House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones

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, Crucual 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 labelled 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 moralising. 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.

      “This is more like it!” Charmain said, and settled down to read.

      A long time later, while she was trying to decide which was more useful, “A Spell to tell Friend from Foe” or “A Spell to Enlarge the Mind,” or perhaps even “A Spell for Flying,” Charmain suddenly knew that she had crying need of a bathroom. This tended to happen to her when she had been absorbed in reading. She sprang up, squeezing her knees together, and then realised that a bathroom was a place she had still not found.

      “Oh, how do I find the bathroom from here?” she cried out.

      Reassuringly, Great Uncle William’s kind, frail voice spoke out of the air at once. “Turn left in the passage, my dear, and the bathroom is the first door on the right.”

      “Thank you!” Charmain gasped, and ran.

      CHAPTER THREE

      In which Charmain works several spells at once

      The bathroom was as reassuring as Great Uncle William’s kindly voice. It had a worn greenstone floor and a little window, at which fluttered a green net curtain. And it had all the fitments Charmain knew from home. And home has nothing but the best, she thought. Better still, it had taps and the toilet flushed. True, the bath and the taps were strange, slightly bulbous shapes, as if the person who installed them had not been quite sure what he or she was aiming at; but the taps, when Charmain experimentally turned them on, ran cold and hot water, just as they were supposed to, and there were warm towels on a rail under the mirror.

      Perhaps I can put one of those laundry bags in the bath, Charmain mused. How would I squeeze it dry?

      Across the corridor from the bathroom was a row of doors, stretching away into dim distance. Charmain went to the nearest one and pushed it open, expecting it to lead to the living room. But there was a small bedroom beyond it instead, obviously Great Uncle William’s, to judge by the mess. The white covers trailed off the unmade bed, almost on top of several stripey nightshirts scattered over the floor. Shirts dangled out of drawers, along with socks and what looked like long underclothes, and the open cupboard held a musty-smelling uniform of some kind. Under the window were two more sacks stuffed full of laundry.

      Charmain groaned aloud. “I suppose he’s been ill for quite a time,” she said, trying to be charitable. “But, mother-of-pearl, why do I have to deal with it all?”

      The bed started twitching.

      Charmain jumped round to face it. The twitching was Waif, curled up comfortably in the mound of bedclothes, scratching for a flea. When he saw Charmain looking at him, he wagged his flimsy tail and grovelled, lowered his frayed ears and whispered a pleading whine at her.

      “You’re not supposed to be there, are you?” she said to him. “All right. I can see you’re comfortable – and I’m blowed if I’m sleeping in that bed anyway.”

      She marched out of the room and opened the next door along. To her relief, there was another bedroom there almost identical to Great Uncle William’s, except that this one was tidy. The bed was clean and neatly made, the cupboard was shut, and when she looked, she found the drawers were empty. Charmain nodded approval at the room and opened the next door along the corridor. There was another neat bedroom there, and beyond that another, each one exactly the same.

      I’d better throw my things around the one that’s mine or I’ll never find it again, she thought.

      She turned back into the corridor to find that Waif had come off the bed and was now scratching at the bathroom door with both front paws. “You won’t want to go in there,” Charmain told him. “None of it’s any use to you.”

      But the door came open somehow before Charmain got to it. Beyond it was the kitchen. Waif trotted jauntily in there and Charmain groaned again. The mess had not gone away. There were the dirty crockery and the laundry bags, with the addition now of a teapot lying in a pool of tea, Charmain’s clothes in a heap near the table and a large green bar of soap in the fireplace.

      “I’d forgotten all this,” Charmain said.

      Waif put both tiny front paws on the bottom rung of the chair and raised himself to his full small length, pleadingly.