The Land of Ingary Trilogy

“Then you’re anxious about this girl, if she’s your great-niece,” Michael said, arriving at the point at last. “I see! But I can’t let you go.”

“I’m going,” said Sophie.

“But if Howl sees you there, he’ll be furious,” Michael went on, working things out. “Because I promised him, he’ll be mad with both of us. You ought to rest.” Then, when Sophie was almost ready to hit him, he exclaimed, “Wait! There’s a pair of seven-league boots in the broom cupboard!”

He took Sophie by her skinny old wrist and towed her uphill to the waiting castle. She was forced to give little hops in order not to catch her feet in the heather. “But,” she panted, “seven leagues is twenty-one miles! I’d be halfway to Porthaven in two strides!”

“No, it’s ten and a half miles a step,” said Michael. “That makes Upper Folding almost exactly. If we each take one boot and go together, then I won’t be letting you out of my sight and you won’t be doing anything strenuous, and we’ll get there before Howl does, so he won’t even know we’ve been. That solves all our problems beautifully!”

Michael was so pleased with himself that Sophie did not have the heart to protest. She shrugged and supposed Michael had better find out about the two Letties before they changed looks again. It was more honest this way. But when Michael fetched the boots from the broom cupboard, Sophie began to have doubts. Up to now she had thought they were two leather buckets that had somehow lost their handles and then got a little squashed.

“You’re supposed to put your foot in them, shoe and all,” Michael explained as he carried the two heavy, bucket-shaped things to the door. “These are the prototypes of the boots Howl made for the King’s army. We managed to get the later ones a bit lighter and more boot-shaped.” He and Sophie sat on the doorstep and each put one foot in a boot. “Point yourself towards Upper Folding before you put the boot down,” Michael warned her. He and Sophie stood up on the foot which was in an ordinary shoe and carefully swung themselves round to face Upper Folding. “Now tread,” said Michael.

Zip! The landscape instantly rushed past them so fast it was only a blur, a grey-green blur for the land and a blue-grey blur for the sky.

The wind of their going tore at Sophie’s hair and dragged every wrinkle in her face backwards until she thought she would arrive with half her face behind each ear.

The rushing stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Everything was calm and sunny. They were knee-deep in buttercups in the middle of Upper Folding village common. A cow nearby stared at them. Beyond it, thatched cottages drowsed under trees. Unfortunately, the bucketlike boot was so heavy that Sophie staggered as she landed.

“Don’t put that foot down!” Michael yelled, too late.

There was another zipping blur and more rushing wind. When it stopped, Sophie found herself right down the Folding Valley, almost into Marsh Folding. “Oh, drat!” she said, and hopped carefully round on her shoe and tried again.

Zip! Blur. And she was back on Upper Folding green again, staggering forwards with the weight of the boot. She had a glimpse of Michael diving to catch her—

Zip! Blur. “Oh, bother!” wailed Sophie. She was up in the hills again. The crooked black shape of the castle was drifting peacefully nearby. Calcifer was amusing himself blowing black smoke rings from one turret. Sophie saw that much before her shoe caught in the heather and she stumbled forwards again.

Zip! Zip! This time Sophie visited in rapid succession the Market Square of Market Chipping and the front lawn of a very grand mansion. “Blow!” she cried. “Drat!” One word for each place. And she was off again with her own momentum and another Zip! right down to the end of that valley in a field somewhere. A large red bull raised its ringed nose from the grass and thoughtfully lowered its horns.

“I’m just leaving, my good beast!” Sophie cried, hopping herself round frantically.

Zip! Back to the mansion. Zip! to Market Square. Zip! and there was the castle yet again. She was getting the hang of it. Zip! Here was Upper Folding – but how did you stop? Zip!

“Oh, confound it!” Sophie cried, almost in Marsh Folding again.

This time she hopped round very carefully and trod with great deliberation. Zip! And fortunately the boot landed in a cowpat and she sat down with a thump. Michael sprinted up before Sophie could move and dragged the boot off her foot. “Thank you!” Sophie cried breathlessly. “There seemed no reason why I should ever stop!”

Sophie’s heart pounded a bit as they walked across the common to Mrs Fairfax’s house, but only in the way hearts do when you have done a lot rather quickly. She felt very grateful for whatever Howl and Calcifer had done.

“Nice place,” Michael remarked as he hid the boots in Mrs Fairfax’s hedge.

Sophie agreed. The house was the biggest in the village. It was thatched, with white walls between the black beams, and, as Sophie remembered from visits as a child, you walked up to the porch through a garden crowded with flowers and humming with bees. Over the porch a honeysuckle and a white climbing rose were competing as to which could give most work to the bees. It was a perfect, hot summer morning down here in Upper Folding.

Mrs Fairfax answered the door herself. She was one of those plump, comfortable ladies, with swathes of butter-coloured hair coiled round her head, who made you feel good with life just to look at her. Sophie felt just the tiniest bit envious of Lettie. Mrs Fairfax looked from Sophie to Michael. She had seen Sophie last a year ago as a girl of seventeen, and there was no reason for her to recognise her as an old woman of ninety. “Good morning to you,” she said politely.

Sophie sighed. Michael said, “This is Lettie Hatter’s great-aunt. I brought her here to see Lettie.”

“Oh, I thought the face looked familiar!” Mrs Fairfax exclaimed. “There’s quite a family likeness. Do come in. Lettie’s a little bit busy just now, but have some scones and honey while you wait.”

She opened her front door wider. Instantly a large collie dog squeezed past Mrs Fairfax’s skirts, barged between Sophie and Michael, and ran across the nearest flower bed, snapping off flowers right and left.

“Oh, stop him!” Mrs Fairfax gasped, flying off in pursuit. “I don’t want him out just now!”

There was a minute or so of helter-skelter chase, in which the dog ran hither and thither, whining in a disturbed way, and Mrs Fairfax and Sophie ran after the dog, jumping flower beds and getting in one another’s way, and Michael ran after Sophie crying, “Stop! You’ll make yourself ill!” Then the dog set off loping round one corner of the house. Michael realised that the way to stop Sophie was to stop the dog. He made a crosswise dash through the flower beds, plunged round the house after the dog, and seized it by two handfuls of its thick coat just as it reached the orchard at the back.

Sophie hobbled up to find Michael pulling the dog away backwards and making such strange faces at her that she thought at first he was ill. But he jerked his head so often towards the orchard that she realised he was only trying to tell her something. She stuck her face round the corner of the house, expecting to see a swarm of bees.

Howl was there with Lettie. They were in a grove of mossy apple trees in full bloom, with a row of beehives in the distance. Lettie sat in a white garden seat. Howl was kneeling on one knee in the grass at her feet, holding one of her hands and looking noble and ardent. Lettie was smiling lovingly at him. But the worst of it, as far as Sophie was concerned, was that Lettie did not look like Martha at all. She was her own extremely beautiful self. She was wearing a dress of the same kind of pinks and white as the crowded apple blossom overhead. Her dark hair trailed in glossy curls over one shoulder and her eyes shone with devotion for Howl.

Sophie brought her head back round the corner and looked with dismay at Michael holding the whining collie dog. “He must have had a speed spell with him,” Michael whispered, equally dismayed.

Mrs Fairfax caught them up, panting and trying to pin back a loose coil of her buttery hair. “Bad dog!” she said in a fierce whisper to the collie. “I’ll put a spell on you if you do that once more!” The dog blinked and crouched down. Mrs Fairfax pointed a stern finger. “Into the house! Stay in the house!” The collie shook himself free of Michael’s hands and slunk away round the house again. “Thank you so much,” Mrs Fairfax said to Michael as they all followed it. “He will keep trying to bite Lettie’s visitor. Inside!” she shouted sternly in the front garden, as the collie seemed to be thinking of going round the house and getting to the orchard the other way. The dog gave her a woeful look over its shoulder and crawled dismally indoors through the porch.

“That dog may have the right idea,” Sophie said. “Mrs Fairfax, do you know who Lettie’s visitor is?”

Mrs Fairfax chuckled. “The Wizard Pendragon, or Howl, or whatever he calls himself,” she said. “But Lettie and I don’t let on we know. It amused me when he first turned up, calling himself Sylvester Oak, because I could see he’d forgotten me, though I hadn’t forgotten him, even though his hair used to be black in his student days.” Mrs Fairfax by now had her hands folded in front of her and was standing bolt upright, prepared to talk all day, as Sophie had often seen her do before. “He was my old tutor’s very last pupil, you know, before she retired. When Mr Fairfax was alive, he used to like me to transport us both to Kingsbury to see a show from time to time. I can manage two very nicely if I take it slowly. And I always used to drop in on old Mrs Pentstemmon while I was there. She likes her old pupils to keep in touch. And one time she introduced this young Howl to us. Oh, she was proud of him. She taught Wizard Suliman too, you know, and she said Howl was twice as good—”

“But don’t you know the reputation Howl has?” Michael interrupted.

Getting into Mrs Fairfax’s conversation was rather like getting into a turning skipping rope. You had to choose the exact moment, but once you were in, you were in. Mrs Fairfax turned herself slightly to face Michael.

“Most of it’s just talk, to my mind,” she said. Michael opened his mouth to say that it was not, but he was in the skipping rope then and it went on turning. “And I said to Lettie, ‘Here’s your big chance, my love.’ I knew Howl could teach her twenty times more than I could – for I don’t mind telling you, Lettie’s brains go way beyond mine, and she could end up in the same league as the Witch of the Waste, only in a good way. Lettie’s a good girl and I’m fond of her. If Mrs Pentstemmon was still teaching, I’d have Lettie to her tomorrow. But she isn’t. So I said, ‘Lettie, here’s Wizard Howl courting you and you could do worse than fall in love with him yourself and let him be your teacher. The pair of you will go far.’ I don’t think Lettie was too keen on the idea at first, but she’s been softening lately, and today it seems to be going beautifully.”

Here Mrs Fairfax paused to beam benevolently at Michael, and Sophie dashed into the skipping rope for her turn. “But someone told me Lettie was fond of someone else,” she said.

“Sorry for him, you mean,” said Mrs Fairfax. She lowered her voice. “There’s a terrible disability there,” she whispered suggestively, “and it’s asking too much of any girl. I told him so. I’m sorry for him myself—”

Sophie managed a mystified “Oh?”

“—but it’s a fearsomely strong spell. It’s very sad,” Mrs Fairfax wound on. “I had to tell him that there’s no way someone of my abilities can break anything that’s put on by the Witch of the Waste. Howl might, but of course he can’t ask Howl, can he?”

Here Michael, who kept looking nervously to the corner of the house in case Howl came round it and discovered them, managed to trample through the skipping rope and stop it by saying, “I think we’d better be going.”

“Are you sure you won’t come in for a taste of my honey?” asked Mrs Fairfax. “I use it in nearly all my spells, you know.” And she was off again, this time about the magical properties of honey. Michael and Sophie walked purposefully down the path to the gate and Mrs Fairfax drifted behind them, talking away and sorrowfully straightening plants that the dog had bent as she talked. Sophie meanwhile racked her brains for a way to find out how Mrs Fairfax knew Lettie was Lettie, without upsetting Michael. Mrs Fairfax paused to gasp a bit as she heaved a large lupin upright.

Sophie took the plunge. “Mrs Fairfax, wasn’t it my niece Martha who was supposed to come to you?”

“Naughty girls!” Mrs Fairfax said, smiling and shaking her head as she emerged from the lupin. “As if I wouldn’t recognise one of my own honey-based spells! But as I said to her at the time, ‘I’m not one to keep anyone against their will and I’d always rather teach someone who wants to learn. Only,’ I said to her, ‘I’ll have no pretence here. You stay as your own self or not at all.’ And it’s worked out very happily, as you see. Are you sure you won’t stay and ask her for yourself?”

“I think we’d better go,” Sophie said.

“We have to get back,” Michael added, with another nervous look towards the orchard. He collected the seven-league boots from the hedge and set one down outside the gate for Sophie. “And I’m going to hold on to you this time,” he said.

Mrs Fairfax leaned over her gate while Sophie inserted her foot in the boot. “Seven-leaguers,” she said. “Would you believe, I’ve not seen any of those for years. Very useful things for someone your age, Mrs Er—I wouldn’t mind a pair myself these days. So it’s you Lettie inherits her witchcraft from, is it? Not that it necessarily runs in families, but as often as not—”

Michael took hold of Sophie’s arm and pulled. Both boots came down and the rest of Mrs Fairfax’s talk vanished in the Zip! and rush of air. Next moment Michael had to brace his feet in order not to collide with the castle. The door was open. Inside, Calcifer was roaring, “Porthaven door! Someone’s been banging on it ever since you left.”

CHAPTER NINE In which Michael has trouble with a spell (#ulink_bff0db36-319f-51d3-8dd2-9275681a8f57)