Witch Week (26 page)

One of the huge men reached out a huge hand and dragged Mr. Wentworth over from beside the door as easily as if Mr. Wentworth had been a guy stuffed with straw. Miss Cadwallader looked as if she would like to protest about this, but she gave it up as useless. Inquisitor Littleton trained his black box on Mr. Wentworth.

Before he could turn the knob, the black box was torn out of his hands. With its broken strap trailing, it hurried from the inquisitor to Chrestomanci.

“I think that was a mistake, Brian,” said Chrestomanci.

Both huge men drew their guns. Inquisitor Littleton backed away and pointed at Chrestomanci. His face was purple, and full of a queer mixture of hate and horror and pleasure. “Look at that!” he shouted out. “It has a demon to wait on it! Oh, I’ve got you now!”

Chrestomanci looked almost irritated. “My good man,” he said, “that really is a most ignorant assumption. Only a hedge wizard would stoop to using a demon.”

“I’m not a demon!” shouted Brian’s shrill voice. “I’m Brian Wentworth!”

Delia screamed. The huge man who was not holding Mr. Wentworth seemed to lose his nerve. Glaring with fear, he held his gun out in both hands, and aimed it at the black box.

“Throw it!” said Chrestomanci.

Brian obeyed. The black box sailed towards the window. The huge man was muddled into following it around with his gun. He fired. There was a tremendous crash. Quite a few people screamed this time. The black box exploded into a muddle of wire and metal plates and half of the window blew out. A gust of rain blew in.

“You fool!” said Inquisitor Littleton. “That was my very latest model witch-finder!” He glared at Chrestomanci. “Right. I’ve had enough of this foul thing. Get it for me.”

The huge man put his gun back in its holster and marched towards Chrestomanci. Nirupam quickly stuck up a long arm. “Please. Just a moment. I think Miss Cadwallader may be a witch too.”

Everyone at once looked at Miss Cadwallader. She said, “How dare you, child!” but she was as white as Mr. Wentworth.

And this, Nan realized, was where she came in. She was not sure how, but she surged to her feet all the same, in such haste that she nearly knocked her desk over like Estelle. Everyone stared at her. Nan felt terrible. For a long, long instant, she went on standing there without a thought in her head and without one scrap of confidence to help her. But she knew she could not just sit down again. She began to talk.

“Just a moment,” she said. “Before you do another thing, I’ve got to tell you about Guy Fawkes. He’s the reason almost everybody in the world is a witch, you know. The main thing about Guy Fawkes is that he was the kind of man who can never do anything right. He meant well, but he was a failure—”

“Make that girl shut up!” Inquisitor Littleton said, in his harsh, bossy voice. Nan looked at him nervously, and then at the two huge men. None of them moved. In fact, now that she looked, everyone seemed to be stuck and frozen exactly where they were when she first stood up. She looked at Chrestomanci. He was staring vaguely into the distance and did not seem to be doing anything either, but Nan was suddenly sure that Chrestomanci was somehow holding everything in one place to give her a chance to explain. That made her feel much better.

She had gone on talking all the time she was looking around, explaining about the Gunpowder Plot, and what a mistake the conspirators made choosing Guy Fawkes to do the blowing up. Now she seemed to be going on to explain about other worlds.

“There were an awful lot of Guy Fawkeses in an awful lot of worlds,” she heard herself saying. “And he was a failure in every one. Some people are like that. There are millions of other worlds, you know. The big differences get made at the big events in history, where a battle gets either won or lost. Both things can’t happen in one world, so a new one splits off and goes different after that. But there are all sorts of smaller things that can go two ways as well, which
don’t
make a world split off. You’ve probably all had those kinds of dreams that are like your usual life, except that a lot of things are not the same, and you seem to know the future in them. Well, this is because these other worlds where two things can happen spread out from our own world like rainbows, and sort of flow into one another—”

Nan found herself rather admiring this description. She was inspired now. She could have talked for hours. But there was not much point unless she could persuade the rest of 6B to
do
something. Everyone was just staring at her.

“Now our world should really just be a rainbow-stripe in another proper world,” she said. “But it isn’t. And I’m going to tell you why, so that we can all do something about it. I told you Guy Fawkes was a failure. Well, the trouble was, he knew he was. And that made him very nervous, because he wanted to do at least this one thing right and blow up Parliament properly. He kept going over in his mind all the things that could go wrong: He could be betrayed, or the gunpowder could be damp, or his candle could go out, or his fuse might not light—he thought of all the possibilities, all the things that make the rainbow-stripes of not-quite-different worlds. And in the middle of the night, he got so nervous that he went and lit the fuse, just to make sure it would light. He wasn’t thinking that November 5, the day he was doing it, was the last day of Witch Week, when there is so much magic around in the world that all sorts of peculiar things happen—”

“Will somebody silence that girl!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

He made Charles jump. Charles had been sitting all this time trying to understand the way he was feeling. He seemed to have divided into two again, but inside himself, where it did not show. Half of him was plain terrified. It felt as if it had been buried alive, in screaming, shut-in despair. The other half was angry, angry with Chrestomanci, Miss Cadwallader, 6B, Inquisitor Littleton—everything. Now, when Inquisitor Littleton suddenly spoke in his loud grating voice, Charles looked at the inquisitor. He was a small man with a stupid face, in a blue suit which did not fit, who enjoyed arresting witches.

Charles found himself remembering his first witch again. The fat man who had been so astonished at being burned. And he suddenly understood the witch’s amazement. It was because someone so ordinary, so plain stupid, as Inquisitor Littleton had the power to burn him. And that was all wrong.

“Oh come on, all of you!” said Nan. “Don’t you see? When Guy Fawkes lit that fuse, that made a new spread of rainbow possibilities. In our proper world, the world we ought to belong to, the fuse should have gone straight out again, and the Houses of Parliament would have been perfectly safe. But once the fuse was alight, the night watchman could have smelled it, or Guy Fawkes could have put it out with water, or the thing could have happened which made us the way we are: Guy Fawkes could have stamped the fuse out, but left just one tiny spark alight, which went on burning and creeping towards the kegs of gunpowder—”

“I told you to shut that girl up!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

Charles was in one piece again now. He looked from the inquisitor to Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci did not look so elegant just then. His suit was crumpled as if he had fallen away inside it, and his face was pale and hollow. Charles could see sweat on his forehead. And he understood that Chrestomanci was putting out a huge effort and somehow holding the whole world still, to give Nan time to persuade 6B to use their combined witchcraft to change it. But 6B were still sitting there like dumb things. That was why Inquisitor Littleton had started talking again. He was obviously one of those people who were very hard to keep quiet, and Chrestomanci had had to let go of him in order to have strength to hold everything else.

“Will you be quiet, girl!” said Inquisitor Littleton.

“BOOM!” said Nan. “And up went Parliament, but with no people in it. It wasn’t very important, because even Guy Fawkes wasn’t killed. But remember it was Witch Week. That made it a much worse explosion than it should have been. In it, this whole stripe of the rainbow, where we are now, and all the magic anywhere near, got blown out of the rest of the world, like a sort of long colored splinter. But it wasn’t blown quite free. It was still joined to the rest of the rainbow at both ends. And that’s the way it still is. And we could put it back if only we could make it so that the explosion never happened. And because it’s Halloween today, and there’s even more magic about than usual—”

Charles saw that Chrestomanci was beginning to shake. He looked tired out. At this rate, Chrestomanci was not going to have any strength left to put their splinter of world back where it belonged. Charles jumped up. He wanted to apologize. It was obvious that someone with power like Chrestomanci’s could easily have just gone away the moment Inquisitor Littleton arrived. Instead, he had chosen to stay and help them. But saying he was sorry would have to wait. Charles knew he had to do something. And thanks to Nan, he knew just what to do.

“Sit down, boy!” rasped Inquisitor Littleton.

Charles took no notice. He dived across the gangway and took hold of Simon Silverson by the front of his blazer. “Simon. Say what Guy Fawkes did. Quick!”

Simon gazed at Charles. He shook his head and pointed to his mouth.

“Go on! Say it, you fool!” said Charles, and he shook Simon.

Simon kept his mouth shut. He was afraid to say anything. It was like a bad dream. “Say what Guy Fawkes did!” Charles yelled at him. He gave up shaking Simon and poured witchcraft at him to make him say it. And Simon just shook his head.

Nirupam saw the point. “Say it, Simon!” he said. And that made all the rest of 6B understand what Charles was trying to do. Everyone stood up in their seats and shouted at Simon. “SAY IT, SIMON!” Mr. Wentworth shouted. Brian’s voice joined in. Witchcraft was blasting at Simon from all sides, and even Karen and Delia were shouting at him. Nan joined in the shouting. She was bubbling with pride and delight. She had done this, just by describing what happened. It was as good as witchcraft any day. Everyone had understood that they could make this world part of the other one again—part of the world to which the witches’ rescue service sent witches—by making Simon say what had
not
happened in that other world. “SAY IT, SIMON!” everyone screamed.

Simon opened his mouth. “I—oh, leave
off
!” He was terrified of what might happen, but once he had started to speak, all the witchcraft beating at him was too much for him. “He—he—Guy Fawkes blew up the Houses of Parliament.”

Everything at once began to ripple.

It was as if the world had turned into a vast curtain, hanging in folds, with every fold in it rippling in and out. The ripples ran through desks, windows, walls, and people alike. Each person was rippled through. They were tugged, and rippled again, until everyone felt they were coming to pieces. By then, the ripples were so strong and steep that everyone could see right down into the folds. For just a moment, on the outside of each fold, was the classroom everyone knew, with the inquisitor and his huge men on the same fold as Miss Cadwallader, and Chrestomanci on another fold beside them. The inner parts of the folds were all different places.

Charles realized that if he were going to apologize to Chrestomanci, he had better do it at once. He turned around to say it. But the folds had already rippled flat and nothing was the same anymore.

“I
’M VERY SORRY, SIR,”
said one of the boys. He sounded as if he meant it, for a wonder.

Mr. Crossley jumped, and wondered if he had been asleep. He seemed to have had that kind of shiver that makes you say, “Someone walked over my grave.” He looked up from the books he was marking.

The janitor was in the classroom. What was his name? He had a raucous voice and a lot of stupid opinions. Littleton, that was it. Littleton seemed to be clearing up broken glass. Mr. Crossley was puzzled, because he did not remember a window being broken. But when he looked over at the windows, he saw one of them was newly mended, with a lot of putty and many thumbprints.

“There you are, Mr. Crossley. All tidy now,” Mr. Littleton rasped.

“Thank you, Littleton,” Mr. Crossley said coldly. If you let Littleton get talking, he stayed and tried to teach the class. He watched the janitor collect his things and back himself through the door. Thank goodness!

“Thank you, Charles,” said someone.

Mr. Crossley jerked around and discovered a total stranger in the room. This man was tall and tired-looking and seemed, from his clothes, to be on his way to a wedding. Mr. Crossley thought he must be a school governor and started to stand up politely.

“Oh, please don’t get up,” Chrestomanci said. “I’m just on my way out.” He walked to the door. Before he went out of it, he looked around 6B and said, “If any of you want me again, a message to the Old Gate House should find me.”

The door closed behind him. Mr. Crossley sat down to his marking again. He stared. There was a note on top of the topmost exercise book. He knew it had not been there before. It was written in ordinary blue ballpoint, in capital letters, and it gave Mr. Crossley the oddest feeling of having been in the same situation before. Why was that? He must have dozed off and had a dream. Yes. Now Mr. Crossley thought about it, he
had
had the strangest dream. He had dreamed he taught in a dreadful boarding school called Larwood House. He looked thankfully up at the bent, busy heads of 6B. This was, as he well knew, Portway Oaks Comprehensive, and everyone went home every evening. Thank goodness! Mr. Crossley hated the idea of teaching in a boarding school. You were always on the job.