“What on earth are you carrying a door around with you for then?” asked the owl, fixing Wish with its beady eye.
“We’ve been flying on the back of it,” said Wish, and even to her own ears this sounded a little ridiculous.
The owl tut-tutted like anything.
“Rugs are for flying on, carpets are for flying on, and doors are for opening and shutting…” snapped the owl. “Who is in charge of the education of this child?”
“I am,” admitted Caliburn. “But I haven’t had very long to teach her, and—”
“Well, I think,” said the bear thoughtfully, “that a flying door is a wonderfully creative idea. What is your name, wonderful child?”
Wish wasn’t feeling very wonderful, all dripping wet sitting on the back of the bear, but nonetheless she replied shyly, “Wish.”
“You see, a wonderful name for a wonderful child,” said the bear encouragingly. “What you should do now, Wish, is THINK the door onto the side of the mound. Imagine it is happening with the whole of your mind…”
“Maybe put your eyepatch up just a smidgeon,” Caliburn whispered in her ear.
Wish put her eyepatch up a smidgeon and imagined the door fitting onto the side of the mound, and the door obligingly shuffled across to the hill and shrugged itself dejectedly into the side of it, dripping with water.
“Brilliant!” said the bear admiringly.
“It’s not brilliant—it’s very basic telekinesis,” humphed the grumpy little owl. “I presume you have a key?”
“She does indeed!” whooped the key, hopping delightedly out of Wish’s hair and down to the ground, and plugging itself into the keyhole.
“The key unlocks the door, once, twice… And then you step forward, Wish… and knock three times,” explained the bear.
“I suppose you did all right, fork, for a steering job in an emergency, although it did, as I predicted, end in disaster,” said Wish’s Enchanted Key chattily in its little creaky voice, and showing off like anything as it made a great display of swiveling around in the keyhole. “But you see, nobody unlocks a door like a proper KEY…”
And then Wish stepped forward and knocked three times.
RAT!
TAT!
TAT!
And slowly, slowly, the poor battered door opened…
C-R-E-A-K!
…to reveal, behind it, wonder of wonders, a great open hall—or was it a gigantic corridor? To the left and right of them it carried on without stopping, until it curved away, and you could not see the end of it.
The hall was lit with candles and there was a much larger open door on the other side. Through that door they could hear a faint whispering of welcoming sprites and in the distance the sound of chattering voices, the howl of wolves, and the clunk of giants’ boots, all warm and cozy and homey as anything.
“That’s impossible!” breathed Bodkin with an open mouth. “That was a hill… a solid hillside! How can the door make a doorway suddenly appear into some kind of hall?”
The door felt like it had always been there, cut into the mound. One side, the rain, the forest. Step over the threshold and on the other side, the warmth of the hall.
“I’m so confused,” said Bodkin. “Is this a house, or is this a hill? Where are we?”
“Humph,” said the little owl. “Have you never seen Magic performed before, child?”
The hall appeared to be made out of gigantic stones, all fitting together perfectly, and any cracks between them made watertight with burned soil. Wish had seen buildings similar in places of worship, or passage tombs, but nothing of this extraordinary size before. Many of the stones were covered in deep patterns cut into the rock—diamond shapes, swirls and, more interestingly, suns drawn in many different types of ways, crescent moons, whole moons, slivers of moons, and long wavy lines that looked like winding rivers but which Wish knew were in fact calendars, ways of telling the time. Wish’s heart lifted with excitement. Wherever they were must be a very important place indeed.
They all stepped over the threshold and into the hall. (When I say ALL, of course I mean the children, Caliburn, the sprites, Lonesome and the wolves and the snowcats—the bear and Crusher were too big to fit through the door.)
“Make the door bigger so that we can all come through,” the little owl ordered Wish.
“I really can’t do that,” said Wish. “I’ve learned about telekinesis, but I haven’t done making things bigger.”
“Tut-tut!” said the owl. “Here’s a child who really needs to work on her positive thinking. Just because you’ve never done something before doesn’t mean it can’t be done. All you have to do is—”
But the owl didn’t need to explain.
On the other side of the door the bear had finally remembered the password.
“Oh! Don’t worry! I’ve remembered the password now!” said the bear. “It’s my mother’s maiden name! ARDEN!!!”
As soon as the bear spoke the word “ARDEN,” there was a loud
BOOOOOM!
And the entire side of the hill exploded, leaving an enormous gap for Crusher and the bear to get through.
Coughing and spluttering, Crusher and the bear stepped through into the hall beside the children, both of them so covered with chalk dust that they looked like they had been caught out in a sudden snowstorm.
“There!” said the bear with satisfaction, showering them all with chalk dust as she gave herself a good old shake. “I knew I’d remember the password in the end! But we mustn’t get distracted… We need to get you to the study area as soon as we can before the house pixies detect us!”
“Pixxxxiessss???” hissed the sprites in horror. “There are pixies in this house? We’s HATE pixies.” They drew all their weapons and hissed with fury, because sprites do indeed absolutely loathe pixies for reasons that everyone has forgotten because they go way back in fairy lore, but the hatred still shines as bright as if whatever-the-original-crime-was had happened only yesterday.
“Yes, of course there are pixies,” snapped the owl. “All the best houses are infested with pixies. They’re a pain in the neck, but put away your weapons, sprites! I will have no fighting in our house, and the first one who casts a spell will be thrown out into the rain.”
Grumbling, the sprites put their sharpened thorns and bows and arrows away.
“Remember,” said the owl, “we may have rescued you, but YOU ARE NOT STAYING HERE. This is just an overnight visit and I think that it would be best if we kept it a secret between ourselves, and pixies absolutely cannot keep a secret, so everyone needs to be as quiet as possible until we reach the safety of the study. Close the door, Wish! And bring it with us!”
Wish closed the door with her mind and—Cre-e-e-eak!—the door closed, shutting out the view into the raining forest. And when the door detached itself from the inside wall of the hill, there was nothing to say that a door had ever been there.
“How are you doing that?” said Bodkin, and even Xar was impressed.
Meanwhile the bear said the password backward: “NEDRA!” and the entire side of the hill jammed itself back into the gap with another BOOOOOM! that made the whole mound shake and covered them all in yet another shower of chalk dust.
“Messy,” said the owl reprovingly.
“Sorry,” said the bear apologetically, wiping her nose with her paw and getting it all chalky.
“Come along! Come along!” said the owl, spitting chalk dust out of its beak and shooing the dripping party through the hall. They tiptoed across the flagstones, leaving great puddles of watery footsteps. “As quiet as you can…”
It was too late. The sound of the bear’s entrance had already attracted the pixies’ attention. There was a hissssss of excitement and a glowing band of bright warm pixies burst into the hall just as they were crossing it…
“Pixies!” hissed Xar’s sprites in horror.
Now, pixies look quite a lot like sprites, but woe betide you if you confuse the two, for they
get very offended if you do. They are a bit like hairy fairies who have never grown up, but furrier and fuzzier, with weird exploding hairstyles that the sprites think they only grow that way to show off. They tend to be brown when they are inside, but as soon as they are outside they can turn any color they want, for pixies are chameleons. They are very small and a lot of them were riding on the backs of wasps, which they keep as pets.
“Hello! Hello! Hello! Welcome, welcome, welcome!” The pixies beamed, buzzing around the visitors in great warm swarms. “What have we here? New people?”
“Nothing to see here, pixies!” said the little owl. “Nobody’s staying! Just some hospital cases that we rescued from the fire. They’re not staying long because there’s an awful lot of them. They’ll just be here for ONE DAY while we treat their door and feed them up. Don’t tell anyone, pixies! SHOO!”
“We won’t tell we won’t tell…” buzzed the pixies. “One bear one giant one werewolf three drowned humans three wolves three snowcats eight USELESS sprites… one peregrine falcon and a baby… all very WET… But we won’t tell we won’t tell… we won’t tell NO ONE, will we, pixies?” replied the pixies, delighted to get a reaction from the sprites, who were hissing with annoyance.
“NONONO!” sang the pixies, answering themselves as some of their party buzzed off to tell everyone. “We won’t tell we won’t tell, your secret’s safe with US…”
The owl shooed them all through the hall, and instead of the door on the other side leading into another room, it led into a courtyard, which was more like an enormous clearing where many, many trees were growing. The clearing was too large to see the other side, and it was ringed with the grassy hill, which on the inside appeared to be supported by more sacred rocks, carved again with spirals and diamonds and waves.
“Wow,” said Wish admiringly, looking up at the sky. “How does that work? The mound looks like a normal hill on the outside, but inside it has a hollow center.”
“Magical spaces work very differently from normal spaces,” said Caliburn.
They certainly did.
What appeared to be a normal-sized hillside on the outside was a far bigger space on the inside. This clearing was HUGE, and smoke coming out of all the trees from firesides deep underground meant that many, many chambers and great halls for all the habitations must be hollowed out in the tree roots. It was just as Wish and Bodkin had seen once before, when they visited Xar’s Wizard fort on the edge of the Badwoods. There were the shadowy shapes of giants in the distance among the trees, the lights of sprites, and the outlines of crowds of chattering Wizards.
“Keep in the shadows!” ordered the little owl. “We’re nearly there! No one needs to know we’re here…”
Tell that to the pixies, gathering in greater and greater numbers, who had now organized an entire flying band of musical instruments to follow them as well (for pixies love music and dancing)—fiddles and drums and flute-type thingummies playing themselves to a tune that went something like this:
“It’s sweet to go traveling… in lakes and forests and on foam… butit’ssomuchsweeter… yesit’ssomuchsweeter… tocomeHOME!”
“Nobody’s HOME!” said the owl. “This is just a flying visit, FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY… THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT BEING ADMITTED PERMANENTLY!”
“Here they are!” sang the fiddles.
“LOOK OVER HERE!” boomed the drums.
“Welcome, welcome, secret visitors!” trilled the flute-type thingummies…
“Onebearonegiantonewerewolfthreedrowned humans… threewolvesthreesnowcats… EIGHTuselessspritesoneperegrinefalconandababy… WELCOME ALL!” sang the pixies.
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” said the owl.
“You’re HOME, you’re HOME, welcome to your HOME!” sang everyone all together at full blast. “Your magical, marv-e-lous, magnifi-cent… new HO-O-O-OME!!!!”
“For absolutely the last time!” spluttered the owl. “This is NOT THESE PEOPLE’S NEW HOME! There’s absolutely loads of them, we haven’t got room, and so whoever they are, they’re just passing through.”
“I told you your sister wouldn’t want us,” whispered Wish sadly to Caliburn. “It’s just like I said… we’re a bit odd, and we don’t really fit in anywhere…”
“No, no,” Caliburn whispered back, “I’m sure she wants us really… It’s just that this owl of hers needs a little time to get used to us.”
“Thank goodness!” said the bear in relief. “We’ve reached my study! Or as some people call it, the Lair of the Bear.”
The Lair of the Bear, or the study, was a great oak liberally festooned with countless balls of mistletoe. They managed to get there with Xar’s sprites only getting into one wrestling match with the pixies, and Squeezjoos only biting off one shoe of a pixy who was trying to pick Xar’s pocket, and it was in the nick of time, for the utter commotion was beginning to draw the attention of the other inhabitants of the hillside.
“Now… what was the password again?” the bear wondered to herself, coming to a gentle lumbering halt and accidentally sitting on a snowcat, who let out a protesting howl. “Sorry…” said the bear, hurriedly getting to her feet.
“ARDEN! The password is ARDEN!” shrieked the little owl.
And as the owl spoke, the roots of the oak rustled and moved to reveal a hollow space. The roots took in the size of the various bears and snowcats, and moved wider, wider, revealing an enormous hollow that led on to a gigantic winding staircase down into the Lair of the Bear.
“Down into the tree!” ordered the little owl, all of a fluster, sending a couple of pixies scattering away with one urgent sweep of its claw, and everyone apart from Crusher went down the winding staircase. “Wait here,” the owl said to Crusher, “and inform anyone who asks that We Are Not to be Disturbed and It is None of Their Business…
“NEDRA!” snapped the owl, and the tree roots shuffled and closed, and the little party were now in the Lair of the Bear.
6. In the Lair of the Bear
The Lair of the Bear was exceptionally messy. There was a fire in the center of it, and there were books everywhere, on bookcases that were higgledy-piggledy and wandered all over the place with the tree roots. Then there were birds perching on the books, and the visitors had to be careful not to step on the droppings and not to knock over smaller fires with little cauldrons on them everywhere you looked.
Even as they came in, one of the cauldrons was boiling over. Great violet-colored smoke bubbles came out of it and landed on some papers on the floor, which promptly burst into the flames. The bear broke into a gentle run and extinguished the flames by sitting on them. Hsss.
“Whoops,” said the bear guiltily. “I forgot I left that on.”
“Wow!” said Wish, looking around the room. The birds whirled into the air, trilling and clucking and twittering, then flew off to fetch blankets, holding them by the edges in their beaks and draping them around the shivering children and the wolves and the snowcats. “What a wonderful room! And thank you so much for saving us in the forest back there. I cannot tell you how grateful we are…”
“Hmmm,” said the bear. “One of them has manners, at least. That’s a start.”
Getting to her feet, the bear continued. “Before we go any further, can I just say, brother, what a joy it is to see you again! What an unexpected, accidental, magnificent DELIGHT!”
The bear hugged the raven.
And the bear and the raven began to dance, which was very sweet really, and although it was fine for the raven to dance in the air, the bear was too big for all the mess in the room. As she whirled around in galumphing circles, her bottom knocked over piles of books and her nose knocked over cauldrons, and snowcats had to scatter out of the way, and everyone had to pick everything up as it fell over.
“Will someone please tell me what is going on?” asked Bodkin, speaking for everyone. “Where are we? And why is your sister a bear?”
Caliburn the raven landed on the bear’s head.
“Thi
s bear is not only my sister, she is my twin,” said Caliburn proudly. “Meet Perdita.”
There was a big silence.
“Okay…” said Bodkin, looking to Xar for guidance. “This is weird.”
“Don’t look at me,” said Xar, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m a Wizard, but even for the Wizard world, this is weird.”
Wish blinked. She looked from the bear to the bird. “For twins, you really are not very alike,” said Wish eventually.
“Yes, I think I did mention that I wasn’t really a bear, didn’t I?” explained the bear. “It’s just a transformation. You see? Watch while I transform back again. Transformation is one of my favorites of the Wizard skills.”
And in front of Wish’s eyes, the bear transformed. It was a spectacular moment.
One moment the bear was a great, magnificent bearlike beast. The next, the outline of the bear melted and shriveled and became, smaller, smaller… until it turned into a small, very untidy-looking woman of goodness-knows-WHAT-age, rather eccentrically dressed, but with very smiley eyes.
“You’re still not very alike,” said Bodkin, looking from one to the other and shaking his head. “One of you is small and black and feathery. And the other one is a human. Not much of a family resemblance, I’d say…”
“You transform back into a human now, brother,” urged Perdita, looking up at Caliburn, who was still sitting on her head.
The raven tipped his head down and looked sadly into her eyes. “Unfortunately, I can’t,” said Caliburn. “At the moment this is a sort of temporarily permanent transformation, for this lifetime, at least.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Perdita.
“It could have been worse,” said Caliburn gloomily. “I could have been a cockroach.”
“That is so true,” said Perdita. “It is always important to look on the bright side… And, brother, even in bird form, it’s so wonderful to see you again!” Perdita held out her arms and danced, as Caliburn took flight and fluttered in and out of them.
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