House of Many Ways Read online

  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 th
e 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.

  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 fou
nd 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.