“Well, there are two reasons,” Mara said. “The first is that the University didn’t understand Derk, or treat him at all well, when he was there. I was there with him, so I know what a miserable time he had. Your father was full of new ideas—like creating the griffins—and he wanted nothing so much as to be helped to find out how to make those ideas work. But instead of helping him, they tried to force him to do things their way. It didn’t matter to them at all that he was brilliant in his way. They went on at him about how wizardry these days had to be directed toward things that made the tours better, and they told him contemptuously that pure research was no use. I found him in tears more than once, Blade.”
“Yes, but that was him,” Blade objected. “I’m different. I’ve got lots of ideas, but I don’t want to try them out yet. I want to know the normal things first.”
“Fair enough,” said Mara. “I didn’t share my ideas about micro-universes in those days. But you can surely understand the second reason Derk doesn’t want you at the University. They really do nothing there these days that isn’t going to help the tours. They haven’t time to look beyond. They probably don’t dare to. And your father thinks, rightly or wrongly, that you’ll end up as miserable as he was, or you’ll find yourself doing nothing but look after the tours like the rest of them. And that would break his heart, Blade.”
Blade found himself wanting to say whole numbers of things—everything from I do understand to But this is not his life, it’s mine!—and could only manage, rather sulkily, “Well, it turns out we’re both having to look after the tours anyway.”
Before Mara could reply, Lydda cut in with “This Mr. Chesney—does he eat the same stuff as us? He’s from a different world, isn’t he?”
Mara sprang up. “Oh, yes. I’m sure he does. That reminds me—”
“Good,” said Lydda. “I’m planning godlike snacks.”
“And I must get us organized,” said Mara. “Let me see, there’ll be eighty-odd wizards, plus two people with Mr. Chesney, and us. Blade, come and help me see if we can turn the dining room into a Great Hall. And there’s your father’s clothes—”
From then on it was all a mighty bustle. Derk, for the most part, strode through it muttering, “There must be a way out!” and doing all his usual things, like feeding and exercising the animals, turning the sprinkler on his coffee bushes, milking the Friendly Cows, and checking his experiments, while everyone else raced about. Blade thought rather angrily that Dad seemed to have taken Shona’s offer of help far too literally. Derk did not come near the house until Blade and Mara were trying to move the garden.
It was almost dark by then. Before that, Blade and Mara had tried to stretch the house out to make room for a Great Hall in the middle. Shona decided that they needed marble stairs, too, leading into the hall, and sat on the ordinary wooden stairs making drawings of sculptured banisters and sketches of the sort of clothes Derk should wear. But before the house was even half long enough, there were alarming creakings and crunchings from all over it. Kit roared a warning, and Don and Elda dashed indoors to say the middle of the roof was dipping downward, spreading the tiles like scales on a fir cone. At the same time Lydda shrieked that the kitchen was falling in and Shona shouted that the new marble stairs were swaying. Blade and Mara had to prop the house up and think again.
“Put everyone out on the terrace,” Kit suggested, “and make sure it doesn’t rain. That way the griffins can help hand round the food.”
This was almost the only help Kit had offered, Blade thought morosely, and he knew it was only because Kit was far too big to be comfortable indoors these days. At least Don and Elda were helping in the kitchen. Or no, Blade knew he was being unfair to Kit really. After Blade and Mara had expanded the terrace into a large stone platform reaching halfway to the front gates, Kit got busy hauling all the tables and chairs in the house out there. Blade’s annoyance with Kit was because he knew the griffins were up to something. He had seen all five of them, even Lydda—and Callette, who almost never, on principle, did anything Kit wanted—gathered in a secretive cluster around Kit in the twilight. It made Blade feel hurt and left out. The griffins were, after all, his brothers and sisters. Most of the time, it worked like that. But there were times—like this, and almost always under Kit’s leadership—when the griffins shut the rest of them out. Blade hated it.
So much for family solidarity! he thought, and turned to help Mara to bend and push the shrubberies and all the flower beds into some kind of shape around the new, huge terrace. “If we shunt the little forest up to this corner—” Mara said to him. “No, even if we do, we’ll have to straighten the drive. I know your father hates straight lines in a garden, but there simply isn’t room.”
Here Don backed out onto the terrace, carrying one end of the piano stool, with Shona attached to the other end of it, screaming, “I said give it back! I need it to do my practice on!”
Kit slammed down the kitchen table and gave voice like six out-of-tune bugles. “LET HIM TAKE IT. WE NEED IT. YOU CAN PRACTICE AT COLLEGE.”
“No, I can’t! I’m not going to college until this is over! I promised Dad!” Shona shrilled.
“You’re still going to give it here.” Kit dropped to all fours, tail slashing, and advanced on Shona. Even on all fours, he towered over her.
“You big bully,” Shona said, not in the least impressed. “Do you want me to poke you in the eye?”
“I think I’d better break that up,” Mara said.
But at that point Derk appeared, rushing across the acre of terrace to stare down at the twilit garden in horror. “What do you think you’re doing, woman?”
“Trying to make it fit—what did you think?” Mara said, while behind Derk, Kit and Shona hastily pretended to be having a friendly discussion.
“Leave it. I’ll do it,” said Derk. “Why is it that no one but me has the slightest artistic sense when it comes to gardening?”
Everyone went to bed exhausted.
THREE
WIZARDS BEGAN ARRIVING from about eleven the next morning. When Querida and Barnabas reached the gates of Derkholm, they found themselves met by a silent pair of griffins. These were Don and Lydda. Kit, for some reason, had insisted on a matched pair. Don and Lydda were the same age—thirteen—and almost the same handsome golden to brown colors, and they were the same size, if you allowed for the fact that Lydda’s shape was—to put it politely—chunky, while Don’s was spare. Under the big gold-tinted brown feathers of his wings, his ribs always showed and always worried Mara.
The two of them preceded Querida and Barnabas up the straight drive (for despite working until after midnight, Derk had not found room to make the drive wander as he wanted) and to the enormous terrace, where they politely bowed the two wizards up the steps. It was perhaps unfortunate that the moving around of the garden had resulted in the clump of man-eating orchids arriving at a bed just beside these steps. They made a dart at Querida as she passed, all several dozen yellow blooms at once. Querida turned and looked at them. The orchids drew back hastily.
On the terrace the various tables had been converted into one long one, covered with a white cloth—which had been two dozen tea towels an hour before—and the assorted chairs had become identical graceful gold seats. Mara felt rather proud of the effect as she came forward wearing a rich brocade dress—Shona had stylishly sewn together two aprons and a tablecloth to make the basis of the dress—to show the newcomers to their seats.
Derk was beside Mara in clothes Shona and Mara had worked on late into the night. They were indigo velvet—Callette’s idea—with a cloak that swirled to reveal a starry night sky. It was real sky and real stars, as if seen small and distant. Querida naturally ignored this wondrous lining. “I’m glad to see you’re being sensible about this, Wizard Derk,” she said.
“Not sensible,” he said. “Resigned.” While he worked on the garden in the dark, it had come to Derk that the only way to go through with this was to promise himself t
hat as soon as it was over, he would start work at once on a completely new kind of animal.