by Zen Cho
One of the names was Midsomer.
Muna’s heart lurched.
There were two paintings bearing the name of Midsomer among the collection, but these both turned out to be depictions of the same person, a George Midsomer. This was a pale, lipless gentleman with reddish hair and a severe expression. In both portraits he wore an enormous white ruff, beneath which the rest of his person, clad in black, seemed to vanish into darkness.
“That is certainly a face capable of cursing people,” said Muna aloud . . .
She had spoken Malay, but she was answered in English.
“I beg your pardon?” said the portrait. While Muna stared, transfixed with horror, the painted head moved. George Midsomer turned to look at her, his forehead creasing in a frown. “But you are a woman!”
Muna leapt back with a shriek, clutching at her chest.
“A native woman, at that,” said George Midsomer in disgust.
“It is because of that female that calls herself the Sorceress Royal,” said another painted Englishman next to him. This second thaumaturge looked to have been painted on his deathbed, so frail was he, but his pale eyes glared with a passion that seemed scarcely supportable by his aged frame. “They tell me she has taken on half a dozen black servants. I can only suppose she relishes being defrauded by her staff!”
“You forget, sir, that Prunella Wythe has native blood herself,” drawled George Midsomer. “It is no surprise she is attached to her kind, since the creatures cannot by any superiority of manner or intellect put her to the blush.”
One by one the painted thaumaturges stirred and came to life, craning their necks so they could glower at Muna.
Muna stood with her hand pressed to her breast, trying to calm herself. But her initial shock had faded and she saw what was afoot. The paintings were possessed by demons. Antique objects did often become the repositories of spirits. That these were the demonic type of spirit was evident from the men’s appalling manners and bigoted language.
“It is not to be borne,” cried the aged thaumaturge. “You, gel, go to your mistress and tell her we will not have natives in the Society!”
Warmth rose in Muna’s cheeks, for she could not recall ever having been addressed in such a manner in her life. Mak Genggang might reprove her dependents, but she did not deal in insults or name-calling. Like all the islanders of Janda Baik, she prized civility as highly as virtue—indeed, to speak gently and with refinement was deemed a kind of virtue in itself.
“You are mistaken, sir,” she said, for after all the man who had addressed her was very old and frail. “This is not the Society, but the Lady Maria Wythe Academy for the Instruction of Females in Practical Thaumaturgy.” She and Sakti had learnt the name of the Sorceress Royal’s establishment before they came to England, in case they were lost and were obliged to ask for directions to the Academy. They had had to repeat it to each other several times before they could remember.
“And I am no maidservant,” Muna continued, throwing her head back, “but a witch of the island of Janda Baik, and an honoured guest of the Sorceress Royal!”
The portraits burst into coarse laughter, intermixed with jeers and hoots.
“A witch!” sneered one. “Did not I tell you so, Midsomer? I knew Mrs. Wythe should be obliged to invite all sorts of riffraff to make up numbers at her Academy. I told you no Englishman with any ordinary pride would allow his daughter to be taught magic by an upstart!”
George Midsomer did not answer but fixed a gaze on Muna, whose chill seemed to pierce through to her bones. “We know how to regard any guest of Prunella Wythe,” he said. “Females meddling in what has nothing to do with them—shameless, depraved and unwomanly!”
“Nonsense,” said Muna, firing up. “If God had intended women to have nothing to do with magic, there would be no such creatures as witches—nor any female spirits, and everyone knows there are a great many of those!”
The paintings did not like being spoken to in this manner. They broke out into an ungodly uproar. Some restricted themselves to marvelling that anyone should rely upon fairies as an argument for women’s magic (“When everyone knows the females of the fairy race are the maddest of all!”), but others shouted, “Hex her! Teach her a lesson!”
Muna stepped back, daunted—after all, she did not know what powers these spirits possessed. She glimpsed out of the corner of her eye a green door tucked away in the corner of the gallery. The door was nearer than the entrance through which she had come, and it had the advantage that she need not brave a gauntlet of disapproving painted faces to get to it.
“I shall not lower myself to quarrel with you,” she said with dignity, inching by degrees towards the door. “But you should be ashamed of yourselves. I am a guest in your country; I am entitled to your hospitality, and instead you hoot like monkeys! You dishonour your white hair by your conduct. Men so old should know better!”
“It is only a wig,” objected one of the newer-looking paintings. “I am not more than thirty.”
Another thaumaturge produced a wand from within his coat, crying, “We will see if you are still as impertinent in the form of a frog!”
The doorknob was under Muna’s hand.
“No, we won’t!” she retorted. She gave the door a shove. It swung open, and Muna slipped through it, shutting out the magicians’ angry voices behind her.
9
MUNA STOOD IN a high-ceilinged hall. Brilliant sunlight spilt through the windows stretching from dark stone floors to a vaulted ceiling. A table of gigantic proportions ran along the entire length of the hall.
She was no longer in Britain. The air betrayed this—it was a dry hot air; nothing less like the damp chill of Britain could be imagined. The light, too, was not the watery grey light of London but a harsh brassy glare, possessing all the intensity of the noonday sun in Janda Baik.
The windows looked out on a vast expanse of blue sky, unmarred by a single wisp of cloud. Below lay golden desert, stretching away as far as the eye could see. Mountains reared up in the distance, but Muna did not study these, for the herd of beasts thundering past distracted her.
She took these for deer, but as she approached the window this illusion fell away. While she could see that some species of deer might have blue fur and beards and even furry paws in place of hooves, she doubted whether any could boast tails of blue flame.
A vast black shadow fell over the herd. The beasts put on a burst of speed, vanishing into the distance.
Muna raised her head and saw the naga.
She had never seen a dragon before, but she knew it for what it was at once. It was flying quite low and so she could see that it was not large, so far as naga went. The creature was no larger than an elephant—it was the massive wings that cast the greatest part of the shadow.
As she watched, openmouthed, the naga turned its great golden head. Muna looked directly into an enormous blue eye—and it looked back at her.
The naga swerved and dived towards her.
Muna whipped around and ran helter-skelter along the hall, too frightened even to spare the breath to scream. It took a hideous age for her to cross the expanse of floor dividing her from the door. At any moment the naga would shatter the glass and rush into the room. She could almost feel the beast’s hot breath stirring her hair, its talons gouging her flesh . . .
She could not help glancing back when she reached the door. The naga had landed outside the window. It lowered its head to peer through, puzzling over how it might enter. Muna slammed the door shut behind her.
She had expected to return to the gallery of ill-bred portraits, but she stumbled out into a different corridor. Before panic could overtake her, recognition came—she knew that painting of cows by the river. She was in the Academy, back in Britain. Sure enough, when she pushed open the door by the painting of cows, she found herself in her own bedchamber.
Her heart was still racing. She collapsed into a chair, panting.
The Sorceress Royal ought to put up a sign on that door, Muna thought in indignation. Why, anyone might enter and be devoured!
But then she went still, for a disquieting thought possessed her.
They had lied to her—the Sorceress Royal, Henrietta and the polong. Leonine deer with flaming tails and blue-eyed dragons were not to be found in deserts in the mortal world. Muna had just been in the Unseen Realm.
She sprang to her feet and rushed back to the gallery. It was still there, and the portraits recognised her at once.
“There is that gel again!” one began.
But Muna’s wariness of the paintings had evaporated in the shock of seeing the naga. Painted demons hardly seemed to compare.
“Oh, hush!” she snapped. “I shall go away again directly. I have no more desire for your society than you have for mine!”
Her tone startled the paintings sufficiently that they subsided into discontented mutterings. Ignoring them, Muna went down to the end of the gallery, but it was as she had half-suspected. The green door she had seen before had vanished.
It had been the same in Mak Genggang’s house. Doorways shifted about; new verandas occasionally sprouted without warning; and once an entire annexe had blossomed behind the main house to accommodate a family from the village whose own house had burnt down. It had gone away again once their house was rebuilt.
It was in the nature of magicians’ houses that they were in a state of constant metamorphosis. But Muna knew what she had seen.
* * *
• • •
WHEN Muna returned to her bedroom she took out the polong’s bottle from under the bed where she had concealed it. She could not interrogate the English; she was sure she had seen what was not meant for her. But perhaps the spirit would be able to tell her where the green door had gone.
Though she repeated the summons twice, however, the polong did not appear.
“I know I was uncivil last night,” said Muna, “but I beg you will forgive me, kak. Think how you would feel if you knew your sister was in the clutches of evil spirits and you were helpless to prevent it!”
Muna’s plea was met with silence—a silence that had a distinctly stubborn quality.
“Oh, very well!” said Muna. Bitter words crowded her throat, but she swallowed them. It was not impossible that she might still prevail upon the polong to help her, once the spirit had recovered from her sulks.
Muna was troubled as she restored the bottle to its hiding place. It was all very well for the polong to counsel her to maintain the pretence of being a witch. How was she to continue to impose upon the English without the spirit’s aid? And what would become of her if she was found out as a fraud?
She could not quite believe that she would be thrown out on the street. The Sorceress Royal might be ruthless enough to use her so, but surely Henrietta would intervene on her behalf—Muna could not imagine the blond Englishwoman, with her gentle eyes, doing anything so unkind. They might send her back to Janda Baik. That would not be so bad, for then she could ask Mak Genggang for help. But if she was obliged to travel there without the aid of magic, it would be a year before she saw the witch.
Who knew what a year would mean to Sakti? It was said that in the Unseen Realm time did not pass as it did in the mortal world, but still, Muna could not afford to leave her sister in the Palace of the Unseen—perhaps in the power of the very enchanter who had cursed them—for so long.
The thought of the curseworker reminded her of the painting she had seen of George Midsomer. Was he the Midsomer to whom the spell had referred? But why should an English magician trapped in a painting have cursed two girls from an island thousands of miles away? How could he have spirited Sakti away to the Palace of the Unseen, if he had not even the power to liberate himself from a picture frame? Besides, surely if he were their enemy he would have known Muna, and he had shown no sign of recognising her.
She had not enjoyed her exchange with Mr. Midsomer and if she were governed by her inclinations alone she would not soon have returned to the gallery. But duty must override inclination, and it was clearly her duty to question him and discover what she could. Muna rose from where she knelt by the bed, dusting herself off.
She was resolved to go back to the gallery directly, but when she opened the door she found the maidservant Sarah stood outside with her hand raised to knock.
“Oh, you startled me, miss!” gasped Sarah. “I beg your pardon, but dinner will be served in half an hour, and I came to see if I might help you dress. We shall have three of the scholars with us—Miss Edwards, Miss Campbell and Alice—Miss Pinder, that is. They have just arrived, and right pleased to see you, they will be.”
“Thank you,” said Muna, after a pause. “I can dress myself, though it is kind of you to offer, and I shall be delighted to meet the scholars.”
There was no reason she should feel guilty, she told herself, for it would not help Sakti for Muna to fast. Besides, she owed it to her English hosts to make a decent show of gratitude and attend the meals they laid on for her. She would go back to the gallery later. And if she felt relieved that she need not confront George Midsomer just then, no one who had seen his manners would blame her.
The Academy’s scholars were waiting for her at dinner. They proved a motley crew—Miss Edwards was six-and-twenty, a governess who had given her notice when she heard of Mrs. Wythe’s Academy, whereas Miss Alice Pinder was not more than eight years old. It seemed her attendance at the Academy had caused considerable controversy, because her mother was a cook.
“But what is offensive about that?” said Muna, surprised. “To be a cook is a respectable profession.”
“Oh, you cannot conceive the number of things that will offend an English thaumaturge,” said Miss Campbell. “He is the touchiest creature alive!” Miss Campbell, a lively maiden of fourteen, was from Scotland and had little reverence to spare for the English.
“They ought not all to be tarred with the same brush, however,” said Miss Edwards in defence of her countrymen. “Mr. Damerell is a Fellow of the Society, and he is a great friend to the Academy. Mr. Damerell is abroad,” she explained to Muna, “visiting Threlfall, for his familiar is a dragon belonging to that clan. But he often teaches us when he is in England.”
Muna had never heard of Threlfall, but the scholars were only too delighted to enlighten her about that ancient clan of dragons, who governed their own demesne in Fairyland and were feared even by the Fairy Queen herself. They told her of Mr. Damerell’s friend and familiar Robert of Threlfall, who was occasionally to be seen in the Academy—a pleasant-spoken, gentlemanly creature, not in the least proud though he was so highborn.
“What is Threlfall like?” asked Muna, thinking of the sun-baked land she had glimpsed earlier that day, in the room where she had sought refuge from the talking paintings. Might the dragon she had seen have anything to do with these friends of the Sorceress Royal? “Is it a dry country, do you know?”
Miss Campbell shook her head. “Mr. Threlfall never speaks of his home. If you did not know, you might think he was a mortal born and bred. You never met anyone so English!”
But she and the others told Muna everything else they knew—about the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers that frowned upon them; the dashing Sorceress Royal who trailed scandal and excitement in her wake; and their instructors at the Academy (they referred fondly to Miss Stapleton as Henny, but it was for Mr. Wythe that they reserved their most ardent sentiments—they all seemed more than half in love with him).
Muna had feared that dinner would be a wearisome affair, but she was diverted by the girls’ conversation, and touched by their pains to welcome a stranger. Their gossip was more than amusing; it proved instructive. For it was Miss Campbell who said, with an air of importance:
“And they say we are t
o have a new instructress this year.”
“Who says so? Who is it?” cried Miss Edwards and Miss Pinder.
“The footman told me,” said Miss Campbell. “He saw her at the Sorceress Royal’s quarters.”
“A magicienne?” said Miss Edwards. “I had not thought there were any others qualified to teach.”
“Yes, and you will never guess who it is,” said Miss Campbell. “It is the least likely person in the world—Miss Clarissa Midsomer!”
If she had hoped to create a sensation, she was amply rewarded by her audience. Alice, to be sure, said, “Who is that?” but Miss Edwards echoed, “Clarissa Midsomer?” in tones of incredulity, and Muna choked on her mouthful of whiting.
Fortunately the girls had no reason to believe the name “Midsomer” meant anything to Muna. They supposed she had swallowed a bone. When, anxious not to interrupt the conversation, she had reassured them, they returned to the subject of Clarissa Midsomer, questioning Miss Campbell eagerly.
“But I thought the Midsomers abhorred the Sorceress Royal,” said Miss Edwards. “Was not it Miss Midsomer’s father who applied to the Presiding Committee to strip Mrs. Wythe of her office?”
Miss Campbell nodded, her eyes bright. “And Mrs. Midsomer blames Mrs. Wythe for exiling her son Geoffrey to Fairyland. Such nonsense, when everyone knows Geoffrey Midsomer went to Fairy because of his wife! But Miss Midsomer was at school with Mrs. Wythe and Miss Stapleton. It seems she is not entirely of one mind with her mother and father.”
She exchanged a knowing look with Miss Edwards, and even little Alice looked sage. It seemed it was not at all uncommon for female magicians to disagree with their relations.
“It will be good to have another instructress,” Miss Edwards concluded. “Though I wonder how Miss Midsomer could have learnt enough magic to be able to teach! Mrs. Wythe and Miss Stapleton have always said they learnt nothing at their school but how to suppress their magic. It was Mr. Wythe who taught them thaumaturgy.”
