House of Many Ways Read Online Free PDF Page B

looked at Stage Four. By this time, she was looking at stage four in “A Spell to Bend Objects to the Will.”
    “Take up the quill,” this said, “and, using the prepared mixture, write upon the paper the word Ylf surrounded by a five-sided figure. Care must be taken not to touch the paper while doing this.”
    Charmain took up the drippy, sticky feather pen, adorned with bits of eggshell and a piece of pink petal, and did her best. The mixture was not easy to write with and there seemed no way to hold the paper steady. It slipped and it slid, while Charmaindipped and scratched, and the word that was supposed to be Ylf came out gluey and semi-visible and crooked, and looked more like Hoof because the red hair in the bowl came out on the pen halfway through and did strange loopy things across the word. As for the five-sided figure, the paper slipped sideways while Charmain was trying to draw it, and the most that could be said for it was that it had five sides. It finished as a sinister egg-yolk yellow shape with a dog hair sticking off one corner.
    Charmain heaved up a breath, plastered her hair back with a now extremely sticky hand, and looked at the final stage, Stage Five. It was now Stage Five of “A Spell to Make a Wish Come True,” but she was far too flustered to notice. It said, “Placing the feather back in the bowl, clap hands three times and say ‘Tacs.’”
    “Tacs!” Charmain said, clapping hard and stickily.
    Something evidently worked. The paper, the bowl, and the quill pen all vanished, quietly and completely. So did most of the sticky trickles onGreat-Uncle William’s desk. The Boke of Palimpsest shut itself with a snap. Charmain stood back, dusting crumby bits from her hands, feeling quite exhausted and rather let down.
    “But I should be able to fly,” she told herself. “I wonder where the best place is to test it out.”
    The answer was obvious. Charmain went out of the study and along to the end of the passage, to where the window stood invitingly open to the sloping green meadow. The window had a broad, low sill, perfect for climbing over. In a matter of seconds, Charmain was out in the meadow in the evening sunlight, breathing the cold, clean air of the mountains.
    She was right up in the mountains here, with most of High Norland spread out beneath her, already blue with evening. Opposite her, lit up orange by the low sun and deceivingly near, were the snowy peaks that separated her country from Strangia, Montalbino, and other foreign places. Behind her were more peaks where large dark gray and crimson clouds were crowding up ominously. Itwas going to rain up here soon, as it often did in High Norland, but for the moment it was warm and peaceful. There were sheep grazing in another meadow just beyond some rocks, and Charmain could hear mooing and bells tonkling from a herd of cows somewhere quite near. When she looked that way, she was a trifle startled to find that the cows were in a meadow above her and that there was no sign of Great-Uncle William’s house or the window she had climbed out of.
    Charmain did not let this worry her. She had never been this high in the mountains before, and she was astonished at how beautiful it was. The grass she was standing on was greener than any she had seen in the town. Fresh scents blew off it. These came, when she looked closely, from hundreds and hundreds of tiny, exquisite flowers growing low in the grass.
    “Oh, Great-Uncle William, you are lucky!” she cried out. “Fancy having this next door to your study!”
    For a while, she wandered blissfully about, avoidingthe bees that were busy among the flowers and picking herself a bunch that was supposed to be one of each kind. She picked a tiny scarlet tulip, a white one, a starry golden flower, a pale pigmy primrose, a mauve harebell, a blue cup, an orange orchid, and one each from crowded clumps of pink and white and yellow. But the flowers that took her fancy most were tiny blue trumpets,