House of Many Ways (2 page)

“I expect so,” Charmain said. The musty room seemed quite tidy to her. “Can you tell me some of the things I ought to do?” Though I hope I shan’t be here long, she thought. Once the king replies to my letter…

“As to that,” said Great-Uncle William, “the usual household things, of course, but magical. Naturally, most of it’s magical. As I wasn’t sure what grade of magic you’ll have reached, I took some steps—”

Horrors! Charmain thought. He thinks I know magic!

She tried to interrupt Great-Uncle William to explain, but at that moment they were both interrupted. The front door clattered open and a procession of tall, tall elves walked quietly in. They were all most medically dressed in white, and there was
no expression on their beautiful faces at all. Charmain stared at them, utterly unnerved by their beauty, their height, their neutrality, and above all, by their complete silence. One of them moved her gently aside and she stood where she was put, feeling clumsy and disorderly, while the rest clustered around Great-Uncle William with their dazzling fair heads bent over him. Charmain was not sure what they did, but in next to no time Great-Uncle William was dressed in a white robe and they were lifting him out of his chair. There were what seemed to be three red apples stuck to his head. Charmain could see he was asleep.

“Er…haven’t you forgotten his suitcase?” she said, as they carried him away toward the door.

“No need for it,” one of the elves said, holding the door open for the others to ease Great-Uncle William out through it.

After that, they were all going away down the garden path. Charmain dashed to the open front door and called after them, “How long is he going to be away?” It suddenly seemed urgent to know
how long she was going to be left in charge here.

“As long as it takes,” another of the elves replied.

Then they were all gone before they reached the garden gate.

Charmain stared at the empty path for a while and then shut the front door with a bang. “
Now
what do I do?” she said to the deserted, musty room.

“You will have to tidy the kitchen, I’m afraid, my dear,” said Great-Uncle William’s tired, kindly voice out of thin air. “I apologize for leaving so much laundry. Please open my suitcase for more complicated instructions.”

Charmain shot the suitcase a look. So Great-Uncle William had meant to leave it, then. “In a minute,” she said to it. “I haven’t unpacked for
myself yet.” She picked up her two bags and marched with them to the only other door. It was at the back of the room and, when Charmain had tried to open it with the hand that held the food bag, then with that hand and with both bags in the other hand, and finally with both hands and with both bags on the floor, she found it led to the kitchen.

She stared for a moment. Then she dragged her two bags round the door just as it was shutting and stared some more.

“What a
mess
!” she said.

It ought to have been a comfortable, spacious kitchen. It had a big window looking out onto the mountains, where sunlight came warmly pouring through. Unfortunately, the sunlight only served to highlight the enormous stacks of plates and cups piled into the sink and on the draining board and down on the floor beside the sink. The sunlight then went on—and Charmain’s dismayed eyes went with it—to cast a golden glow over the two big canvas laundry bags leaning beside the sink. They were stuffed so full with dirty washing that Great-Uncle
William had been using them as a shelf for a pile of dirty saucepans and a frying pan or so.

Charmain’s eyes traveled from there to the table in the middle of the room. Here was where Great-Uncle William appeared to keep his supply of thirty or so teapots and the same number of milk jugs—not to speak of several that had once held gravy. It was all quite neat in its way, Charmain thought, just crowded and not clean.

“I suppose you
have
been ill,” Charmain said grudgingly to the thin air.

There was no reply this time. Cautiously, she went over to the sink, where, she had a feeling, something was missing. It took her a moment or so to realize that there were no taps. Probably this house was so far outside town that no water pipes had been laid. When she looked through the window, she could see a small yard outside and a pump in the middle of it.

“So I’m supposed to go and pump water and then bring it in, and
then
what?” Charmain demanded. She looked over at the dark, empty fireplace. It was
summer, after all, so naturally there was no fire, nor anything to burn that she could see. “I heat the water?” she said. “In a dirty saucepan, I suppose, and—Come to think of it, how do
I
wash? Can’t I ever have a bath? Doesn’t he have any bedroom, or a bathroom at all?”

She rushed to the small door beyond the fireplace and dragged it open. All Great-Uncle William’s doors seemed to need the strength of ten men to open, she thought angrily. She could almost feel the weight of magic holding them shut. She found herself looking into a small pantry. It had nothing on its shelves apart from a small crock of butter, a stale-looking loaf, and a large bag mysteriously labeled
CIBIS CANINICUS
that seemed to be full of soapflakes. And piled into the back part of it were two more large laundry bags as full as the ones in the kitchen.

“I shall scream,” Charmain said. “How
could
Aunt Sempronia do this to me? How could Mother let her do it?”

In this moment of despair, Charmain could only
think of doing what she always did in a crisis: bury herself in a book. She dragged her two bags over to the crowded table and sat herself down in one of the two chairs there. There she unbuckled the carpet bag, fetched her glasses up onto her nose, and dug eagerly among the clothes for the books she had put out for Mother to pack for her.

Her hands met nothing but softness. The only hard thing proved to be the big bar of soap among her washing things. Charmain threw it across the room into the empty hearth and dug further. “I don’t
believe
this!” she said. “She must have put them in first, right at the bottom.” She turned the bag upside down and shook everything out onto the floor. Out fell wads of beautifully folded skirts, dresses, stockings, blouses, two knitted jackets, lace petticoats, and enough other underclothes for a year. On top of those flopped her new slippers. After that, the bag was flat and empty. Charmain nevertheless felt all the way round the inside of the bag before she threw it aside, let her glasses drop to the end of their chain, and wondered whether to
cry. Mrs. Baker had actually
forgotten
to pack the books.

“Well,” Charmain said, after an interval of blinking and swallowing, “I suppose I’ve never really been away from home before. Next time I go anywhere, I’ll pack the bag
myself
and fill it with books. I shall make the best of it for now.”

Making the best of it, she heaved the other bag onto the crowded table and shoved to make room for it. This shunted four milk jugs and a teapot off onto the floor. “And I
don’t care
!” Charmain said as they fell. Somewhat to her relief, the milk jugs were empty and simply bounced, and the teapot did not break either. It just lay on its side leaking tea onto the floor. “That’s probably the good side to magic,” Charmain said, glumly digging out the topmost meat pasty. She flung her skirts into a bundle between her knees, put her elbows on the table, and took a huge, comforting, savory bite from the pasty.

Something cold and quivery touched the bare part of her right leg.

Charmain froze, not daring even to chew. This
kitchen is full of big magical slugs! she thought.

The cold thing touched another part of her leg. With the touch came a very small whispery whine.

Very slowly, Charmain pulled aside skirt and tablecloth and looked down. Under the table sat an extremely small and ragged white dog, gazing up at her piteously and shaking all over. When it saw Charmain looking down at it, it cocked uneven, frayed-looking white ears and flailed at the floor with its short, wispy tail. Then it whispered out a whine again.

“Who are
you
?” Charmain said. “Nobody told me about a dog.”

Great-Uncle William’s voice spoke out of the air once more. “This is Waif. Be very kind to him. He came to me as a stray and he seems to be frightened of everything.”

Charmain had never been sure about dogs. Her mother said they were dirty and they bit you and would never have one in the house, so Charmain had always been extremely nervous of any dog she met. But this dog was so small. It seemed extremely white
and clean. And it looked to be far more frightened of Charmain than Charmain was of it. It was still shaking all over.

“Oh, do stop trembling,” Charmain said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Waif went on trembling and looking at her piteously.

Charmain sighed. She broke off a large lump of her pasty and held it down toward Waif. “Here,” she said. “Here’s for not being a slug after all.”

Waif’s shiny black nose quivered toward the lump. He looked up at her, to make sure she really meant this, and then, very gently and politely, he took the lump into his mouth and ate it. Then he looked up at Charmain for more. Charmain was fascinated by his politeness. She broke off another lump. And then another. In the end, they shared the pasty half and half.

“That’s all,” Charmain said, shaking crumbs off her skirt. “We’ll have to make this bagful last, as there seems to be no other food in this house. Now show me what to do next, Waif.”

Waif promptly trotted over to what seemed to be the back door, where he stood wagging his wisp of a tail and whispering out a tiny whine. Charmain opened the door—which was just as difficult to open as the other two—and followed Waif out into the backyard, thinking that this meant she was supposed to pump water for the sink. But Waif trotted past the pump and over to the rather mangy-looking apple tree in the corner, where he raised a very short leg and peed against the tree.

“I see,” Charmain said. “That’s what
you’re
supposed to do, not me. And it doesn’t look as if you’re doing the tree much good, Waif.”

Waif gave her a look and went trotting to and fro around the yard, sniffing at things and raising a leg against clumps of grass. Charmain could see he felt quite safe in this yard. Come to think of it, so did she. There was a warm, secure feeling, as if Great-Uncle William had put wizardly protections around the place. She stood by the pump and stared up beyond the fence to the steeply rising mountains. There was a faint breeze blowing down from the
heights, bringing a smell of snow and new flowers, which somehow reminded Charmain of the elves. She wondered if they had taken Great-Uncle William up there.

And they’d better bring him back soon, she thought. I shall go mad after more than a day here!

There was a small hut in the corner by the house. Charmain went over to investigate it, muttering, “Spades, I suppose, and flowerpots and things.” But when she had hauled its stiff door open, she found a vast copper tank inside and a mangle and a place to light a fire under the tank. She stared at it all, the way you stare at a strange exhibit in a museum for a while, until she remembered that there was a similar shed in her own yard at home. It was a place just as mysterious to her as this one, since she had always been forbidden to go into it, but she did know that, once a week, a red-handed, purple-faced washerwoman came and made a lot of steam in this shed, out of which came clean clothes somehow.

Ah. A wash house, she thought. I think you have to put those laundry bags in the tank and boil them
up. But how? I’m beginning to think I’ve led a much too sheltered life.

“And a good thing too,” she said aloud, thinking of the washerwoman’s red hands and mauve face.

But that doesn’t help me wash dishes, she thought. Or about a bath. Am I supposed to boil myself in that tank? And where shall I sleep, for goodness’ sake?

Leaving the door open for Waif, she went back indoors, where she marched past the sink, the bags of laundry, the crowded table, and the heap of her own things on the floor, and dragged open the door in the far wall. Beyond it was the musty living room again.

“This is hopeless!” she said. “Where are bedrooms? Where is a
bathroom?”

Great-Uncle William’s tired voice spoke out of the air. “For bedrooms and bathroom, turn left as soon as you open the kitchen door, my dear. Please forgive any disorder you find.”

Charmain looked back through the open kitchen door to the kitchen beyond it. “Oh, yes?” she said. “Well, let’s see.” She walked carefully backward
into the kitchen and shut the door in front of her. Then she hauled it open again, with what she was beginning to think of as the usual struggle, and turned briskly left into the door frame before she had time to think of it as impossible.

She found herself in a passageway with an open window at the far end. The breeze coming in through the window was strongly full of the mountain smell of snow and flowers. Charmain had a startled glimpse of a sloping green meadow and faraway blue distances, while she was busy turning the handle and shoving her knee against the nearest door.

This door came open quite easily, as if it were used rather a lot. Charmain stumbled forward into a smell that caused her instantly to forget the scents from the window. She stood with her nose up, sniffing delightedly. It was the delicious mildewy fragrance of old books. Hundreds of them, she saw, looking round the room. Books were lined up on shelves on all four walls, stacked on the floor, and piled on the desk, old books in leather covers mostly, although some of the ones on the floor had
newer looking colored jackets. This was obviously Great-Uncle William’s study.

“Oooh!” Charmain said.

Ignoring the way the view from the window was of the hydrangeas in the front garden, she dived to look at the books on the desk. Big, fat, redolent books, they were, and some of them had metal clasps to keep them shut as if they were dangerous open. Charmain had the nearest one already in her hands when she noticed the stiff piece of paper spread out on the desk, covered with shaky handwriting.

“My dear Charmain,” she read, and sat herself down in the padded chair in front of the desk to read the rest.

“I suppose he
is
by-marriage,” Charmain said aloud. “He must be Aunt Sempronia’s great-uncle, really, and she married Uncle Ned, who is Dad’s uncle, except that he’s dead now. What a pity. I was starting to hope I’d inherited some of his magic.” And she said politely to the air, “Thank you very much, Great-Uncle William.”

There was no reply. Charmain thought, Well, there wouldn’t be. That wasn’t a question. And she set about exploring the books on the desk.

The fat book she had in her hand was called
The Book of Void and Nothingness.
Not surprisingly, when she opened it, the pages were blank. But she could feel under her fingers each empty page sort of purring and writhing with hidden magics. She put it down rather quickly and picked up one called
Wall’s Guide to Astromancy
instead. This was slightly disappointing, because it was mostly diagrams of black dotted lines with numbers of square red dots spreading out from the black lines in various patterns, but almost nothing to read. All the same, Charmain spent longer looking at it than she
expected. The diagrams must have been hypnotic in some way. But eventually, with a bit of a wrench, she put it down and turned to one called
Advanced Seminal Sorcery,
which was not her kind of thing at all. It was closely printed in long paragraphs that mostly seemed to begin, “If we extrapolate from our findings in my earlier work, we find ourselves ready to approach an extension of the paratypical phenomenology…”