Диана Уинн Джонс - Дом ста дорог [with w_cat]

[286] A good half hour later, Peter lay back and stretched. "That was great," he said. "At least we won't starve. Wizard Norland," he added experimentally, "how do we get lunch in this house?"

There was no reply.

[287] "He only answers me," Charmain said, a trifle smugly. "And I'm not going to ask now. I had to deal with a lubbock before you came and I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed."

[288] "What are lubbocks?" Peter asked. "I think one killed my father."

[289] Charmain did not feel up to answering him. She got up and went to the door.

[290] "Wait," Peter said. "How do we get rid of the stuff on this trolley?"

[291] "No idea," said Charmain. She opened the door.

[292] "Wait, wait, wait!" Peter said, hurrying after her. "Show me my bedroom first."

[293] I suppose I'll have to, Charmain thought. He can't tell left from right. She sighed. Unwillingly, she shoved Peter in among the bubbles that were still storming into the kitchen, thicker than ever, so that he could collect his knapsack, and then steered him left, back through the door to where the bedrooms were. "Take the third one along," she said.

[294] "That one's mine and the first one's Great-Uncle William's. But there's miles of them, if you want a different one.

Good night," she added, and went into the bathroom.

[295] Everything in there was frozen.

"Oh, well," Charmain said.

[296] By the time she got to her bedroom and into her somewhat tea-stained nightdress, Peter was out in the corridor, shouting, "Hey! This toilet's frozen over!" Bad luck! Charmain thought. She got into bed and was asleep almost at once.

[297] About an hour later, she dreamed that she was being sat on by a woolly mammoth. "Get off, Waif," she said. "You're too big." After this she dreamed that the mammoth slowly got off her, grumbling under its breath, before she went off into other, deeper dreams.

[298] Chapter Five

IN WHICH CHARMAIN RECEIVES HER ANXIOUS PARENT

[299] When Charmain woke, she discovered that Waif had planted her vast head on the bed, across Charmain's legs. The rest of Waif was piled on the floor in a hairy white heap that filled most of the rest of the room.

[300] "So you can't go smaller on your own," Charmain said. "I'll have to think of something."

[301] Waif 's answer was a series of giant wheezings, after which she appeared to go to sleep again. Charmain, with difficulty, dragged her legs out from under Waif 's head and edged round Waif 's vast body finding clean clothes and getting into them. When she came to do her hair, Charmain discovered that all the hairpins she usually put it up with seemed to have vanished, probably during her dive off the cliff. All she had left was a ribbon. Mother always insisted that respectable girls needed to have their hair in a neat knot on the top of their heads. Charmain had never worn her hair any other way.

[302] "Oh, well," she said to her reflection in the neat little mirror, "Mother's not here, is she?" And she did her hair in a fat plait over one shoulder and fastened it with the ribbon. Like that, she thought her reflection looked nicer than usual, fuller in the face and less thin and grumpy. She nodded at her reflection and picked her way around Waif to get to the bathroom.

[303] To her relief, the bathroom had thawed overnight. The room was full of soft dripping sounds from water dewing all the pipes, but nothing else seemed to be wrong until Charmain tried the taps. All four of them ran ice-cold water, no matter how long they ran for.

[304] "I didn't want a bath anyway," Charmain said, as she went out into the corridor.

[305] There was no sound from Peter. Charmain remembered Mother telling her that boys always were hard to wake in the morning. She did not let this worry her. She opened the door and turned left into the kitchen, into solid foam. Clots of foam and large single bubbles sailed past her into the corridor.

[306] "Damnation!" Charmain said. She put her head down and her arms across her head and plowed into the room. It was as hot in there as her father's bake house when he was baking for a big order. "Phew!" she said. "I suppose it takes days to use up a cake of soap." After that she said nothing else, because her mouth filled with soapy froth when she opened it. Bubbles worked up her nose until she sneezed, causing a small foamy whirlwind. She collided with the table and heard another teapot fall down, but she plowed on until she ran into the laundry bags and heard the saucepans rattle on top of them. Then she knew where she was. She spared one hand from her face in order to fumble for the sink and then along the sink until she felt the back door under her fingers. She groped for the latch—for a moment she thought that had vanished in the night, until she realized it was on the other edge of the door—and finally flung the door open. Then she stood gulping in deep, soapy breaths and blinking her running, smarting, soap-filled eyes into a beautiful mild morning.

[307] Bubbles sailed out past her in crowds. As her eyes cleared, Charmain stood admiring the way big shiny bubbles caught the sunlight as they soared against the green slopes of the mountains. Most of them, she noticed, seemed to pop when they got to the end of the yard, as if there was an invisible barrier there, but some sailed on and up and up as if they would go on forever. Charmain followed them up with her eyes, past brown cliffs and green slopes. One of those green slopes must be that meadow where she had met the lubbock, but she was unable to tell which. She let her eyes go on to the pale blue sky above the peaks. It was a truly lovely day.

[308] By this time there was a steady, shimmering stream of bubbles pouring out of the kitchen. When Charmain turned to look, the room was no longer solid foam, but there were still bubbles everywhere and more piling out of the fireplace.

Charmain sighed and edged back indoors, until she could lean over the sink and throw the window open too. This helped enormously. Two lines of bubbles now sailed out of the house, faster than before, and made rainbows in the yard. The kitchen emptied rapidly. It was soon clear enough for Charmain to see that there were now four bags of laundry leaning beside the sink, in place of last night's two.

[309] "Bother that!" Charmain said. "Great-Uncle William, how do I get breakfast?"

[310] It was good to hear Great-Uncle William's voice among the bubbles. "Just tap the side of the fireplace and say 'Breakfast, please,' my dear."

[311] Charmain rushed hungrily over there at once. She gave the soapy paintwork there an impatient tap. "Breakfast, please."

[312] Then found she was having to back away from a floating tray, nudging at the glasses dangling on her chest. In the center of this tray was a sizzling plate of bacon and eggs, and crammed in around it were a coffee pot, a cup, a rack of toast, jam, butter, milk, a bowl of stewed plums, and cutlery in a starched napkin.

[313] "Oh, lovely!" she said, and before it could all get too soapy, she seized the tray and carried it away into the living room. To her surprise, there was no sign of the afternoon tea feast that she and Peter had had last night, and the trolley was neatly back in its corner; but the room was very musty and there were quite a few escaped bubbles coasting around in it. Charmain went on and out through the front door. She remembered that, while she was picking the pink and blue petals for the spell from The Boke of Palimpsest, she had noticed a garden table and bench outside the study window. She carried the tray round the corner of the house to look for it.

[314] She found it, in the place where the morning sun was strongest, and above it, over the pink-and-blue bush, the study window, even though there was no space in the house for the study to be. Magic is interesting, she thought as she set the tray on the table. Though the bushes around her were still dripping from the overnight rain, the bench and the table were dry. Charmain sat down and consumed the most enjoyable breakfast she had ever had, warm in the sun and feeling lazy, luxurious, and extremely grown up. The only thing missing is a chocolate croissant, like Dad makes, she thought, sitting back to sip her coffee. I must tell Great-Uncle William when he comes back.

[315] She had an idea that Great-Uncle William must have sat here often, enjoying his breakfast. The blooms on the hydrangeas around her were the finest in the garden, as if for his special pleasure. Each bush had more than one color of flowers. The one in front of her had white flowers and pale pink and mauve. The next one over started blue on the left side and shaded over into a deep sea green on the right. Charmain was feeling rather pleased that she had not allowed the kobold to cut these bushes down, when Peter stuck his head out through the study window. This rather destroyed Charmain's pleasure.

[316] "Hey, where did you get that breakfast?" Peter demanded.

[317] Charmain explained, and he put his head inside and went away. Charmain stayed where she was, expecting Peter to arrive any moment and hoping that he wouldn't. But nothing happened. After basking in the sun a while longer, Charmain thought she would find a book to read. She carried the tray indoors and through to the kitchen first, congratulating herself on being so tidy and efficient. Peter had obviously been there, because he had shut the back door, leaving only the window open, so that the room was once more filled with bubbles, floating gently toward the window and then streaming swiftly out of it. Among these bubbles loomed the great white shape of Waif. As Charmain arrived, Waif stretched out her huge frayed tail and wagged it sharply against the mantelpiece. A very small dog dish, piled with the amount of food suitable for a very small dog, landed among the bubbles by her enormous front paws.

Waif surveyed it sadly, lowered her vast head, and slurped up the dog food in one mouthful.

[318] "Oh, poor Waif!" Charmain said.

[319] Waif looked up and saw her. Her huge tail began to wag, thrumming against the fireplace. A new tiny dog dish appeared with each wag. In seconds, Waif was surrounded in little dog dishes, spread all over the floor.

[320] "Don't overdo it, Waif," Charmain said, edging among the dishes. She put the tray down on one of the two new laundry bags and said to Waif, "I'll be in the study looking for a book, if you want me," and edged her way back there. Waif ate busily and took no notice.

[321] Peter was in the study. His finished breakfast tray was on the floor beside the desk and Peter himself was in the chair, busily leafing through one of the large leather books from the row at the back of the desk. He looked far more respectable today. Now that his hair was dry, it was in neat tawny curls and he was wearing what was obviously his second suit, which was of good green tweed. It was crumpled from his knapsack and had one or two round wet patches on it where bubbles had burst, but Charmain found that she quite approved of it. As Charmain came in, he slammed the book shut with a sigh and pushed it back in its place. Charmain noticed that he had a piece of green string tied round his left thumb. So that's how he managed to get in here, she thought.

[322] "I can't make head or tail of these," he said to her. "It must be in here somewhere, but I can't find it."

[323] "What are you trying to find?" Charmain asked.

[324] "You said something last night about a lubbock," Peter said, "and I realized that I didn't really know what they are. I'm trying to look them up. Or do you know all about them?"

[325] "Not really—except that they're very frightening," Charmain confessed. "I'd like to find out about them too. How do we?"

[326] Peter pointed his thumb with the green string round it at the row of books. "These. I know these are a wizards' encyclopedia, but you have to know the sort of thing you're looking for before you can even find the right volume to look in."

[327] Charmain pulled her glasses up and bent to look at the books. Each one was called Res Magica in gold, with a number under that and then a title. Volume 3, she read, Giroloptica; Volume 5, Panacticon; then down at the other end, Volume 19, Advanced Seminal; Volume 27, Terrestrial Oneiromancy; Volume 28, Cosmic Oneiromancy. "I see your problem," she said.

[328] "I'm going through them in order now," Peter said. "I've just done Five. It's all spells I can't make head or tail of." He pulled out Volume 6, which was labeled simply Hex, and opened it. "You do the next one," he said.

[329] Charmain shrugged and pulled forward Volume 7. It was called, not very helpfully, Potentes. She took it over to the windowsill, where there was space and light, and opened it not far from the beginning. As soon as she did, she knew it was the one. "Demon: powerful and sometimes dangerous being," she read, "often confused with an Elemental qv," and leafing on a few pages, "Devil: a creature of hell…." After that she was at "Elfgift: contains powers gifted by Elves qv for the safety of a realm…," and then, a wad of pages later, "Incubus: specialized Devil qv, inimical mostly to women…." She turned the pages over very slowly and carefully after that, and twenty pages on, she found it.

[330] "Lubbock. Got it!" she said.

[331] "Great!" Peter slammed Hex shut. "This one's nearly all diagrams. What does it say?" He came and leaned on the windowsill beside Charmain and they both read the entry.

[332] "LUBBOCK: a creature fortunately rare. A lubbock is a purple-hued insectile being of any size from grasshopper to larger than human. It is very dangerous, though nowadays luckily only to be encountered in wild or uninhabited areas.

A lubbock will attack any human it sees, either with its pincer-like appendages or its formidable proboscis. For ten months of the year, it will merely tear the human to pieces for food, but in the months of July and August it comes into its breeding season and is then especially dangerous; for in those months it will lie in wait for human travelers and, having caught one, it will lay its eggs in that human's body. The eggs hatch after twelve months, whereupon the first hatched will eat the rest, and this single new lubbock will then carve its way out of its human host. A male human will die. A female human will give birth in the normal fashion, and the offspring so born will be a LUBBOCKIN (see below). The human female then usually dies."