The Merlin Conspiracy

by Diana Wynne Jones

“Oh, God!” He held both hands to his face. “Just assure me you’re not another of these bad dreams, will you?”

  “I’m real,” I said. “Honestly. So’s the elephant.”

  “You keep turning up in my dreams with a parcel of children,” he said.

  When Dad had flu last Christmas, he kept calling people in to tell them about the latest weird dream he’d had. I understood that. “That was flu,” I said. “This is me for real. Have you got anything I can give Mini to eat?”

  “I’ve no idea what elephants eat,” he said, and then pulled himself together again. “All right. Third shed along at this end of the house. Ask for elephant food while you’re opening the door.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “And your hens?”

  “Bin of corn in the same shed,” he said. “One bucketful poured on the ground.”

  “What about the goat?” I asked. “She need milking?”

  I was not happy about that idea, and I was very relieved when he said, “Helga? No, she’s dry at the moment. Just find her some sweet corn.”

  “And, er,” I said, coming to the dreaded part, “what about your big cat?”

  “In the forest over on the mainland,” he said. “Takes care of herself.”

  I felt such a gush of relief at this that I went all considerate and helpful. I get like this with Dad, too, when he says I can have a day off school. “How about you? Can I get you anything? I know how to cook pasta.”

  Romanov shuddered. “No. I’ll be fine. All I need is some sleep,” he said, and he rolled over and pulled the covers across his face.

  I tiptoed away out of the airy white bedroom and along to the front door. Mini loomed in front of me there, jigging anxiously inside the crowd of cackling hens. I’d forgotten how huge she was.

  “Did you find any food?”

  “Yes. It’s under control,” I said. “Follow me, troops, here comes the cavalry.” I went marching away along the side of the house, and the hens, like I’d hoped, rushed after me in a fussy gaggle—stupid things!—and left Mini free to follow me, too.

  The sheds were all new and clean and kind of stacked against one another and against the end of the house. When I got to the third, it was just a big garden shed, really, and I had a moment when I thought that Romanov had said the first thing that came into his head in order to get rid of me. But I pushed the door open and said, “Elephant food?” and almost got trampled in the rush. The hens stormed inside yelling. Mini went, “Oh, thank goodness!” and nearly trod on me, hauling out an immense bundle of leafy stuff with her trunk and then some sort of hay bale, while I was edging among hens to get to the wooden bin wedged in there among the stack of fodder. While I was unhooking the bucket from the wall and scooping up grain and Mini was going, “Sugarcane! My favorite!,” the goat came dancing up, too, and helped itself to sugarcane more or less out of Mini’s trunk.

  I took the bucket and spilled it a fair distance off, away from Mini’s feet, and looked up to see that goat chomping cane and staring at me like one of Dad’s demons, while it made for the corn, too. I had to bribe it with its own pile of grain. By that time Mini’s trunk was going out, curling round a bundle of fodder, pushing it into her funny triangular mouth and then going out for more, like clockwork. She really had been starving. Maybe the hens were, too. They were all beak down, tail up and busy.

  “Enjoy your feeding frenzy,” I said, and went along to snoop in the other sheds. There was a powerful-looking motorboat in one that smelled piercingly of something that wasn’t petrol. Garden stuff in the other. Then I noticed a door in the brick wall up the hill, so I went to take a look inside it.

  Mini had said there were vegetables, but that hadn’t given me the least idea of the garden that was behind that wall. It was vast. It was laid out in oblongs, with gravel paths between them, and there must have been every kind of fruit and veg there was, growing there, from every world there ever was. Just standing at the gate, I could see strawberries and apples and oranges, leeks, marrows, melons and lettuces, green, droopy stuff I didn’t know, and okra, and yellow things that weren’t tomatoes. There were even flowers, away in the distance.

  That was all I saw before the goat came romping up and tried to barge in past me. One thing I knew about goats: they eat anything they can get near, and I didn’t think Romanov would be happy to find I’d let her into his garden. So I tried to shut the door on her. She pushed back. It must have seemed like Christmas to her, that garden. And she was strong. We had a mighty pushing match, me heaving from inside with my back to the door, the goat shoving madly from outside. It took me five minutes to get that door shut on her, and once I had, I was exhausted.

  I did wander down a gravel path, but not far. I ached all over from the various things that had happened to me. My clothes were still damp and beginning to smell of mildew, and now the sun was almost down, I felt clammy. I felt as if I’d been without sleep for a week. So when I came to a tall stand of sweet corn, I broke off a few heads for the goat, and I ate a few of the strawberries, because they were there, but they tasted of nipling to me, and then I gave up.

  The goat was waiting outside. I had to slam the door and throw the corn at her in self-defense. She snatched up a cob and stood doing her chomp-with-demon-stare act at me.

  “I love you, too,” I told her.

  Down by the sheds, Mini loomed with her trunk curled round leafy stuff and her eyes shut blissfully. The hens had guzzled and gone.

  “I think I’ve done my bit,” I said, and I went into the house to find somewhere to sleep. There was one particular sofa I had my eye on. I felt about it the way that goat felt about the garden.

  A telephone started to ring somewhere down the corridor.

  I raced off to stop it ringing. I know the things Dad had said about what telephones did to his head when he’d had flu, and Romanov could probably do all those things that Dad had only threatened.

  It was pretty dark in the corridor by then. It took me a minute to find the phone on a table down by the wall. I almost panicked before I found it. I kept imagining Romanov storming out of his bedroom casting spells to left and right and blaming me for not answering the thing.

  I found it at last—it was an old-fashioned dial phone—and I fumbled up the receiver.

  “And about time, too!” said a woman’s voice before I could say a word. “I don’t know where you’ve been, Romanov, and I don’t care, but I want you to listen to me for once!”

  It was not a nice voice. To tell the truth, it reminded me of my mother’s. Like Mum’s, it had sweetness on top and beastly, grinding undertones beneath that made you squirm and want to get away. I could tell that this woman was in a really bitchy mood. And, as I always did with Mum, I tried to shut her up. “I’m sorry, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov is not available at this moment.”

  “But I’m his wife!” she said, cooing and grinding. “Fetch him at once.”

  “I am afraid I cannot do that, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov will not be available at all tonight.”

  “What do you mean, not available?” she demanded. And while I was wondering what I should say to that, because I could tell she was the kind of person who wouldn’t let a little thing like someone having flu stand in her way, she luckily went on, “Who are you anyway?”

  Then I was home and dry. “I’m just the caretaker, madam,” I said. “Mr. Romanov called me in to look after the elephant.”

  “Look after the elephant!” she exclaimed. “Is he starting a circus?”

  “There do seem to be a number of animals here,” I said, “but Mr. Romanov’s plans for them are a sealed book to me, madam. Perhaps you would like to call back when Mr. Romanov can answer your query in person.”

  “I certainly will,” she said. “Just tell me when that’s going to be.”

  I said, “That’s a little difficult to do, madam, but as he has only hired me for a week—”

  “A week!” she said, and then, “Doh!,” just the way my mother used to whe
n I’d got her really mad. I heard her end of the line go clash, click, whirr....

  I couldn’t help grinning as I laid the receiver quietly down beside the phone, so that she couldn’t bother me or Romanov again, and crept off to the strange, futuristic bathroom. After that, I remember taking my clothes off and hanging them over warm pipes to dry, but not much else beyond the fact that the sofa I’d been eyeing up was even better than I’d hoped.

  7

  NICK

  ONE

  I seemed to be dreaming about Roddy all that night. It must have been something to do with that house. Romanov said he’d dreamed about me in a crowd of kids, and in my dreams, Roddy was always with a whole bunch of children, too. “I have to talk to you alone!” I kept saying to her, and she would give me a worried look and say, “Don’t you understand? There’s nobody else to look after them.” Then I told her, “If we don’t talk, the whole thing is going to overbalance.” And she said, “It’s the salamanders doing it.” Over and over, in front of all kinds of scenery. It was crazy.

  The phone ringing woke me up next morning. It rang and rang.

  I woke up enough to give a deep, wild growl and shamble up the corridor draped in the towels I’d been using for blankets. I’ve told you what I’m like when I first wake up. I crashed into the table and knocked the phone off it. I left it on the floor and groped for the receiver until I found it; then I shook it a bit to shut it up. When that didn’t stop the noise, I put it to my ear and gave another wild growl.

  “Is that you this time, Romanov?” said the horrible woman’s voice.

  “Graah!” I said.

  “No, listen to me,” she said. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried to be forgiving, and God knows I’ve tried to live on the pittance you give me …”

  I groaned. Probably that was exactly what Romanov would have done, because she thought I was him. She went on and on. It was all about how difficult it was to keep up appearances without more money and how people stared at her because she had to wear the same dress twice—all that stuff. It got up my nose completely. “Why don’t you earn some money of your own, then?” I said, except that it came out as “Wumunumumen?”

  “What?” she said. “Romanov, are you drunk?”

  “No, I just haven’t had any coffee yet,” I said, or rather, “Jussuffcuffya.”

  “You are!” she said, almost triumphantly. “Romanov, I’m seriously worried about you. You could have had a scintillating career here. The world was at your feet when you deserted me and took yourself off to that island. I didn’t understand you then; I don’t understand you now. I hear you’re planning to open a circus. Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve started drinking, too. You must come back at once and take your place among decent people with the right outlook on life before you fall apart completely. You know I can look after you. I can help you, Romanov. I think you’re in with a bad crowd. I didn’t like the sound of that caretaker you’re employing at all, and I’m sure that elephant is just a cry for help....”

  It was around then that I tried to stop her by putting the receiver back on the telephone, but it did no good. Her voice just went on trumpeting out into the corridor, on and on, all about what a weak character Romanov was and how he needed a good woman to help him. I sat on the floor and listened for five minutes or so, thinking it was really no wonder Romanov had left her and wondering how to shut her up. I was too sleepy to think properly, but I could tell that her voice was coming streaming in by magic from somewhere across my right shoulder. Everything was done by magic here. That gave me a sort of idea, and I sighed and picked the receiver up again.

  She was angry by this time. She was going, “Romanov, will you answer me! If you don’t, you can be sure I shall do exactly what I said. I can manipulate magic, too, you know. If you stay this obstinate, I shall lay my hands on all the power I can get, and I shall make you sorry. It may take me years, but I shall do it, and then you’d better look out! I am sick to death of your attitude....”

  Squawk, squawk, squawk, I thought, while I carefully traced the line her voice was coming in on, and when I had it, I sort of turned the line on round, like you turn the hands of a clock to point to a different hour. Her voice went fuzzy, and then faint, and then turned into a whisper with gaps in it, and finally it stopped altogether. I could tell she was still talking, but now she was doing it in quite the wrong direction, yelling away into the sea somewhere, and the corridor was peaceful again.

  Beautiful! I thought, and slouched off in my towels to look for my clothes.

  They were dry, but stiff as cardboard. While I was unbending them from round the pipes, I got the feeling that the plumbing had gone more normal than I remembered, but I still couldn’t see properly, so I wasn’t sure. And when I shuffled my way into the kitchen, that seemed different, too—smaller, probably. But I need four cups of coffee before I turn into a real human being, and I gave the coffee priority. I hunted by smell. I’m good at that. I found a tin of coffee and a jug and a strainer, and while I was hunting down the kettle I could hear singing on the range—this range was a shiny black sort of stove with a fire in its middle, which I certainly didn’t remember from last night—I discovered a newly baked loaf in one of its ovens.

  Doing well, I thought, and sniffed around for the butter.

  That hunt took me to the window above the sink, where the butter dish had been put into a bowl of water to keep cool. While I was feeling about for it, the window flew open and something sticky and pliable came through it and tried to take hold of my face. I jumped backward. I nearly screamed. It was such a shock that my eyes actually came right open. My heart banged, and I came up to normal human standard in a flash. This was just as well, as it turned out, but at the time I was really annoyed. Being sleepy is my luxury, and the sticky thing was only Mini’s trunk, anxiously probing in case I’d died in the night or something. I swore at her.

  “You went deathly quiet inside the house and I didn’t know where you were!” she said.

  “I was asleep, you fool!” I snarled.

  “Oh!” she said. Then she went into her nervous school-girl act. I could hear one of her back legs rubbing shyly against the other. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m …”

  “Hungry,” I growled. “God! You ate a whole shedful last night!”

  “The goat ate quite a lot, too,” she said apologetically.

  “All right, all right, all right!” I said, and I stamped out through the door—the door now opened straight out of the kitchen, confusingly—and along the house to the shed, which was about as empty as a shed could be. There was one wisp of something left. The goat was in there polishing that off as I came. “Out!” I said to her.

  She turned round, chewing, ready to give me a cheeky look. Then she saw the mood I was in. I swear I saw that goat change her mind. She went trotting meekly outside and left the place to Mini and the hens.

  I slammed the shed door shut. “Elephant food,” I said. “Hen food. Food for goats while you’re at it, too.” When I opened the door again, the place was stacked to the ceiling, so full of hay and branches and big cattlecake things that I had a hard job getting to the corn bin. “Right,” I said as I scooped corn up with the bucket, “keep this shed full like this in future or I’ll want to know the reason why. That clear? It makes no sense to have to keep opening and shutting doors. Let the elephant help herself.”

  Then I fed the hens and, still angry and yearning for coffee, stamped back to the kitchen. On the way I spotted an egg laid in the flower bed by the house wall, and I scooped that up. Odd, I thought. I clearly remembered that last night this wall was neat stone and nice pale wood. Now it seemed to be white-painted plaster. But I was wanting my coffee too much to bother about it.

  I went in and put the egg in the butter bowl—Romanov might fancy it, I thought—and got my coffee at last. I didn’t take nearly as long having breakfast as I’d meant to. Somehow being properly awake so soon had thrown me off line. I felt urgent and s
till angry. I cut myself a doorstep of bread with masses of butter and went along to see Romanov while I was eating it. I thought I’d better tell him how I’d turned his wife off.

  His square white bedroom didn’t seem nearly so airy this morning. The window looked smaller. And I could have sworn that the spaces between his thrown-down clothes had almost halved since I was last in there. Romanov looked worse by light of morning. His hair was sticky with sweat, and his face looked dreadful because the brown tan of it had gone yellow on top of grayness. He didn’t move or open his eyes as I leaned over him.

  Well, I thought, not too happily, flu usually gets worse before it gets better. “Want any breakfast?” I said. “Or can I find you an aspirin?”

  He just turned over fretfully and didn’t answer. There was no way I could think of to get a doctor to him, so I just went quietly out again and shut the door.

  My foot kicked the telephone on my way down the passage. I picked it up, jingling, in a buttery hand. It was a toy telephone, red and blue plastic, and there wasn’t even a flex in the wall or anything joining it to the yellow plastic receiver lying on the table. I stared at it a moment. “Cordless phone?” I said. “Heavily disguised mobile?” But I knew it wasn’t either of those. It was a toy. “That’s magic for you,” I said when I was in the kitchen hunting for a basket. “It’s all magic in this place. You just have to take a firm line with it, I suppose.”

  I went out with the basket to see if the hens had laid any more eggs. They had. Eggs were hidden in all sorts of cunning clumps and crannies. I kept finding them.

  “Oh, good!” Mini said, looming over me with her ears lifting anxiously. “I’d been so afraid of treading on one of those. What are they for?”

  I looked up at her, meaning to explain about eggs, but I happened to see the garden wall beyond her. It was definitely lower now, and its bricks were old and crumbling away in places. It was also much nearer the house than I expected. “Mini,” I said, “has it struck you that this place is getting smaller?”