House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones
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.
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’.”
“Tacs!” Charmain said, clapping hard and stickily.
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.
“But I should be able to fly,” she told herself. “I wonder where the best place is to test it out.”
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.
She was right up in the mountains here, with most of High Norland spread out beneath her, already blue with evening. 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 grey 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.
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.
“Oh, Great Uncle William, you are lucky!” she cried out. “Fancy having this next door to your study!”
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.
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.
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 grey 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.
“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.
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.
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.
We’re not a very big country, are we? she thought.
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?
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.
“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.”
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 realise I was trespassing in your meadow.”
“You are trespassing wherever you tread,” the lubbock snarled. “All the land you can see is mine.”
“What? All of High Norland?” Charmain said. “Don’t talk nonsense!”
“I never talk nonsense.” the creature said. “All is mine. You are mine.” Wings whirring, it began to stalk towards her on most unnatural-looking wiry blobs of feet. “I shall come to claim my own very soon now. I claim you first.” It took a whirring stride towards 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.
CHAPTER