles away and said, "I think I'll take all my clothes off."

[] Someone hammered on the back door.

"Perhaps not," Charmain said.

[] The person outside hammered on the door again. Charmain sat where she was, hoping it was not the lubbock. But when the hammering came a third time, she got up reluctantly and picked her way among the storming bubbles to see who it was. It could be Rollo, she supposed, wanting to come in out of the rain.

[] "Who are you?" she shouted through the door. "What do you want?"

"I need to come in!" the person outside shouted back. "It's pouring with rain!"

[] Whoever it was sounded young, and the voice did not rasp like Rollo's or buzz like the lubbock's. And Charmain could hear the rain thrashing down, even through the hissing of steam and the continuous, gentle popping of the bubbles. But it could be a trick.

[] "Let me in!" the person outside screamed. "The wizard's expecting me!"

"That's not true!" Charmain shouted back.

[] "I wrote him a letter!" the person shouted. "My mother arranged for me to come. You've no right to keep me out!"

[] The latch on the door waggled. Before Charmain could do more than put both hands out to hold it shut, the door crashed open and a soaking wet boy surged inside. He was about as wet as a person could be. His hair, which was probably curly, hung round his young face in dripping brown spikes. His sensible-looking jacket and trousers were black and shiny with wet, and so was the big knapsack on his back. His boots squelched as he moved. He began to steam the moment he was indoors. He stood staring at the crowding, floating bubbles, at Waif yapping and yapping under the chair, at Charmain clutching her sweater and gazing at him between the red strands of her hair, at the stacks of dirty dishes, and at the table loaded with teapots. His eyes turned to the laundry bags, and these things were obviously all too much for him. His mouth came open and he just stood there, staring around at all these things all over again and steaming quietly.

[] After a moment, Charmain reached over and took hold of his chin, where a few harsh hairs grew, showing he was older than he looked. She pushed upward and his mouth shut with a clop. "Do you mind closing the door?" she said.

[] The boy looked behind him at the rain pelting into the kitchen. "Oh," he said. "Yes." He heaved at the door until it shut. "What's going on?" he said. "Are you the wizard's apprentice too?"

[] "No," said Charmain. "I'm only looking after the house while the wizard's not here. He was ill, you see, and the elves took him away to cure him."

[] The boy looked very dismayed. "Didn't he tell you I was coming?"

[] "He didn't really have time to tell me anything," Charmain said. Her mind went to the pile of letters under Das Zauberbuch. One of those hopeless requests for the wizard to teach people must have been from this boy, but Waif 's yapping was making it difficult to think. "Do shut up, Waif. What's your name, boy?"

[] "Peter Regis," he said. "My mother's the Witch of Montalbino. She's a great friend of William Norland's and she arranged with him for me to come here. Do be quiet, little dog. I'm meant to be here." He heaved himself out of the wet knapsack and dumped it on the floor. Waif stopped barking in order to venture out from under the chair and sniff at the knapsack in case it might be dangerous. Peter took the chair and hung his wet jacket on it. His shirt underneath was almost as wet. "And who are you?" he asked, peering at Charmain among the bubbles.

[] "Charmain Baker," she told him and explained, "We always call the wizard Great-Uncle William, but he's Aunt Sempronia's relation, really. I live in High Norland. Where have you come from? Why did you come to the back door?"

[] "I came down from Montalbino," Peter said. "And I got lost, if you must know, trying to take the short cut from the pass. I did come here once before, when my mother was arranging for me to be Wizard Norland's apprentice, but I don't seem to have remembered the way properly. How long have you been here?"

[] "Only since this morning," Charmain said, rather surprised to realize she had not been here a whole day yet. It had felt like weeks.

[] "Oh." Peter looked at the teapots through the floating bubbles, as if he were calculating how many cups of tea

Charmain had drunk. "It looks as if you'd been here for weeks."

[] "It was like this when I came," Charmain said coldly.

[] "What? Bubbles and all?" Peter said.

[] Charmain thought, I don't think I like this boy. "No," she said. "That was me. I forgot I'd thrown my soap into the grate."

[] "Ah," Peter said. "I thought it looked like a spell that's gone wrong. That's why I assumed you were an apprentice too. We'll just have to wait for the soap to be used up, then. Have you any food? I'm starving."

[] Charmain's eyes went grudgingly to her bag on the table. She turned them away quickly. "No," she said. "Not really."

"What are you going to feed your dog on, then?" Peter said.

[] Charmain looked at Waif, who had gone under the chair again in order to bark at Peter's knapsack. "Nothing. He's just had half a pork pie," she said. "And he's not my dog. He's a stray that Great-Uncle William took in. He's called Waif."

[] Waif was still yapping. Peter said, "Do be quiet, Waif," and reached among the storming bubbles and past his wet jacket to where Waif crouched under the chair. Somehow he dragged Waif out and stood up with Waif upside down in his arms. Waif uttered a squeak of protest, waved all four paws, and curled his frayed tail up between his back legs.

Peter uncurled the tail.

[] "You've damaged his dignity," Charmain said. "Put him down."

"He isn't a he," Peter said. "He's a she. And she hasn't got any dignity, have you, Waif?"

[] Waif clearly disagreed, and managed to scramble out of Peter's arms onto the table. Another teapot fell down, and

Charmain's bag tipped over. To Charmain's great dismay, the pork pie and the apple tart rolled out of it.

[] "Oh, good!" said Peter, and snatched up the pork pie just before Waif got to it. "Is this all the food you've got?" he said, biting deeply into the pie.

"Yes," Charmain said. "That was breakfast."

[] She picked the fallen teapot up. The tea that had spilled out of it rapidly turned into brown bubbles, which whirled upward to make a brown streak among the other bubbles. "Now look what you've done."

[] "A bit more won't make any difference to this mess," Peter said. "Don't you ever tidy up? This is a really good pie. What's this other one?"

[] Charmain looked at Waif, who was sitting soulfully beside the apple tart. "Apple," she said. "And if you eat it, you have to give some to Waif too."

[] "Is that a rule?" Peter said, swallowing the last of the pork pie.

"Yes," said Charmain. "Waif made it and he—I mean she—is very firm about it."

[] "She's magical, then?" Peter suggested, picking up the apple tart. Waif at once made small soulful noises and trotted about among the teapots.

"I don't know," Charmain began. Then she thought of the way Waif seemed to be able to go anywhere in the house and how the front door had burst open for her earlier on. "Yes," she said. "I'm sure she is. Very magical."

Slowly and grudgingly, Peter broke a lump off the apple tart. Waif's frayed tail wagged and Waif's eyes followed his every movement. She seemed to know exactly what Peter was doing, no matter how many bubbles got in the way. "I see what you mean," Peter said, and he passed the lump to Waif. Waif gently took it in her jaws, jumped from the table to the chair and then to the floor, and went pattering away to eat it somewhere behind the laundry bags. "How about a hot drink?" Peter said.

[] A hot drink was something Charmain had been yearning for ever since she fell off the mountainside. She shivered and hugged her sweater round herself. "What a good idea," she said. "Do make one if you can find out how."

[] Peter waved bubbles aside to look at the teapots on the table. "Someone must have made all these pots of tea," he said.

"Great-Uncle William must have made them," Charmain said. "It wasn't me."

[] "But it shows it can be done," Peter said. "Stop standing there looking feeble and find a saucepan or something."

"You find one," Charmain said.

[] Peter shot her a scornful look and strode across the room, waving bubbles aside as he went, until he reached the crowded sink. There he naturally made the discoveries that Charmain had made earlier. "There are no taps!" he said incredulously. "And all these saucepans are dirty. Where does he get water from?"

[] "There's a pump out in the yard," Charmain said unkindly.

[] Peter looked among the bubbles at the window, where rain was still streaming across the panes. "Isn't there a bathroom?" he said. And before Charmain could explain how you got to it, he waved and stumbled his way across the kitchen to the other door and arrived in the living room. Bubbles stormed in there around him as he dived angrily back into the kitchen. "Is this a joke?" he said incredulously. "He can't have only these two rooms!"

[] Charmain sighed, huddled her sweater further around herself, and went to show him. "You open the door again and turn left," she explained, and then had to grab Peter as he turned right. "No. That way goes to somewhere very strange.

This is left. Can't you tell?"

[] "No," Peter said. "I never can. I usually have to tie a piece of string round my thumb."

[] Charmain rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and pushed him left. They both arrived in the corridor, which was loud with the rain pelting across the window at the end. Light slowly flooded the place as Peter stood looking around.

[] "Now you can turn right," Charmain said, pushing him that way. "The bathroom's this door here. That row of doors leads to bedrooms."

[] "Ah!" Peter said admiringly. "He's been bending space. That's something I can't wait to learn how to do. Thanks," he added, and plunged into the bathroom. His voice floated back to Charmain as she tiptoed toward the study. "Oh, good!

Taps! Water!"

[] Charmain whisked herself into Great-Uncle William's study and closed the door, while the funny twisted lamp on the desk lit up and grew brighter. By the time she reached the desk, it was almost bright as daylight in there. Charmain shoved aside Das Zauberbuch and picked up the bundle of letters underneath. She had to check. If Peter was telling the truth, one of the letters asking to be Great-Uncle William's apprentice had to be from him. Because she had only skimmed through them before, she had no memory of seeing one, and if there wasn't one, she was dealing with an imposter, possibly another lubbock. She had to know.

[] Ah! Here it was, halfway down the pile. She put her glasses on and read:

[] Esteemed Wizard Norland,

With regard to my becoming your apprentice, will it be convenient for me to arrive with you in a week's time, instead of in the autumn as arranged? My mother has to journey into Ingary and prefers to have me settled before she leaves.

Unless I hear from you to the contrary, I shall present myself at your house on the thirteenth of this month.

Hoping this is convenient,

Yours faithfully,

Peter Regis

[] So that seems to be all right! Charmain thought, half relieved and half annoyed. When she had skimmed the letters earlier, her eye must have caught the word apprentice near the top and the word hoping near the bottom, and those words were in all the letters. So she had assumed it was just another begging letter. And it looked as if Great-Uncle William had done the same. Or perhaps he had been too ill to reply. Whatever had happened, she seemed to be stuck with Peter. Bother! At least he's not sinister, she thought.

[] Here she was interrupted by dismayed yelling from Peter in the distance. Charmain hastily stuffed the letters back under Das Zauberbuch, snatched off her glasses, and dived out into the corridor.

[] Steam was blasting out of the bathroom, mixing with the bubbles that had strayed in there. It almost concealed something vast and white that was looming toward Charmain.

[] "What have you d—" she began.

This was all she had time to say before the vast white something put out a gigantic pink tongue and licked her face. It also gave out a huge trumpeting sound. Charmain reeled backward. It was like being licked by a wet bath towel and whined at by an elephant. She leaned against the wall and stared up into the creature's enormous, pleading eyes.

[] "I know those eyes," Charmain said. "What has he done to you, Waif?"

[] Peter surged out of the bathroom, gasping. "I don't know what went wrong," he gasped. "The water didn't come out hot enough to make tea, so I thought I'd make it hotter with a Spell of Enlargement."

[] "Well, do it backward at once," Charmain said. "Waif's the size of an elephant."

[] Peter shot the huge Waif a distracted look. "Only the size of a carthorse. But the pipes in here are red hot," he said.

"What do you think I should do?"

[] "Oh, honestly!" Charmain said. She pushed the enormous Waif gently aside and went to the bathroom. As far as she could see through the steam, boiling water was gushing out of all four taps and flushing into the toilet, and the pipes along the walls were indeed glowing red. "Great-Uncle William!" she shouted. "How do I make the bathroom water cold?"

[] Great-Uncle William's kindly voice spoke among the hissing and gushing. "You will find further instructions somewhere in the suitcase, my dear."

[] "That's no good!" Charmain said. She knew there was no time to go searching through suitcases. Something was going to explode soon. "Go cold!" she shouted into the steam. "Freeze! All you pipes, go cold at once!" she screamed, waving both arms. "I order you to cool down!"

[] It worked, to her astonishment. The steam died away to mere puffs and then vanished altogether. The toilet stopped flushing. Three of the taps gurgled and stopped running. Frost almost instantly formed on the tap that was running— the cold tap over the washbasin—and an icicle grew from the end of it. Another icicle appeared on the pipes that ran across the wall and slid, hissing, down into the bath.

[] "That's better," Charmain said, and turned round to look at Waif. Waif looked sadly back. She was as big as ever.

[] "Waif," Charmain said, "go small. Now. I order you."

[] Waif sadly wagged the tip of her monstrous tail and stayed the same size.

[] "If she's magic," Peter said, "she can probably turn herself back if she wants to."

[] "Oh, shut up!" Charmain snapped at him. "What did you think you were trying to do anyway? No one can drink scalding water."

[] Peter glowered at her from under the twisted, dripping ends of his hair. "I wanted a cup of tea," he said. "You make tea with boiling water."

[] Charmain had never made tea in her life. She shrugged. "Do you really?" She raised her face to the ceiling. "Great-Uncle William," she said, "how do we get a hot drink in this place?"

[] The kindly voice spoke again. "In the kitchen, you tap the table and say 'Tea,' my dear. In the living room, tap the trolley in the corner and say 'Afternoon Tea.' In your bedroom—"

[] Neither Peter nor Charmain waited to hear about the bedroom. They dived forward and slammed the bathroom door, opened it again—Charmain giving Peter a stern push to the left—and jammed themselves through it into the kitchen, turned round, shut the door, opened it again, and finally arrived in the living room, where they looked eagerly around for the trolley. Peter spotted it over in the corner and reached it ahead of Charmain. "Afternoon Tea!" he shouted, hammering mightily upon its empty, glass-covered surface. "Afternoon Tea! Afternoon Tea! Aftern—"

[] By the time Charmain got to him and seized his flailing arm, the trolley was crowded with pots of tea, milk jugs, sugar bowls, cups, scones, dishes of cream, dishes of jam, plates of hot buttered toast, piles of muffins, and a chocolate cake.

A drawer slid out of the end of it, full of knives, spoons, and forks. Charmain and Peter, with one accord, dragged the trolley over to the musty sofa and settled down to eat and drink. After a minute, Waif put her huge head round the door, sniffing. Seeing the trolley, she shoved a bit and arrived in the living room too, where she crawled wistfully and mountainously over to the sofa and put her enormous hairy chin on the back of it behind Charmain. Peter gave her a distracted look and passed her several muffins, which she ate in one mouthful, with huge politeness.

[] A good half hour later, Peter lay back and stretched. "That was great," he said. "At least we won't starve. Wizard Norland," he added experimentally, "how do we get lunch in this house?"

There was no reply.

[] "He only answers me," Charmain said, a trifle smugly. "And I'm not going to ask now. I had to deal with a lubbock before you came and I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed."

[] "What are lubbocks?" Peter asked. "I think one killed my father."

[] Charmain did not feel up to answering him. She got up and went to the door.

[] "Wait," Peter said. "How do we get rid of the stuff on this trolley?"

[] "No idea," said Charmain. She opened the door.

[] "Wait, wait, wait!" Peter said, hurrying after her. "Show me my bedroom first."

[] I suppose I'll have to, Charmain thought. He can't tell left from right. She sighed. Unwillingly, she shoved Peter in among the bubbles that were still storming into the kitchen, thicker than ever, so that he could collect his knapsack, and then steered him left, back through the door to where the bedrooms were. "Take the third one along," she said.

[] "That one's mine and the first one's Great-Uncle William's. But there's miles of them, if you want a different one.

Good night," she added, and went into the bathroom.

[] Everything in there was frozen.

"Oh, well," Charmain said.

[] By the time she got to her bedroom and into her somewhat tea-stained nightdress, Peter was out in the corridor, shouting, "Hey! This toilet's frozen over!" Bad luck! Charmain thought. She got into bed and was asleep almost at once.

[] About an hour later, she dreamed that she was being sat on by a woolly mammoth. "Get off, Waif," she said. "You're too big." After this she dreamed that the mammoth slowly got off her, grumbling under its breath, before she went off into other, deeper dreams.

 

[

298

] Chapter Five

IN WHICH CHARMAIN RECEIVES HER ANXIOUS PARENT

[] When Charmain woke, she discovered that Waif had planted her vast head on the bed, across Charmain's legs. The rest of Waif was piled on the floor in a hairy white heap that filled most of the rest of the room.

[] "So you can't go smaller on your own," Charmain said. "I'll have to think of something."

[] Waif 's answer was a series of giant wheezings, after which she appeared to go to sleep again. Charmain, with difficulty, dragged her legs out from under Waif 's head and edged round Waif 's vast body finding clean clothes and getting into them. When she came to do her hair, Charmain discovered that all the hairpins she usually put it up with seemed to have vanished, probably during her dive off the cliff. All she had left was a ribbon. Mother always insisted that respectable girls needed to have their hair in a neat knot on the top of their heads. Charmain had never worn her hair any other way.

[] "Oh, well," she said to her reflection in the neat little mirror, "Mother's not here, is she?" And she did her hair in a fat plait over one shoulder and fastened it with the ribbon. Like that, she thought her reflection looked nicer than usual, fuller in the face and less thin and grumpy. She nodded at her reflection and picked her way around Waif to get to the bathroom.

[] To her relief, the bathroom had thawed overnight. The room was full of soft dripping sounds from water dewing all the pipes, but nothing else seemed to be wrong until Charmain tried the taps. All four of them ran ice-cold water, no matter how long they ran for.

[] "I didn't want a bath anyway," Charmain said, as she went out into the corridor.

[] There was no sound from Peter. Charmain remembered Mother telling her that boys always were hard to wake in the morning. She did not let this worry her. She opened the door and turned left into the kitchen, into solid foam. Clots of foam and large single bubbles sailed past her into the corridor.

[] "Damnation!" Charmain said. She put her head down and her arms across her head and plowed into the room. It was as hot in there as her father's bake house when he was baking for a big order. "Phew!" she said. "I suppose it takes days to use up a cake of soap." After that she said nothing else, because her mouth filled with soapy froth when she opened it. Bubbles worked up her nose until she sneezed, causing a small foamy whirlwind. She collided with the table and heard another teapot fall down, but she plowed on until she ran into the laundry bags and heard the saucepans rattle on top of them. Then she knew where she was. She spared one hand from her face in order to fumble for the sink and then along the sink until she felt the back door under her fingers. She groped for the latch—for a moment she thought that had vanished in the night, until she realized it was on the other edge of the door—and finally flung the door open. Then she stood gulping in deep, soapy breaths and blinking her running, smarting, soap-filled eyes into a beautiful mild morning.

[] Bubbles sailed out past her in crowds. As her eyes cleared, Charmain stood admiring the way big shiny bubbles caught the sunlight as they soared against the green slopes of the mountains. Most of them, she noticed, seemed to pop when they got to the end of the yard, as if there was an invisible barrier there, but some sailed on and up and up as if they would go on forever. Charmain followed them up with her eyes, past brown cliffs and green slopes. One of those green slopes must be that meadow where she had met the lubbock, but she was unable to tell which. She let her eyes go on to the pale blue sky above the peaks. It was a truly lovely day.

[] By this time there was a steady, shimmering stream of bubbles pouring out of the kitchen. When Charmain turned to look, the room was no longer solid foam, but there were still bubbles everywhere and more piling out of the fireplace.

Charmain sighed and edged back indoors, until she could lean over the sink and throw the window open too. This helped enormously. Two lines of bubbles now sailed out of the house, faster than before, and made rainbows in the yard. The kitchen emptied rapidly. It was soon clear enough for Charmain to see that there were now four bags of laundry leaning beside the sink, in place of last night's two.

[] "Bother that!" Charmain said. "Great-Uncle William, how do I get breakfast?"

[] It was good to hear Great-Uncle William's voice among the bubbles. "Just tap the side of the fireplace and say 'Breakfast, please,' my dear."

[] Charmain rushed hungrily over there at once. She gave the soapy paintwork there an impatient tap. "Breakfast, please."

[] Then found she was having to back away from a floating tray, nudging at the glasses dangling on her chest. In the center of this tray was a sizzling plate of bacon and eggs, and crammed in around it were a coffee pot, a cup, a rack of toast, jam, butter, milk, a bowl of stewed plums, and cutlery in a starched napkin.

[] "Oh, lovely!" she said, and before it could all get too soapy, she seized the tray and carried it away into the living room. To her surprise, there was no sign of the afternoon tea feast that she and Peter had had last night, and the trolley was neatly back in its corner; but the room was very musty and there were quite a few escaped bubbles coasting around in it. Charmain went on and out through the front door. She remembered that, while she was picking the pink and blue petals for the spell from The Boke of Palimpsest, she had noticed a garden table and bench outside the study window. She carried the tray round the corner of the house to look for it.

[] She found it, in the place where the morning sun was strongest, and above it, over the pink-and-blue bush, the study window, even though there was no space in the house for the study to be. Magic is interesting, she thought as she set the tray on the table. Though the bushes around her were still dripping from the overnight rain, the bench and the table were dry. Charmain sat down and consumed the most enjoyable breakfast she had ever had, warm in the sun and feeling lazy, luxurious, and extremely grown up. The only thing missing is a chocolate croissant, like Dad makes, she thought, sitting back to sip her coffee. I must tell Great-Uncle William when he comes back.

[] She had an idea that Great-Uncle William must have sat here often, enjoying his breakfast. The blooms on the hydrangeas around her were the finest in the garden, as if for his special pleasure. Each bush had more than one color of flowers. The one in front of her had white flowers and pale pink and mauve. The next one over started blue on the left side and shaded over into a deep sea green on the right. Charmain was feeling rather pleased that she had not allowed the kobold to cut these bushes down, when Peter stuck his head out through the study window. This rather destroyed Charmain's pleasure.

[] "Hey, where did you get that breakfast?" Peter demanded.

[] Charmain explained, and he put his head inside and went away. Charmain stayed where she was, expecting Peter to arrive any moment and hoping that he wouldn't. But nothing happened. After basking in the sun a while longer, Charmain thought she would find a book to read. She carried the tray indoors and through to the kitchen first, congratulating herself on being so tidy and efficient. Peter had obviously been there, because he had shut the back door, leaving only the window open, so that the room was once more filled with bubbles, floating gently toward the window and then streaming swiftly out of it. Among these bubbles loomed the great white shape of Waif. As Charmain arrived, Waif stretched out her huge frayed tail and wagged it sharply against the mantelpiece. A very small dog dish, piled with the amount of food suitable for a very small dog, landed among the bubbles by her enormous front paws.

Waif surveyed it sadly, lowered her vast head, and slurped up the dog food in one mouthful.

[] "Oh, poor Waif!" Charmain said.

[] Waif looked up and saw her. Her huge tail began to wag, thrumming against the fireplace. A new tiny dog dish appeared with each wag. In seconds, Waif was surrounded in little dog dishes, spread all over the floor.

[] "Don't overdo it, Waif," Charmain said, edging among the dishes. She put the tray down on one of the two new laundry bags and said to Waif, "I'll be in the study looking for a book, if you want me," and edged her way back there. Waif ate busily and took no notice.

[] Peter was in the study. His finished breakfast tray was on the floor beside the desk and Peter himself was in the chair, busily leafing through one of the large leather books from the row at the back of the desk. He looked far more respectable today. Now that his hair was dry, it was in neat tawny curls and he was wearing what was obviously his second suit, which was of good green tweed. It was crumpled from his knapsack and had one or two round wet patches on it where bubbles had burst, but Charmain found that she quite approved of it. As Charmain came in, he slammed the book shut with a sigh and pushed it back in its place. Charmain noticed that he had a piece of green string tied round his left thumb. So that's how he managed to get in here, she thought.

[] "I can't make head or tail of these," he said to her. "It must be in here somewhere, but I can't find it."

[] "What are you trying to find?" Charmain asked.

[] "You said something last night about a lubbock," Peter said, "and I realized that I didn't really know what they are. I'm trying to look them up. Or do you know all about them?"

[] "Not really—except that they're very frightening," Charmain confessed. "I'd like to find out about them too. How do we?"

[] Peter pointed his thumb with the green string round it at the row of books. "These. I know these are a wizards' encyclopedia, but you have to know the sort of thing you're looking for before you can even find the right volume to look in."

[] Charmain pulled her glasses up and bent to look at the books. Each one was called Res Magica in gold, with a number under that and then a title. Volume 3, she read, Giroloptica; Volume 5, Panacticon; then down at the other end, Volume 19, Advanced Seminal; Volume 27, Terrestrial Oneiromancy; Volume 28, Cosmic Oneiromancy. "I see your problem," she said.

[] "I'm going through them in order now," Peter said. "I've just done Five. It's all spells I can't make head or tail of." He pulled out Volume 6, which was labeled simply Hex, and opened it. "You do the next one," he said.

[] Charmain shrugged and pulled forward Volume 7. It was called, not very helpfully, Potentes. She took it over to the windowsill, where there was space and light, and opened it not far from the beginning. As soon as she did, she knew it was the one. "Demon: powerful and sometimes dangerous being," she read, "often confused with an Elemental qv," and leafing on a few pages, "Devil: a creature of hell…." After that she was at "Elfgift: contains powers gifted by Elves qv for the safety of a realm…," and then, a wad of pages later, "Incubus: specialized Devil qv, inimical mostly to women…." She turned the pages over very slowly and carefully after that, and twenty pages on, she found it.

[] "Lubbock. Got it!" she said.

[] "Great!" Peter slammed Hex shut. "This one's nearly all diagrams. What does it say?" He came and leaned on the windowsill beside Charmain and they both read the entry.

[] "LUBBOCK: a creature fortunately rare. A lubbock is a purple-hued insectile being of any size from grasshopper to larger than human. It is very dangerous, though nowadays luckily only to be encountered in wild or uninhabited areas.

A lubbock will attack any human it sees, either with its pincer-like appendages or its formidable proboscis. For ten months of the year, it will merely tear the human to pieces for food, but in the months of July and August it comes into its breeding season and is then especially dangerous; for in those months it will lie in wait for human travelers and, having caught one, it will lay its eggs in that human's body. The eggs hatch after twelve months, whereupon the first hatched will eat the rest, and this single new lubbock will then carve its way out of its human host. A male human will die. A female human will give birth in the normal fashion, and the offspring so born will be a LUBBOCKIN (see below). The human female then usually dies."

[] My goodness, I had a narrow escape! Charmain thought and her eyes, and Peter's, scudded on to the next entry.

[] "LUBBOCKIN: the offspring of a LUBBOCK qv and a human female. These creatures normally have the appearance of a human child except that they invariably have purple eyes. Some will have purple skin, and a few may even be born with vestigial wings. A midwife will destroy an obvious lubbockin on sight, but in many cases lubbockins have been mistakenly reared as if they were human children. They are almost invariably evil, and since lubbockins can breed with humans, the evil nature does not disappear until several generations have passed. It is rumored that many of the inhabitants of remote areas such as High Norland and Montalbino owe their origins to a lubbockin ancestor."

[] It was hard to describe the effect of reading this on both Charmain and Peter. They both wished they had not read it.

Great-Uncle William's sunny study suddenly felt entirely unsafe, with queer shadows in the corners. In fact, Charmain thought, the whole house did. She and Peter both found themselves staring around uneasily and then looking urgently out of the window for danger in the garden. Both jumped when Waif gave an outsize yawn somewhere in the corridor.

Charmain wanted to dash out there and make sure that window at the end was quite, quite shut. But first she had to look at Peter very, very carefully for any signs of purple in him. He said he came from Montalbino, after all.

[] Peter had gone very white. This showed up quite a few freckles across his nose, but they were pale orange freckles, and the meager new hairs that grew on his chin were a sort of orange too. His eyes were a rusty sort of brown, nothing like the greenish yellow of Charmain's own eyes, but not purple either. She could see all this easily because Peter was staring at her quite as carefully. Her face felt cold. She could tell it had gone as white as Peter's. Finally, they both spoke at once.

[] Charmain said, "You're from Montalbino. Is your family purple?"

Peter said, "You met a lubbock. Did it lay any eggs in you?"

Charmain said, "No."

[] Peter said, "My mother's called the Witch of Montalbino, but she's from High Norland, really. And she is not purple.

Tell me about this lubbock you met."

[] Charmain explained how she had climbed out of the window and arrived in the mountain pasture where the lubbock lurked inside the blue flower and—

[] "But did it touch you?" Peter interrupted.

[] "No, because I fell off the cliff before it could," Charmain said.

[] "Fell off the—Then why aren't you dead?" Peter demanded. He backed away from her slightly, as if he thought she might be some kind of zombie.

[] "I worked a spell," Charmain told him, rather airily because she was so proud of having worked real magic. "A flying spell."

[] "Really?" said Peter, half eager, half suspicious. "What flying spell? Where?"

[] "Out of a book in here," Charmain said. "And when I fell, I started to float and came down quite safely in the garden path. There's no need to look so disbelieving. There was a kobold called Rollo in the garden when I came down. Ask him, if you don't believe me."

[] "I will," Peter said. "What was this book? Show me."

[] Charmain tossed her plait haughtily across her shoulder and went over to the desk. The Boke of Palimpsest seemed to be trying to hide. It was certainly not where she had left it. Perhaps Peter had moved it. She found it in the end, squeezed in among the row of Res Magica, pretending to be another volume of the encyclopedia. "There," she said, banging it down on top of Hex, "and how dare you doubt my word! Now I'm going to find a book to read."

[] She marched to one of the bookshelves and began picking out likely titles. None of the books seemed to have stories in them, which Charmain would have preferred, but some of the titles were quite interesting. What about The Thaumaturge as Artist, for instance, or Memoirs of an Exorcist? On the other hand, The Theory and Practice of Choral Invocation looked decidedly dry, but Charmain rather fancied the one next to it, called The Twelve-Branched Wand.

[] Peter meanwhile sat himself down at the desk and leafed eagerly through The Boke of Palimpsest. Charmain was just discovering that The Thaumaturge as Artist was full of off-putting sayings like "thus our happy little magician can bring a sweet, fairylike music to our ears," when Peter said irritably, "There's no spell for flying in here. I've looked right through."

[] "Perhaps I used it up," Charmain suggested vaguely. She took a look inside The Twelve-Branched Wand and found it a very promising read.

[] "Spells don't work like that," Peter said. "Where did you find it, really?"

[] "In there. I told you," Charmain said. "And if you can't believe a word I say, why do you keep asking me?" She dropped her glasses off her nose, snapped the book shut, and carried a whole pile of likely volumes out into the corridor, where she slammed the study door on Peter and marched off backward and forward through the bathroom door until she reached the living room. There, in spite of the mustiness, she decided to stay. After that entry in Res Magica, outside in the sun did not seem safe anymore. She thought of the lubbock looming above the hydrangeas and sat herself firmly down on the sofa instead.

[] She was deep in The Twelve-Branched Wand, and even beginning to understand what it was about, when there was a sharp rapping at the front door. Charmain thought, just as she usually did, Someone else can answer that, and read on.

[] The door opened with an impatient rattle. Aunt Sempronia's voice said, "Of course she's all right, Berenice. She just has her nose in a book, as usual."

[] Charmain tore herself out of the book and snatched off her glasses in time to see her mother following Aunt Sempronia into the house. Aunt Sempronia, as usual, was most impressively clothed in stiff silk. Mrs. Baker was at her most respectable in gray, with shining white collar and cuffs, and wore her most respectable gray hat.

[] How lucky I put on clean clothes this—, Charmain was beginning to think, when it dawned on her that the rest of the house was simply not fit for either of these two ladies to see. Not only was the kitchen full of dirty human dishes and dirty dog dishes, bubbles, laundry, and a vast white dog, but Peter was sitting in the study. Mother would probably only find the kitchen, and that was bad enough. But Aunt Sempronia was (pretty certainly) a witch, and she would find the study and come across Peter. Then Mother would want to know what an unknown boy was doing here. And when Peter was explained, Mother would say that in that case Peter could look after Great-Uncle William's house for him, and Charmain must do the respectable thing and come home at once. Aunt Sempronia would agree, and off home Charmain would be forced to go. And there would be an end to peace and freedom.

[] Charmain jumped to her feet and smiled terrifically, so broadly and welcomingly that she thought she might have sprained her face. "Oh, hallo!" she said. "I didn't hear the door."

[] "You never do," said Aunt Sempronia.

[] Mrs. Baker peered at Charmain, full of anxiety. "Are you all right, my love? Quite all right? Why haven't you put your hair up properly?"

[] "I like it like this," Charmain said, shuffling across so that she was between the two ladies and the kitchen door. "Don't you think it suits me, Aunt Sempronia?"

[] Aunt Sempronia leaned on her parasol and looked at her judiciously. "Yes," she said. "It does. It makes you look younger and plumper. Is that how you want to look?"

[] "Yes, it is," Charmain said defiantly.

[] Mrs. Baker sighed. "Darling, I wish you wouldn't talk in that bold way. People don't like it, you know. But I'm very glad to see you looking so well. I lay awake half the night listening to the rain and hoping that the roof on this house didn't leak."

[] "It doesn't leak," Charmain said.

[] "Or fearing that you might have left a window open," added her mother.

[] Charmain shuddered. "No, I shut the window," she said, and immediately felt sure that Peter was at that moment opening the window onto the lubbock's meadow. "You really have nothing to worry about, Mother," she lied.

[] "Well, to tell the truth, I was a little worried," Mrs. Baker said. "Your first time away from the nest, you know. I spoke to your father about it. He said you might not be managing to feed yourself properly." She held up the bulging embroidered bag she was carrying. "He packed you some more food in this. I'll just go and put it in the kitchen for you, shall I?" she asked, and pushed past Charmain toward the inner door.

[] No! Help! Charmain thought. She took hold of the embroidered bag in what she hoped was a most gentle, civilized way, rather than the grab for it that she would have liked to make, and said, "You needn't bother, Mother. I'll take it in a moment and fetch the other one for you—"

[] "Oh why? It's no trouble, my love," her mother protested, hanging on to the bag.

[] "—because I've got a surprise for you first," Charmain said hurriedly. "You go and sit down. That sofa's very comfortable, Mother." And it has its back to this door. "Do take a seat, Aunt Sempronia—"

[] "But it won't take me a moment," Mrs. Baker said. "If I leave it on the kitchen table where you can find it—"

[] Charmain waved her free hand. Her other hand was hanging on to the bag for dear life. "Great-Uncle William!" she cried out. "Morning coffee! Please!"

[] To her enormous relief, Great-Uncle William's kind voice replied, "Tap the trolley in the corner, my dear, and say 'Morning Coffee.'"

[] Mrs. Baker gasped with amazement and looked round to see where the voice was coming from. Aunt Sempronia looked interested, looked quizzical, and went over to give the trolley a smart rap with her parasol. "Morning Coffee?" she said.

[] Instantly the room filled with a warm smell of coffee. A tall silver coffee pot stood on the trolley, steaming, together with tiny gilded cups, a gilded cream jug, a silver sugar boat, and a plate of little sugary cakes. Mrs. Baker was so astonished that she let go of the embroidered bag. Charmain put it quickly behind the nearest armchair.

[] "Very elegant magic," Aunt Sempronia said. "Berenice, come and sit down here and let Charmain wheel the trolley over beside this sofa."

[] Mrs. Baker obeyed, looking dazed, and to Charmain's acute relief, the visit started to turn into an elegant, respectable coffee morning. Aunt Sempronia poured coffee, while Charmain handed round the sugary cakes. Charmain was standing facing the kitchen door, holding the plate out to Aunt Sempronia, when the door swung open and Waif 's huge face appeared round the edge of it, obviously fetched by the smell of little sugary cakes.

[] "Go away, Waif!" Charmain said. "Shoo! I mean it! You can't come in here unless you're…you're…you're respectable.

Go!"

[] Waif stared wistfully, sighed hugely, and backed away. By the time Mrs. Baker and Aunt Sempronia, each carefully holding a brimming little coffee cup, had managed to turn round to see who Charmain was talking to, Waif was gone and the door was shut again.

"What was that?" Mrs. Baker asked.

[] "Nothing," Charmain said soothingly. "Only Great-Uncle William's guard dog, you know. She's terribly greedy—"

[] "You have a dog here!" Mrs. Baker interrupted, in the greatest alarm. "I'm not sure I like that, Charmain. Dogs are so dirty. And you could get bitten! I hope you keep it chained up."

[] "No, no, no, she's terribly clean. And obedient," Charmain said, wondering if this was true. "It's just—it's just that she overeats. Great-Uncle William tries to keep her on a diet, so of course she was after one of these cakes—"

[] The kitchen door opened again. This time it was Peter's face that came round the edge of it, with a look on it that suggested that Peter had something urgent to say. The look turned to horror as he took in Aunt Sempronia's finery and Mrs. Baker's respectability.

[] "Here she is again," Charmain said, rather desperately. "Waif, go away!"

[] Peter took the hint and vanished, just before Aunt Sempronia could turn round again and see him. Mrs. Baker looked more alarmed than ever.

[] "You worry too much, Berenice," Aunt Sempronia said. "I admit that dogs are smelly and dirty and noisy, but there's nothing to beat a good guard dog for keeping a house safe. You should be glad that Charmain has one."

[] "I suppose so," Mrs. Baker agreed, sounding wholly unconvinced. "But—but didn't you tell me this house is protected by—your great-uncle's…er…wizardly arts?"

[] "Yes, yes, it is!" Charmain said eagerly. "The place is doubly safe!"

[] "Of course it is," said Aunt Sempronia. "I believe that nothing can get in here that hasn't been invited over the threshold."

[] As if to prove Aunt Sempronia completely wrong there, a kobold suddenly appeared on the floor beside the trolley.

[] "Now, look here!" he said, small and blue and aggressive.

[] Mrs. Baker gave a shriek and clutched her coffee cup to her bosom. Aunt Sempronia drew her skirts back from him in a stately way. The kobold stared at them, clearly puzzled, and then looked at Charmain. He was not the garden kobold.

His nose was bigger, his blue clothing was of finer cloth, and he looked as if he was used to giving orders.

[] "Are you an important kobold?" Charmain asked him.

[] "Well," the kobold said, rather taken aback, "you could say that. I'm chieftain in these parts, name of Timminz. I'm leading this deputation, and we're all pretty annoyed. And now we're told that the wizard isn't here, or won't see us, or —"

[] Charmain could see he was working himself into a rage. She said quickly, "That's true. He's not here. He's ill. The elves have taken him away to cure him, and I'm looking after his house while he's away."

[] The kobold hunched his eyes over his great blue nose and glowered at her. "Are you telling the truth?"

[] I seem to have spent all day being told I'm lying! Charmain thought angrily.

[] "It is the exact truth," Aunt Sempronia said. "William Norland is not here at present. So will you be so kind as to take yourself off, my good kobold. You are frightening poor Mrs. Baker."

[] The kobold glowered at her and then at Mrs. Baker. "Then," he said to Charmain, "I don't see any chance of this dispute being settled, ever!" And he was gone as suddenly as he had come.

[] "Oh, my goodness!" Mrs. Baker gasped, holding her chest. "So little! So blue! How did it get in? Don't let it run up your skirt, Charmain!"

[] "It was only a kobold," Aunt Sempronia said. "Pull yourself together, Berenice. Kobolds as a rule do not get on with humans, so I have no idea what it was doing here. But I suppose Great-Uncle William must have had some sort of dealings with the creatures. There's no accounting for wizards."

[] "And I've spilled coffee—" Mrs. Baker wailed, mopping at her skirt.

[] Charmain took the little cup and soothingly filled it with coffee again. "Have another cake, Mother," she said, holding the plate out. "Great-Uncle William has a kobold to do the gardening, and that one was angry too when I met him—"

[] "What was the gardener doing in the living room?" Mrs. Baker demanded.

[] As often happened, Charmain began to despair of getting her mother to understand. She's not stupid, she just never lets her mind out, she thought. "That was a different kobold," she began.

[] The kitchen door opened and Waif trotted in. She was the right size again. That meant that she was, if anything, smaller than the kobold and very pleased with herself for shrinking. She trotted jauntily across to Charmain and raised her nose wistfully toward the cake plate.

[] "Honestly, Waif!" Charmain said. "When I think how much you ate for breakfast!"

[] "Is that the guard dog?" Mrs. Baker quavered.

[] "If it is," Aunt Sempronia opined, "it would come off second best against a mouse. How much did you say it ate for breakfast?"

[] "About fifty dog dishes full," Charmain said without thinking.

"Fifty!" said her mother.

[] "I was exaggerating," Charmain said.

[] Waif, seeing them all looking at her, sat up into begging position with her paws under her chin. She contrived to look enchanting. It was the way she managed to make one ragged ear flop that did it, Charmain decided.

[] "Oh, what a sweet little doggie!" Mrs. Baker cried out. "Is ooh hungwy, then?" She gave Waif the rest of the cake she was eating. Waif took it politely, ate it in one gulp, and continued to beg. Mrs. Baker gave her a whole cake from the plate. This caused Waif to beg more soulfully than ever.

[] "I'm disgusted," Charmain told Waif.

[] Aunt Sempronia graciously handed a cake over to Waif too. "I must say," she said to Charmain, "with this great hound to guard you, no one need fear for your safety, although you might go rather hungry yourself."

[] "She's good at barking," Charmain said. And there's no need to be sarcastic, Aunt Sempronia. I know she isn't a guard dog. But Charmain had no sooner thought this than she realized that Waif was guarding her. She had taken Mother's attention completely away from kobolds, or the kitchen, or any dangers to Charmain herself, and she had contrived to reduce herself to the right size to do it. Charmain found herself so grateful that she gave Waif a cake as well. Waif thanked her very charmingly, by nosing her hand, and then turned her expectant attention to Mrs. Baker again.

[] "Oh, she is so sweet!" Mrs. Baker sighed, and rewarded Waif with a fifth cake.

[] She'll burst, Charmain thought. Nevertheless, thanks to Waif, the rest of the visit went off most peacefully, until right at the end, when the ladies got up to go. Mrs. Baker said, "Oh, I nearly forgot!" and felt in her pocket. "This letter came for you, darling." She held out to Charmain a long, stiff envelope with a red wax seal on the back of it. It was addressed to "Mistress Charmain Baker" in elegant quavery writing.

[] Charmain stared at the letter and found her heart was banging away in her ears and her chest like a blacksmith at an anvil. Her eyes went fuzzy. Her hand shook as she took the letter. The King had replied to her. He had actually answered. She knew it was the King. The address was in the same quavery writing that she had found on the letter in Great-Uncle William's study. "Oh. Thanks," she said, trying to sound casual.

[] "Open it, dear," her mother said. "It looks very grand. What do you think it is?"

[] "Oh, it's nothing," Charmain said. "It's only my Leavers' Certificate."

[] This was a mistake. Her mother exclaimed, "What? But your father is expecting you to stay on at school and learn a little culture, darling!"

[] "Yes, I know, but they always give everyone a certificate at the end of the tenth year," Charmain invented. "In case some of us do want to leave, you know. My whole class will have got one too. Don't worry."

[] In spite of this explanation, which Charmain considered quite brilliant, Mrs. Baker did worry. She might have made a very great fuss, had not Waif suddenly sprung up onto her hind legs and walked at Mrs. Baker, with her front paws most appealingly tucked under her chin again.

[] "Oh, you sweetheart!" Mrs. Baker exclaimed. "Charmain, if your great-uncle lets you bring this darling little dog home with you when he's better, I shan't mind a bit. I really shan't."

[] Charmain was able to stuff the King's letter into her waistband and kiss her mother and then Aunt Sempronia good-bye without either of them mentioning it again. She waved them happily off down the path between the hydrangeas and shut the front door behind them with a gasp of relief. "Thank you, Waif!" she said. "You clever dog!" She leaned against the front door and started to open the King's letter—though I know in advance he's bound to say no, she told herself, shivering with excitement. I would say no, if it was me!

[] Before she had the envelope more than half open, the other door was flung open by Peter. "Have they gone?" he said.

[] "At last? I need your help. I'm being mobbed by angry kobolds in here."

 

[

429

] Chapter Six

WHICH CONCERNS THE COLOR BLUE

[] Charmain sighed and stuffed the King's letter into her pocket. She did not feel like sharing whatever it said with Peter.

[] "Why?" she said. "Why are they angry?"

[] "Come and see," Peter said. "It all sounds ridiculous to me. I told them that you were in charge and they had to wait until you had finished being polite to those witches."

[] "Witches!" said Charmain. "One of them was my mother!"

[] "Well, my mother's a witch," Peter said. "And you only had to look at the proud one in silk to see that she was a witch. Do come on."

[] He held the door open for Charmain and she went through, thinking that Peter was probably right about Aunt Sempronia. No one in the Bakers' respectable house ever mentioned witchcraft, but Charmain had thought that Aunt Sempronia was a witch for years, without ever putting it to herself so baldly.

[] She forgot about Aunt Sempronia as soon as she entered the kitchen. There were kobolds everywhere. Little blue men with different shapes of large blue noses were standing anywhere there was a space on the floor that was not full of dog dishes or spilled tea. They were on the table between teapots and in the sink balanced on dirty dishes. There were little blue women too, mostly perched on the laundry bags. The women were distinguished by their smaller, gentler noses and their rather stylish flounced blue skirts. I'd like a skirt like that, Charmain thought. Only larger, of course.

There were so many kobolds that it took Charmain a moment to notice that the bubbles from the fireplace were nearly gone.

[] All the kobolds raised a shrill shout as Charmain came in. "We seem to have got the whole tribe," Peter said.

Charmain thought he was probably right. "Very well," she said above the yelling. "I'm here. What's the problem?"

[] The answer was such a storm of yelling that Charmain put her hands over her ears.

[] "That'll do!" she shouted. "How can I understand a word you say when you all scream at once?" She recognized the kobold who had appeared in the living room, standing on a chair with at least six others. His nose was a very memorable shape. "You tell me. What was your name again?"

[] He gave her a curt little bow. "Timminz is my name. I understand you are Charming Baker and you speak for the wizard. Am I right?"

[] "More or less," Charmain said. There did not seem to be much point in arguing about her name. Besides, she rather liked being called Charming. "I told you the wizard's ill. He's gone away to get cured."

[] "So you say," Timminz answered. "Are you sure he hasn't run away?"

[] This produced such yells and jeers from all over the kitchen that Charmain had to shout again to get heard. "Be quiet!

Of course he hasn't run away. I was here when he went. He was very unwell and the elves had to carry him. He would have died if the elves hadn't taken him."

[] In the near-silence that followed this, Timminz said sulkily, "If you say so, we believe you, of course. Our quarrel is with the wizard, but maybe you can settle it. And I tell you we don't like it. It's indecent."

[] "What is?" Charmain asked.

[] Timminz squeezed his eyes up and glowered over his nose. "You are not to laugh. The wizard laughed when I complained to him."

[] "I promise not to laugh," Charmain said. "So what is it?"

[] "We were very angry," Timminz said. "Our ladies refused to wash his dishes for him and we took away his taps so that he couldn't wash them himself, but all he did was smile, and say he hadn't the strength to argue—"

[] "Well, he was ill," Charmain said. "You know that now. So what is it about?"

[] "This garden of his," Timminz said. "The complaint came first from Rollo, but I came and took a look and Rollo was quite right. The wizard was growing bushes with blue flowers, which is the correct and reasonable color for flowers to be, but by his magic he had made half the same bushes pink, and some of them were even green or white, which is disgusting and incorrect."

[] Here Peter was unable to contain himself. "But hydrangeas are like that!" he burst out. "I've explained it to you! Any gardener could tell you. If you don't put the bluing powder under the whole bush, some of the flowers are going to be pink. Rollo's a gardener. He must have known."

[] Charmain looked around the crowded kitchen but could not see Rollo anywhere among the swarms of blue people.

[] "He probably only told you," she said, "because he likes to chop things down. I bet he kept asking the wizard if he could chop the bushes down and the wizard said no. He asked me last night—"

[] At this, Rollo popped up from beside a dog dish, almost at Charmain's feet. She recognized him mostly by his grating little voice when he shouted, "And so I did ask her! And she sits there in the path, having just floated down from the sky, cool as you please, and tells me I only wants to enjoy myself. As bad as the wizard, she is!"

[] Charmain glared down at him. "You're just a destructive little beast," she said. "What you're doing is making trouble because you can't get your own way!"

[] Rollo flung out an arm. "Hear her? Hear that? Who's wrong here, her or me?"

[] A dreadful shrill clamor arose from all over the kitchen. Timminz shouted for silence, and when the clamor had died into muttering, he said to Charmain, "So will you now give permission for these disgraceful bushes to be lopped down?"

[] "No, I will not," Charmain told him. "They're Great-Uncle William's bushes and I'm supposed to look after all his things for him. And Rollo is just making trouble."

[] Timminz said, squeezing his glower at her, "Is that your last word?"

[] "Yes," said Charmain. "It is."

[] "Then," Timminz said, "you're on your own. No kobold is going to do a hand's turn for you from now on."

[] And they were all gone. Just like that, the blue crowd vanished from among teapots and dog dishes and dirty crockery, leaving a little wind stirring the last few bubbles about and the fire now burning brightly in the grate.

[] "That was stupid of you," Peter said.

[] "What do you mean?" Charmain asked indignantly. "You're the one who said those bushes were supposed to be like that. And you could see Rollo had got them all stirred up on purpose. I couldn't let Great-Uncle William come home to find his garden all chopped down, could I?"

[] "Yes, but you could have been more tactful," Peter insisted. "I was expecting you to say we'd put down a bluing spell to make all the flowers blue, or something."

[] "Yes, but Rollo would still have wanted to cut them all down," Charmain said. "He told me I was a spoilsport last night for not letting him."

[] "You could have made them see what he was like," Peter said, "instead of making them all even angrier."

[] "At least I didn't laugh at them like Great-Uncle William did," Charmain retorted. "He made them angry, not me!"

[] "And look where that got him!" Peter said. "They took away his taps and left all his dishes dirty. So now we've got to wash them all without even any hot water in the bathroom."

[] Charmain flounced down into the chair and began, again, to open the King's letter. "Why have we got to?" she said. "I haven't the remotest idea how to wash dishes anyway."

[] Peter was scandalized. "You haven't? Why ever not?"

[] Charmain got the envelope open and pulled out a beautiful, large, stiff, folded paper. "My mother brought me up to be respectable," she said. "She never let me near the scullery, or the kitchen either."

[] "I don't believe this!" Peter said. "Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap?"

[] "That," Charmain said haughtily, "was an accident. Please be quiet and let me read my letter." She pulled her glasses up on to her nose and unfolded the stiff paper.

[] "Dear Mistress Baker," she read.

[] "Well, I'm going to get on and try," Peter said. "I'm blowed if I'm going to be bullied by a crowd of little blue people.

And I should think you had enough pride to help me do it."

[] "Shut up," said Charmain and concentrated on her letter.

[] Dear Mistress Baker,

How kind of you to offer Us your services. In the normal way, We would find the assistance of Our Daughter, the Princess Hilda, sufficient for Our need; but it so happens that the Princess is about to receive Important Visitors and is obliged to forgo her Work in the Library for the duration of the Visit. We therefore gratefully accept your Kind Offer, on a temporary basis. If you would be so Good as to present yourself at the Royal Mansion this coming Wednesday Morning, at around ten-thirty, We shall be happy to receive you in Our Library and instruct you in Our Work.

Your Obliged and Grateful

Adolphus Rex Norlandi Alti

[] Charmain's heart banged and bumped as she read the letter, and it was not until she reached the end of it that she realized that the amazing, unlikely, unbelievable thing had happened: the King had agreed to let her help him in the Royal Library! Tears came into her eyes, she was not sure why, and she had to whisk her glasses off. Her heart hammered with joy. Then with alarm. Was today Wednesday? Had she missed her chance?

[] She had been hearing, without attending, Peter crashing saucepans about and kicking dog dishes aside as he went to the inner door. Now she heard him come back again.

[] "What day is it today?" she asked him.

[] Peter set the large saucepan he was carrying down, hissing, on the fire. "I'll tell you if you tell me where he keeps his soap," he said.

[] "Bother you!" said Charmain. "It's in the pantry in a bag labeled something like Caninitis. Now, what day is it?"

[] "Cloths," said Peter. "Tell me where cloths are first. Did you know there are two new bags of laundry in this pantry now?"

[] "I don't know where cloths are," Charmain said. "What day is it?"

[] "Cloths first," said Peter. "He doesn't answer me when I ask."

[] "He didn't know you were coming," Charmain said. "Is it Wednesday yet?"

[] "I can't think why he didn't know," Peter said. "He got my letter. Ask for cloths."

[] Charmain sighed. "Great-Uncle William," she said, "this stupid boy wants to know where cloths are, please."

[] The kindly voice replied, "Do you know, my dear, I nearly forgot cloths. They're in the table drawer."

[] "It's Tuesday," Peter said, pouncing on the drawer and dragging it open almost into Charmain's stomach. He said as he fetched out wads of toweling and dishcloths, "I know it must be Tuesday, because I set off from home on Saturday and it took me three days to walk here. Satisfied?"

[] "Thank you," Charmain said. "Very kind of you. Then I'm afraid I'll have to go into town tomorrow. I may be gone all day."

[] "Then isn't it lucky that I'm here to look after the place for you?" Peter said. "Where are you skiving off to?"

[] "The King," Charmain said, with great dignity, "has asked me to go and help him. Read this, if you don't believe me."

[] Peter picked up the letter and looked it over. "I see," he said. "You've arranged to be in two places at once. Nice for you. So you can darned well help me wash these dishes now, when the water's hot."

[] "Why? I didn't get them dirty," Charmain said. She pocketed her letter and stood up. "I'm going into the garden."

[] "I didn't get them dirty either," Peter said. "And it was your uncle who annoyed the kobolds."

[] Charmain simply swept past him toward the living room.

[] "You've got nothing to do with being respectable!" Peter shouted after her. "You're just lazy."

[] Charmain took no notice and swept onward to the front door. Waif followed her, bustling appealingly around her ankles, but Charmain was too annoyed with Peter to bother with Waif. "Always criticizing!" she said. "He's never stopped once since he got here. As if he was perfect!" she said as she flung open the front door.

[] She gasped. The kobolds had been busy. Very busy, very quickly. True, they had not cut down the bushes because she had told them not to, but they had cut off every single pink bloom and most of the mauve or white ones. The front path was strewn with pink and lilac umbrellas of hydrangea flowers and she could see more lying among the bushes.

Charmain gave a cry of outrage and rushed forward to pick them up.

[] "Lazy, am I?" she muttered as she collected hydrangea heads into her skirt. "Oh, poor Great-Uncle William! What a mess. He liked them all colors. Oh, those little blue beasts!"

[] She went to tip the flowers out of her skirt onto the table outside the study window and discovered a basket by the wall there. She took it with her among the bushes. While Waif scuttled and snorted and sniffed around her, Charmain scooped up snipped-off hydrangea heads by the basket load. She chuckled rather meanly when she discovered that the kobolds had not always been certain which were blue. They had left most of the ones that were greenish and some that were lavender-colored, while there was one bush at which they must have had real trouble, because each flower on each of its umbrellas was pink in the middle and blue on the outside. To judge by the numbers of tiny footprints around this bush, they had held a meeting about it. In the end, they had cut the blooms off one half of the bush and left the rest.

[] "See? It's not that easy," Charmain said loudly, in case there were any kobolds around listening. "And what it really is is vandalism and I hope you're ashamed." She carried her last basketful back to the table, repeating, "Vandals. Bad behavior. Little beasts," and hoping that Rollo at least was somewhere listening.

[] Some of the biggest heads had quite long stalks. Charmain collected those into a large pink, mauve, and greenish white bunch and spread the rest out on the table to dry in the sun. She remembered reading somewhere that you could dry hydrangeas and they would stay the same color and make good decorations for winter. Great-Uncle William would enjoy these, she thought.

"So you see it is useful to sit and read a lot!" she announced to the air. By this time, however, she knew she was trying to justify herself to the world—if not to Peter—because she had been rather too impressed with herself for getting a letter from the King. "Oh, well," she said. "Come on, Waif."

[] Waif followed Charmain into the house but backed away from the kitchen door, trembling. Charmain saw why when she came into the kitchen and Peter looked up from his steaming saucepan. He had found an apron from somewhere and stacked all the crockery in neat heaps along the floor. He gave Charmain a look of righteous pain. "Very ladylike," he said. "I ask you to help me wash up and you pick flowers!"

[] "No, really," Charmain said. "Those beastly kobolds have cut off all the pink ones."

[] "They have?" Peter said. "That's too bad! Your uncle's going to be upset when he comes home, isn't he? You could put your flowers in that dish where the eggs are."

[] Charmain looked at the pie dish full of eggs crammed in beside the big bag of soapflakes among the teapots on the table. "Then where do we put the eggs? Just a moment." She went away to the bathroom and put the hydrangeas in the washbasin. It was rather ominously moist and trickly in there, but Charmain preferred not to think about that. She went back to the kitchen and said, "Now I'm going to nurture the hydrangea bushes by emptying these teapots on them."

[] "Nice try," Peter said. "That'll take you several hours. Do you think this water is hot yet?"

[] "Only steaming," Charmain said. "I think it ought to bubble. And it won't take me hours. Watch." She sorted out two largish saucepans and began emptying teapots into them. She was saying, "There are some advantages to being lazy, you know," when she realized that, as soon as she had emptied a teapot and put it back on the table, the teapot disappeared.

[] "Leave us one," Peter said anxiously. "I'd like a hot drink."

[] Charmain thought about this and carefully put the last teapot down on the chair. It disappeared too.

"Oh, well," Peter said.

[] Since he was obviously trying not to be so unfriendly, Charmain said, "We can get afternoon tea in the living room after I've emptied these. And my mother brought another bag of food when she came."

[] Peter cheered up remarkably. "Then we can have a decent meal when we've done the washing up," he said. "We're doing that first, whatever you say."

[] And he held Charmain to it, in spite of her protests. As soon as she came in from the garden, Peter came and took the book out of her hands and presented her with a cloth to tie round her waist instead. Then he led her to the kitchen, where the mysterious and horrible process began. Peter thrust another cloth into her hands. "You wipe and I'll wash," he said, lifting the steaming saucepan off the fire and pouring half the hot water on the soapflakes sprinkled in the sink.

He heaved up a bucket of cold water from the pump and poured half of that in the sink too.

[] "Why are you doing that?" Charmain asked.

[] "So as not to get scalded," Peter replied, plunging knives and forks into his mixture and following those with a stack of plates. "Don't you know anything?"

[] "No," Charmain said. She thought irritably that not one of the many books she had read had so much as mentioned washing dishes, let alone explained how you did it. She watched as Peter briskly used a dishcloth to wipe old, old dinner off a patterned plate. The plate came out of the suds bright and clean. Charmain rather liked the pattern now and was almost inclined to believe that this was magic. She watched Peter dip the plate in another bucket to rinse it.

Then he handed it to her. "What do I do with this?" she asked.

[] "Wipe it dry, of course," he said. "Then stack it on the table."

[] Charmain tried. The whole horrible business took ages. The wiping cloth hardly seemed to soak up water at all and the plate kept nearly slithering out of her hands. She was so much slower at wiping than Peter was at washing, that Peter soon had a heap of plates draining beside the sink and began to get impatient. Naturally, at that point, the prettiest patterned plate slid out of Charmain's hands completely and fell on the floor. Unlike the strange teapots, it broke.

[] "Oh," Charmain said, staring down at the pieces. "How do you put them together?"

[] Peter rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling. "You don't," he said. "You just take care not to drop another." He collected the pieces of plate and threw them into another bucket. "I'll wipe now. You try your hand at washing, or we'll be all day." He let the now brownish water out of the sink, collected the knives, forks, and spoons out of it, and dropped them in the rinsing bucket. To Charmain's surprise, they all seemed to be clean and shiny now.

[] As she watched Peter fill the sink again with more soap and hot water, she decided, crossly but quite reasonably, that Peter had chosen the easy part of the work.

[] She found she was mistaken. She did not find it easy at all. It took her slow ages on each piece of crockery, and she got soaked down the front of her in the process. And Peter kept handing back to her plates and cups, saucers and mugs, and saying they were still dirty. Nor would he let her wash any of the many dog dishes until the human crockery was done. Charmain thought this was too bad of him. Waif had licked each one so clean that Charmain knew they would be easier to wash than anything else. Then, on top of this, she was horrified to find that her hands were coming out of the suds all red and covered with strange wrinkles.

[] "I must be ill!" she said. "I've got a horrible skin disease!"

[] She was annoyed and offended when Peter laughed at her.

[] But the dreadful business was done at last. Charmain, damp in front and wrinkly in the hands, went sulkily off to the living room to read The Twelve-Branched Wand by the slanting light of the setting sun, leaving Peter to stack the clean things in the pantry. By this time, she was feeling she might go mad if she didn't sit and read for a while. I've hardly read a word all day, she thought.

[] Peter interrupted her much too soon by coming in with a vase he had found and filled with the hydrangeas, which he dumped down on the table in front of her. "Where's that food you said your mother brought?" he said.

[] "What?" Charmain said, peering at him through the foliage.

"I said Food," Peter told her.

[] Waif seconded him by leaning against Charmain's legs and groaning.

[] "Oh," Charmain said. "Yes. Food. You can have some if you promise not to dirty a single dish eating it."

[] "That's all right," Peter said. "I'm so hungry I could lick it off the carpet."

[] So Charmain reluctantly stopped reading and dragged the bag of food out from behind the armchair, and they all three ate large numbers of Mr. Baker's beautiful pasties, followed by Afternoon Tea, twice, from the trolley. In the course of this huge meal, Charmain parked the vase of hydrangeas on the trolley to be out of the way. When she next looked, they had vanished.

[] "I wonder where they went," Peter said.

"You can sit on the trolley and find out," Charmain suggested.

[] But Peter did not feel like going that far, to Charmain's disappointment. While she ate, she tried to think of ways of persuading Peter to go away, back to Montalbino. It was not that she utterly disliked him, exactly. It was just annoying to share the house with him. And she knew, as clearly as if Peter had told her, that the next thing he was going to make her do was to empty the things out of those laundry bags and wash them too. The idea of more washing made her shudder.

[] At least, she thought, I'm not going to be here tomorrow, so he can't make me do it then.

[] All at once she was hideously nervous. She was going to see the King. She had been crazy to write to him, quite mad, and now she was going to have to go and see him. Her appetite went away. She looked up from her last creamy scone and found it was now dark outside. The magical lighting had come on indoors, filling the room with what seemed like golden sunshine, but the windows were black.

[] "I'm going to bed," she said. "I've got a long day tomorrow."

[] "If that King of yours has any sense," Peter said, "he'll kick you straight out as soon as he sees you. Then you can come back here and do the laundry."

[] Since both these things were exactly what Charmain was afraid of, she did not answer. She simply picked up Memoirs of an Exorcist for some light reading, marched to the door with it, and turned left to where the bedrooms were.

 

[

542

] Chapter Seven

IN WHICH A NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARRIVE AT THE ROYAL MANSION

[] Charmain had rather a disturbed night. Some of this was certainly due to Memoirs of an Exorcist, whose author had clearly been very busy among a lot of haunts and weirdities, all of which he described in a matter-of-fact way that left Charmain in no doubt that ghosts were entirely real and mostly very unpleasant. She spent a lot of the night shivering and wishing she knew how to turn on the light.

[] Some of the disturbance was due to Waif, who was determined she had a right to sleep on Charmain's pillow.

[] But most of the disturbance was nerves, pure and simple, and the fact that Charmain had no way of telling what the time was. She kept waking up, thinking, Suppose I oversleep! She woke in gray dawn, hearing birds twittering somewhere, and almost decided to get up then. But somehow she fell asleep again, and when she woke next it was in broad daylight.

[] "Help!" she cried out and flung back the covers, accidentally flinging Waif onto the floor too, and stumbled across the room to find the good clothes she had put out specially. As she dragged on her best green skirt, the sensible thing to do came to her at last. "Great-Uncle William," she called out, "how do I tell what time it is?"

[] "Merely tap your left wrist," the kindly voice replied, "and say 'Time,' my dear." It struck Charmain that the voice was fainter and weaker than it had been. She hoped it was simply that the spell was wearing off, and not that Great-Uncle William was getting weaker himself, wherever he was.

[] "Time?" she said, tapping.

[] She expected a voice, or more probably a clock to appear. People in High Norland were great on clocks. Her own house had seventeen, including one in the bathroom. She had been vaguely surprised that Great-Uncle William did not seem to have even one cuckoo clock somewhere, but she realized the reason for this when what happened was that she simply knew the time. It was eight o'clock. "And it'll take me at least an hour to walk there!" she gasped, ramming her arms into her best silk blouse as she ran for the bathroom.

[] She was more nervous than ever as she did her hair in there. Her reflection—with water trickling across it for some reason—looked terribly young with its hair in one rusty pigtail over its shoulder. He'll know I'm only a schoolgirl, she thought. But there was no time to dwell on it. Charmain rushed out of the bathroom and back through the same door leftward and charged into the warm, tidy kitchen.

[] There were now five laundry bags leaning beside the sink, but Charmain had no time to bother about that. Waif scuttled toward her, whining piteously, and scuttled back to the fireplace, where the fire was still cheerfully burning.

Charmain was just about to tap the mantelpiece and ask for breakfast, when she saw Waif 's problem. Waif was now too small to get her tail anywhere near the fireplace. So Charmain tapped and said, "Dog food, please," before asking for breakfast for herself.

[] As she sat at the cleared table hurrying through her breakfast, while Waif briskly cleaned up the dog dish at her feet, Charmain could not help grudgingly thinking that it was much nicer having the kitchen clean and tidy. I suppose Peter has his uses, she thought, pouring herself a last cup of coffee. But then she felt she ought to tap her wrist again. And she knew it was now six minutes to nine and jumped up in a panic.

[] "How did I take so long?" she said out loud, and raced back to her bedroom for her smart jacket.

Perhaps because she was putting on the jacket as she ran, she somehow turned the wrong way through the door and found herself in a very peculiar place. It was a long thin room with pipes running everywhere around it and, in the middle, a large, trickling tank, mystifyingly covered in blue fur.

[] "Oh, bother!" Charmain said, and backed out through the door.

[] She found herself back in the kitchen.

[] "At least I know the way from here," she said, diving through into the living room and running for the front door.

Outside, she nearly tripped over a crock of milk which must have been meant for Rollo. "And he doesn't deserve it!" she said, as she shut the front door with a slam.

[] Down the front path she raced, between beheaded hydrangeas, and out through the gate, which shut with a clash behind her. Then she managed to slow down, because it was silly to try to run however many miles it was to the Royal Mansion, but she went down the road at a very brisk walk indeed, and she had just got to the first bend when the garden gate went clash again behind her. Charmain whirled round. Waif was running after her, pattering as fast as her little legs would take her. Charmain sighed and marched back toward her. Seeing her coming, Waif gamboled delightedly and made tiny squeaks of pleasure.

[] "No, Waif," Charmain said. "You can't come. Go home." She pointed sternly toward Great-Uncle William's house.

"Home!"

[] Waif drooped both ears and sat up and begged.

[] "No!" Charmain commanded, pointing again. "Go home!"

[] Waif dropped to the ground and became a miserable white lump, with just the tip of her tail wagging.

[] "Oh, honestly!" Charmain said. And since Waif seemed determined not to budge from the middle of the road, Charmain was forced to pick her up and rush back to Great-Uncle William's house with her. "I can't take you with me," she explained breathlessly as they went. "I've got to see the King, and people just don't take dogs to see the King." She opened Great-Uncle William's front gate and dumped Waif on the garden path. "There. Now, stay!"

She shut the gate on Waif's reproachful face and strode off down the road again. As she went, she tapped her wrist anxiously and said, "Time?" But she was outside Great-Uncle William's grounds then and the spell did not work. All Charmain knew was that it was getting later. She broke into a trot.

[] Behind her the gate clashed again. Charmain looked back to see Waif once more racing after her.

[] Charmain groaned, whirled round, raced to meet Waif, scooped her up, and dumped her back inside the gate. "Now be a good dog and stay!" she panted, rushing off again.

[] The gate clashed behind her, and Waif once more came pelting after her. "I shall scream!" Charmain said. She turned back and dumped Waif inside the gate for the third time. "Stay there, you silly little dog!" This time she set off toward town at a run.

[] Behind her, the gate clashed yet again. Tiny footsteps pattered in the road.

[] Charmain whirled round and ran back toward Waif, crying out, "Oh, blast you, Waif! I shall be so late!" This time she picked Waif up and carried her toward the town, panting out, "All right. You win. I shall have to take you because I'll be late if I don't, but I don't want you, Waif! Don't you understand?"

[] Waif was delighted. She squirmed upward and licked Charmain's chin.

[] "No, stop that," Charmain said. "I'm not pleased. I hate you. You're a real nuisance. Keep still or I'll drop you."

[] Waif settled into Charmain's arms with a sigh of contentment.

"Grrr!" Charmain said as she hurried on.

[] As she rounded the huge bulge of cliff, Charmain had meant to check upward in case the lubbock came plunging down at her from the meadow above, but by then she was in such a hurry that she clean forgot about the lubbock and simply jogtrotted onward. And greatly to her surprise, the town was almost in front of her when she came round the bend. She had not remembered it was so near. There were the houses and towers, rosy and twinkling in the morning sun, only a stone's throw away. I think Aunt Sempronia's pony made a meal of this journey, Charmain thought, as she strode in among the first houses.

[] The road dived in across the river and became a dirty town street. Charmain thought she remembered that this end of town was rather rough and unpleasant and marched on fast and nervously. But although most of the people she passed seemed quite poor, none of them seemed to notice Charmain particularly—or if they did, they only noticed Waif, peeping out enthusiastically from Charmain's arms. "Pretty little dog," remarked a woman carrying strings of onions to market as Charmain strode by.

[] "Pretty little monster," Charmain said. The woman looked very surprised. Waif squirmed protestingly. "Yes, you are,"

Charmain told her, as they began to come among wider streets and smarter houses. "You're a bully and a blackmailer, and if you've made me late I shall never forgive you."

[] As they reached the marketplace, the big clock on the town hall struck ten o'clock. And Charmain went suddenly from needing to hurry to wondering how she was going to stretch ten minutes' walk into half an hour. The Royal Mansion was practically just round the corner from here. At least she could slow down and get cool. By now the sun had burned through the mist from the mountains, and what with that and Waif's warm body, Charmain was decidedly hot.

She took a detour along the esplanade that ran high above the river, rushing swift and brown on its way to the great valley beyond the town, and dropped to a saunter. Three of her favorite bookshops were on this road. She pushed her way among other sauntering people and looked eagerly into windows. "Nice little dog," several people said as she went.

[] "Huh!" Charmain said to Waif. "Fat lot they know!"

[] She arrived in Royal Square as the big clock there began to chime the half hour. Charmain was pleased. But, as she crossed the square to the booming of the clock, she was somehow not pleased, and not hot anymore either. She was cold and small and insignificant. She knew she had been stupid to come. She was a fool. They would take one look at her and send her away. The flashing of the golden tiles on the roof of the Royal Mansion daunted her completely. She was glad of Waif's small warm tongue licking her chin again. By the time she was climbing the steps to the heavy front door of the Mansion, she was so nervous that she almost turned round and ran away.

[] But she told herself firmly that this was the one thing in the world she really wanted to do—even though I'm not sure I do want to now, she thought. And everyone knows that those tiles are only tin enchanted to look like gold! she added, and she lifted the great gold-painted knocker and bravely hammered on the door with it. Then her knees threatened to fold under her and she wondered if she could run away. She stood there quivering and clutching Waif hard.

[] The door was opened by an old, old serving man. Probably the butler, Charmain thought, wondering where she had seen the old man before. I must have passed him in town on my way to school, she thought. "Er…," she said. "I'm Charmain Baker. The King wrote me a letter—" She let go of Waif with one hand in order to fetch the letter out of her pocket, but before she could get at it, the old butler held the door wide open.

[] "Please to come in, Miss Charming," he said in a quavery old voice. "His Majesty is expecting you."

[] Charmain found herself entering the Royal Mansion on legs that wobbled almost as badly as the old butler's did. He was so stooped with age that his face was on a level with Waif as Charmain wobbled in past him.

He stopped her with a shaky old hand. "Please to keep tight hold on the little dog, miss. It wouldn't do to have it wandering about here."

[] Charmain discovered herself to be babbling. "I do hope it's all right to bring her, she would keep following me, you see, and in the end I had to pick her up and carry her or I'd have been—"

[] "Perfectly all right, miss," the butler said, heaving the great door shut. "His Majesty is very fond of dogs. Indeed he has been bitten several times trying to make friends with—Well, the fact of the matter is, miss, that our Rajpuhti cook owns a dog that is not at all a nice creature. It has been known to slay other dogs when they impinge upon its territory."

[] "Oh, dear," Charmain said weakly.

[] "Precisely," said the old butler. "If you will follow me, miss."

[] Waif squirmed in Charmain's arms because Charmain was clutching her so tightly as she followed the butler along a broad stone corridor. It was cold inside the Mansion and rather dark. Charmain was surprised to find that there were no ornaments anywhere and almost no hint of royal grandeur, unless you counted one or two large brown pictures in dingy gold frames. There were big pale squares on the walls every so often, where pictures had been taken away, but Charmain was by now so nervous that she did not wonder about this. She just became colder and thinner and more and more unimportant, until she felt she must be about the size of Waif.

[] The butler stopped and creakily pushed open a mighty square oak door. "Your Majesty, Miss Charming Baker," he announced. "And dog." Then he doddered away.

[] Charmain managed to dodder into the room. The shakiness must be catching! she thought, and did not dare curtsy in case her knees collapsed.

[] The room was a vast library. Dim brown shelves of books stretched away in both directions. The smell of old book, which Charmain normally loved, was almost overpowering. Straight in front of her was a great oak table, piled high with more books and stacks of old, yellow papers, and some newer, whiter paper at the near end. There were three big carved chairs at that end, arranged around a very small charcoal fire in an iron basket. The basket sat on a kind of iron tray, which in turn sat on an almost worn-out carpet. Two old people sat in two of the carved chairs. One was a big old man with a nicely trimmed white beard and—when Charmain dared to look at him—kindly, crinkled old blue eyes.

She knew he had to be the King.

[] "Come here, my dear," he said to her, "and take a seat. Put the little dog down near the fire."

[] Charmain managed to do as the King said. Waif, to her relief, seemed to realize that one must be on one's best behavior here. She sat gravely down on the carpet and politely quivered her tail. Charmain sat on the edge of the carved chair and quivered all over.

[] "Let me make my daughter known to you," said the King. "Princess Hilda."

[] Princess Hilda was old too. If Charmain had not known she was the King's daughter, she might have thought the Princess and the King were the same age. The main difference between them was that the Princess looked twice as royal as the King. She was a big lady like her father, with very neat iron-gray hair and a tweed suit so plain and tweed-colored that Charmain knew it was a highly aristocratic suit. Her only ornament was a big ring on one veiny old hand.

[] "That is a very sweet little dog," she said, in a firm and forthright voice. "What is her name?"

[] "Waif, Your Highness," Charmain faltered.

[] "And have you had her long?" the Princess asked.

[] Charmain could tell that the Princess was making conversation in order to set her at her ease, and that made her more nervous than ever. "No…er…that is," she said. "The fact is she was a stray. Or…er…Great-Uncle William said she was. And he can't have had her long because he didn't know she was…er…a bi…er…I mean a girl. William Norland, you know. The wizard."

[] The King and the Princess both said, "Oh!" at this and the King said, "Are you related to Wizard Norland, then, my dear?"

[] "Our great friend," added the Princess.

[] "I—er—He's my aunt Sempronia's great-uncle really," Charmain confessed.

Somehow the atmosphere became much more friendly. The King said, rather longingly, "I suppose you have had no news of how Wizard Norland is yet?"

[] Charmain shook her head. "I'm afraid not, Your Majesty, but he did look awfully ill when the elves took him away."

[] "Not to be wondered at," stated Princess Hilda. "Poor William. Now, Miss Baker—"

[] "Oh—oh—please call me Charmain," Charmain stammered.

[] "Very well," the Princess agreed. "But we must get down to business now, child, because I shall have to leave you soon to attend to my first guest."

[] "My daughter is sparing you an hour or so," the King said, "to explain to you what we do here in the library and how you may best assist us. This is because we gathered from your handwriting that you were not very old—which we see is the case—and so probably inexperienced." He gave Charmain the most enchanting smile. "We really are most grateful to you for your offer of help, my dear. No one has ever considered that we might need assistance before."

[] Charmain felt her face filling with heat. She knew she was blushing horribly. "My pleasure, Your—," she managed to mutter.

[] "Pull your chair over to the table," Princess Hilda interrupted, "and we'll get down to work."

[] As Charmain got up and dragged the heavy chair over, the King said courteously, "We hope you may not be too hot in here with the brazier beside you. It may be summer now, but we old people feel the cold these days."

[] Charmain was still frozen with nerves. "Not at all, Sire," she said.

[] "And Waif at least is happy," the King said, pointing a gnarly finger. Waif had rolled over onto her back with all four paws in the air and was basking in the heat from the brazier. She seemed far happier than Charmain was.

[] "To work, Father," the Princess said severely. She fetched up the glasses hanging from a chain round her neck and planted them on her aristocratic nose. The King fetched up a pair of pince-nez. Charmain fetched up her own glasses.

If she had not been so nervous, she would have wanted to giggle at the way they all had to do this.

[] "Now," said the Princess, "we have in this library books, papers, and parchment scrolls. After a lifetime of labor, Father and I have managed to list roughly half the books—by name and author's name—and assigned each a number, together with a brief account of what is in each book. Father will continue doing this, while you make yourself responsible for my main task, which is to catalog papers and scrolls. I have barely made a start there, I'm afraid. Here is my list." She opened a large folder full of sheets of paper covered in elegant spidery writing, and spread a row of them in front of Charmain. "As you see, I have several main headings: Family Letters, Household Accounts, Historic Writings, and so on. Your task is to go through each pile of paper and decide exactly what every sheet contains. You then write a description of it under the appropriate heading, after which you put the paper carefully in one of these labeled boxes here. Is this clear so far?"

[] Charmain, leaning forward to look at the beautifully written lists, was afraid that she seemed awfully stupid. "What do I do," she asked, "if I find a paper that doesn't fit any of your headings, ma'am?"

[] "A very good question," Princess Hilda said. "We are hoping that you will find a great many things that do not fit.

When you do find one, consult my father at once, in case the paper is important. If it isn't, put it in the box marked Miscellaneous. Now here is your first packet of papers. I'll watch as you go through them to see how you go on. There is paper for your lists. Pen and ink are here. Please start." She pushed a frayed brown packet of letters, tied together with pink tape, in front of Charmain and sat back to watch.

[] I've never known anything so off-putting! Charmain thought. She tremulously unpicked the pink knot and tried spreading the letters out a little.

[] "Pick each one up by its opposite corners," Princess Hilda said. "Don't push them."

[] Oh, dear! Charmain thought. She glanced sideways at the King, who had taken up a wilted-looking soft leather book and was leafing carefully through it. I'd hoped to be doing that, she thought. She sighed and carefully opened the first crumbly brown letter.

[] "My dearest, gorgeous, wonderful darling," she read. "I miss you so hideously…"

[] "Um," she said to Princess Hilda, "is there a special box for love letters?"

[] "Yes, indeed," said the Princess. "This one. Record the date and the name of the person who wrote it—Who was it, by the way?"

[] Charmain looked on to the end of the letter. "Um. It says 'Big Dolphie.'"

[] Both the King and the Princess said, "Well!" and laughed, the King most heartily. "Then they are from my father to my mother," Princess Hilda said. "My mother died many years ago now. But never mind that. Write it on your list."

[] Charmain looked at the crumbly brown state of the paper and thought it must have been many years ago. She was surprised that the King did not seem to mind her reading it, but neither he nor the Princess seemed in the least worried.

Perhaps royal people are different, she thought, looking at the next letter. It began "Dearest chuffy puffy one." Oh, well. She got on with her task.

[] After a while, the Princess stood up and pushed her chair neatly up to the table. "This seems quite satisfactory," she stated. "I must go. My guest will be arriving soon. I still wish I had been able to ask that husband of hers too, Father."

[] "Out of the question, my dear," the King said, without looking up from the notes he was making. "Poaching. He's someone else's Royal Wizard."

[] "Oh, I know," Princess Hilda said. "But I am also aware that Ingary has two Royal Wizards. And our poor William is ill and may be dying."

[] "Life is never fair, my dear," the King said, still scratching away with his quill pen. "Besides, William had no more success than we have had."

[] "I'm aware of that too, Father," Princess Hilda said as she left the library. The door shut with a heavy thud behind her.

[] Charmain bent over her next pile of papers, trying to look as if she had not been listening. It seemed private. This pile of paper had been tied into a bundle for so long that each sheet had stuck to the next one, all dry and brownish, like a wasps' nest Charmain had once found in the attic at home. She became very busy trying to separate the layers.

[] "Er-hem," said the King. Charmain looked up to see that he was smiling at her, with his quill in the air and a sideways twinkle at her from above his glasses. "I see you are a very discreet young lady," he said. "And you must have gathered from our talk just now that we—and your great-uncle with us—are searching for some very important things.

My daughter's headings will give you some clue what to look out for. Your key words will be 'treasury,' 'revenues,' 'gold,' and 'elfgift.' If you find a mention of any of these, my dear, please tell me at once."

[] The idea of looking for such important things made Charmain's fingers on the frail paper go all cold and clumsy. "Yes.

Yes of course, Your Majesty," she said.

[] Rather to her relief, that packet of papers was nothing but lists of goods and their prices—all of which seemed surprisingly low. "To ten pounds of wax candles at two pennies a pound, twenty pence," she read. Well, it did seem to date from two hundred years ago. "To six ounces of finest saffron, thirty pence. To nine logs of fragrant applewood for the scenting of the chief chambers, one farthing." And so on. The next page was full of things like "To forty ells of linen drapes, forty-four shillings." Charmain made careful notes, put those pages in the box labeled Household Accounts, and peeled up the next sheet.

[] "Oh!" she said. The next sheet said, "To Wizard Melicot, for the enchanting of one hundred square feet of tinne tilings to give the appearance of a golden roofe, 200 guineas."

[] "What is it, my dear?" the King asked, putting his finger on his place in his book.

[] Charmain read the ancient bill out to him. He chuckled and shook his head a little. "So it was definitely done by magic, was it?" he said. "I must confess I had always hoped it would turn out to be real gold, hadn't you?"

[] "Yes, but it looks like gold anyway," Charmain said consolingly.

[] "And a very good spell too, to last two hundred years," the King said, nodding. "Expensive as well. Two hundred guineas was a lot of money in those days. Ah, well. I never did hope to solve our financial problems that way. Besides, it would look shocking if we climbed up and stripped all the tiles off the roof. Keep looking, my dear."

[] Charmain kept looking but all she found was someone charging two guineas to plant a rose garden and someone else getting paid ten guineas to refurbish the treasury—no, not someone else, the same Wizard Melicot who did the roof!

[] "Melicot was a specialist, I fancy," the King said, when Charmain had read this out. "Looks to me like a fellow who went in for faking precious metals. The treasury was certainly empty by that date. I've known my crown was a fake for years. Must be this Melicot's work. Are you getting peckish at all, my dear? A bit cold and stiff? We don't bother with regular lunch—my daughter doesn't hold with it—but I generally ask the butler to bring in a snack around this time.

Why not get up and stretch your legs while I ring the bell?"

[] Charmain stood up and walked about, causing Waif to roll to her feet and watch inquiringly, while the King limped over to the bell rope by the door. He was decidedly frail, Charmain thought, and very tall. It was as if his height was too much for him. While they waited for someone to answer the bell, Charmain seized the chance to look at the books in the shelves. They seemed to be books about everything, higgledy-piggledy, travel books next to books of algebra and poems rubbing shoulders with geography. Charmain had just opened one called Secrets of the Universe Revealed, when the library door opened and a man in a tall cook's hat came in carrying a tray.

To Charmain's surprise, the King nimbly skipped behind the table. "My dear, pick up your dog!" he called out urgently.

[] Another dog had come in, pressed close to the cook's legs as if it felt unsafe, a bitter-looking brown dog with gnarly ears and a ratty tail. It was growling as it came. Charmain had no doubt that this was the dog that slew other dogs, and she dived to pick Waif up.

[] But Waif somehow slipped through her hands and went trotting toward the cook's dog. The other dog's growls increased to a snarl. Bristles rose along its haggard brown back. It looked so menacing that Charmain did not dare go any nearer to it. Waif, however, seemed to feel no fear. She went right up to the snarling dog in her jauntiest way, raised herself on her tiny hind legs, and cheekily dabbed her nose on its nose. The other dog started back, so surprised that it stopped snarling. Then it pricked its lumpy ears and, very cautiously, nosed Waif in return. Waif gave an excited squeak and frisked. Next second, both dogs were gamboling delightedly all over the library.

[] "Well!" said the King. "I suppose that's all right, then. What is the meaning of this, Jamal? Why are you here instead of Sim?"

[] Jamal—who had only one eye, Charmain noticed—came and apologetically put his tray down on the table. "Our princess has taken Sim away to receive the guest, Sire," he explained, "leaving no one but me to bring food. And my dog would come. I think," he added, watching the two prancing dogs, "that my dog has never enjoyed life until now."

He bowed to Charmain. "Please bring your small white dog here again often, Miss Charming."

[] He whistled to his dog. It pretended not to hear. He went to the door and whistled again. "Food," he said. "Come for squid." This time both dogs came. And to Charmain's surprise and dismay, Waif went trotting out of the door beside the cook's dog, and the door shut after them both.

[] "Not to worry," the King said. "They seem to be friends. Jamal will bring her back. Very reliable fellow, Jamal. If it wasn't for that dog of his, he'd be the perfect cook. Let's see what he's brought us, shall we?"

[] Jamal had brought a jug of lemonade and a platter piled with crisp brown things under a white cloth. The King said, "Ah!" as he eagerly lifted the cloth. "Have one while they're hot, my dear."

[] Charmain did so. One bite was enough to assure her that Jamal was an even better cook than her father—and Mr. Baker was renowned for being the best cook in town. The brown things were crunchy, but soft at the same time, with a rather hot taste that Charmain had never met before. They made you need the lemonade. She and the King polished off the whole platterful between them and drank all the lemonade. Then they got back to work.

[] By this time they were on extremely friendly terms. Charmain now had no shyness about asking the King anything she wanted to know. "Why would they need two bushels of rose petals, Sire?" she asked him, and the King answered, "They liked them underfoot in the dining saloon in those days. Messy habit, to my mind. Listen to what this philosopher has to say about camels, my dear." And he read out a page from his book that made them both laugh. The philosopher had clearly not got on with camels.

[] Quite a long time later, the library door opened and Waif trotted in, looking very pleased with herself. She was followed by Jamal. "Message from our Princess, Sire," he said. "The lady has settled in, and Sim is taking tea to the front parlor."

[] "Ah," said the King. "Crumpets?"

[] "Muffins too," Jamal said and went away.

[] The King banged his book shut and stood up. "I had better go and greet our guest," he said.

[] "I'll go on with the bills, then," Charmain said. "I'll make a pile of the ones I want to ask about."

[] "No, no," said the King. "You come too, my dear. Bring the little dog. Helps break the ice, you know. This lady is my daughter's friend. Never met her myself."

[] Charmain at once felt highly nervous again. She had found Princess Hilda thoroughly intimidating and much too royal for comfort, and any friend of hers was likely to be just as bad. But she could hardly refuse, when the King was expectantly holding the door open for her. Waif was already trotting after him. Charmain felt forced to get up and follow.

[] The front parlor was a large room full of faded sofas with slightly frayed arms and rather ragged fringes. There were more pale squares on the walls, where pictures must once have hung. The biggest pale square was over the grand marble fireplace, where to Charmain's relief a cheerful fire was burning. The parlor, like the library, was a cold room, and Charmain had gone cold with nerves again.

[] Princess Hilda was sitting bolt upright on a sofa beside the fireplace, where Sim had just pushed a large tea trolley. As soon as she saw Sim pushing a trolley, Charmain knew where she had seen Sim before. It was when she had got lost beside the Conference Room and had that glimpse of the old man pushing a trolley along a strange corridor. That's odd! she thought. Sim was in the act of shakily placing a plate of buttered crumpets in the hearth. At the sight of those crumpets, Waif's nose quivered and she made a dash toward them. Charmain was only just in time to catch her. As she stood up holding the wriggling Waif firmly in both arms, the Princess said, "Ah, my father, the King." Everyone else in the parlor stood up. "Father," said the Princess, "may I introduce my great friend, Mrs. Sophie Pendragon?"

[] The King strode limpingly forward, holding out his hand and making the large room look quite a little smaller.

Charmain had not realized before quite how large he was. Quite as tall as those elves, she thought.

[] "Mrs. Pendragon," he said. "Delighted to meet you. Any friend of our daughter's is a friend of ours."

[] Mrs. Pendragon surprised Charmain. She was quite young, younger than the Princess by a long way, and modishly dressed in a peacock blue that set off her red gold hair and blue-green eyes to perfection. She's lovely! Charmain thought, rather enviously. Mrs. Pendragon dropped the King a little curtsy as they shook hands, and said, "I'm here to do my best, Sire. More I can't say."

[] "Quite right, quite right," the King replied. "Please be seated again. Everyone. And let's have some tea."

[] Everyone sat down, and a polite, courteous hum of conversation began, while Sim doddered around giving out cups of tea. Charmain felt a complete outsider. Feeling sure that she should not be here, she sat herself in the corner of the most distant sofa and tried to work out who the other people were. Waif meanwhile sat sedately on the sofa beside Charmain, looking demure. Her eyes keenly followed the gentleman who was handing round the crumpets. This gentleman was so quiet and colorless that Charmain forgot what he looked like as soon as she took her eyes off him and had to look at him again to remind herself. The other gentleman, the one whose mouth looked closed even when he was talking, she gathered was the King's Chancellor. He seemed to have a lot of secretive things to say to Mrs. Pendragon, who kept nodding—and then blinking a bit, as if what the Chancellor said surprised her. The other lady, who was elderly, seemed to be Princess Hilda's lady-in-waiting and very good at talking about the weather.

[] "And I shouldn't be surprised if it didn't rain again tonight," she was saying, as the colorless gentleman arrived beside Charmain and offered her a crumpet. Waif's nose swiveled yearningly to follow the plate.

[] "Oh, thanks," Charmain said, pleased that he had not forgotten her.

[] "Take two," suggested the colorless gentleman. "His Majesty will certainly eat any that are left over." The King at that moment was eating two muffins, one squashed on top of the other, and watching the crumpets as eagerly as Waif was.

[] Charmain thanked the gentleman again and took two. They were the most buttery crumpets she had ever encountered.

Waif's nose swiveled to dab gently against Charmain's hand. "All right, all right," Charmain muttered, trying to break off a piece without dripping butter on the sofa. Butter ran down her fingers and threatened to trickle up her sleeves.

She was trying to get rid of it on her handkerchief, when the lady-in-waiting finished saying all anyone could possibly say about the weather, and turned to Mrs. Pendragon.

[] "Princess Hilda tells me you have a charming little boy," she said.

[] "Yes. Morgan," Mrs. Pendragon said. She seemed to be having trouble with butter too and was mopping her fingers with her handkerchief and looking flustered.

[] "How old will Morgan be now, Sophie?" Princess Hilda asked. "When I saw him he was just a baby."

[] "Oh—nearly two," Mrs. Pendragon replied, catching a big golden drip of butter before it fell on her skirt. "I left him with—"

[] The door of the parlor opened. Through it came a small, fat toddler in a grubby blue suit, with tears rolling down his face. "Mum-mum-mum!" he was wailing as he staggered into the room. But as soon as he saw Mrs. Pendragon, his face spread into a blinding smile. He stretched out both arms and rushed to her, where he buried his face in her skirt.

"Mum!" he shouted.

[] Following him through the door came floating an agitated-looking blue creature shaped like a long teardrop with a face on the front of it. It seemed to be made of flames. It brought a gust of warmth with it and a gasp from everyone in the room. An even more agitated housemaid hurried in after it.

[] After the housemaid came a small boy, quite the most angelic child Charmain had ever seen. He had a mass of blond curls that clustered around his angelic pink and white face. His eyes were big and blue and bashful. His exquisite little chin rested on a frill of white, white lace, and the rest of his graceful little body was clothed in a pale blue velvet suit with big silver buttons. His pink rosebud mouth spread into a shy smile as he came in, showing a charming dimple in his delicate little cheek. Charmain could not think why Mrs. Pendragon was staring at him in such horror. He was surely a truly enchanting child. And what long, curly eyelashes!

[] "—with my husband and his fire demon," Mrs. Pendragon finished. Her face had gone fiery red, and she glared at the little boy across the toddler's head.

 

[

675

] Chapter Eight

IN WHICH PETER HAS TROUBLE WITH THE PLUMBING

[] "Oh, ma'am, Sire!" the housemaid gasped. "I had to let them in. The little one was so upset!"

[] She said this into a room full of confusion. Everyone stood up and someone dropped a teacup. Sim plunged to rescue the cup and the King dived past him to pick up the plate of crumpets. Mrs. Pendragon stood up with Morgan in her arms, still looking daggers at the small boy, while the blue teardrop creature bobbed in front of her face. "It's not my fault, Sophie!" it kept saying, in an agitated crackling voice. "I swear it's not my fault! We couldn't stop Morgan crying for you."

[] Princess Hilda rose quellingly to her feet. "You may go," she said to the housemaid. "There is no need for anyone to be upset. Sophie, dear, I had no idea that you didn't employ a nursemaid."

[] "No, I don't. And I was hoping for a break," Mrs. Pendragon said. "You would think," she added, glowering at the angelic little boy, "that a wizard and a fire demon could manage one small toddler between them."

[] "Men!" said the Princess. "I have no opinion of men's ability to manage anything. Of course Morgan and the other little boy must be our guests too, now that they're here. What sort of accommodation does a fire demon require?" she asked the colorless gentleman.

[] He looked completely blank.

[] "I'd appreciate a good log fire," the fire demon crackled. "I see you have a nice one in this room. That's all I need. I'm Calcifer, by the way, ma'am."

[] The Princess and the colorless gentleman both looked relieved. The Princess said, "Yes, of course. I believe we met briefly in Ingary, two years ago."

[] "And who is this other little fellow?" the King asked genially.

[] "Thophie'th my auntie," the small boy answered in a sweet lisping voice, raising his angelic face and big blue eyes to the King's.

[] Mrs. Pendragon looked outraged.

[] "Pleased to meet you," the King said. "And what's your name, my little man?"

[] "Twinkle," the little boy whispered, coyly ducking his curly blond head.

[] "Have a crumpet, Twinkle," the King said heartily, holding the plate out.

[] "Fank you," Twinkle said devoutly, taking a crumpet.

[] At this, Morgan held out a fat, imperious hand and boomed, "Me, me, me!" until the King gave him a crumpet too.

Mrs. Pendragon sat Morgan on a sofa to eat it. Sim looked around and resourcefully fetched a cloth from the trolley. It became soaked in butter almost at once. Morgan beamed up at Sim, the Princess, the lady-in-waiting, and the Chancellor, with his face all shiny. "Dumpet," he said. "Dood dumpet."

[] While this was going on, Charmain became aware that Mrs. Pendragon had somehow trapped little Twinkle behind the sofa she was sitting on. She could not help but overhear Mrs. Pendragon demanding, "What do you think you're doing, Howl?" She sounded so fierce that Waif jumped into Charmain's lap and cowered there.

[] "They forgot to invite me," Twinkle's sweet little voice replied. "That'th thilly. You can't thort out thith meth on your own, Thophie. You need me."

[] "No I do not!" Sophie retorted. "And do you have to lisp like that?"

[] "Yeth," said Twinkle.

[] "Doh!" said Sophie. "It's not funny, Howl. And you've dragged Morgan here—"

[] "I tell you," Twinkle interrupted her, "Morgan did not thtop crying from the moment you left. Athk Calthifer if you don't believe me!"

[] "Calcifer's as bad as you are!" Sophie said passionately. "I don't believe either of you so much as tried to stop him.

Did you? You were just looking for an excuse to launch this—this masquerade on poor Princess Hilda!"

[] "She needth uth, Thophie," Twinkle said earnestly.

[] Charmain was quite fascinated by this conversation, but, unfortunately, Morgan looked round for his mother just then and spotted Waif trembling on Charmain's knee. He gave a loud cry of "Doggie!," slid off his sofa, trampling the cloth as he went, and rushed at Waif with both buttery hands out. Waif jumped desperately onto the back of the sofa, where she stood and yapped. And yapped, like a shrill version of someone with a hacking cough. Charmain was forced to pick Waif up and back away, out of Morgan's reach, so that all she heard next of the strange conversation behind the sofa was Mrs. Pendragon saying something about sending Twinkle (or was his name Howl?) to bed without supper and Twinkle daring her to "jutht try it."

[] As Waif quieted down, Twinkle said wistfully, "Don't you fink I'm pwetty at all?"

[] There was a strange hollow thump then, as if Mrs. Pendragon had so far forgotten good behavior as to stamp her foot.

[] "Yes," Charmain heard her say. "Disgustingly pretty!"

[] "Well," said Princess Hilda, over near the fire, while Charmain was still backing away from Morgan, "things are certainly lively with children around. Sim, give Morgan a muffin, quickly."

[] Morgan at once reversed direction and ran toward Sim and the muffins. Charmain heard her own hair frizzle. She looked round and found the fire demon hovering beside her shoulder, looking at her with flaming orange eyes.

"Who are you?" the demon said.

[] Charmain's heart thumped a little, although Waif seemed perfectly calm. If I hadn't just met a lubbock, Charmain thought, I'd be quite frightened of this Calcifer. "I…er…I'm only the temporary help in the library," she said.

[] "Then we'll need to talk to you later," Calcifer crackled. "You reek of magic, did you know? You and your dog."

[] "She's not my dog. She belongs to a wizard," Charmain said.

[] "This Wizard Norland who seems to have messed things up?" Calcifer asked.

[] "I don't think Great-Uncle William messed things up," Charmain said. "He's a dear!"

[] "He seems to have looked in all the wrong places," Calcifer said. "You don't need to be nasty to make a mess. Look at Morgan." And he whisked away. He had this way, Charmain thought, of vanishing in one place and turning up in another, like a dragonfly flicking about over a pond.

[] The King came across to Charmain, jovially wiping his hands on a large, crisp napkin. "Better get back to work, my dear. We have to tidy up for the night."

[] "Yes, of course, Sire," Charmain said and followed him toward the door.

[] Before they got there, the angelic Twinkle somehow escaped from the angry Mrs. Pendragon and pulled at the sleeve of the lady-in-waiting. "Pleathe," he asked charmingly, "do you have any toyth?"

[] The lady looked nonplussed. "I don't play with toys, dear," she said.

[] Morgan caught the word from her. "Doy!" he shouted, waving both arms, with a buttery muffin clutched in one fist.

"Doy, doy, doy!"

[] A jack-in-the-box landed in front of Morgan, bursting its lid open, so that the jack popped out with a boinng. A large dollhouse crashed down beside it, followed by a shower of elderly teddy bears. An instant later, a shabby rocking horse established itself next to the tea trolley. Morgan shouted with delight.

[] "I think we'll leave my daughter to cope with her guests," the King said, ushering Charmain and Waif out of the parlor.

He shut the door upon more and more toys appearing and the child Twinkle looking highly demure, while everyone else ran about in confusion. "Wizards are often very vigorous guests," the King remarked on the way back to the library, "although I had no idea they started so young. A bit trying for their mothers, I imagine."

* * *

[] Half an hour later, Charmain was on her way back to Great-Uncle William's house with Waif pattering behind her looking as demure as the child Twinkle.

[] "Ooof!" Charmain said to her. "You know, Waif, I've never lived so much life in three days, ever!" She felt a bit wistful all the same. It made sense for the King to give her the bills and love letters, but she did wish they could have taken turns with the books. She would have loved to spend some of the day at least going through a thoroughly elderly and musty leather-bound volume. It was what she had been hoping for. But never mind. As soon as she got back to Great-Uncle William's house, she could bury herself in The Twelve-Branched Wand, or perhaps Memoirs of an Exorcist would be better, since it seemed to be the kind of book you were happier to read by daylight. Or try a different book altogether, maybe?

[] She was looking forward so much to a good read that she hardly noticed the walk, except to pick Waif up again when Waif began panting and toiling. With Waif in her arms, she kicked Great-Uncle William's gate open and found herself confronting Rollo halfway up the path, scowling all over his small blue face.

[] "What is it now?" Charmain said to him, and seriously wondered whether to pick Rollo up too and throw him into the hydrangeas. Rollo was small enough to hurl beautifully, even when she had one arm wrapped round Waif.

[] "Them flowerheads you got all over that outside table," Rollo said. "You expect me to stick them back on, or something?"

[] "No, of course not," Charmain said. "They're drying in the sun. Then I'll have them in the house."

[] "Huh!" said Rollo. "Prettifying in there, are you? How do you think the wizard'll like that?"

[] "None of your business," Charmain said haughtily, and strode forward so that Rollo was forced to hop out of her way.

He shouted something after her as she was opening the front door, but she did not bother to listen. She knew it was rude. She slammed the door shut on his yells.

[] Indoors, the smell of the living room was more than musty. It was like a stagnant pond. Charmain put Waif on the floor and sniffed suspiciously. So did Waif. Long brown fingers of something were oozing under the door to the kitchen. Waif tiptoed up to them warily. Charmain, equally warily, put out her toe and prodded the nearest brown trickle. It squished like a marsh.

[] "Oh, what has Peter done now?" Charmain exclaimed. She flung the door open.

[] Two inches of water rippled all over the kitchen floor. Charmain could see it seeping darkly up the six bags of laundry beside the sink.

[] "Doh!" she cried out, slammed the door shut, opened it again, and turned left.

[] The corridor there was awash. Sunlight from the end window flared on the water in a way that suggested a strong current coming from the bathroom. Angrily, Charmain splashed her way there. All I wanted to do was sit down and read a book! she thought, and I come home to a flood!

[] As she reached the bathroom, with Waif paddling unhappily after her, its door opened and Peter shot out of it, damp down his front and looking thoroughly harassed. He had no shoes on and his trousers were rolled up to his knees.

[] "Oh good, you're back," he said, before Charmain could speak. "There's this hole in one of the pipes in here. I've tried six different spells to stop it, but all they do is make it move about. I was just going to turn the water off at that woolly tank through there—or try to anyway—but perhaps you could do something instead."

[] "Woolly tank?" Charmain said. "Oh, you mean that thing covered in blue fur. What makes you think that will do any good? Everywhere's flooded!"

[] "It's the only thing I haven't tried," Peter snarled at her. "The water has to come from there somehow. You can hear it trickling. I thought I might find a stopcock—"

[] "Oh, you're useless!" Charmain snarled back. "Let me have a look." She pushed Peter aside and flounced into the bathroom, raising a sheet of water as she went.

[] There was indeed a hole. One of the pipes between the washbasin and the bath had a lengthwise slit in it, and water was spraying out of it in a merry fountain. Here and there along the pipe were gray magical-looking blobs which must have been Peter's six useless spells. And this is all his fault! she snarled to herself. He was the one who made the pipes red hot. Oh, honestly!

[] She rushed at the spraying slit and angrily planted both hands on it. "Stop this!" she commanded. Water sprayed out round her hands and into her face. "Stop it at once!"

[] All that happened was that the slit moved sideways from under her fingers for about six inches and sprayed water over her pigtail and her right shoulder. Charmain scooped her hands along to cover it again. "Stop that! Stop it!"

The slit moved off sideways again.

[] "So that's how you want it, is it?" Charmain said to it, and scooped some more. The slit moved off. She followed it with her hands. In a moment or so she had it cornered above the bath and the water spraying harmlessly into the bath and running away down the plughole. She kept it there, by leaning on the pipe with one hand, while she thought what next to do. I wonder Peter didn't think of this, she thought in a sort of mutter, instead of running about casting useless spells. "Great-Uncle William," she called out, "how do I stop the bathroom pipe leaking?"

[] There was no answer. This was obviously not something Great-Uncle William thought Charmain would need to know.

[] "I don't think he knows much about plumbing," Peter said from the doorway. "There's nothing useful in the suitcase either. I had it all out to see."

[] "Oh, did you?" Charmain said nastily.

[] "Yes, some of the stuff in there is really interesting," Peter said. "I'll show you if you—"

[] "Be quiet and let me think!" Charmain snapped at him.

[] Peter seemed to realize that Charmain might not be in a very good mood. He stopped talking and waited while Charmain stood in the bath and leaned on the pipe, thinking. You had to come at this leak two ways, so that it couldn't slide off again. First you fixed it in one place and then you covered it up. But how? Quick, before my feet are quite soaked. "Peter," she said, "go and get me some dishcloths. At least three."

[] "Why?" said Peter. "You don't think—"

"Now!" said Charmain.

[] To her relief, Peter went crossly splashing off, muttering about bossy, bad-tempered cats. Charmain pretended not to hear. Meanwhile, she dared not let go of the slit and the slit kept spraying and she was getting wetter every second.

[] Oh, blast Peter! She put her other hand on the farther end of the slit and began pushing and sliding her hands together as hard as she could. "Close up!" she ordered the pipe. "Stop leaking and close up!" Water spouted rudely into her face. She could feel the slit trying to dodge, but she refused to let it. She pushed and pushed. I can do magic! she thought at the pipe. I worked a spell. I can make you close up! "So close up!"

[] And it worked. By the time Peter came wading back with just two cloths, saying those were all he could find, Charmain was soaked through to her underclothes but the pipe was whole again. Charmain took the cloths and bound them around the pipe on either side of where the slit had been. Then she snatched up the long back brush from beside the bath—this being the only thing remotely like a wizard's staff that she could see—and batted at the cloths with it.

[] "Stay there. Don't dare move!" she told the cloths. She batted at the mended slit. "You stay shut," she told it, "or it'll be the worse for you!" After that she turned the back brush on Peter's blobby gray spells and batted at them too. "Go!" she told them. "Go away! You're useless!" And they all obediently vanished. Charmain, flushed with a sense of great power, batted at the hot tap beside her knees. "Run hot again," she told it, "and let's have no nonsense! And you," she added, reaching across to bat at the hot tap on the washbasin. "Both hot—but not too hot, or I'll give you grief. But you stay running cold," she instructed the cold taps, batting them. Finally, she came out of the bath with a great splash and batted at the water on the floor. "And you go! Go on, dry up, drain away. Go! Or else!"

[] Peter waded over to the washbasin, turned the hot tap on, and held his hand under it. "It's warm!" he said. "You really did it! That's a relief. Thanks."

[] "Huh!" said Charmain, soaked and cold and grumpy. "Now I'm going to change into dry clothes and read a book."

[] Peter asked, rather pathetically, "Aren't you going to help mop up, then?"

[] Charmain did not see why she should. But her eye fell on poor Waif, struggling toward her with water lapping at her underside. It did not look as if the back brush had worked on the floors. "All right," she sighed. "But I have done a day's work already, you know."

[] "So have I," Peter said feelingly. "I was rushing about all day trying to stop that pipe leaking. Let's get the kitchen dry, at least."

[] As the fire was still leaping and crackling in the kitchen grate, it was not unlike a steam bath in there. Charmain waded through the tepid water and opened the window. Apart from the mysteriously multiplying laundry bags, which were sodden, everywhere but the floor was dry. This included the suitcase, open on the table.

[] Behind Charmain, Peter spoke strange words and Waif whimpered.

[] Charmain whirled round to find Peter with his arms stretched out. Little flames were flickering on them, from his fingers to his shoulders. "Dry, O waters on the floor!" he intoned. Flames began to flicker across his hair and down his damp front too. His face changed from smug to alarmed. "Oh dear!" he said. As he said this, the flames rippled all over him and he began to burn quite fiercely. By then he looked plain frightened. "It's hot! Help!"

[] Charmain rushed at him, seized one of his blazing arms, and pushed him over into the water on the floor. This did no good at all. Charmain stared at the extraordinary sight of flames flickering away under the water and simmering bubbles appearing all round Peter, where the water was starting to boil, and hauled him up again double quick in a shower of hot water and steam. "Cancel it!" she shouted, snatching her hands off his hot sleeve. "What spell did you use?"

[] "I don't know how!" Peter wailed.

[] "What spell?" Charmain bawled at him.

[] "It was the spell to stop floods in The Boke of Palimpsest," Peter babbled, "and I've no idea how to cancel it."

[] "Oh, you are stupid!" Charmain cried out. She grabbed him by one flaming shoulder and shook him. "Cancel, spell!" she shouted. "Ouch! Spell, I order you to cancel at once!"

[] The spell obeyed her. Charmain stood shaking her scorched hand and watched the flames vanish in a sizzle, a cloud of steam, and a wet, singeing smell. It left Peter looking brown and frizzled all over. His face and hands were bright pink and his hair was noticeably shorter. "Thanks!" he said, flopping over with relief.

[] Charmain pushed him upright. "Pooh! You smell of burned hair! How can you be so stupid! What other spells have you been doing?"

[] "Nothing," Peter said, raking burned bits out of his hair. Charmain was fairly sure he was lying, but if he was, Peter was not going to confess. "And it wasn't that stupid," he argued. "Look at the floor."

[] Charmain looked down to see that the water had mostly gone. The floor was once again simply tiles, wet, shiny, and steaming, but not flooded any longer. "Then you've been very lucky," she said.

[] "I mostly am," Peter said. "My mother always says that too, whenever I do a spell that goes wrong. I think I'm going to have to change into different clothes."

[] "Me too," Charmain said.

[] They went through the inner door, where Peter tried to turn right and Charmain pushed him left, so that they went straight and arrived in the living room. The wet trickles on the carpet there were steaming and drying out rapidly, but the room still smelled horrible. Charmain snorted, turned Peter round, and pushed him left through the door again.

Here, the corridor was damp, but not full of water any longer.

[] "See?" Peter said as he went into his bedroom. "It did work."

[] "Huh!" Charmain said, going into her own room. I wonder what else he's done. I don't trust him an inch. Her best clothes were a wet mess. Charmain took them off sadly and hung them around the room to get dry. And nothing was going to cure the big scorch mark down the front of her best jacket. She would have to wear ordinary clothes tomorrow when she went to the Royal Mansion. And do I dare leave Peter alone here? she wondered. I bet he'll spend the time experimenting with spells. I know I would. She shrugged a little, as she realized she was no better than Peter really. She had been quite unable to resist the spells in The Boke of Palimpsest either.

[] She was feeling much more kindly toward Peter when she came back to the kitchen, dry again except for her hair and wearing her oldest clothes and her slippers.

[] "Find out how to ask for supper," Peter said, as Charmain put her wet shoes to dry in the hearth. "I'm starving." He was looking much more comfortable in the old blue suit that he had arrived in.

[] "There's food in the bag Mother brought yesterday," Charmain said, busy arranging the shoes in the best place.

[] "No, there isn't," Peter said. "I ate it all for lunch."

[] Charmain stopped feeling kindly toward Peter. "Greedy pig," she said, banging on the fireplace for food for Waif.

Waif, in spite of all the crumpets she had eaten in the Royal Mansion, was delighted to see the latest dog dish. "And so are you a greedy pig," Charmain said, watching Waif gobble. "Where do you put it all? Great-Uncle William, how do we get supper?"

[] The kindly voice was very faint now. "Just knock on the pantry door and say 'Supper,' my dear."

[] Peter got to the pantry first. "Supper!" he bellowed, banging hard on the door.

[] There was a knobby, flopping sound from the table. Both of them whirled round to look. There, lying beside the open suitcase, were a small lamb chop, two onions, and a turnip. Charmain and Peter stared at them.

[] "All raw!" Peter said, stunned.

[] "And not enough anyway," Charmain said. "Do you know how to cook it?"

[] "No," said Peter. "My mother does all the cooking in our house."

[] "Oh!" said Charmain. "Honestly!"