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

“Protection,” said the plate of cake. “Open the door and let’s get out of here.”

Charmain took one hand from the false plate, opened the door, and slipped out into the damp, echoing hallway. “But who’s being protected from what?” she asked, closing the door as quietly as possible.

“Morgan,” said the plate of cake. “Sophie got an anonymous note this morning. It said, ‘Stop your investigation and leave High Norland, or your child suffers.’ But we can’t leave, because Sophie’s promised the Princess she’ll stay until we find out where all the money’s gone. Tomorrow we’re going to pretend to go—”

Calcifer was interrupted by shrill barking. Waif came dashing round the corner and hurled herself delightedly onto Charmain’s ankles. Calcifer jumped and floated free in his own shape, as a fiery blue teardrop hovering by Charmain’s shoulder. Charmain scooped Waif up. “How did you—?” she began, trying to keep her face out of the way of Waif’s eager tongue. Then she realized that Waif was not in the least wet. “Oh, Calcifer, she must have come the quick way through the house! Can you find me the Conference Room? I can get us back from there.”

“Easy.” Calcifer darted off like a blue comet, so fast that Charmain had trouble keeping up. He whirled round several corners and into the corridor where the kitchen smells were. In next to no time, Charmain was standing with her back to the door of the Conference Room with Waif in her arms and Calcifer floating by her shoulder, while she tried to remember just what you did from here. Calcifer said, “It’s like this,” and zigzagged away in front of her. Charmain followed as best she could and found herself in the corridor where the bedrooms were. Sunlight was blazing in the window beyond Great-Uncle William’s study. Peter came dashing toward them, looking pale and urgent.

“Oh, good dog, Waif!” he said. “I sent her to fetch you. Just come and take a look at this!”

He turned and galloped back to the other end of the corridor, where he pointed, rather shakily, at the view out of the window.

Out in the mountain meadow, the rain was just passing away in big, melting, dark gray clouds that were obviously still raining below on the town. A rainbow arched across the mountains, lurid in front of the clouds and pale and misty across the meadow. The meadow grass blazed and twinkled so with sunlit wetness, that Charmain was dazzled for a moment and could not see what Peter was pointing at.

“That’s the lubbock,” Peter said, rather hoarsely. “Right?”

The lubbock was there, towering huge and purple in the middle of the meadow. It was bending slightly to listen to a kobold, who was hopping up and down, pointing at the rainbow and evidently shouting at the lubbock.

“That’s the lubbock, all right,” Charmain said, shivering. “And that’s Rollo.”

As she said it, the lubbock laughed and rolled its bundles of insect eyes toward the rainbow. It stepped carefully backward until the misty rainbow stripes seemed to be right beside its insect feet. There it bent and dragged a small earthenware pot out of the turf. Rollo capered about.

“That must be the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow!” Peter said wonderingly.

They watched the lubbock pass the pot to Rollo, who took it in both arms. It was evidently heavy. Rollo stopped capering and staggered about with his head thrown back in greedy joy. He turned to stagger away. He did not see the lubbock slyly extend its long purple proboscis behind him. He did not seem to notice when the proboscis stabbed into his back. He just sank away into the meadow grass, still clutching the pot and laughing. The lubbock laughed too, standing in the middle of the meadow and waving its insect arms.

“It’s just laid its eggs in Rollo,” Charmain whispered, “and he didn’t even notice!” She felt ill. The same thing had so nearly happened to her. Peter looked quite green, and Waif was shivering. “You know,” she said, “I think the lubbock may have promised Rollo a crock of gold for making trouble between the kobolds and Great-Uncle William.”

“I’m sure it did,” Peter said. “Before you got here, I could hear Rollo yelling that he needed to be paid.”

He opened the window to listen, Charmain thought. The silly fool.

“I have to declare war,” Calcifer said. He had gone rather wispy and pale. He added in a small hiss that trembled slightly, “I have to fight that lubbock or I won’t deserve the life that Sophie gave me. One moment.” He stopped speaking and hung in the air, long and stiff, with his orange eyes closed.

“Are you the fire demon?” Peter asked. “I’ve never seen one bef—”

“Quiet,” said Calcifer. “I’m concentrating. This has to be right.”

There was a slight rumbling from somewhere. Then, overhead and across the window from behind, came what Charmain at first took for a thundercloud. It threw a large, black, turreted shadow along the meadow, which very quickly reached the rejoicing lubbock. The lubbock looked round as the shadow fell across it and froze for an instant. Then it started to run. By this time the turreted shadow had been followed by the castle that was making it, a tall black castle built of huge blocks of dark stone, with turrets on all four corners. They could see the big stones it was made of shaking and grinding together as it moved. It came after the lubbock faster than the lubbock could run.

The lubbock dodged. The castle swerved after it. The lubbock spread its small fuzzy wings for more speed and went bounding in furious strides to the tall rocks at the end of the meadow. As soon as it reached the rocks, it turned round and came rushing the other way, toward the window. It must have hoped that the castle would crash into the rocks. But the castle reversed itself with no trouble at all and came after it faster than ever. Big puffs of black smoke went belching from the castle’s turrets and floating away across the fading rainbow. The lubbock swiveled one of its multiple eyes as it ran, then put its insect head down and pelted, feelers flapping, wings beating, in a big curve that took it along the very edge of the cliff. Although its wings were now purple blurs, it seemed not to be able to fly with them at all. Charmain understood why it had not tried to follow her down from the cliff: it would not have been able to fly back up. Instead of jumping off the cliff to escape, the lubbock simply kept on running, tempting the castle to follow and fall off the edge.

The castle did follow. It came steaming and puffing and grinding at speed along the cliff, and seemed perfectly balanced in spite of the way half of it was hanging over the edge. The lubbock gave out a despairing hoot, changed dire

ction again, and rushed out into the center of the meadow. There it played its last trick and went small. It shrank into a tiny purple insect and plunged in among the grass and flowers.

The castle was on to that spot in instants. It shuddered to a stop over the place where the lubbock had vanished and floated there. Flames began to come out of its flat underside, yellow flames first, then orange, then angry red, and finally a white hotness that was too bright to look at. Flames and thick smoke licked up its sides and joined the dark smokes streaming from its turrets. The meadow filled with hot black fog. For what seemed hours but was probably only minutes, the castle was a dim hovering shape over smoky brightness, like the sun seen through clouds. They could hear the roar of burning even behind the magical window.

“Right,” Calcifer said. “I think that’s done it.” He turned to Charmain, and she noticed that his eyes were now a strange shining silver. “Will you open the window, please? I have to go and make sure.”

As Charmain turned the catch and swung the window open, the castle rose up and moved sideways. All the smokes and fogs collected into one large dark puff, which rolled across the edge of the cliff and out into the valley, where it shredded away to nothing. When Calcifer floated forward into the meadow, the castle was standing demurely, with only a wisp of smoke coming from each turret, beside a big square patch of black earth. A perfectly horrible smell rolled in through the window.

“Ugh!” said Charmain. “What is that?”

“Roast lubbock, I hope,” Peter said.

They watched Calcifer float to the burned square. There he became a blue streak of action, whirling this way and that across the blackness until he had covered every tiny scrap of it.