House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones
and looking at her piteously.
Charmain sighed. She broke off a large lump of her pasty and held it down towards Waif. “Here,” she said. “Here’s for not being a slug after all.”
Waif’s shiny black nose quivered towards 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.
“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 backwards 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 coloured 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