House of Many Ways. Diana Wynne Jones

heard the lubbock give a whirring shout of rage, though not clearly for the rushing wind of her fall. She saw the huge cliff streaking past her face. She went on screaming. “Ylf, YLF!” she bellowed. “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Ylf! I just did a flying spell. Why doesn’t it work?”

      It was working. Charmain realised it must be when the upwards rush of the rocks in front of her slowed to a crawl, then to a glide and then to a dawdle. For a moment, she hung in space, bobbing just above some gigantic spikes of rock in the crags below the cliff.

      Perhaps I’m dead now, she thought.

      Then she said, “This is ridiculous!” and managed, by means of a lot of ungainly kicking and arm waving, to turn herself over. And there was Great Uncle William’s house, still a long way below her in the gloaming and about a quarter of a mile off. “And it’s all very well floating,” Charmain said, “but how do I move?” At this point, she remembered that the lubbock had wings and was probably at that moment whirring down from the heights towards her. After that, there was no need to ask how to move. Charmain found herself kicking her legs mightily and positively surging towards Great Uncle William’s house. She shot in over its roof and across the front garden, where the spell seemed to leave her. She just had time to jerk herself sideways so that she was above the path, before she came down with a thump and sat on the neat crazy-paving, shaking all over.

      Safe! she thought. Somehow there seemed to be no doubt that inside Great Uncle William’s boundaries it was safe. She could feel it was.

      After a bit, she said, “Oh, goodness! What a day! When I think that all I ever asked for was a good book and a bit of peace to read it in…! Bother Aunt Sempronia!”

      The bushes beside her rustled. Charmain flinched away and nearly screamed again when the hydrangeas bent aside to let a small blue man hop out on to the path. “Are you in charge here now?” this small blue person demanded in a small hoarse voice.

      Even in the twilight the little man was definitely blue, not purple, and he had no wings. His face was crumpled with bad-tempered wrinkles and almost filled with a mighty nose, but it was not an insect’s face. Charmain’s panic vanished. “What are you?” she said.

      “Kobold, of course,” said the little man. “High Norland is all kobold country. I do the garden here.”

      “At night?” Charmain said.

      “Us kobolds mostly come out at night,” said the small blue man. “What I said – are you in charge?”

      “Well,” Charmain said. “Sort of.”

      “Thought so,” the kobold said, satisfied. “Saw the wizard carried off by the Tall Ones. So you’ll be wanting all these hydrangeas chopped down, then?”

      “Whatever for?” Charmain said.

      “I like to chop things down,” the kobold explained. “Chief pleasure of gardening.”

      Charmain, who had never thought about gardening in her life, considered this. “No,” she said. “Great Uncle William wouldn’t have them if he didn’t like them. He’s coming back before long, and I think he might be upset to find them all chopped down. Why don’t you just do your usual night’s work and see what he says when he’s back?”

      “Oh, he’ll say no, of course,” the kobold said gloomily. “He’s a spoilsport, the wizard is. Usual fee, then?”

      “What is your usual fee?” Charmain asked.

      The kobold said promptly, “I’ll take a crock of gold and a dozen new eggs.”

      Fortunately, Great Uncle William’s voice spoke out of the air at the same time. “I pay Rollo a pint of milk nightly, my dear, magically delivered. No need to concern yourself.”

      The kobold spat disgustedly on the path. “What did I say? Didn’t I say spoilsport? And a fat lot of work I can do, if you’re going to sit in this path all night.”

      Charmain said, with dignity, “I was just resting. I’m going now.” She got to her feet, feeling surprisingly heavy, not to speak of weak about the knees, and plodded up the path to the front door. It’ll be locked, she thought. I shall look awfully silly if I can’t get in.

      The door burst open before she reached it, letting out a surprising blaze of light and with the light Waif’s small scampering shape, squeaking and wagging and wriggling with delight at seeing Charmain again. Charmain was so glad to be home and welcomed that she scooped Waif up and carried him indoors, while Waif writhed and wriggled and reached up to lick Charmain’s chin.

      Indoors, the light seemed to follow you about magically. “Good,” Charmain said aloud. “Then I don’t need to hunt for candles.” But her inner thoughts were saying frantically, I left that window open! The lubbock can get in! She dumped Waif on the kitchen floor and then rushed left through the door. Light blazed in the corridor as she raced along to the end and slammed the window shut. Unfortunately, the light made it seem so dark in the meadow that, no matter how hard she peered through the glass, she could not tell if the lubbock was out there or not. She consoled herself with the thought that she had not been able to see the window once she was in the meadow, but she still found she was shivering.

      After that, she could not seem to stop shivering. She shivered her way back to the kitchen and shivered while she shared a pork pie with Waif, and shivered more because the pool of tea had spread out under the table, making the underside of Waif wet and brown. Whenever Waif came near her, parts of Charmain became clammy with tea too. In the end, Charmain took off her blouse, which was flapping open because of the missing buttons anyway, and wiped up the tea with it. This of course made her shiver more. She went and fetched herself the thick woollen sweater Mrs Baker had packed for her and huddled into it, but she still shivered. The threatened rain started. It beat on the window and pattered down the kitchen chimney, and Charmain shivered even more. She supposed it was shock really, but she still felt cold.

      “Oh!” she cried out. “How do I light a fire, Great Uncle William?”

      “I believe I left the spell in place,” the kindly voice said out of the air. “Simply throw into the grate one thing that will burn and say aloud, ‘Fire, light,’ and you should have your fire.”

      Charmain looked round for one thing that would burn. There was the bag beside her on the table, but it still had another pork pie and an apple tart in it, and besides, it was a nice bag, with flowers that Mrs Baker had embroidered on it. There was paper in Great Uncle William’s study, of course, but that meant getting up and fetching it. There was the laundry in the bags by the sink, but Charmain was fairly sure that Great Uncle William would not appreciate having his dirty clothes burned. On the other hand, there was her own blouse, dirty and teasoaked and missing two buttons, in a heap on the floor by her feet.

      “It’s ruined anyway,” she said. She picked up the brown, soggy bundle and threw it into the fireplace. “Fire, light,” she said.

      The grate thundered into life. For a minute or so, there was the most cheerfully blazing fire that anyone could have wished for. Charmain sighed with pleasure. She was just moving her chair nearer to the warmth, when the flames turned to hissing clouds of steam. Then, piling up and up among the steam, crowding up the chimney and blasting out into the room, came bubbles. Big bubbles, small bubbles, bubbles glimmering with rainbow colours, they came thronging out of the fireplace into the kitchen. They filled the air, landed on things, flew into Charmain’s face, where they burst with a soft sigh, and kept coming. In seconds, the kitchen was a hot, steamy storm of froth, enough to make Charmain gasp.

      “I forgot the bar of soap!” she said, panting in the sudden wet heat.

      Waif decided that the bubbles were personal enemies and retreated under Charmain’s chair, yapping madly and snarling at the bubbles that burst. It was surprisingly noisy.

      “Do shut up!” Charmain said. Sweat ran down her face, and her hair, which had come down over her shoulders,