“As long as it takes,” another of the elves replied.
Then they were all gone before they reached the garden gate.
Chapter Two
IN WHICH CHARMAIN EXPLORES THE HOUSE
Charmain stared at the empty path for a while and then shut the front door with a bang. “Now what do I do?” she said to the deserted, musty room.
“You will have to tidy the kitchen, I’m afraid, my dear,” said Great-Uncle William’s tired, kindly voice out of thin air. “I apologize for leaving so much laundry. Please open my suitcase for more complicated instructions.”
Charmain shot the suitcase a look. So Great-Uncle William had meant to leave it, then. “In a minute,” she said to it. “I haven’t unpacked for myself yet.” She picked up her two bags and marched with them to the only other door. It was at the back of the room and, when Charmain had tried to open it with the hand that held the food bag, then with that hand and with both bags in the other hand, and finally with both hands and with both bags on the floor, she found it led to the kitchen.
She stared for a moment. Then she dragged her two bags round the door just as it was shutting and stared some more.
“What a mess!” she said.
It ought to have been a comfortable, spacious kitchen. It had a big window looking out onto the mountains, where sunlight came warmly pouring through. Unfortunately, the sunlight only served to highlight the enormous stacks of plates and cups piled into the sink and on the draining board and down on the floor beside the sink. The sunlight then went on—and Charmain’s dismayed eyes went with it—to cast a golden glow over the two big canvas laundry bags leaning beside the sink. They were stuffed so full with dirty washing that Great-Uncle William had been using them as a shelf for a pile of dirty saucepans and a frying pan or so.
Charmain’s eyes traveled from there to the table in the middle of the room. Here was where Great-Uncle William appeared to keep his supply of thirty or so teapots and the same number of milk jugs—not to speak of several that had once held gravy. It was all quite neat in its way, Charmain thought, just crowded and not clean.
“I suppose you have been ill,” Charmain said grudgingly to the thin air.
There was no reply this time. Cautiously, she went over to the sink, where, she had a feeling, something was missing. It took her a moment or so to realize that there were no taps. Probably this house was so far outside town that no water pipes had been laid. When she looked through the window, she could see a small yard outside and a pump in the middle of it.
“So I’m supposed to go and pump water and then bring it in, and then what?” Charmain demanded. She looked over at the dark, empty fireplace. It was summer, after all, so naturally there was no fire, nor anything to burn that she could see. “I heat the water?” she said. “In a dirty saucepan, I suppose, and—Come to think of it, how do I wash? Can’t I ever have a bath? Doesn’t he have any bedroom, or a bathroom at all?”
She rushed to the small door beyond the fireplace and dragged it open. All Great-Uncle William’s doors seemed to need the strength of ten men to open, she thought angrily. She could almost feel the weight of magic holding them shut. She found herself looking into a small pantry. It had nothing on its shelves apart from a small crock of butter, a stale-looking loaf, and a large bag mysteriously labeled CIBIS CANINICUS that seemed to be full of soapflakes. And piled into the back part of it were two more large laundry bags as full as the ones in the kitchen.
“I shall scream,” Charmain said. “How could Aunt Sempronia do this to me? How could Mother let her do it?”
In this moment of despair, Charmain could only think of doing what she always did in a crisis: bury herself in a book. She dragged her two bags over to the crowded table and sat herself down in one of the two chairs there. There she unbuckled the carpet bag, fetched her glasses up onto her nose, and dug eagerly among the clothes for the books she had put out for Mother to pack for her.
Her hands met nothing but softness. The only hard thing proved to be the big bar of soap among her washing things. Charmain threw it across the room into the empty hearth and dug further. “I don’t believe this!” she said. “She must have put them in first, right at the bottom.” She turned the bag upside down and shook everything out onto the floor. Out fell wads of beautifully folded skirts, dresses, stockings, blouses, two knitted jackets, lace petticoats, and enough other underclothes for a year. On top of those flopped her new slippers. After that, the bag was flat and empty. Charmain nevertheless felt all the way round the inside of the bag before she threw it aside, let her glasses drop to the end of their chain, and wondered whether to cry. Mrs. Baker had actually forgotten to pack the books.
“Well,” Charmain said, after an interval of blinking and swallowing, “I suppose I’ve never really been away from home before. Next time I go anywhere, I’ll pack the bag myself and fill it with books. I shall make the best of it for now.”
Making the best of it, she heaved the other bag onto the crowded table and shoved to make room for it. This shunted four milk jugs and a teapot off onto the floor. “And I don’t care!” Charmain said as they fell. Somewhat to her relief, the milk jugs were empty and simply bounced, and the teapot did not break either. It just lay on its side leaking tea onto the floor. “That’s probably the good side to magic,” Charmain said, glumly digging out the topmost meat pasty. She flung her skirts into a bundle between her knees, put her elbows on the table, and took a huge, comforting, savory bite from the pasty.
Something cold and quivery touched the bare part of her right leg.
Charmain froze, not daring even to chew. This kitchen is full of big magical slugs! she thought.
The cold thing touched another part of her leg. With the touch came a very small whispery whine.
Very slowly, Charmain pulled aside skirt and tablecloth and looked down. Under the table sat an extremely small and ragged white dog, gazing up at her piteously and shaking all over. When it saw Charmain looking down at it, it cocked uneven, frayed-looking white ears and flailed at the floor with its short, wispy tail. Then it whispered out a whine again.
“Who are you?” Charmain said. “Nobody told me about a dog.”
Great-Uncle William’s voice spoke out of the air once more. “This is Waif. Be very kind to him. He came to me as a stray and he seems to be frightened of everything.”
Charmain had never been sure about dogs. Her mother said they were dirty and they bit you and would never have one in the house, so Charmain had always been extremely nervous of any dog she met. But this dog was so small. It seemed extremely white and clean. And it looked to be far more frightened of Charmain than Charmain was of it. It was still shaking all over.
“Oh, do stop trembling,” Charmain said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Waif went on trembling and looking at her piteously.
Charmain sighed. She broke off a large lump of her pasty and held it down toward Waif. “Here,” she said. “Here’s for not being a slug after all.”
Waif’s shiny black nose quivered toward the lump. He looked up at her, to make sure she really meant this, and then, very gently and politely, he took the lump into his mouth and ate it. Then he looked up at Charmain for more. Charmain was fascinated by his politeness. She broke off another lump. And then another. In the end, they shared the pasty half and half.
“That’s all,” Charmain said, shaking crumbs off her skirt. “We’ll have to make this bagful last, as there seems to be no other food in this house. Now show me what to do next, Waif.”
Waif promptly trotted over to what seemed to be the back door, where he stood wagging his wisp of a tail and whispering out a tiny whine. Charmain opened the door—which was just as difficult to open as the other two—and followed Waif out into the backyard, thinking that this meant she was supposed to pump water for the sink. But Waif trotted past the pump and over to the rather mangy-looking apple tree in the corner, where he raised a very short leg and peed against the tree.
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“I see,” Charmain said. “That’s what you’re supposed to do, not me. And it doesn’t look as if you’re doing the tree much good, Waif.”
Waif gave her a look and went trotting to and fro around the yard, sniffing at things and raising a leg against clumps of grass. Charmain could see he felt quite safe in this yard. Come to think of it, so did she. There was a warm, secure feeling, as if Great-Uncle William had put wizardly protections around the place. She stood by the pump and stared up beyond the fence to the steeply rising mountains. There was a faint breeze blowing down from the heights, bringing a smell of snow and new flowers, which somehow reminded Charmain of the elves. She wondered if they had taken Great-Uncle William up there.
And they’d better bring him back soon, she thought. I shall go mad after more than a day here!
There was a small hut in the corner by the house. Charmain went over to investigate it, muttering, “Spades, I suppose, and flowerpots and things.” But when she had hauled its stiff door open, she found a vast copper tank inside and a mangle and a place to light a fire under the tank. She stared at it all, the way you stare at a strange exhibit in a museum for a while, until she remembered that there was a similar shed in her own yard at home. It was a place just as mysterious to her as this one, since she had always been forbidden to go into it, but she did know that, once a week, a red-handed, purple-faced washerwoman came and made a lot of steam in this shed, out of which came clean clothes somehow.
Ah. A wash house, she thought. I think you have to put those laundry bags in the tank and boil them up. But how? I’m beginning to think I’ve led a much too sheltered life.
“And a good thing too,” she said aloud, thinking of the washerwoman’s red hands and mauve face.
But that doesn’t help me wash dishes, she thought. Or about a bath. Am I supposed to boil myself in that tank? And where shall I sleep, for goodness’ sake?
Leaving the door open for Waif, she went back indoors, where she marched past the sink, the bags of laundry, the crowded table, and the heap of her own things on the floor, and dragged open the door in the far wall. Beyond it was the musty living room again.
“This is hopeless!” she said. “Where are bedrooms? Where is a bathroom?”
Great-Uncle William’s tired voice spoke out of the air. “For bedrooms and bathroom, turn left as soon as you open the kitchen door, my dear. Please forgive any disorder you find.”
Charmain looked back through the open kitchen door to the kitchen beyond it. “Oh, yes?” she said. “Well, let’s see.” She walked carefully backward into the kitchen and shut the door in front of her. Then she hauled it open again, with what she was beginning to think of as the usual struggle, and turned briskly left into the door frame before she had time to think of it as impossible.
She found herself in a passageway with an open window at the far end. The breeze coming in through the window was strongly full of the mountain smell of snow and flowers. Charmain had a startled glimpse of a sloping green meadow and faraway blue distances, while she was busy turning the handle and shoving her knee against the nearest door.
This door came open quite easily, as if it were used rather a lot. Charmain stumbled forward into a smell that caused her instantly to forget the scents from the window. She stood with her nose up, sniffing delightedly. It was the delicious mildewy fragrance of old books. Hundreds of them, she saw, looking round the room. Books were lined up on shelves on all four walls, stacked on the floor, and piled on the desk, old books in leather covers mostly, although some of the ones on the floor had newer looking colored jackets. This was obviously Great-Uncle William’s study.
“Oooh!” Charmain said.
Ignoring the way the view from the window was of the hydrangeas in the front garden, she dived to look at the books on the desk. Big, fat, redolent books, they were, and some of them had metal clasps to keep them shut as if they were dangerous open. Charmain had the nearest one already in her hands when she noticed the stiff piece of paper spread out on the desk, covered with shaky handwriting.
“My dear Charmain,” she read, and sat herself down in the padded chair in front of the desk to read the rest.
My dear Charmain,
Thank you for so kindly agreeing to look after this house in my absence. The elves tell me I should be gone for about two weeks. (Thank goodness for that!, Charmain thought.) Or possibly a month if there are complications. (Oh.) You really must forgive any disorder you find here. I have been afflicted for quite some time now. But I am sure you are a resourceful young lady and will find your feet here quite readily. In case of any difficulty, I have left spoken directions for you wherever these seemed necessary. All you need do is speak your question aloud and it should be answered. More complex matters you will find explained in the suitcase. Please be kind to Waif, who has not been with me for long enough to feel secure, and please feel free to help yourself to any books in this study, apart from those actually on this desk, which are for the most part too powerful and advanced for you. (Pooh. As if I cared for that!, Charmain thought.) Meanwhile I wish you a happy sojourn here and hope to be able to thank you in person before very long.
Your affectionate great-great-uncle-by-marriage,
William Norland
“I suppose he is by-marriage,” Charmain said aloud. “He must be Aunt Sempronia’s great-uncle, really, and she married Uncle Ned, who is Dad’s uncle, except that he’s dead now. What a pity. I was starting to hope I’d inherited some of his magic.” And she said politely to the air, “Thank you very much, Great-Uncle William.”
There was no reply. Charmain thought, Well, there wouldn’t be. That wasn’t a question. And she set about exploring the books on the desk.
The fat book she had in her hand was called The Book of Void and Nothingness. Not surprisingly, when she opened it, the pages were blank. But she could feel under her fingers each empty page sort of purring and writhing with hidden magics. She put it down rather quickly and picked up one called Wall’s Guide to Astromancy instead. This was slightly disappointing, because it was mostly diagrams of black dotted lines with numbers of square red dots spreading out from the black lines in various patterns, but almost nothing to read. All the same, Charmain spent longer looking at it than she expected. The diagrams must have been hypnotic in some way. But eventually, with a bit of a wrench, she put it down and turned to one called Advanced Seminal Sorcery, which was not her kind of thing at all. It was closely printed in long paragraphs that mostly seemed to begin, “If we extrapolate from our findings in my earlier work, we find ourselves ready to approach an extension of the paratypical phenomenology…”
No, Charmain thought. I don’t think we are ready.
She put that one down too and lifted up the heavy, square book on the corner of the desk. It was called Das Zauberbuch and it turned out to be in a foreign language. Probably what they speak in Ingary, Charmain decided. But, most interestingly, this book had been acting as a paperweight to a pile of letters underneath it, from all over the world. Charmain spent a long time going nosily through the letters and becoming more and more impressed with Great-Uncle William. Nearly all of them were from other wizards who were wanting to consult Great-Uncle William on the finer points of magic—clearly, they thought of him as the great expert—or to congratulate him on his latest magical discovery. One and all of them had the most terrible handwriting. Charmain frowned and scowled at them and held the worst one up to the light.
Dear Wizard Norland (it said, as far as she could read it),
Your book, Crucial Cantrips, has been a great help to me in my dimensional (or is that “demented”? Charmain wondered) work, but I would like to draw your attention to a small discovery of mine related to your section on Murdoch’s Ear (“Merlin’s Arm? Murphy’s Law?” I give up! Charmain thought). When I next find myself in High Norland, perhaps we could talk?
Yours alluringly (“allergically? admiringly? antiphony?” Lord! What writing! Charmain thought),
Wizard Howl Pendragon
“Dear, dear! He must write with a poker!” Charmain said aloud, picking up the next letter.
This one was from the King himself and the writing, though wavery and old-fashioned, was much easier to read.
Dear Wm (Charmain read, with growing awe and surprise),
We are now more than halfway through Our Great Task and as yet none the wiser. We rely on you. It is Our devout Hope that the Elves We sent you will succeed in restoring you to Health and that We will again shortly have the Inestimable Benefit of your Advice and Encouragement. Our Best Wishes go with you.
Yours, in Sincere Hope,
Adolphus Rex High Norland
So the King sent those elves! “Well, well,” Charmain murmured, leafing through the final stack of letters. Every single one of these was written in different sorts of someone’s best handwriting. They all seemed to say the same thing in different ways: “Please, Wizard Norland, I would like to become your apprentice. Will you take me on?” Some of them went on to offer Great-Uncle William money. One of them said he could give Great-Uncle William a magical diamond ring, and another, who seemed to be a girl, said, rather pathetically, “I am not very pretty myself, but my sister is, and she says she will marry you if you agree to teach me.”
Charmain winced and only flipped hastily through the rest of the stack. They reminded her so very much of her own letter to the King. And quite as useless, she thought. It was obvious to her that these were the kind of letters that a famous wizard would instantly write and say “No” to. She bundled them all back under Das Zauberbuch and looked at the other books on the desk. There was a whole row of tall, fat books at the back of the desk, all labeled Res Magica, which she thought she would look at later. She picked up two more books at random. One was called Mrs. Pentstemmon’s Path: Signposts to the Truth and it struck her as a trifle moralizing. The other, when she had thumbed open its metal clasp and spread it out at its first page, was called The Boke of Palimpsest. When Charmain turned over the next pages, she found that each page contained a new spell—a clear spell, too, with a title saying what it did and, below that, a list of ingredients, followed by numbered stages telling you what you had to do.