Witch Week (24 page)

Nan thought about it. “I suppose I would,” she said, rather surprised. “If only we didn’t have to do it in our journals!”

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “I think I can promise you one really good opportunity to describe things, nothing to do with journals. I told you it would take strong magic to put this world back into the one where it belongs. When I find the way to do it, I shall need everyone’s help, in order to harness all the magic there is in the world to make the change. When the time comes, can I rely on you to explain all this?”

Nan nodded. She felt hugely flattered and responsible.

While she was feeling this way, Chrestomanci added, “Just as well you prefer describing things. I’m afraid you won’t be a witch when the change comes.” Nan stared at him. He was not joking. “I know you are descended from the Archwitch,” Chrestomanci said, “but talents don’t always descend in the same shape. Yours seem to have come to you in the form of making-up and describing. My advice is to stick with that, if you can. Now name me one character out of history.”

Nan blinked at the change of subject. “Er—Christopher Columbus,” she said miserably.

Chrestomanci took out a little gold notebook and unclipped a gold pencil. “Would you mind explaining who he was?” he said, a little helplessly.

It was astonishing the way Chrestomanci seemed not to know the most obvious things, Nan thought. She told him all about Christopher Columbus, as kindly as she could, and Chrestomanci wrote it down in his gold notebook. “Admirable,” he murmured as he wrote. “Clear and vivid.” The result was that Nan went out of the study one half delighted that Chrestomanci thought she was so good at describing things, and the other half desperately sad at not being a witch before long. Dan Smith’s friend Lance Osgood, who was next one in, looked hard at Nan’s face as she came out and did not know what to make of it.

Lance was not in the study long. Nor was Theresa Mullett, who came next. By this time, Estelle had just gotten up to the top of the stairs, near the end of the line. Estelle craned around the corner as Theresa came out, searching for signs of love in Theresa, but Theresa looked peevish and puzzled. Everyone saw that the inquisitor had not treated Theresa with proper respect. Delia was whispering across to Heather about it when Charles went in.

Charles was not in the least frightened by this time. He was sure by now that Chrestomanci was treating everybody exactly as he or she deserved. He grinned when he saw the study all draped in black, and pushed his glasses up his nose to look at the things hung on the walls.

Chrestomanci was a dim shape behind the lamp and the spitting wires. “You approve?” he said.

“It’s not bad,” said Charles. “Where’s Brian?”

“Over here,” said Brian’s voice. Two pairs of handcuffs on the black-draped wall lifted and jingled. “How long is this going on? I’m magicking bored already, and you’ve only gotten to M.”

“Why have you got him in here?” Charles asked Chrestomanci. He kept his finger on his glasses in order to give Brian his best double-barreled glare.

“I have my reasons,” Chrestomanci said quietly. Quiet though it was, it made Charles feel as if something very cold and rather deadly was crawling down his back. “I want to talk to you,” Chrestomanci continued, in the same quiet way, “about your
Simon Says
spell.”

The cold spread from Charles’s spine right through the rest of him, and settled particularly in his stomach. He knew that this interview was not going to be anything like the joke he had thought it would be. “What about it?” he muttered.

“I can’t understand,” Chrestomanci said, mild and puzzled and more deadly quiet than ever, “how you forgot to mention that spell. How did it come to slip your mind?”

It was like being embedded in ice. Charles tried to break out of the ice by blustering. “There was no point in telling you. It was only a spell—it wasn’t important and Simon deserved it! And Nirupam took it off him anyway!”

“I beg your pardon. I wasn’t aware that you had a defense,” Chrestomanci said.

Sarcasm like this is hard enough to bear, and even worse if you know someone like Brian is listening in. Charles mustered another glare. But he found it hard to direct at Chrestomanci, hidden beyond the light, and swung it around at Brian again instead. Or rather, at the handcuffs where Brian might be. “It wasn’t that important,” he said.

Chrestomanci seemed more puzzled than ever. “Not important? My dear boy, what is so unimportant about a spell that could break the world up? You may know better, of course, but my impression is that Simon could easily have chanced to say something very silly, like—say—‘Two and two are five.’ If he had, everything to do with numbers would have fallen apart at once. And since everything can be counted, everything would have come apart—the earth, the sun in the sky, the cells in bodies, anything else you can think of. No doubt you have a mind above such things, but I can’t help finding that quite important myself.”

Charles glowered at the handcuffs to disguise how awful this made him feel. And Brian had heard every word! “I didn’t realize—how could I? Simon had it coming to him, anyway. He deserved something.” He was rather glad, as he said it, that no one knew he intended to do something to Dan Smith next.

“Simon deserved it?” wondered Chrestomanci. “Simon certainly has a large opinion of himself, but—Brian, you tell us. You have an ego at least as big as Simon’s. Do you or Simon deserve to have such power put in your hands?”

“No,” Brian’s voice said sulkily. “Not to destroy the world.”

Charles was cold all through with horror at what he had almost done. But he was not going to admit it. “Nirupam took it off him,” he said, “before Simon did anything really.”

“Brian seems to be learning,” Chrestomanci remarked, “even if you are not, Charles. I grant you that, because magic is forbidden here, nobody has ever taught you what it can do or how to use it. But you could have worked it out. And you are still not thinking. Nirupam did
not
take that spell off Simon. He simply turned it back to front.
Nothing
the poor boy says comes true now. I have had to order him to keep his mouth shut.”

“Poor boy!” Charles exclaimed. “You can’t be sorry for him!”

“I am,” said Brian’s voice. “And if I hadn’t been in the sick bay, I’d have tried to take it off him myself. I’d have managed better than Nirupam, too!”

“Now there, Charles,” said Chrestomanci, “you have an excellent example quite apart from rights and wrongs, of why it is such a bad idea to do things to people. Everyone is now sorry for Simon. Which is not what you want at all, is it?”

“No.” Charles looked down at the shadowy black carpet and decided regretfully to think again about Dan Smith. This time he would get it right.

“Make him take the spell off Simon,” Brian suggested.

“I doubt if he could,” said Chrestomanci. “It’s a fearsomely strong thing. Charles must have powers way up in the enchanter class in order to have worked it at all.” Charles kept his face turned to the carpet, hoping that would hide the huge smug grin he could feel spreading on his face. “It will take a number of special circumstances to get that spell off Simon,” Chrestomanci continued. “For a start, Charles must want to take the spell off. And he doesn’t. Do you, Charles?”

“No,” said Charles. The idea of Simon having to hold his tongue for the rest of his life gave him such pleasure that he did not bother to listen to all the names Brian began calling him. He held his finger out, into the lamplight, and admired the way the strong light and the spitting wires made patterns in the yellow cushion of blister. Wickedness was branded into him, he thought.

Chrestomanci waited for Brian to run out of names to call Charles. Then he said, “I’m sorry you feel this way, Charles. We are all going to need your help when we try to put this world back where it belongs. Won’t you reconsider?”

“Not after the way you went on at me in front of Brian,” said Charles. And he went on admiring his blister.

Chrestomanci sighed. “You and Brian are both as bad as one another,” he said. “People in Larwood House are always developing into witches, Mr. Wentworth tells me, but he tells me he has had no trouble in stopping any of them giving themselves away, until it came to you and Brian. Brian was so anxious to be noticed that he didn’t care if he was burned—”

“Hey!” Brian said indignantly.

So Chrestomanci was trying to make it fair by getting at Brian now, Charles thought. It was a bit late for that. He was not going to help.

“So he is going to have to help, or stay invisible for the rest of his life,” Chrestomanci went on. He ignored indignant, miserable noises from Brian and turned to Charles. “You, Charles, seem to have bottled yourself up, hating everything, until your witchcraft came along and blew the stopper off you. Now, either you are going to have to bottle yourself up again or be burned,
or
you are going to have to help us. Since your talent for witchcraft is so strong, it seems certain that in your right world, you will have an equally strong talent for something else, and you should find that easier. So which do you choose?”

Lose his witchcraft? Charles pressed one finger to his glasses and glared through the strong light at Chrestomanci. He did not think he even hated Simon or Dan as much as he hated Chrestomanci. “I’m going to go on being a witch! So there!”

The dim shape of Chrestomanci shrugged behind the light. “Warlock is the usual term for people who mess about the way you do. Very well. Now name me one historical personage, please.”

“Jack the Ripper,” snarled Charles.

The gold notebook flashed in the lamplight. “Thank you,” said Chrestomanci. “Send the next person in as you go out.”

As Charles turned and trudged to the door, Brian began calling him names again.

“Brian,” Chrestomanci said quietly, “I told you I would take your voice away, and I shall if you speak to anyone else.”

Typical! Charles thought angrily. He tore open the door, wondering what he dared do to Nan and Estelle for calling Chrestomanci here, and found himself staring into Delia Martin’s face. He must have looked quite frightening. Delia went white. She actually spoke to him. “What’s he like?”

“Magicking horrible!” Charles said loudly. He hoped Chrestomanci heard him.

T
HE REST OF
6B shuffled slowly in and out of the study. Some came out white, some came out relieved. Estelle came out misty-eyed and beaming.

“Really!” said Theresa. “Some people!”

Estelle shot her a look of utter scorn and went up to Nan. She put both hands around one of Nan’s ears and whispered wetly, “He says that where we’re going, my mum won’t be in prison!”

“Oh good!” said Nan, and she thought, in sudden excitement,
my
mum will still be alive, then!

Chrestomanci himself came out of the study with Geoffrey Barnes, who was last, and exchanged a deep look with Mr. Wentworth. Nan could tell that he had not found out how to change the world. She saw they were both worried.

“Right. In line and back to the classroom,” shouted Mr. Wentworth. He was looking so harrowed, and hurried them down the stairs so fast, that Nan knew Chrestomanci’s luck was running out. Perhaps the real inquisitor had arrived by now. The bell for the end of the first lesson rang as 6B marched through the corridors, which increased the urgent feeling. Other classes hurried past them, and gave them looks of pitying curiosity.

Simon’s friends kept trying to talk to him as they went. Simon shook his head madly and pointed to his mouth. “He knows who the witch is, but his lips are sealed,” Ronald West said wisely.

This caused Delia and Karen to skip out of line and walk beside Simon. “Tell us who the witch is, Simon,” they whispered. “We won’t say.” The more Simon shook his head, the more they asked.

“Quiet!” barked Mr. Wentworth.

Everyone filed into the classroom. There stood Mr. Crossley, expecting to sit with 6B while they wrote their journals.

“You’d better treat this as a free period, Harold,” Mr. Wentworth said to him. Mr. Crossley nodded, highly pleased, and went off to the staff room, hoping to catch Miss Hodge there.

“Poor Teddy,” Estelle whispered to Nan. “He doesn’t know she’s in next Tuesday. Mind you, I don’t think she’d ever have him anyway.”

Chrestomanci came into the classroom, looking suave and vague. No one could have guessed from the look of him that time was running out and he was probably just as anxious as Mr. Wentworth. He coughed for attention. He got instant silence, complete and attentive. Mr. Wentworth looked a little envious.

“This is a miserable affair,” Chrestomanci said. “We have a witch in our midst. And this witch has cast a spell on Simon Silverson—”

The room rustled with people turning to look at Simon. Charles glowered. Simon was looking almost happy again. He was in the limelight, where he belonged.

“Now, most unfortunately,” Chrestomanci went on, “someone made a well-meant but misguided effort to break the spell and turned it back to front.” Nirupam looked morbid. “You can’t blame this person,” said Chrestomanci, “but the result is most unhappy. It was a very strong spell. Everything Simon now says does not only
not
happen, but it never
has
happened. I have had to warn Simon not to open his mouth until we get to the bottom of the matter.”