They nodded, but they looked doubtful until the young man from the wine shop said, “I get you. Like blowing glass. Is that what you mean?”
“Just exactly!” said Hume. “Ready Mordion?”
They tried it. It took huge force, so huge that Mordion, who had not meant to be theatrical, found he had to raise his arms to increase the power. Before long, the others had their arms raised too. And all the while the trees around stood as still as if they were a painting. They pushed. And when it seemed impossible, they felt the theta-space give and start spreading, like a balloon being blown up. Then it was only a question of spreading and spreading it, steadily and carefully, until it was as wide as they could get it. Mordion nodded then, and everyone at once thought hardness. Martin was best here. He thought hard steel and frozen snow, adamantine dragon scales and solid oak. It was so much the right way to think that everyone else found they were following Martins lead, until they had made a hardness no one had believed possible.
“Right,” Hume said at last. “That’s the best we can do.”
They all took their arms down, feeling unexpectedly tired. The Wood stirred around them and stirred again, until the tops of the trees were making a sound like the deep sea.
“I think we got it right,” Mordion said to Hume.
“Permanent hocus-pocus,” Yam said sourly. “Anyone entering this Wood from now on is liable to be a long time coming out.”
“That won’t kill them,” said Vierran. She thought about this. “Necessarily,” she added.
As they walked in the direction of Wood Street, there were ample signs that they had got the Wood’s need right. Nightingales burst into song around them. A herd of deer went in a swift line across their path, and a small wild boar crashed out from a hawthorn beside them and fled into the distance. In that distance a man in green flitted, armed with a long bow. Hume flinched from the great snaky glinting coils of a dragon far down an open ride, and then flinched again as a row of twiggy figures with wreathed ivy heads went stalking after the dragon. Other people were turning their heads, convinced that they had seen a small man with furry legs dart on little hoofs behind the nearest tree, or strange dun-coloured women-shapes dancing at the corners of their vision. Once Vierran pulled Mordion’s arm and pointed. He was just in time to see a small white horse, luminous in the green, with a single horn in its forehead, dash across a far-off glade. And all the time, the branches above gave off a deep, happy surging, like the sea on a good day for sailing.
Before long, they were crossing the stream and walking up the passage between the houses.
“Quite a comedown,” Hugon said regretfully, as they came to Wood Street
It was very busy there. People were taking down the boards nailed over shop windows. As the young man from the wine shop raced across the road to help his friend, Vierran noticed that a set of total strangers were at work on Stavely Greengrocer – or not quite strangers. She thought they might have been working in the castle kitchens. All round them and up and down the road, starters were whirring and doors were banging in the neglected cars. Sir John Bedford raced to his own car as soon as they came level with it. The people from Homeworld stood in an uncertain huddle nearby by, a very curious, motley crowd, since some of them were in the finery of a great House, and others were in camouflage jackets, Siri was in white, and Hume beside her in a threadbare blue tracksuit
Beyond them, the gates of Hexwood Farm swung open and a white van, covered with twigs and bird droppings, backed slowly out. It was followed by Controller Borasus in a tattered green gown, waving and imploring the maintenance men for a lift. Madden, who was driving, simply grinned and went on backing the van.
Sir John opened the door of his car. “I’ve just been through to Runcorn on the phone,” he called. “They’re going to open a portal there and warn the sectors you’re all on your way. You five Reigners hop in, and the robot too, and I’ll drive you there. The rest of you are travelling with the security team in those other cars. They’ve been told.” Here the baying of Controller Borasus caught his attention. Madden, grinning more broadly than ever, was turning the van to drive away. “Give him a lift, you fools!” Sir John bellowed at the van. “That man’s your Sector Controlled”
“When Sir John has finished tidying up Earth,” Mordion said to his fellow Reigners, “we’d better make him Controller of Albion.”
They looked at Controller Borasus being hauled into the van and agreed unanimously.
Other Works
Chrestomanci Series
Charmed Life
The Magicians of Caprona
Witch Week
The Lives of Christopher Chant
Mixed Magics
Black Maria
A Tale of Time City
Howl’s Moving Castle
Castle in the Air
The Homeward Bounders
Archer’s Goon
Eight Days of Luke
Dogsbody
Power of Three
For older readers
Fire and Hemlock
The Time of the Ghost
For younger readers
Wild Robert
Copyright
First published by Methuen Children’s Books Ltd 1993
First published in paperback by Collins 2000
Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books
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Text copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1993
Illustration by Tim Stevens 2000
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