House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones

sat in the chair and Waif sat on her left foot, and they shared another pasty. Then they shared a fruit tart, two doughnuts, six chocolate biscuits and a custard flan. After this Waif plodded rather heavily away to the inner door, which opened for him as soon as he scratched at it. Charmain gathered up her pile of clothes and followed him, meaning to put her things in the first empty bedroom.

      But here things went a trifle wrong. Charmain pushed the door open with one elbow and, fairly naturally, turned right to go into the corridor with the bedrooms in it. She found herself in complete darkness. Almost at once she walked into another door, where she hit her elbow on its doorknob with a clang.

      “Ouch!” she said, fumbled for the doorknob and opened this door.

      It swung inward majestically. Charmain walked into a large room lit by arched windows all around it and found herself breathing a damp, stuffy, leathery, neglected smell. The smell seemed to come from the elderly leather seats of carved chairs arranged around the big carved table that took up most of the room. Each seat had a leather mat on the table in front of it, and an old, withered sheet of blotting paper on the mat, except for the large seat at the other end that had the arms of High Norland carved into the back of it. This one had a fat little stick on the table instead of a mat. All of it, chairs, table, and mats, was covered in dust and there were cobwebs in the corners of the many windows.

      Charmain stared. “Is this the dining room or what?” she said. “How do I get to the bedrooms from here?”

      Great Uncle William’s voice spoke, sounding quite faint and far off. “You have reached the Conference Room,” it said. “If you are there, you are rather lost, my dear, so listen carefully. Turn round once, clockwise. Then, still turning clockwise, open the door with your left hand only. Go through and let the door shut behind you. Then take two long steps sideways to your left. This will bring you back beside the bathroom.”

      And let’s hope it does! Charmain thought, doing her best to follow these directions.

      All went well, except for the moment of darkness after the door had swung shut behind her, when Charmain found herself staring into a totally strange stone corridor. An old, bent man was pushing a trolley along it, loaded with steaming silver teapot, jugs and chafing dishes and what looked like a pile of crumpets. She blinked a little, decided that she would not do any good, either to herself or the old man, by calling out to him, and took two long steps to the left instead. And then, to her relief, she was standing beside the bathroom, from where she could see Waif turning round and round on Great Uncle William’s bed in order to get comfortable.

      “Phew!” Charmain said, and went and dumped the pile of clothes on top of the chest of drawers in the next bedroom along.

      After that she went along the corridor to the open window at the end, where she spent some minutes staring out at that sloping sunlit meadow and breathing the fresh, chilly air that blew in from it. A person could easily climb out of this, she thought. Or in. But she was not really seeing the meadow, or thinking of fresh air. Her real thoughts were with that enticing book of spells that she had left open on Great Uncle William’s desk. She had never in her life been let loose among magic like this. It was hard to resist. I shall just open it at random and do the first spell I see, she thought. Just one spell.

      In the study, The Boke of Palimpsest was, for some reason, now open at “A Spell to Find Yourself a Handsome Prince”. Charmain shook her head and closed the book. “Who needs a prince?” she said. She opened the book again, carefully at a different place. This page was headed “A Spell for Flying”.

      “Oh yes!” Charmain said. “That’s much more like it!” She put her glasses on and studied the list of ingredients.

      “A sheet of paper, a quill pen (easy, there’s both on this desk), one egg (kitchen?), two flower petals – one pink and the other blue – six drops of water (bathroom), one red hair, one white hair and two pearl buttons.”

      “No problem at all,” Charmain said. She took her glasses off and bustled about assembling ingredients. She hurried to the kitchen – she got to that by opening the bathroom door and turning left and was almost too excited to find that she had got this right – and asked the air, “Where do I find eggs?”

      Great Uncle William’s gentle voice replied, “Eggs are in a crock in the pantry, my dear. I think it’s behind the laundry bags. I do apologise for leaving you with such disorder.”

      Charmain went into the pantry and leaned across the laundry bags, where sure enough she found an old pie dish with half a dozen brown eggs in it. She took one of them carefully back to the study. Since her glasses were dangling on their chain, she failed to notice that The Boke of Palimpsest was now open at “A Spell to Find Hidden Treasure”. She bustled over to the study window, where the flower petals were ready to hand on a hydrangea bush that was one half pink and the other blue. She laid those beside the egg and rushed to the bathroom, where she collected the six drops of water in a tooth mug. On the way back, she went across the passage to where Waif was now curled up like a meringue on Great Uncle William’s blankets. “Excuse me,” Charmain said to him, and raked her fingers along his ragged white back. She came away with quite a number of white hairs, one of which she put beside the flower petals and added to that a red hair from her own head. As for the pearl buttons, she simply ripped two of them off the front of her blouse.

      “Right,” she said, and put her glasses eagerly on again to look at the instructions. The Boke of Palimpsest was now open at “A Spell for Personal Protection”, but Charmain was too excited to notice. She looked only at the instructions, which were in five stages. Stage One said, “Place all ingredients except quill and paper in a suitable bowl.”

      Charmain, after taking her glasses off to stare searchingly around the room, and finding no bowl, suitable or not, was forced to go off to the kitchen again. While she was gone, lazily and slyly, The Boke of Palimpsest turned over another couple of pages. When Charmain came back with a slightly sugary bowl, having tipped all the sugar out on to a not-too-dirty plate, the Boke was open at “A Spell to Increase Magical Power”.

      Charmain did not notice. She put the bowl down on the desk and piled into it the egg, the two petals, the two hairs and her two buttons, and dripped the water carefully in on top. Then she put her glasses on and leaned over the book to discover what she did next. By this time, The Boke of Palimpsest was displaying “A Spell to Become Invisible”, but Charmain only looked at the instructions and did not see this.

      Stage Two told her to “Mash all ingredients together, using only the pen.”

      It is not easy to mash up an egg with a feather, but Charmain managed it, stabbing with the sharpened end over and over until the shell fell to pieces, then stirring so hard that her hair fell down over her face in red strands, and finally, when nothing seemed to mix properly, whisking with the feather end. When she finally stood up, panting, and pushed her hair away with sticky fingers, the Boke had turned over yet another page. It now displayed “A Spell to Start a Fire”, but Charmain was too busy trying not to get egg on her glasses to see. She put them on and studied Stage Three.

      Stage Three of this spell said, “Recite three times ‘Hegemony Gauda’.”

      “Hegemony gauda,” Charmain intoned obediently over the bowl. She was not sure, but on the third repetition she thought the bits of eggshell seethed around the pearl buttons a little. I think it’s working! she thought. She pushed her glasses back on her nose and looked at Stage Four. By this time, she was looking at Stage Four in “A Spell to Bend Objects to the Will”.

      “Take up the quill,” this said, “and, using the prepared mixture, write upon the paper the word Ylf surrounded by a five-sided figure. Care must be taken not to touch the paper while doing this.”

      Charmain took up the drippy, sticky feather pen, adorned with bits of eggshell and a piece of pink petal, and did her best. The mixture was not easy to write with and there seemed no way to hold the paper steady. It slipped and it slid, while Charmain dipped and scratched,