Дом ста дорог [with w_cat]

"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."

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

[144] 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.

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

[146] 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.

[147] 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.

[148] "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."

[149] "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?"

[150] 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."

[151] 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.

[152] "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."

[153] 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."

[154] 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.

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

[156] 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.'"

[157] "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."

[158] "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."

[159] 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.

[160] 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.'"

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

[162] 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.

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

[164] 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.

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

[166] 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.

[167] 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.

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

[169] 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.

[170] 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.

[171] 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.

[172] "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.

[173] 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.

[174] 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.

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

[176] 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?

[177] 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.

[178] "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."

[179] 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."

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

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

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

[183] 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."

[184] 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

[186] 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?"

[187] 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.

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

[189] 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.

[190] 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.

[191] 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!"

[192] 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.

[193] 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.

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

"At night?" Charmain said.

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

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

[197] "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?"

[198] "Whatever for?" Charmain said.

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

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

[201] "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?"

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

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

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

[205] 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."

[206] 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."

[207] 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.

[208] 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.

[209] 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.

[210] 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.

[211] "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."

[212] 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.

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

[214] 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.

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

[216] 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.

[217] "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."

[218] Someone hammered on the back door.

"Perhaps not," Charmain said.

[219] 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.

[220] "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!"

[221] 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.

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

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

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

[224] 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.

[225] 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.

[226] 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?"