House of Many Ways

House of Many Ways
Diana Wynne Jones

A chaotically magical sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, from the bestselling children’s author and ‘godmother of fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones.Charmain Baker is in over her head. Looking after Great Uncle William's tiny cottage while he's ill should have been easy, but Great Uncle William is better known as the Royal Wizard Norland and his house bends space and time. Its single door leads to any number of places - the bedrooms, the kitchen, the caves under the mountains, the past, to name but a few.By opening that door, Charmain is now also looking after an extremely magical stray dog, a muddled young apprentice wizard and a box of the king's most treasured documents, as well as irritating a clan of small blue creatures.Caught up in an intense royal search, she encounters an intimidating sorceress named Sophie. And where Sophie is, can the Wizard Howl and fire demon Calcifer be far behind?

Dear Reader,

Here is my new book, House of Many Ways, which I hope you will enjoy. It is a sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, set in the world where such things as seven-league boots and flying carpets are not only possible but real. For this one we move to the mountainous kingdom of High Norland, where the elderly King and his almost equally elderly daughter are busy cataloguing their huge library, but not too busy to notice that they are getting poorer and poorer. Their Royal Wizard falls ill and is unable to help them, which is how we come to meet Charmain, a cross-grained teenager who has been brought up so respectably that she knows almost nothing about anything except books. Charmain is volunteered to look after the Royal Wizard’s house while he is ill. But of course a wizard’s house is bound to be peculiar, and this one is, very.

While Charmain struggles with its peculiarities and with a very small and very greedy dog called Waif, she runs into the fearsome lubbock, a cocksure boy called Peter, a tribe of kobolds, and the inhabitants of the moving castle – Sophie, her son Morgan, Calcifer the fire demon and Wizard Howl in a very irritating disguise. Oh, and there are elves too, not to speak of Jamal the cook and his surly dog.

I had fun writing this. I hope you will have equal fun reading it.

Diana Wynne Jones

Illustrated by Tim Stevens

To my granddaughter, Ruth, together with Sharyn’s laundry and also to Lilly B.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

In which Charmain is volunteered to look after a wizard’s house

“Charmain must do it,” said Aunt Sempronia. “We can’t leave Great Uncle William to face this on his own.”

“Your Great Uncle William?” said Mrs Baker. “Isn’t he—” She coughed and lowered her voice because this, to her mind, was not quite nice. “Isn’t he a wizard?”

“Of course,” said Aunt Sempronia. “But he has—” Here she too lowered her voice. “He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off in order to cure him, you see, and someone has to look after his house. Spells, you know, escape if there’s no one there to watch them. And I am far too busy to do it. My stray dogs’ charity alone—”

“Me too. We’re up to our ears in wedding cake orders this month,” Mrs Baker said hastily. “Sam was saying only this morning—”

“Then it has to be Charmain,” Aunt Sempronia decreed. “Surely she’s old enough now.”

“Er—” said Mrs Baker.

They both looked across the parlour to where Mrs Baker’s daughter sat, deep in a book, as usual, with her long, thin body bent into what sunlight came in past Mrs Baker’s geraniums, her red hair pinned up in a sort of birds’ nest and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She held one of her father’s huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.

“Er… did you hear us, dear?” Mrs Baker said anxiously.

“No,” Charmain said with her mouth full. “What?”

“That’s settled, then,” Aunt Sempronia said. “I’ll leave it to you to explain to her, Berenice, dear.” She stood up, majestically shaking out the folds of her stiff silk dress and then of her silk parasol. “I’ll be back to fetch her tomorrow morning,” she said. “Now I’d better go and tell poor Great Uncle William that Charmain will be taking care of things for him.”

She swept out of the parlour, leaving Mrs Baker to wish that her husband’s aunt was not so rich or so bossy, and to wonder how she was going to explain to Charmain, let alone to Sam. Sam never allowed Charmain to do anything that was not utterly respectable. Nor did Mrs Baker either, except when Aunt Sempronia took a hand.

Aunt Sempronia, meanwhile, mounted into her smart little pony trap and had her groom drive her out of the other side of town where Great Uncle William lived.

“I’ve fixed it all up,” she announced, sailing through the magic ways to where Great Uncle William sat glumly writing in his study. “My great niece Charmain is coming here tomorrow. She will see you on your way and look after you when you come back. In between, she will take care of the house for you.”

“How very kind of her,” said Great Uncle William. “I take it she is well versed in magic, then?”

“I have no idea,” said Aunt Sempronia. “What I do know is that she never has her nose out of a book, never does a hand’s turn in the house and is treated like a sacred object by both her parents. It will do her good to do something normal for a change.”

“Oh dear,” said Great Uncle William. “Thank you for warning me. I shall take precautions then.”

“Do that,” said Aunt Sempronia. “And you had better make sure there is plenty of food in the place. I’ve never known a girl who eats so much. And remains thin as a witch’s besom with it. I’ve never understood it. I’ll bring her here tomorrow before the elves come, then.”

She turned and left. “Thank you,” Great Uncle William said weakly to her stiff, rustling back. “Dear, dear,” he added, as the front door slammed. “Ah, well. One has to be grateful to one’s relatives, I suppose.”

Charmain, oddly enough, was quite grateful to Aunt Sempronia too. Not that she was in the least grateful for being volunteered to look after an old, sick wizard whom she had never met. “She might have asked me!” she said, rather often, to her mother.

“I think she knew you would say no, dear,” Mrs Baker suggested eventually.

“I might have,” Charmain said. “Or,” she added, with a secretive smile, “I might not have.”

“Dear, I’m not expecting you to enjoy it,” Mrs Baker said tremulously. “It’s not at all nice. It’s just that it would be so very kind—”

“You know I’m not kind,” Charmain said, and she went away upstairs to her white frilly bedroom, where she sat at her nice desk, staring out of her window at the roofs, towers and chimneys of High Norland City, and then up at the blue mountains beyond. The truth was, this was the chance she had been longing for. She was tired of her respectable school and very tired of living at home, with her mother treating her as if Charmain were a tigress no one was sure was tame, and her father forbidding her to do things because they were not nice, or not safe, or not usual. This was a chance to leave home and do something – the one thing – Charmain had always wanted to do. It was worth putting up with a wizard’s house just for that. She wondered if she had the courage to write the letter that went with it.

For a long time she had no courage at all. She sat and stared at the clouds piling along the peaks of the mountains, white and purple, making shapes like fat animals and thin swooping dragons. She stared until the clouds had wisped away into nothing but faint mist against a blue sky. Then she said, “Now or nothing.” After that she sighed, fetched her glasses up on the chain that hung round her neck, and got out her good pen and her best writing paper. She wrote, in her best writing:

Your Majesty,

Ever since I was a small child and first heard of your great collection of books and manuscripts, I have longed to work in your

library. Although I know that you yourself, with the aid of your daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Hilda, are personally engaged in the long and difficult task of sorting and listing the contents of the Royal Library, I nevertheless hope that you might appreciate my help. Since I am of age, I wish to apply for the post of librarian assistant in the Royal Library. I hope Your Majesty will not find my application too presumptuous.

Yours truly, Charmain Baker 12 Corn Street High Norland City

Charmain sat back and reread her letter. There was no way, she thought, that writing like this to the old King could be anything other than sheer cheek, but it seemed to her that the letter was quite a good one. The one thing in it that was dubious was the “I am of age.” She knew that was supposed to mean that a person was twenty-one – or at least eighteen – but she felt it was not exactly a lie. She had not said what age she was of, after all. And she hadn’t, either, said that she was hugely learned or highly qualified, because she knew she was not. She hadn’t even said that she loved books more than anything else in the world, although this was perfectly true. She would just have to trust her love of books shone through.

I’m quite sure the King will just scrumple the letter up and throw it on the fire, she thought. But at least I tried.

She went out and posted the letter, feeling very brave and defiant.

The next morning, Aunt Sempronia arrived in her pony trap and loaded Charmain into it, along with a neat carpet bag that Mrs Baker had packed full of Charmain’s clothes, and a much larger bag that Mr Baker had packed, bulging with pasties and tasties, buns, flans and tarts. So large was this second bag, and smelling so strongly of savoury herbs, gravy, cheese, fruit, jam and spices, that the groom driving the trap turned round and sniffed in astonishment, and even Aunt Sempronia’s stately nostrils flared.

“Well, you’ll not starve, child,” she said. “Drive on.”

But the groom had to wait until Mrs Baker had embraced Charmain and said, “I know I can trust you, dear, to be good and tidy and considerate.”

That’s a lie, Charmain thought. She doesn’t trust me an inch.

Then Charmain’s father hurried up to peck a kiss on Charmain’s cheek. “We know you’ll not let us down, Charmain,” he said.

That’s another lie, Charmain thought. You know I will.

“And we’ll miss you, my love,” her mother said, nearly in tears.