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

He came floating back with his eyes a normal orange again. “That’s it,” he said cheerfully. “Gone.”

And so are a lot of flowers, Charmain thought, but it did not seem polite to say so. The important thing was that the lubbock was gone, truly gone.

“The flowers will grow again next year,” Calcifer said to her. “What did you come and fetch me for? This lubbock?”

“No. The lubbock eggs,” Peter and Charmain said together. They explained about the elf and what the elf had said.

“Show me,” said Calcifer.

They went to the kitchen, all except Waif, who whined and refused to go in there. There Charmain had a fine sunlit view of the yard out of the window, full of dripping pink, white, and red laundry still on the clotheslines. Peter had obviously not bothered to fetch it in. She wondered what he had been doing.

The glass box was still on the table, still with the eggs in it, but it had sunk into the table somehow, so that only half of it was showing.

“What made it do that?” Charmain asked. “The magic in the eggs?”

Peter looked a little self-conscious. “Not exactly,” he said. “That happened when I put my safety spell on it. I was going back to the study to look up another spell when I saw Rollo talking to the lubbock.”

Isn’t that typical! Charmain thought. This fool always thinks he knows best!

“The elf spells would have been quite enough,” Calcifer said, floating above the embedded glass box.

“But he said it was dangerous!” Peter protested.

“You’ve made it more dangerous,” Calcifer said. “Don’t either of you come any nearer. No one can touch the box now. Does one of you know of a good stout layer of rock where I can go to destroy these eggs?”

Peter tried not to look chastened. Charmain remembered her fall from the cliff and how she had nearly landed on big rocks before she started to fly. She did her best to describe to Calcifer where those crags were.

“Under the cliff. I see,” Calcifer said. “One of you open the back door, please, and then stand back.”

Peter hurried to open the door. Charmain could see he was quite ashamed of what he had done to the glass box. But it won’t stop him doing something just as silly another time, she thought. I wish he’d learn!

Calcifer hovered over the glass box for a moment and then whirled to the open door. Halfway through the doorway, he seemed to stick, jerking and trembling, until he gave a mighty heave, doubling himself up like a large blue tadpole and then slamming himself straight again, and shot forward across the colorful washing. The glass box came loose with a scrape and a sound like someone throwing wooden planks about, and shot after him. It floated over the yard, eggs and all, following Calcifer’s small blue teardrop shape. Peter and Charmain went to the door and watched the glass box glinting its way up and across the green hillside toward the lubbock’s meadow, until it was out of sight.

“Oh!” Charmain said. “I forgot to tell him that Prince Ludovic is a lubbockin!”

“Is he? Really?” Peter said as he shut the door. “That must explain why my mother left this country, then.”

Charmain had never had much interest in Peter’s mother. She turned impatiently away and saw that the table was now flat again. That was a relief. She had been wondering what you did with a table that had a square trench in the middle of it. “What safety spell did you use?” she said.

“I’ll show you,” Peter said. “I want to have another sight of that castle anyway. Do you think we dare open the window and climb out near to it?”

“No,” said Charmain.

“But the lubbock’s definitely dead,” Peter said. “There can’t be any harm in it.”

Charmain had a very strong feeling that Peter was asking for trouble. “How do you know there was only one lubbock?” she said.

“The encyclopedia said,” Peter argued. “Lubbocks are solitary.”

Arguing fiercely about it, they wrangled their way through the inner door and turned left into the corridor. There Peter made a defiant dash for the window. Charmain dashed after him and held him back by his jacket. Waif dashed after them, squeaking with distress, and contrived to tangle herself with Peter’s feet so that he fell forward with both hands on the window. Charmain looked nervously out at the meadow, gleaming peacefully in orange sunset light, where the castle was still squatting beside the burned black patch. It was one of the queerest buildings she had ever seen.

There was a flash of light so bright that it blinded them.

Instants later there came the clap of an explosion as loud as the light was bright. The floor beneath them jiggled and the window blurred in its frame. Everything shook. Through tears of dazzle mixed with blots of blindness, Charmain thought she saw the castle vibrating all over. With ears fuzzy and deaf, she thought she heard rocks crash and grind and tumble.

Clever Waif! she thought. If Peter had been outside, he might be dead by now.

“What do you think that was?” Peter asked when they could almost hear again.