Castle in the Air Read online

  Lettie Suliman was clearly not at all used to the manners of Zanzib. “Good heavens!” she said. “I mean, how polite! And you’re speaking the exact truth, aren’t you? I think you ought to talk to Ben at once. Please come in.”

  She backed away from the doorway to give Abdullah room to enter. Abdullah, still with his eyes modestly lowered, stepped forward into the house. As soon as he did, something landed on his back. Then it took off again with a heavy rip of claws and went sailing over his head to land with a thump on Lettie’s prominent front. A noise like a metal pulley filled the air.

  “Midnight!” Abdullah said crossly, staggering forward.

  “Sophie!” screamed Lettie, staggering backward with the cat in her arms. “Oh, Sophie, I’ve been worried sick! Manfred, get Ben at once. I don’t care what he’s doing. This is urgent!”

  Chapter 16

  In which strange things befall Midnight and Whippersnapper.

  There was a great deal of confusion and rushing about. Two other servants appeared, followed by first one and then a second young man in long blue gowns, who seemed to be the wizard’s apprentices. All these people ran about, while Lettie ran back and forth in the hall with Midnight in her arms, screaming orders. In the midst of it all, Abdullah found Manfred showing him to a seat and solemnly giving him a glass of wine. Since this seemed what he was expected to do, Abdullah sat down and sipped the wine, rather bemused by the confusion.

  Just as he was thinking it was going to go on forever, it all stopped. A tall, commanding man in a black robe had appeared from somewhere. “What on earth is going on?” said this man.

  Since this summed up Abdullah’s feelings entirely, he found himself rather taking to this man. He had faded red hair and a tired, craggy face. The black robe made Abdullah certain that this must be Wizard Suliman; he would have looked like a wizard whatever he was wearing. Abdullah rose from his chair and bowed. The wizard shot him a look of craggy mystification and turned to Lettie.

  “He’s from Zanzib, Ben,” said Lettie, “and he knows something about the threat to the Princess. And he brought Sophie with him. She’s a cat! Look! Ben, you’ve got to change her back at once!”

  Lettie was one of those ladies who look lovelier the more distraught they get. Abdullah was not surprised when Wizard Suliman took her gently by the elbows and said, “Yes, of course, my love,” and followed that by kissing her forehead. It made Abdullah wonder miserably whether he would ever have a chance to kiss Flower-in-the-Night like that, or to add, as the wizard added, “Calm down—remember the baby.” After this the wizard said over his shoulder, “And can’t someone shut the front door? Half Kingsbury must know what’s happened by now.”

  This endeared the wizard to Abdullah more than ever. The one thing that had prevented him getting up and shutting the door was a fear that it might be the custom here to leave your front door open in a crisis. He bowed again and found the wizard swinging around to face him.

  “And what has happened, young man?” asked the wizard. “How did you know this cat was my wife’s sister?”

  Abdullah was somewhat taken aback by this question. He explained—several times—that he had had no idea Midnight was human, let alone that she was the Royal Wizard’s sister-in-law, but he was not at all sure that anyone listened. They all seemed so glad to see Midnight that they simply assumed that Abdullah had brought her to the house out of pure friendship. Far from demanding a large fee, Wizard Suliman seemed to think that he owed Abdullah something, and when Abdullah protested that this was not so, he said, “Well, come along and see her changed back, anyway.”

  He said this in such a friendly and trusting way that Abdullah warmed to him even more and let himself be swept along with everyone else to a large room that seemed to be at the back of the house— except that Abdullah had a feeling that it was somehow somewhere else entirely. The floor and the walls sloped in a way that was not usual.

  Abdullah had never seen any working wizardry before. He gazed around with interest, for the room was crowded with intricate magical devices. Nearest to him were filigree shapes with delicate smokes wreathing about them. Beside that, large and peculiar candles stood inside complicated signs, and beyond those were strange images made of wet clay. Farther off he saw a fountain of five jets that fell in odd geometric patterns and that half hid many much odder things, crowded into the distance beyond.

  “No room to work in here,” Wizard Suliman said, sweeping through. “These should hold by themselves while we set up in the next room. Hurry, all of you.”

  Everyone whirled on into a smaller room beyond, which was empty apart from some round mirrors hanging on the walls. Here Lettie set Midnight carefully down on a blue-green stone in the middle, where she sat seriously washing the inside of her front legs and looking totally unconcerned, while everyone else, including Lettie and the servants, worked away feverishly at building a sort of tent around her out of long silver rods.

  Abdullah stood prudently against the wall, watching. By now he was rather regretting assuring the wizard that he owed him nothing. He should have taken the opportunity to ask how to reach the castle in the sky. But he reckoned that since nobody seemed to have listened to him then, it was better to wait until things calmed down. Meanwhile, the silver rods grew into a pattern of skeletal silver stars, and Abdullah watched the bustle, somewhat confused at the way the scene was reflected in all the mirrors, small and busy and bulging. The mirrors bent as oddly as the walls and floors did.

  At length Wizard Suliman clapped his large, bony hands. “Right,” he said. “Lettie can help me here. The rest of you get to the other room and make sure the wards for the Princess stay in place.”

  The apprentices and the servants hurried away. Wizard Suliman spread his arms. Abdullah intended to watch closely and remember clearly what happened. But somehow, as soon as the magic working started, he was not at all sure what was going on. He knew things were happening, but they did not seem to happen. It was like listening to music when you were tone-deaf. Every so often Wizard Suliman uttered a deep, strange word that blurred the room and the inside of Abdullah’s head with it, which made it even harder to see what was happening. But most of Abdullah’s difficulty came from the mirrors on the walls. They kept showing small, round pictures that looked like reflections but were not—or not quite. Every time one of the mirrors caught Abdullah’s eye, it showed the framework of rods glowing with silvery light in a new pattern—a star, a triangle, a hexagon, or some other symbol angular and secret—while the real rods in front of him did not glow at all. Once or twice a mirror showed Wizard Suliman with his arms spread when, in the room, his arms were by his sides.

  Several times a mirror showed Lettie standing still with her hands clasped, looking vividly nervous. But each time Abdullah looked at the real Lettie, she was moving about, making strange gestures and perfectly calm. Midnight never appeared in the mirrors at all. Her small black shape in the middle of the rods was oddly hard to see in reality, too.

  Then all the rods suddenly glowed misty silver and the space inside filled with a haze. The wizard spoke a final deep word and stepped back.

  “Confound it!” said someone inside the rods. “I can’t smell you at all now!”

  This made the wizard grin and Lettie laugh outright. Abdullah looked for the person who was amusing them so and was forced to look away almost at once. The young woman crouching inside the framework, understandably enough, had no clothes on at all. The glimpse he caught, told him that the young woman was as fair as Lettie was dark but otherwise quite like her. Lettie ran to the side of the room and came back with a wizardly green gown. When Abdullah dared to look, the young woman was wearing the gown like a dressing gown, and Lettie was trying to hug her and help her out of the framework at the same time.

  “Oh, Sophie! What happened?” she kept saying.

  “One moment,” gasped Sophie. She seemed to have difficulty balancing on two feet at first, but she hugged Lettie and then staggered to th
e wizard and hugged him, too. “It feels so odd without a tail!” she said. “But thanks awfully, Ben.” Then she advanced on Abdullah, walking rather more easily now. Abdullah backed against the wall, afraid she was going to hug him, too, but all Sophie said was “You must have wondered why I was following you. The truth is, I always get lost in Kingsbury.”

  “I am happy to have been of service, most charming of changelings,” Abdullah said rather stiffly. He was not sure he was going to get on with Sophie any more than he had got on with Midnight. She struck him as uncomfortably strong-minded for a young woman—almost as bad as his father’s first wife’s sister, Fatima.

  Lettie was still demanding to know what had turned Sophie into a cat, and Wizard Suliman was saying anxiously, “Sophie, does this mean that Howl’s wandering about as an animal, too?”

  “No, no,” Sophie said, and suddenly looked desperately anxious.

  “I’ve no idea where Howl is. He was the one who turned me into a cat, you see.”

  “What? Your own husband turned you into a cat!” Lettie exclaimed. “Is this another of your quarrels, then?”

  “Yes, but it was all perfectly reasonable,” said Sophie. “It was when someone stole the moving castle, you see. We only had about half a day’s notice, and that was only because Howl happened to be working on a divining spell for the King. It showed something very powerful stealing the castle and then stealing Princess Valeria. Howl said he’d warn the King at once. Did he?”

  “He certainly did,” said Wizard Suliman. “The Princess is guarded every second. I invoked demons and set up wards in the next room. Whatever being is threatening her has no chance of getting through.”

  “Thank goodness!” said Sophie. “That’s a weight off my mind. It’s a djinn, did you know?”

  “Even a djinn couldn’t get through,” said Wizard Suliman. “But what did Howl do?”

  “He swore,” said Sophie. “In Welsh. Then he sent Michael and the new apprentice away. He wanted to send me away, too. But I said if he and Calcifer were staying, then so was I, and couldn’t he put a spell on me that would simply make the djinn not notice I was there? And we argued about that—”

  Lettie chuckled. “Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?” she said.

  Sophie’s face became somewhat pink, and she put her head up defiantly. “Well. Howl would keep saying I’d be safest right out of the way in Wales with his sister, and he knows I don’t get on with her, and I kept saying I’d be more use if I could be in the castle without the thief noticing. Anyway”—she put her face in her hands— “I’m afraid we were still arguing when the djinn came. There was an enormous noise, and everything went dark and confused. I remember Howl shouting the words of the cat spell—he had to gabble them in a hurry—and then yelling to Calcifer—”

  “Calcifer’s their fire demon,” Lettie explained politely to Abdullah.

  “—yelling to Calcifer to get out and save himself because the djinn was too strong for either of them,” Sophie went on. “Then the castle came off from on top of me like the lid off a cheese dish. Next thing I knew, I was a cat in the mountains north of Kingsbury.”

  Lettie and the Royal Wizard exchanged puzzled looks over So-phie’s bent head. “Why those mountains?” Wizard Suliman wondered. “The castle wasn’t anywhere near there.”

  “No, it was in four places at once,” Sophie said. “I think I was thrown somewhere midway between. It could have been worse. There were plenty of mice and birds to eat.”

  Lettie’s lovely face twisted in disgust. “Sophie!” she exclaimed. “Mice!”

  “Why not? That’s what cats eat,” Sophie said, lifting her head defiantly again. “Mice are delicious. But I’m not so fond of birds. The feathers choke you. But”—she gulped and put her head in her hands again—“but it happened at a rather bad time for me. Morgan was born about a week after that, and of course, he was a kitten—”

  This caused Lettie, if possible, even more consternation than the thought of her sister eating mice. She burst into tears and flung her arms around Sophie. “Oh, Sophie! What did you do?”

  “What cats always do, of course,” Sophie said. “Fed him and washed him a lot. Don’t worry, Lettie, I left him with Abdullah’s friend the soldier. That man would kill anyone who harmed his kitten. But,” she said to Wizard Suliman, “I think I ought to fetch Morgan now so that you can turn him back, too.”

  Wizard Suliman was looking almost as distraught as Lettie. “I wish I’d known!” he said. “If he was born a cat as part of the same spell, he may be changed back already. We’d better find out.” He strode to one of the round mirrors and made circular gestures with both hands.

  The mirror—all the mirrors—at once seemed to be reflecting the room at the inn, each from a different viewpoint, as if they were hanging on the wall there. Abdullah stared from one to the other and was as alarmed at what he saw as the other three were. The magic carpet had, for some reason, been unrolled upon the floor. On it lay a plump, naked pink baby. Young as this baby was, Abdullah could see he had a personality as strong as Sophie’s. And he was asserting that personality. His legs and arms were punching the air, his face was contorted with fury, and his mouth was a square, angry hole. Though the pictures in the mirrors were silent, it was clear that Morgan was being very noisy indeed.

  “Who is that man?” said Wizard Suliman. “I’ve seen him before.”

  “A Strangian soldier, worker of wonders,” Abdullah said helplessly.

  “Then he must remind me of someone I know,” said the wizard.

  The soldier was standing beside the screaming baby, looking horrified and useless. Perhaps he was hoping the genie would do something. At any rate, he had the genie bottle in one hand. But the genie was hanging out of the bottle in several spouts of distracted blue smoke, each spout a face with its hand over its ears, as helpless as the soldier.

  “Oh, the poor darling child!” said Lettie.

  “The poor blessed soldier, you mean,” said Sophie. “Morgan’s furious. He’s never been anything but a kitten, and kittens can do so much more than babies can. He’s angry because he can’t walk. Ben, do you think you can—”

  The rest of Sophie’s question was drowned in a noise like a giant piece of silk tearing. The room shook. Wizard Suliman exclaimed something and made for the door—and then had to dodge hastily. A whole crowd of screaming, wailing somethings swept through the wall beside the door, swooped across the room, and vanished through the opposite wall. They were going too fast to be seen clearly, but none of them seemed to be human. Abdullah had a blurred glimpse of multiple clawed legs, of something streaming along on no legs at all, of beings with one wild eye and of others with many eyes in clusters. He saw fanged heads, flowing tongues, flaming tails. One, moving swiftest of all, was a rolling ball of mud.

  Then they were gone. The door was thrown open by an agitated apprentice. “Sir, sir! The wards are down! We couldn’t hold—”

  Wizard Suliman seized the young man’s arm and hurried him back into the next room, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back when I can! The Princess is in danger!”

  Abdullah looked to see what was happening to the soldier and the baby, but the round mirrors now showed nothing but his own anxious face, and Sophie’s and Lettie’s, all staring upward into them.

  “Drat!” said Sophie. “Lettie, can you work them?”

  “No. They’re Ben’s special thing,” said Lettie.

  Abdullah thought of the carpet unrolled and the genie bottle in the soldier’s hand. “Then in that case, O pair of twinned pearls,” he said, “most lovely ladies, I will, with your permission, hasten back to the inn before too many complaints are made about the noise.”

  Sophie and Lettie replied in chorus that they were coming, too. Abdullah could scarcely blame them, but he came precious near it in the next few minutes. Lettie, it seemed, was not up to hurrying through the streets in her interesting condition. As the three of them rushed through the jumble and chaos o
f broken spells in the next room, Wizard Suliman spared a second from frantically setting up new things in the ruins to order Manfred to get the carriage out. While Manfred raced off to do that, Lettie took Sophie upstairs to get her some proper clothes.

  Abdullah was left pacing the hall. To everyone’s credit, he only waited there less than five minutes, but during that time he tried the front door at least ten times, only to find there was a spell holding it shut. He thought he would go mad. It seemed like a century before Sophie and Lettie came downstairs, both in elegant going-out clothes, and Manfred opened the front door to show a small open carriage drawn by a nice bay gelding, waiting outside on the cobbles. Abdullah wanted to take a flying leap into that carriage and whip up that gelding. But of course, that was not polite. He had to wait while Manfred helped the ladies up into it and then climbed to the driver’s seat. The carriage set off smartly clattering across the cobbles while Abdullah was still squeezing himself into the seat beside Sophie, but even that was not quick enough for him. He could hardly bear to think of what the soldier might be doing.