House of Many Ways

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “My mother says difficulties help you learn,” Peter said. “You should be pleased. I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned today, and that’s how to get enough supper.” He pointed with his thumb to the bubbling pot. That thumb had a piece of green string round it. The other thumb had red string and one of his fingers was decorated with blue string.

  He’s been trying to go in three directions at once, Charmain thought. Striving mightily to sound friendly, she said, “How do you get enough supper, then?”

  “I kept banging on the pantry door,” Peter said, “until enough things landed on the table. Then I put them in that pot to boil.”

  Charmain looked at the pot. “What things?”

  “Liver and bacon,” Peter said. “Cabbage. More turnips and a chunk of rabbit. Onions, two more chops, and a leek. It was easy, really.”

  Yuk! thought Charmain. In order not to say something really rude, she turned round to go to the living room.

  Peter called after her, “Don’t you want to know how I got that vase of flowers back?”

  “You sat on the trolley,” Charmain said coldly, and went away to read The Twelve-Branched Wand.

  But it was no good. She kept looking up and seeing that vase of hydrangeas and then looking over at the trolley and wondering if Peter had truly sat there and vanished away with an Afternoon Tea. Then wondering how he had got back. And every time she looked, she was more aware that her resolve to be kind to Peter had come to absolutely nothing. She stood it for nearly an hour and then went back to the kitchen. “I apologize,” she said. “How did you get the flowers back?”

  Peter was prodding at the stuff in the pot with a spoon. “I don’t think this is ready yet,” he said. “This spoon bounces off.”

  “Oh, come on,” Charmain said. “I’m being polite.”

  “I’ll tell you over supper,” Peter said.

  He kept his word, maddeningly. He hardly said a word for an hour, until the contents of the pot had been shared into two bowls. Dividing the food was not easy, because Peter had not bothered to peel anything or cut it up before he put it in the pot. They had to hack the cabbage apart with two spoons. Nor had Peter remembered that a stew needs salt. Everything—white, soggy bacon, hunk of rabbit, whole turnip, and flabby onion—floated in weak watery juice. To put it mildly, the food was quite horrible. Doing her best to be kind, Charmain did not say it was.

  The only good thing was that Waif liked it. That is to say, she lapped up the weak juice and then carefully ate the meaty bits out from among the cabbage. Charmain did much the same and tried not to shudder. She was glad to take her mind off it by listening to what Peter had to tell.

  “Are you aware,” he began, rather pompously, to Charmain’s mind. But she could tell that he had everything worked out in his mind like a story and was going to tell it just as he had it worked out. “Are you aware that when things vanish from the trolley, they go back into the past?”

  “Well, I suppose the past makes quite a good waste dump,” Charmain said. “As long as you make sure it really is past and things don’t turn up again all moldy—”

  “Do you want to hear or not?” Peter demanded.

  Be kind, Charmain told herself. She ate another piece of nasty cabbage and nodded.

  “And that parts of this house are in the past?” Peter continued. “I didn’t sit on the trolley, you know. I just went exploring with a list of the ways I needed to turn, and I found out by accident, really. I must have turned the wrong way once or twice.”

  Doesn’t surprise me, Charmain thought.

  “Anyway,” said Peter, “I got to a place where there were hundreds of kobold ladies all washing teapots and stacking food on trays for breakfasts and teas and things. And I was a bit nervous of them, because of the way you’d annoyed them over the hydrangeas, but I tried to look pleasant as I went by and nodded and smiled and things. And I was really surprised when they all nodded and smiled back and said ‘Good morning’ in a perfectly friendly way. So I went on nodding and smiling and walking past, until I came to a room I hadn’t seen before. As soon as I opened the door, the first thing I saw was that vase of flowers sitting on the front of a long, long table. The next thing I saw was Wizard Norland, sitting behind the table—”

  “Good gracious!” said Charmain.

  “It surprised me too,” Peter admitted. “I just stood there and stared, to tell the truth. He looked quite healthy—you know, strong and pink, and he had a lot more hair than I remembered—and he was busy working on the chart that was in the suitcase. He had it all spread out along the table and he’d only filled in about a quarter of it. I suppose that gave me a clue. Anyway, he looked up and said, quite politely, ‘Would you mind closing the door? There’s quite a draft.’ Then before I could say anything, he looked up again and said, ‘Who on earth are you?’

  “I said, ‘I’m Peter Regis.’

  “That made him frown. He said, ‘Regis, Regis? Does that make you some relation of the Witch of Montalbino, perhaps?’

  “‘She’s my mother,’ I said.

  “And he said, ‘I didn’t think she had any children.’

  “‘She only has me,’ I said. ‘My dad was killed in a big avalanche at Transmontain just after I was born.’

  “He frowned some more and said, ‘But that avalanche was only last month, young man. They’re saying that a lubbock set it off and it certainly killed a lot of people—or are we talking about the avalanche forty years ago?’ And he looked very stern and disbelieving at me.

  “I wondered how I could make him believe what had happened. I said, ‘I promise it’s true. Some of your house must go back in time. It’s where the Afternoon Teas disappear to. And—this should prove it—we put that vase of flowers on the trolley the other day and it came back here to you.’ He looked at the vase, but he didn’t say anything. I said, ‘I came here to your house because my mother arranged for me to be your apprentice.’

  “He said, ‘Did she indeed? I must have been wanting to oblige her quite badly then. You don’t seem to me to have any remarkable talent.’

  “‘I can do magic,’ I said, ‘but my mother can arrange anything when she wants to.’

  “He said, ‘True. She has a remarkably forceful personality. What did I say when you turned up?’

  “‘You didn’t,’ I said. ‘You weren’t there. A girl called Charmain Baker was looking after your house—or she was supposed to be, but she went off and worked for the King and met a fire demon—’

  “He interrupted me then, looking shocked. ‘A fire demon? Young man, those are very dangerous beings. Are you telling me that the Witch of the Waste will be in High Norland before long?’

  “‘No, no,’ I said. ‘One of the Royal Wizards in Ingary did for the Witch of the Waste nearly three years ago now. This one was something to do with the King, Charmain said. I suppose she’s only just born from your point of view, but she said you were ill and the elves carried you off to cure you and her Aunt Sempronia arranged for Charmain to look after the house while you were gone.’

  “He looked quite upset about this. He sat back in his chair and blinked a bit. ‘I have a great-niece called Sempronia,’ he said, sort of slowly and thinking about it. ‘This could be so. Sempronia has married into a very respectable family, I believe—’

  “‘Oh, they are!’ I said. ‘You should just see Charmain’s mother. She’s so respectable she doesn’t let Charmain do anything.’”

  Thank you very much, Peter! Charmain thought. Now he thinks I’m a complete waste of space!

  “But he wasn’t really interested,” Peter went on. “He wanted to know what had made him ill and I couldn’t tell him. Do you know?” he asked Charmain. Charmain shook her head. Peter shrugged and said, “Then he sighed, and said he supposed it didn’t matter, because it seemed to have been unavoidable. But after that, he said, quite pathetically and all puzzled, ‘But I don’t know any elves!’

  “I said, ‘Charmain said it was the King who sent the
elves.’

  “‘Oh,’ he said, and he looked much happier. ‘Of course it would be! The royal family has elf blood—several of them married elves and the elves do keep up the connection, I believe.’ Then he looked at me and said, ‘So this story begins to hang together.’

  “I said, ‘Well it should do. It’s all true. But what I don’t understand is what you did to make the kobolds so angry with you.’

  “‘Nothing, I assure you,’ he said. ‘Kobolds are my friends, they have been for years. They do a great many tasks for me. I would no more anger a kobold than I would anger my friend the King.’

  “He seemed annoyed enough about this that I thought I’d better change the subject. I said, ‘Then can I ask you about this house? Did you build it or find it?’

  “‘Oh, found it,’ he said. ‘Or at least I bought it when I was quite a young, struggling wizard, because it seemed small and cheap. Then I found it was a labyrinth of many ways. It was a delightful discovery, I can tell you. It seems once to have belonged to a Wizard Melicot, the same man who made the roof of the Royal Mansion appear to be gold. I have always hoped that, somewhere inside this house, there is hidden the actual gold that was in the Royal Treasury at the time. The King has been looking for that for years, you know.’

  “And you can guess how that made me prick up my ears,” Peter said. “But I never got to ask any more, because he said, looking at the vase on the table, ‘So these are really flowers from the future, then? Do you mind telling me what sort they are?’

  “I was quite astonished he didn’t know. I told him they were hydrangeas from his own garden. ‘The colored ones the kobolds cut off,’ I said. And he looked at them and murmured that they were quite magnificent, particularly the way they were so many different colors. ‘I shall have to start growing them for myself,’ he said. ‘They have more colors than roses.’

  “‘You can get them to grow blue too,’ I said. ‘My mother uses a spell with copper powder for ours.’ And while he was murmuring about that, I asked him if I could take them back with me, so that I could prove to you that I’d met him.

  “‘Certainly, certainly,’ he said. ‘They are rather in the way here. And tell your young lady who knows the fire demon that I hope to have my chart of the house finished by the time she is grown up enough to need it.’

  “So,” Peter said, “I took the flowers and came away. Wasn’t that extraordinary!”

  “Very,” said Charmain. “He wouldn’t have grown hydrangeas if the kobolds hadn’t cut them off and I hadn’t picked them up and you hadn’t got lost—It makes my head go round.” She pushed aside her bowlful of cabbage and turnip. I shall be nice to him. I shall, I shall! “Peter, how would it be if I called in on my father on my way home tomorrow and asked him for a cookery book? He must have hundreds. He’s the best cook in town.”

  Peter looked utterly relieved. “Good idea,” he said. “My mother’s never told me much about cooking. She always does it all.”

  And I shan’t object to the way he’s made Great-Uncle William think of me, Charmain vowed. I shall be kind. But if he does that once again…

  Chapter Ten

  IN WHICH TWINKLE TAKES TO THE ROOF

  In the night, a worrying thought struck Charmain. If you could travel in time in Great-Uncle William’s house, what was to stop her arriving in the Royal Mansion ten years ago, to find that the King was not expecting her? Or ten years in the future, to find that Prince Ludovic was ruling now? It was enough to make her decide to walk to the Mansion in the usual way.

  So, the next morning, Charmain set off along the road, with Waif pattering behind her, until they came by the cliff where the lubbock’s meadow was, when Waif became so breathless and pathetic that Charmain picked her up. As usual, Charmain thought. I feel like a proper grown-up working girl, she added to herself as she strode toward town with Waif happily trying to lick her chin.

  It had rained in the night again, but now it was one of those mornings of pale blue sky and huge white clouds. The mountains were silky blues and greens, and in the town, the sun glittered off wet cobbles and flared on the river. Charmain felt very contented. She was really looking forward to a day of sorting papers and chatting with the King.

  As she crossed Royal Square, the sun glared so off the golden roof of the Royal Mansion that Charmain was forced to look down at the cobbles. Waif blinked and ducked and then jumped as a loud squealing sound came from the Mansion.

  “Look at me! Look at me!”

  Charmain looked, found her eyes full of tears from the dazzle, and looked again under a hand spared from Waif. The child Twinkle was sitting astride the golden roof, fully a hundred feet in the air, waving merrily to her. He almost overbalanced doing it. At the sight, Charmain forgot all the unkind thoughts she had had about children yesterday. She dumped Waif on the cobbles and ran for the Mansion door, where she clattered at the great knocker and rang the bell furiously.

  “That little boy!” she gasped at Sim when he slowly and creakily opened the door. “Twinkle. He’s sitting on the roof! Someone has to get him down!”

  “Is that so?” said Sim. He tottered out onto the steps. Charmain had to wait while he tottered to a place where he could see the roof and craned shakily upward. “Indeed he is, miss,” he agreed. “Little demon. He’ll fall. That roof is as slippery as ice.”

  Charmain was jigging with impatience by then. “Send someone to fetch him in! Quickly!”

  “I don’t know who,” Sim said slowly. “Nobody much in this Mansion climbs too well. I could send Jamal, I suppose, but with only the one eye his balance is not too good.”

  Waif was prancing about, yapping to be carried up the steps. Charmain ignored her. “Then send me,” she said. “Just tell me how to get there. Now. Before he slides off sideways.”

  “Good notion,” Sim agreed. “You take the stairs at the end of the hall, miss, and keep on going up. Last flight’s wooden and you’ll find a small door—”

  Charmain waited for no more. Leaving Waif to fend for herself, she raced off down the damp stone corridor until she came to the lobby with the stone stairs. There she began to climb for dear life, with her glasses bouncing on her chest and her footsteps ringing round the walls. Up she went, two long flights, her mind filled with horrible thoughts of a small body plummeting down and hitting the cobbles with…well…a splash, just about where she had left Waif. Panting hard, she hurried up a third, narrower flight. It seemed endless. Then she came to wooden stairs and clattered up those, almost out of breath. They seemed endless too. At last she came to a small wooden door. Praying she was still in time, Charmain flung open the door onto a blaze of sunlight and gold.

  “I fort you were never coming,” Twinkle said from the middle of the roof. He was wearing a pale blue velvet suit and his golden hair blazed as bright as the roof. He seemed perfectly calm, more like a strayed angel than a small boy in trouble on a roof.

  “Are you very frightened?” Charmain panted anxiously. “Hold on very tight and don’t move and I’ll crawl out and get you.”

  “Pleathe do that,” Twinkle said politely.

  He doesn’t know the danger he’s in! Charmain thought. I shall have to keep very calm. Very cautiously, she climbed out through the wooden door and maneuvered until she was sitting astride the roof like Twinkle. It was highly uncomfortable. Charmain did not know which was worse: the fact that the tin tiles were hot, wet, sharp, and slippery, or the way the roof seemed to be cutting her in two. When she snatched a sideways look at Royal Square, far, far below, she had to remind herself, very seriously, that she had worked a spell only three days ago that had saved her from the lubbock and proved that she could fly. She might be able to grab Twinkle round his waist and float down with him.

  Here she realized that Twinkle was moving backward away from her as she worked her way toward him. “Stop that!” she said. “Don’t you know how dangerous this is?”

  “Of courthe I do,” Twinkle retorted. “Heighth thcare me thilly
. But thith ith the only plathe where I can talk to you without anyone overhearing. Jutht get yourthelf to the middle of the roof where I don’t have to thout. And be quick. Printheth Hilda hath hired a nurthemaid for Morgan and me. The wretched girl will be along any minute now.”

  This sounded so grown-up that Charmain blinked and stared at him. Twinkle smiled blindingly back, all big blue eyes and enchanting rosy lips. “Are you an infant genius, or something?” she asked him.

  “Well, I am now,” Twinkle said. “When I wath really thix yearth old, I wath about average, I think. With a thtrong gift for magic, of courthe. Move along, can’t you.”

  “I’m trying.” Charmain set herself to shunting along the roof, until she was only a foot or so away from the child. “So what are we supposed to be talking about?” she snapped into his face.

  “Withard Norland firtht,” Twinkle said. “They tell me you know him.”

  “Not really,” Charmain said. “He’s my great-aunt-by-marriage’s great-uncle. I’m keeping house for him while he’s ill.” She did not feel like mentioning Peter.

  “And what ith hith houthe like?” Twinkle asked. He added chattily, “I live in a moving cathtle mythelf. Doeth Norland’th houthe move?”

  “No,” said Charmain. “But there’s a door in the middle that takes you to about a hundred different rooms. They say Wizard Melicot made it.”

  “Ah. Melicot,” Twinkle piped. He seemed very pleased. “Then I’ll probably need to come and thee it, whatever Calthifer thayth. Ith that all right?”

  “I suppose so,” Charmain said. “Why?”

  “Becauthe,” Twinkle explained, “Thophie, Calthifer, and I have been hired to find out what became of the gold in the King’th treathury. At leatht, we fink that’th what they’re wanting, but they’re not being very clear. Half the time, they theem to be thaying that what they’ve lotht ith thomething called the Elfgift and nobody knowth what thith Elfgift ith. And the Printheth has athked Thophie to find out what keepth happening to the money from the taxeth. And that theemth to be thomething different again. They’ve thold a lot of pictureth and other thingth and they’re thtill ath poor ath church mithe—you mutht have notithed.”