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

The answer was such a storm of yelling that Charmain put her hands over her ears.

“That’ll do!” she shouted. “How can I understand a word you say when you all scream at once?” She recognized the kobold who had appeared in the living room, standing on a chair with at least six others. His nose was a very memorable shape. “You tell me. What was your name again?”

He gave her a curt little bow. “Timminz is my name. I understand you are Charming Baker and you speak for the wizard. Am I right?”

“More or less,” Charmain said. There did not seem to be much point in arguing about her name. Besides, she rather liked being called Charming. “I told you the wizard’s ill. He’s gone away to get cured.”

“So you say,” Timminz answered. “Are you sure he hasn’t run away?”

This produced such yells and jeers from all over the kitchen that Charmain had to shout again to get heard. “Be quiet! Of course he hasn’t run away. I was here when he went. He was very unwell and the elves had to carry him. He would have died if the elves hadn’t taken him.”

In the near-silence that followed this, Timminz said sulkily, “If you say so, we believe you, of course. Our quarrel is with the wizard, but maybe you can settle it. And I tell you we don’t like it. It’s indecent.”

“What is?” Charmain asked.

Timminz squeezed his eyes up and glowered over his nose. “You are not to laugh. The wizard laughed when I complained to him.”

“I promise not to laugh,” Charmain said. “So what is it?”

“We were very angry,” Timminz said. “Our ladies refused to wash his dishes for him and we took away his taps so that he couldn’t wash them himself, but all he did was smile, and say he hadn’t the strength to argue—”

“Well, he was ill,” Charmain said. “You know that now. So what is it about?”

“This garden of his,” Timminz said. “The complaint came first from Rollo, but I came and took a look and Rollo was quite right. The wizard was growing bushes with blue flowers, which is the correct and reasonable color for flowers to be, but by his magic he had made half the same bushes pink, and some of them were even green or white, which is disgusting and incorrect.”

Here Peter was unable to contain himself. “But hydrangeas are like that!” he burst out. “I’ve explained it to you! Any gardener could tell you. If you don’t put the bluing powder under the whole bush, some of the flowers are going to be pink. Rollo’s a gardener. He must have known.”

Charmain looked around the crowded kitchen but could not see Rollo anywhere among the swarms of blue people. “He probably only told you,” she said, “because he likes to chop things down. I bet he kept asking the wizard if he could chop the bushes down and the wizard said no. He asked me last night—”

At this, Rollo popped up from beside a dog dish, almost at Charmain’s feet. She recognized him mostly by his grating little voice when he shouted, “And so I did ask her! And she sits there in the path, having just floated down from the sky, cool as you please, and tells me I only wants to enjoy myself. As bad as the wizard, she is!”

Charmain glared down at him. “You’re just a destructive little beast,” she said. “What you’re doing is making trouble because you can’t get your own way!”

Rollo flung out an arm. “Hear her? Hear that? Who’s wrong here, her or me?”

A dreadful shrill clamor arose from all over the kitchen. Timminz shouted for silence, and when the clamor had died into muttering, he said to Charmain, “So will you now give permission for these disgraceful bushes to be lopped down?”

“No, I will not,” Charmain told him. “They’re Great-Uncle William’s bushes and I’m supposed to look after all his things for him. And Rollo is just making trouble.”

Timminz said, squeezing his glower at her, “Is that your last word?”

“Yes,” said Charmain. “It is.”

“Then,” Timminz said, “you’re on your own. No kobold is going to do a hand’s turn for you from now on.”

And they were all gone. Just like that, the blue crowd vanished from among teapots and dog dishes and dirty crockery, leaving a little wind stirring the last few bubbles about and the fire now burning brightly in the grate.

“That was stupid of you,” Peter said.

“What do you mean?” Charmain asked indignantly. “You’re the one who said those bushes were supposed to be like that. And you could see Rollo had got them all stirred up on purpose. I couldn’t let Great-Uncle William come home to find his garden all chopped down, could I?”

“Yes, but you could have been more tactful,” Peter insisted. “I was expecting you to say we’d put down a bluing spell to make all the flowers blue, or something.”

“Yes, but Rollo would still have wanted to cut them all down,” Charmain said. “He told me I was a spoilsport last night for not letting him.”

“You could have made them see what he was like,” Peter said, “instead of making them all even angrier.”

“At least I didn’t laugh at them like Great-Uncle William did,” Charmain retorted. “He made them angry, not me!”