Stopping for a Spell

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Good,” Simon whispered as he and Marcia went over to the old, old record player. “We can look in the box while the music’s going.”

  Marcia picked up an old scratched record and set it on the turntable. “I thought we were never going to get a chance!” she said. “We can give them a good long go with the music first time.” She carefully lowered the lopsided stylus. The record began:

  Here we go gathering click in May,

  Click in May, nuts in click…

  and all the children danced cautiously around the chairs, with Chair Person prancing in their midst, waving his arms like a lobster.

  Simon and Marcia ran to the table and pulled the conjuring box out from under the other prizes. The crystal ball was still leaking. There was quite a damp patch on the tablecloth. But the wand was lying on top, when they opened the box, still wrapped in flags. Simon snatched it up. Marcia ran back and lifted the stylus off the record. There was a stampede for chairs.

  Chair Person, of course, was the one without a chair. Simon had expected that. He followed Chair Person and gave him a smart tap with the wand as Chair Person blundered up the line of sitting children. But the wand did not seem to work. Chair Person pushed the smallest girl off the end chair and sat in it himself.

  “I saw that! You were out!” Auntie Christa shouted, pointing at him.

  Chair Person sat where he was. “I—er, hn hm—appear to be sitting in a chair,” he said. “That was the snuffle rule as I understand it.”

  Auntie Christa glared. “Start the game again,” she said.

  Simon tapped Chair Person on the head with the wand before everyone got up, but that did not seem to work either. “What shall we do?” he whispered to Marcia, as they hurried back to the record player.

  “Try it without the flags,” Marcia whispered back. She lowered the stylus again.

  “Here we go gathering click in May,” the record began as Simon dashed over to the table, unwrapping the string of flags from the wand as he went. He was just putting the flags back in the box, when the table gave a sort of wriggle and stamped one of its legs.

  Simon beckoned Marcia madly. The box must have been standing on the table for quite a long time. The stuff from the crystal ball had leaked down into the table and spread along the tablecloth to the food. The tablecloth was rippling itself, in a sly, lazy way. As Marcia arrived, one of the jellies spilled its way up to the edge of its cardboard bowl and peeped timidly out.

  “It’s all getting lively,” Simon said.

  “We’d better take the crystal ball to the toilet and drain it away,” Marcia said.

  “No!” said Simon. “Think what might happen if the toilet gets lively! Think of something else.”

  “Why should I always have to be the one to think?” Marcia snapped. “Get an idea for yourself for once!” She knew this was unfair, but by this time she was in as bad a fuss as Mum.

  Here the record got as far as “Who shall we click to click him away?” and stuck. “Who shall we click, who shall we click…”

  Marcia raced for the record and took it off. Simon raced among the stampede toward Chair Person and hit him with the unwrapped wand. Again nothing happened. Chair Person pushed a boy with a leg brace off the end chair and sat down. Auntie Christa said angrily, “This is too bad! Start the game again.”

  Marcia put the stylus down on the beginning of the record a third time. “I’d better stay and do this,” she said. “You go and search the box—quickly, before we get landed with Table Person and Jelly Person as well!”

  Simon sped to the table and started taking things out of the conjuring box—first the flags, then the dripping hat with the crystal ball in it. After that came a toy rabbit, which was perhaps meant to be lively when it was fetched out of the hat. Yet, for some reason, it was just a toy. None of the things in the box was more than just wet. Simon took out a sopping leather wallet, three soaking packs of cards, and a dripping bundle of colored handkerchiefs. They were all just ordinary. That meant that there had to be a way of stopping things getting lively, but search as he would, Simon could not find it.

  As he searched, the cracked music stopped and started and the table stamped one leg after another in time to it. Simon glanced at the game. Chair Person had found another way to cheat. He simply sat in his chair the whole time.

  “I’m counting you out,” Auntie Christa kept saying. And Chair Person went on sitting there with his smashed-hedgehog chin pointing obstinately to the ceiling.

  Next time Simon looked, there were only two chairs left beside Chair Person’s and three children. “We’ll have tea after this game,” Auntie Christa called as Marcia started the music again.

  Help! thought Simon. The wobbling, climbing jelly was half out of its bowl, waving little feelers. Simon turned the whole box out onto the jigging table. All sorts of things fell out. But there was nothing he could see that looked useful—except perhaps a small wet pillbox. There was a typed label on its lid that said “DISAPPEARING BOX.” Simon hurriedly opened it.

  It was empty inside, so very empty that he could not see the bottom. Simon put it down on the table and stared into it, puzzled.

  Just then the table got livelier than ever from all the liquid Simon had emptied out of the conjuring box. It started to dance properly. The tablecloth got quite lively, too, and stretched itself in a long, lazy ripple. The two things together rolled the hat with the crystal in it across the tiny, empty pillbox.

  There was a soft WHOP. The hat and the crystal were sucked into the box. And they were gone. Just like that. Simon stared.

  The table was still dancing and the tablecloth was still rippling. One by one, and very quickly, the other things from the conjuring box were rolled and jigged across the tiny pillbox. WHOP went the rabbit, WHOP the wand, WHOP-WHOP the string of flags, and then all the other things WHOP WHOP WHOP, and they were all gone, too. The big box that had held the things tipped over and made a bigger WHOP. And that was gone as well, before Simon could move. After that the other prizes started to vanish WHOP WHOP WHOP. This seemed to interest the tablecloth. It put out a long, exploring corner toward the pillbox.

  At that Simon came to his senses. He pushed the corner aside and rammed the lid on the pillbox before the tablecloth had a chance to vanish, too.

  As soon as the lid was on, the pillbox was not there anymore. There was not even a whisper of a WHOP as it went. It was just gone. And the tablecloth was just a tablecloth, lying half wrapped across the few prizes left. And the table stood still and was just a table. The jelly slid back into its bowl. Its feelers were gone, and it was just a jelly.

  The music stopped, too. Auntie Christa called out, “Well done, Philippa! You’ve won again! Come and choose a prize, dear.”

  “It’s not fair!” somebody complained. “Philippa’s won everything!”

  Marcia came racing over to Simon as he tried to straighten the tablecloth. “Look, look! You did it! Look!”

  Simon turned around in a dazed way. There were still two chairs standing in the middle of the hall after the game. One of them was an old shabby striped armchair. Simon was sure that was not right. “Who put—?” he began. Then he noticed that the chair was striped in sky blue, orange, and purple. Its stuffing was leaking in a sort of fuzz from its sideways top cushion. It had stains on both arms and on the seat. Chair Person was a chair again. The only odd thing out was that the chair was wearing football socks and shiny shoes on its two front legs.

  “I’m not sure if it was the wand or the pillbox,” Simon said.

  They pushed the armchair over against the wall while everyone was crowding around the food.

  “I don’t think I could bear to have it on our bonfire after this,” Marcia said. “It wouldn’t seem quite kind.”

  “If we take its shoes and socks off,” Simon said, “we could leave it here. People will probably think it belongs to the hall.”

  “Yes, it would be quite useful here,” Marcia agreed.

  Later on,
after the children had gone and Auntie Christa had locked up the hall, saying over her shoulder, “Tell your mother and father that I’m not on speaking terms with either of them!” Simon and Marcia walked slowly home.

  Simon asked, “Do you think he knew we were going to put him on our bonfire? Was he having his revenge on us?”

  “He may have been,” said Marcia. “He never talked about the bonfire, did he? But what was to stop him just asking us not to when he was a Person?”

  “No,” said Simon. “He didn’t have to set the house on fire. I suppose that shows the kind of Person he was.”

  The Four Grannies

  1

  Erg Gets an Idea

  Erg’s dad and Emily’s mum found they had to go away to a conference for four days, leaving Erg and Emily at home.

  “I want a house to come back to,” said Erg’s dad, thinking of the time Erg had borrowed the front door to make an underground fort in the garden.

  “We’d better ask one of the grannies to come and look after them,” said Emily’s Mum, knowing that if Erg did not borrow a thing, Emily could be trusted to fall over it and break it. Emily was younger than Erg, but she was enormous. She needed bigger shoes than Erg’s dad.

  There were four grannies to choose from, because Erg’s dad and Emily’s mum had both been divorced before they married one another.

  Granny One was strict. She wore her hair scraped back from her forbidding face, and her favorite saying was, “Life is always saying No.” Since Life did not have a voice, Granny One spoke for it, and said No about once every five minutes.

  Granny Two was a worrier. She could worry about anything. She was fond of ringing up in the middle of the night to ask if Emily was getting enough vitamins, or—in her special, hushed worrying voice—if Erg ought to be sent to a Special School.

  Granny Three was very rich and very stingy. She was the one Emily hated most. Granny Three always arrived with a large box of chocolates. She would give Erg’s dad a chocolate, and Emily’s mum a chocolate, and eat six herself, and take the rest of the box away with her when she went. Erg agreed with Emily that this was mean, but he thought Granny Three was more fun than the others, because she had a new car and different colored hair every time she came.

  Granny Four was a saint. She was gentle and quavery and wrinkled. If Erg and Emily quarreled in front of her, or even spoke loudly, Granny Four promptly came over faint and had to have a doctor.

  Granny Four was the one Erg and Emily chose to look after them. If you could avoid making Granny Four feel faint, she usually let you do what you wanted. But, when Emily’s mum rang Granny Four to ask her, Granny Four was faint already. She had been let down over a Save the Children Bazaar and was too ill to come.

  So, despite the shrill groans of Erg and the huge moans of Emily, Emily’s mum phoned Granny One. To Erg’s relief, Granny One was going on holiday and could not come either. So that left Granny Two, because Granny Three had never been known to look after anyone but herself. But Erg’s dad phoned Granny Three, all the same, hoping she might pay for someone to look after Erg and Emily. Granny Three said she thought it was an excellent idea for Emily and Erg to look after themselves.

  Erg’s dad phoned Granny Two. “What!” exclaimed Granny Two, hushed and worried. “Leave dear Erg and poor little Emily all alone, for all that time!”

  “But we’re only going to Scotland for four days,” Erg’s dad protested.

  “I know, dear,” said Granny Two. “But I’m thinking of you. Scotland is covered with oil these days and so dangerous!”

  Erg and Emily were not looking forward to Granny Two. They waved their parents off gloomily, and sat about waiting for Granny Two to arrive. She was a long time coming. Emily fidgeted round the living room like an impatient horse, knocking things over right and left. Erg felt an idea coming on. He wandered away to the kitchen to see what he could find.

  All the food was wrapped up and carefully labeled so that Granny Two could find it, but Erg found a cookie tin. It had holes in the lid from the time he had started a caterpillar farm. Inside were the works of a clock he had once borrowed. It seemed a good beginning for an invention. He collected other things: an eggbeater, the blades off the mixer, a sardine tin opener, and a skewer. He took them all back to the living room and began fitting them together. The invention was already looking quite promising when the phone rang. Emily bounced up to answer it, and, quite naturally, she trod on the invention as she went and squashed it flat. Erg roared with rage.

  It was Granny Two on the phone. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I’d got halfway when I thought I’d left my kitchen tap on. I’m just setting out again now.”

  “Was your tap on?” asked Emily.

  “No, dear. But just suppose it had been.”

  Emily went back to the living room to find Erg still roaring with rage. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined my invention!”

  Emily looked at the invention. It looked like a squashed cookie tin with eggbeaters sticking out of it. “It’s only a squashed cookie tin,” she said. “And you ought to put those eggbeaters back.”

  But Erg had just discovered that the hand beater fitted beautifully into a split in the side of the cookie tin.

  “You’re not supposed to have any of them,” said Emily. But Erg took no notice. He wound the handle of the eggbeater. The battered metal of the tin went in and out as if it were breathing, and the pieces of clock inside made a most interesting noise. Emily got annoyed at the way Erg had forgotten her. “Put those things back, you horrible little boy!” she roared.

  She was trampling toward Erg to take the invention apart when a shocked voice said, “Emily! Children!”

  They looked around to find Granny Four in the doorway. She was pale and quavery and threatening to faint.

  2

  More Grannies Arrive

  Erg and Emily tried to stop Granny Four fainting by smiling politely. “I thought you weren’t coming,” said Erg.

  “I couldn’t leave you two poor children all alone,” Granny Four said in a failing voice.

  Emily and Erg looked at one another. Neither of them had quite the courage to say Granny Two was already on her way.

  “Here you are, dear,” Granny Four said to Emily. Shakily she held out a small, elderly book. “This will put you in a better frame of mind. It’s a beautiful little book about a wicked little girl called Emily. You’ll find it charming, dear.”

  Emily took the book. It was not the kind of gift you could say thank you for easily. “I’ll take it upstairs to read,” Emily said, and thundered away so as not to seem ungrateful.

  Erg was hoping heartily that Granny Four had something better for him. But it was not much better. It was a shiny red stick, narrower at one end than the other.

  “I think it’s a chopstick,” said Granny Four. “It was in the bazaar.” She must have seen from Erg’s expression that he was not loving the chopstick particularly. She went white and leaned against the side of the door. “You can pretend it’s a magic wand, dear,” she said reproachfully.

  Erg knew she would faint. He took the chopstick hurriedly and jammed it in one of the holes in his invention. It must have caught in the works of the clock inside the squashed tin, because when he wound the handle of the eggbeater, the skewer, the sardine tin opener, and the mixer blades all began to turn around, grating and clanking as they turned. It was much more interesting now.

  Granny Four smothered a slight yawn and began to look healthier. “We can take such delight in simple things!” she said.

  But just then a voice shouted, “Coo-ee!” and Granny Two staggered in. She had brought four bags of potatoes, two dozen oranges, and a packet of health food. Granny Four took in the situation and turned faint again. Granny Two took in Granny Four and sprang to her side. “You shouldn’t have come, dear. You look ready to collapse! Come upstairs and lie down and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” And she led Granny Four away.

  Erg was rather pleased.
It looked as if the two grannies could keep one another busy while he got on with his invention. He went into the kitchen again. This time he collected the cutters from the mincer, the handle of the hot tap, the knobs off the cooker, and the clip that held the bag of the vacuum cleaner together. Most of these things threaded very nicely onto the things stuck into the holes on top of the cookie tin. When Erg wound the eggbeater this time, the tap top, the mincer cutters, and the cooker knobs all twiddled round and round, quite beautifully. The works of the clock clanked. The tin breathed in and out. And everything ground and grated just like a real machine.

  Erg was trying to find a place for the clip from the vacuum cleaner when he looked up into the outraged face of Granny One.

  Granny One! Erg looked up again unbelievingly. She was really there. She was putting down her neat suitcase in order to fold her arms grimly.

  “You’re on holiday!” he said.

  “I canceled my holiday,” Granny One said grimly. “To look after you. Take all those things back to the kitchen at once.”

  “But you’re on holiday,” Erg argued. “You can have a holiday from saying No, if you like.”

  “Life is always saying No,” said Granny One. “Take those things back.”

  “If Life is always saying No,” Erg argued reasonably, “it’s saying No to me taking them back, too.”

  But Granny One tapped the floor with her knobby shoe, quite impervious to reason. “I’m waiting. Do as you’re told.”

  “Oh, bother you!” said Erg.

  That was a mistake. It brought a storm down on Erg’s head. It started with “Don’t you speak to me like that!” and ended with Erg sullenly carrying the invention out into the hall to take it to pieces in the kitchen.