Unexpected Magic (10 page)

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!”