DIANA WYNNE JONES

Believing Is Seeing

Seven stories

INTRODUCTION

These stories were written at intervals over a long period, and it so happened that each time I had written one of them, someone asked me for a story for a collection. I began to feel positively precognitive.

The trouble is that the collection didn’t always match the story. “The Sage of Theare” started because I remembered, or thought I remembered, a story by Borges being read on the radio, in which a scholar arduously tracked down a learned man but never quite found him. I have never actually found that story either. If it exists, it behaves like its own plot. But years after I thought I remembered hearing it, I started having dreams about it—strange circular dreams in a strange city where gods took a hand—and the dream person never found the wise man he was looking for. In order to exorcise the dreams, I wrote the story. I was writing Chrestomanci books at the time, so the story fairly naturally included Chrestomanci, too. While I was finishing it, Susan Schwartz asked me for something for a collection called Hecate’s Cauldron, and with some doubts, I sent it to her. She used it, and to my dismay, it stuck out like a sore thumb. All the other stories were very female. Chrestomanci strides among them like a grasshopper in a beehive. His effect on the gods in the story is rather the same, too.

“The Master” was another dream, or maybe a nightmare, which I dreamed more than once and had again to exorcise by writing it down. I know it is really part of the complex of ideas out of which Fire and Hemlock got written, but I couldn’t explain how. It is, of course, about precognition. At that time, I was quite worried about the way most of my books came true at me after I had written them, but I am glad to say that the events in “The Master” have (so far) not happened to me.

One rainy afternoon quite a long time later I sat down and wrote “The Girl Who Loved the Sun.” I had been thinking about all those Greek stories where women get turned into plants and animals, and I kept wondering how and why: how it felt to the person it happened to and why they let it happen. It seemed to me that nothing that radical could happen to someone without their personal consent, and I wondered why one might consent. When I had done the first draft, I had two phone calls. The first was from my sister, who wanted to tell me she had been writing poems about women who were turned into plants and animals and asking much the same questions as I had (my sister and I seem to share trains of thought quite often), and the second was someone wanting a story about unhappy love. I sent this story, as doubtfully as I had earlier sent “The Sage of Theare,” because I was not sure it quite counted. But they said it did. You must see what you think.

Peculiarly, I do not remember why I wrote “Enna Hittims,” but I presume I was sick in bed and feeling bored. And when Greenwillow asked me for a new story for this collection, it was ready and waiting.

Much earlier than all of these, while I was thinking out the multiplicity of alternate worlds that occur in The Lives of Christopher Chant, I wrote “Dragon Reserve, Home Eight” almost by way of clarifying things. At that time, though, I was thinking of the worlds as rather like a wad of different colored paper handkerchiefs. If you were to take that wad and crumple it in one hand, each color would be separate, but wrapped in with the others. And I was also thinking of an enchanter’s gifts rather more as inborn psychic talents. As so often happens, when I came to write the actual book a good four years later, everything turned out differently, and probably no one would realize this story had anything to do with it unless I told them. Again, I had just done a rather rough and unsatisfactory first draft when Robin McKinley asked me for a fantasy story. I sent this one, but she refused it on the grounds that it was not fantasy. This struck me as fair and reasonable, even though I knew it was going to be fantasy later.

I asked myself for a story with “What the Cat Told Me.” When I wrote it, I was suffering cat deprivation. I was brought up with cats and didn’t have one at that time (this was four years ago, just before someone suddenly arrived and organized me a cat, so this one came true in a way). I love the exacting self-centeredness of cats. The story is about that. Then I was asked to compile a collection of fantasy stories, and I put this one in among the original selection, which I knew was going to be far too long. I mean, what can one leave out of a fantasy collection? My idea was to leave my own story out. But when it came to cutting the list down to publishable size, the editors, to my great surprise, insisted that this one stay in. I was glad. It was fun to write.

It was even more fun to write “nad and Dan adn Quaffy.” This one is a loving send-up of a well-known author whose writing I admire and read so avidly that I’m sure I know where a lot of it comes from. The idea for it came to me as I typed nad for and for the hundredth time, changed it, found it was now adn, reached for my coffee in frustration, and idly realized—among other things—that this other writer did this, too. Typos are a great inspiration. Depending on which side you hit the wrong key, coffee can be either xiddaw or voggrr, both of which are obviously alien substances that induce a state of altered consciousness. And yet again, when I was halfway through it, giggling as I wrote, I was asked for a story about computers.

And there you are: believing is seeing.

Diana Wynne Jones

Bristol, 1999

THE SAGE OF THEARE

There was a world called Theare in which Heaven was very well organized. Everything was so precisely worked out that every god knew his or her exact duties, correct prayers, right times for business, utterly exact character, and unmistakable place above or below other gods. This was the case from Great Zond, the king of the gods, through every god, godlet, deity, minor deity, and numen, down to the most immaterial nymph. Even the invisible dragons that lived in the rivers had their invisible lines of demarcation. The universe ran like clockwork. Mankind was not always so regular, but the gods were there to set him right. It had been like this for centuries.

So it was a breach in the very nature of things when, in the middle of the yearly Festival of Water, at which only watery deities were entitled to be present, Great Zond looked up to see Imperion, god of the sun, storming toward him down the halls of Heaven.

“Go away!” cried Zond, aghast.

But Imperion swept on, causing the watery deities gathered there to steam and hiss, and arrived in a wave of heat and warm water at the foot of Zond’s high throne.

“Father!” Imperion cried urgently.

A high god like Imperion was entitled to call Zond Father. Zond did not recall whether or not he was actually Imperion’s father. The origins of the gods were not quite so orderly as their present existence. But Zond knew that, son of his or not, Imperion had breached all the rules. “Abase yourself,” Zond said sternly.

Imperion ignored this command, too. Perhaps this was just as well, since the floor of Heaven was awash already, and steaming. Imperion kept his flaming gaze on Zond. “Father! The Sage of Dissolution has been born!”

Zond shuddered in the clouds of hot vapor and tried to feel resigned. “It is written,” he said, “a Sage shall be born who shall question everything. His questions shall bring down the exquisite order of Heaven and cast all the gods into disorder. It is also written—” Here Zond realized that Imperion had made him break the rules, too. The correct procedure was for Zond to summon the god of prophecy and have that god consult the Book of Heaven. Then he realized that Imperion was the god of prophecy. It was one of his precisely allocated duties. Zond rounded on Imperion. “What do you mean coming and telling me? You’re god of prophecy! Go and look in the Book of Heaven!”

“I already have, Father,” said Imperion. “I find I prophesied the coming of the Sage of Dissolution when the gods first began. It is written that the Sage shall be born and that I shall not know.”

“Then,” said Zond, scoring a point, “how is it you’re here telling me he has been born?”

“The mere fact,” Imperion said, “that I can come here and interrupt the Water Festival shows that the Sage has been born. Our Dissolution has obviously begun.”

There was a splash of consternation among the watery gods. They were gathered down the hall as far as they could get from Imperion, but they had all heard. Zond tried to gather his wits. What with the steam raised by Imperion and the spume of dismay thrown out by the rest, the halls of Heaven were in a state nearer chaos than he had known for millennia. Any more of this, and there would be no need for the Sage to ask questions. “Leave us,” Zond said to the watery gods. “Events even beyond my control cause this festival to be stopped. You will be informed later of any decision I make.” To Zond’s dismay, the watery ones hesitated—further evidence of Dissolution. “I promise,” he said.

The watery ones made up their minds. They left in waves, all except one. This one was Ock, god of all oceans. Ock was equal in status to Imperion, and heat did not threaten him. He stayed where he was.

Zond was not pleased. Ock, it always seemed to him, was the least orderly of the gods. He did not know his place. He was as restless and unfathomable as mankind. But, with Dissolution already begun, what could Zond do? “You have our permission to stay,” he said graciously to Ock, and to Imperion: “Well, how did you know the Sage was born?”

“I was consulting the Book of Heaven on another matter,” said Imperion, “and the page opened at my prophecy concerning the Sage of Dissolution. Since it said that I would not know the day and hour when the Sage was born, it followed that he has already been born, or I would not have known. The rest of the prophecy was commendably precise, however. Twenty years from now, he will start questioning Heaven. What shall we do to stop him?”

“I don’t see what we can do,” Zond said hopelessly. “A prophecy is a prophecy.”

“But we must do something!” brazed Imperion. “I insist! I am a god of order, even more than you are. Think what would happen if the sun went inaccurate! This means more to me than anyone. I want the Sage of Dissolution found and killed before he can ask questions.”

Zond was shocked. “I can’t do that! If the prophecy says he has to ask questions, then he has to ask them.”

Here Ock approached. “Every prophecy has a loophole,” he said.

“Of course,” snapped Imperion. “I can see the loophole as well as you. I’m taking advantage of the disorder caused by the birth of the Sage to ask Great Zond to kill him and overthrow the prophecy. Thus restoring order.”

“Logic chopping is not what I meant,” said Ock.

The two gods faced one another. Steam from Ock suffused Imperion and then rained back on Ock, as regularly as breathing. “What did you mean, then?” said Imperion.

“The prophecy,” said Ock, “does not appear to say which world the Sage will ask his questions in. There are many other worlds. Mankind calls them if-worlds, meaning that they were once the same world as Theare, but split off and went their own ways after each doubtful event in history. Each if-world has its own Heaven. There must be one world in which the gods are not as orderly as we are here. Let the Sage be put in that world. Let him ask his predestined questions there.”

“Good idea!” Zond clapped his hands in relief, causing untoward tempests in all Theare. “Agreed, Imperion?”

“Yes,” said Imperion. He flamed with relief. And being unguarded, he at once became prophetic. “But I must warn you,” he said, “that strange things happen when destiny is tampered with.”

“Strange things maybe, but never disorderly,” Zond asserted. He called the watery gods back and, with them, every god in Theare. He told them that an infant had just been born who was destined to spread Dissolution, and he ordered each one of them to search the ends of the earth for this child. (“The ends of the earth” was a legal formula. Zond did not believe that Theare was flat. But the expression had been unchanged for centuries, just like the rest of Heaven. It meant “Look everywhere.”)

The whole of Heaven looked high and low. Nymphs and godlets scanned mountains, caves, and woods. Household gods peered into cradles. Watery gods searched beaches, banks, and margins. The goddess of love went deeply into her records, to find who the Sage’s parents might be. The invisible dragons swam to look inside barges and houseboats. Since there was a god for everything in Theare, nowhere was missed, nothing was omitted. Imperion searched harder than any, blazing into every nook and crevice on one side of the world, and exhorting the moon goddess to do the same on the other side.

And nobody found the Sage. There were one or two false alarms, such as when a household goddess reported an infant that never stopped crying. This baby, she said, was driving her up the wall, and if this was not Dissolution, she would like to know what was. There were also several reports of infants born with teeth, or six fingers, or suchlike strangeness. But in each case Zond was able to prove that the child had nothing to do with Dissolution. After a month it became clear that the infant Sage was not going to be found.

Imperion was in despair, for as he had told Zond, order meant more to him than to any other god. He became so worried that he was actually causing the sun to lose heat. At length the goddess of love advised him to go off and relax with a mortal woman before he brought about Dissolution himself. Imperion saw she was right. He went down to visit the human woman he had loved for some years. It was established custom for gods to love mortals. Some visited their loves in all sorts of fanciful shapes, and some had many loves at once. But Imperion was both honest and faithful. He never visited Nestara as anything but a handsome man, and he loved her devotedly. Three years ago she had borne him a son, whom Imperion loved almost as much as he loved Nestara. Before the Sage was born to trouble him, Imperion had been trying to bend the rules of Heaven a little, to get his son approved as a god, too.

The child’s name was Thasper. As Imperion descended to earth, he could see Thasper digging in some sand outside Nestara’s house—a beautiful child, fair-haired and blue-eyed. Imperion wondered fondly if Thasper was talking properly yet. Nestara had been worried about how slowly he was learning to speak.

Imperion alighted beside his son. “Hello, Thasper. What are you digging so busily?”

Instead of answering, Thasper raised his golden head and shouted. “Mum!” he yelled. “Why does it go bright when Dad comes?”

All Imperion’s pleasure vanished. Of course no one could ask questions until he had learned to speak. But it would be too cruel if his own son turned out to be the Sage of Dissolution. “Why shouldn’t it go bright?” he asked defensively.

Thasper scowled up at him. “I want to know. Why does it?”

“Perhaps because you feel happy to see me,” Imperion suggested.

“I’m not happy,” Thasper said. His lower lip came out. Tears filled his big blue eyes. “Why does it go bright? I want to know. Mum! I’m not happy!”

Nestara came racing out of the house, almost too concerned to smile at Imperion. “Thasper love, what’s the matter?”

“I want to know!” wailed Thasper.

“What do you want to know? I’ve never known such an inquiring mind,” Nestara said proudly to Imperion as she picked Thasper up. “That’s why he was so slow talking. He wouldn’t speak until he’d found out how to ask questions. And if you don’t give him an exact answer, he’ll cry for hours.”

“When did he first start asking questions?” Imperion inquired tensely.

“About a month ago,” said Nestara.

This made Imperion truly miserable, but he concealed it. It was clear to him that Thasper was indeed the Sage of Dissolution and he was going to have to take him away to another world. He smiled and said, “My love, I have wonderful news for you. Thasper has been accepted as a god. Great Zond himself will have him as cupbearer.”

“Oh, not now!” cried Nestara. “He’s so little!”

She made numerous other objections, too. But in the end she let Imperion take Thasper. After all, what better future could there be for a child? She put Thasper into Imperion’s arms with all sorts of anxious advice about what he ate and when he went to bed. Imperion kissed her good-bye, heavy-hearted. He was not a god of deception. He knew he dared not see her again for fear he told her the truth.

Then, with Thasper in his arms, Imperion went up to the middle regions below Heaven, to look for another world.

Thasper looked down with interest at the great blue curve of the world. “Why—” he began.

Imperion hastily enclosed him in a sphere of forgetfulness. He could not afford to let Thasper ask things here. Questions that spread Dissolution on earth would have an even more powerful effect in the middle region. The sphere was a silver globe, neither transparent nor opaque. In it, Thasper would stay seemingly asleep, not moving and not growing, until the sphere was opened. With the child thus safe, Imperion hung the sphere from one shoulder and stepped into the next-door world.

He went from world to world. He was pleased to find there was an almost infinite number of them, for the choice proved supremely difficult. Some worlds were so disorderly that he shrank from leaving Thasper in them. In some, the gods resented Imperion’s intrusion and shouted at him to be off. In others, it was mankind that was resentful. One world he came to was so rational that to his horror, he found the gods were dead. There were many others he thought might do, until he let the spirit of prophecy blow through him, and in each case this told him that harm would come to Thasper here. But at last he found a good world. It seemed calm and elegant. The few gods there seemed civilized but casual. Indeed, Imperion was a little puzzled to find that these gods seemed to share quite a lot of their power with mankind. But mankind did not seem to abuse this power, and the spirit of prophecy assured him that, if he left Thasper here inside his sphere of forgetfulness, it would be opened by someone who would treat the boy well.

Imperion put the sphere down in a wood and sped back to Theare, heartily relieved. There he reported what he had done to Zond, and all Heaven rejoiced. Imperion made sure that Nestara married a very rich man who gave her not only wealth and happiness but plenty of children to replace Thasper. Then, a little sadly, he went back to the ordered life of Heaven. The exquisite organization of Theare went on untroubled by Dissolution.

Seven years passed.

All that while Thasper knew nothing and remained three years old. Then, one day, the sphere of forgetfulness fell in two halves, and he blinked in sunlight somewhat less golden than he had known.

“So that’s what was causing all the disturbance,” a tall man murmured.

“Poor little soul!” said a lady.

There was a wood around Thasper, and people standing in it looking at him, but, as far as Thasper knew, nothing had happened since he soared to the middle region with his father. He went on with the question he had been in the middle of asking. “Why is the world round?” he said.

“Interesting question,” said the tall man. “The answer usually given is because the corners wore off spinning around the sun. But it could be designed to make us end where we began.”

“Sir, you’ll muddle him, talking like that,” said another lady. “He’s only little.”

“No, he’s interested,” said another man. “Look at him.”

Thasper was indeed interested. He approved of the tall man. He was a little puzzled about where he had come from, but he supposed the tall man must have been put there because he answered questions better than Imperion. He wondered where Imperion had got to. “Why aren’t you my dad?” he asked the tall man.

“Another most penetrating question,” said the tall man. “Because, as far as we can find out, your father lives in another world. Tell me your name.”

This was another point in the tall man’s favor. Thasper never answered questions; he only asked them. But this was a command. The tall man understood Thasper. “Thasper,” Thasper answered obediently.

“He’s sweet!” said the first lady. “I want to adopt him.” To which the other ladies gathered around most heartily agreed.

“Impossible,” said the tall man. His tone was mild as milk and rock firm. The ladies were reduced to begging to be able to look after Thasper for a day then. An hour. “No,” the tall man said mildly. “He must go back at once.” At which all the ladies cried out that Thasper might be in great danger in his own home. The tall man said, “I shall take care of that, of course.” Then he stretched out a hand and pulled Thasper up. “Come along, Thasper.”

As soon as Thasper was out of it, the two halves of the sphere vanished. One of the ladies took his other hand, and he was led away, first on a jiggly ride, which he much enjoyed, and then into a huge house, where there was a very perplexing room. In this room Thasper sat in a five-pointed star and pictures kept appearing around him. People kept shaking their heads. “No, not that world either.” The tall man answered all Thasper’s questions, and Thasper was too interested even to be annoyed when they would not allow him anything to eat.

“Why not?” he said.

“Because, just by being here, you are causing the world to jolt about,” the tall man explained. “If you put food inside you, food is a heavy part of this world, and it might jolt you to pieces.”

Soon after that a new picture appeared. Everyone said “Ah!” and the tall man said, “So it’s Theare!” He looked at Thasper in a surprised way. “You must have struck someone as disorderly,” he said. Then he looked at the picture again, in a lazy, careful kind of way. “No disorder,” he said. “No danger. Come with me.”

He took Thasper’s hand again and led him into the picture. As he did so, Thasper’s hair turned much darker. “A simple precaution,” the tall man murmured, a little apologetically, but Thasper did not even notice. He was not aware what color his hair had been to start with, and besides, he was taken up with surprise at how fast they were going. They whizzed into a city and stopped abruptly. It was a good house, just on the edge of a poorer district. “Here is someone who will do,” the tall man said, and he knocked at the door.

A sad-looking lady opened the door.

“I beg your pardon, madam,” said the tall man. “Have you by any chance lost a small boy?”

“Yes,” said the lady. “But this isn’t—” She blinked, “Yes, it is!” she cried out. “Oh, Thasper! How could you run off like that? Thank you so much, sir.” But the tall man had gone.

The lady’s name was Alina Altun, and she was so convinced that she was Thasper’s mother that Thasper was soon convinced, too. He settled in happily with her and her husband, who was a doctor, hardworking but not very rich. Thasper soon forgot the tall man, Imperion, and Nestara. Sometimes it did puzzle him—and his new mother, too—that when she showed him off to her friends, she always felt bound to say, “This is Badien, but we always call him Thasper.” Thanks to the tall man, none of them ever knew that the real Badien had wandered away the day Thasper came, and fell in the river, where an invisible dragon ate him.

If Thasper had remembered the tall man, he might also have wondered why his arrival seemed to start Dr. Altun on the road to prosperity. The people in the poorer district nearby suddenly discovered what a good doctor Dr. Altun was, and how little he charged. Alina was shortly able to afford to send Thasper to a very good school, where Thasper often exasperated his teachers by his many questions. He had, as his new mother often proudly said, a most inquiring mind. Although he learned quicker than most the Ten First Lessons and the Nine Graces of Childhood, his teachers were nevertheless often annoyed enough to snap, “Oh, go and ask an invisible dragon!” which is what people in Theare often said when they thought they were being pestered.

Thasper did, with difficulty, gradually cure himself of his habit of never answering questions. But he always preferred asking to answering. At home he asked questions all the time: “Why does the kitchen god go and report to Heaven once a year? Is it so I can steal biscuits? Why are there invisible dragons? Is there a god for everything? Why is there a god for everything? If the gods make people ill, how can Dad cure them? Why must I have a baby brother or sister?”

Alina Altun was a good mother. She most diligently answered all these questions, including the last. She told Thasper how babies were made, ending her account with, “Then, if the gods bless my womb, a baby will come.” She was a devout person.

“I don’t want you to be blessed!” Thasper said, resorting to a statement, which he only did when he was strongly moved.

He seemed to have no choice in the matter. By the time he was ten years old, the gods had thought fit to bless him with two brothers and two sisters. In Thasper’s opinion, they were, as blessings, very low grade. They were just too young to be any use. “Why can’t they be the same age as me?” he demanded, many times. He began to bear the gods a small but definite grudge about this.

Dr. Altun continued to prosper, and his earnings more than kept pace with his family. Alina employed a nursemaid, a cook, and a number of rather impermanent houseboys. It was one of these houseboys who, when Thasper was eleven, shyly presented Thasper with a folded square of paper. Wondering, Thasper unfolded it. It gave him a curious feeling to touch, as if the paper was vibrating a little in his fingers. It also gave out a very strong warning that he was not to mention it to anybody. It said:

Dear Thasper,

Your situation is an odd one. Make sure that you call me at the moment when you come face to face with yourself. I shall be watching and I will come at once.

Yrs,

Chrestomanci

Since Thasper by now had not the slightest recollection of his early life, this letter puzzled him extremely. He knew he was not supposed to tell anyone about it, but he also knew that this did not include the houseboy. With the letter in his hand, he hurried after the houseboy to the kitchen.

He was stopped at the head of the kitchen stairs by a tremendous smashing of china from below. This was followed immediately by the cook’s voice raised in nonstop abuse. Thasper knew it was no good trying to go into the kitchen. The houseboy—who went by the odd name of Cat—was in the process of getting fired, like all the other houseboys before him. He had better go and wait for Cat outside the back door. Thasper looked at the letter in his hand. As he did so, his fingers tingled. The letter vanished.

“It’s gone!” he exclaimed, showing by this statement how astonished he was. He never could account for what he did next. Instead of going to wait for the houseboy, he ran to the living room, intending to tell his mother about it, in spite of the warning. “Do you know what?” he began. He had invented this meaningless question so that he could tell people things and still make it into an inquiry. “Do you know what?” Alina looked up. Thasper, though he fully intended to tell her about the mysterious letter, found himself saying, “The cook’s just sacked the new houseboy.”

“Oh, bother!” said Alina. “I shall have to find another one now.”

Annoyed with himself, Thasper tried to tell her again. “Do you know what? I’m surprised the cook doesn’t sack the kitchen god, too.”

“Hush, dear. Don’t talk about the gods that way!” said the devout lady.

By this time the houseboy had left and Thasper lost the urge to tell anyone about the letter. It remained with him as his own personal exciting secret. He thought of it as the Letter from a Person Unknown. He sometimes whispered the strange name of the Person Unknown to himself when no one could hear. But nothing ever happened, even when he said the name out loud. He gave up doing that after a while. He had other things to think about. He became fascinated by Rules, Laws, and Systems.

Rules and Systems were an important part of the life of mankind in Theare. It stood to reason, with Heaven so well organized. People codified all behavior into things like the Seven Subtle Politenesses or the Hundred Roads to Godliness. Thasper had been taught these things from the time he was three years old. He was accustomed to hearing Alina argue the niceties of the Seventy-two Household Laws with her friends. Now Thasper suddenly discovered for himself that all Rules made a magnificent framework for one’s mind to clamber about in. He made lists of rules, and refinements on rules, and possible ways of doing the opposite of what the rules said while still keeping the rules. He invented new codes of rules. He filled books and made charts. He invented games with huge and complicated rules and played them with his friends. Onlookers found these games both rough and muddled, but Thasper and his friends reveled in them. The best moment in any game was when somebody stopped playing and shouted, “I’ve thought of a new rule!”

This obsession with rules lasted until Thasper was fifteen. He was walking home from school one day, thinking over a list of rules for Twenty Fashionable Hairstyles. From this it will be seen that Thasper was noticing girls, though none of the girls had so far seemed to notice him. And he was thinking which girl should wear which hairstyle when his attention was caught by words chalked on a wall:

IF RULES MAKE A FRAMEWORK FOR THE MIND TO CLIMB ABOUT IN, WHY SHOULD THE MIND NOT CLIMB RIGHT OUT? SAYS THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION.

That same day, there was consternation again in Heaven. Zond summoned all the high gods to his throne. “The Sage of Dissolution has started to preach,” he announced direfully. “Imperion, I thought you got rid of him.”

“I thought I did,” Imperion said. He was even more appalled than Zond. If the Sage had started to preach, it meant that Imperion had got rid of Thasper and deprived himself of Nestara quite unnecessarily. “I must have been mistaken,” he admitted.

Here Ock spoke up, steaming gently. “Father Zond,” he said, “may I respectfully suggest that you deal with the Sage yourself, so that there will be no mistake this time?”

“That was just what I was about to suggest,” Zond said gratefully. “Are you all agreed?”

All the gods agreed. They were too used to order to do otherwise.

As for Thasper, he was staring at the chalked words, shivering to the soles of his sandals. What was this? Who was using his own private thoughts about rules? Who was this Sage of Dissolution? Thasper was ashamed. He, who was so good at asking questions, had never thought of asking this one. Why should one’s mind not climb right out of the rules, after all?

He went home and asked his parents about the Sage of Dissolution. He fully expected them to know. He was quite agitated when they did not. But they had a neighbor, who sent Thasper to another neighbor, who had a friend, who, when Thasper finally found his house, said he had heard that the Sage was a clever young man who made a living by mocking the gods.

The next day someone had washed the words off. But the day after that a badly printed poster appeared on the same wall.

THE SAGE OF DISSOLUTION ASKS BY WHOSE ORDER IS ORDER ANYWAY?? COME TO SMALL UNCTION SUBLIME CONCERT HALL TONIGHT 6:30.

At 6:20 Thasper was having supper. At 6:24 he made up his mind and left the table. At 6:32 he arrived panting at Small Unction Hall. It proved to be a small shabby building quite near where he lived. Nobody was there. As far as Thasper could gather from the grumpy caretaker, the meeting had been the night before. Thasper turned away, deeply disappointed. Who ordered the order was a question he now longed to know the answer to. It was deep. He had a notion that the man who called himself the Sage of Dissolution was truly brilliant.

By way of feeding his own disappointment, he went to school the next day by a route which took him past the Small Unction Concert Hall. It had burned down in the night. There were only blackened brick walls left. When he got to school, a number of people were talking about it. They said it had burst into flames just before seven the night before.

“Did you know,” Thasper said, “that the Sage of Dissolution was there the day before yesterday?”

That was how he discovered he was not the only one interested in the Sage. Half his class were admirers of Dissolution. That, too, was when the girls deigned to notice him. “He’s amazing about the gods,” one girl told him. “No one ever asked questions like that before.” Most of the class, however, girls and boys alike, only knew a little more than Thasper, and most of what they knew was secondhand. But a boy showed him a carefully cut-out newspaper article in which a well-known scholar discussed what he called “the so-called Doctrine of Dissolution.” It said, long-windedly, that the Sage and his followers were rude to the gods and against all the rules. It did not tell Thasper much, but it was something. He saw, rather ruefully, that his obsession with rules had been quite wrongheaded and had, into the bargain, caused him to fall behind the rest of his class in learning of this wonderful new doctrine. He became a Disciple of Dissolution on the spot. He joined the rest of his class in finding out all they could about the Sage. He went around with them, writing up on walls:

DISSOLUTION RULES OK.

For a long while after that, the only thing any of Thasper’s class could learn of the Sage were scraps of questions chalked on walls and quickly rubbed out.

WHAT NEED OF PRAYER? WHY SHOULD THERE BE A HUNDRED ROADS TO GODLINESS, NOT MORE OR LESS? DO WE CLIMB ANYWHERE ON THE STEPS TO HEAVEN? WHAT IS PERFECTION: A PROCESS OR A STATE? WHEN WE CLIMB TO PERFECTION, IS THIS A MATTER FOR THE GODS?

Thasper obsessively wrote all these sayings down. He was obsessed again, he admitted, but this time it was in a new way. He was thinking, thinking. At first he thought simply of clever questions to ask the Sage. He strained to find questions no one had asked before. But in the process his mind seemed to loosen, and shortly he was thinking of how the Sage might answer his questions. He considered order and rules and Heaven, and it came to him that there was a reason behind all the brilliant questions the Sage asked. He felt light-headed with thinking.

The reason behind the Sage’s questions came to him the morning he was shaving for the first time. He thought, The gods need human beings in order to be gods! Blinded with this revelation, Thasper stared into the mirror at his own face half covered with white foam. Without humans believing in them, gods were nothing! The order of Heaven, the rules and codes of earth, were all only there because of people! It was transcendent. As Thasper stared, the letter from the Unknown came into his mind. “Is this being face to face with myself?” he said. But he was not sure. And he became sure that when that time came, he would not have to wonder.

Then it came to him that the Unknown Chrestomanci was almost certainly the Sage himself. He was thrilled. The Sage was taking a special mysterious interest in one teenage boy, Thasper Altun. The vanishing letter exactly fitted the elusive Sage.

The Sage continued elusive. The next firm news of him was a newspaper report of the Celestial Gallery’s being struck by lightning. The roof of the building collapsed, said the report, “only seconds after the young man known as the Sage of Dissolution had delivered another of his anguished and self-doubting homilies and left the building with his disciples.”

“He’s not self-doubting,” Thasper said to himself. “He knows about the gods. If I know, then he certainly does.”

He and his classmates went on a pilgrimage to the ruined gallery. It was a better building than Small Unction Hall. It seemed the Sage was going up in the world.

Then there was enormous excitement. One of the girls found a small advertisement in a paper. The Sage was to deliver another lecture, in the huge Kingdom of Splendor Hall. He had gone up in the world again. Thasper and his friends dressed in their best and went there in a body. But it seemed as if the time for the lecture had been printed wrong. The lecture was just over. People were streaming away from the hall, looking disappointed.

Thasper and his friends were still in the street when the hall blew up. They were lucky not to be hurt. The police said it was a bomb. Thasper and his friends helped drag injured people clear of the blazing hall. It was exciting, but it was not the Sage.

By now Thasper knew he would never be happy until he had found the Sage. He told himself that he had to know if the reason behind the Sage’s questions was the one he thought. But it was more than that. Thasper was convinced that his fate was linked to the Sage’s. He was certain the Sage wanted Thasper to find him.

But there was now a strong rumor in school and around town that the Sage had had enough of lectures and bomb attacks. He had retired to write a book. It was to be called Questions of Dissolution. Rumor also had it that the Sage was in lodgings somewhere near the Road of the Four Lions.

Thasper went to the Road of the Four Lions. There he was shameless. He knocked on doors and questioned passers-by. He was told several times to go and ask an invisible dragon, but he took no notice. He went on asking until someone told him that Mrs. Tunap at No. 403 might know. Thasper knocked at No. 403, with his heart thumping.

Mrs. Tunap was a rather prim lady in a green turban. “I’m afraid not, dear,” she said. “I’m new here.” But before Thasper’s heart could sink too far, she added, “But the people before me had a lodger. A very quiet gentleman. He left just before I came.”

“Did he leave an address?” Thasper asked, holding his breath.

Mrs. Tunap consulted an old envelope pinned to the wall in her hall. “It says here, ‘Lodger gone to Golden Heart Square,’ dear.”

But in Golden Heart Square, a young gentleman who might have been the Sage had only looked at a room and gone. After that Thasper had to go home. The Altuns were not used to teenagers, and they worried about Thasper suddenly wanting to be out every evening.

Oddly enough, No. 403 Road of the Four Lions burned down that night.

Thasper saw clearly that assassins were after the Sage as well as he was. He became more obsessed with finding him than ever. He knew he could rescue the Sage if he caught him before the assassins did. He did not blame the Sage for moving about all the time.

Move about the Sage certainly did. Rumor had him next in Partridge Pleasance Street. When Thasper tracked him there, he found the Sage had moved to Fauntel Square. From Fauntel Square, the Sage seemed to move to Strong Wind Boulevard, and then to a poorer house in Station Street. There were many places after that. By this time Thasper had developed a nose, a sixth sense, for where the Sage might be. A word, a mere hint about a quiet lodger, and Thasper was off, knocking on doors, questioning people, being told to ask an invisible dragon, and bewildering his parents by the way he kept rushing off every evening. But no matter how quickly Thasper acted on the latest hint, the Sage had always just left. And Thasper, in most cases, was only just ahead of the assassins. Houses caught fire or blew up, sometimes when he was still in the same street.

At last he was down to a very poor hint, which might or might not lead to New Unicorn Street. Thasper went there, wishing he did not have to spend all day at school. The Sage could move about as he pleased, and Thasper was tied down all day. No wonder he kept missing him. But he had high hopes of New Unicorn Street. It was the poor kind of place that the Sage had been favoring lately.

Alas for his hopes. The fat woman who opened the door laughed rudely in Thasper’s face. “Don’t bother me, son! Go and ask an invisible dragon!” And she slammed the door again.

Thasper stood in the street, keenly humiliated. And not even a hint of where to look next. Awful suspicions rose in his mind: he was making a fool of himself; he had set himself a wild-goose chase; the Sage did not exist. In order not to think of these things, he gave way to anger. “All right!” he shouted at the shut door. “I will ask an invisible dragon! So there!” And carried by his anger, he ran down to the river and out across the nearest bridge.

He stopped in the middle of the bridge, leaning on the parapet, and knew he was making an utter fool of himself. There were no such things as invisible dragons. He was sure of that. But he was still in the grip of his obsession, and this was something he had set himself to do now. Even so, if there had been anyone about near the bridge, Thasper would have gone away. But it was deserted. Feeling an utter fool, he made the prayer sign to Ock, Ruler of Oceans—for Ock was the god in charge of all things to do with water—but he made the sign secretly, down under the parapet, so there was no chance of anyone’s seeing. Then he said, almost in a whisper, “Is there an invisible dragon here? I’ve got something to ask you.”

Drops of water whirled over him. Something wetly fanned his face. He heard the something whirring. He turned his face that way and saw three blots of wet in a line along the parapet, each about two feet apart and each the size of two of his hands spread out together. Odder still, water was dripping out of nowhere all along the parapet, for a distance about twice as long as Thasper was tall.

Thasper laughed uneasily. “I’m imagining a dragon,” he said. “If there was a dragon, those splotches would be the places where its body rests. Water dragons have no feet. And the length of the wetness suggests I must be imagining it about eleven feet long.”

“I am fourteen feet long,” said a voice out of nowhere. It was rather too near Thasper’s face for comfort and blew fog at him. He drew back. “Make haste, child-of-a-god,” said the voice. “What did you want to ask me?”

“I-I-I—” stammered Thasper. It was not just that he was scared. This was a body blow. It messed up utterly his notions about gods needing men to believe in them. But he pulled himself together. His voice only cracked a little as he said, “I’m looking for the Sage of Dissolution. Do you know where he is?”

The dragon laughed. It was a peculiar noise, like one of those water warblers people make bird noises with. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you precisely where the Sage is,” the voice out of nowhere said. “You have to find him for yourself. Think about it, child-of-a-god. You must have noticed there’s a pattern.”

“Too right, there’s a pattern!” Thasper said. “Everywhere he goes, I just miss him, and then the place catches fire!”

“That, too,” said the dragon. “But there’s a pattern to his lodgings, too. Look for it. That’s all I can tell you, child-of-a-god. Any other questions?”

“No—for a wonder,” Thasper said. “Thanks very much.”

“You’re welcome,” said the invisible dragon. “People are always telling one another to ask us, and hardly anyone does. I’ll see you again.” Watery air whirled in Thasper’s face. He leaned over the parapet and saw one prolonged clean splash in the river, and silver bubbles coming up. Then nothing. He was surprised to find his legs were shaking.

He steadied his knees and tramped home. He went to his room, and before he did anything else, he acted on a superstitious impulse he had not thought he had in him and took down the household god Alina insisted he keep in a niche over his bed. He put it carefully outside in the passage. Then he got out a map of the town and some red stickers and plotted out all the places where he had just missed the Sage. The result had him dancing with excitement. The dragon was right. There was a pattern. The Sage had started in good lodgings at the better end of town. Then he had gradually moved to poorer places, but he had moved in a curve, down to the station and back toward the better part again. Now, the Altuns’ house was just on the edge of the poorer part. The Sage was coming this way! New Unicorn Street had not been so far away. The next place should be nearer still. Thasper had only to look for a house on fire.

It was getting dark by then. Thasper threw his curtains back and leaned out of his window to look at the poorer streets. And there it was! There was a red-and-orange flicker to the left—in Harvest Moon Street, by the look of it. Thasper laughed aloud. He was actually grateful to the assassins!

He raced downstairs and out of the house. The anxious questions of parents and the yells of brothers and sisters followed him, but he slammed the door on them. Two minutes’ running brought him to the scene of the fire. The street was a mad flicker of dark figures. People were piling furniture in the road. Some more people were helping a dazed woman in a crooked brown turban into a singed armchair.

“Didn’t you have a lodger as well?” someone asked her anxiously.

The woman kept trying to straighten her turban. It was all she could really think of. “He didn’t stay,” she said. “I think he may be down at the Half Moon now.”

Thasper waited for no more. He went pelting down the street.

The Half Moon was an inn on the corner of the same road. Most of the people who usually drank there must have been up the street, helping rescue furniture, but there was a dim light inside, enough to show a white notice in the window. ROOMS, it said.

Thasper burst inside. The barman was on a stool by the window, craning to watch the house burn. He did not look at Thasper. “Where’s your lodger?” gasped Thasper. “I’ve got a message. Urgent.”

The barman did not turn around. “Upstairs, first on the left,” he said. “The roof’s caught. They’ll have to act quick to save the house on either side.”

Thasper heard him say this as he bounded upstairs. He turned left. He gave the briefest of knocks on the door there, flung it open, and rushed in.

The room was empty. The light was on, and it showed a stark bed, a stained table with an empty mug and some sheets of paper on it, and a fireplace with a mirror over it. Beside the fireplace, another door was just swinging shut. Obviously somebody had just that moment gone through it. Thasper bounded toward that door. But he was checked, for just a second, by seeing himself in the mirror over the fireplace. He had not meant to pause. But some trick of the mirror, which was old and brown and speckled, made his reflection look for a moment a great deal older. He looked easily over twenty. He looked—

He remembered the Letter from the Unknown. This was the time. He knew it was. He was about to meet the Sage. He had only to call him. Thasper went toward the still gently swinging door. He hesitated. The letter had said call at once. Knowing the Sage was just beyond the door, Thasper pushed it open a fraction and held it so with his fingers. He was full of doubts. He thought, Do I really believe the gods need people? Am I so sure? What shall I say to the Sage after all? He let the door slip shut again.

“Chrestomanci,” he said miserably.

There was a whoosh of displaced air behind him. It buffeted Thasper half around. He stared. A tall man was standing by the stark bed. He was a most extraordinary figure in a long black robe, with what seemed to be yellow comets embroidered on it. The inside of the robe, swirling in the air, showed yellow, with black comets on it. The tall man had a very smooth dark head, very bright dark eyes, and, on his feet, what seemed to be red bedroom slippers.

“Thank goodness,” said this outlandish person. “For a moment I was afraid you would go through that door.”

The voice brought memory back to Thasper. “You brought me home through a picture when I was little,” he said. “Are you Chrestomanci?”

“Yes,” said the tall, outlandish man. “And you are Thasper. And now we must both leave before this building catches fire.”

He took hold of Thasper’s arm and towed him to the door which led to the stairs. As soon as he pushed the door open, thick smoke rolled in, filled with harsh crackling. It was clear that the inn was on fire already. Chrestomanci clapped the door shut again. The smoke set both of them coughing, Chrestomanci so violently that Thasper was afraid he would choke. He pulled both of them back into the middle of the room. By now smoke was twining up between the bare boards of the floor, causing Chrestomanci to cough again.

“This would happen just as I had gone to bed with flu,” he said, when he could speak. “Such is life. These orderly gods of yours leave us no choice.” He crossed the smoking floor and pushed open the door by the fireplace.

It opened onto blank space. Thasper gave a yelp of horror.

“Precisely,” coughed Chrestomanci. “You were intended to crash to your death.”

“Can’t we jump to the ground?” Thasper suggested.

Chrestomanci shook his smooth head. “Not after they’ve done this to it. No. We’ll have to carry the fight to them and go and visit the gods instead. Will you be kind enough to lend me your turban before we go?” Thasper stared at this odd request. “I would like to use it as a belt,” Chrestomanci croaked. “The way to Heaven may be a little cold, and I only have pajamas under my dressing gown.”

The striped undergarments Chrestomanci was wearing did look a little thin. Thasper slowly unwound his turban. To go before gods bareheaded was probably no worse than going in nightclothes, he supposed. Besides, he did not believe there were any gods. He handed the turban over. Chrestomanci tied the length of pale blue cloth around his black-and-yellow gown and seemed to feel more comfortable. “Now hang on to me,” he said, “and you’ll be all right.” He took Thasper’s arm again and walked up into the sky, dragging Thasper with him.

For a while Thasper was too stunned to speak. He could only marvel at the way they were treading up the sky as if there were invisible stairs in it. Chrestomanci was doing it in the most matter-of-fact way, coughing from time to time and shivering a little, but keeping very tight hold of Thasper nevertheless. In no time the town was a clutter of prettily lit dolls’ houses below, with two red blots where two of them were burning. The stars were unwinding about them, above and below, as if they had already climbed above some of them.

“It’s a long climb to Heaven,” Chrestomanci observed. “Is there anything you’d like to know on the way?”

“Yes,” said Thasper. “Did you say the gods are trying to kill me?”

“They are trying to eliminate the Sage of Dissolution,” said Chrestomanci, “which they may not realize is the same thing. You see, you are the Sage.”

“But I’m not!” Thasper insisted. “The Sage is a lot older than me, and he asks questions I never even thought of until I heard of him.”

“Ah yes,” said Chrestomanci. “I’m afraid there is an awful circularity to this. It’s the fault of whoever tried to put you away as a small child. As far as I can work out, you stayed three years old for seven years—until you were making such a disturbance in our world that we had to find you and let you out. But in this world of Theare, highly organized and fixed as it is, the prophecy stated that you would begin preaching Dissolution at the age of twenty-three, or at least in this very year. Therefore the preaching had to begin this year. You did not need to appear. Did you ever speak to anyone who had actually heard the Sage preach?”

“No,” said Thasper. “Come to think of it.”

“Nobody did,” said Chrestomanci. “You started in a small way, anyway. First you wrote a book, which no one paid much heed to—”

“No, that’s wrong,” objected Thasper. “He—I—er, the Sage was writing a book after the preaching.”

“But don’t you see,” said Chrestomanci, “because you were back in Theare by then, the facts had to try to catch you up. They did this by running backward, until it was possible for you to arrive where you were supposed to be. Which was in that room in the inn there, at the start of your career. I suppose you are just old enough to start by now. And I suspect our celestial friends up here tumbled to this belatedly and tried to finish you off. It wouldn’t have done them any good, as I shall shortly tell them.” He began coughing again. They had climbed to where it was bitterly cold.

By this time the world was a dark arch below them. Thasper could see the blush of the sun, beginning to show underneath the world. They climbed on. The light grew. The sun appeared, a huge brightness in the distance underneath. A dim memory came again to Thasper. He struggled to believe that none of this was true, and he did not succeed.

“How do you know all this?” he asked bluntly.

“Have you heard of a god called Ock?” Chrestomanci coughed. “He came to talk to me when you should have been the age you are now. He was worried—” He coughed again. “I shall have to save the rest of my breath for Heaven.”

They climbed on, and the stars swam around them, until the stuff they were climbing changed and became solider. Soon they were climbing a dark ramp, which flushed pearly as they went upward. Here Chrestomanci let go of Thasper’s arm and blew his nose on a gold-edged handkerchief with an air of relief. The pearl of the ramp grew to silver and the silver to dazzling white. At length they were walking on level whiteness, through hall after hall.

The gods were gathered to meet them. None of them looked cordial.

“I fear we are not properly dressed,” Chrestomanci murmured.

Thasper looked at the gods, and then at Chrestomanci, and squirmed with embarrassment. Fanciful and queer as Chrestomanci’s garb was, it was still most obviously nightwear. The things on his feet were fur bedroom slippers. And there, looking like a piece of blue string around Chrestomanci’s waist, was the turban Thasper should have been wearing. The gods were magnificent, in golden trousers and jeweled turbans, and got more so as they approached the greater gods. Thasper’s eye was caught by a god in shining cloth of gold, who surprised him by beaming a friendly, almost anxious look at him. Opposite him was a huge, liquid-looking figure draped in pearls and diamonds. This god swiftly, but quite definitely, winked. Thasper was too awed to react, but Chrestomanci calmly winked back.

At the end of the halls, upon a massive throne, towered the mighty figure of Great Zond, clothed in white and purple, with a crown on his head. Chrestomanci looked up at Zond and thoughtfully blew his nose. It was hardly respectful.

“For what reason do two mortals trespass in our halls?” Zond thundered coldly.

Chrestomanci sneezed. “Because of your own folly,” he said. “You gods of Theare have had everything so well worked out for so long that you can’t see beyond your own routine.”

“I shall blast you for that,” Zond announced.

“Not if any of you wish to survive,” Chrestomanci said.

There was a long murmur of protest from the other gods. They wished to survive. They were trying to work out what Chrestomanci meant. Zond saw it as a threat to his authority and thought he had better be cautious. “Proceed,” he said.

“One of your most efficient features,” Chrestomanci said, “is that your prophecies always come true. So why, when a prophecy is unpleasant to you, do you think you can alter it? That, my good gods, is rank folly. Besides, no one can halt his own Dissolution, least of all you gods of Theare. But you forgot. You forgot you had deprived both yourselves and mankind of any kind of free will, by organizing yourselves so precisely. You pushed Thasper, the Sage of Dissolution, into my world, forgetting that there is still chance in my world. By chance, Thasper was discovered after only seven years. Lucky for Theare that he was. I shudder to think what might have happened if Thasper had remained three years old for all his allotted lifetime.”

“That was my fault!” cried Imperion. “I take the blame.” He turned to Thasper. “Forgive me,” he said. “You are my own son.”

Was this, Thasper wondered, what Alina meant by the gods blessing her womb? He had not thought it was more than a figure of speech. He looked at Imperion, blinking a little in the god’s dazzle. He was not wholly impressed. A fine god, and an honest one, but Thasper could see he had a limited outlook. “Of course I forgive you,” he said politely.

“It is also lucky,” Chrestomanci said, “that none of you succeeded in killing the Sage. Thasper is a god’s son. That means there can only ever be one of him, and because of your prophecy, he has to be alive to preach Dissolution. You could have destroyed Theare. As it is, you have caused it to blur into a mass of cracks. Theare is too well organized to divide into two alternative worlds, as my world would. Instead, events have had to happen which could not have happened. Theare has cracked and warped, and you have all but brought about your own Dissolution.”

“What can we do?” Zond said, aghast.

“There’s only one thing you can do,” Chrestomanci told him. “Let Thasper be. Let him preach Dissolution and stop trying to blow him up. That will bring about free will and a free future. Then either Theare will heal, or it will split, cleanly and painlessly, into two healthy new worlds.”

“So we bring about our own downfall?” Zond asked mournfully.

“It was always inevitable,” said Chrestomanci.

Zond sighed. “Very well. Thasper, son of Imperion, I reluctantly give you my blessing to go forth and preach Dissolution. Go in peace.”

Thasper bowed. Then he stood there silent a long time. He did not notice Imperion and Ock both trying to attract his attention. The newspaper report had talked of the Sage as full of anguish and self-doubt. Now he knew why. He looked at Chrestomanci, who was blowing his nose again. “How can I preach Dissolution?” he said. “How can I not believe in the gods when I have seen them for myself?”

“That’s a question you certainly should be asking,” Chrestomanci croaked. “Go down to Theare and ask it.” Thasper nodded and turned to go. Chrestomanci leaned toward him and said, from behind his handkerchief, “Ask yourself this, too: can the gods catch flu? I think I may have given it to all of them. Find out and let me know, there’s a good chap.”

THE MASTER

This is the trouble with being a newly qualified vet. The call came at 5:50 A.M. I thought it was a man’s voice, though it was high for a man, and I didn’t quite catch the name—Harry Sanovit? Harrison Ovett? Anyway, he said it was urgent.

Accordingly, I found myself on the edge of a plain, facing a dark fir forest. It was about midmorning. The fir trees stood dark and evenly spaced, exhaling their crackling gummy scent, with vistas of trodden-looking pine needles beneath them. A wolfwood, I thought. I was sure that thought was right. The spacing of the trees was so regular that it suggested an artificial pinewood in the zoo, and there was a kind of humming, far down at the edges of the senses, as if machinery was at work sustaining a man-made environment here. The division between trees and plain was so sharp that I had some doubts that I would be able to enter the wood.

But I stepped inside with no difficulty. Under the trees it was cooler, more strongly scented, and full of an odd kind of depression, which made me sure that there was some sort of danger here. I walked on the carpet of needles cautiously, relaxed but intensely afraid. There seemed to be some kind of path winding between the straight boles, and I followed it into the heart of the wood. After a few turns, flies buzzed around something just off the path. Danger! pricked out all over my skin like sweat, but I went and looked all the same.

It was a young woman about my own age. From the flies and the freshness, I would have said she had been killed only hours ago. Her throat had been torn out. The expression on her half-averted face was of sheer terror. She had glorious red hair and was wearing what looked, improbably, to be evening dress.

I backed away, swallowing. As I backed, something came up beside me. I whirled around with a croak of terror.

“No need to fear,” he said. “I am only the fool.”

He was very tall and thin and ungainly. His feet were in big, laced boots, jigging a silent, ingratiating dance on the pine needles, and the rest of his clothes were a dull brown and close-fitting. His huge hands came out to me placatingly. “I am Egbert,” he said. “You may call me Eggs. You will take no harm if you stay with me.” His eyes slid off mine apologetically, round and blue-gray. He grinned all over his small, inane face. Under his close crop of straw-fair hair, his face was indeed that of a near idiot. He did not seem to notice the woman’s corpse at all, even though he seemed to know I was full of horror.

“What’s going on here?” I asked him helplessly. “I’m a vet, not a—not a—mortician. What animal needs me?”

He smiled seraphically at nothing over my left shoulder. “I am only Eggs, Lady. I don’t not know nothing. What you need to do is call the Master. Then you will know.”

“So where is the Master?” I said.

He looked baffled by this question. “Hereabouts,” he suggested. He gave another beguiling smile, over my right shoulder this time, panting slightly. “He will come if you call him right. Will I show you the house, Lady? There are rare sights there.”

“Yes, if you like,” I said. Anything to get away from whatever had killed that girl. Besides, I trusted him somehow. When he had said I would take no harm if I was with him, it had been said in a way I believed.

He turned and cavorted up the path ahead of me, skipping soundlessly on his great feet, waving great, gangling arms, clumsily tripping over a tree root and, even more clumsily, just saving himself. He held his head on one side and hummed as he went, happy and harmless. That is to say, harmless to me so far. Though he walked like a great, hopping puppet, those huge hands were certainly strong enough to rip a throat out.

“Who killed that girl?” I asked him. “Was it the Master?”

His head snapped around, swayingly, and he stared at me, appalled, balancing on the path as though it were a tightrope. “Oh, no, Lady. The Master wouldn’t not do that!” He turned sadly, almost tearfully, away.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

His head bent, acknowledging that he had heard, but he continued to walk the tightrope of the path without answering, and I followed. As I did, I was aware that there was something moving among the trees to either side of us. Something softly kept pace with us there, and, I was sure, something also followed along the path behind. I did not try to see what it was. I was quite as much angry with myself as I was scared. I had let my shock at seeing that corpse get the better of my judgment. I saw I must wait to find out how the redheaded girl had got herself killed. Caution! I said to myself. Caution! This path was a tightrope indeed.

“Has the Master got a name?” I asked.

That puzzled Eggs. He stood balancing on the path to think. After a moment he nodded doubtfully, shot me a shy smile over his shoulder, and walked on. No attempt to ask my name, I noticed. As if I was the only other person there and “Lady” should be enough. Which meant that the presences among the trees and behind on the path were possibly not human.

Around the next bend I found myself facing the veranda of a chaletlike building. It looked a little as if it were made of wood, but it was no substance that I knew. Eggs tripped on the step and floundered toward the door at the back of the veranda. Before I could make more than a move to help him, he had saved himself and his great hands were groping with an incomprehensible lock on the door. The humming was more evident here. I had been hoping that what I had heard at the edge of the wood had been the flies on the corpse. It was not. Though the sound was still not much more than a vibration at the edge of the mind, I knew I had been right in my first idea. Something artificial was being maintained here, and whatever was maintaining it seemed to be under this house.

In this house, I thought, as Eggs got the door open and floundered inside ahead of me. The room we entered was full of—well, devices. The nearest thing was a great cauldron, softly bubbling for no reason I could see, and giving out a gauzy violet light. The other things were arranged in ranks beyond, bewilderingly. In one place something grotesque stormed green inside a design painted on the floor; here a copper bowl smoked; there a single candle sat like something holy on a white stone; a knife suspended in air dripped gently into a jar of rainbow glass. Much of it was glass, twinkling, gleaming, chiming, under the light from the low ceiling that seemed to come from nowhere. There were no windows.

“Good heavens!” I said, disguising my dismay as amazement. “What are all these?”

Eggs grinned. “I know some. Pretty, aren’t they?” He roved, surging about, touching the edge of a pattern here, passing his huge hand through a flame or a column of smoke there, causing a shower of fleeting white stars, solemn gong notes, and a rich smell of incense. “Pretty, aren’t they?” he kept repeating, and, “Very pretty!” as an entire fluted glass structure began to ripple and change shape at the end of the room. As it changed, the humming, which was everywhere in the room, changed, too. It became a purring chime, and I felt an indescribable pulling feeling from the roots of my hair and under my skin, almost as if the glass thing were trying to change me as it changed itself.

“I should come away from that if I were you,” I said as firmly and calmly as I could manage.

Eggs turned and came floundering toward me, grinning eagerly. To my relief, the sound from the glass modulated to a new kind of humming. But my relief vanished when Eggs said, “Petra knew all, before Annie tore her throat out. Do you know as much as Petra? You are clever, Lady, as well as beautiful.” His eyes slid across me, respectfully. Then he turned and hung, lurching, over the cauldron with the gauzy violet light. “Petra took pretty dresses from here,” he said. “Would you like for me to get you a pretty dress?”

“Not at the moment, thank you,” I said, trying to sound kind. As I said, Eggs was not necessarily harmless. “Show me the rest of the house,” I said, to distract him.

He fell over his feet to oblige. “Come. See here.” He led me to the side of the devices, where there was a clear passage and some doors. At the back of the room was another door, which slid open by itself as we came near. Eggs giggled proudly at that, as if it were his doing. Beyond was evidently a living room. The floor here was soft, carpetlike, and blue. Darker blue blocks hung about, mysteriously half a meter or so in the air. Four of them were a meter or so square. The fifth was two meters each way. They had the look of a suite of chairs and a sofa to me. A squiggly mural thing occupied one wall, and the entire end wall was window, which seemed to lead to another veranda, beyond which I could see a garden of some kind. “The room is pretty, isn’t it?” Eggs asked anxiously. “I like the room.”

I assured him I liked the room. This relieved him. He stumbled around a floating blue block, which was barely disturbed by his falling against it, and pressed a plate in the wall beyond. The long glass of the window slid back, leaving the room open to the veranda. He turned to me, beaming.

“Clever,” I said, and made another cautious attempt to find out more. “Did Petra show you how to open that, or was it the Master?”

He was puzzled again. “I don’t not know,” he said, worried about it.

I gave up and suggested we go into the garden. He was pleased. We went over the veranda and down steps into a rose garden. It was an oblong shape, carved out from among the fir trees, about fifteen meters from the house to the bushy hedge at the far end. And it was as strange as everything else. The square of sky overhead was subtly the wrong color, as if you were seeing it through sunglasses. It made the color of the roses rich and too dark. I walked through with a certainty that it was being maintained—or created—by one of the devices in that windowless room.

The roses were all standards, each planted in a little circular bed. The head of each was about level with my head. No petals fell on the gravel-seeming paths. I kept exclaiming, because these were the most perfect roses I ever saw, whether full bloom, bud, or overblown. When I saw an orange rose—the color I love most—I put my hand up cautiously to make sure that it was real. It was. While my fingers lingered on it, I happened to glance at Eggs, towering over me. It was just a flick of the eyes, which I don’t think he saw. He was standing there, smiling as always, staring at me intently. There was, I swear, another shape to his face, and it was not the shape of an idiot. But it was not the shape of a normal man either. It was an intent, hunting face.

Next moment he was surging inanely forward. “I will pick you a rose, Lady.” He reached out and stumbled as he reached. His hand caught a thorn in a tumble of petals. He snatched it back with a yelp. “Oh!” he said. “It hurts!” He lifted his hand and stared at it. Blood was running down the length of his little finger.

“Suck it,” I said. “Is the thorn still in it?”

“I don’t know,” Eggs said helplessly. Several drops of blood had fallen among the fallen petals before he took my advice and sucked the cut, noisily. As he did so, his other hand came forward to bar my way. “Stay by me, Lady,” he said warningly.

I had already stopped dead. Whether they had been there all along or had been summoned, materialized, by the scent of blood, I still do not know, but they were there now, against the hedge at the end of the garden, all staring at me. Three Alsatian dogs, I told myself foolishly, and knew it was nonsense as I thought it. Three of them. Three wolves. Each of them must have been, in bulk, if not in height, at least as big as I was.

They were dark in the curious darkness of that garden. Their eyes were the easiest to see, light wolf-green. All of them staring at me, staring earnestly, hungrily. The smaller two were crouched in front. One of those was brindled and larger and rangier than his browner companion. And these two were only small by comparison with the great black she-wolf standing behind with slaver running from her open jaws. She was poised either to pounce or to run away. I have never seen anything more feral than that black she-wolf. But they were all feral, stiff-legged, terrified, half in mind to tear my throat out, and yet they were held there for some reason, simply staring. All three were soundlessly snarling, even before I spoke.

My horror—caught from the wolves to some extent—was beyond thought and out into a dreamlike state, where I simply knew that Eggs was right when he said I would be safe with him, and so I said what the dream seemed to require. “Eggs,” I said, “tell me their names.”

Eggs was quite unperturbed. His hand left his mouth and pointed at the brindled wolf in front. “That one is Hugh, Lady. Theo is the one beside him. She standing at the back is Annie.”

So now I knew what had torn redheaded Petra’s throat out. And what kind of woman was she, I wondered, who must have had Eggs as servant and a roomful of strange devices, and on top of this gave three wild beasts these silly names? My main thought was that I did not want my throat torn out, too. And I had been called here as a vet after all. It took quite an effort to look those three creatures over professionally, but I did so. Ribs showed under the curly brownish coat of Theo. Hugh’s haunches stuck out like knives. As for Annie standing behind, her belly clung upward almost to her backbone. “When did they last eat?” I said.

Eggs smiled at me. “There is food in the forest for them, Lady.”

I stared at him, but he seemed to have no idea what he was saying. It was to the wolves’ credit that they did not seem to regard dead Petra as food, but from the look of them it would not be long before they did so. “Eggs,” I said, “these three are starving. You and I must go back into the house and find food for them.”

Eggs seemed much struck by this idea. “Clever,” he said. “I am only the fool, Lady.” And as I turned, gently, not to alarm the wolves, he stretched out his hands placatingly—at least it looked placating, but it was quite near to an attempt to take hold of me, a sketch of it, as it were. That alarmed me, but I dared not show it here. The wolves’ ears pricked a little as we moved off up the garden, but they did not move, to my great relief.

Back through the house Eggs led me in his lurching, puppet’s gait, around the edges of the room with the devices, where the humming filled the air and still seemed to drag at me in a way I did not care for at all, to another brightly lit, windowless room on the other side. It was a kitchen place, furnished in what seemed to be glass. Here Eggs cannoned into a glass table and stopped short, looking at me expectantly. I gazed around at glass-fronted apparatus, some of it full of crockery, some of it clearly food stores, with food heaped behind the glass, and some of it quite mysterious to me. I made for the glass cupboard full of various joints of meat. I could see they were fresh, although the thing was clearly not a refrigerator. “How do you open this?” I asked.

Eggs looked down at his great hands, planted in encircling vapor on top of the glass table. “I don’t not know, Lady.”

I could have shaken him. Instead, I clawed at the edges of the cupboard. Nothing happened. There it was, warmish, piled with a good fifty kilograms of meat, while three starving wolves prowled outside, and nothing I could do seemed to have any effect on the smooth edge of the glass front. At length I pried my fingernails under the top edge and pulled, thinking it moved slightly.

Eggs’s huge hand knocked against mine, nudging me awkwardly away. “No, no, Lady. That way you’ll get hurt. It is under stass-spell, see.” For a moment he fumbled doubtfully at the top rim of the glass door, but, when I made a movement to come back and help, his hands suddenly moved, smoothly and surely. The thing clicked. The glass slid open downward, and the smell of meat rolled out into the kitchen.

So you do know how to do it! I thought. And I knew you did! There was some hint he had given me, I knew, as I reached for the nearest joint, which I could not quite see now.

“No, no, Lady!” This time Eggs pushed me aside hard. He was really distressed. “Never put hand into stass-spell. It will die on you. You do this.” He took up a long, shiny pair of tongs, which I had not noticed because they were nested into the top of the cupboard, and grasped the nearest joint with them. “This, Lady?”

“And two more,” I said. “And when did you last eat, Eggs?” He shrugged and looked at me, baffled. “Then get out those two steaks, too,” I said. Eggs seemed quite puzzled, but he fetched out the meat. “Now we must find water for them as well,” I said.

“But there is juice here in this corner!” Eggs objected. “See.” He went to one of the mysterious fixtures and shortly came back with a sort of cardboard cup swaying in one hand, which he handed me to taste, staring eagerly while I did. “Good?” he asked.

It was some form of alcohol. “Very good,” I said, “but not for wolves.” It took me half an hour of patient work to persuade Eggs to fetch out a large lightweight bowl and then to manipulate a queer faucet to fill it with water. He could not see the point of it at all. I was precious near to hitting him before long. I was quite glad when he stayed behind in the kitchen to shut the cabinets and finish his cup of “juice.”

The wolves had advanced down the garden. I could see their pricked ears and their eyes above the veranda boards, but they did not move when I stepped out onto the veranda. I had to make myself move with a calmness and slowness I was far from feeling. Deliberately I dropped each joint, one by one, with a sticky thump onto the strange surface. From the size and the coarse grain of the meat, it seemed to be venison—at least I hoped it was. Then I carefully lowered the bowl to stand at the far end of the veranda, looking all the time through my hair at the wolves. They did not move, but the open jaws of the big wolf, Annie, were dripping.

The bowl down, I backed away into the living room, where I just had to sit down on the nearest blue block. My knees gave.

They did not move for long seconds. Then all three disappeared below the veranda, and I thought they must have slunk away. But the two smaller ones reappeared, suddenly, silentiy, as if they had materialized, at the end of the veranda beside the bowl. Tails trailing, shaking all over, they crept toward it. Both stuck their muzzles in and drank avidly. I could hear their frantic lapping. And when they raised their heads, which they both did shortly, neatly and disdainfully, I realized that one of the joints of meat had gone. The great wolf, Annie, had been and gone.

Her speed must have reassured Theo and Hugh. Both sniffed the air, then fumed and trotted toward the remaining joints. Each nosed a joint. Each picked it up neatly in his jaws. Theo seemed about to jump down into the garden with his. But Hugh, to my astonishment, came straight toward the open window, evidently intending to eat on the carpet as dogs do.

He never got a chance. Theo dropped his joint and sprang at him with a snarl. There was the heavy squeak of clawed paws. Hugh sprang around, hackles rising the length of his lean, sloping back, and snarled back without dropping his portion. It was, he seemed to be saying, his own business where he went to eat. Theo, crouching, advancing on him with lowered head and white teeth showing, was clearly denying him this right. I braced myself for the fight. But at that moment Annie reappeared, silent as ever, head and great forepaws on the edge of the veranda, and stood there, poised. Theo and Hugh vanished like smoke, running long and low to either side. Both took their food with them, to my relief. Annie dropped out of sight again. Presently there were faint, very faint, sounds of eating from below.

I went back to the glassy kitchen, where I spent the next few hours getting Eggs to eat, too. He did not seem to regard anything in the kitchen as edible. It took me a good hour to persuade him to open a vegetable cabinet and quite as long to persuade him to show me how to cook the food. If I became insistent, he said, “I don’t not know, Lady,” lost interest, and shuffled off to the windowless room to play with the pretty lights. That alarmed me. Every time I fetched him back, the humming chime from the glass apparatus seemed to drag at me more intensely. I tried pleading. “Eggs, I’m going to cut these yams, but I can’t find a knife somehow.” That worked better. Eggs would come over obligingly and find me a thing like a prong and then wander off to his “juice” again. There were times when I thought we were going to have to eat everything raw.

But it got done in the end. Eggs showed me how to ignite a terrifying heat source that was totally invisible, and I fried the food on it in a glass skillet. Most of the vegetables were quite strange to me, but at least the steak was recognizable. We were just sitting down on glass stools to eat it at the glass table when a door I had not realized was there slid aside beside me. The garden was beyond. The long snout of Hugh poked through the gap. The pale eyes met mine, and the wet nose quivered wistfully.

“What do you want?” I said, and I knew I had jerked with fear. It was obvious what Hugh wanted. The garden must have filled with the smell of cooking. But I had not realized that the wolves could get into the kitchen when they pleased. Trying to seem calm, I tossed Hugh some fat I’d trimmed off the steaks. He caught it neatly and, to my intense relief, backed out of the door, which closed behind him.

I was almost too shaken to eat after that, but Eggs ate his share with obvious pleasure, though he kept glancing at me as if he was afraid I would think he was making a pig of himself. It was both touching and irritating. But the food—and the “juice”—did him good. His face became pinker, and he did not jig so much. I began to risk a few cautious questions. “Eggs, did Petra live in this house or just work here?”

He looked baffled. “I don’t not know.”

“But she used the wolves to help her in her work, didn’t she?” It seemed clear to me that they must have been laboratory animals in some way.

Eggs shifted on his stool. “I don’t not know,” he said unhappily.

“And did the Master help in the work, too?” I persisted.

But this was too much for Eggs. He sprang up in agitation, and before I could stop him, he swept everything off the table into a large receptacle near the door. “I can’t say!” I heard him say above the crash of breaking crockery.

After that he would listen to nothing I said. His one idea was that we must go to the living room. “To sit elegantly, Lady,” he explained. “And I will bring the sweet foods and the juice to enjoy ourselves with there.”

There seemed no stopping him. He surged out of the kitchen with an armload of peculiar receptacles and a round jug of “juice” balanced between those and his chin, weaving this way and that among the devices in the windowless room. These flared and flickered and the unsupported knife danced in the air as I pursued him. I felt as much as saw the fluted glass structure changing shape again. The sound of it dragged at the very roots of me.

“Eggs,” I said desperately. “How do I call the Master? Please.”

“I can’t say,” he said, reeling on into the living room.

Some enlightenment came to me. Eggs meant exactly what he said. I had noticed that when he said “I don’t not know,” this did not mean that he did not know; it usually seemed to be something he could not explain. Now I saw that when he said “I can’t say,” he meant that he was, for some reason, unable to tell me about the Master. So, I thought, struggling on against the drag of the chiming apparatus, this means I must use a little cunning to get him to tell me.

In the living room Eggs was laying out dishes of sweets and little balls of cheese near the center of the large blue sofa-like block. I sat down—at one end of it. Eggs promptly came and sat beside me, grinning and breathing “juice” fumes. I got up and moved to the other end of the sofa. Eggs took the hint. He stayed where he was, sighing, and poured himself another papery cup of his “juice.”

“Eggs,” I began. Then I noticed that the wolf Hugh was crouched on the veranda facing into the room, with his brindled nose on his paws and his sharp haunches outlined against the sunset roses. Beyond him were the backs of the two others, apparently asleep. Well, wolves always leave at least one of their pack on guard when they sleep. I told myself that Hugh had drawn sentry duty and went back to thinking how I could induce Eggs to tell me how to get hold of this Master. By this time I felt I would go mad unless someone explained this situation to me.

“Eggs”—I began again—“when I ask you how I fetch the Master, you tell me you can’t say, isn’t that right?” He nodded eagerly, obligingly, and offered me a sweet. I took it. I was doing well so far. “That means that something’s stopping you telling me, doesn’t it?” That lost him. His eyes slid from mine. I looked where his eyes went and found that Hugh had been moving, in the unnoticed silent way a wild creature can. He was now crouched right inside the room. The light feral eyes were fixed on me. Help! I thought. But I had to go on with what I was saying before Eggs’s crazed mind lost it. “So I’m going to take it that when you say, ‘I can’t say,’ you mean ‘Yes,’ Eggs. It’s going to be like a game.”

Eggs’s face lit up. “I like games, Lady!”

“Good,” I said. “The game is called Calling-the-Master. Now I know you can’t tell me direct how to call him, but the rule is that you’re allowed to give me hints.”

That was a mistake. “And what is the hint, Lady?” Eggs asked, in the greatest delight. “Tell me and I will give it.”

“Oh—I—er—” I said. And I felt something cold gently touch my hand. I looked down to find Hugh standing by my knees. Beyond him Theo was standing up, bristling. “What do you want now?” I said to Hugh. His eyes slid across the plates of sweets, and he sighed, like a dog. “Not sweets,” I said firmly. Hugh understood. He laid his long head on my knee, yearningly.

This produced a snarl from Theo out on the veranda. It sounded like pure jealousy.

“You can come in, too, if you want, Theo,” I said hastily. Theo gave no sign of understanding, but when I next looked, he was half across the threshold. He was crouched, not lying. His hackles were up, and his eyes glared at Hugh. Hugh’s eyes moved to see where he was, but he did not raise his chin from my knee.

All this so unnerved me that I tried to explain what a hint was by telling Eggs a story. I should have known better. “In this story,” I said, absently stroking Hugh’s head as if he were my dog. Theo instantly rose to his feet with the lips of his muzzle drawn back and his ears up. I removed my hand—but quick! “In this story,” I said. Theo lay down again, but now it was me he was glaring at. “A lady was left three boxes by her father, one box gold, one silver, and one lead. In one of the boxes there was a picture of her. Her father’s orders were that the man who guessed which of the three boxes her picture was in could marry her—”

Eggs bounced up with a triumphant laugh. “I know! It was in the lead box! Lead protects. I can marry her!” He rolled about in delight. “Are you that lady?” he asked eagerly.

I suppressed a strong need to run about screaming. I was sure that if I did, either Theo or Annie would go for me. I was not sure about Hugh. He seemed to have been a house pet. “Right,” I said. “It was in the lead box, Eggs. This other lady knew that, but the men who wanted to marry her had to guess. All of them guessed wrong, until one day a beautiful man came along whom this other lady wanted to marry. So what did she do?”

“Told him,” said Eggs.

“No, she was forbidden to do that,” I said. God give me patience! “Just like you. She had to give the man hints instead. Just like you. Before he came to choose the box, she got people to sing him a song and—remember, it was the lead box—every line in that song rhymed with ‘lead.’ A rhyme is a word that sounds the same,” I added hurriedly, seeing bewilderment cloud Eggs’s face. “You know—‘said’ and ‘bled’ and ‘red’ all rhyme with ‘lead.’”

“Said, bled, red,” Eggs repeated, quite lost.

“Dead, head,” I said. Hugh’s cold nose nudged my hand again. Wolves are not usually scavengers, unless in dire need, but I thought cheese would not hurt him. I passed him a round to keep him quiet.

Theo sprang up savagely and came half across the room. At the same instant, Eggs grasped what a rhyme was. “Fed, instead, bed, wed!” he shouted, rolling about with glee. I stared into Theo’s gray-green glare and at his pleated lip showing the fangs beneath it and prayed to heaven. Very slowly and carefully, I rolled a piece of cheese off the sofa toward him. Theo swung away from it and stalked back to the window. “My hint is bedspread, Lady!” Eggs shouted.

Hugh, meanwhile, calmly took his cheese as deftly and gently as any hunting dog and sprang up onto the sofa beside me, where he stood with his head down, chewing with small bites to make the cheese last. “Now you’ve done it, Hugh!” I said, looking nervously at Theo’s raked-up back and at the sharp outline of Annie beyond him.

“Thread, head, watershed, bread!” bawled Eggs. I realized he was drunk. His face was flushed, and his eyes glittered. He had been putting back quantities of “juice” ever since he first showed me the kitchen. “Do I get to marry you now, Lady?” he asked soulfully.

Before I could think what to reply, Hugh moved across like lightning and bit Eggs on his nearest large folded knee. He jumped clear even quicker, as Eggs surged to his feet, and streaked off to join Theo on the veranda. I heard Theo snap at him.

Eggs took an uncertain step that way, then put his hand to his face. “What is this?” he said. “This room is chasing its tail.” It was clear the “juice” had caught up with him.

“I think you’re drunk,” I said.

“Drink,” said Eggs. “I must get a drink from the faucet. I am dying. It is worse than being remade.” And he went blundering and crashing off into the windowless room.

I jumped up and went after him, sure that he would do untold damage bumping into cauldron or candle. But he wove his way through the medley of displays as only a drunk man can, avoiding each one by a miracle, and reached the kitchen when I was only halfway through the room. The hum of the crystal apparatus held me back. It dragged at my very skin. I had still only reached the cauldron when there was an appalling splintering crash from the kitchen, followed by a hoarse male scream.

I do not remember how I got to the kitchen. I only remember standing in the doorway, looking at Eggs kneeling in the remains of the glass table. He was clutching at his left arm with his right hand. Blood was pulsing steadily between his long fingers and making a pool on the glass-littered floor. The face he turned to me was so white that he looked as if he were wearing greasepaint. “What will you do, Lady?” he said.

Do? I thought. I’m a vet. I can’t be expected to deal with humans! “For goodness’ sake, Eggs,” I snapped at him. “Stop this messing about and get me the Master! Now. This instant!”

I think he said, “And I thought you’d never tell me!” But his voice was so far from human by then it was hard to be sure. His body boiled about on the floor, surging and seething and changing color. In next to a second the thing on the floor was a huge gray wolf, with its back arched and its jaws wide in agony, pumping blood from a severed artery in its left foreleg.

At least I knew what to do with that. But before I could move, the door to the outside slid open to let in the great head and shoulders of Annie. I backed away. The look in those light, blazing eyes said: “You are not taking my mate like she did.”

Here the chiming got into my head and proved to be the ringing of the telephone. My bedside clock said 5:55 A.M. I was quite glad to be rid of that dream as I fumbled the telephone up in the dark. “Yes?” I said, hoping I sounded as sleepy as I felt.

The voice was a light, high one, possibly a man’s. “You won’t know me,” it said. “My name is Harrison Ovett, and I’m in charge of an experimental project involving wild animals. We have a bit of an emergency on here. One of the wolves seems to be in quite a bad way. I’m sorry to call you at such an hour, but—”

“It’s my job,” I said, too sleepy to be more than proud of the professional touch. “Where are you? How do I get to your project?”

I think he hesitated slightly. “It’s a bit complicated to explain,” he said. “Suppose I come and pick you up? I’ll be outside in twenty minutes.”

“Right,” I said. And it was not until I put the phone down that I remembered my dream. The name was the same, I swear. I would equally swear to the voice. This is why I have spent the last twenty minutes feverishly dictating this account of my dream. If I get back safely, I’ll erase it. But if I don’t—well, I am not sure what anyone can do if Annie’s torn my throat out, but at least someone will know what became of me. Besides, they say forewarned is forearmed. I have some idea what to expect.

ENNA HITTIMS

Anne Smith hated having mumps. She had to miss two school outings. Her face came up so long and purple that both her parents laughed at her when they were at home. And she was left alone rather a lot, because her parents could not afford to leave their jobs.

The first day was terrible. Anne’s temperature went up and up, and the higher it got, the more hungry she became. By the time her father got off work early and came home, she was starving.

“But people aren’t supposed to get hungry with a temperature!” Mr. Smith said, grinning at the sight of Anne’s great purple face.

“I don’t care. I want five sausages and two helpings of chips and lots of ketchup,” said Anne. “Quickly, or I’ll die!”

So Mr. Smith raced out to the chip shop. But when he came back, Anne could not open her mouth far enough to get a bite of sausage. She could not chew the chips. And the ketchup stung the inside of her face like nettles.

“I told you so,” said Mr. Smith.

Anne, who was usually a most reasonable person, burst into tears and threw all the food on the floor. “I’m so hungry!” she yelled. “It’s torture!” Of course it hurt to shout, too.

Mr. Smith was reasonable, too, except when he had to clean ketchup off the carpet. He lost his temper and shouted, “Do that again, and I’ll spank you, mumps or not!”

“I hate you,” said Anne. “I hate everything.” And she sat and glowered, which is the only way to be angry with mumps.

“I think she’s got grumps as well as mumps,” Mrs. Smith said when she got in from work.

It did seem to be so. For the next few days, nothing pleased Anne. She tried wandering about the house—very slowly, because moving jiggled her great mauve face—looking for things to do. Nothing seemed interesting. She tried playing with Tibby, the cat, but Tibby was boring. She tried watching videos, but they were either boring or they made her laugh, and laughing hurt. She tried reading, but that was the same, and her fat, swollen chin kept getting in the way. Everything was boring. Mrs. Harvey next door had kindly agreed to come in and give Anne lunch. But it did not seem to occur to Mrs. Harvey that things like crusty pizza and stewed rhubarb are the last things you want to eat with mumps.

Anne told her parents all this when they got home. The result was that her parents stopped saying, “It’s the way you feel with mumps.” Instead, they said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne, do stop grumbling!” every time Anne opened her mouth.

Anne took herself and her great purple face back to bed, where she lay staring at the shape of her legs under the bedclothes and hating her parents. I’m seriously ill, she thought, and nobody cares!

The next minute she had invented Enna Hittims.

It all happened in a flash, but when she thought about it later, Anne supposed it was because the shape of her legs under the bedspread looked like a landscape with two long hills in it and a green jungly valley in between. The long wrinkle running down from her left foot looked like a gorge where a river might run. Even through her crossness, Anne seemed to be wondering what it would be like to be small enough to explore those hills and that valley.

Enna Hittims was small enough. The name was Anne Smith backward, of course. But there is no way you can say “Htims” without putting in a noise between the H and the t, so Enna’s second name had to be Hittims. It suited her. She was a bold and heroic lady, even if she was only an inch or so high. She was tall and slim and muscular, and she wore her raven locks cut short around her thin brown face. There was no trace of mumps about Enna Hittims, and no trace of cowardice either. Enna Hittims was born to explore and have adventures.

Enna Hittims started life on her parents’ farm beside the Crease River, just below Leftoe Mountain. She was plowing their cornfield one day, when the plow turned up an old sword. Enna Hittims picked it up and swished it, and it cut through the plow. It was an enchanted sword that could cut through anything. Enna Hittims took the sword home to where her parents were lazing about and cut the kitchen table in half to show them what it could do.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “I want to have adventures.”

“No, you’re not,” said her parents. “We forbid it. We need you to do the work.”

Then Enna Hittims realized that her parents were exploiting her. She cut both their heads off with the enchanted sword and set off from the farm with a small bundle of food, to look for what she might find.

In this way Enna Hittims began the most exciting and interesting kind of life. For the next few days Anne found it hard to think of anything else. She lay in bed and looked at the landscape on the bedspread and imagined adventures for Enna Hittims to go with it.

The first heroic deed Enna Hittims did was to kill a tiger at Ankle Bend. Tibby put this idea into Anne’s head by coming to sleep on her bed. After that Enna Hittims climbed on up the mountain, where the landscape grew ever more wondrous. In the giant fern forest near the top of Leftoe Mountain, where monkeys chattered and parrots screamed, Enna Hittims came upon two more intrepid travelers, who were about to be killed by a savage gorilla. Enna Hittims cut the gorilla’s head off for them, and the two travelers became her faithful friends. They were called Marlene and Spike. The heroic three set off to find the treasure guarded by the dragon on Knee Heights.

By this time, Anne was finding Enna Hittims and her friends so interesting that she just had to get out of bed for her drawing book and felt tips and draw pictures of their adventures. Of course, when she got back into bed, the landscape had changed. The green patch which had been the fern forest had got down between Anne’s feet and become the Caves of Emerald, and the Crease River had turned into Toagara Falls. Enna Hittims and her friends realized they were exploring an enchanted land and took it all quite calmly. As the landscape changed every time Anne got in and out of bed, they soon understood that a powerful magician was trying to stop them getting the treasure. Enna Hittims vowed to conquer the magician when they had killed the dragon.

The three friends explored all over the bedspread. Anne made drawing after drawing of them. She no longer minded Tibby’s being so boring. While Tibby was curled up asleep on the bed, she held still for Anne to draw her. Anne intended Tibby to be the dragon in the end, but meanwhile, Tibby made a useful model for all the other monsters the three heroes killed. For the human monsters, Anne fetched snapshots of her parents and her cousins and copied them with glaring eyes and long teeth.

Enna Hittims was easy to draw. Her bold dark face gave Anne no trouble at all. Marlene was almost as easy, because she was the opposite of her friend, fair and small and not very brave. Enna Hittims often had to snap at Marlene for being so scared. Spike was more trouble to draw. Of course he had spiky hair, but his name really came from the enchanted spike he used as a weapon. He was small and nimble, with a puckered face. Anne kept getting him looking like a monkey, until she got used to drawing him. She drew and drew. Every time she got out of bed and the landscape changed, she thought of new adventures. She hardly noticed what Mrs. Harvey brought her for lunch. She hardly noticed whether her parents were in or out.

“Thank goodness!” said Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

And then disaster struck. Just before lunchtime, when Anne was all alone in the house, every one of her felt tips ran out.

“Oh, bother!” Anne wailed, almost in tears. She scribbled angrily, but even the mauve felt tip only made a pale, squeaky line. It was awful. Enna Hittims and her friends were in the middle of meeting the hermit who knew where to find the dragon. Anne was dying to draw the hermit’s cave. Enna Hittims was holding her enchanted sword threateningly at the foolish hermit’s throat. Anne had a photograph of Mr. Smith all ready to copy as the hermit. She was looking forward to giving him long hair and a scraggly beard and a look of utter terror.

“Oh, bother!” she shouted, and threw the felt tips across the room.

Tibby by now knew all about Anne in this mood. She jumped off Anne’s bed and galloped for the door. Mrs. Harvey came in with Anne’s lunch just then. Tibby slipped around Mrs. Harvey and ran away.

“Here you are, dear,” Mrs. Harvey said, puffing rather. She put a tray down on Anne’s knees. “I’ve done you macaroni cheese and some nice stewed apple. You can eat that, can’t you?”

Anne knew Mrs. Harvey was being very kind. She smiled, in spite of her crossness, and said, “Yes, thank you.”

“I should think you’d be well enough to go downstairs a bit now,” Mrs. Harvey said, a little reproachfully. “The stairs are hard work.” She went away, saying, “Tell your dad to pop the dishes back tonight. I’m out till then.”

Anne sighed and looked back at the bedspread. To her surprise, Enna Hittims had killed the hermit during the interruption. Anne had meant the hermit to stay alive and guide the heroes to the dragon. She stared at Enna Hittims coolly wiping her enchanted sword clean on a handy tuft of cloth. “Sorry if I lost my temper,” Enna Hittims was saying, “but I don’t think the old fool knew a thing about that dragon.”

Anne was rather shocked. She had not known that Enna Hittims was that unfeeling.

“You did quite right,” said Spike. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder if that dragon exists at all.”

“Me, too,” answered Enna Hittims. She hitched her sword to her belt rather grimly. “And if someone’s having us on—”

“Enna,” Marlene interrupted, “the landscape’s changed again. Over there.”

The three heroes swung around and shaded their eyes with their hands to look at the tray across Anne’s lap. “So it has!” said Enna Hittims. “Well done, Marlene! What is it up there?”

“A tableland,” said Spike. “There are two white mountains, and one’s steaming. Do you think it could be the dragon?”

“Probably only a new volcano,” said Enna Hittims. “Let’s go and see.”

The three heroes set off along the top of Anne’s right leg, walking swiftly in single file, and Anne watched them in some alarm. She did not want them climbing over her lunch while she tried to eat it.

“Go back,” she said. “The dragon’s going to be down by my right knee.”

“What was that?” Marlene whispered nervously as she followed the other two up the slant of Anne’s thigh.

“Just thunder. We’re always hearing it,” said Enna Hittims. “Don’t whinge, Marlene.”

The three heroes stood in a row with their chins on the edge of the lunch tray.

“Well, how about that!” said Enna Hittims. She pointed to the plate of macaroni cheese. “That hill of hot pipes—do you think it’s an installation of some kind?”

“There could be a baby dragon in each pipe,” Marlene suggested.

“What are those shiny things?” Spike wondered, pointing at the knife, fork, and spoon.

“Silver bars,” Enna Hittims said. “We’ll have to find an elephant and tow them away. This must be the dragon’s lair. But what’s that?”

The three heroes stared at the bowl of stewed apple.

“Pale yellow slush,” said Spike, “with a sour smell. Dragon sick?”

“It could be some kind of gold mulch,” Marlene said doubtfully. She looked carefully across the tray, searching for some clue. Her eyes went on, up the hill of Anne’s body beyond. She jumped and clutched Spike’s sleeve. “Look!” she whispered. “Up there!”

Spike looked. He turned quietly to Enna Hittims. “Look up, but don’t be too obvious about it,” he murmured. “Isn’t that a giant face up there?”

Enna Hittims glanced up. She nodded. “Right. Very big and purple, with little, piggy eyes. It’s some kind of giant. We’ll have to kill it.”

“Now look here—” Anne called out.

But the three heroes took her voice for thunder, just as they always did. Enna Hittims went on briskly laying her plans. “Marlene and Spike, you go around the tableland, one on each side, and climb up its hair. Swing over when you’re above the nose and stab an eye each. I’ll go in over the middle and see if I can cut its fat throat.” Spike and Marlene nodded and raced away around the edges of the tray.

Anne did not wait to see if the plan worked. She picked up the tray and pushed it on top of her bedside cupboard. Then she scrambled out of bed as fast as she could go. This of course changed the landscape completely, toppling all three heroes over and burying them under mountains of sheet and blanket. Anne hoped that had done for them. It ought to have done, since they were only part of her imagination.

To give them time to smother, or vanish, or something, Anne went down to the kitchen and got herself a glass of milk. She looked for Tibby to give her some milk, too, but Tibby seemed to have gone out through her cat flap. She went back to her bedroom, hoping the heroes had gone.

They were still there. Spike was up on her pillow, whirling his spike around his head on the end of a rope. He let it fly just as Anne came in, and it stuck firmly into the edge of the tray. It was a tin tray, but the spike was magic, of course, and would stick into anything Spike wanted it to. Spike, Enna Hittims, and Marlene all took hold of the rope and heaved. The tray slid. It tipped.

“No, stop!” Anne said weakly. She had not balanced the tray properly in her hurry.

One end of the tray came down into the bed. Down slid the macaroni cheese, and down slid the stewed apple after it. The heroes saw it coming. They leaped expertly for safety up on the pillows. They were used to this kind of thing. While Anne was still staring at macaroni and apple soaking into her sheets, Spike was dashing down and rescuing his spike.

Enna Hittims walked around the marsh of stewed apple and sliced at a macaroni tube with her sword. “It’s not alive,” she said. “Don’t just stand there, Marlene. We’re going up that ramp to find that giant and finish him off. It’s obviously the giant that’s been changing the landscape all the time. No giant’s going to do that to me!”

They started scrambling up the sloping tray. Anne hoped it would be too slippery for them. But no. Spike used his spike to help him scramble up. Enna Hittims used her sword one-handed to hack footholds and walked up backward, dragging Marlene with her other hand and snapping, “Do come on, Marlene!”

Even before they were halfway up to the bedside cupboard, Anne knew that the only sensible thing to do was to pick the tray up and tip them back into the stewed apple. And then put the tray on top of them and press. But she could not bring herself to do anything so nasty. She stood and watched them climb on top of the cupboard. Enna Hittims stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the bedroom.

“We’re in the giant’s house now,” she said confidently.

“And he’ll be a mountain of cat food before long,” said Spike. Marlene laughed with pleasure.

Anne ran out of the bedroom and shut the door with a slam. She ran down to the living room and stood with her hands together and her eyes shut. “Go away, all three of you!” she prayed. “Go. Disappear. Vanish. You’re only made up!”

Then she went back upstairs to see if the prayer had worked. Her bedroom door was still shut, but there was some kind of purple tube sticking out from under the door. As Anne bent down to see what it was, she heard Enna Hittims’s voice from behind the door. “Well, what is out there, Marlene?”

“A huge passage,” Marlene’s voice replied. The tube was the mauve felt tip with its inside taken out. It swung sideways as Anne looked. “Oh!” said Marlene. “There’s a giant out there now! I can see its toes.”

“Great!” said Enna Hittims. “Let’s get after it.” There was a burring, splintering noise. The tip of Enna Hittims’s enchanted sword, together with a lot of sawdust, made a neat half circle in the bottom of the bedroom door.

Anne ran away to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath, wondering what to do. She heard the voices of the three heroes out in the passage after a moment. She shut the bathroom door, very quietly. Nothing happened. After a while she felt she had better go and see what the heroes were doing.

There was a hole like a mousehole in the bottom of her bedroom door. The heroes were on their way downstairs. Anne could hear Enna Hittims saying, “Come on, Marlene! Just let yourself drop and Spike will catch you.” They seemed to be halfway down. Anne went down cautiously to see how they were doing it. They seemed to be letting themselves down on the rope tied to Spike’s magic spike. Marlene was dangling and spinning on the rope. To Anne’s surprise, she was wearing a new dress of a pretty harebell blue.

“Ooh! It’s so high!” she said.

“Don’t be so feeble!” said Enna Hittims. “We’re halfway down.”

Spike was keeping guard. “There’s a giant on the stairs above us,” he said quietly.

Enna Hittims glanced up at Anne. “You two go on,” she said. “It’s only a small one. You two get down and look for the big giants, while I slice off a few of this one’s toes to keep it busy.”

Anne was forced to run back to the bathroom again, rather than lose her toes. Then she realized that her bedroom was safe now and went back there. It was in the most awful mess, even if you did not count the lunch in the bed. The heroes had pulled books and jigsaws and games out of the shelves. Enna Hittims had slashed Anne’s piggy bank to bits with her sword, but she obviously had not thought that 50p in pence was much of a treasure, and she had cut some of the money up, too. Spike had pulled out Anne’s records. She could see the scratches his spike had made, right across her favorite ones. One of them had scribbled with a mauve felt tip across most of Anne’s drawings. But it was Marlene who had done the worst damage. She had cut a ragged circle out of Anne’s best sweater in order to make herself her new dress.

That made Anne so angry that she almost ran downstairs. By now she hated all three heroes. Enna Hittims was bossy and bloodthirsty. Spike was a vandal. And Marlene was so awful that she deserved the way Enna Hittims ordered her about! Anne wished she had never invented them. But it was plain she was not going to get rid of them by just wishing. She was going to have to do something, however nasty that might be.

As she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, quaking but determined, there was a ringing SMASH! from the living room and the sound of smithereens pattering on the carpet. Anne knew it was the big china lamp her mother was so fond of.

The heroes came scampering around the living room door into the hall. “Too many hazards in there,” Enna Hittims announced. “Now let’s see. We’re sure the small purple-faced giant is only a servant left on guard. Where can we go to kill the big ones when they come back?”

“The kitchen,” said Spike. “They’ll want to eat.”

“Us, probably,” Marlene quavered.

“Don’t moan, Marlene,” said Enna Hittims. “Right. To the kitchen!” She held her sword up and led the other two at a run around the open kitchen door.

Something in the kitchen went ching-BOING! and there was the glop-glop-glop of liquid running out of a bottle. “Oh, no!” said Anne. She had left the milk bottle on the floor while she was looking for Tibby. Worse still, she remembered the way Tibby always knew when there was milk on the floor. She could not let Tibby get in the way of the enchanted sword. She ran across the hall.

“My new dress is soaked!” she heard Marlene whine. Then came the sound of Tibby’s cat flap opening. Marlene gasped, “A monster!”

“What a splendid one!” Enna Hittims cried ringingly. “You two guard my rear while I kill it.”

By the time Anne got to the kitchen, Enna Hittims was standing in a warlike attitude facing Tibby, barring Tibby’s way to the pool of milk on the floor. And Tibby, who had no kind of idea about enchanted swords, was crouching with her tail swishing, staring eagerly at Enna Hittims. It was clear she thought the hero was a new kind of mouse.

Anne charged through the kitchen and caught Tibby just as she sprang. “Oh-ho!” shouted Enna Hittims. The enchanted sword swung at Anne’s right foot. Spike sprang at Anne’s left foot and stabbed. Tibby struggled and clawed. But Anne hung on to Tibby in spite of it all. She ran out into the hall, kicking the kitchen door shut behind her, and did not let go of Tibby until the door was shut. Then she dropped Tibby. Tibby stood in a ruffled hump, giving Anne the look that meant they would not be on speaking terms for some time, and then stalked away upstairs.

Anne sat on the bottom stair, watching blood ooze from a round hole in her left big toe and more blood trickle from a deep cut under her right ankle. “How lucky I didn’t invent them poisoned weapons!” she said. She sat and thought. Surely one ordinary-sized girl ought to be able to defeat three inch-high heroes, if she went about it the right way. She needed armor really.

She went thoughtfully up to her bedroom. Tibby was now crouched on Anne’s bed, delicately picking pieces of macaroni cheese out of the stewed apple. Tibby loved cheese. She looked up at Anne with the look that meant “Stop me if you dare!”

“You eat it,” said Anne. “Be my guest. Stuff yourself. It’ll keep you up here out of danger.” She got dressed. She put on her toughest jeans and her hard shoes and her thickest sweater and then the zip-up plastic jacket to make quite sure. She tied the covers of her drawing book around her legs to make even more sure. Then she collected a handful of shoelaces, string, and belts and picked up the tray. It had little regular notches in it where Enna Hittims had carved her footholds. Mrs. Harvey would not be pleased.

She shut her bedroom door to keep Tibby in there and went down to the living room. She stepped over the pieces of the china lamp to the dining area and fetched out the tea trolley. Then she spent quite a long time tying the tray to the front of the trolley, testing it, and tying it again. When she had it tied firmly, so that it grated along the carpet as the trolley was pushed, and nothing an inch high could possibly get under the bottom edge of the tray, Anne picked up the poker. She was ready.

She wheeled the armored trolley out through the hall. By lying on her stomach across the top of it, she managed to reach the handle of the kitchen door and open it quietly. She looked warily inside.

She was in luck. The three heroes thought they had defeated her. They were relaxing, filling their waterskins at the edge of the pool of milk. “Now remember to go for the big giants’ eyes,” Enna Hittims was saying. “You can hold on to their ears if they have short hair.”

“No, you can’t!” Anne shouted. She shoved off with one foot and sent the trolley through the pool of milk toward them. The tray raised a tidal wave in front of it as it went. The heroes had to leap back and run, or they would have been submerged. They ran across the kitchen, shouting angrily. Anne followed them with the trolley. This way and that, they ran. But the trolley was good at turning this way and that, too. Anne pushed with her foot, and pushed. Whenever the heroes tried to run to one side of the tray, she leaned over and jabbed at them with the poker to keep them in front of it. Spike’s spike tinged against the tray. Enna Hittims carved several pieces off the poker. But it did no good. Within minutes, Anne had pushed and prodded and herded them up against the back door where the cat flap was. She let them hew angrily at the tray, while she leaned over and pushed the cat flap open with the poker.

“There’s a way out!” squeaked Marlene.

“Stupid! It’s just tempting us!” shouted Enna Hittims.

But Anne gave the heroes no choice. She held the cat flap open and shoved hard with her foot. The tray went right up against the door. The heroes were forced to leap out through the cat flap or be squashed.

“We’ll get in another way!” Enna Hittims shouted angrily as the flap banged shut.

“No, you won’t!” said Anne. She left the trolley pushed against the door, and she overturned the kitchen table and pushed that up against the back of the trolley to keep it there.

She was just setting off to make sure all the windows were shut when she heard a car outside. It was the unmistakable, growly sound of her father turning the car around in the road before he backed down into the garage. A glance at the kitchen clock showed Anne that he was back almost two hours early.

“I can’t let them stab his eyes!” she gasped. She raced through the hall, her head full of visions of the heroes standing on the garden wall and climbing up Mr. Smith as he walked back around from the garage. She dragged the front door open and made warning gestures with the poker.

Mr. Smith smiled at her through the back window of the car. The car was already swinging round backward into the driveway. Anne stood where she was, with the poker raised. She held her breath. The heroes were standing about halfway up the drive. Marlene was pointing at the car and gasping as usual. “Another monster!”

“Go for its big black feet!” Enna Hittims shouted, and she led the three heroes at a run toward the car.

Mr. Smith never saw them. He backed briskly down the drive. Halfway there, the heroes saw the danger. Marlene screamed, and they all turned and ran the other way. But the car, even slowing down, was moving far faster than they could run. Anne watched the big, black, zigzag-patterned tire roll over on top of them. There was the tiniest possible crunching. Much as she hated the heroes by now, Anne let her breath out with a shudder.

Before Anne could lower the poker, there was a sharp hiss. The enchanted sword, and perhaps the magic spike, too, could still do damage. Mr. Smith jumped out of the car. Anne ran across the lawn, and they both watched the right-hand back tire sink into a flat squashiness.

Mr. Smith looked ruefully from the tire to Anne’s face. “Your face has gone down, too,” he said. “Did you know?”

“Has it?” Anne put up her hand to feel. The mumps were now only two small lumps on either side of her chin.

While she was feeling them, her father turned and got something out of the car. “Here you are,” he said. He passed her a fat new drawing book and a large pack of felt tips. “I knew you were going to run out of drawing things today.”

Anne looked at the rows of different colors and the thick book of paper. She knew her father hated going to the drawing shop. There was never anywhere to park, and he always got a parking ticket. But he had gone there specially and then come home early to give them to her. “Thanks!” she said. “Er—I’m afraid there’s rather a mess indoors.”

Mr. Smith smiled cheerfully. “Then isn’t it lucky you’re so much better?” he said. “You can tidy up while I’m putting the spare wheel on.”

It seemed fair, Anne thought. She turned toward the house, wondering where to start. The macaroni, the china lamp, or the milk? She looked down at the pack of felt tips while she tried to decide. They were a different make from the old lot. That was a good thing. She was fairly sure that it was her drawings that had brought Enna Hittims and her friends to life like that. The old felt tips would not have been called Magic Markers for nothing.

THE GIRL WHO LOVED THE SUN

There was a girl called Phega who became a tree. Stories from the ancient times when Phega lived would have it that when women turned into trees, it was always under duress, because a god was pursuing them, but Phega turned into a tree voluntarily. She did it from the moment she entered her teens. It was not easy, and it took a deal of practice, but she kept at it. She would go into the fields beyond the manor house where she lived, and there she would put down roots, spread her arms, and say, “For you I shall spread out my arms.” Then she would become a tree.

She did this because she was in love with the sun. The people who looked after her when she was a child told her that the sun loved the trees above all other living things. Phega concluded that this must be so from the way most trees shed their leaves in winter when the sun was unable to attend to them very much. As Phega could not remember a time when the sun had not been more to her than mother, father, or life itself, it followed that she had to become a tree.

At first she was not a very good tree. The trunk of her tended to bulge at hips and breast and was usually an improbable brown color. The largest number of branches she could achieve was four or five at the most. These stood out at unconvincing angles and grew large, pallid leaves in a variety of shapes. She strove with these defects valiantly, but for a long time it always seemed that when she got her trunk to look more natural, her branches were fewer and more misshapen, and when she grew halfway decent branches, either her trunk relapsed or her leaves were too large or too yellow.

“Oh, sun”—she sighed—“do help me to be more pleasing to you.” Yet it seemed unlikely that the sun was even attending to her. “But he will!” Phega said, and driven by hope and yearning, she continued to stand in the field, striving to spread out more plausible branches. Whatever shape they were, she could still revel in the sun’s impartial warmth on them and in the searching strength of her roots reaching into the earth. Whether the sun was attending or not, she knew the deep peace of a tree’s long, wordless thoughts. The rain was pure delight to her, instead of the necessary evil it was to other people, and the dew was a marvel.

The following spring, to her delight, she achieved a reasonable shape, with a narrow, lissome trunk and a cloud of spread branches, not unlike a fruiting tree. “Look at me, sun,” she said. “Is this the kind of tree you like?”

The sun glanced down at her. Phega stood at that instant between hope and despair. It seemed that he attended to the wordless words.

But the sun passed on, beaming, not unkindly, to glance at the real apple trees that stood on the slope of the hill.

I need to be different in some way, Phega said to herself.

She became a girl again and studied the apple trees. She watched them put out big pale buds and saw how the sun drew those buds open to become leaves and white flowers. Choking with the hurt of rejection, she saw the sun dwelling lovingly on those flowers, which made her think at first that flowers were what she needed. Then she saw that the sun drew those flowers on, quite ruthlessly, until they died, and that what came after were green blobs that turned into apples.

“Now I know what I need,” she said.

It took a deal of hard work, but the following spring she was able to say, “Look at me, sun. For you I shall hold out my arms budded with growing things,” and spread branches full of white blossom that she was prepared to force on into fruit.

This time, however, the sun’s gaze fell on her only in the way it fell on all living things. She was very dejected. Her yearning for the sun to love her grew worse.

“I still need to be different in some way,” she said.

That year she studied the sun’s ways and likings as she had never studied them before. In between she was a tree. Her yearning for the sun had grown so great that when she was in human form, it was as if she were less than half alive. Her parents and other human company were shadowy to her. Only when she was a tree with her arms spread to the sunlight did she feel she was truly in existence.

As that year took its course, she noticed that the place the sun first touched unfailingly in the morning was the top of the hill beyond the apple trees. And it was the place where he lingered last at sunset. Phega saw this must be the place the sun loved best. So, though it was twice as far from the manor, Phega went daily to the top of that hill and took root there. This meant that she had an hour more of the sun’s warm company to spread her boughs into, but the situation was not otherwise as good as the fields. The top of the hill was very dry. When she put down roots, the soil was thin and tasted peculiar. And there was always a wind up there. Phega found she grew bent over and rather stunted.

“But what more can I do?” she said to the sun. “For you I shall spread out my arms, budded with growing things, and root within the ground you warm, accepting what that brings.”

The sun gave no sign of having heard, although he continued to linger on the top of the hill at the beginning and end of each day. Phega would walk home in the twilight considering how she might grow roots that were adapted to the thin soil and pondering ways and means to strengthen her trunk against the wind. She walked slightly bent over and her skin was pale and withered.

Up till now Phega’s parents had indulged her and not interfered. Her mother said, “She’s very young.” Her father agreed and said, “She’ll get over this obsession with rooting herself in time.” But when they saw her looking pale and withered and walking with a stoop, they felt the time had come to intervene. They said to one another, “She’s old enough to marry now, and she’s ruining her looks.”

The next day they stopped Phega before she left the manor on her way to the hill. “You must give up this pining and rooting,” her mother said to her. “No girl ever found a husband by being out in all weathers like this.”

And her father said, “I don’t know what you’re after with this tree nonsense. I mean, we can all see you’re very good at it, but it hasn’t got much bearing on the rest of life, has it? You’re our only child, Phega. You have the future of the manor to consider. I want you married to the kind of man I can trust to look after the place when I’m gone. That’s not the kind of man who’s going to want to marry a tree.”

Phega burst into tears and fled away across the fields and up the hill.

“Oh, dear!” her father said guiltily. “Did I go too far?”

“Not at all,” said her mother. “I would have said it if you hadn’t. We must start looking for a husband for her. Find the right man, and this nonsense will slide out of her head from the moment she claps eyes on him.”

It happened that Phega’s father had to go away on business, anyway. He agreed to extend his journey and look for a suitable husband for Phega while he was away. His wife gave him a good deal of advice on the subject, ending with a very strong directive not to tell any prospective suitor that Phega had this odd habit of becoming a tree—at least not until the young man was safely proved to be interested in marriage, anyway. And as soon as her husband was away from the manor, she called two servants she could trust and told them to follow Phega and watch how she turned into a tree. “For it must be a process we can put a stop to somehow,” she said, “and if you can find out how we can stop her for good, so much the better.”

Phega, meanwhile, rooted herself breathlessly into the shallow soil at the top of the hill. “Help me,” she called out to the sun. “They’re talking of marrying me and the only one I love is you!”

The sun pushed aside an intervening cloud and considered her with astonishment. “Is this why you so continually turn into a tree?” he said.

Phega was too desperate to consider the wonder of actually, at last, talking to the sun. She said, “All I do, I do in the remote, tiny hope of pleasing you and causing you to love me as I love you.”

“I had no idea,” said the sun, and he added, not unkindly, “but I do love everything according to its nature, and your nature is human. I might admire you for so skillfully becoming a tree, but that is, when all is said and done, only an imitation of a tree. It follows that I love you better as a human.” He beamed and was clearly about to pass on.

Phega threw herself down on the ground, half woman and half tree, and wept bitterly, thrashing her branches and rolling back and forth. “But I love you,” she cried out. “You are the light of the world, and I love you. I have to be a tree because then I have no heart to ache for you, and even as a tree I ache at night because you aren’t there. Tell me what I can do to make you love me.”

The sun paused. “I do not understand your passion,” he said. “I have no wish to hurt you, but this is the truth: I cannot love you as an imitation of a tree.”

A small hope came to Phega. She raised the branches of her head. “Could you love me if I stopped pretending to be a tree?”

“Naturally,” said the sun, thinking this would appease her. “I would love you according to your nature, human woman.”

“Then I make a bargain with you,” said Phega. “I will stop pretending and you will love me.”

“If that is what you want,” said the sun, and went on his way.

Phega shook her head free of branches and her feet from the ground and sat up, brooding, with her chin on her hands. That was how her mother’s servants found her and watched her warily from among the apple trees. She sat there for hours. She had bargained with the sun as a person might bargain for her very life, out of the desperation of her love, and she needed to work out a plan to back her bargain with. It gave her slight shame that she was trying to trap such a being as the sun, but she knew that was not going to stop her. She was beyond shame.

There is no point imitating something that already exists, she said to herself, because that is pretending to be that thing. I will have to be some kind that is totally new.

Phega came down from the hill and studied trees again. Because of the hope her bargain had given her, she studied in a new way, with passion and depth, all the time her father was away. She ranged far afield to the forests in the valleys beyond the manor, where she spent days among the trees, standing still as a tree, but in human shape—which puzzled her mother’s servants exceedingly—listening to the creak of their growth and every rustle of every leaf, until she knew them as trees knew other trees and comprehended the abiding restless stillness of them. The entire shape of a tree against the sky became open to her, and she came to know all their properties. Trees had power. Willows had pithy centers and grew fast; they caused sleep. Elder was pithy, too; it could give powerful protection but had a touchy nature and should be treated politely. But the oak and the ash, the giant trees that held their branches closest to the sun’s love, had the greatest power of all. Oak was constancy, and ash was change. Phega studied these two longest and most respectfully.

“I need the properties of both these,” she said.

She carried away branches of leafing twigs to study as she walked home, noting the join of twig to twig and the way the leaves were fastened on. Evergreens impressed her by the way they kept leaves for the sun even in winter, but she was soon sure they did it out of primitive parsimony. Oaks, on the other hand, had their leaves tightly knotted on by reason of their strength.

“I shall need the same kind of strength,” Phega said.

As autumn drew on, the fruiting trees preoccupied her, since it was clear that it was growth and fruition the sun seemed most to love. They all, she saw, partook of the natures of both oaks and elders, even hawthorn, rowan, and hazel. Indeed, many of them were related to the lowlier bushes and fruiting plants, but the giant trees that the sun most loved were more exclusive in their pedigrees.

“Then I shall be like the oak,” Phega said, “but bear better fruit.”

Winter approached, and trees were felled for firewood. Phega was there, where the foresters were working, anxiously inspecting the rings of the sawn trunk and interrogating the very sawdust. This mystified the servants who were following her. They asked the foresters if they had any idea what Phega was doing.

The foresters shook their heads and said, “She is not quite sane, but we know she is very wise.”

The servants had to be content with this. At least after that they had an easier time, for Phega was mostly at home in the manor examining the texture of the logs for the fires. She studied the bark on the outside and then the longwise grains and the roundwise rings of the interior, and she came to an important conclusion: an animal stopped growing when it had attained a certain shape, but a tree did not.

“I see now,” she said, “that I have by no means finished growing.” And she was very impatient because winter had put a stop to all growth, so that she had to wait for spring to study its nature.

In the middle of winter her father came home. He had found the perfect husband for Phega and was anxious to tell Phega and her mother all about the man. This man was a younger son of a powerful family, he said, and he had been a soldier for some years, during which time he had distinguished himself considerably and gained a name for sense and steadiness. Now he was looking for a wife to marry and settle down with. Though he was not rich, he was not poor either, and he was on good terms with the wealthier members of his family. It was, said Phega’s father, a most desirable match.

Phega barely listened to all this. She went away to look at the latest load of logs before her father had finished speaking. He may not ever come here, she said to herself, and if he does, he will see I am not interested and go away again.

“Did I say something wrong?” her father asked her mother. “I had hoped to show her that the man has advantages that far outweigh the fact that he is not in his first youth.”

“No—it’s just the way she is,” said Phega’s mother. “Have you invited the man here?”

“Yes, he is coming in the spring,” her father said. “His name is Evor. Phega will like him.”

Phega’s mother was not entirely sure of this. She called the servants she had set to follow Phega to her privately and asked them what they had found out. “Nothing,” they said. “We think she has given up turning into a tree. She has never so much as put forth a root while we are watching her.”

“I hope you are right,” said Phega’s mother. “But I want you to go on watching her, even more carefully than before. It is now extremely important that we know how to stop her becoming a tree if she ever threatens to do so.”

The servants sighed, knowing they were in for another dull and difficult time. And they were not mistaken because, as soon as the first snowdrops appeared, Phega was out in the countryside studying the way things grew. As far as the servants were concerned, she would do nothing but sit or stand for hours watching a bud, or a tree, or a nest of mice or birds. As far as Phega was concerned, it was a long fascination as she divined how cells multiplied again and again and at length discovered that while animals took food from solid things, plants took their main food from the sun himself. “I think that may be the secret at last,” she said.

This puzzled the servants, but they reported it to Phega’s mother all the same. Her answer was, “I thought so. Be ready to bring her home the instant she shows a root or a shoot.”

The servants promised to do this, but Phega was not ready yet. She was busy watching the whole course of spring growth transform the forest. So it happened that Evor arrived to meet his prospective bride and Phega was not there. She had not even noticed that everyone in the manor was preparing a feast in Evor’s honor. Her parents sent messengers to the forest to fetch her, while Evor first kicked his heels for several hours in the hall and finally, to their embarrassment, grew impatient and went out into the yard. There he wondered whether to order his horse and leave.

I conclude from this delay, he said to himself, that the girl is not willing, and one thing I do not want is a wife I have to force. Nevertheless, he did not order his horse. Though Phega’s parents had been at pains to keep from him any suggestion that Phega was not as other girls were, he had been unable to avoid hearing rumors on the way. For by this time Phega’s fame was considerable. The first gossip he heard, when he was farthest away, was that his prospective bride was a witch. This he had taken for envious persons’ way of describing wisdom and pressed on. As he came nearer, rumor had it that she was very wise, and he felt justified—though the latest rumor he had heard, when he was no more than ten miles from the manor, was that Phega was at least a trifle mad. But each rumor came accompanied by statements about Phega’s appearance which were enough to make him tell himself that it was too late to turn back, anyway. This kept him loitering in the yard. He wanted to set eyes on her himself.

He was still waiting when Phega arrived, walking in through the gate quickly but rather pensively. It was a gray day, with the sun hidden, and she was sad. But, she told herself, I may as well see this suitor and tell him there was no point in his coming and get it over with. She knew her parents were responsible and did not blame the man at all.

Evor looked at her as she came and knew that rumor had understated her looks. The time Phega had spent studying had improved her health and brought her from girl to young woman. She was beautiful. Evor saw that her hair was the color of beer when you hold a glass of it to the light. She was wearing a dress of smooth silver-gray material which showed that her body under it when she moved was smooth-muscled and sturdy—and he liked sturdy women. Her overgarment was a curious light, bright green and floated away from her arms, revealing them to be very round and white. When he looked at her face, which was both round and long, he saw beauty there, but he also saw that she was very wise. Her eyes were gray. He saw a wildness there contained by the deep calm of long, long thought and a capacity to drink in knowledge. He was awed. He was lost.

Phega, for her part, tore her thoughts from many hours of standing longing among the great trees and saw a wiry man of slightly over middle height, who had a bold face with a keen stare to it. She saw he was not young. There was gray to his beard—which always grew more sparsely than he would have liked, though he had combed it carefully for the occasion—and some gray in his hair, too. She noticed his hair particularly because he had come to the manor in light armor, to show his status as a soldier and a commander, but he was carrying his helmet politely in the crook of his arm. His intention was to show himself as a polished man of the world. But Phega saw him as iron-colored all over. He made her think of an ax, except that he seemed to have such a lot of hair. She feared he was brutal.

Evor said, “My lady!” and added as a very awkward after-thought, “I came to marry you.” As soon as he had said this, it struck him as so wrong and presumptuous a thing to say to a woman like this one that he hung his head and stared at her feet, which were bare and, though beautiful, stained green with the grass she had walked through. The sight gave him courage. He thought that those feet were human after all, so it followed that the rest of her was, and he looked up at her eyes again. “What a thing to say!” he said.

He smiled in a flustered way. Phega saw that he was somewhat snaggle-toothed, not to speak of highly diffident in spite of his gray and military appearance, and possibly in awe of her. She could not see how he could be in awe of her, but his uneven teeth made him a person to her. Of a sudden he was not just the man her parents had procured for her to marry, but another person like her, with feelings like those Phega had herself. Good gods! she thought, in considerable surprise. This is a person I could maybe love after all, if it were not for the sun. And she told him politely that he was very welcome.

They went indoors together and presently sat down to the feast. There Evor got over his awe a little, enough to attempt to talk to Phega. And Phega, knowing he had feelings to be hurt, answered the questions he asked and asked things in return. The result was that before long, to the extreme delight of Phega’s parents, they were talking of his time at war and of her knowledge and laughing together as if they were friends—old friends. Evor’s wonder and joy grew. Long before the feast was over, he knew he could never love any other woman now. The effect of Phega on him was like a physical tie, half glorious, half painful, that bound him to respond to every tiny movement of her hand and every flicker of her lashes.

Phega found—and her surprise increased—that she was comfortable with Evor. But however amicably they talked, it was still as if she was only half alive in the sun’s absence—though it was an easy half life—and, as the evening wore on, she felt increasingly confined and trapped. At first she assumed that this feeling was simply due to her having spent so much of the past year out of doors. She was so used to having nothing but the sky with the sun in it over her head that she often did find the manor roof confining. But now it was like a cage over her head. And she realized that her growing liking for Evor was causing it.

If I don’t take care, she said to herself, I shall forget the bargain I made with the sun and drift into this human contract. It is almost too late already. I must act at once.

Thinking this, she said her good-nights and went away to sleep.

Evor remained, talking jubilantly with Phega’s parents. “When I first saw her,” he said, “I thought things were hopeless. But now I think I have a chance. I think she likes me.”

Phega’s father agreed, but Phega’s mother said, “I’m sure she likes you all right, but—I caught a look in her eye—this may not be enough to make her marry you.”

Saying this, Phega’s mother touched on something Evor had sensed and feared himself. His jubilation turned ashy; indeed, he felt as if the whole world had been taken by drought; there was no moisture or virtue in it anywhere from pole to pole. “What more can I do?” he said, low and slow.

“Let me tell you something,” said Phega’s mother.

“Yes,” Phega’s father broke in eagerly. “Our daughter has a strange habit of—”

“She is,” Phega’s mother interrupted swiftly, “under an enchantment which we are helpless to break. Only a man who truly loves her can break it.”

Hope rose in Evor, as violent as Phega’s hope when she bargained with the sun. “Tell me what to do,” he said.

Phega’s mother considered all the reports her servants had brought her. So far as she knew, Phega had never once turned into a tree all the time her father was away. It was possible she had lost the art. This meant that with luck, Evor need never know the exact nature of her daughter’s eccentricity. “Sometime soon,” she said, “probably at dawn, my daughter will be compelled by the enchantment to leave the manor. She will go to the forest or the hill. She may be compelled to murmur words to herself. You must follow her when she goes, and as soon as you see her standing still, you must take her in your arms and kiss her. In this way you will break the spell, and she will become your faithful wife ever after.” And, Phega’s mother told herself, this was very likely what would happen. For, she thought, as soon as he kisses her, my daughter will discover that there are certain pleasures to be had from behaving naturally. Then we can all be comfortable again.

“I shall do exactly what you say,” said Evor, and he was so uplifted with hope and gratitude that his face was nearly handsome.

All that night he kept watch. He could not have slept, anyway. Love roared in his ears, and longing choked him. He went over and over the things Phega had said and each individual beauty of her face and body as she said these things, and when, in the dawn, he saw her stealing through the hall to the door, there was a moment when he could not move. She was even more lovely than he remembered.

Phega softly unbarred the door and crossed the yard to unbar the gate. Evor pulled himself together and followed. They walked out across the fields in the white time before sunrise, Phega pacing very upright, with her eyes on the sky where the sun would appear, and Evor stealing after. He softly took off his armor piece by piece as he followed her and laid it down carefully in case it should clatter and alarm her.

Up the hill Phega went, where she stood like one entranced, watching the gold rim of the sun come up. And such was Evor’s awe that he loitered a little in the apple trees, admiring her as she stood.

“Now,” Phega said, “I have come to fulfill my bargain, sun, since I fear this is the last time I shall truly want to.” What she did then, she had given much thought to. It was not the way she had been accustomed to turn into a tree before. It was far more thorough. For she put down careful roots, driving each of her toes downward and outward and then forcing them into a network of fleshy cables to make the most of the thin soil at the top of the hill. “Here,” she said, “I root within the soil you warm.”

Evor saw the ground rise and writhe and low branches grow from her insteps to bury themselves also. “Oh, no!” he cried out. “Your feet were beautiful as they were!” And he began to climb the hill toward her.

Phega frowned, concentrating on the intricacy of feathery rootlets. “But they were not the way I wanted them,” she said, and she wondered vaguely why he was there. But by then she was putting forth her greatest effort, which left her little attention to spare. Slowly, once her roots were established, she began to coat them with bark before insects could damage them. At the same time, she set to work on her trunk, growing swiftly, grain by growing grain. “Increased by yearly rings,” she murmured.

As Evor advanced, he saw her body elongate, coating itself with mat pewter-colored bark as it grew, until he could barely pick out the outline of limbs and muscles inside it. It was like watching a death. “Don’t!” he said. “Why are you doing this? You were lovely before!”

“I was like all human women,” Phega answered, resting before her next great effort. “But when I am finished, I shall be a wholly new kind of tree.” Having said that, she turned her attention to the next stage, which she was expecting to enjoy. Now she stretched up her arms, and the hair of her head, yearning into the warmth of the climbing sun, and made it all into limblike boughs, which she coated like the rest of her, carefully, with dark silver bark. “For you I shall hold out my arms,” she said.

Evor saw her, tree-shaped and twice as tall as himself, and cried out, “Stop!” He was afraid to touch her in this condition. He knelt at her roots in despair.

“I can’t stop now,” Phega told him gently. She was gathering herself for her final effort, and her mind was on that, though the tears she heard breaking his voice did trouble her a little. She put that trouble out of her head. This was the difficult part. She had already elongated every large artery of her body, to pass through her roots and up her trunk and into her boughs. Now she concentrated on lifting her veins, and every nerve with them, without disturbing the rest, out to the ends of her branches, out and up, up and out, into a mass of living twigs, fine-growing and close as her own hair. It was impossible. It hurt—she had not thought it would hurt so much—but she was lifting, tearing her veins, thrusting her nerve ends with them, first into the innumerable fine twigs, then into even further particles to make long, sharp buds.

Evor looked up as he crouched and saw the great tree surging and thrashing above him. He was appalled at the effort. In the face of this gigantic undertaking he knew he was lost and forgotten, and besides, it was presumptuous to interfere with such willing agony. He saw her strive and strive again to force those sharp buds open. “If you must be a tree,” he shouted above the din of her lashing branches, “take me with you somehow, at least!”

“Why should you want that?” Phega asked with wooden lips that had not yet quite closed, just where her main boughs parted.

Evor at last dared to clasp the trunk with its vestigial limbs showing. He shed tears on the gray bark. “Because I love you. I want to be with you.”

Trying to see him forced her buds to unfurl, because that was where her senses now were. They spread with myriad shrill agonies, like teeth cutting, and she thought it had killed her, even while she was forcing further nerves and veins to the undersides of all her pale viridian leaves. When it was done, she was all alive and raw in the small hairs on the undersides of those leaves and in the symmetrical ribs of vein on the shiny upper sides, but she could sense Evor crouching at her roots now. She was grateful to him for forcing her to the necessary pain. Her agony responded to his. He was a friend. He had talked of love, and she understood that. She retained just enough of the strength it had taken to change to alter him, too, to some extent, though not enough to bring him beyond the animal kingdom. The last of her strength was reserved for putting forth small pear-shaped fruit covered with wiry hairs, each containing four triangular nuts. Then, before the wooden gap that was her mouth had entirely closed, she murmured, “Budding with growing things.”

She rested for a while, letting the sun harden her leaves to a dark shiny green and ripen her fruit a little. Then she cried wordlessly to the sun, “Look! Remember our bargain. I am an entirely new kind of tree—as strong as an oak, but I bear fruit that everything can eat. Love me. Love me now!” Proudly she shed some of her three-cornered nuts onto the hilltop,

“I see you,” said the sun. “This is a lovely tree, but I am not sure what you expect me to do with you.”

“Love me!” she cried.

“I do,” said the sun. “There is no change in me. The only difference is that I now feed you more directly than I feed that animal at your feet. It is the way I feed all trees. There is nothing else I can do.”

Phega knew the sun was right and that her bargain had been her own illusion. It was very bitter to her; but she had made a change that was too radical to undo now, and besides, she was discovering that trees do not feel things very urgently. She settled back for a long, low-key sort of contentment, rustling her leaves about to make the best of the sun’s heat on them. It was like a sigh.

After a while a certain activity among her roots aroused a mild arboreal curiosity in her. With senses that were rapidly atrophying, she perceived a middle-sized iron-gray animal with a sparse bristly coat, which was diligently applying its long snout to the task of eating her three-cornered nuts. The animal was decidedly snaggle-toothed. It was lean and had a sharp corner to the center of its back, as if that was all that remained of a wiry man’s military bearing. It seemed to sense her attention, for it began to rub itself affectionately against her gray trunk, which still showed vestiges of rounded legs within it.

Ah, well, thought the tree, and considerately let fall another shower of beech mast for it.

That was long ago. They say that Phega still stands on the hill. She is one of the beech trees that stand on the hill that always holds the last rays of the sun, but so many of the trees in that wood are so old that there is no way to tell which one she is. All the trees show vestiges of limbs in their trunks, and all are given at times to inexplicable thrashings in their boughs, as if in memory of the agony of Phega’s transformation. In the autumn their leaves turn the color of Phega’s hair and often fall only in spring, as though they cling harder than most leaves in honor of the sun.

There is nothing to eat their nuts now. The wild boar vanished from there centuries ago, though the name stayed. The maps usually call the place Boar’s Hill.

DRAGON RESERVE, HOME EIGHT

Where to begin? Neal and I had had a joke for years about a little green van coming to carry me off—this was when I said anything more than usually mad—and now it was actually happening. Mother and I stood at my bedroom window, watching the van bouncing up the track between the dun green hills, and neither of us smiled. It wasn’t a farm van, and most of our neighbors visit on horseback, anyway. Before long we could see it was dark green with a silver dragon insigne on the side.

“It is the Dragonate,” Mother said. “Siglin, there’s nothing I can do.” It astonished me to hear her say that. Mother only comes up to my shoulder, but she held her land and our household, servants, Neal and me, and all three of her husbands, in a hand like iron, and she drove out to plow or harvest if one of my fathers was ill. “They said the dragons would take you,” she said. “I should have seen. You think Orm informed on you?”

“I know he did,” I said. “It was my fault for going into the Reserve.”

“I’ll blood an ax on him,” Mother said, “one of these days. But I can’t do it over this. The neighbors would say he was quite right.” The van was turning between the stone walls of the farmyard now. Chickens were squirting and flapping out of its way, and our sheepdog pups were barking their heads off. I could see Neal up on the washhouse roof watching yearningly. It’s a good place to watch from because you can hide behind the chimney. Mother saw Neal, too. “Siglin,” she said, “don’t let on Neal knows about you.”

“No,” I said. “Nor you either.”

“Say as little as you can, and wear the old blue dress; it makes you look younger,” Mother said, turning toward the door. “You might just get off. Or they might just have come about something else,” she added. The van was stopping outside the front door now, right underneath my window. “I’d best go and greet them,” Mother said, and hurried downstairs.

While I was forcing my head through the blue dress, I heard heavy boots on the steps and a crashing knock at the door. I shoved my arms into the sleeves, in too much of a hurry even to feel indignant about the dress. It makes me look about twelve, and I am nearly grown up! At least, I was fourteen quite a few weeks ago now. But Mother was right. If I looked too immature to have awakened, they might not question me too hard. I hurried to the head of the stairs while I tied my hair with a childish blue ribbon. I knew they had come for me, but I had to see.

They were already inside when I got there, a whole line of tall men tramping down the stone hallway in the half dark, and Mother was standing by the closed front door as if they had swept her aside. What a lot of them, just for me! I thought. I got a weak, sour feeling and could hardly move for horror. The man at the front of the line kept opening the doors all down the hallway, calm as you please, until he came to the main parlor at the end. “This room will do nicely,” he said. “Out you get, you.” And my oldest father, Timas, came shuffling hurriedly out in his slippers, clutching a pile of accounts and looking scared and worried. I saw Mother fold her arms. She always does when she is angry.

Another of them turned to Mother. “We’ll speak to you first,” he said, “and your daughter after that. Then we want the rest of the household. Don’t any of you try to leave.” And they went into the parlor with Mother and shut the door.

They hadn’t even bothered to guard the doors. They just assumed we would obey them. I was shaking as I walked back to my room, but it was not terror anymore. It was rage. I mean, we have all been brought up to honor the Dragonate. They are the cream of the men of the Ten Worlds. They are supposed to be gallant and kind and dedicated and devote their lives to keeping us safe from Thrallers, not to speak of maintaining justice, law, and order all over the Ten Worlds. Dragonate men swear that oath of Alienation, which means they can never have homes or families like ordinary people. Up to then I’d felt sorry for them for that. They give up so much. But now I saw they felt it gave them the right to behave as if the rest of us were not real people. To walk in as if they owned our house. To order Timas out of his own parlor. Oh, I was angry!

I don’t know how long Mother was in the parlor. I was so angry it felt like seconds until I heard flying feet and Neal hurried into my room. “They want you now.”

I stood up and took some of my anger out on poor Neal. I said, “Do you still want to join the Dragonate? Swear that stupid oath? Behave like you own the Ten Worlds?”

It was mean. Neal looked at the floor. “They said straightaway,” he said. Of course he wanted to join. Every boy does, particularly on Sveridge, where women own most of the land. I swept down the stairs, angrier than ever. All the doors in the hallway were open, and our people were standing in them, staring. The two housemen were at the dining room door, the cattlewomen and two farmhands were looking out of the kitchen, and the stableboy and the second shepherd were craning out of the pantry. I thought, They still will be my people someday! I refuse to be frightened! My fathers were in the doorway of the bookroom. Donal and Yan were in work clothes and had obviously rushed in without taking their boots off. I gave them what I hoped was a smile, but only Timas smiled back. They all know! I thought as I opened the parlor door.

There were only five of them, sitting facing me across our best table. Five was enough. All of them stood up as I came in. The room seemed full of towering green uniforms. It was not at all what I expected. For one thing, the media always show the Dragonate as fair and dashing and handsome, and none of these were. For another, the media had led me to expect uniforms with big silver panels. These were all plain green, and four of them had little silver stripes on one shoulder.

“Are you Sigrid’s daughter, Siglin?” asked the one who had opened all the doors. He was a bleached, pious type like my father Donal, and his hair was dust color.

“Yes,” I said rudely. “Who are you? Those aren’t Dragonate uniforms.”

“Camerati, Lady,” said one who was brown all over with wriggly hair. He was young, younger than my father Yan, and he smiled cheerfully, like Yan does. But he made my stomach go cold. Camerati are the crack force, cream of the Dragonate. They say a man has to be a genius even to be considered for it.

“Then what are you doing here?” I said. “And why are you all standing up?”

The one in the middle, obviously the chief one, said, “We always stand up when a lady enters the room. And we are here because we were on a tour of inspection at Holmstad, anyway, and there was a Slaver scare on this morning. So we offered to take on civic duties for the regular Dragonate. Now if that answers your questions, let me introduce us all.” He smiled, too, which twisted his white, crumpled face like a demon mask. “I am Lewin, and I’m Updriten here. On your far left is Driten Palino, our recorder.” This was the pious type, who nodded. “Next to him is Driten Renick of Law Wing.” Renick was elderly and iron-gray, with one of those necks that look like a chicken’s leg. He just stared. “Underdriten Terens is on my left, my aide and witness.” That was brown-and-wriggly. “And beyond him is Cadet Alectis, who is traveling with us to Home Nine.”

Alectis looked a complete baby, only a year older than I was, with pink cheeks and sandy hair. He and Terens both bowed and smiled so politely that I nearly smiled back. Then I realized that they were treating me as if I were a visitor. In my own home! I bowed freezingly, the way Mother usually does to Orm.

“Please sit down, Siglin,” Lewin said politely.

I nearly didn’t, because that might keep them standing up, too. But they were all so tall I’d already got a crick in my neck. So I sat grandly on the chair they’d put ready facing the table. “Thank you,” I said. “You are a very kind host, Updriten Lewin.” To my great joy, Alectis went bright red at that, but the other four simply sat down, too. Pious Palino took up a memo block and poised his fingers over its keys. This seemed to be in case the recorder in front of Lewin went wrong. Lewin set that going. Wriggly Terens leaned over and passed me another little square box.

“Keep this in your hand,” he said, “or your answers may not come out clearly.”

I caught the words lie detector from his wriggly head as clearly as if he had said them aloud. I don’t think I showed how very scared I was, but my hand made the box wet almost straightaway.

“Court is open,” Lewin said to the recorder. “Presiding Updriten Lewin.” He gave a string of numbers and then said, “First hearing starts on charges against Siglin, of Upland Holding, Wormstow, North Sveridge on Home Eight, accused of being heg and heg concealing its nature. Questions begin. Siglin, are you clear what being heg is?” He crumpled one eyebrow upward at me.

“No,” I said. After all, no one has told me in so many words. It’s just a thing people whisper and shudder at.

“Then you’d better understand this,” Lewin said. He really was the ugliest and most outlandish of the five. Dragonate men are never posted to the world of their birth, and I thought Lewin must come from one a long way off. His hair was black, so black it had blue lights, but, instead of being dark all over to match it, like wriggly Terens, he was a lot whiter than I was, and his eyes were a most piercing blue, almost the color they make the sky on the media. “If the charges are proved,” he said, “you face death by beheading since that is the only form of execution a heg cannot survive. Renick—”

Elderly Renick swept sourly in before Lewin had finished speaking. “The law defines a heg as one with human form who is not human. Medical evidence of brain pattern or nerve and muscle deviations is required prior to execution, but for a first hearing it is enough to establish that the subject can perform one or more of the following: mind reading; kindling fire or moving objects at a distance; healing or killing by the use of the mind alone; surviving shooting, drowning, or suffocation; or enslaving or otherwise afflicting the mind of a beast or human.”

He had the kind of voice that bores you, anyway. I thought, Great gods! I don’t think I can do half those things! Maybe I looked blank. Palino stopped clicking his memo block to say, “It’s very important to understand why these creatures must be stamped out. They can make people into puppets in just the same way that the Slavers can. Foul.” Actually I think he was explaining to Alectis. Alectis nodded humbly. Palino said, definitely to me, “Slavers do it with those V-shaped collars. You must have seen them on the media. Quite foul.”

“We call them Thrallers,” I said. Foul or not, I thought, I’m the only one of me I’ve got! I can’t help being made the way I am.

Lewin flapped his hand to shut Palino up, and Renick went on again. “A heg is required by law to give itself up for execution. Any normal person who knowingly conceals a heg is likewise liable for execution.” Now I knew why Mother had told me to keep Neal out of it.

Then it seemed to be Palino’s turn. He said, “Personal details follow. How old are you, er, Sigrun?”

“Siglin,” I said. “Fourteen last month.”

Renick stretched out his chicken neck. “In this court’s opinion, subject is old enough to have awakened as heg.” He looked at Terens.

Terens said, “I witness. Girls awaken early, don’t they?”

Palino, tapping away, said, “Mother, Sigrid, also of Upland Holding.”

At which Lewin leaned forward. “Cleared by this court,” he said. I was relieved to hear that. Mother is clever. She hadn’t let them know she knew.

Palino said, “And your father is?”

“Timas, Donal, and Yan,” I said. I had to bite the inside of my cheek not to laugh at how annoyed he was by that.

“Great Tew, girl!” he said. “A person can’t have three fathers!”

“Hold it, Palino,” said Lewin. “You’re up against local customs here. Men outnumber women three to one on Home Eight.”

“In Home Eight law a woman’s child is the child of all her husbands equally,” Renick put in. “No more anomalous than the status of the Ahrings on Seven, really.”

“Then tell me how I rephrase my question,” Palino said waspishly, “in the light of the primitive customs on Home Eight.”

I said, “There’s no such place as Home Eight. This world is called Sveridge.” Primitive indeed!

Palino gave me a pale glare. I gave him one back. Lewin cut in, smooth and humorous. “You’re up against primitive Dragonate customs here, Siglin. We refer to all the worlds by numbers, from Albion, Home One, to Yurov, Home Ten, and the worlds of the Outer Manifold are Cath One, Two, Three, and Four to us. Have you really no idea which of your mother’s husbands is actually your father?”

After that they all began asking me. Being heg is inherited, and I knew they were trying to find out if any of my fathers was heg, too. At length even Alectis joined in, clearing his throat and going very red because he was only a cadet. “I know we’re not supposed to know,” he said, “but I bet you’ve tried to guess. I did. I found out in the end.”

That told me he was Sveridge, too. And he suddenly wasn’t a genius in the Camerati anymore, but just a boy. “Then I bet you wished you hadn’t!” I said. “My friend Inga at Hillfoot found out, and hers turned out to be the one she’s always hated.”

“Well,” said Alectis, redder still. “Er, it wasn’t the one I’d hoped—”

“That’s why I’ve never asked,” I said. And that was true. I’d always hoped it was Timas till now. Donal is so moral, and Yan is fun, but he’s under Donal’s thumb even more than he’s under Mother’s. But I didn’t want my dear old Timas in trouble.

“Well, a cell test should settle it,” Lewin said. “Memo for that, Palino. Terens, remind me to ask how the regular Dragonate usually deals with it. Now, Siglin, this charge was laid against you by a man known as Orm the Worm Warden. Do you know this man?”

“Don’t I just!” I said. “He’s been coming here and looking through our windows and giggling ever since I can remember! He lives on the Worm Reserve in a shack. Mother says he’s a bit wrong in the head, but no one’s locked him up because he’s so good at managing dragons.”

There! I thought. That’ll show them you can’t trust a word Orm says! But they just nodded. Terens murmured to Alectis, “Sveridge worm, Draco draco, was adopted as the symbol of the Dragonate—”

“We have all heard of dragons,” Palino said to him nastily.

Lewin cut in again. I suppose it was his job as presiding Updriten. “Siglin, Orm, in his deposition, refers to an incident in the Worm Reserve last Friday. We want you to tell us what happened then, if anything.”

Grim’s teeth! I thought. I’d hoped they’d just ask me questions. You can nearly always get around questions without lying. And I’d no idea what Orm had said. “I don’t usually go to the Dragon Reserve,” I said, “because of being Mother’s heir. When I was born, the Fortune Teller said the dragons would take me.” I saw Renick and Palino exchange looks of contempt at our primitive customs. But Mother had in a good Teller, and I believe it enough to keep away from the Reserve.

“So why did you go last Friday?” said Lewin.

“Neal dared me to,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else with a lie detector in my hands. Neal gets on with Orm, and he goes to the Reserve a lot. Up to Friday he thought I was being silly refusing to go. But the real trouble was that Neal had been there all along, riding Barra beside me on Nellie, and now Lewin had made me mention Neal, I couldn’t think how to pretend he hadn’t been there. “I rode up behind Wormhill,” I said, “and then over the Saddle until we could see the sea. That means you’re in the Reserve.”

“Isn’t the Reserve fenced off at all?” Renick asked disapprovingly.

“No,” I said. “Worms—dragons—can fly, so what’s the point? They stay in because the shepherds bombard them if they don’t, and we all give them so many sheep every month.” And Orm makes them stay in, bad cess to him! “Anyway,” I said, “I was riding down a kyle—that’s what we call those narrow stony valleys—when my horse reared and threw me. Next thing I knew—”

“Question,” said Palino. “Where was your brother at this point?”

He would spot that! I thought. “Some way behind,” I said. Six feet, in fact. Barra is used to dragons and just stood stock-still. “This dragon shuffled head down with its great snout across the kyle,” I said. “I sat on the ground with its great amused eye staring at me and listening to Nellie clattering away up the kyle. It was a youngish one, sort of brown-green, which is why I hadn’t seen it. They can keep awfully still when they want to. And I said a rude word to it.

“‘That’s no way to speak to a dragon!’ Orm said. He was sitting on a rock on the other side of the kyle, quite close, laughing at me.” I wondered whether to fill the gap in my story where Neal was by telling them that Orm always used to be my idea of Jack Frost when I was little. He used to call at Uplands for milk then, to feed dragon fledglings on, but he was so rude to Mother that he goes to Inga’s place now. Orm is long and skinny and brown, with a great white bush of hair and beard, and he smells rather. But they must have smelled him in Holmstad, so I said, “I was scared because the dragon was so near I could feel the heat off it. And then Orm said, ‘You have to speak politely to this dragon. He’s my particular friend. You give me a nice kiss, and he’ll let you go.’”

I think Lewin murmured something like, “Ah, I thought it might be that!” but it may just have been in his mind. I don’t know because I was in real trouble then, trying to pick my way through without mentioning Neal. The little box got so wet it nearly slipped out of my hand. I said, “Every time I tried to get up, Orm beckoned, and the dragon pushed me down with its snout with a gamesome look in its eye. And Orm cackled with laughter. They were both really having fun.” This was true, but the dragon also pushed between me and Neal and mantled its wings when Neal tried to help. And Neal said some pretty awful things to Orm. Orm giggled and insulted Neal back. He called Neal a booby who couldn’t stand up for himself against women. “Then,” I said, “then Orm said I was the image of Mother at the same age—which isn’t true: I’m bigger all over—and he said, ‘Come on, kiss and be friends!’ Then he skipped down from his rock and took hold of my arm—”

I had to stop and swallow there. The really awful thing was that as soon as Orm had hold of me, I got a strong picture from his mind: Orm kissing a pretty lady smaller than me, with another dragon, an older, blacker one, looking on from the background. And I recognized the lady as Mother, and I was absolutely disgusted.

“So I hit Orm and got up and ran away,” I said. “And Orm shouted to me all the time I was running up the kyle and catching Nellie, but I took no notice.”

“Question,” said Renick. “What action did the dragon take?”

“They—they always chase you if you run, I’d heard,” Alectis said shyly.

“And this one appears to have been trained to Orm’s command,” Palino said.

“It didn’t chase me,” I said. “It stayed with Orm.” The reason was that neither of them could move. I still don’t know what I did—I had a picture of myself leaning back inside my own head and swinging mighty blows, the way you do with a pickax—and Neal says the dragon went over like a cartload of potatoes and Orm fell flat on his back. But Orm could speak, and he screamed after us that I’d killed the worm and I’d pay for it. But I was screaming, too, at Neal, to keep away from me because I was heg. That was the thing that horrified me most. Before that I’d tried not to think I was. After all, for all I knew, everyone can read minds and get a book from the bookcase without getting up from his chair. And Neal told me to pull myself together and think what we were going to tell Mother. We decided to say that we’d met a dragon in the Reserve and I’d killed it and found out I was heg. I made Neal promise not to mention Orm. I couldn’t bear even to think of Orm. And Mother was wonderfully understanding, and I really didn’t realize that I’d put her in danger as well as Neal.

Lewin looked down at the recorder. “Dragons are a preserved species,” he said. “Orm claims that you caused grievous bodily harm to a dragon in his care. What have you to say to that?”

“How could I?” I said. Oh, I was scared. “It was nearly as big as a house.”

Renick was on to that at once. “Query,” he said. “Prevarication?”

“Obviously,” said Palino, clicking away at his block.

“We haven’t looked at that dragon yet,” Terens said.

“We’ll do that on our way back,” Lewin said, sighing rather. “Siglin, I regret to say there is enough mismatch between your account and Orm’s, and enough odd activity on that brain measure you hold in your hand, to warrant my taking you to Holmstad Command Center for further examination. Be good enough to go with Terens and Alectis to the van, and wait there while we complete our inquiries here.”

I stood up. Everything seemed to drain out of me. I could lam them like I lammed that dragon, I thought. But Holmstad would only send a troop out to see why they hadn’t come back. And I put my oldest dress on for nothing! I thought as I walked down the hallway with Terens and Alectis. The doors were all closed. Everyone had guessed. The van smelled of clean plastic, and it was very warm and light because the roof was one big window. I sat between Terens and Alectis on the backseat. They pulled straps around us all—safety straps, but they made me feel a true prisoner.

After a while Terens said, “You could sue Orm if the evidence doesn’t hold up, you know.” I think he was trying to be kind, but I couldn’t answer.

After another while Alectis said, “With respect, Driten, I think suspects should be told the truth about the so-called lie detector.”

“Alectis, I didn’t hear you say that,” Terens said. He pretended to look out of the window, but he must have known I knew he had deliberately thought lie detector at me as he passed me the thing. They’re told to. Dragonate think of everything. I sat and thought I’d never hated anything so much as I hated our kind, self-sacrificing Dragonate, and I tried to take a last look at the stony yard, tipped sideways on the hill, with our square stone house at the top of it. But it wouldn’t register somehow.

Then the front door opened, and the other three came out, bringing Neal with them. Behind them the hall was full of our people, with Mother in front, just staring. I just stared, too, while Palino opened the van door and shoved Neal into the seat beside me. “Your brother has admitted being present at the incident,” he said as he strapped himself in beside Neal. I could tell he was pleased.

By this time Lewin and Renick had strapped themselves into the front seat. Lewin drove away without a word. Neal looked back at the house. I couldn’t. “Neal—?” I whispered.

“Just like you said,” Neal said, loudly and defiantly. “Behaving as if they own the Ten Worlds. I wouldn’t join now if they begged me to!” Why did I have to go and say that to him? “Why did you join?” Neal said rudely to Alectis.

“Six brothers,” Alectis said, staring ahead.

The other four all started talking at once. Lewin asked Renick the quickest way to the Reserve by road, and Renick said it was down through Wormstow. “I hope the dragons eat you!” Neal said. This was while Palino was leaning across us to say to Terens, “Where’s our next inspection after this hole?” And Terens said, “We go straight on to Arkloren on Nine. Alectis will get to see some other parts of the Manifold shortly.” Behaving as if we didn’t exist. Neal shrugged and shut up.

The Dragonate van was much smoother and faster than a farm van. We barely bounced over the stony track that loops down to Hillfoot, and it seemed no time before we were speeding down the better road, with the rounded yellowish Upland Hills peeling past on either side. I love my hills, covered with yellow ling that only grows here on Sveridge, and the soft light of the sun through our white and gray clouds. Renick, still making conversation, said he was surprised to find the hills so old and worn down. “I thought Eight was a close parallel with Seven!” he said.

Lewin answered in a boring voice, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen Seven since I was a cadet.”

“Oh, the mountains are much higher and greener there,” Renick said. “I was posted in Camberia for years. Lovely spot.”

Lewin just grunted. Quite a wave of homesickness filled the van. I could feel Renick thinking of Seven and Alectis not wanting to go to Nine. Terens was remembering boating on Romaine when he was Neal’s age. Lewin was thinking of Seven, in spite of the grunt. We were coming over Jiot Fell already then, with the Giant Stones standing on top of the world against the sky. A few more turns in the road would bring us out above Wormstow where Neal and I went—used to go—to school. What about me? I was thinking. I’m homesick for life. And Neal. Poor Mother.

Then the air suddenly filled with noise, like the most gigantic sheet being torn.

Lewin said, “What the—?” and we all stared upward. A great silvery shape screamed overhead. And another of a fatter shape, more blue than silver, screamed after it, both of them only just inside the clouds. Alectis put up an astonished pointing arm. “Thraller! The one behind’s a Slaver!”

“What’s it doing here?” said Terens. “Someone must have slipped up.”

“Ours was a stratoship!” said Palino. “What’s going on?”

A huge ball of fire rolled into being on the horizon, above the Giant Stones. I felt Lewin slam on the brakes. “We got him!” one of them cried out.

“The Slaver got ours,” Lewin said. The brakes were still yelling like a she-worm when the blast hit.

I lose the next bit. I start remembering again a few seconds later, sitting up straight with a bruised lip, finding the van around sideways a long way on down the road. In front of me Renick’s straps had broken. He was lying kind of folded against the windscreen. I saw Lewin pull himself upright and pull at Renick. And stop pulling quickly. My ears had gone deaf, because I could only hear Lewin as if he were very far off. “—hurt in the back?”

Palino looked along the four of us and shouted, “Fine! Is Renick—?”

“Dead,” Lewin shouted back. “Neck broken.” He was jiggling furiously at buttons in the controls. My ears started to work again, and I heard him say, “Holmstad’s not answering. Nor’s Ranefell. I’m going back to Holmstad. Fast.”

We set off again with a roar. The van seemed to have lost its silencer, and it rattled all over, but it went. And how it went. We must have done nearly a hundred down Jiot, squealing on the bends. In barely minutes we could see Wormstow spread out below, old gray houses and new white ones, and all those imported trees that make the town so pretty. The clouds over the houses seemed to darken and go dense.

“Uh-oh!” said Terens.

The van jolted to another yelling stop. It was not the clouds. Something big and dark was coming down through the clouds, slowly descending over Wormstow. Something enormous. “What is that?” Neal and Alectis said together.

“Hedgehog,” said Terens.

“A slaveship,” Palino explained, sort of mincing the word out to make it mean more. “Are—are we out of range here?”

“I most thoroughly hope so,” Lewin said. “There’s not much we can do with hand weapons.”

We sat and stared as the thing came down. The lower it got, the more Renick’s bent-up shape was in my way. I kept wishing Lewin would do something about him, but nobody seemed to be able to think of anything but that huge descending ship. I saw why they call them hedgehogs. It was rounded above and flat beneath, with bits and pieces sticking out all over like bristles. Hideous somehow. And it came and hung squatting over the roofs of the houses below. There it let out a ramp like a long black tongue, right down into the Market Square. Then another into High Street, between the rows of trees, breaking a tree as it passed.

As soon as the ramps touched ground, Lewin started the van and drove down toward Wormstow.

“No, stop!” I said, even though I knew he couldn’t. The compulsion those Slavers put out is really strong. Some of it shouts inside your head, like your own conscience through an amplifier, and some of it is gentle and creeping and insidious, like Mother telling you gently to come along now and be sensible. I found I was thinking, Oh, well, I’m sure Lewin’s right. Tears rolled down Alectis’s face, and Neal was sniffing. We had to go to the ship, which was now hanging a little above us. I could see people hurrying out of houses and racing to crowd up the ramp in the Market Square. People I knew. So it must be all right, I thought. The van was having to weave past loose horses that people had been riding or driving. That was how I got a glimpse of the other ramp, through trees and the legs of a horse. Soldiers were pouring down it, running like a muddy river, in waves. Each wave had a little group of kings, walking behind it, directing the soldiers. They had shining crowns and shining Vs on their chests and walked mighty, like gods.

That brought me to my senses. “Lewin,” I said, “those are Thrallers, and you’re not to do what they say, do you hear?” Lewin just drove around a driverless cart, toward the Market Square. He was going to be driving up that ramp in a second. I was so frightened then that I lammed Lewin—not like I lammed the dragon, but in a different way. Again it’s hard to describe, except that this time I was giving orders. Lewin was to obey me, not the Thrallers, and my orders were to drive away at once. When nothing seemed to happen, I got so scared that I seemed to be filling the whole van with my orders.

“Thank you,” Lewin said in a croaking sort of voice. He jerked the van around into Worm Parade and roared down it, away from the ship and the terrible ramps. The swerve sent the van door open with a slam, and to my relief, the body of poor Renick tumbled out into the road.

But everyone else screamed out, “No! What are you doing?” and clutched their heads. The compulsion was far, far worse if you disobeyed. I felt as if layers of my brain were being peeled off with hot pincers. Neal was crying, like Alectis. Terens was moaning. It hurt so much that I filled the van frantically with more and more orders. Lewin made grinding sounds deep in his throat and kept on driving away, with the door flapping and banging.

Palino took his straps undone and yelled, “You’re going the wrong way, you damn cariarder!” I couldn’t stop him at all. He started to climb into the front seat to take the controls away from Lewin. Alectis and Neal both rose up, too, and shoved him off Lewin. So Palino gave that up and scrambled for the open flapping door instead. Nobody could do a thing. He just jumped out and went rolling in the road. I didn’t see what he did then, because I was too busy giving orders, but Neal says he simply scrambled up and staggered back toward the ship and the ramp.

We drove for another horrible half mile, and then we must have got out of range. Everything suddenly went easy. It was like when somebody lets go the other end of a rope you’re both pulling, and you go over backward. Wham. And I felt too dim and stunned to move.

“Thank the gods!” I heard Terens more or less howl.

“It’s Siglin you should be thanking,” Lewin said. “Alectis, climb over to the front and shut that door. Then try and raise Holmstad again.”

Neal said the door was too battered to shut. Alectis had to hold it with one hand while he worked the broadcaster with the other. I heard him saying that Holmstad still didn’t answer through the roaring and rattling the van made when Lewin put on speed up the long, looping gradient of Wormjiot. We had nearly got up to the Saddle when Terens said, “It’s going! Aren’t they quick?” I looked back, still feeling dim and horrible, in time to see the squatting hedgehog rise up inside the clouds again.

“Now you can thank the gods,” Lewin said. “They didn’t think we were worth chasing. Try medium wave, Alectis.” There is an outcrop of ragged rock near the head of Wormjiot. Lewin drove off the road and stopped behind it while Alectis fiddled with knobs.

Instead of getting dance music and cookery hints, Alectis got a voice that fizzed and crackled. “This is Dragonate Fanejiot, Sveridge South, with an emergency message for all Dragonate units still in action. You are required to make your way to Fanejiot and report there soonest.” It said that about seven times. Then it said, “We can now confirm earlier reports that Home Nine is in Slaver hands. Here is a list of bases on Home Eight that have been taken by Slavers.” It was a long list. Holmstad came quite early on it, and Ranefell about ten names after that.

Lewin reached across and turned it off. “Did someone say we slipped up?” he said. “That was an understatement.”

“Fanejiot is two thousand flaming miles from here!” Terens said. “With an ocean and who knows how many Slavers in between!”

“Well put,” said Lewin. “Did Palino’s memo block go to the Slavers with him?”

It was lying on the backseat beside Neal. Neal tried to pretend it wasn’t, but Alectis turned around and grabbed it as Neal tried to shove it on the floor. I was lying back in my straps, feeling gray and thinking, We could get away now. I’d better lam them all again. But all I did was lie there and watch Neal and Alectis having an angry tug-of-war. Then watch Lewin turn around and pluck the block away from the pair of them.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said to Neal. “I’ve already erased the recorder. And if I hadn’t had Renick and Palino breathing righteously down our necks, I’d never have recorded anything. It goes against the grain to take in children.”

Lewin pressed the erase on the memo block, and it gave out a satisfied sort of gobble. Neither of the other two said anything, but I could feel Alectis thinking how much he had always hated Palino. Terens was looking down at Wormstow through a fieldglass and trying not to remember a boy in Cadets with him who had turned heg and given himself up. I felt I wanted to say thank you. But I was too shy to do anything but sit up and look at Wormstow, too, between the jags of the rock. Even without a fieldglass, I could see the place throbbing like a broken anthill with all the Slaver troops.

“Getting ready to move out and mop up the countryside,” Terens said.

“Yes, and that’s where most people live,” Lewin said. “Farms and holdings in the hills. What’s the quickest way to the Dragon Reserve?”

“There’s a track on the right around the next bend,” said Neal. “Why?”

“Because it’s the safest place I can think of,” Lewin said.

Neal and I looked at one another. You didn’t need to be heg to tell that Neal was thinking, just as I was, that this was a bit much. They were supposed to help all those people in the holdings. Instead, they thought of the safest place and ran there! So neither of us said that the trade was only a bridle path, and we didn’t try to warn them not to take the van into the Reserve. We just sat there while Lewin drove it uphill and then lumping and bumping and rattling up the path. The path gave out in the marshy patch below the Saddle, but Lewin kept grinding and roaring on, throwing up peat in squirts, until we tipped downhill again and bounced down a yellow fellside. We were in the Reserve by then. The ling was growing in lurid green patches, black at the roots where dragons had burned it in the mating season. They fight a lot then.

We got some way into the Reserve. The van gave out clanging sounds and smelled bad, but Lewin kept it going by driving on the most level parts. We were in a wide stony scoop, with yellow hills all around, when the smell got worse and the van just stopped. Alectis let go of the door. “Worms—dragons,” he said, “don’t like machines, I’ve heard.”

“Now he tells us!” said Terens, and we all got out. We all looked as if we had been in an accident. I mean, I know we had in a way, but we looked worse than I’d expected: sort of ragged and pale and shivery. Lewin turned his foot on a stone, which made him clutch his chest and swear. Neither of the other two even asked if he was all right. That is the Dragonate way. They just set out walking. Neal and I went with them, thinking of the best place to dodge off up a kyle, so that we could run home and try and warn Mother about the Slavers.

“Where that bog turns into a stream—I’ll say when,” Neal was whispering, when a dragon came over the hill into the valley and made straight for us.

“Stand still!” said Alectis. Lewin and Terens each had a gun in his hand without seeming to have moved. Alectis didn’t, and he was white.

“They only eat moving prey,” Neal said, because he was sorry for him. “Make sure not to panic and run, and you’re fine.”

I was sorry for Alectis, too, so I added, “It’s probably only after the van. They love metal.”

Lewin crumpled his face at me and said “Ah!” for some reason.

The dragon came quite slowly, helping itself with its spread wings and hanging its head rather. It was a bad color, sort of creamy through the brown-green. I thought it might be one of the sick ones that turn man-eater, and I tried to brace myself and stop feeling so tired and shaky so that I could lam it. But Neal said, “That’s Orm’s dragon! You didn’t kill it after all!”

It was Orm’s dragon. By this time it was near enough for me to see the heat off it quivering in the air, and I recognized the gamesome, shrewd look in its eye. But since it had every reason to hate me, that didn’t make me feel much better. It came straight for me, too. We all stood like statues. And it came right up to me and bent its neck and laid its huge brown head on the ling in front of my feet, where it puffed out a sigh that made Lewin cough and gasp another swearword.

It had felt me coming, the dragon said, and it was here to say sorry. It hadn’t meant to upset me. It had thought it was a game.

That made me feel terrible. “I’m sorry, too,” I said. “I lost my head. I didn’t mean to hurt you. That was Orm’s fault.”

Orm was only playing, too, the dragon said. Orm called him Huffle, and I could, too, if I liked. Was he forgiven? He was ashamed.

“Of course I forgive you, Huffle,” I said. “Do you forgive me?”

Yes. Huffle lifted his head up and went a proper color at once. Dragons are like people that way.

“Ask him to fetch Orm here,” Lewin said urgently.

I didn’t want to see Orm, and Lewin was a coward. “Ask him yourself,” I said. “He understands.”

“Yes, but I don’t think he’d do it for me,” Lewin said.

“Then, will you fetch Orm for Lewin?” I asked Huffle.

He gave me a cheeky look. Maybe. Presently. He sauntered away past Terens, who moved his head back from Huffle’s rattling right wing, looking as if he thought his last hour had come, and went to have a look at the van. He put out a great clawed foot, in a thoughtful sort of way, and tore the loose door off it. Then he tucked the door under his right front foreleg and departed, deliberately slowly, on three legs, helping himself with his wings, so that rocks rattled and flapped all along the valley.

Alectis sat down rather suddenly. But Lewin made him leap up again and help Terens get the broadcaster out of the van before any more dragons found it. They never did get it out. They were still working and waggling at it to get it loose, and Lewin was standing over Neal and me, so that we couldn’t sneak off, when we heard that humming kind of whistle that you get from a dragon in flight. We whirled around. This dragon was a big black one, coasting low over the hill opposite and gliding down the valley. They don’t often fly high. It came to ground with that grinding of stones and leathery slap of wings closing that always tells you a dragon is landing. It arched its black neck and looked at us disdainfully.

Orm was sitting on its back looking equally disdainful. It was one of those times when Orm looks grave and grand. He sat very upright, with his hair and beard combed straight by the wind of flying, and his big pale eyes hardly looked mad at all. Neal was the only one of us he deigned to notice. “Good afternoon, Neal Sigridsson,” he said. “You keep bad company. Dragonate are not human.”

Neal was very angry with Orm. He put my heart in my mouth by saying, quite calmly, “Then in that case, I’m the only human here.” With that dragon standing glaring! I’ve been brought up to despise boys, but I think that is a mistake.

To my relief, Orm just grinned. “That’s the way, boy,” he said. “Not a booby after all, are you?”

Then Lewin took my breath away by going right up to the dragon. He had his gun, of course, but that wouldn’t have been much use against a dragon. He went so near that the dragon had to turn its head out of his way. “We’ve dropped the charges,” he said. “And you should never have brought them.”

Orm looked down at him. “You,” he said, “know a thing or two.”

“I know dragons don’t willingly attack humans,” Lewin said. “I always read up on a case before I hear it.” At this, Orm put on his crazy look and made his mad cackle. “Stop that!” said Lewin. “The Slavers have invaded. Wormstow’s full of Slaver troops, and we need your help. I want to get everyone from the outlying farms into the Reserve and persuade the dragons to protect them. Can you help us do that?”

That took my breath away again, and Neal’s, too. We did a quick goggle at one another. Perhaps the Dragonate was the way it was supposed to be after all!

Orm said, “Then we’d better get busy,” and slid down from the dragon. He still towered over Lewin. Orm is huge. As soon as he was down, the black dragon lumbered across to the van and started taking it to bits. That brought other dragons coasting, whistling in from all sides of the valley, to crunch to earth and hurry to the van, too. In seconds it was surrounded by black and green-brown shapes the size of hay barns. And Orm talked, at the top of his voice, through the sound of metal tearing, and big claws screaming on iron, and wings clapping, and angry grunts when two dragons happened to get hold of the same piece of van. Orm always talks a lot. But this time he was being particularly garrulous, to give the dragons time to lumber away with their pieces of van, hide them, and come back. “They won’t even do what Orm says until they’ve got their metal,” I whispered to Terens, who got rather impatient with Orm.

Orm said the best place to put people was the high valley at the center of the Reserve. “There’s an old she-drake with a litter just hatched,” he said. “No one will get past her when she’s feared for her young. I’ll speak to her. But the rest are to promise me she’s not disturbed.” As for telling everyone at the farms where to come, Orm said the dragons could do that, provided Lewin could think of a way of sending a message by them. “You see, most folk can’t hear a dragon when it speaks,” he said. “And some who can hear”—with a nasty look at me—“speak back to wound.” He was still very angry with me. I kept on the other side of Terens and Alectis when the dragons all came swooping back.

Terens set the memo block to repeat and tapped out an official message from Lewin. Then he tore off page after page with the same thing on it. Orm handed each page to a dragon, saying things like “Take this to the fat cow up at Hillfoot.” Or “Drop this on young vinegar lady at Crowtop—hard.” Or “This is for Dopey at High Jiot, but don’t give it her; give it to her youngest husband or they’ll never get moving.”

Some of the things he said made me laugh a lot. But it was only when Alectis asked what was so funny and Neal kicked my ankle that I realized I was the only one who could hear the things Orm said. Each dragon, as it got its page, ran down the valley and took off, showering us with stones from the jump it gave to get higher in the air than usual. Their wings boom when they fly high. Orm took off on the black dragon last of all, saying he would go and warn the she-drake.

Lewin crumpled his face ruefully at the few bits of van remaining, and we set off to walk to the valley ourselves. It was a long way. Over ling slopes and up among boulders in the kyles we trudged, looking up nervously every so often when fat bluish Slaver fliers screamed through the clouds overhead. After a while our dragons began booming overhead, too, seaward to roost. Terens counted them and said every one we had sent seemed to have come back now. He said he wished he had wings. It was sunset by the time we reached the valley. By that time Lewin was bent over, holding his chest and swearing every other step. But everyone was still pretending, in that stupid Dragonate way, that he was all right. We came up on the cliffs, where the kyle winds down to the she-drake’s valley, and there was the sunset lighting the sea and the towers of rock out there, and the waves crashing around the rocks, where the young dragons were flying to roost, and Lewin actually pretended to admire the view. “I knew a place like this on Seven,” he said. “Except there were trees instead of dragons. I can’t get used to the way Eight doesn’t have trees.”

He was going to sit down to rest, I think, but Orm came up the kyle just then. Huffle was hulking behind him. “So you got here at last!” Orm said in his rudest way.

“We have,” said Lewin. “Now would you mind telling me what you were playing at bringing those charges against Siglin?”

“You should be glad I did. You’d all be in a slaveship now if I hadn’t,” Orm said.

“But you weren’t to know that, were you?” Terens said.

“Not to speak of risking being charged yourself,” added Lewin.

Orm leaned on his hand against Huffle, as you might against a wall. “She half killed this dragon!” he said. “That’s why! All I did was ask her for a kiss, and she screams and lays into poor Huffle. My own daughter, and she tries to kill a dragon! And I thought, Right, my lady, then you’re no daughter of mine anymore! And I flew Huffle’s mother straight into Holmstad and laid charges. I was that angry! My own father tended dragons, and his mother before him. And my daughter tried to kill one! You wonder I was angry?”

“Nobody told me!” I said. I had that draining-away feeling again.

I was quite glad when Terens took hold of my elbow and said something like “Steady, steady!”

“Are you telling the truth?” Neal said.

“I’m sure he is,” Lewin said. “Your sister has his eyes.”

“Ask Timas,” said Orm. “He married your mother the year after I did. He can take being bossed about. I can’t. I went back to my dragons. But I suppose there’s a record of that?” he said challengingly to Lewin.

“And the divorce,” said Lewin. “Terens looked it up for me. But I expect the Slavers have destroyed it by now.”

“And she never told you?” Orm said to me. He wagged his shaggy eyebrows at me almost forgivingly. “I’ll have a bone to pick with her over that,” he said.

Mother arrived just as we’d all got down into the valley. She looked very indomitable, as she always does on horseback, and all our people were with her, down to both our shepherds. They had carts of clothes and blankets and food. Mother knew the valley as well as Orm did. She used to meet Orm there when she was a girl. She set out for the Reserve as soon as she heard the broadcast about the invasion, and the dragon we sent her met them on the way. That’s Mother for you. The rest of the neighbors didn’t get there for some hours after that.

I didn’t think Mother’s face—or Timas’s—could hold such a mixture of feelings as they did when they saw Neal and me and the Dragonate men all with Orm. When Orm saw Mother, he folded his arms and grinned. Huffle rested his huge chin on Orm’s shoulder, looking interested.

“Here she comes,” Orm said to Huffle. “Oh, I do love a good quarrel!”

They had one. It was one of the loudest I’d ever heard. Terens took Neal and me away to help look after Lewin. He turned out to have broken some ribs when the blast hit the van, but he wouldn’t let anyone look even until I ordered him to. After that Neal, Alectis, and I sat under our hay cart and talked, mostly about the irony of Fate. You see, Neal has always secretly wished Fate had given him Orm as a father, and I’m the one that’s got Orm. Neal’s father is Timas. Alectis says he can see the likeness. We’d both gladly swap. Then Alectis confessed that he’d been hating the Dragonate so much that he was thinking of running away, which is a serious crime. But now the Slavers have come, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a Dragonate anymore, he feels quite different. He admires Lewin.

Lewin consented to rest while Terens and Mother organized everyone into a makeshift camp in the valley, but he was up and about again the next day, because he said the Slavers were bound to come the day after, when they found the holdings were deserted. The big black she-drake sat in her cave at the head of the kyle, with her infants between her forefeet, watching groups of people rushing around to do what Lewin said, and didn’t seem to mind at all. Huffle said she’d been bored and bad-tempered up to then. We made life interesting. Actually that she-drake reminds me of Mother. Both of them made me give them a faithful report of the battle.

I don’t think the Slavers knew about the dragons. They just knew that there was a concentration of people in here, and they came straight across the Reserve to get us. As soon as the dragons told Orm they were coming, Lewin had us all out hiding in the hills in their path, except for Mother and Timas and Inga’s mother and a few more who had shotguns. They had to stay and guard the little kids in the camp. The rest of us had any weapons we could find. Neal and Alectis had bows and arrows. Inga had her airgun. Donal and most of the farmers had scythes. The shepherds all had their slingshots. I was in the front with Lewin, because I was supposed to stop the effect of the Slavers’ collars. Orm was there, too, although nobody had ever admitted in so many words that Orm might be heg. All Orm did was to ask the dragons to keep back because we didn’t want them enslaved by those collars.

And there they came, a huddle of sheeplike troops, and then another huddle, each one being driven by a cluster of kingly Slavers, with crowns and winking V-shaped collars And there again we all got that horrible guilty compulsion to come and give ourselves up. But I don’t think those collars have any effect on dragons. Half of us were standing up to walk into the Slavers’ arms, and I was ordering them as hard as I could not to, when the dragons smelled those golden crowns and collars: there was no holding them. They just whirred down over our heads and took those Slavers to pieces for the metal. Lewin said, “Ah!” and crumpled his face in a grin like a fiend’s. He’d thought the dragons might do that. I think he may really be a genius, like they say Camerati are. But I was so sick at that, and then again at the sight of nice people like Alectis and Yan killing the sheeplike troops, that I’m not going to talk about it anymore. Terens says I’m not to go when the Slavers come next. Apparently I broadcast the way I was feeling, just as the Slavers do, and even the dragons felt queasy. The she-drake snorted at that. Mother says, “Nonsense. Take travel pills and behave as my daughter should.”

Anyway, we have found out how to beat the Slavers. We have no idea what is going on in the other of the Ten Worlds, or even in the rest of Sveridge, but there are fifty more Worm Reserves around the world, and Lewin says there must be stray Dragonate units, too, who might think of using dragons against Slavers. We want to move out and take over some of the farms again soon. The dragons are having far too much fun with the sheep. They keep flying over with woolly bundles dangling from their claws, watched by a gloomy crowd of everyone’s shepherds. “Green dot,” the shepherds say. “The brutes are raiding Hightop now.” They are very annoyed with Orm because Orm just gives his mad cackle and lets the dragons go on.

Orm isn’t mad at all. He’s afraid of people knowing he’s heg; he still won’t admit he is. I think that’s why he left Mother, and Mother doesn’t admit she was ever married to him. Not that Mother minds. I get the feeling she and Orm understand one another rather well. But Mother married Donal, you see, after Timas. Donal, and Yan, too, have both told me that the fact that I’m heg makes no difference to them, but you should see the way they both look at me! I’m not fooled. I don’t blame Orm for being scared stiff Donal would find out he was heg. But I’m not sure I shall ever like Orm, all the same.

I am putting all this down on what is left of Palino’s memo block. Lewin wanted me to, in case there is still some history yet to come. He has made his official version on the recorder. I’m leaning the block on Huffle’s forefoot. Huffle is my friend now. Leaning on a dragon is the best way to keep warm on a chilly evening like this, when you’re forced to camp out in the Reserve. Huffle is letting Lewin lean on him, too, beyond Neal, because Lewin’s ribs still pain him. There is a lot of leaning space along the side of a dragon. Orm has just stepped across Huffle’s tail, into the light, chortling and rubbing his hands in his most irritating way.

“Your mother’s on the warpath,” he says. “Oh, I do love a good quarrel!”

And here comes Mother, ominously upright, and with her arms folded. It’s not Orm she wants. It’s Lewin. “Listen, you,” she says. “What the dickens is the Dragonate thinking of, beheading hegs all these years? They can’t help what they are. And they’re the only people who can stand up to the Thrallers.”

Orm is cheated of his quarrel. Lewin looked up, crumpled into the most friendly smile. “I do so agree with you,” he said. “I’ve just said so in my report. And I’d have got your daughter off somehow, you know.”

Orm is cackling like the she-drake’s young ones. Mother’s mouth is open, and I really think that for once in her life she has no idea what to say.

WHAT THE CAT TOLD ME

I am a cat. I am a cat like anything. Keep stroking me. I came in here because I knew you were good at stroking. But put your knees together so I can sit properly, front paws under. That’s better. Now keep stroking, don’t forget to rub my ears, and I will purr and tell.

I am going to tell you how I came to be so very old. When I was a kitten, humans dressed differently, and they had great stamping horses to pull their cars and buses. The Old Man in the house where I lived used to light a hissing gas on the wall when it got dark. He wore a long black coat. The Boy who was nice to me wore shabby breeches that only came to his knees, and he mostly went without shoes, just like me. We slept in a cupboard under the stairs, Boy and I. We kept one another warm. We kept one another fed, too, later on. The Old Man did not like cats or boys. He only kept us because we were useful.

I was more useful than Boy. I had to sit in a five-pointed star. The Boy would help Old Man mix things that smoked and made me sneeze. I had to sneeze three times. After that things happened. Sometimes big purple cloud things came and sat beside me in the star. Fur stood up on me, and I spat, but the things only went away when Old Man hit the star with his stick and told them, “Begone!” in a loud voice. At other times the things that came were small, real things you could hit with your paw: boxes, or strings of shiny stones no one could eat, or bright rings that fell tink beside me out of nowhere. I did not mind those things. The things I really hated were the third kind. Those came inside me and used my mouth to speak. They were nasty things with hateful thoughts, and they made me hateful. And my mouth does not like to speak. It ached afterward, and my tongue and throat were so sore that I could not wash the hatefulness off me for hours.

I so hated those inside-speaking things that I used to run away and hide when I saw Old Man drawing the star on the cellar floor. I am good at hiding. Sometimes it took Boy half the day to find me. Then Old Man would shout and curse and hit Boy and call him a fool. Boy cried at night in the cupboard afterward. I did not like that, so after a while I scratched Old Man instead. I knew none of it was Boy’s fault. Boy made Old Man give me nice things to eat after I had sat in the star. He said it was the only way to get me to sit there.

Boy was clever, you see. Old Man thought he was a fool, but Boy told me—at night in the cupboard—that he only pretended to be stupid. Boy was an orphan like me. Old Man had bought him for a shilling from a baby farmer ages before I was even a kitten, because his hair was orange, like the ginger patches on me, and that is supposed to be a good color for magic. Old Man paid a whole farthing for me, for much the same reason, because I am brindled. And Boy had been with Old Man ever since, learning things. It was not only magic that Boy learned. Old Man was away quite a lot when Boy was small. Boy used to read Old Man’s books in the room upstairs, and the newspapers, and anything else he could find. He told me he wanted to learn magic in order to escape from Old Man, and he learned the other things so that he could manage in the wide world when he did escape; but he had been a prisoner in the house for years now, and although he knew a great deal, he still could not break the spell Old Man had put on him to keep him inside the house. “And I really hate him,” Boy said to me, “because of the cat before you. I want to stop him doing any more magic before I leave.”

And I said—

What was that? How could Boy and I talk together? Do you think I am a stupid cat, or something? I am nearly as clever as Boy. How do you think I am telling you all this? Let me roll over. My stomach needs rubbing. Oh, you rub well! I really like you. Well— No, let me sit up again now. I think the talking must be something to do with those inside-speaking things. When I was a kitten, I could understand what people said, of course, but I couldn’t do it back, not at first, until I had been lived in and been spoken through by quite a lot of Things. Boy thought they stretched my mind. And I was clever to start with, not like the cat before me.

Old Man killed the cat before me somehow. Boy would not tell me how. It was a stupid cat, he said, but he loved it. After he told me that, I would not go near Boy for a whole day. It was not just that I was nervous about being killed, too. How could he love any cat that wasn’t me? Boy caught me a pigeon off the roof, but I still wouldn’t speak to him. So he stole me a saucer of milk and swore he would make sure Old Man didn’t kill me, too. He liked me a lot better than the other cat, he said, because I was clever. Anyway, Old Man killed the other cat doing magic he would not be able to work again without a certain special powder. Besides, the other cat was black and did not look as interesting as me.

After Boy had told me a lot of things like this, I put my nose to his nose, and we were friends again. We made a conspiracy—that was what Boy called it—and swore to defeat Old Man and escape somehow. But we could not find out how to do it. We thought and thought. In the end I stopped growing because of the strain and worry. Boy said no, it was because I was full grown.

I said, “Why, in that case, are you still growing? You’re already more than ten times my size. You’re nearly as big as Old Man!”

“I know,” said Boy. “You’re an elegant little cat. I don’t think I shall be elegant until I’m six feet tall, and maybe not even then. I’m so clumsy. And so hungry!”

Poor Boy. He did grow so, around then. He did not seem to know his own size from one day to the next. When he rolled over in the cupboard, he either squashed me or burst out into the hallway. I had to scratch him quite hard, several nights, or he would have smothered me. And he kept knocking things over when he was awake. He spilled the milk jug—which I didn’t mind at all—and he kicked Old Man’s magic tripod by accident and smashed six jars of smelly stuff. Old Man cursed and called Boy a fool, worse than ever. And I think Boy really was stupid then, because he was so hungry. Old Man was too mean to give him more to eat. Boy ate my food, so I was hungry, too. He said he couldn’t help it.

I went on the roof and caught pigeons. Boy roasted them over the gaslight at night when Old Man was asleep. Delicious. But the bones made me sick in the corner. We hid the feathers in the cupboard, and after I had caught a great many pigeons, night after night, the cupboard began to get warm. Boy began to get his mind back. But he still grew, and he was still hungry. By the time I had stopped growing for a year, Boy was so big his breeches went right up his legs and his legs went all hairy. Old Man couldn’t hit him anymore then, because Boy just put out a long, long arm and held Old Man off.

“I need more clothes,” he told Old Man.

Old Man grumbled and protested, but at last he said, “Oh, all right, you damn scarecrow. I’ll see what I can do.” He went unwillingly down into the cellar and heaved up one of the flagstones there. He wouldn’t let me look in the hole, but I know that what was under that flagstone was Old Man’s collection of all the rings and shiny stones that came from nowhere when I sat in the five-pointed star. I saw Old Man take some chinking things out. Then he slammed down the stone and went away upstairs, not noticing that one shiny thing had spilled out and gone rolling across the floor. It was a little golden ball. It was fun. I chased it for hours. I patted it and it rolled, and I pounced, and it ran away all around the cellar. Then it spoiled the fun by rolling down a crack between two flagstones and getting lost. Then I found I was shut in the cellar and had to make a great noise to be let out.

That reminds me: does your house have balls in it? Then buy me one tomorrow. Until then a piece of paper on some string will do.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Someone smelling of mildew came and let me out. I nearly didn’t know Boy at first. He had a red coat and white breeches and long black boots on, all rather too big for him. He said it was an old soldier’s uniform Old Man had picked up cheap, and how did I get shut in the cellar?

I sat around his neck and told him about the flagstone where Old Man kept his shinies. Boy was very interested. “That would buy an awful lot of food,” he said. He was still hungry. “We’ll take it with us when we escape. Let’s try escaping next time he works magic.”

So that night we made a proper plan at last. We decided to summon a Good Spirit, instead of the hateful things Old Man always fetched. “There must be some good ones,” Boy said. But since we didn’t know enough to summon a good one on our own, we had to make Old Man do it for us somehow.

We did it the very next day. I played up wonderfully. As soon as Old Man started to draw on the cellar floor, I ran away, so that Old Man would not suspect us. I dug my claws hard into Boy’s coat when he caught me, so that Old Man could hardly pull me loose. And I scratched Old Man, very badly, so that there was blood when he put me inside the five-pointed star. Then I sat there, humped and sulky, and it was Boy’s turn.

Boy did rather well, too. At first he was just the usual kind of clumsy and kicked some black powder into some red powder while they were putting it out in heaps, and the cellar filled with white soot. It was hard not to sneeze too soon, but I managed not to. I managed to hold the sneeze off until Old Man had done swearing at Boy and begun on the next bit, the mumbling. Then I sneezed—once. Boy promptly fell against the tripod, which dripped hot stuff on the spilled powder. The cellar filled with big purple bubbles. They drifted and shone and bobbed most enticingly. I would have loved to chase them, but I knew I mustn’t, or we would spoil what we were doing. Old Man couldn’t leave off his mumbling, because that would spoil the spell, but he glared at Boy through the bubbles. I sneezed again—two—to distract him. Old Man raised his stick and began on the chanting bit. And Boy pretended to trip and, as he did, he threw a fistful of powder he had ready into the gaslight.

Whup! it went.

Old Man jumped and glared and went on grimly chanting—he had to, you see, because you can’t stop magic once you have started—and all the bubbles drifted to the floor and burst, smicker, smicker, very softly. As each one burst, there was a little tiny pink animal on the floor, running about and calling, “Oink, oink, oink!” in a small squeaky voice. That nearly distracted me, as well as Old Man. I stared out at them with longing. I would have given worlds to jump out of the star and chase those beasties. They looked so beautifully eatable. But I knew I mustn’t try to come out of the star yet, so I shut my eyes and yawned to hold in the third sneeze and thought hard, hard, hard of a Good Thing. Let a Good Thing come! I thought. I thought as hard as you do when you see a saucer of milk held in the air above you, and you want them to put it on the floor—quick. Then I gave my third sneeze.

That reminds me. Milk? Yes, please, or I won’t be able to tell you any more.

Thank you. Keep your knee steady. You may stroke me if you wish. Where was I?

Right. When I opened my eyes, all the delicious beasties had vanished and the light burned sort of dingily. Old Man was beating Boy over the head with a stick. He could do that for once, because Boy was crouched by the wall laughing until his face ran tears. “Pigs!” he said. “Tiny little pigs! Oh, oh, oh!”

“I’ll pig you!” Old Man screamed. “You spoiled my spell! Look at the pentangle—there’s nothing there at all!”

But there was. I could feel the new Thing inside me. It wasn’t hateful at all, but it felt lost and a bit feeble. It was too scared to say or do anything or even let me move, until Old Man crossly broke the pentangle and stumped away upstairs.

Boy stood rubbing his head. “Pity it didn’t work, Brindle,” he said. “But wasn’t it worth it just for those pigs?”

“Master,” the Good Thing said with my mouth, “Master, how can I serve you, bound as I am?”

Boy stared, and his face went odd colors. I always wonder how you humans manage that. “Good Lord!” he said. “Did we do it after all? Or is it a demon?”

“I don’t think I’m a demon,” Good Thing said doubtfully. “I may be some kind of spirit. I’m not sure.”

“Can’t you get out of me?” I said to it in my head.

“No. Our Master would not be able to hear me if I did,” it told me.

“Bother you then!” I said, and started to wash.

“You can serve me, anyway, whatever you are,” Boy said to Good Thing. “Get me some food.”

“Yes, Master,” it made me say, and obeyed at once. I had just reached that stage of washing where you have one foot high in the air. I fell over. It was most annoying. Next minute I was rolling about in a huge warm room full of people cooking things. A kitchen, Boy said it was later. It smelled marvelous.... I hardly minded at all when Good Thing made me leap up and snatch a roast leg of mutton from the nearest table. But I did mind—a lot—when two men in white hats rushed at me shouting, “Damn cat!”

Good Thing didn’t know what to do about that at all, and it nearly got us caught. “Let me handle this!” I spat at it, and it did. I told you, it was a bit feeble. I dived under a big dresser where people couldn’t reach me and crouched there right at the back by the wall. It was a pity I had to leave the meat behind. It smelled wonderful. But I had to leave it, or they’d have gone on chasing me. “Now,” I said, when my coat had settled flat again, “you tell me what you want me to take and I’ll take it properly this time.”

Good Thing agreed that might work better. We waited until they’d all gone back to cooking and then slunk softly out into the room again. And Good Thing had been thinking all this time. It made me a sort of invisible sack. It was most peculiar. No one could see the sack, not even me, and it didn’t get in my way at all. I just knew it was behind me, filling up with the food I stole. Good Thing made me take stuff I’d never have dreamed of eating myself, like cinnamon jelly and—yuk!—cucumber, as well as good honest meat and venison pie and other reasonable things.

Then we were suddenly back in the cellar, where Boy was glumly clearing up. When he saw the food spilling out onto the floor, his face lit up. Good Thing had been right. He loved the jelly and even ate cucumber. For once in his life he really had enough to eat. I helped him eat the venison pie, and we both had strawberries and cream to finish with. I love those.

Which reminds me— Oh. Strawberries are out of season? Never mind. I’ll stay with you until they come back in. Rub my stomach again.

I was heavy and kind of round after that meal. Good Thing complained rather. “Well, get out of me then, and it won’t bother you,” I said. I wanted to sleep.

“In a minute,” it said. “Master, the cat tells me you want to escape, but I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”

Boy woke up in dismay. He was dropping off to sleep on the floor, being so full. “Why not?”

“Two reasons,” Good Thing said apologetically. “First, there is a very strong spell on you, which confines you to this house, and it is beyond my power to break it. Second, there is an equally strong spell on me. You and the cat broke part of it, the part which confined me to a small golden ball, but I am still forced to stay in the house where the golden ball is. The only other place I can go is the house I … came from.”

“Damn!” said Boy. “I did hope—”

“The spell that confines the cat is nothing like so strong,” Good Thing said. “I could raise that for you.”

“That’s something at least! Do that,” said Boy. He was a generous Boy. “And if you two could keep on fetching food, so that I can put my mind to something besides how hungry I am, then I might think of a way to break the spell on you and me.”

I was a little annoyed. It seemed that we had got Good Thing just because the golden ball had escaped from Old Man, and not because of Boy’s cleverness or my powers of thought. But though I knew the ball was down a crack just inside the place where Old Man usually drew his pentangle, I didn’t mention it to Boy in case his feelings were hurt, too.

We had great good times for quite a long while after that, Boy, Good Thing, and I, and Old Man never suspected at all. He was away a lot around then, anyway. While he was away, there were always a jug of milk and a loaf that appeared magically every four days, but Boy and I would have half starved on that without Good Thing. Good Thing took me to the kitchen place every day at suppertime, and we came back with every kind of food in the invisible sack. When Good Thing was not around—it quite often went away in the night and left me in peace—I went out across the roofs. I led a lovely extra life on top of the town. I met other cats by moonlight, but they were never as clever as me. I found out all sorts of things and came and told them to Boy. He was always very wistful about not being able to go out himself, but he listened to everything. He was like that. He was my friend. And he was a great comfort to me when I had my first kittens. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Boy guessed and he told me. Then he told me that we must hide the kittens or Old Man would know I had been able to go out. We were very secret and hid them in our cupboard in a nest of pigeon feathers.

I am good at having kittens. I’ll show you presently. I always have three, one tabby, one ginger, and one mixed like me. I had three kittens then, and Old Man never knew, even though they were quite noisy sometimes, especially after I taught them how to play with Good Thing.

When Good Thing came out of me, I could see it quite well, though Boy never could. It was quite big outside me, up to Boy’s shoulder, and frail and wafty, and it could float about at great speed. It enjoyed playing. I used to hunt it all round the house and leap on it, pretending to tear it to bits, and of course it would waft away between my paws. Boy used to guess where Good Thing was from my behavior and laugh at me hunting it. He laughed even more when my kittens were old enough to play hunting Good Thing, too.

By this time Boy was a fine, strong Boy, full of thoughts, and his soldier clothes were getting too short and tight. He asked Good Thing to get him some more clothes next time Old Man was away. So Good Thing and I went to another part of the mansion where the kitchen was. Boy said “house” was the wrong word for that place. He was right. It was big and grand. This time when we got there, we went sneaking at a run up a great stair covered with red carpet—or I went sneaking with Good Thing inside me—and along more carpet to a large room with curtains all around the walls. The curtains had pictures that Good Thing said were lords and ladies hunting animals with birds and horses. I never knew that birds were any help to people.

There was a space between the curtains and the walls, and Good Thing sent me sneaking through that space, around the room. There were people in the room. I peeped at them through a crack in the curtains.

There was a very fine Man there, almost as tall and fine as my Boy, but much older. With him were two of the ones in white hats from the kitchen. They held their hats in their hands, sorrowfully. With them was a Woman in long clothes, looking cross as Old Man.

“Yes indeed, sir, I saw this cat for myself, sir,” the Woman said. “It stole a cake under my very eyes, sir.”

“I swear to you, sir,” one of the white hats said, “it appears every evening and vanishes like magic with every kind of food.”

“It is magic, that’s why,” said the other white hat.

“Then we had better take steps to see where it comes from,” the fine Man said. “If I give you this—”

Good Thing wouldn’t let me stay to hear more. We ran on. “Oh, dear!” Good Thing said in my head as we ran. “We’ll have to be very careful after this!” We came to a room that was white and gold, with mirrors. Good Thing wouldn’t let me watch myself in the mirrors. The white-and-gold walls were all cupboards filled with clothes hanging or lying inside. We stuffed the invisible sack as full as it would hold with clothes from the cupboards, so that we would not need to go back. For once it felt heavy. I was glad to get back to Boy waiting in Old Man’s book room.

“Great Scott!” said Boy as the fine coats, good boots, silk shirts, cravats, and smooth trousers tumbled out onto the floor. “I can’t wear these! These are fit for a king! The Old Man would be bound to notice.” But he could not resist trying some of them on, all the same. Good Thing told me he looked good. I thought Boy looked far finer than the Man they belonged to.

After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing, “Are there books in this mansion, too?”

“And pictures and jewels,” Good Thing said through me. “What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a—”

“Just books,” said Boy. “I need to learn. I’m still so ignorant.”

Good Thing always obeyed Boy. The next night, instead of going to the kitchen, Good Thing took me to a vast room with a round ceiling held up by freckled pillars, where the walls were lined with books in shelves. Good Thing had one of its helpless turns there. “Which do you think our Master wants?” it asked me feebly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m only a cat. Let’s just take all we can carry. I want to get back to my kittens.”

So we took everything out of one shelf, and it was not right. Boy said he did not need twenty-four copies of the Bible: one was enough. The same went for Shakespeare. And he could not read Greek, he said. I spat. But we gathered up all the books except two and went back.

We had just spilled all the books onto the floor of the room with the freckled pillars when the big door burst open. The Man came striding in, with a crowd of others. “There’s the cat now!” they all cried out.

Good Thing had me snatch another book at random, and we went.

“And I daren’t go back for a while, Master,” Good Thing said to Boy.

I saw to my kittens; then I went out hunting. I fed Boy for the next few days—when he remembered to eat, that was. I stole a leg of lamb from an inn, a string of sausages from the butcher down the road, and a loaf and some buns from the baker. The kittens ate most of it. Boy was reading. He sat in his fine clothes, and he read, the Bible first, then Shakespeare, and then the book of history Good Thing had me snatch. He said he was educating himself. It was as if he were asleep. When Old Man suddenly came back, I had to dig all my claws into Boy to make him notice.

Old Man looked grumpily around everywhere to make sure everything was in order. He was always suspicious. I was scared. I made Good Thing stay with the kittens in the cupboard and hid the remains of the sausages in there with them. Boy was all dreamy, but he sat on the book of history to hide it. Old Man looked at him, hard. I was scared again. Surely Old Man would notice that Boy’s red coat was of fine warm cloth and that there was a silk shirt underneath? But Old Man said, “Stupid as ever, I see,” and grumped out of the house again.

Talking of sausages, when do you eat? Soon? Good. Now, go on stroking.

The next day Old Man was still away. Boy said, “Those were wonderful books. I must have more. I wish I didn’t have to trust a cat and a spirit to steal them. Isn’t there any way I can go and choose books for myself?”

Good Thing drifted about the house, thinking. At last it got into me and said, “There is no way I can take you to the mansion bodily, Master. But if you can go into a trance, I can take you there in spirit. Would that do?”

“Perfectly!” said Boy.

“Oh, no,” I said. “If you do, I’m coming, too. I don’t trust you on your own with my Boy, Good Thing. You might go feeble and lose him.”

“I will not!” said Good Thing. “But you may come if you wish. And we will wait till the middle of the night, please. We don’t want you to be seen again.”

Around midnight Boy cheerfully went into a trance. Usually he hated it when Old Man made him do it. And we went to the mansion again, all three of us. It was very odd. I could see Boy there the way I could see Good Thing, like a big, flimsy cloud. As soon as we were there, Boy was so astonished by the grandeur of it that he insisted on drifting all around it, upstairs and down, to see as much as he could. I was scared. Not everyone was asleep. There were gaslights or candles burning in most of the corridors, and someone could easily have seen me. But I stuck close to Boy because I was afraid Good Thing would lose him.

It was not easy to stay close. They could go through doors without opening them. When they went through one door upstairs, I had to jump up and work the handle in order to follow Boy inside. It was a pretty room. The quilt on the bed was a cat’s dream of comfort. I jumped up and paddled on it, while Boy and Good Thing hovered to look at the person asleep there. She was lit up by the nightlight beside the bed.

“What a lovely girl!” I felt Boy think. “She must be a princess.”

She sat up at that. I think it was because of me treading on her stomach. I went tumbling way backward, which annoyed me a good deal. She stared. I glowered and wondered whether to spit. “Oh!” she said. “You’re that magic cat my father wants to catch. Come here, puss. I promise I won’t let him hurt you.” She held out her hand. She was nice. She knew how to stroke a cat, just like you. I let her stroke me and talk to me, and I was just curling up to enjoy a rest on her beautiful quilt when a huge Woman sprang up from a bed on the other side of the room.

“Were you calling, my lady?” she asked. Then she saw me. She screamed. She ran to a rope hanging in one corner and heaved at it, screaming, “That cat’s back!”

“Run!” Good Thing said to me. “I’ll look after Boy.”

So I ran. I have never run like that in my life, before or since. It felt as if everyone in the mansion was after me. Luckily for me, I knew my way around quite well by then. I ran upstairs and I ran down, and people clattered after me, shouting. I dived under someone’s hand and dodged through a crooked cupboard place, and at last I found myself behind the curtains in the Man’s room. He ran in and out. Other people ran in and out, but the Princess really had done something to help me somehow and not one of them thought of looking behind those curtains.

After a bit I heard the Princess in that room, too. “But it’s a nice cat, Father—really sweet. I can’t think why you’re making all this fuss about it!” Then there was a sort of grating sound. I smelled the smallest whiff of fresh air. Bless her, she had opened the Man’s window for me.

I got out of it as soon as the room was empty. I climbed down onto grass. I ran again. I knew just the way I should go. Cats do, you know, particularly when they have kittens waiting for them. I was dead tired when I got to Old Man’s house. It was right on the other side of town. As I scrambled through the skylight in the roof, I was almost too tired to move. But I was dead worried about my kittens and about Boy, too. It was morning by then.

My kittens were fine, but Boy was still lying on the floor of the book room in a trance, cold as ice. And as if that were not enough, keys grated in the locks and Old Man came back. All I could think to do was to lie around Boy’s neck to warm him.

Old Man came and kicked Boy. “Lazy lump!” he said. “Anyone would think you were in a trance!” I couldn’t think what to do. I got up and hurried about, mewing for milk, to distract Old Man. He wasn’t distracted. Looking gleefully at Boy, he carefully put a jar of black powder away in his cupboard and locked it. Then he sat down and looked at one of his books, not bothering with me at all. He kept looking across at Boy.

My kittens distracted Old Man by having a fight in the cupboard about the last of the sausages. Old Man heard it and leaped up. “Scrambling and squeaking!” he said. “Mice! Could even be rats by the noise. Damn cat! Don’t you ever do your job?” He hit at me with his stick.

I tried to run. Oh, I was tired! I made for the stairs, to take us both away from Boy and my kittens, and Old Man caught me by my tail halfway up. I was that tired.... I was forced to bite him quite hard and scratch his face. He dropped me with a thump, so he probably did not hear the even louder thump from the book room. I did. I ran back there.

Boy was sitting up, shivering. There was a pile of books beside him.

“Good Thing!” I said. “That was stupid!”

“Sorry,” said Good Thing. “He would insist on bringing them.” The books vanished into the invisible sack just as Old Man stormed in.

He ranted and grumbled at Boy for laziness and for feeding me so that I didn’t catch mice, and he made Boy set mousetraps. Then he stormed off to the cellar.

“Why didn’t you come back sooner?” I said to Boy.

“It was too marvelous being somewhere that wasn’t this house,” Boy said. He was all dreamy with it. He didn’t even read his new books. He paced about. So did I. I realized that my kittens were not safe from Old Man. And if he found them, he would realize that I could get out of the house. Maybe he would kill me like the cat before. I was scared. I wished Boy would be scared, too. I wished Good Thing would show some sense. But Good Thing was only thinking of pleasing Boy.

“Don’t let him go into a trance again,” I said. “Old Man will know.”

“But I have to!” Boy shouted. “I’m sick of this house!” Then he calmed down and thought. “I know,” he said to Good Thing. “Fetch the Princess here.”

Good Thing got into me and bleated that this wasn’t wise now that Old Man was back. I said so, too. But Boy wouldn’t listen. He had to have Princess. Or else he would go into a trance and see her that way. I understood then. Boy wanted kittens. Very little will stop boys or cats when they do.

So we gave in. When Old Man was asleep and snoring, Boy dressed himself in the middle of the night in the Man’s finest clothes and looked fine as fine. He even washed in horrible cold water, in spite of all I said. Then Good Thing went to the mansion.

Instants later the Princess was lying asleep on the floor of the book room. “Oh,” Boy said sorrowfully, “what a shame to wake her!” But he woke her up all the same.

She rubbed her eyes and stared at him. “Who are you, sir?”

Boy said, “Oh, Princess—”

She said, “I think you’ve made a mistake, sir. I’m not a princess. Are you a prince?”

Boy explained who he was and all about himself, and she explained that her father was a rich magician. She was a disappointment to him, she said, because she could hardly do any magic and was not very clever. But Boy still called her Princess. She said she would call him Orange because of his hair. She may not have been clever, but she was nice. I sat on her knee and purred. She stroked me and talked to Boy for the whole night, until it began to get light. They did nothing but talk. I said to Good Thing that it was a funny way to have kittens. Good Thing was not happy. Princess did not understand about Good Thing. Boy gave up trying to explain. Good Thing drifted about, sulking.

When it was really light, Princess said she must go back. Boy agreed, but they put it off and kept talking. That was when I had my good idea. I went to the cupboard and fetched out my kittens, one by one, and I put them into Princess’s lap.

“Oh!” she said. “What beauties!”

“Tell her she’s to keep them and look after them,” I said to Boy.

He told her, and she said, “Brindle can’t mean it! It seems such a sacrifice. Tell her it’s sweet of her, but I can’t.”

“Make her take them,” I said. “Tell her they’re a present from you, if it makes her happier. Tell her they’re a sign that she’ll see you again. Tell her anything, but make her take them!”

So Boy told her, and Princess agreed. She gathered the tabby and the ginger and the mixed kitten into her hands, and Good Thing took her and the kittens away. We stood staring at the place where she had been, Boy and I. Things felt empty, but I was pleased. My kittens were safe from Old Man, and Princess had kittens now, which ought to have pleased Boy, even if they were mine and not his. I did not understand why he looked so sad.

Old Man was standing in the doorway behind us. We had not heard him getting up. He glared at the fine way Boy was dressed. “How did you come by those clothes?”

“I did a spell,” Boy said airily. Well, it was true in a way. Boy’s mood changed when he realized how clever we had been. He said, “And Brindle got rid of the mice,” and laughed.

Old Man was always annoyed when Boy laughed. “Funny, is it?” he snarled. “For that, you can go down to the cellar, you and your finery, and stay there till I tell you to come out.” And he put one of his spells on Boy, so that Boy had to go. Old Man locked the cellar door on him. Then he turned back, rubbing his hands and laughing, too. “Last laugh’s mine!” he said. “I thought he knew more than he let on, but there’s no harm done. I’ve still got him!” He went and looked in almanacs and horoscopes and chuckled more. Boy was eighteen that day. Old Man began looking up spells, lots of them, from the bad black books that even he rarely touched.

“Brindle,” said Good Thing, “I am afraid. Do one thing for me.”

“Leave a cat in peace!” I said. “I need to sleep.”

Good Thing said, “Boy will soon be dead and I will be shut out forever unless you help.”

“But my kittens are safe,” I said, and I curled up in the cupboard.

“They will not be safe,” said Good Thing, “unless you do this for me.”

“Do what for you?” I said. I was scared again, but I stretched as if I didn’t care. I do not like to be bullied. You should remember that.

“Go to the cellar in my invisible sack and tell Boy where the golden ball is,” Good Thing said. “Tell him to fetch it out of the floor and give it to you.”

I stretched again and strolled past Old Man. His face was scratched all over, I was glad to see, but he was collecting things to work spells with now. I strolled quite fast to the cellar door. There Good Thing scooped me up and went inside, in near dark. Boy was sitting against the wall.

“Nice of you to come,” he said. “Will Good Thing fetch Princess again tonight?” He did not think there was any danger. He was used to Old Man behaving like this. But I thought of my kittens. I showed him the place where the golden ball had got lost down the crack. I could see it shining down there. It took me ages to persuade Boy to dig it out, and even then he only worked at it idly, thinking of Princess. He could only get at it with one little finger, which made it almost too difficult for him to bother.

I heard Old Man coming downstairs. I am ashamed to say that I bit Boy, quite hard, on the thumb of the hand he was digging with. He went “Ow!” and jerked, and the ball flew rolling into a corner. I raced after it.

“Put it in your mouth. Hide it!” said Good Thing.

I did. It was hard not to swallow it. Then, when I didn’t swallow, it was hard not to spit it out. Cats are made to do one or the other. I had to pretend it was a piece of meat I was taking to my kittens. I sat in the corner, in the dark, while Old Man came in and locked the door and lit the tripod lamp.

“If you need Brindle,” Boy said, sulkily sucking his hand, “you can look for her. She bit me.”

“This doesn’t need a cat,” Old Man said. Boy and I were both astonished. “It just needs you,” he told Boy. “This is the life transfer spell I was trying on the black cat. This time I know how to get it right.”

“But you said you couldn’t do it without a special powder!” Boy said.

Old Man giggled. “What do you think I’ve been away looking for all this year?” he asked. “I’ve got a whole jar of it! With it, I shall put myself into your body and you into my body, and then I shall kill this old body off. I won’t need it or you after that. I shall be young and handsome, and I shall live for years. Stand up. Get into the pentangle.”

“Blowed if I shall!” said Boy.

But Old Man did spells and made him. It took a long time because Boy resisted even harder than I usually did and shouted spells back. In the end Old Man cast a spell that made Boy stand still and drew the five-pointed star around him, not in the usual place.

“I shall kill my old body with you inside it rather slowly for that,” he said to Boy. Then he drew another star, a short way off. “This is for my bride,” he said, giggling again. “I took her into my power ten years ago, and by now she’ll be a lovely young woman.” Then he drew a third star, overlapping Boy’s, for himself, and stood in it chuckling. “Let it start!” he cried out, and threw the strong, smelly black powder on the tripod. Everything went green-dark. When the green went, Princess was standing in the empty star.

“Oh, it’s you!” she and Boy both said.

“Aha!” said Old Man. “Hee-hee! So you and she know one another, do you? How you did it, boy, I won’t inquire, but it makes things much easier for me.” He began on his chanting.

“Give the golden ball to Princess,” Good Thing said to me. “Hurry. Make Boy tell her to swallow it.”

I ran across to Princess and spit the golden ball into her star. She pulled her skirt back from it.

“Brindle wants you to swallow it,” Boy said. “I think it’s important.”

People are peculiar. Princess must have known it was very important, but she said faintly, “I can’t! Not something that’s been in a cat’s mouth!”

Old Man saw the golden ball. He glared, still chanting, and raised his stick. The ball floated up and came toward him. Princess gave a last despairing snatch and caught it, just in time. She put it in her mouth.

“Ah! Back again!” said Good Thing.

Princess swallowed. She changed. She had been nice before but sort of stupid. Now she was nice and as clever as Boy. “You toad!” she said to Old Man. “That was part of my soul! You took it, didn’t you?”

Old Man raised his stick again. Princess held up both hands. Magic raged, strong enough to make my fur stand up, and Old Man did not seem to be able to do much at first. It was interesting. Princess had magic, too, only I think it had all gone into Good Thing. But not quite enough. She started to lose. “Help me!” she said to Boy.

Boy started to say a spell, but at that moment the door of the cellar burst open, and half the wall fell in with it. The Man rushed in with a crowd of others.

“Father!” said Princess. “Thank goodness!”

“Are you all right?” said the Man. “We traced you through those kittens. What are you trying to do here, Old Man? The life transfer, is it? Well, that’s enough of that!” The Man made signs that stood my coat up on end again.

Old Man screamed. I could tell he was dying. The spell had somehow turned back on him. He was withering and shrinking and getting older and older. Boy jumped out of his star and ran to Princess. They both looked very happy. Old Man snarled at them, but he could do nothing but round on me. Everyone does that. They all kick the cat when they can’t kick a person. “So you had kittens!” he screamed. “This is all your fault, cat! For that, you shall have kittens to drown for the next thousand years!”

“I soften that curse!” the Man shouted.

Then everything went away, and I was not in the town I knew anymore. I have been wandering about, all these years, ever since. Old Man’s curse means that I am good at having kittens. It is not a bad curse because the Man has softened it. Old Man meant my kittens to be drowned every time. But instead, if I can find an understanding person—like you—who will listen to my story, then my kittens will have good homes, and so will I for a time. You won’t mind. They’ll be beautiful kittens. They always are. You’ll see very soon now. After supper.

NAD AND DAN ADN QUAFFY

She had struggled rather as a writer until she got her word processor. Or not exactly struggled, she thought, frowning at her screen and flipping the cursor back to correct adn to and. For some reason, she always garbled the word and. It was always adn or nad; dna or nda was less frequent, but all of them appeared far oftener than the right way. She had only started to make this mistake after she gave up her typewriter, and she felt it was a small price to pay.

For years she had written what seemed to her the most stirring sort of novels, about lonely aliens among humans, or lonely humans among aliens, or sometimes both kinds lonely in an unkind world, all without ever quite hitting the response from readers she felt she was worth. Then came her divorce, which left her with custody of her son, Daniel, then thirteen. That probably provided an impetus of some sort in itself, for Danny was probably the most critical boy alive.

“Mum!” he would say. “I wish you’d give up that lonely-heart alien stuff! Can’t you write about something decent for a change?” Or, staring at her best efforts at cookery, he said, “I can’t be expected to eat this!” After which he had taken over cooking himself: they now lived on chili con carne and stir-fry. For as Danny said, “A man can’t be expected to learn more than one dish a year.” At the moment, being nearly fifteen, Danny was teaching himself curry. Their nice Highgate house reeked of burned garam masala most of the time.

But the real impetus had come when she found Danny in her workroom sternly plaiting the letters of her old typewriter into metal braid. “I’ve had this old thing!” he said when she tore him away with fury and cursings. “So have you. It’s out of the ark. Now you’ll have to get a word processor.”

“But I don’t know how to work the things!” she had wailed.

“That doesn’t matter. I do. I’ll work it for you,” he replied inexorably. “And I’ll tell you what one to buy, too, or you’ll only waste money.”

He did so. The components were duly delivered and installed, and Daniel proceeded to instruct his mother in how to work as much of them as—as he rather blightingly said—her feeble brain would hold. “There,” he said. “Now write something worth reading for a change.” And he left her sitting in front of it all.

When she thought about it, she was rather ashamed of the fact that her knowledge of the thing had not progressed one whit beyond those first instructions Danny had given her. She had to call on her son to work the printout, to recall most of the files, and to get her out of any but the most simple difficulty. On several occasions—as when Danny had been on a school trip to Paris or away with his school cricket team—she had had to tell her publisher all manner of lies to account for the fact that there would be no copy of anything until Danny got back. But the advantages far outweighed these difficulties, or at least she knew they did now.

That first day had been a nightmare. She had felt lost and foolish and weak. She had begun, not having anything else in mind, on another installment of lonely aliens. And everything kept going wrong. She had to call Danny in ten times in the first hour, and then ten times after lunch, and then again when, for some reason, the machine produced what she had written of Chapter I as a list, one word to a line. Even Danny took most of the rest of the day to sort out what she had done to get that. After that he hovered over her solicitously, bringing her mugs of black coffee, until, somewhere around nine in the evening, she realized she was in double bondage, first to a machine and then to her own son.

“Go away!” she told him. “Out of my sight! I’m going to learn to do this for myself or die in the attempt!”

Danny gave her bared teeth a startled look and fled.

By this time she had been sitting in front of board and screen for nearly ten hours. It seemed to her that her threat to die in the attempt was no idle one. She felt like death. Her back ached, and so did her head. Her eyes felt like running blisters. She had cramp in both hands and one foot asleep. In addition, her mouth was foul with too much coffee and Danny’s chili con carne. The little green letters on the screen kept retreating behind the glass to the distant end of a long, long tunnel. “I will do this!” she told herself fiercely. “I am an intelligent adult—probably even a genius—and I will not be dominated by a mere machine!”

And she typed all over again:

CHAPTER ONE

The Captain had been at board and screen ever since jump—a total of ten hours. Her hands shook with weariness, making it an effort to hold them steady on her switches. Her head was muzzy, her mouth foul with nutrient concentrates. But since the mutiny, it was sit double watches or fail to bring the starship Candida safely through the intricate system of Meld....

At this point she began to get a strange sense of power. She was dominating this damned machine, even though she was doing it only by exploiting her own sensations. Also, she was becoming interested in what might be going to happen to the starship Candida, not to speak of the reasons that had led up to the mutiny aboard her. She continued writing furiously until long after midnight. When she stopped at last, she had to pry her legs loose from her chair.

“That’s more like it, Mum!” Danny said the next morning, reading it as it came from the printer.

He was, as usual, right. Starship Candida was the book that made the name of F. C. Stone. It won prizes. It sold in resorts and newsagents all over the world. It was, reviewers said, equally remarkable for its insight into the Captain’s character as for the intricate personal relationships leading to the mutiny. Much was spoken about the tender and peculiar relationships between the sexes. This last made F. C. Stone grin rather. All she had done was to revenge herself on Danny by reversing the way things were between them. In the book the Captain was all-powerful and dominating and complained a lot about the food. The Mate had a hypnotically induced mind-set that caused him to bleat for assistance at the first sign of trouble.

Her next book, The Mutineers, was an even greater success. For this one, F. C. Stone extended the intricate personal relationships to the wider field of galactic politics. She discovered she reveled in politics. Provided she was making up the politics herself, there seemed no limit to how intricate she could make them.

Since then she had, well, not stuck to a formula—she was much more artfully various than that—but as she said and Danny agreed, there was no point in leaving a winning game. Though she did not go back to starship Candida, she stayed with that universe and its intricate politics. There were aliens in it, too, which she always enjoyed. And she kept mostly out in space, so that she could continue to describe pilots astronauting at the controls of a word processor. Sooner or later in most of her books, someone, human or alien, would have sat long hours before the screen until dazed with staring, aching in the back, itching in the nose—for the burning of Asian spices in the kitchen tended to give her hay fever—and with cramped hands, this pilot would be forced to maneuver arduously through jump. This part always, or nearly always, got written when F. C. Stone was unable to resist staying up late to finish the chapter.

Danny continued to monitor his mother. He was proud of what he had made her do. In holidays and around the edges of school, he hung over her shoulder and brought her continual mugs of strong black coffee. This beverage began to appear in the books, too. The mutineer humans drank gav, while their law-abiding enemies quaffed chvi. Spacer aliens staggered from their nav-couches to gulp down kivay, and the mystics of Meld used xfy to induce an altered state of consciousness, although this was not generally spotted as being the same substance. And it was all immensely popular.

It was all due to the word processor, she thought, giving the nearest component a friendly pat as she leaned toward the screen again. The latest mug of cooling kivay sat beside her. Her nose was, as usual, tickled by burned ginger or something. Her back was beginning to ache, or, more truthfully, her behind was. She ought to get a more comfortable chair, but she was too fond of this old one. Anyway, the latest book was the thing. For this one, she had at last gone back to starship Candida. There had been a lot of pressure from her fans. And her publisher thought there was enough material in their suggestions, combined with F. C. Stone’s own ideas, to make a trilogy. So she had decided to start in the way she knew would get her going. She typed:

Jump. Time nad the world stretched dna went out. Back. The Captain had sat at her boards for four objective days—four subjective minutes or four subjective centuries. Her head ached, gums adn all. She cursed. Hands trembling on controls, she struggled to get her fix on this system’s star.

Now what had some vastly learned reader suggested about this system’s star? It had some kind of variability, but that was all she could remember. Damn. All her notes for it were in that file Danny had set up for her. He was at school. But he had written down for her how to recall it. She fumbled around for his piece of paper—it had worked halfway under a black box whose name and function she never could learn—and took a swig of lukewarm xfy while she studied what to do. It looked quite simple. She took another sip of gav. Store the new book. Careful not to cancel this morning’s work. There. Screen blank. Now type in this lot, followed by Candida 2. Then—

A clear childish voice spoke. “This is Candida Two, Candy,” it said. “Candida One, I need your confirmation.”

It was no voice F. C. Stone knew, and it seemed to come from the screen. Her eyes turned to the mug of kivay. Perhaps she was in a state of altered consciousness.

“Candida One!” the voice said impatiently. “Confirm that you are conscious. I will wait ten seconds and then begin lifesaving procedures. Ten, nine, eight …”

This sounded serious. Coffee poisoning, thought F. C. Stone. I shall change to carrot juice or cocoa.

“… seven, six, five,” counted the childish voice, “four, three …”

I’d better say something, thought F. C. Stone. How absurd. Weakly she said, “Do stop counting. It makes me nervous.”

“Are you Candida One?” demanded the voice. “The voice pattern does not quite tally. Please say something else for comparison with my records.”

Why should I? thought F. C. Stone. But it was fairly clear that if she stayed silent, the voice would start counting again and then, presumably, flood the room with the antidote for xfy.

No, no, this was ridiculous. There was no way a word processor could flood anyone’s system with anything. Come to that, there was no way it could speak either—or was there? She must ask Danny. She was just letting her awe of the machine, and her basic ignorance, get on top of her. Let us be rational here, she thought. If she was not suffering from gav poisoning, or if, alternatively, the smell of charred turmeric at present flooding the house did not prove to have hallucinogenic properties, then she had worked too long and hard imagining things and was now unable to tell fantasy from reality … unless—what a wonderful thought!—Danny had, either for a joke or by accident, connected one of the black boxes to the radio and she was at this moment receiving its Play for the Day.

Her hand shot out to the radio beside her, which she kept for aural wallpaper during the duller part of her narratives, and switched it on. Click. “During this period Beethoven was having to contend with his increasing deafness—”

The childish voice cut in across this lecture. “This voice is not correct,” it pronounced, putting paid to that theory. “It is the voice of a male. Males are forbidden access to any of my functions beyond basic navigational aids. Candida One, unless you reply confirming that you are present and conscious, I shall flood this ship with sedative gas ten seconds from now.”

Then perhaps Danny has put a cassette in the radio as a joke, thought F. C. Stone. She turned off the radio and, for good measure, shook it. No, no cassette in there.

And the childish voice was at its counting again: “… six, five, four …”

Finding that her mouth was hanging open, F. C. Stone used it. “I know this is a practical joke,” she said. “I don’t know what it is you’ve done, Danny, but my God, I’ll skin you when I get my hands on you!”

The countdown stopped. “Voice patterns are beginning to match,” came the pronouncement, “though I do not understand your statement. Are you quite well, Candy?”

Fortified by the knowledge that this had to be a joke of Danny’s, F. C. Stone snapped, “Yes, of course I am!” Very few people knew that the C. in F. C. Stone stood for Candida, and even fewer knew that she had, in her childhood, most shamingly been known as Candy. But Danny of course knew both these facts. “Stop this silly joke, Danny, and let me get back to work.”

“Apologies,” spoke the childish voice, “but who is Danny? There are only two humans on this ship. Is that statement addressed to the male servant beside you? He asks me to remind you that his name is Adny.”

The joke was getting worse. Danny was having fun with her typos now. F. C. Stone was not sure she would ever forgive him for that. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me we’ve just emerged in the Dna System and will be coming in to ladn at Nad,” she said bitterly.

“Of course,” said the voice.

F. C. Stone spent a moment in angry thought. Danny had to be using a program of some kind. She ought first to test this theory and then, if it was correct, find some way to disrupt the program and get some peace. “Give me your name,” she said, “with visual confirmation.”

“If you like,” the voice responded. Had it sounded puzzled? Then Danny had thought of this. “I am Candida Two. I am your conscious-class computer modeled on your own brain.” It sounded quite prideful, saying this. But, thought F. C. Stone, a small boy co-opted by a grand fifteen-year-old like Danny would sound prideful. “We are aboard the astroship Partlett M32/A401.”

Motorways, thought F. C. Stone, but where did he get the name?

“Visual,” said the voice. Blocks of words jumped onto the screen. They seemed to be in—Russian? Greek?—capitals.

It had to be a computer game of some kind, F. C. Stone thought. Now what would Danny least expect her to do? Easy. She plunged to the wall and turned the electricity off. Danny would not believe she would do that. He would think she was too much afraid of losing this morning’s work, and maybe she would, but she could do it over again. As the blocks of print faded from the screen, she stumped off to the kitchen and made herself a cup of xfy—no, COFFEE!—and prowled around in there amid the smell of cauterized ginger while she drank it, with some idea of letting the system cool off thoroughly. She had a vague notion that this rendered a lost program even more lost. As far as she was concerned, this joke of Danny’s couldn’t be lost enough.

The trouble was that she was accustomed so to prowl whenever she was stuck in a sentence. As her annoyance faded, habit simply took over. Halfway through the mug of quaffy, she was already wondering whether to call the taste in the Captain’s mouth merely foul or to use something more specific, like chicken shit. Five minutes later F. C. Stone mechanically made herself a second mug of chofiy—almost as mechanically noting that this seemed to be a wholly new word for the stuff and absently constructing a new kind of alien to drink it—and carried it through to her workroom to resume her day’s stint. With her mind by then wholly upon the new solar system just entered by the starship Candida—there was no need to do whatever it was the learned fan wanted; after all, neither of them had been there and she was writing this book, not he—she switched the electicity back on and sat down.

Neat blocks of Greco-Cyrillic script jumped to her screen. “Candy!” said the childish voice. “Why don’t you answer? I repeat. We are well inside the Dna System and coming up to jump.”

F. C. Stone was startled enough to swallow a mouthful of scalding c’phee and barely notice what it was called. “Nonsense, Danny,” she said, somewhat hoarsely. “Everyone knows you don’t jump inside a solar system.”

The script on the screen blinked a little. “His name is Adny,” the voice said, sounding a little helpless. “If you do not remember that, or that microjumps are possible, then I see I must attend to what he has been telling me. Candy, it is possible that you have been overtaken by senility—”

“Senility!” howled F. C. Stone. Many murderous fates for Danny crowded through her mind.

“—and your male has been imploring me to ask you to authorize his use of functions Five through Nine to preserve this ship. Will you so authorize? Some action is urgent.”

A certain curiosity emerged through F. C. Stone’s anger. How far was Danny prepared to take his joke? How many possibilities had he allowed for? “I authorize,” she said carefully, “his use of functions Five through Eight only.” And let’s see if he planned for that! she thought.

It seemed he had. A symbol of some kind now filled the screen, a complex curlicue the like of which F. C. Stone had never seen or imagined her equipment capable of producing. A wholly new voice spoke, male and vibrant. “I thank you,” it said. “Function Eight will serve for now. This justifies my faith in you, Candida Three. I am now able to bypass the computer and talk to you direct. Please do not turn your power source off again. We must talk.”

It was a golden voice, the voice, perhaps, of an actor, a voice that made F. C. Stone want to curl up and purr and maybe put her hair straight, even while she was deciding there was no way Danny could have made his rough and squawky baritone sound like this. Gods! He must have hired someone! She gave that boy far too much money. She took another swig of ogvai while she noted that the voice was definitely in some way connected to the symbol on the screen. The curlicue jumped and wavered in time to its words.

“What do you mean by calling me Candida Three?” she asked coldly.

“Because you are the exact analogue of my mistress, Candida One,” the golden voice replied. “Her ship’s computer is known as Candida Two. It therefore followed that when I had searched the universes and discovered you, I came to think of you as Candida Three. I have been studying you—most respectfully, of course—through this machine you use and the thoughts you set down on it, for two years now, and—”

“And Daniel has been reading other books besides mine,” F. C. Stone interrupted. “Unfaithful brat!”

“I beg your pardon?” The symbol on the screen gave an agitated jump.

Score one to me! F. C. Stone thought. “My son,” she said. “And we’re talking parallel universes here, I take it?”

“We are.” The golden voice sounded both cautious and bemused. “Forgive me if I don’t quite follow you. You take the same sudden leaps of mind as my mistress, though I have come to believe that your mind is far more open than hers. She was born to a high place in the Matriarchy and is now one of the most powerful members of the High Coven—”

“Coven!” said F. C. Stone. “Whose book is this out of?”

There was a pause. The curlicue gave several agitated jumps. Then the golden voice said, “Look, please let me explain. I’m delaying jump as long as I can, but there really is only a very narrow window before I have to go or abort.”

He sounded very pleading. Or perhaps beguiling was a better word, F. C. Stone thought, for that kind of voice. “All right,” she said. “Get on with the program. But just tell me first what you mean when you say mistress, Danny.”

“Adny,” he said. “My name is Adny.”

“Adny, then,” said F. C. Stone. “Mistress has two meanings.”

“Why, I suppose I mean both,” he answered. “I was sold to Candy as a child, the way all men are in this universe. Men have almost no rights in the Matriarchy, and the Matriarchy is the chief power in our galaxy. I have been luckier than most, being sold to a mistress who is an adept of the High Coven. I have learned from her—”

F. C. Stone gave a slight exasperated sigh. For a moment there she had been uneasy. It had all seemed far more like a conversation than any program Danny could produce. But his actor friend seemed to have got back to his lines now. She shot forth another question. “So where is your mistress now?”

“Beside me, unconscious,” was the reply.

“Senile?” said F. C. Stone.

“Believe me, they are liable to it,” he said. “The forces they handle do seem to damage them, and it does seem to overtake them oftenest when they’re out in space. But”—she could hear the smile in his voice—“I must confess that I was responsible for this one. It took me years of study before I could outwit her, but I did it.”

“Congratulations, Adny,” said F. C. Stone. “What do you want me to do about it? You’re asking me to help you in your male backlash, is that it?”

“Yes, but you need do almost nothing,” he replied. “Since you are the counterpart of Candida One, the computer is accepting you already. If you wish to help me, all I need is your voice authorizing Candida Two to allow me functions Nine and Ten. I can then tap my mistress’s full power and navigate the ship to my rendezvous, whereupon I will cut this connection and cease interrupting you in your work.”

“What!” said F. C. Stone. “You mean I don’t get to navigate a word processor?”

“I don’t understand,” said Adny.

“Then you’d better!” said F. C. Stone. She was surprised at how strongly she felt. “Listen, Danny or Adny, or whoever you are! My whole career, my entire success as a writer, has been founded on the fact that I enjoy, more than anything else, sitting in front of this screen and pretending it’s the controls of a starship. I enjoy the dazed feeling, I like the exhaustion, I don’t mind getting cramp, and I even like drinking myself sick on ogvai! The only reason I haven’t turned the machine off again is the chance that you’re going to let me do it for real—or what feels like for real, I don’t care which—and I’m not going to let that chance slip. You let me pilot my WP and I’ll even authorize you to function Eleven afterward, if there is such a thing. Is that clear?”

“It is very clear, Great Lady,” he said. There was that in his tone that suggested he was very used to yielding to demanding women, but could there have been triumph in it, too?

F. C. Stone was not sure of that tone, but she did not let it worry her. “Right,” she said. “Brief me.”

“Very well,” he said, “though it may not be what you expect. We are about to make a microjump which in the normal way would bring us out above the spaceport but in this case is designed to bring us directly above the city of Nad and, hopefully, inside the Coven’s defenses there. Other ships of my conspiracy should be materializing, too, hopefully at the same moment, so the jump must be made with utmost accuracy. I can broadcast you a simulacrum of Partlett’s controls, scaled down to correspond to your own keyboard. But you must depress the keys in exactly the order in which I highlight them. Can you do this?”

“Yes,” said F. C. Stone. “But stop saying hopefully, or I shan’t grant you any functions at all. The word shouldn’t be used like that, and I detest sloppy English!”

“Yours to command,” Adny said. She could hear the smile in his voice again. “Here are your controls.”

The curlicue faded from the screen, to be replaced by a diagrammatic image of F. C. Stone’s own keyboard. It was quite recognizable, except to her dismay, an attempt had been made to repeat it three times over. The two outer representations of it were warped and blurred. “Gods!” said F. C. Stone. “How do I use this? There isn’t room for it all.”

“Hit HELP before you use the extra keys on the right and CAP before you use the ones on the left.” Adny’s voice reassured her. “Ready?”

She was. She took a hasty sip of cooling qavv to steady herself and hovered over her keyboard, prepared to enjoy herself as never before.

It was actually a bit of a letdown. Keys on her screen shone brighter green. Obedient to them, F. C. Stone found herself typing CAP A, d, HELP N and then HELP N, a, D. Some part of her mind suggested that this still looked like Danny’s joke, while another part, more serious, suggested it might be overwork and perhaps she should see a doctor. But she refused to let either of these thoughts distract her and typed CAP D, n, HELP A in high excitement.

As she did so, she heard the computer’s childish voice again. “Ready for jump. Candida One, are you sure of this? Your coordinates put us right on top of Nad, in considerable danger from our own defenses.”

“Reassure her,” Adny’s voice said urgently.

Without having to think, F. C. Stone said soothingly, “It’s all right, Candida Two. We have to test those defenses. Nad is under orders not to hurt us.” And she thought, As to the manner born! I’d have made a good Matriarch!

“Understood,” said the childish voice. “Jump as given, on the count of zero. Five, four, three”—F. C. Stone braced herself—“two, one, zero.”

Did she feel a slight lurch? Was there a mild ripple of giddiness? She was almost sure not. A quick look around the workroom assured her that all was as usual.

“Jumping,” said Candida Two. “There will be an interval of five subjective minutes.”

“Why?” said F. C. Stone, like a disappointed child.

Adny’s voice cut in hastily. “Standard for a microjump. Don’t make her suspicious!”

“But I don’t feel anything!” F. C. Stone complained in a whisper.

The keyboards vanished from the screen. “Nobody does,” said Adny. “Computer’s out of the circuit now. You can speak freely. There is no particular sensation connected with jump, though disorientation does occur if you try to move about.”

“Damn!” said F. C. Stone. “I shall have to revise all my books!” An acute need to visit the toilet down the passage came upon her. She picked up her mug of chphy reflexively, thought better of that, and put it down again. Her mind dwelt on that toilet, its bowl stained from Danny’s attempt, some years ago, to concoct an elixir of life, and its chain replaced by a string of cow bells. To take her mind off it, she said, “Tell me what you mean to do when you and the other ships come out over Nad. Does this start a revolution?”

“It’s rather more complicated than that,” said Adny. “Out of the twelve Male Lodges, there are only six prepared to rebel. Two of the remaining six are neutral traditionally and supported in this by the Minor Covens, but the Minor Covens are disaffected enough to ally with the Danai, who are a helium life-form and present a danger to all of us. The four loyal Lodges are supposed to align with the Old Coven, and on the whole they do, except for the Fifth Lodge, which has thrown in with the Midmost Coven, who are against everyone else. Their situation is complicated by their concessions to the Traders, who are largely independent, save for overtures they seem to have made to the Anders. The Anders—another life-form—have said they are our allies, but this flirting with the Traders makes us suspicious. So we decided on a bold ploy to test—”

“Stop!” said F. C. Stone. Much as she loved writing this kind of stuff, hearing someone talk like it made her head reel. “You mean, you’ve gone to all this trouble just for a test run?”

“It’s more complicated than—” began Adny.

“No, I don’t want to know!” said F. C. Stone. “Just tell me what happens if you fail.”

“We can’t fail,” he replied. “If we do, the High Coven will crush the lot of us.”

“Me, too?” F. C. Stone inquired anxiously.

“Possibly,” said Adny. “They may not realize how I did this, but if they do, you can probably stop them by destroying your machine.”

“Never!” said F. C. Stone. “I’d rather suffer—or, better still, win!”

A bell rang. The keyboard reappeared, elongated and bent, in her screen. “Emerged over Nad,” the computer said. “Candy! What is this? I count sixteen other ships emerged, two Trader, four Ander, and the rest appear to be Matriarch. We jump back.”

“Give me functions Nine and Ten!” Adny snapped.

“I authorize Adny—” said F. C. Stone.

“Oh, Candy!” the computer said reproachfully. “Why are you so good to that little creep? He’s only a man.”

“I authorize Adny in functions Nine and Ten,” F. C. Stone almost shrieked. It was the only way she could think of to stop the unpleasant sensations which were suddenly manifesting, mostly in her head and stomach. It was as if surf were breaking through her in bubbles of pain. A tearing feeling across her shoulders made her think she was germinating claws there. And psychic attack or not, she knew she just had to get to that toilet.

“Acknowledged,” the computer said glumly.

She leaped from her chair and ran. Behind her she heard claps of sound and booms that seemed to compress the air around her. Through them she heard Adny’s voice issuing orders, but that was shortly overlaid by a high-pitched whistling, drilling through her ears even through the firmly shut toilet door.

But in the loo, as she was adjusting her dress, a certain sanity was restored to F. C. Stone. She looked at her own face in the mirror. It was encouragingly square and solid and as usual—give or take a sort of wildness about the eyes—and it topped the usual rather overweight body in its usual comfortably shapeless sweater. She raked her fingers through the graying frizz of her hair, thinking as she did so that she would make a very poor showing beside Adny of the golden voice. The action brought away two handfuls of loose hair. As always, she was shedding hair after a heavy session at the word processor—a fact she was accustomed to transfer to her aliens, who frequently shed feathers or fur during jump. Things were quite normal. She had simply been overworking and let Danny’s joke get to her.

Or perhaps it was charred chili powder, she thought as she marched out into the passage again. Possibly due to its hallucinogenic nature, that damnable whistling was still going on, pure torture to her ears. From the midst of it she could hear Adny’s voice. “Ned Coven, do we have your surrender, or do we attack again?”

I’ve had enough! thought F. C. Stone. She marched to her desk, where the screen was showing Adny’s curlicue, pulsing to the beat of the beastly shrilling. “Stop this noise!” she commanded. “And give me a picture of Partlett’s flight deck.” If you can, she thought, feeling for the moment every inch the captain of the starship Candida.

The whistling died to an almost bearable level. “I need function Eleven to give you vision,” Adny said—irritably? casually? or was it too casually? He was certainly overcasual when he added, “It does exist, you know.”

Give him what he wants and get rid of him, thought F. C. Stone. “I authorize function Eleven then,” she said.

“Oh!” said the computer, like a hurt child.

And there was a picture on the screen, greenish and jumping and sleeting green lines, but fairly clear for all that. Partlett’s controls, F. C. Stone noted absently, had fewer screens than she expected—far fewer than she put in her books—but far more ranks of square buttons and far, far too many dials for comfort, all of them with a shabby, used look. But she was looking mostly at the woman who seemed to be asleep in the padded swivel seat in front of the controls. Mother naked, F. C. Stone was slightly shocked to see, and not a mark or a wrinkle on her slender body or on her thin and piquant face. Abruptly F. C. Stone remembered being quite proud of her looks when she was seventeen, and this woman was herself at seventeen, only beyond even her most idealized memories. Immense regret suffused F. C. Stone.

The whistling, blessedly, stopped. “Candy is really the same age as you,” Adny observed.

Her attention turned to him. His seat was humbler, a padded swivel stool. Sitting on it was a small man with a long, nervy face, the type of man who usually has tufts of hair growing in his ears and below his eyes, as if to make up for the fact that such men’s hair always tends to be thin and fluffy on top. Adny’s hair was noticeably thin on top, but he had smoothed and curled it to disguise the fact, and it was obvious that he had plucked and shaved all other hair from his wrinkled little body; F. C. Stone had no doubt of this, since he was naked, too. The contrast between his appearance and his voice was, to say the least of it, startling.

Adny saw her look and grinned rather ruefully as he leaned forward to hold a paper cup under some kind of tap below the control panel. She realized he could see her, too. The contrast between herself and the sleeping beauty beside him made her feel almost as rueful as he looked. “Can you give me a picture of Nad and any damage there?” she asked, still clinging to her role as Captain. It seemed the only way to keep any dignity.

“Certainly,” he said, running his finger down a row of the square buttons.

She found herself apparently staring down at a small town of old houses built up against the side of a hot stony hill—red roofs, boxlike white houses, courtyards shaded with trees. It was quite like a town in Spain or Italy, except that the shapes of the walls and the slant of the roofs were subtly different and wrong. It was the very smallness of the difference between this and towns she knew which, oddly enough, convinced F. C. Stone for once and for all that this place was no fake. She really was looking at a real town in a real world somewhere else entirely. There was a smoking, slaggy crater near the market square and another downhill below the town. That had destroyed a road. She had glimpses of the other spaceships, drifting about looking rather like hot-air balloons.

“Why is it such a small place?” she said.

“Because Nad is only a small outpost of the Matriarchy,” Adny replied in his golden voice. The picture flipped back to show he had turned to face her on his stool, sipping steaming liquid from his paper cup. No doubt it was kfa or even quphy. He smiled through its steam in a way that must have beguiled the poor sleeping beauty repeatedly, and she found she was wishing he had turned out to be an alien instead. “I owe you great thanks on behalf of the Second Male Lodge,” he said. “We now have the Nadlings where we want them. And since you have given me full control of this ship and access to all my ex-mistress’s power, I can move on to the central worlds in strength and use her as a hostage there.”

Hitler and Napoleon were both small men, F. C. Stone thought, with golden voices. It gave her a slight, cold frisson to think what she might have loosed on the unfortunate Matriarchy. “You gave me the impression that this was the central world,” said F. C. Stone.

“Not in so many words,” said Adny. “You don’t think I’d be fool enough to move against the strength of the Matriarchy without getting hold of a conscious-class computer first, do you?”

F. C. Stone wished to say that yes, she did. People took that sort of desperate risk in her books all the time. It depressed her to find him such a cautious rebel. And he had cheated her, as well as his sleeping beauty, and no doubt he was all set to turn the whole works into a Patriarchy. It was a total waste of a morning.

Or was it? she wondered. A matriarchy where men were sold as slaves was right up her street. There was certainly a book in there. Perhaps she should simply be grateful and hope that Adny did not get too far.

“Tell me,” she said, at which he looked up warily from his cup, “what is that stuff you’re drinking? Goffa? Xvay?”

She was glad to see she had surprised him. “Only coffee,” he said.

Read on for an excerpt from Howl’s Moving Castle

Chapter One

IN WHICH SOPHIE TALKS TO HATS

In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes.

Sophie Hatter was the eldest of three sisters. She was not even the child of a poor woodcutter, which might have given her some chance of success! Her parents were well to do and kept a ladies’ hat shop in the prosperous town of Market Chipping. True, her own mother died when Sophie was two years old and her sister Lettie was one year old, and their father married his youngest shop assistant, a pretty blonde girl called Fanny. Fanny shortly gave birth to the third sister, Martha. This ought to have made Sophie and Lettie into Ugly Sisters, but in fact all three girls grew up very pretty indeed, though Lettie was the one everyone said was most beautiful. Fanny treated all three girls with the same kindness and did not favor Martha in the least.

Mr. Hatter was proud of his three daughters and sent them all to the best school in town. Sophie was the most studious. She read a great deal, and very soon realized how little chance she had of an interesting future. It was a disappointment to her, but she was still happy enough, looking after her sisters and grooming Martha to seek her fortune when the time came. Since Fanny was always busy in the shop, Sophie was the one who looked after the younger two. There was a certain amount of screaming and hair-pulling between those younger two. Lettie was by no means resigned to being the one who, next to Sophie, was bound to be the least successful.

“It’s not fair!” Lettie would shout. “Why should Martha have the best of it just because she was born the youngest? I shall marry a prince, so there!”

To which Martha always retorted that she would end up disgustingly rich without having to marry anybody.

Then Sophie would have to drag them apart and mend their clothes. She was very deft with her needle. As time went on, she made clothes for her sisters too. There was one deep rose outfit she made for Lettie, the May Day before this story really starts, which Fanny said looked as if it had come from the most expensive shop in Kingsbury.

About this time everyone began talking of the Witch of the Waste again. It was said the Witch had threatened the life of the King’s daughter and that the King had commanded his personal magician, Wizard Suliman, to go into the Waste and deal with the Witch. And it seemed that Wizard Suliman had not only failed to deal with the Witch: he had got himself killed by her.

So when, a few months after that, a tall black castle suddenly appeared on the hills above Market Chipping, blowing clouds of black smoke from its four tall, thin turrets, everybody was fairly sure that the Witch had moved out of the Waste again and was about to terrorize the country the way she used to fifty years ago. People got very scared indeed. Nobody went out alone, particularly at night. What made it all the scarier was that the castle did not stay in the same place. Sometimes it was a tall black smudge on the moors to the northwest, sometimes it reared above the rocks to the east, and sometimes it came right downhill to sit in the heather only just beyond the last farm to the north. You could see it actually moving sometimes, with smoke pouring out from the turrets in dirty gray gusts. For a while everyone was certain that the castle would come right down into the valley before long, and the Mayor talked of sending to the King for help.

But the castle stayed roving about the hills, and it was learned that it did not belong to the Witch but to Wizard Howl. Wizard Howl was bad enough.

Though he did not seem to want to leave the hills, he was known to amuse himself by collecting young girls and sucking the souls from them. Or some people said he ate their hearts. He was an utterly cold-blooded and heartless wizard and no young girl was safe from him if he caught her on her own. Sophie, Lettie, and Martha, along with all the other girls in Market Chipping, were warned never to go out alone, which was a great annoyance to them. They wondered what use Wizard Howl found for all the souls he collected.

They had other things on their minds before long, however, for Mr. Hatter died suddenly just as Sophie was old enough to leave school for good. It then appeared that Mr. Hatter had been altogether too proud of his daughters. The school fees he had been paying had left the shop with quite heavy debts. When the funeral was over, Fanny sat down in the parlor in the house next door to the shop and explained the situation.

“You’ll all have to leave that school, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’ve been doing sums back and front and sideways, and the only way I can see to keep the business going and take care of the three of you is to see you all settled in a promising apprenticeship somewhere. It isn’t practical to have you all in the shop. I can’t afford it. So this is what I’ve decided. Lettie first—”

Lettie looked up, glowing with health and beauty which even sorrow and black clothes could not hide. “I want to go on learning,” she said.

“So you shall, love,” said Fanny. “I’ve arranged for you to be apprenticed to Cesari’s, the pastry cook in Market Square. They’ve a name for treating their learners like kings and queens, and you should be very happy there, as well as learning a useful trade. Mrs. Cesari’s a good customer and a good friend, and she’s agreed to squeeze you in as a favor.”

Lettie laughed in the way that showed she was not at all pleased. “Well, thank you,” she said. “Isn’t it lucky that I like cooking?”

Fanny looked relieved. Lettie could be awkwardly strong-minded at times. “Now Martha,” she said. “I know you’re full young to go out to work, so I’ve thought round for something that would give you a long, quiet apprenticeship and go on being useful to you whatever you decide to do after that. You know my old school friend Annabel Fairfax?”

Martha, who was slender and fair, fixed her big gray eyes on Fanny almost as strong-mindedly as Lettie. “You mean the one who talks such a lot,” she said. “Isn’t she a witch?”

“Yes, with a lovely house and clients all over the Folding Valley,” Fanny said eagerly. “She’s a good woman, Martha. She’ll teach you all she knows and very likely introduce you to grand people she knows in Kingsbury. You’ll be all set up in life when she’s done with you.”

“She’s a nice lady,” Martha conceded. “All right.”

Sophie, listening, felt that Fanny had worked everything out just as it should be. Lettie, as the second daughter, was never likely to come to much, so Fanny had put her where she might meet a handsome young apprentice and live happily ever after. Martha, who was bound to strike out and make her fortune, would have witchcraft and rich friends to help her. As for Sophie herself, Sophie had no doubt what was coming. It did not surprise her when Fanny said, “Now, Sophie dear, it seems only right and just that you should inherit the hat shop when I retire, being the eldest as you are. So I’ve decided to take you on as apprentice myself, to give you a chance to learn the trade. How do you feel about that?”

Sophie could hardly say that she simply felt resigned to the hat trade. She thanked Fanny gratefully.

“So that’s settled then!” Fanny said.

The next day Sophie helped Martha pack her clothes in a box, and the morning after that they all saw her off on the carrier’s cart, looking small and upright and nervous. For the way to Upper Folding, where Mrs. Fairfax lived, lay over the hills past Wizard Howl’s moving castle. Martha was understandably scared.

“She’ll be all right,” said Lettie. Lettie refused all help with the packing. When the carrier’s cart was out of sight, Lettie crammed all her possessions into a pillow case and paid the neighbor’s bootboy sixpence to wheel it in a wheel-barrow to Cesari’s in Market Square. Lettie marched behind the wheel-barrow looking much more cheerful than Sophie expected. Indeed, she had the air of shaking the dust of the hat shop off her feet.

The bootboy brought back a scribbled note from Lettie, saying she had put her things in the girls’ dormitory and Cesari’s seemed great fun. A week later the carrier brought a letter from Martha to say that Martha had arrived safely and that Mrs. Fairfax was “a great dear and uses honey with everything. She keeps bees.” That was all Sophie heard of her sisters for quite a while, because she started her own apprenticeship the day Martha and Lettie left.

Sophie of course knew the hat trade quite well already. Since she was a tiny child she had run in and out of the big workshed across the yard where the hats were damped and molded on blocks, and flowers and fruit and other trimmings were made from wax and silk. She knew the people who worked there. Most of them had been there when her father was a boy. She knew Bessie, the only remaining shop assistant. She knew the customers who bought the hats and the man who drove the cart which fetched raw straw hats in from the country to be shaped on the blocks in the shed. She knew the other suppliers and how you made felt for winter hats. There was not really much that Fanny could teach her, except perhaps the best way to get a customer to buy a hat.

“You lead up to the right hat, love,” Fanny said. “Show them the ones that won’t quite do first, so they know the difference as soon as they put the right one on.”

In fact, Sophie did not sell hats very much. After a day or so observing in the workshed, and another day going round the clothier and the silk merchant’s with Fanny, Fanny set her to trimming hats. Sophie sat in a small alcove at the back of the shop, sewing roses to bonnets and veiling to velours, lining all of them with silk and arranging wax fruit and ribbons stylishly on the outsides. She was good at it. She quite liked doing it. But she felt isolated and a little dull. The workshop people were too old to be much fun and, besides, they treated her as someone apart who was going to inherit the business someday. Bessie treated her the same way. Bessie’s only talk anyway was about the farmer she was going to marry the week after May Day. Sophie rather envied Fanny, who could bustle off to bargain with the silk merchant whenever she wanted.

The most interesting thing was the talk from the customers. Nobody can buy a hat without gossiping. Sophie sat in her alcove and stitched and heard that the Mayor never would eat green vegetables, and that Wizard Howl’s castle had moved round to the cliffs again, really that man, whisper, whisper, whisper.... The voices always dropped low when they talked of Wizard Howl, but Sophie gathered that he had caught a girl down the valley last month. “Bluebeard!” said the whispers, and then became voices again to say that Jane Farrier was a perfect disgrace the way she did her hair. That was one who would never attract even Wizard Howl, let alone a respectable man. Then there would be a fleeting, fearful whisper about the Witch of the Waste. Sophie began to feel that Wizard Howl and the Witch of the Waste should get together.

“They seem to be made for one another. Someone ought to arrange a match,” she remarked to the hat she was trimming at that moment.

But by the end of the month the gossip in the shop was suddenly all about Lettie. Cesari’s, it seemed, was packed with gentlemen from morning to night, each one buying quantities of cakes and demanding to be served by Lettie. She had had ten proposals of marriage, ranging in quality from the Mayor’s son to the lad who swept the streets, and she had refused them all, saying she was too young to make up her mind yet.

“I call that sensible of her,” Sophie said to a bonnet she was pleating silk into.

Fanny was pleased with this news. “I knew she’d be all right!” she said happily. It occurred to Sophie that Fanny was glad Lettie was no longer around.

“Lettie’s bad for custom,” she told the bonnet, pleating away at mushroom-colored silk. “She would make even you look glamorous, you dowdy old thing. Other ladies look at Lettie and despair.”

Sophie talked to hats more and more as weeks went by. There was no one else much to talk to. Fanny was out bargaining, or trying to whip up custom, much of the day, and Bessie was busy serving and telling everyone her wedding plans. Sophie got into the habit of putting each hat on its stand as she finished it, where it sat looking almost like a head without a body, and pausing while she told the hat what the body under it ought to be like. She flattered the hats a bit, because you should flatter customers.

“You have mysterious allure,” she told one that was all veiling with hidden twinkles. To a wide, creamy hat with roses under the brim she said, “You are going to have to marry money!” and to a caterpillar-green straw with a curly green feather she said, “You are young as a spring leaf.” She told pink bonnets they had dimpled charm and smart hats trimmed with velvet that they were witty. She told the mushroom-pleated bonnet, “You have a heart of gold and someone in a high position will see it and fall in love with you.” This was because she was sorry for that particular bonnet. It looked so fussy and plain.

Jane Farrier came into the shop next day and bought it. Her hair did look a little strange, Sophie thought, peeping out of her alcove, as if Jane had wound it round a row of pokers. It seemed a pity she had chosen that bonnet. But everyone seemed to be buying hats and bonnets around then. Maybe it was Fanny’s sales talk or maybe it was spring coming on, but the hat trade was definitely picking up. Fanny began to say, a little guiltily, “I think I shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get Martha and Lettie placed out. At this rate we might have managed.”

There was so much custom as April drew on toward May Day that Sophie had to put on a demure gray dress and help in the shop too. But such was the demand that she was hard at trimming hats in between customers, and every evening she took them next door to the house, where she worked by lamplight far into the night in order to have hats to sell the next day. Caterpillar-green hats like the one the Mayor’s wife had were much called for, and so were pink bonnets. Then, the week before May Day, someone came in and asked for one with mushroom pleats like the one Jane Farrier had been wearing when she ran off with the Count of Catterack.

That night, as she sewed, Sophie admitted to herself that her life was rather dull. Instead of talking to the hats, she tried each one on as she finished it and looked in the mirror. This was a mistake. The staid gray dress did not suit Sophie, particularly when her eyes were red-rimmed with sewing, and, since her hair was a reddish straw color, neither did caterpillar green nor pink. The one with mushroom pleats simply made her look dreary. “Like an old maid!” said Sophie. Not that she wanted to race off with counts, like Jane Farrier, or even fancied half the town offering her marriage, like Lettie. But she wanted to do something—she was not sure what—that had a bit more interest to it than simply trimming hats. She thought she would find time next day to go and talk to Lettie.

But she did not go. Either she could not find the time, or she could not find the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Howl—anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister. It was very odd. Sophie had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie. Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when there were no excuses left. “This is absurd!” Sophie said. “Market Square is only two streets away. If I run—” And she swore to herself she would go round to Cesari’s when the hat shop was closed for May Day.

Meanwhile a new piece of gossip came into the shop. The King had quarreled with his own brother, Prince Justin, it was said, and the Prince had gone into exile. Nobody quite knew the reason for the quarrel, but the Prince had actually come through Market Chipping in disguise a couple of months back, and nobody had known. The Count of Catterack had been sent by the King to look for the Prince, when he happened to meet Jane Farrier instead. Sophie listened and felt sad. Interesting things did seem to happen, but always to somebody else. Still, it would be nice to see Lettie.

May Day came. Merrymaking filled the streets from dawn onward. Fanny went out early, but Sophie had a couple of hats to finish first. Sophie sang as she worked. After all, Lettie was working too. Cesari’s was open till midnight on holidays. “I shall buy one of their cream cakes,” Sophie decided. “I haven’t had one for ages.” She watched people crowding past the window in all kinds of bright clothes, people selling souvenirs, people walking on stilts, and felt really excited.

But when she at last put a gray shawl over her gray dress and went out into the street, Sophie did not feel excited. She felt overwhelmed. There were too many people rushing past, laughing and shouting, far too much noise and jostling. Sophie felt as if the past months of sitting and sewing had turned her into an old woman or a semi-invalid. She gathered her shawl round her and crept along close to the houses, trying to avoid being trodden on by people’s best shoes or being jabbed by elbows in trailing silk sleeves. When there came a sudden volley of bangs from overhead somewhere, Sophie thought she was going to faint. She looked up and saw Wizard Howl’s castle right down on the hillside above the town, so near it seemed to be sitting on the chimneys. Blue flames were shooting out of all four of the castle’s turrets, bringing balls of blue fire with them that exploded high in the sky, quite horrendously. Wizard Howl seemed to be offended by May Day. Or maybe he was trying to join in, in his own fashion. Sophie was too terrified to care. She would have gone home, except that she was halfway to Cesari’s by then. So she ran.

“What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?” she asked as she ran. “I’d be far too scared. It comes of being the eldest of three.”

When she reached Market Square, it was worse, if possible. Most of the inns were in the Square. Crowds of young men swaggered beerily to and fro, trailing cloaks and long sleeves and stamping buckled boots they would never have dreamed of wearing on a working day, calling loud remarks and accosting girls. The girls strolled in fine pairs, ready to be accosted. It was perfectly normal for May Day, but Sophie was scared of that too. And when a young man in a fantastical blue-and-silver costume spotted Sophie and decided to accost her as well, Sophie shrank into a shop doorway and tried to hide.

The young man looked at her in surprise. “It’s all right, you little gray mouse,” he said, laughing rather pityingly. “I only want to buy you a drink. Don’t look so scared.”

The pitying look made Sophie utterly ashamed. He was such a dashing specimen too, with a bony, sophisticated face—really quite old, well into his twenties—and elaborate blonde hair. His sleeves trailed longer than any in the Square, all scalloped edges and silver insets. “Oh, no thank you, if you please, sir,” Sophie stammered. “I—I’m on my way to see my sister.”

“Then by all means do so,” laughed this advanced young man. “Who am I to keep a pretty lady from her sister? Would you like me to go with you, since you seem so scared?”

He meant it kindly, which made Sophie more ashamed than ever. “No. No thank you, sir!” she gasped and fled away past him. He wore perfume too. The smell of hyacinths followed her as she ran. What a courtly person! Sophie thought, as she pushed her way between the little tables outside Cesari’s.

The tables were packed. Inside was packed and as noisy as the Square. Sophie located Lettie among the line of assistants at the counter because of the group of evident farmers’ sons leaning their elbows on it to shout remarks to her. Lettie, prettier than ever and perhaps a little thinner, was putting cakes into bags as fast as she could go, giving each bag a deft little twist and looking back under her own elbow with a smile and an answer for each bag she twisted. There was a great deal of laughter. Sophie had to fight her way through to the counter.

Lettie saw her. She looked shaken for a moment. Then her eyes and her smile widened and she shouted, “Sophie!”

“Can I talk to you?” Sophie yelled. “Somewhere,” she shouted, a little helplessly, as a large, well-dressed elbow jostled her back from the counter.

“Just a moment!” Lettie screamed back. She turned to the girl next to her and whispered. The girl nodded, grinned, and came to take Lettie’s place.

“You’ll have to have me instead,” she said to the crowd. “Who’s next?”

“But I want to talk to you, Lettie!” one of the farmers’ sons yelled.

“Talk to Carrie,” Lettie said. “I want to talk to my sister.” Nobody really seemed to mind. They jostled Sophie along to the end of the counter, where Lettie held up a flap and beckoned, and told her not to keep Lettie all day. When Sophie had edged through the flap, Lettie seized her wrist and dragged her into the back of the shop, to a room surrounded by rack upon wooden rack, each one filled with rows of cakes. Lettie pulled forward two stools. “Sit down,” she said. She looked in the nearest rack, in an absentminded way, and handed Sophie a cream cake out of it. “You may need this,” she said.

Sophie sank onto the stool, breathing the rich smell of cake and feeling a little tearful. “Oh, Lettie!” she said. “I am so glad to see you!”

“Yes, and I’m glad you’re sitting down,” said Lettie. “You see, I’m not Lettie. I’m Martha.”

Read on for an excerpt from The Merlin Conspiracy

I

ONE

I have been with the Court all my life, traveling with the King’s Progress.

I didn’t know how to go on. I sat and stared at this sentence, until Grundo said, “If you can’t do it, I will.”

If you didn’t know Grundo, you’d think this was a generous offer, but it was a threat, really. Grundo is dyslexic. Unless he thinks hard, he writes inside out and backward. He was threatening me with half a page of crooked writing with words like inside turning up as sindie and story as otsyr.

Anything but that! I thought. So I decided to start with Grundo—and me. I am Arianrhod Hyde, only I prefer people to call me Roddy, and I’ve looked after Grundo for years now, ever since Grundo was a small, pale, freckled boy in rompers, sitting completely silently in the back of the children’s bus. He was so miserable that he had wet himself. I was only about five myself at the time, but I somehow realized that he was too miserable even to cry. I got up and staggered through the bumping, rushing bus to the clothes lockers. I found some clean rompers and persuaded Grundo to get into them.

This wasn’t easy, because Grundo has always been very proud. While I was working at it, Grundo’s sister, Alicia, turned round from where she was sitting with the big ones. “What are you bothering with Cesspit for?” she said, tipping up her long, freckled nose. “There’s no point. He’s useless.” She was eight at the time, but she still looks just the same: straight fair hair, thick body, and an air of being the person, the one everyone else has to look up to. “And he’s ugly,” she said. “He’s got a long nose.”

“So have you got a long nose,” I said, “Lady Sneeze.” I always called her Lady Sneeze when I wanted to annoy her. If you say “Alicia” quickly, it sounds just like a well-behaved sneeze—just like Alicia, in fact. I wanted to annoy her for calling Grundo Cesspit. She only said it because Sybil, her mother, called Grundo that. It was typical of the way they both treated him. Grundo’s father left Sybil before Grundo was born. Ever since I could remember, Sybil and Alicia had been thick as thieves together. Poor Grundo was nowhere.

It got worse when Grundo started lessons with us and turned out to be dyslexic. Sybil went around sighing, “He’s so stupid!” And Alicia chanted at him, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” Alicia, of course, did everything well, whether it was maths, magic, or horse riding. She got chosen as a Court page when she was ten.

Our teachers knew Grundo was not stupid, but his inside-out way of going on baffled them. They sighed, too, and called Grundo “our young eccentric,” and I was the one who taught Grundo to read and write. I think that was when I started calling him Grundo. I can’t quite remember why, except that it suited him better than his real name, which is Ambrose, of all things! Before long the entire Court called him Grundo. And while I was teaching him, I discovered that he had an unexpected amount of inside-out magical talent.

“This book is boring,” he complained in his deep, solemn voice. “Why should I care if Jack and Jill go shopping? Or if Rover chases the ball?” While I was explaining to him that all reading books were like this, Grundo somehow turned the book into a comic book, all pictures and no words. It started at the back and finished at the front, and in the pictures the ball chased Rover and Jack and Jill were bought by the groceries. Only Grundo would think of two people being bought by a huge chunk of cheese.

He refused to turn the book back. He said it was more fun that way, and I couldn’t turn it back into a reading book whatever I tried. It’s probably still where I hid it, down inside the cover of the old teaching bus seat. Grundo is obstinate as well as proud.

You might say I adopted Grundo as my brother. We were both on our own. I am an only child, and all the other Court wizards’ children were the same age as Alicia or older still. The other children our own age were sons and daughters of Court officials, who had no gift for magic. They were perfectly friendly—don’t get me wrong—but they just had a more normal outlook.

There were only about thirty of us young ones who traveled in the King’s Progress all the time. The rest only joined us for Christmas or for the other big religious ceremonies. Grundo and I always used to envy them. They didn’t have to wear neat clothes and remember Court manners all the time. They knew where they were going to be, instead of traveling through the nights and finding themselves suddenly in a flat field in Norfolk, or a remote Derbyshire valley, or a busy port somewhere next morning. They didn’t have to ride in buses in a heat wave. Above all, they could go for walks and explore places. We were never really in one place long enough to do any exploring. The most we got to do was look round the various castles and great houses where the King decided to stay.

We envied the princesses and the younger princes particularly. They were allowed to stay in Windsor most of the year. Court gossip said that the Queen, being foreign, had threatened to go back to Denmark unless she was allowed to stay in one place. Everyone pitied the Queen rather for not understanding that the King had to travel about in order to keep the realm healthy. Some said that the whole magic of the Islands of Blest—or maybe the entire world of Blest—depended on the King’s constantly moving about and visiting every acre of England.

I asked my grandfather Hyde about this. He is a Magid and knows about the magics of countries and worlds and so on. And he said that there might be something in this, but he thought people were overstating the case. The magic of Blest was very important for all sorts of reasons, he said, but it was the Merlin who was really entrusted with keeping it healthy.

My mother did quite often talk of sending me to live with this grandfather in London. But this would have meant leaving Grundo to the mercies of Sybil and Alicia, so whenever she suggested it, I told her I was proud to be a member of Court—which was quite true—and that I was getting the best possible education—which was partly quite true—and then I sort of went heavy at her and hoped she’d forget the idea. If she got really anxious and went on about this being no sort of life for a growing girl, I went on about the way Grandad grows dahlias. I really do hate dahlias as a way of life.

Mam had her latest worry session in Northumbria, in the rain. We were all camped in a steep, heathery valley waiting for the Scottish King to pay our King a formal visit. It was so bare that there was not even a house for the King. The canvas of the royal tent was turning a wet, dismal yellow just downhill from us, and we were slithering in shiny, wet sheep droppings while I went on about the way Grandad grows dahlias.

“Besides, it’s such a stupid thing for a powerful magician to do!” I said.

“I wish you didn’t feel like this about him,” Mam said. “You know he does a great deal more than simply grow flowers. He’s a remarkable man. And he’d be glad to have you as company for your cousin Toby.”

“My cousin Toby is a wimp who doesn’t mind being ordered to do the weeding,” I said. I looked up at Mam through the wet black wriggles of my hair and realized that my dahlia ploy hadn’t worked the way it usually did. Mam continued to look anxious. She is a serious person, my mam, weighed down by her responsible job in the traveling Exchequer, but I can usually get her to laugh. When she laughs, she throws her head back and looks very like me. We both have rather long pink cheeks and a dimple in the same place, though her eyes are black and mine are blue.

I could see the rain was getting her down—having to keep the water out of her computer and having to go to the loo in a little wet flapping tent and all the rest—and I saw it was one of the times when she starts imagining me going down with rheumatic fever or pneumonia and dying of it. I realized I’d have to play my very strongest card or I’d be packed off down to London before lunch.

“Come off it, Mam!” I said. “Grandad’s not your father. He’s Dad’s. If you’re so anxious for me to be in the bosom of my family, why not send me to your father instead?”

She pulled her shiny waterproof cape around her and went back a step. “My father is Welsh,” she said. “If you went there, you’d be living in a foreign country. All right. If you feel you really can stand this awful, wandering existence, we’ll say no more.”

She went away. She always did if anyone talked about her father. I thought he must be terrifying. All I knew about my other grandfather was that Mam had had to run away from home in order to marry Dad, because her father had refused to let her marry anyone. Poor Mam. And I’d used that to send her away. I sighed with mixed relief and guilt. Then I went to find Grundo.

Grundo’s lot is always worse when we’re stopped anywhere for a while. Unless I think of an excuse to fetch him away, Sybil and Alicia haul him into Sybil’s tent and try to correct his faults. When I ducked into the dim, damp space, it was worse than usual. Sybil’s manfriend was in there, laughing his nasty, hissing laugh. “Give him to me, dear,” I heard him saying. “I’ll soon make a man of him.” Grundo was looking pale, even for him.

The only person at Court that I dislike more than Alicia is Sybil’s manfriend. His name is Sir James Spenser. He is very unpleasant. The astonishing thing is that the whole Court, including Sybil, knows he is nasty, but they pretend not to notice because Sir James is useful to the King. I don’t understand about this. But I have noticed the same thing happening with some of the businessmen who are useful to the King. The media are constantly suggesting these men are crooks, but nobody even thinks of arresting them. And it is the same with Sir James, although I have no idea in what way he is useful to the King.

He gave me a leer. “Checking that I haven’t eaten your sweetheart?” he said. “Why do you bother, Arianrhod? If I had your connections, I wouldn’t look twice at young Ambrose.”

I looked him in the face, at his big, pocky nose and the eyes too near on either side of it. “I don’t understand you,” I said in my best Court manner. Polite but stony. I didn’t think my connections were particularly aristocratic. My father is only the King’s weather wizard and much further down the order than Sybil, who is, after all, Earthmistress to England.

Sir James did his hissing laugh at me. Hs-ss-szz. “The aristocracy of magic, my dear child,” he said. “Look at your grandparents! I should think at the very least you’d be setting your sweet young adolescent cap at the next Merlin.”

Sybil said sharply, “What?” and Alicia gave a gasp. When I looked at her, she was speckled pink with indignation. Alicia has even more freckles than Grundo. Sybil’s long, jowly face was furious. Her pale blue eyes were popping at me.

I didn’t understand what made them so angry. I just thought, Bother! Now I shall have to be very polite—and rather stupid—and pretend I haven’t noticed. This was typical of Sir James. He loved making everyone around him angry. “But we’ve got a perfectly good Merlin!” I said.

“An old man, my dear,” Sir James said gleefully. “Old and frail.”

“Yes,” I said, truly puzzled. “But there’s no knowing who’ll be the next one, is there?”

He looked at me pityingly. “There are rumors, dear child. Or don’t you listen to gossip with your naïve little ears?”

“No,” I said. I’d had enough of his game, whatever it was. I turned, very politely, to Sybil. “Please would it be all right if I took Grundo to watch my father work?”

She shrugged her thick shoulders. “If Daniel wants to work in front of a staring child, that’s his funeral, I suppose. Yes, take him away. I’m sick of the sight of him. Grundo, be back here to put on Court clothing before lunch or you’ll be punished. Off you go.”

“There’s motherly love for you!” I said to Grundo as we hurried off into the rain.

He grinned. “We don’t need to go back. I’ve got Court clothes on under these. It’s warmer.”

I wished I’d thought of doing the same. It was so chilly that you wouldn’t have believed it was nearly Midsummer. Anyway, I’d got Grundo away. Now I just had to hope that Dad wouldn’t mind us watching him. He doesn’t always like being disturbed when he’s working.

When I cautiously lifted the flap of the weather tent, Dad was just getting ready. He had taken off his waterproof cape and was slipping off his heavy blue robe of office and rolling up his shirtsleeves. He looked all slim and upright like that, more like a soldier preparing for a duel than a wizard about to work on the weather.

“Over in that corner, both of you,” he said. “Don’t distract me or you’ll have the King after us in person. He’s given me very exact instructions for today.” He turned a grin on us as he said this, to show he didn’t at all mind having us there.

Grundo gave him one of his serious, deep looks. “Are we allowed to ask questions, sir?”

“Most probably not,” said my father. “That’s distracting. But I’ll describe what I’m doing as I go along, if you want. After all,” he added, with a wistful look at me, “one of you might wish to follow in my footsteps someday.”

I love my dad, though I never see very much of him. I think he really does hope that I might turn out to be a weather worker. I’m afraid I am going to be a great disappointment to him. Weather does fascinate me, but so does every other kind of magic, too. That was true even then, when I didn’t know more than the magic they teach you in Court, and it’s more true than ever now.

But I loved watching Dad work. I found I was smiling lovingly as he stepped over to the weather table. At this stage it was unactivated and was simply a sort of framework made of gold and copper wires resting on stout legs that folded up for when we traveled. The whole thing folded away into a worn wooden box about four feet long, which I had known for as long as I could remember. It smelled of ozone and cedarwood. Dad and that box went together somehow.

He stood beside the table with his head bent. It always looked as if he were nerving himself up for something. Actually, he was just working the preliminary magics, but when I was small, I always thought that weather working took great courage, and I used to worry about him. But I’ve never lost the queer amazement you feel when the magic answers Dad’s call. Even that day, I gasped quietly as mistiness filled the framework. It was blue, green, and white at first, but almost at once it became a perfect small picture of the Islands of Blest. There was England in all its various greens, except for the small brown stains of towns, with its backbone of the Pennines and its southern hills as a sort of hipbone. All the rivers were there, as tiny blue-gray threads, and dark green clumps of woodlands—very important each of these, Dad tells me, because you bring the picture into being by thinking of water, wood, and hill—but it still defeats me why I could even see the white cliffs in the south. And Scotland was there, too, browner, with traveling ridges of gray and white cloud crossing the brown. The fierce grayness at the top was a bad storm somewhere near John O’ Groats. Wales lurked over to one side, showing only as dim greens under blue-gray clouds. But Ireland was entirely clear, living up to the name of Emerald Isle, and covered in big moving ripples of sunlight.

Dad walked round it all, bending over to look at the colors of the seas particularly. Then he stood back to see the patterns of the slanting, scudding clouds. “Hmm,” he said. He pointed to the northeast of England, where the land was almost invisible under smoky, whitish mist. “Here’s the rain that’s presently being such a pest. As you see, it’s not moving much. The King wants it cleared up and, if possible, a blaze of sunlight when the Scottish King arrives. Now, look at Scotland. There’s very little clear sky there. They’re having sun and showers every ten minutes or so as those clouds ripple. I can’t get any good weather from there, not to make it last. Quite a problem.”

He walked slowly in among the green landscapes and the moving clouds, passing through the wires of the framework underneath as if they were not there. That part always gave me a shudder. How could a person walk through solid gold wire?

He stopped with his hand over dim, green Wales. “This is the real problem. I’m going to have to fetch the weather from Ireland without letting this lot drift in across us. That’s really appalling weather there in Wales at the moment. I shall have to try to get it to move away north and out to sea. Let’s see how the bigger currents are going.”

Up to his waist in moving, misty map, he gestured. The whole picture humped up a little and moved away sideways, first to show a curve of heaving gray ocean, ribbed like a tabby cat with strips of whitish cloud, and then, giddily, going the other way to show green-brown views of the Low Countries and the French kingdoms and more stripes of cloud there.

“Hmm,” my father said again. “Not as bad as I feared. Everything is setting northward, but only very slowly. I shall have to speed things up.”

He set to work, rather as a baker might roll dough along a board, pushing and kneading at clumps of cloud, steering ocean wisps with the flat of his hands, and shoving mightily at the weathers over Ireland and Wales. The dimness over Wales broke apart a little to show more green, but it didn’t move away. My father surveyed it with one hand to his chin.

“Sorry, everyone,” he said. “The only way with this is a well-placed wind.”

We watched him moving around, sometimes up to his shoulders in land and cloud, creating winds. Most of them he made by blowing more or less softly, or even just opening his mouth and breathing, and they were never quite where you thought they ought to be. “It’s a little like sailing a boat,” he explained, seeing Grundo frowning. “The wind has to come sideways onto the canvas to make a boat move, and it’s the same here, except that weather always comes in swirls, so I have to be careful to set up a lighter breeze going the opposite way. There.” He set everything moving with a sharp breath that was almost a whistle and stood back out of the table to time it.

After a few minutes of looking from his big, complicated watch to the movements on the table, he walked away and picked up his robe. Weather working is harder than it looks. Dad’s face was streaming with sweat, and he was panting slightly as he fetched his portable far-speaker out of a pocket in the robe. He thought a moment, to remember that day’s codes, and punched in the one for the Waymaster Royal’s office.

“Daniel Hyde here,” he told the official who answered. “The rain will stop at twelve-oh-two, but I can’t promise any sunlight until one o’clock.... Yes … Almost exactly, but it couldn’t be done without a wind, I’m afraid. Warn His Majesty that there may be half a gale blowing between eleven-thirty and midday. It’ll drop to a light wind around half past. … Yes, we should have fine weather for some days after this.”

He put the speaker away and smiled at us while he put on his robe. “Fancy a visit to the Petty Viands bus?” he asked. “I could do with a cup of something hot and maybe a sticky cake or two.”

Read on for an excerpt from Dark Lord of Derkholm

ONE

WILL YOU ALL BE QUIET!” snapped High Chancellor Querida. She pouched up her eyes and glared around the table.

“I was only trying to say—” a king, an emperor, and several wizards began.

“At once,” said Querida, “or the next person to speak spends the rest of his life as a snake!”

This shut most of the University Emergency Committee up. Querida was the most powerful wizard in the world, and she had a special feeling for snakes. She looked like a snake herself, small and glossy-skinned and greenish, and very, very old. Nobody doubted she meant what she said. But two people went on talking, anyway. Gloomy King Luther murmured from the end of the table, “Being a snake might be a relief.” And when Querida’s eyes darted around at him, he stared glumly back, daring her to do it.

And Wizard Barnabas, who was vice chancellor of the University, simply went on talking.

“… trying to say, Querida, that you don’t understand what it’s like. You’re a woman. You only have to be the Glamorous Enchantress. Mr. Chesney won’t let women do the Dark Lord.” Querida’s eyes snapped around at him with no effect at all. Barnabas gave her a cheerful smile and puffed a little. His face seemed designed for good humor. His hair and beard romped around his face in gray curls. He looked into Querida’s pouched eyes with his blue, bloodshot ones and added, “We’re all worn out, the lot of us.”

“Hear, hear!” a number of people around the table muttered cautiously.

“I know that!” Querida snapped. “And if you’d listen, instead of all complaining at once, you’d hear me saying that I’ve called this meeting to discuss how to put a stop to Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties for good.”

This produced an astonished silence.

A bitter little smile put folds in Querida’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “I’m well aware that you elected me high chancellor because you thought I was the only person ruthless enough to oppose Mr. Chesney and that you’ve all been very disappointed when I didn’t immediately leap at his throat. I have, of course, been studying the situation. It is not easy to plan a campaign against a man who lives in another world and organizes his tours from there.” Her small green-white hands moved to the piles of paper, bark, and parchment in front of her, and she began stacking them in new heaps, with little dry, rustling movements. “But it is clear to me,” she said, “that things have gone from bad, to intolerable, to crisis point, and that something must be done. Here I have forty-six petitions from all the male wizards attached to the University and twenty-two from other male magic users, each pleading chronic overwork. This pile is three letters signed by over a hundred female wizards, who claim they are being denied equal rights. They are accurate. Mr. Chesney does not think females can be wizards.” Her hands moved on to a mighty stack of parchments with large red seals dangling off them. “This,” she said, “is from the kings. Every monarch in the world has written to me at least once protesting at what the tours do to their kingdoms. It is probably only necessary to quote from one. King Luther, perhaps you would care to give us the gist of the letter I receive from you once a month?”

“Yes, I would,” said King Luther. He leaned forward and gripped the table with powerful blue-knuckled hands. “My kingdom is being ravaged,” he said. “I have been selected as Evil King fifteen times in the last twenty years, with the result that I have a tour through there once a week, invading my court and trying to kill me or my courtiers. My wife has left me and taken the children with her for safety. The towns and countryside are being devastated. If the army of the Dark Lord doesn’t march through and sack my city, then the Forces of Good do it next time. I admit I’m being paid quite well for this, but the money I earn is so urgently needed to repair the capital for the next Pilgrim Party that there is almost none to spare for helping the farmers. They hardly grow anything these days. You must be aware, High Chancellor—”

Querida’s hand went to the next pile, which was of paper, in various shapes and sizes. “I am aware, thank you, Your Majesty. These letters are a selection of those I get from farmers and ordinary citizens. They all state that what with magical weather conditions, armies marching over crops, soldiers rustling cattle, fires set by the Dark Lord’s minions, and other hazards, they are likely to starve for the foreseeable future.” She picked up another smallish pile of paper. “Almost the only people who seem to be prospering are the innkeepers, and they complain that the lack of barley is making it hard to brew sufficient ale.”

“My heart bleeds,” King Luther said sourly. “Where would we be if a Pilgrim Party arrived at an inn with no beer?”

“Mr. Chesney would not be pleased,” murmured a high priest. “May the gods defend us, Anscher preserve us from that!”

“Chesney’s only a man,” muttered the delegate from the Thieves Guild.

“Don’t let him hear you say that!” Barnabas said warningly.

“Of course he’s only a man,” snapped Querida. “He just happens to be the most powerful man in the world, and I’ve taken steps to ensure that he cannot hear us inside this council chamber. Now may I go on? Thank you. We are being pressured to find a solution by several bodies. Here”—she picked up a large and beautifully lettered parchment with paintings in the margins—“is an ultimatum from Bardic College. They say that Mr. Chesney and his agents appear to regard all bards with the tours as expendable. Rather than lose any more promising musicians, they say here, they are refusing to take part in any tours this year, unless we can guarantee the safety of—”

“But we can’t!” protested a wizard two places down from Barnabas.

“True,” said Querida. “I fear the bards are going to have to explain themselves to Mr. Chesney. I also have here similar but more moderate letters from the seers and the healers. The seers complain that they have to foresee imaginary events and that this is against the articles of their guild, and the healers, like the wizards, complain of chronic overwork. At least they only threaten not to work this year. And here”—she lifted up a small ragged pile of paper—“here are letters from the mercenary captains. Most of them say that replacements to manpower, equipment, and armor cost them more than the fees they earn from the Pilgim Parties, and this one on top from—Black Gauntlet, I think the man’s name is—also very feelingly remarks that he wants to retire to a farm, but he has not in twenty years earned enough for one coo—”

“One what?” said King Luther.

“Cow. He can’t spell,” said Barnabas.

“—even if there were any farms where he would be safe from the tours,” said Querida. She shuffled more papers, saying as she shuffled, “Pathetic letters from nuns, monks, werewolves. Where are—? Oh, yes, here.” She picked up a white sheet that glowed faintly and a large pearly slice of what seemed to be shell, covered with faint marks. “Probably one of their old scales,” she remarked. “These are protests from the elves and the dragons.”

“What have they got to complain of?” another wizard asked irritably.

“Both put it rather obscurely,” Querida confessed. “I think the Elfking is talking about blackmail and the dragons seem to be bewailing the shrinking of their hoards of treasure, but both of them seem to be talking about their birthrate, too, so one cannot be sure. You can all read them in a short while, if you wish, along with any other letters you want. For now, have I made my point?” Her pouchy eyes darted to look at everyone around the long table. “I have asked everyone I can think of to tell me how the tours affect them. I have received over a million replies. My study is overflowing with them, and I invite you all to go and inspect it. What I have here are only the most important. And the important thing is that they all, in different ways, say the same thing. They want an end to Mr. Chesney’s Pilgrim Parties.”

“And have you thought of a way to stop them?” Barnabas asked eagerly.

“No,” said Querida. “There is no way.”

“What?” shouted almost everyone around the table.

“There is no way,” Querida repeated, “that I can think of. Perhaps I should remind you that Mr. Chesney’s decisions are supported by an extremely powerful demon. All the signs are that he made a pact with it when he first started the tours.”

“Yes, but that was forty years ago,” objected the young Emperor of the South. “Some of us weren’t born then. Why should I have to keep on doing what that demon made my grand-father do?”

“Don’t be foolish,” Querida snapped. “Demons are immortal.”

“But Mr. Chesney isn’t,” argued the young Emperor.

“Possibly he isn’t, but I’ve heard he has children being groomed to take over after him,” Barnabas said sadly.

Querida’s eyes darted to the Emperor in venomous warning. “Don’t speak like that outside this room. Mr. Chesney does not like to hear anyone being less than enthusiastic about his Pilgrims, and we do not mention the demon. Have I made myself plain?” The young Emperor swallowed and sat back. “Good,” said Querida. “Now, to business. The tour agents have been in this world for over a month, and the arrangements for this year’s tours are almost complete. Mr. Chesney is due here himself tomorrow to give the Dark Lord and the Wizard Guides their final briefings. The purpose of this meeting is supposed to be to appoint this year’s Dark Lord.”

Heavy sighs ran around the table. “All right,” said one of the wizards, out of the general dejection. “Who is it to be? Not me. I did it last year.”

Querida gave her sour little smile, folded her hands, and sat back. “I have no idea,” she said blandly. “I have no more idea who is to be Dark Lord than I have about how to stop the tours. I propose that we consult the Oracles.”

There was a long, thoughtful silence. Relieved shiftings began around the table as even the slowest of the people there realized that Querida was, after all, trying to find a way out. At last the high priest said dubiously, “Madam Chancellor, I understood that the Oracles were set up for Mr. Chesney by wizards of the University—”

“And by a former high priest, who asked the gods to speak through the Oracles,” Querida agreed. “Is that any reason why they shouldn’t work, Reverend Umru?”

“Well,” said the high priest. “Er. Mightn’t the Oracles, in that case, be … well … biased?”

“Probably,” said Querida. “For that reason, I propose to ask both the White Oracle and the Black Oracle. They will say two different things, and we will do them both.”

“Er,” said High Priest Umru. “Two Dark Lords?”

“If necessary,” said Querida. “Anything it takes.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. Because she was so small, this kept her head at exactly the same height. Her small, lizard-like chin jutted as she looked around the table. “We can’t all go to the Oracles,” she said, “and some of you look far too tired. I shall take a representative body. King Luther, I think, and Barnabas, you come. And you, High Priest Umru—”

Umru stood up and bowed, with his hands clasped across his large belly. “Madam Chancellor, I would hate to be selected on false pretenses. I am probably one of the few people here who does not object to the Pilgrim Parties. My temple has prospered exceedingly out of them over the years.”

“I know,” said Querida. “You people keep taking me for a fool. I want you as a representative of the other point of view, of course. And I’ll take you, too, for the same reason.” Her hand darted out like a snake’s tongue to point at the delegate from the Thieves Guild.

He was a young man, thin and fair and clever-looking. He was extremely surprised. “Me?” he said. “Are you sure?”

“What a silly question,” Querida said. “Your guild must have made a mint from the Pilgrims, one way and another.”

A strange expression crossed the face of the thief, but he got up without a word. His clothing was as rich as that of the high priest. His long silk sleeves swirled as he walked gracefully around the table. “Aren’t the Oracles in the Distant Desert?” he asked. “How do we go?”

“By a translocation spell I have already set up,” Querida said. “Come over here, the four of you.” She led the way to the empty part of the room, where one of the large flagstones in the floor could be seen to have faint marks around its edges. “The rest of you can start reading those letters while we’re away,” she said. “And I’ll need a name for you,” she told the young thief.

“Oh … Regin,” he said.

“Stand here,” Querida said, pushing him to one corner of the flagstone. She pushed King Luther, Barnabas, and High Priest Umru to each of the other corners and slithered between Umru and King Luther to stand in the center of the stone herself. From the point of view of the people still sitting at the table, she vanished entirely behind Umru’s belly. Then, quietly and without warning, all five of them vanished and the flagstone was bare.

From the point of view of the four people with Querida, it was like suddenly stepping into an oven—an oven that was probably on fire, King Luther thought, shielding his eyes with his stout woolen sleeve. Sweat ran out from under Barnabas’s curls. Umru gasped and staggered and then tried wretchedly to get sand out of his embroidered slippers and loosen his vestments at the same time.

Only Querida was perfectly happy. She said, “Ah!” and stretched, turning her face up to the raging sun with a blissful smile. Her eyes, the young thief noticed, were wide open and looking straight into the sun. Wizards! he thought. He was as uncomfortable as the other three, but he had been trained to seem cool and keep his wits about him. He looked around. The Oracles were only a few yards away. They were two small domed buildings, the one on the left so black that it looked like a hole in the universe, and the one on the right so dazzlingly white that sweat ran stinging into his eyes and he had to look away from it.

While they waited for the other three to recover, Querida took Regin’s arm and pulled him across the sand, toward the white building. “Why did you look so oddly when I said your guild must have made a mint from the tours?” she hissed up at him. “Does that mean you want the tours stopped, too?”

Trust her to notice! the thief thought ruefully. “Not exactly, Madam Chancellor. But if you think about it, you’ll see that after forty years we haven’t got much else to steal. We’re debating stealing from one another, and even if we did, there’s nothing much left to spend what we steal on. Actually, I was sent to ask whether it was permissible to steal from the Pilgrims.”

“Don’t you steal from tourists?” Querida asked. When he shook his head, another blissful grin spread over Querida’s little lizard face. “Do you know, I believe that must be one thing that Mr. Chesney forgot to put in his rules. By all means, start stealing from tourists.” Her face darted around toward Umru, who was now mopping his head with his embroidered cope. “Come along, man! Don’t just stand there! Come along, all of you, before you fry. We’ll begin with the White Oracle.”

She led the way to the white building. Regin followed, stepping lightly in his soft boots, although sweat trickled past his ears. King Luther and Barnabas trudged glumly after them. Umru floundered behind and had some trouble fitting through the narrow white doorway.

Inside, it was dark and beautifully cool. They stood in a row looking into a complete darkness that seemed to take up much more space than such a small building could hold.

“What do we do?” King Luther asked.

“Wait,” said Querida. “Watch.”

They waited. After a while, as happens when you stare into total darkness, they all thought they could see dots, blobs, and twirling patterns. Sun dazzle, King Luther thought. Trick of the eyeballs, Regin thought. Take no notice. Means nothing.

All at once the seeming dazzles gathered purposefully together. It was impossible to think they meant nothing. In a second or so they definitely formed the shape of something that might have been human, though swirling and too tall, composed of dim reds and sullen blues and small flashes of green. A soft, hollow voice, with a lot of echoes behind it, said, Speak your question, mortals.

“Thank you,” Querida said briskly. “Our question is this: What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr. Chesney for good?”

The swirling shape dived, mounted to something twenty feet high, and then shrank to something Querida’s size, weaving this way and that. It seemed agitated. But the hollow voice, when it spoke, was the same as before: You must appoint as Dark Lord the first person you see on leaving here.

“Much obliged,” said Querida.

Quite suddenly the little temple was not dark at all. It was a very small space, hardly big enough for the five of them, with bare white walls and a floor of drifted sand in which bits of rubbish could be seen, evidently dropped by other people who had been to consult the White Oracle. There were scraps of paper, a small shoe, buckles, straps, and plum stones. Something flashed, half buried in the sand by the toes of Regin’s boots. While everyone was turning to go out, he stooped and picked it deftly up and then paused in surprise with the rest of them, because the doorway was no longer narrow. It was now wide enough for all five of them to walk out side by side. They stepped forward into the heat again, blinking at empty miles of glaring desert.

“No one here,” said Querida.

“I suppose it’ll be the first person we see when we get back then,” Barnabas said.

Regin looked at what he had picked up. It was a strip of cloth. There were black letters printed on it that read: Be careful what you ask for; you may get it. He passed it silently to King Luther, who was nearest.

“Now it warns us!” said King Luther, and passed it to Umru.

“This is something I often tell my flock,” Umru said.

“Wizards know it, too,” Barnabas said. He took the cloth and passed it to Querida. “We’ve been warned, Querida. Do you still want to consult the Black Oracle as well?”

“Of course I do. And I am always very careful what I ask for,” Querida retorted. She led the way across the short distance to the black temple. The others looked at one another, shrugged, and followed.

The black building breathed out cold from its surface. Umru sighed with relief as he came under its walls, but his teeth were actually chattering slightly by the time it was his turn to squeeze through the narrow entrance. Inside, he moaned miserably, because it was as hot in there as the desert outside. He stood puffing and panting in deep darkness while, just as before, dazzles and blobs gathered in front of their eyes.

We wait for them to gather, Regin thought wisely. But this time, instead of gathering, the twirling dazzles retreated, swirling away to the sides and glowing more and more strongly. It took all the watchers a full minute to realize that the darkness left behind was now the shape of a huge nearly human figure.

“Oh, I see!” muttered Querida.

You do? said a great, hollow voice. It was deep as a coal mine. Then ask.

“Thank you,” said Querida, and just as before, she asked, “What do we do to abolish the Pilgrim Parties and get rid of Mr. Chesney for good?”

There was a long, long silence. The darkness remained absolutely still while the silence lasted and then abruptly quivered and broke up, with shoots of light rushing through it from either side. When it spoke again, the deep voice shook a little.

You must appoint as Wizard Guide to the last tour the second person you see on leaving here.

Then, as in the white temple, the space was small and empty and they were crowded together, standing among rubbish. It was slightly less hot.

“I swear that thing was laughing!” Barnabas said as they turned to go and found, as before, that the doorway was now wide enough to take all of them.

Something glittered in the sand by Regin’s boot. This time he did not pick it up. He put his toe under it and nudged it until he could see that it was a scrap of paper with one gold edge. Sure enough, it had written on it: Be careful what you ask for; you may get it. He decided not to mention it to the others.

“Well, the desert’s still empty,” said King Luther. “Oh!”

A man was just coming out of the temple of the White Oracle. He was a tall, fattish, mildfaced man, dressed in the kind of clothes farmers wore. He was edging sideways out of the narrow entrance with one arm up to shade his eyes, but they could all see his face quite clearly.

Barnabas said, “Oh, no!” and King Luther said, “I’ll be damned!” Umru shook his head. “Be careful what you ask for,” he sighed. Querida drew in a little hiss of breath.

“What’s the matter?” asked Regin. “Who is he? Who are they, I mean?” he added as someone else squeezed out of the white doorway behind the wide man. This person was a boy of about fourteen who looked rather like the man, except that he was skinny where the man was wide. As Regin asked, the man rounded on the boy.

“There,” he said. “You’re answered. Satisfied?”

“No, I am not!” said the boy. “I’ve never heard of this person. Who is he?”

“Goodness knows,” replied the man. “But he’s no one at the University, so it’s quite clear you’re not going to the University to learn your wizardry, anyway. I was right.”

The boy’s chin bunched angrily. “There’s no need to look so pleased. You always try to stop me doing what I want!”

And the two of them stood in the sand and shouted at one another.

“Who are they?” Regin asked again.

“I don’t know the boy,” Querida said, “but I know the man all right. His name is Derk. And he did once qualify at the University as a wizard. There is no doubt Mr. Chesney would accept him as Dark Lord.”

“The boy’s his son,” Barnabas said. “His name’s Blade. Querida, I don’t want to do this. Derk is a nice man and a friend of mine. He’s actually very gifted—”

“There are two opinions about that,” Querida snapped. “Has the boy any talent?”

“Bags of it,” Barnabas said miserably. “Takes after his mother.”

“Oh—Mara, I remember,” Querida said. “I must talk to Mara. That’s settled then. We have our Dark Lord and our Wizard Guide according to both the Oracles.”

“We could always pretend we hadn’t seen them and choose the next two people we see,” King Luther suggested.

“The gods forfend!” Umru gasped, mopping his face with his undercope.

Querida shot King Luther her snakiest look and marched over to the two outside the white temple. As she reached them, Derk was leaning forward to bawl into his son’s face, with a wholly reasonable air, as if he were simply discussing something quietly, “I tell you, the University’s not a place to learn anything these days. They haven’t had a new idea for thirty years. All they do is crawl to Mr. Chesney.”

Querida could easily pretend not to hear this, because Blade was at the same time screaming, “I don’t want to hear! It’s just excuses to stop me doing what I want! You let Shona go to Bardic College, so why don’t you let me learn magic?”

“ER, HEM!” said Querida, loudly enlarged by magic.

Derk and Blade both whirled around. “Tyrant!” Blade screamed in her face, and then bowed over, consumed with embarrassment.

Derk surveyed the tiny, glistening lady in the robes of high chancellor. His eyes traveled on to the tall, glum, sweaty figure of King Luther and the huge shape of Umru and the blisters of sweat popping out on his vast, red-blotched cheeks. He nodded to them and smiled at Barnabas, whose curls were wet and whose face was even redder than Umru’s. Finally he looked at the young man in the rear, who was a stranger to him and only pretending not to be hot. “Oh, hello,” he said. “What are you all doing here? Is there some reason you aren’t using a refrigeration spell?”

“No, I forgot, bother it!” said Querida. “I like the heat.”

Derk nudged Blade. Blade recovered from his embarrassment enough to make a slight gesture. Incredible, blessed coolness spread over the four men.

“Bags of talent indeed,” Regin murmured.

“Thank you, young man,” Umru said gratefully.

Blade was clearly intending to demonstrate that it was not usual for him to scream into people’s faces. He bowed. “You’re welcome, Your Reverence,” he said with great politeness. “And—excuse me—do any of you know a wizard called Deucalion?” He looked round them anxiously as they all shrugged and shook their heads. “Magic user then?” he asked, with his voice dropping hopelessly.

“Never heard of anyone of that name, Blade,” said Barnabas. “Why?”

“He’s the one the White Oracle says is going to train me as a wizard,” Blade explained. “Dad’s never heard of him either.” He sighed.

Querida swept this aside. “We, as it happens, have consulted the Oracles also,” she said. “They have named you, Wizard Derk, as this year’s Dark Lord and you, young Blade, as Wizard Guide to the last tour.”

“Now listen—” said Derk.

“No arguing with the Oracles, Derk,” Barnabas said quietly.

“But—” said Blade.

“Nor you, young man,” said Querida. “Both of you are going to be very busy for the next six months.”

At this Derk stirred himself, powerfully but a little uncertainly, and stood over Querida. “I don’t think you can do this,” he said.

“Oh, yes, I can,” she said. “Go home and make ready. Tomorrow, at midday sharp, Mr. Chesney and all the Wizard Guides and I will be arriving at your house to brief you on this year’s plans.” When Derk still stood there, she gazed up at him like a cobra ready to strike and added, “In case you are planning to be away from home tomorrow, I must point out you are in a very poor position, Wizard Derk. You have not paid your wizard’s dues to the University for fifteen years. This gives me the right to exact penalties.”

“I sent you a griffin’s egg,” Derk said.

“It was addled,” said Querida. “As I am sure you knew.”

“And I couldn’t send you anything else,” Derk went on seriously. “All the products of my wizardry are alive. It would be criminal to shut them up in the University dues vault. You’d want to kill them and embalm them first. Besides, my wife has paid dues enough for two of us.”

“Mara’s miniature universes are quite irrelevant to Mr. Chesney,” Querida stated. “Be warned, Wizard Derk. Either you present yourself at Derkholm to Mr. Chesney and the rest of us tomorrow, or you have every magic user in this world looking for you to make you be Dark Lord. Do I make myself clear?”

Blade pulled his father’s arm. “Better go, Dad.”

“And you, young man,” said Querida. “You’re to be there, too.”

Blade succeeded in pulling his father around sideways, but Derk still looked down at Querida across his own shoulder. “No one should have this kind of power,” he said.

“To whom do you refer, Wizard?” she asked, still in her cobra stance.

“Chesney, of course,” Derk said rather hastily.

Here Blade pulled harder, and the two of them disappeared in a stinging cloud of blown sand.

“Phew!” said Barnabas. “Poor old Derk!”

“Let us go home more slowly,” said Querida. “I feel a little tired.”

The return journey was more like a lingering walk, in which they trod now on a patch of hot sand, now on wiry dead grass, now on rocks or moss. Regin put himself beside Querida as they went. “Who is this Wizard Derk?” he asked.

Querida sighed. “A shambles of a man. The world’s worst wizard, to my mind.”

“Oh, come now, Querida,” said Barnabas. “He’s excellent at what he does—just a little unconventional, you know. When we were students together, I always thought he was twice as bright as me.”

Querida shuddered. “Unconventional is a kind word for it. I was senior instructor then. Of all the things he did wrong, my worst memories are of being dragged up in the middle of the night to deal with that vast blue demon that Derk had called up and couldn’t put down. You remember?”

Barnabas nodded and bit his lip in order not to laugh. “Nobody knew its name, so none of the usual exorcisms worked. It took the entire staff of the University to get rid of it in the end. All through the night. Derk was never much good at conventional wizardry, I admit. But you use him a lot, don’t you, Reverend?”

Umru smiled sweetly, his fat, comfortable, cool self again. “I pay for Wizard Derk’s services almost every time my temple has a tour party through. No one but Wizard Derk can make a convincing human corpse out of a dead donkey.” Regin stared. Umru smiled ever more sweetly. “Or a sheep,” he said. “We are always chosen as an evil priesthood, and the Pilgrims expect us to have a vilely tortured sacrifice to display. Wizard Derk saves us the necessity of using people.”

“Oh,” said Regin. He turned to where King Luther was trudging grimly in the rear. “And you, Your Majesty? You know this wizard, too?”

“We use him for hangings and heads on spikes occasionally,” King Luther said. “But I hire him most often for the feast when the damn Pilgrims have gone. He has performing animals. Pigs mostly.”

“Pigs?” said Regin.

“Yes, pigs,” said King Luther. “They fly.”

“Oh,” Regin said again. As he said it, they arrived back on the flagstone in the council room again. Regin’s teeth chattered; Barnabas was shivering; Umru was juddering all over. Querida was unaffected. So was King Luther, whose northern kingdom was never warm.

“What is the matter?” Umru cried out. People turned from reading the heaps of letters on the table to stare at him. He held his hands out piteously. “Look. Blue!”

“Oh. Um,” said Barnabas. “It’s young Blade’s fault, I’m afraid. Boys of that age never know their own strength. I’ll do what I can, but it may take an hour or so.”

Read on for an excerpt from Archer’s Goon

CHAPTER ONE

The trouble started the day Howard came home from school to find the Goon sitting in the kitchen. It was Fifi who called him the Goon. Fifi was a student who lived in their house and got them tea when their parents were out. When Howard pushed Awful into the kitchen and slammed the door after them both, the first person he saw was Fifi, sitting on the edge of a chair, fidgeting nervously with her striped scarf and her striped leg warmers.

“Thank goodness you’ve come at last!” Fifi said. “We seem to have somebody’s Goon. Look.”

Howard looked the way Fifi’s chin jerked and saw the Goon sitting in a chair by the dresser. He was filling most of the rest of the kitchen with long legs and huge boots. It was a knack the Goon had. The Goon’s head was very small, and his feet were enormous. Howard’s eyes traveled up a yard or so of tight faded jeans, jerked to a stop for a second at the knife with which the Goon was cleaning the dirty nails of his vast hands, and then traveled on over an old leather jacket to the little, round fair head in the distance. The little face looked half-daft.

Howard was in a bad mood anyway. That was Awful’s fault. Awful had made him meet her coming out of school because, as she said, he was her big brother and supposed to look after her. When Howard got there, there was Awful racing out of the gates, chased by twenty angry little girls. Awful was shouting, “My big brother’s here to hit you! Hit them, Howard!” Howard did not know what Awful had done to the other little girls, but knowing Awful, he suspected it was something bad. He objected to being used as Awful’s secret weapon, but he did not feel he could let her down. He swung his bag menacingly, hoping that would frighten the little girls off. But there were so many of them and they were so angry that it had ended by being quite a fight. And the little girls called names. It was being called names that had put Howard in a bad mood. And now he came home to find it full of Goon.

He banged his bag down on the kitchen table. The Goon did not look up. “Who is he supposed to be?” Howard asked Fifi.

Fifi jittered nervously. “He just walked in and sat there,” she said. “He says he’s from Archer, whoever that is.”

Howard was big for his age. On the other hand, so was the Goon big for whatever age he was. And the Goon had that knife. Howard thumped his bag on the table again. “Well, he can just go away,” he said. It did not come out as fierce as he had hoped.

Here Awful put her word in. “You go away, Goon,” she said. “Howard’s bag’s covered with the blood of little girls.”

This seemed to interest the Goon. He stopped cleaning his nails and gave the bag a wondering look. He spoke, in a strong, daft voice. “Don’t see any blood.”

“And we don’t know anyone called Archer!” Howard snapped.

The Goon grinned, a daft, placid grin. “Your dad does,” he said, and went back to cleaning his nails.

“He smells,” said Awful. “Make him go. I want my tea.”

The Goon did smell rather, a faint smell of gasoline and rotten eggs, which came in whiffs whenever he moved. Howard and Fifi exchanged helpless looks.

“I want my tea!” Awful yelled, in the way that had earned her her name. Her real name was Anthea, but she had been Awful from the moment she was born and first opened her mouth.

The piercingness of Awful’s yell seemed to get to the Goon. A slight quiver ran through the length of him, though it stopped before it got to his face. “Shut up,” he said.

“Shan’t,” said Awful. The Goon’s little face and daft round eyes turned to look at Awful. He seemed amazed. Awful looked back. She drew a deep, careful breath, opened her mouth, and screamed. Dad always said that scream had cleared clinics and emptied buses since Awful was a month old. Now she was eight it was truly horrible.

The Goon cocked his small head and listened to it, almost appreciatively, for a second. Then he grinned. “Aw, shut up,” he said, and threw his knife at Awful.

At least that was what seemed to happen. Something certainly zipped past Awful’s screaming face. Awful ducked and stopped screaming at once. Something certainly flew on past Awful and landed thuk in Howard’s bag on the table. After it had, the Goon went placidly back to cleaning his nails with what was obviously the selfsame knife.

Howard, Fifi, and Awful stared from the knife in the Goon’s hands to the raw new rip in Howard’s bag. Awful longed to scream again but did not quite dare. “How—how did he do that?” said Fifi. “He never moved!”

The Goon spoke again. “Know I mean business now,” he said. He sounded rather smug.

“What business?” said Howard.

“Stay here till I get satisfaction,” said the Goon. “Told her before you came in.” And he went on sitting, with his legs spread over most of the kitchen. It was plain he meant what he said.

Since there seemed no way of budging the Goon, Fifi and Howard began trying to get tea around the edges of him. This turned out to be impossible. The Goon took up too much space. They kept having to climb over his legs. The Goon made no attempt to stop them. On the other hand, he made no attempt to get his legs out of their way either.

“Serve you right if I spill hot tea over you!” Howard said angrily.

The Goon grinned. “Better not.”

“Or,” said Howard, “if I trip, you could get a peanut butter sandwich in the face.”

The Goon thought about this. Fifi interrupted hurriedly. “Would you like some tea, Goon? Tea in a cup, I mean, and a sandwich to hold in your hand?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said the Goon. And he added, after thinking deeply again, “Not stupid, you know. Knew what you meant.”

This was so clearly untrue that Fifi and Awful, scared though they were, spent the next ten minutes hanging on to each other trying not to laugh. Howard crossly pushed a mug of tea and a sandwich at the Goon. The Goon put his knife away and took them without a word. Slurp, he went at the tea, and he ate the sandwich without once closing his mouth. Howard had to look away.

“But why have you come?” he burst out angrily. “Are you sure you’ve come to the right house?”

The Goon nodded. He gulped down the last of the sandwich and then got his knife out again to scrape bits of bread from between his teeth. “Your dad called Quentin Sykes?” he said around the sharp edge of it. “Writes books and things?”

Howard nodded. His heart sank. Dad must have written something rude about this Archer person. It had happened before. “What’s Dad done?”

The Goon jerked his little head at Fifi. “Told her. Sykes got behind with his payment. Archer wants his two thousand. Here to collect it.”

The smiles were wiped off Fifi’s and Awful’s faces. “Two thousand!” Fifi exclaimed. “You never told me that!”

“Who is Archer?” said Howard.

The Goon shrugged his huge shoulders. “Archer farms this part of town. Your dad pays, Archer doesn’t make trouble.” He grinned, almost sweetly, and sucked the last bit of bread off the point of his knife. “Got trouble now. Got me.”

“Phone the police,” said Awful.

The Goon’s smile broadened. He took his knife by its point and wagged it at Awful. “Better not,” he said. “Really bett’n’t had.” They exchanged looks again. It seemed to all of them, even Awful, that the Goon’s advice was good. The Goon nodded when he saw them look and held his mug out for more tea. “Quite peaceful really,” he remarked placidly. “Like this house. Civilized.”

“Oh, do you?” Howard said as Fifi filled the Goon’s mug. “Just as well you like it because Dad won’t be in for ages yet. It’s his day for teaching at the Polytechnic.”

“Easily wait,” the Goon said.

“Does Mum know about Archer?” Awful asked.

“No idea,” said the Goon.

This had been worrying Howard, too. He was sure Mum did not know and would be very upset when she found out. She worried all the time about how short of money they were. He realized that he simply had to get the Goon out of the house before Mum came home. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you and I go along to the Poly? We can find Dad there and ask him.”

The Goon’s little head nodded. The grin he raised from drinking tea was big and sly. “You go,” he said. “Me and the little girl stay here. Teach her some manners.”

“I’m not staying with him!” Awful said.

“Eat your tea,” said Fifi. “We’d better all go, Howard.”

“That suit you?” Howard asked the Goon.

The Goon considered, idly scraping the point of his knife around his mug of tea. The noise made them all shiver. Chips and gouges of china fell out of the mug onto his faded jeans. That knife, Howard thought, must be made of something most unusual, something which could cut china and come back to you when it was thrown. “All go then,” the Goon said at last. “All keep where I can see you.” He put the scraped, carved mug on the floor and waited for Awful to finish eating. When she had, he stood up.

They found themselves backing away from him. He was even larger than they had thought. His little head grazed the ceiling. His long arms dangled. Fifi and Awful looked tiny beside him. Howard, who was used to finding himself as big as most people these days, suddenly felt small and skinny and feeble beside the Goon. He saw it was no good trying to run away when they got outside. They would have to trick the Goon somehow. He was obviously very stupid.

Fifi bravely rewrapped her scarf around her neck and crammed a striped hat on her head. She took hold of Awful’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she said in a small, squeaky voice. “I’m here.”

The Goon grinned down at her and calmly took hold of Awful’s other hand. Awful dragged to get it free. When that made no impression at all, she said, “I’ll bite you!”

“Bite you back,” remarked the Goon. “Give you tetanus.”

“I think he means it,” Fifi said in a faint squeak. “Don’t annoy him, Awful.”

“Can’t annoy me,” said the Goon. “No one has yet.” He must have gone on thinking about this while Howard was leading the way down the side passage into Upper Park Street. It was getting dark by then. The Goon’s head seemed to get lost upward in the dusk. When Howard looked up, he could hardly see anything beyond the Goon’s wide leather shoulders. “Funny,” the Goon’s voice came down. “Never been really angry. Wonder what would happen if I was.”

“I shudder to think!” Fifi said, more faintly than ever. “Howard, would you like to hold my other hand?”

Howard was going to refuse indignantly. But it dawned on him in time that Fifi was scared stiff. So was he. When he took her hand in what was supposed to be a comforting grip, his hand was as cold and shaking as Fifi’s. Joined in a line, they turned right and walked the short distance to the Poly. It could have been a shorter distance still, but Fifi took one look at the empty spaces of the park, and another, shuddering, at the gathering dark in Zed Alley and took the longer way around by the road and in through the main gate of the Poly.

By the time they got there bright strip lights were on in most of the windows of the Poly, and the forecourt, where the diggers were at work excavating for the new building, was well lit, too. There were a lot of people about, students hurrying home and men working on the site. It should have felt safe. But the Goon still had hold of Awful’s hand, and none of them felt safe. Fifi cast longing looks at several people she knew, but she did not dare call out for help. Howard twitched at her hand, trying to tell her that they could give the Goon the slip inside the building. They could go up in the elevator, down the stairs, through the fire doors, up in the other elevators, and shake him off in the crowds. Then they could phone the police.

They went up the steps into the litter of paper cups in the foyer. Howard turned toward the elevators.

“Don’t be too clever,” the Goon said. “Know where you live.”

Howard turned around and looked up at him. The distant small face held the usual grin, but just for an instant, before Howard looked clearly, it did not look quite as daft as he had thought. In fact, he could have sworn the Goon looked almost clever. But when Howard looked properly, he realized that it was just a sort of slyness. That was bad enough. Howard changed direction and led them all up the stairs instead, to the room where Dad usually did his teaching.

Dad was there. They heard his voice from behind the door, raised in a yell. “Good heavens, woman! I don’t want to know what the Structuralists think! I want to know what you think!”

Dad sounded busy. Howard raised one hand to knock at the door, but the Goon reached a long arm around him and tore the door open. Inside, there was a row of people sitting in metal chairs and holding note pads. They all turned irritably to look at the door. Quentin Sykes, propped on the back of another metal chair, turned around as irritably as the rest. He was smallish and fattish and barely came up to the Goon’s armpit. But, as Howard knew, you could rely on Dad not to panic. Quentin went on looking at them irritably and raked his hands through the rather fluffy remains of his hair, while he took in the Goon, Howard’s and Fifi’s scared faces, and Awful’s angry glower.

He turned back to his students. “Well, that about wraps it up for today,” he said smoothly. “We’ll save the Structuralist view for next week. Come in, all of you, and shut the door—you’re making a draft. I think we’ll ask Miss Potter to introduce next week’s discussion, since she obviously knows so much about Structuralism.” At this the thinnest woman with the largest note pad sat upright and stared in outrage. “The rest of you,” Quentin Sykes said, before she could speak, “had better read these books in order to keep up with Miss Potter.” And he rapidly recited a list of books. While the students, including Miss Potter, scribbled them down, Quentin took another look at the Goon. “See you all next week,” he said.

The students took a look at the Goon, too, and all decided to leave quickly. Everyone hurried out of the room, except for Miss Potter, who was still looking outraged. “Mr. Sykes,” she said. “I really must complain—”

“Next week, Miss Potter. Put it all in your paper,” Quentin said. “Show me how wrong I am.”

Miss Potter, looking more outraged than ever, squared her shoulders and marched out of the room. Howard hoped that Dad would be able to get rid of the Goon this easily, too.

“Now what is this?” Quentin said, looking at the Goon.

“Meet the Goon, Dad,” said Howard.

The Goon grinned, almost angelically. “Overdue payment,” he said. “Came to collect two thousand.”

“He just walked in, Mr. Sykes!” Fifi said angrily. “And he—”

Quentin stopped Fifi by holding one hand up. It was a knack he seemed to have with students. “Nonsense,” he said. “My payment isn’t overdue.”

It was the Goon’s turn to hold one hand up, grinning still. Since he was still holding Awful’s hand, Awful came up, too, dangling and yelling. He said something, but nothing could be heard but Awful. He had to shout it. “Should have had it two weeks ago! Archer’s annoyed—” This was as far as the Goon got before Awful somehow managed to climb up her own arm and fasten her teeth in the Goon’s knuckles. The Goon must have felt it. He turned to her reproachfully. “Drop you!” he shouted above the noise Awful was still making.

“No, you won’t. You’ll put her down,” said Quentin. Long practice had given him a way of enlarging his voice so that it came through Awful’s. “Or you will if you want to hear yourself speak.”

This seemed to strike the Goon as a good idea. He lowered Awful to the floor, where she stood putting her tongue in and out and making disgusted faces. “He tastes horrible,” she said. “Can I go on yelling?”

“No,” said Quentin, and he said to the Goon, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of this Archer. The man I deal with is Mountjoy.”

“Don’t know Mountjoy,” said the Goon. “Must go to Archer in the end. Archer didn’t get it.”

“But I tell you I sent it,” Quentin insisted. “I sent it last week. I know it was late, but Mountjoy never bothers, as long as it’s the full two thousand words.” He turned to Fifi. “You know I sent it, don’t you? It was that long envelope I gave you last week to drop in at the Town Hall.”

It seemed to Howard that Fifi gave the faintest gasp at this, but she said promptly, “Oh, was that what it was? Yes, you did.”

“Well then?” Quentin said to the Goon.

The Goon folded his long arms and loomed a little. “Archer didn’t get it,” he repeated.

“Then go ask Mountjoy about it,” said Quentin.

“You ask him,” said the Goon. His round eyes slid sideways to the telephone on the desk.

“All right,” said Quentin. “I will.” He went to the telephone and dialed. Howard, watching and listening and by now quite mystified, knew that his father really did dial the Town Hall. He heard the switchboard girl answer, “City Council. Which office, please?” And Quentin said, “Mr. Mountjoy. Extension six-oh-nine.” After a pause he could hear a man’s voice, a rich, rumbling voice, answering. Quentin, looking unlovingly at the Goon, said, “Quentin Sykes here, Mountjoy. It’s about my two thousand words. Someone seems to have sent me a hired assassin—”

“Not killed anyone yet!” the Goon protested.

“You shut up,” said Quentin. “He says the words are overdue. Now I know I sent them to you, just as usual, nearly a week ago—”

The rich voice rumbled on the telephone. And rumbled more. Quentin’s face clouded and then began to look exasperated. He cut through the rumbling to say, “And who is Archer?” The voice rumbled some more. “Thank you,” said Quentin. He put the phone down and turned to the Goon, sighing.

The Goon’s grin grew wide again. “Didn’t get them, did he?”

“No,” Quentin admitted. “They do seem to have gone astray. But he’ll give me another week to—” He stopped because the Goon’s little head was shaking slowly from side to side. “Now look here!”

“Archer won’t wait,” said the Goon. “Want to go without electricity? Or gas? Archer farms power.”

“I know,” Quentin said angrily. “Mountjoy just told me.”

“Do the words again,” said the Goon.

“Oh, all right,” Quentin said. “Come on, all of you. Let’s get back home and get it over with.”

They marched silently back with the Goon looming over them. Howard was aching to ask his father what on earth was going on, but he did not get a chance. As soon as they reached the house, the Goon took up his former place, filling half the kitchen, and Quentin hurried to his study. The sound of typing came from there, in little rattling bursts, with long pauses in between. Awful went to the front room, where she turned on the television and sat brooding on bad things to do to the Goon. At least, Howard thought thankfully, Mum had not come in yet. He hoped very much that Dad could finish his typing and get rid of the Goon before she did.

In the kitchen Fifi was climbing back and forth across the Goon’s legs again. “Help me get supper started at least, Howard, there’s a love,” she said. “Your mum’s going to be so depressed when she comes in and finds all this going on!”

Catriona Sykes came in five minutes after that. She came in with her eyes shut, tottering, meaning it had been a bad day. Her job was organizing music in schools, and she got headaches from it. She put a stack of music, the evening paper, a tape deck, a bundle of recorders, and a set of cymbals down on the table and fell into a chair by feel, with her hands to her head. Howard watched the relief fading off her face as she listened to the sounds in the house and began to realize something was wrong. He saw her locate Awful by the sound of the television, and Quentin by the clattering of the typewriter, then Fifi by the hurried pouring of hot water into the coffee mug Fifi had ready. Howard saw Catriona follow the haste with which Fifi handed the mug to him and locate Howard by his footsteps hurriedly stepping over the Goon’s legs to give her the coffee. A frown grew on her face. As she took the mug, her head tilted to catch the scraping from the Goon’s knife as he sat cleaning his nails. She took a deep drink of the coffee, pushed her hair back, and opened her eyes to look at the Goon.

“Who are you?” she said.

He grinned his daft grin at her. “Goon,” he said.

“I mean,” said Catriona, “what is your name?”

Howard’s mother had a very strong personality. But so had the Goon in his way. The room seemed thick with them. Howard and Fifi both held their breaths. “Goon will do,” said the Goon, and went on grinning.

Catriona gave him a long, level look. Then, to Howard’s surprise, she smiled quite pleasantly. “You look strong,” she said. “There’s a set of drums in my car. Help Howard get them in before they get damp or stolen.”

And to Howard’s further surprise, the Goon got to his feet and loomed through the room. “Where to?” he asked Howard.

The Goon was so strong that all Howard needed to do was show him the car and unlock the back. The Goon carried the drum set, bumping and booming, and set it down with a further boom in the hall. Then he went back to his chair in the kitchen. There Howard could see his mother had been asking Fifi what was going on. Fifi was looking upset. Catriona was taking it all much more calmly than Howard would have expected. She was just looking gloomily mystified.

“I don’t mind as long as he’s quiet,” she said to Howard. “I’ve been listening to school orchestras all day—have you done your violin practice?—and my head’s splitting.” And before Howard needed to lie about the violin, she looked at the Goon and said, “Who is Archer?”

The Goon looked back. He had a short think. “Farms power,” he said. “Gas and electricity. Money, too. Won’t worry you. You come under Torquil.”

“You mean he’s a town councillor?” Catriona asked.

That amused the Goon highly. He threw back his little head and laughed and clapped his long thigh with his vast hand. “That’s good!” he said. “Look like the Council, do I?”

“No, I can’t say that you do,” said Catriona. She seemed utterly unable to find the Goon alarming. “He seems harmless enough,” she said to Howard as she got up to help Fifi cook. “Move your feet,” she said to the Goon. And the Goon did. He bent his legs up until his knees were near his ears and sat looking like a huge, ungainly grasshopper while Catriona got supper ready. Howard began to see that his mother had found the right way to manage the Goon. He tried it himself when he was setting the table. He told the Goon to get out of the way of the spoon drawer, and the Goon did and grinned at him. “Set for six, Howard,” Catriona said. “I expect the Goon would like some liver and bacon, too.”

“Would!” the Goon said. He inhaled fried onions and grinned deeply.

Howard began to feel that Mum was not taking a serious enough view of the Goon. When supper was ready, and Quentin’s typewriter was still doing bursts of clattering, Catriona said, “Howard, call your father and Awful.”

“Not Sykes. Let him keep at it,” the Goon said.

Catriona accepted this without even asking why and sent Howard into the study with a tray. Quentin looked up absently from his typewriter and said, “Put it down on those papers.” He did not seem alarmed or anxious either.

“Dad,” said Howard, “I think Mum’s got the wrong idea. She’s giving the Goon supper. You don’t give hired assassins supper, do you?”

Quentin smiled. “No, but when a wolf follows your sleigh, you give it meat,” he said. Howard could tell he was only half-serious. “Leave me in peace, or we’ll never get rid of him.”

Howard went back to the kitchen, rather exasperated. He found the Goon sheepishly trying to wedge his knees under the table and Awful protesting. “I’m not going to have supper with him!” she was saying. “He threw his knife at me.”

“Shouldn’t have screamed,” said the Goon. The table lifted on top of his knees, and things began to slide off one end. Fifi caught them. She looked as exasperated as Howard felt. The Goon slid Catriona an embarrassed look and doubled his legs around the back of his chair. He was really almost kneeling like that, and he looked very uncomfortable.

“He did, Mum!” Awful shrilled. “And he smells.” When Catriona took no notice, Awful announced, “I hate everyone except Fifi.”

“What have I done to get hated?” Howard demanded.

“You were scared of the Goon,” Awful said.

Howard found himself exchanging a shamed look with the Goon. “Scare myself sometimes,” the Goon remarked, cautiously picking up a knife and fork. He was trying to behave properly. He kept glancing nervously at Catriona and Fifi to see how he was doing, and he made strong efforts to keep his mouth shut while he chewed. Howard thought he nearly choked once or twice. Even so, the Goon managed to eat huge amounts. Howard had never seen such a stack of potatoes on anyone’s plate before. When he had finished, the Goon retreated quickly to the chair he had sat in before and sat in everyone’s way again, picking his teeth with his knife and looking relieved.

“Wouldn’t you like to go watch the telly in the other room?” Fifi asked him after she had fallen over his legs six times.

But the Goon shook his little head and sat on. He sat while Fifi cleared away and then went up to her room in the attic. He sat while Catriona washed up. When Catriona went away, too, and the Goon was still sitting, Howard thought he had better stay in the kitchen as well. He felt someone ought to watch him. So Howard fetched out his bag of books, with the rip in it that the Goon had made, and tried to do homework on the kitchen table. He found it hard to concentrate. With the Goon sitting there, he did not feel he could spend half the time designing spaceships, as he usually did. He could feel the Goon’s round eyes staring at him and see the knife that had ripped his bag flashing at the corner of his eye. When, at last, Quentin came into the kitchen carrying four typewritten pages, Howard was heartily relieved.

The Goon sprang up, looking as relieved as Howard. He took the pages and examined them. Howard was quite surprised that the Goon seemed able to read.

“That will have to do,” Quentin said as the Goon looked questioningly at him. “It’s not quite the same as I sent Mountjoy, but it’s as near as I could manage from memory.”

“Not a copy?” asked the Goon.

“Definitely no copy,” Quentin assured him.

The Goon nodded, folded the papers, and stuffed them into the front of his leather jacket. “Get along to Archer then,” he said. “See you.” And he loomed his way to the back door, tore it open, ducked his little head under the lintel, and went away.

As soon as the door slammed, Catriona and Awful shot into the kitchen. “Has he gone?” said Awful, and Catriona said, “Now tell us what all that was about.”

“Nothing—nothing at all really,” Quentin said, in a way which everyone knew was much too airy. “Mountjoy’s idea of a joke, that’s all.”

Catriona fixed him with her most powerful look. “Quentin,” she said, “that won’t do. He talked about Archer, not Mountjoy. Explain.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In a career spanning four decades, award-winning author Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) wrote more than forty books of fantasy for young readers. Characterized by magic, multiple universes, witches and wizards—and a charismatic nine-lived enchanter—her books were filled with unlimited imagination, dazzling plots, and an effervescent sense of humor that earned her legendary status in the world of fantasy. In addition to being translated into more than twenty languages, her books have earned a wide array of honors—including two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honors and the Guardian Award—and appeared on countless best-of-the-year lists. Her best-selling Howl’s Moving Castle was made into an animated film by Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki and was nominated for an Academy Award. Diana Wynne Jones was also honored with many prestigious awards for the body of her work. She was given the British Fantasy Society’s Karl Edward Wagner Award in 1999 for having made a significant impact on fantasy, and she won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention in 2007.

www.dianawynnejones.com

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CREDITS

Cover art © 1999 by Nenad Jakesevic

COPYRIGHT

Text copyright © 1982, 1984, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1996, 1999 by Diana Wynne Jones

Illustrations copyright © 1999 by Nenad Jakesevic

Diana Wynne Jones has asserted her right to be identified as author of this work.

The stories in this collection, with the exception of “Enna Hittims,” were published as Minor Arcana in Great Britain in 1996 by Victor Gollancz.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Printed in the United States of America

First Edition   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Diana Wynne.

Believing is seeing : seven stories / by Diana Wynne Jones.

p.   cm.

Contents: The sage of Theare—The master—Enna Hittims—The girl who loved the sun—Dragon reserve, home eight—What the cat told me—nad and Dan adn Quaffy.

ISBN 0-688-16843-4

EPub Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780062244574

1. Fantasy fiction, English.      2. Children’s stories, English.

[1. Fantasy.    2. Short stories.]    1. Title.     PZ7.J684Se    1999

[Fic]—dc21     98-41805     CIP     AC

Introduction © 1996 Diana Wynne Jones.

“The Sage of Theare” appeared in Hecate’s Cauldron, edited by Susan Schwartz, DAW Books. © 1982 Diana Wynne Jones. (U.S.: Hecate’s Cauldron, DAW Books, 1982; Warlock at the Wlieel and Other Stories, Greenwillow Books, 1985.)

“The Master” appeared in Hidden Turnings, edited by Diana Wynne Jones, Methuen Children’s Books. © 1989 Diana Wynne Jones. (U.S.: Hidden Turnings, Greenwillow Books, 1990.)

“Enna Hittims” © 1999 Diana Wynne Jones.

“The Girl Who Loved the Sun” appeared in Heartache, edited by Miriam Hodgson, Methuen. © 1990 Diana Wynne Jones.

“Dragon Reserve, Home Eight” appeared in Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, Diana Wynne Jones, Macmillan Children’s Books. © 1984 Diana Wynne Jones. (U.S.: Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, Greenwillow Books, 1985.)

“What the Cat Told Me” appeared in Fantasy Stories, edited by Diana Wynne Jones, Kingfisher Books. © 1993 Diana Wynne Jones. (U.S.: Fantasy Stories, Kingfisher Books, 1994.)

“nad and Dan adn Quaffy” appeared in Digital Dreams, edited by David V. Barrett, New English Library. © 1990 Diana Wynne Jones. (U.S.: Everard’s Ride, NESFA Press, 1995.)

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Content

DIANA WYNNE JONES
Believing Is Seeing
Seven stories

INTRODUCTION

THE SAGE OF THEARE

THE MASTER

ENNA HITTIMS

THE GIRL WHO LOVED THE SUN

DRAGON RESERVE, HOME EIGHT

WHAT THE CAT TOLD ME

NAD AND DAN ADN QUAFFY

Read on for an excerpt from Howl’s Moving Castle

Chapter One IN WHICH SOPHIE TALKS TO HATS

Read on for an excerpt from The Merlin Conspiracy

I ONE

Read on for an excerpt from Dark Lord of Derkholm

ONE

Read on for an excerpt from Archer’s Goon

CHAPTER ONE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER