Читать книгу House of Many Ways - Diana Wynne Jones - Страница 12

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 realised it must be when the upwards 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 towards her. After that, there was no need to ask how to move. Charmain found herself kicking her legs mightily and positively surging towards 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 on to 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 teasoaked 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 colours, 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 upwards 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 realise 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 on to 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 upwards 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 soulfully 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 towards 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 towards 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 towards 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 backwards. 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 backwards 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.