House of Many Ways Page 4

  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.

  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 th
e 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.