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

“There’s food in the bag Mother brought yesterday,” Charmain said, busy arranging the shoes in the best place.

“No, there isn’t,” Peter said. “I ate it all for lunch.”

Charmain stopped feeling kindly toward Peter. “Greedy pig,” she said, banging on the fireplace for food for Waif. Waif, in spite of all the crumpets she had eaten in the Royal Mansion, was delighted to see the latest dog dish. “And so are you a greedy pig,” Charmain said, watching Waif gobble. “Where do you put it all? Great-Uncle William, how do we get supper?”

The kindly voice was very faint now. “Just knock on the pantry door and say ‘Supper,’ my dear.”

Peter got to the pantry first. “Supper!” he bellowed, banging hard on the door.

There was a knobby, flopping sound from the table. Both of them whirled round to look. There, lying beside the open suitcase, were a small lamb chop, two onions, and a turnip. Charmain and Peter stared at them.

“All raw!” Peter said, stunned.

“And not enough anyway,” Charmain said. “Do you know how to cook it?”

“No,” said Peter. “My mother does all the cooking in our house.”

“Oh!” said Charmain. “Honestly!”

Chapter Nine

HOW GREAT-UNCLE WILLIAM’S HOUSE PROVED TO HAVE MANY WAYS

Peter and Charmain naturally converged on the fireplace then. Waif scuttled out of the way as, one after another, they beat on the mantelpiece and cried out, “Breakfast!” But it seemed that this spell only worked properly in the morning.

“I wouldn’t even have minded kippers,” Charmain said, miserably surveying the two trays. They had rolls, honey, and orange juice on them, and nothing else.

“I know how to boil eggs,” Peter said. “Will Waif eat this lamb chop?”

“She’ll eat almost anything,” Charmain said. “She’s as bad as—as we are. I don’t think she’ll eat a turnip, though. I wouldn’t.”

They had a somewhat unsatisfactory supper. Peter’s eggs were—well—solid. In order to take Charmain’s mind off them, Peter asked her about her time in the Royal Mansion. Charmain told him, in order to take both their minds off the way hard boiled eggs did not mix with honey. Peter was highly intrigued by the way the King seemed to be looking for gold, and even more intrigued by the arrival of Morgan and Twinkle.

“And a fire demon?” he said. “Two infants with magical powers and a fire demon! I bet the Princess has her hands full. How long are they staying?”

“I don’t know. Nobody said,” Charmain said.

“Then I bet you two Afternoon Teas and a Morning Coffee that the Princess turns them out before the weekend,” Peter said. “Have you finished eating? Then I want you to look through your Great-Uncle’s suitcase.”

“But I want to read a book!” Charmain protested.

“No, you don’t,” Peter said. “You can do that any time. This suitcase is full of stuff you need to know. I’ll show you.” He pushed the breakfast trays aside and pulled the suitcase in front of her. Charmain sighed and put her glasses on.

The suitcase was full to the brim with paper. Lying on top was a note in Great-Uncle William’s beautiful but shaky writing. “For Charmain,” it said. “Key to the House.” Under that was a large sheet of paper with a tangle of swirly lines drawn on it. The lines had labeled boxes drawn on them at intervals, and each line ended in an arrow at the edge of the page, with the word “Unexplored” written beside it.

“That’s the short key you’ve got there,” Peter said as Charmain picked this paper up. “The rest of the stuff in the suitcase is the proper map. It folds out. Look.” He took hold of the next sheet of paper and pulled, and it came out with the next sheet joined to it, and then the next, folded back and forth to fit in the sui

tcase. It came out on to the table in a huge zigzag. Charmain stared at it resentfully. Each piece had carefully drawn rooms and corridors on it and neatly written notes beside each thing. The notes said things like “Turn left twice here” and “Two steps right and one left here.” The rooms had blocks of writing in them, some simple, like “Kitchen,” and some eloquent, like the one that read “My store of wizardly supplies, kept constantly replenished by an intake spell I am rather proud of. Please note that the ingredients on the left hand wall are all highly dangerous and must be handled with great care.” And some of the joined sheets seemed to be all criss-crossing corridors labeled “To unexplored North Section,” “To Kobolds,” “To Main Cistern” or “To Ballroom: I doubt if we shall ever find a use for this.”

“I was quite right to leave this suitcase shut,” Charmain said. “It’s the most confusing map I ever saw in my life! It can’t all be this house!”

“It is. It’s enormous,” Peter said. “And if you look, you’ll see that the way the map is folded is a clue to how you get to the different parts of it. See, here’s the living room on the top page, but if you go to the next page, you don’t get his study or the bedrooms because those are folded back, see. You get the kitchen instead because that’s folded the same way….”

Charmain’s head began to go round, and she closed her ears to Peter’s enthusiastic explanations. She looked at the swirling lines on the piece of paper in her hand instead. It almost seemed easier. At least, she could see “Kitchen” right in the middle of it, and “Bedrooms” and “Swimming Pool” and “Study.” Swimming Pool? Not really, surely? An interesting swirl led off to the right, underneath these boxes, into a tangle containing a box labeled “Conference Room.” An arrow pointed off from this box labeled “To Royal Mansion.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You can get to the King’s house from here!”

“…out to a mountain meadow that says ‘Stables,’ but I can’t see how to get there from his workroom yet,” Peter expounded, unfolding another zigzag. “And here’s ‘Food Store.’ It says ‘Stasis Spells operate.’ I wonder how you take those off. But what interests me are the places like this one, where he’s written ‘Storage Space. Just Junk? Must investigate someday.’ Do you think he created all this bent space himself? Or did he find it already there when he moved in?”