“I suppose that is right, in a way.” I felt forced to agree. “But why did you come to me?”

“The boy has unbreakable protections round his room,” the medium-sized one chanted from the curtain rail. “We can’t get in.”

This did not surprise me. If I were next door to the Izzys all night, I would make sure no one could get into my room, too. It surprised me slightly that Grundo could do this, but then Grundo never seems to know what he can do until he does it. All the same … “I don’t understand,” I said. “If Grundo has already told you all this, did you come to me for a second opinion or what?”

“He advised us to speak to Hepzibah or Judith Dimber,” the big creature told me, “but they have never known that we exist. They were asleep, and we couldn’t get them to hear us. And we need to know whether we should proceed now with the rest of the boy’s advice.”

“Oh-oh!” I said. “What else has Grundo told you?”

“To leave the treasure and stop doing the Dimbers’ bidding,” chirped a small one from the curtains.

The rest burst out twittering at that. “Good advice!” or “Bad advice!” or “No one has ever advised us before!” and “No one has ever noticed us before!” came from a dozen transparent, pulsing throats. It was like a tree full of sparrows until the big one took charge again.

He frilled and fluttered his trailing bits, in a way that reminded me exactly of Judith clutching and resettling her mauve shawl. The rest all stopped twittering when he did this. “Looking to the future,” he said, “viewing what is to come, we think we should take the boy’s advice.”

The smaller ones all went crowding this way and that along the curtain rails, looking very anxious indeed. I saw their point. I saw where all this had been leading now. If I was booked to be enslaved to one of the Izzys, I would be terrified. “I see,” I said. “It might not be so bad. They seem quite kind to their dog.”

The big creature just looked at me out of sad shining pink eyes.

“Yes,” I said, “but—if Heppy and Judith don’t know you exist, they won’t understand it if you leave. It seems a bit hard on them. What is it that you actually do for them?”

“Secret ceremonies with me,” the big one said, “and appropriate rituals with all of us, for the health of the land and its magics, in this part of the country. Our belief is that both Dimber ladies have power enough of their own to do this without us.”

But they love that treasure, I thought. They revere it. If these people leave, the Regalia’s going to be like the Inner Garden after the lady on the wall took the goodness away.

“Look,” I said. “Your problem is really Ilsabil, isn’t it? Or Isadora?”

None of the creatures spoke, but there was a terrible tense stillness about the way they perched that showed me I was right. They were dreadfully loyal, though. None of them would say a word against any Dimber. How can I handle this? I wondered. Oh, blast Grundo! What a perfect revenge he’s taken!

“I think what you need,” I said, “is some way of making them realize that you’re people and just as alive as their dog.”

This caused a perfect storm of cheeping and chanting. It was like having the dawn chorus in my bedroom.

“If only they knew!”

“We’ve served so long, but they all think of us as things!”

“Just to be thanked for once!”

“And so we are people, just as you are!”

“They can’t see us, they can’t see us or hear us!”

“We want them to know!”

They made me lose my thread. “What were you before you were made to inhabit the Regalia?” I asked them.

“Merely some of the folk who live in the land,” the big one told me. “You people never seem to see us, but there are crowds of us everywhere. In summer we sway and sing and climb ladders of hot air …”

I missed the next bit because a flower file suddenly opened in my head. You took your time! I thought crossly, but it was all there, under Mullein again. Invisible beings of the day: very potent transparent folk existing in crowds all over the land, idle and joyful, can be commanded but should be entreated with politeness as, when annoyed, they can cause storms, floods, and droughts. Cross-refer to bad magics: enslavement. She had known them well, the hurt lady.

“It was high summer,” the big creature was saying when I started listening again, “and it was a great shock to me when the spells were cast and I was hurled from my bed in the warm air into the cold gold chalice. I admit that my existence has been useful since....”

Should be entreated with politeness, I thought. And they’re very loyal, really. “Look, wouldn’t you rather help the Dimbers of your own free will?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said the big creature, frilling his trailing parts. “It is not the work we object to. We would like to be asked to do what we do.”

“Politely,” muttered someone on the curtains.

Tags: Diana Wynne Jones Magids Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net