House of Many Ways (Howl's Moving Castle 3)

“We have a washerwoman,” Charmain said. “I don’t know how to wash things.”

“I’ll show you how,” Peter said. “Stop hiding behind your ignorance.”

Angrily wondering how it was that Peter always managed to set her to work, Charmain shortly found herself pumping hard at the pump in the yard, filling buckets with water for Peter to carry to the wash house and empty into the great copper boiler. After about the tenth bucketful, Peter came back, saying, “We need to light the fire under the copper now, but I can’t find any fuel. Where do you think he keeps it?”

Charmain wiped sweaty hair back from her face with an exhausted hand. “It must work like the kitchen fire,” she said. “I’ll go and see.” She led the way to the shed, thinking, And if this doesn’t work, we can stop trying. Good. “We need just one thing that will burn,” she told Peter.

He looked blankly round. Inside the shed there was nothing but a stack of wooden tubs and a box of soapflakes. Charmain eyed the place at the bottom of the boiler. It was black with old fires. She eyed the tubs. Too big. She eyed the soapflakes and decided not to risk another storm of bubbles. She went outside and plucked a twig from the unhealthy tree. Shoving this into the blackened fireplace, she slapped the side of the boiler and said, “Fire!” And had to leap quickly backward as flames thundered into being underneath. “There,” she said to Peter.

“Good,” he said. “Back to the pump. We need the copper full now.”

“Why?” said Charmain.

“Because there’s thirty sacks of washing, of course,” Peter said. “We’ll need to run hot water into some of these tubs to soak the silks and do the woolens in. And then we’ll need water for rinsing. Buckets and buckets more.”

“I don’t believe this!” Charmain muttered to Waif, who was pottering about watching. She sighed and went back to pumping.

Meanwhile, Peter fetched out a kitchen chair and put it in the shed. Then, to Charmain’s indignation, he set out the tubs in a row and began pouring bucketfuls of her hard-worked-for cold water into them. “I thought those were for the copper!” she protested.

Peter climbed on the chair and began hurling handfuls of soapflakes into the top of the boiler. It was now steaming and making simmering noises. “Stop arguing and keep pumping,” he said. “It’s nearly hot enough for the whites now. Four more buckets should do it, and then you can start putting shirts and things in.”

He climbed off the chair and went away into the house. When he came back, he was lugging two of the laundry bags, which he left propped against the shed while he went back for more. Charmain pumped, and panted, and glowered, and climbed on the chair to pour her four full buckets into the soapy clouds of steam rising from the copper. Then, glad to be doing something else, she untied the strings that held the first laundry bag closed. There were socks inside, and a red wizardly robe, two pairs of trousers, and shirts and underclothes below that, all smelling of mildew from Peter’s bathroom flood. Oddly enough, when Charmain untied the second bag, there were the same, identical things inside it.

“Wizard’s washing was bound to be peculiar,” Charmain said. She took armfuls of the washing, climbed on the chair, and heaved the clothes into the copper.

“No, no, no! Stop!” Peter shouted, just as Charmain had emptied the second bagful in. He came rushing across the grass, towing eight more bags all tied together.

“But you said to do it!” Charmain protested.

“Not before we’ve sorted it out, you fool!” Peter said. “You only boil the white things!”

“I didn’t know,” Charmain said sullenly.

She spent the rest of the morning sorting laundry into heaps on the grass, while Peter hurled shirts in to boil and ran off soapy water into tubs to soak robes and socks and twenty pairs of wizardly trousers in.

At length he said, “I think the shirts have boiled enough,” and pulled forward a swilling tub of cold water. “You put the fire out while I run the hot water off.”

Charmain had not the least idea how you put a magical fire out. Experimentally, she slapped the side of the copper. It burned her hand. She said, “Ow! Fire, go out!” in a sort of scream. And the fire obediently flickered down and disappeared. She sucked her fingers and watched Peter open the tap at the bottom of the copper and send steaming pink suds gushing away down the drain. Charmain peered through the steam as the tap ran.

“I didn’t know the soap was pink,” she said.

“It wasn’t,” Peter said. “Oh, my heavens! Look what you’ve done now!” He leaped up on the chair and began heaving out steaming shirts with the forked stick meant for the purpose. Every one of them, as it splashed into the cold water, turned out to be bright cherry pink. After the shirts, he forked out fifteen tiny shrunken socks, all of which would have been too small for Morgan, and a baby-sized pair of wizardly trousers. Finally, he fished up a very small red robe and held it out accusingly, dripping and steaming, for Charmain to see. “That’s what you did,” he said. “You never put red wool in with white shirts. The dye runs. And it’s turned out almost too small for a kobold. You are an utter fool!”

“How was I to know?” Charmain demanded passionately. “I’ve lived a sheltered life! Mother never lets me go near our wash house.”

“Because it’s not respectable. I know,” Peter said disgustedly. “I suppose you think I should be sorry for you! Well, I’m not. I’m not going to trust you anywhere near the mangle. The lord knows what you’d do with that! I’m going to try a bleaching spell while I do the mangling. You go and get the clothesline and that tub of clothes pegs from the pantry and hang everything up to dry. Can I trust you not to hang yourself or something while you do that?”

“I’m not a fool,” Charmain said haughtily.

An hour or so later, when Peter and Charmain, both weary and damp with steam, were soberly chewing yesterday’s leftover pasties in the kitchen, Charmain could not help thinking that her efforts with the clothesline were rather more successful than Peter’s with the mangle and the bleaching spell. The clothesline zigzagged ten times back and forth across the yard. But it stayed up. The shirts now flapping from the pegs on it were not white. Some were streaked with red. Some had curious pink curlicues all over them, and some others were a delicate blue. Most of the robes had white stripes on them somewhere. The socks and the trousers were all creamy white. Charmain thought it very tactful of her that she did not point out to Peter that the elf, who was ducking and dodging among the zigzags of washing, was staring at it in grave amazement.

“There’s an elf out there!” Peter exclaimed with his mouth full.

Charmain swallowed the rest of her pasty and opened the back door to see what the elf wanted.

The elf bent his tall fair head under the doorway and stalked into the middle of the kitchen, where he put the glass box he was carrying down on the table. Inside the box were three roundish white things about the size of tennis balls. Peter and Charmain stared at them, and then at the elf, who simply stood there without speaking.

“What are these?” Peter said at length.