by Mary Stewart
Well, thought Mary, why not? She took it obediently between her hands. She could feel her palm still faintly sticky with the fly-by-night.
'Now,' said Doctor Dee, 'you know what to do. Read the words slowly and clearly, then watch the ink, and concentrate. You will soon see yourself going. Nylon or no nylon, I am sure that a young adept like yourself will have no difficulty whatever.'
Mary lifted the ink-well, and as she did so felt on her wrist the slight tug of old Zebedee's raffia, which was still attached to Tib's neck. She noticed that Tib was sitting at the edge of the dais, staring at the empty seats behind the empty desks, and his fur was brushed up. He took no notice of Mary.
'Can he see them?' she asked.
'Cats can see everything. This is what makes them so especially valuable to us,' said Doctor Dee. 'And of all the familiars–toads, owls, bats–a black cat with green eyes is the one that bears away the bell. And this one–the phoenix, the very pink or chrysolite of cats, I have no doubt?'
'Oh, yes,' said Mary. She would look the words up, she decided, when she got home, but Doctor Dee's drift was obvious.
He was smiling down at Tib in obvious admiration. 'We do not often get a totally black cat. Splendid, splendid. Now, better give me the lead, Miss Smith. If he pulls at your hand and breaks your concentration, you will see nothing. I mean, you will see something, and that would never do!'
Laughing gently at his own joke, he took the raffia out of Mary's hand, then pointed with the wand of power at the writing on the redboard.
'Now, Miss Smith of Gormbridge, we shall see–or not see!'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hinx, Minx, The Old Witch Winks, The Fat Begins To Fry…
In the end, she managed very well. Doctor Dee read the words with her. Afterwards she tried to remember what they were, but never could. As soon as the last one was said she bent her head and stared into the ink.
At first it was simply ink, a glossy, dark blue pool, convex at the edges as if ready to brim over. On its surface was a kind of skin where dust floated, as if the ink were not liquid at all, but solid as glass. And, just as in a glass, there was the room reflected, but very small, and perfect in detail, like a miniature painting. She could see the brilliant windows showing like tiny curved strips of light, the painted walls, the redboard, and against them her own reflection, made as small as they by the curved surface of the ink. She stared, taking it in detail by detail, the face she had studied so solemnly yesterday in the mirror at Red Manor, wishing that something would happen…
It was happening now. The little figure in the ink was growing brighter, but behind it the reflected room seemed to blur, its colours running and dissolving like a film going out of focus. The picture shook, blurred, faded, then dwindled down, down, down, to be lost in the darkness at the bottom of the well-shaft. For this was what the ink-well seemed now to have become.
Mary found herself leaning over a deep well-shaft, her hands gripping the parapet, gazing into black depths where, still, her own reflection glimmered in a swirl of smoking darkness.
Then, as softly as a candle melting, and much more quickly, the tiny image slithered into shapelessness, whirled for a moment in smoke, and vanished…
Something stung her leg, a sharp, jabbing pain which made her jump. It must have shaken her back out of the spell, for faintly now through the swirling smoke she could see the classroom windows, and faintly hear, like something echoing in a well, the wizard's bland voice saying: 'Splendid! Splendid! Let's come back, shall we?'
He began to repeat a formula–not the same, but the words sounded familiar, and soon she realised that it was the original one spoken in reverse. And, in the ink, the spell reversed. Her face reappeared against the dark, gathered shape and colour as it swam closer against the sunlit background of the room, then it was only her reflection, small in a pool of ink.
She looked up, blinking in the sunlight. The Headmistress was looking pleased, and here and there in the classroom a few pupils had reappeared unrebuked, and were watching with interest.
Doctor Dee was smiling. 'That was excellent. Remarkable for a first time, remarkable. But of course the Gormbridge background is bound to tell, eh? Next time you will be able to do it yourself, but I think we should leave it at that for the present. One shouldn't go in for long, the first spell of the term. Now I am sure Madam Mumblechook wants to show you the other classes.'
He pushed Tib's lead into Mary's hand. As she went out into the dim corridor with the Headmistress, Mary could hear him beginning to scold the pupils who had reappeared.
'This way,' said Madam Mumblechook. 'I think you will find it interesting. It's the Science Practical, which I'm conducting myself. The teacher is unavoidably absent.'
'Is she ill?'
'You might say so. She made a slight mistake with the spell. Always a tricky thing to do with the advanced classes. Complete accuracy is, of course, essential. Here we are.' She opened the door. 'Why, what is it, Miss Smith?'
As light from the opened door streamed into the corridor Mary had stopped, and was staring down at Tib. Or rather, at where she had imagined Tib to be. The end of the raffia was in her hand, as Doctor Dee had given it back to her, and she thought she had felt Tib gently tugging at the collar, but he was not there. Only the collar dangling …No, she realised, not dangling, but floating along beside her, for all the world as if the little cat were still inside it. But she could not see him.
'Tib!' she cried. 'My cat! I know he was beside me all the time, because he scratched my leg to bring me back out of the spell. I must have left him–'
'You haven't left him.' Madam Mumblechook's voice was amused and unperturbed. 'He's still there. Stroke him and see.'
Mary stooped and reached out, and there, indeed, was the warm fur and the strong, soft body of the cat. His head was smooth under her hand, the ears tucked back flat, and she could feel the thickness of the brushed-up fur. His whole body vibrated faintly, like something thrilling with an electric shock. He did not purr.
As she picked him up, he spat.
'Where are you going?' asked Madam, rather sharply.
'Back to Doctor Dee. The spell must have worked on Tib as well, but there must have been something wrong with the antidote, at any rate for cats. He'll have to bring him back.'
Madam Mumblechook laughed. 'Didn't you realise, child, that anyone can come back from that state at will? You did, didn't you? And you saw what happened to the people in class when they stopped concentrating. Cats are familiar enough with magic, on the whole. Your Tib will come back when he wants to, and not before. Can't you feel how excited he is? Put him down now, or you'll make it harder for him. You heard him spit when you picked him up …That's right. Now come in, and I'll show you something really interesting. This is the class I think you should enrol in tomorrow.'
The third classroom was different yet again, and of a kind familiar to Mary. It was a laboratory. There were long benches with taps and basins, and racks of flasks and test tubes, and burners lit with the familiar green flame. Some dozen or so students in black coats bent over their work. On the bench nearest the door was a complicated apparatus where a girl not much older than Mary seemed to be stewing various roots in a blue liquid which gave off a heavy, sweet smell. She was stirring the mixture with a long whitish rod shaped like a bone.
At the next bench a young man, with one eye bent to a microscope, scribbled notes in a thick, yellow book. There was a cage of mice on the bench beside him. Someone else was running a thick green liquid over some very beautiful white crystals in a bowl. From this a sharp violet-coloured smoke came off with a hiss and a smell of burning hair. At the far end of the long room a furnace burned green behind its transparent door.
The laboratory windows were small and barred, and set high in the walls. Mary noticed how the light outside had changed; she must have been under the invisibility spell for far longer than she had realised.
'I must see how my students are getting on,' said
the Headmistress. 'Sit down here and wait for me. I won't be long. Classes are almost over for the day.'
Mary obeyed her, sitting down in the chair behind the teacher's desk. She could feel Tib close beside her leg, but when she bent to stroke him he spat again, and she drew back. She sat quietly, looking round the lab which was so familiar and yet so strange–weird even–and found herself wishing uneasily that Madam Mumblechook would hurry up and dismiss the class, then enrol her for tomorrow, and let her go.
Madam Mumblechook went slowly from bench to bench, talking to the students, bending over their work, and sometimes sitting beside them to discuss it. Once or twice Mary had been in her father's laboratory, and had seen him doing almost the same things. But that room had been light and clean, smelling of polish and clean chemicals and sunshine. This one smelt queer, fusty, unpleasant almost, like a room which has been dark and locked too long.
Madam's voice talked softly on at the far side of the room. Liquids dripped and trickled, the mice scrabbled and squeaked in their cage. The furnace roared. A big clock ticked, a slightly uneven sound.
The lead weights were shaped like mice. The pendulum swung to and fro, to and fro …tick lock …tick lock…
Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The mouse was dead
As a lump of lead
And rock, rock, rock in the clock, Rickety rock said the clock…
Mary shook herself awake. Now, outside the high windows, she could see the light was fading fast. The clock said ten minutes to six. Surely the class must be over soon? Great-Aunt Charlotte and Miss Marjoribanks would be home in half an hour, and Mary ought to be there before that, or there might be questions asked which certainly she would find it difficult to answer. Mary decided to give Madam till six o'clock, then announce firmly that she must go.
On the teacher's desk in front of her was a pile of papers held down by a glass weight shaped like a frog. Light from the burners glittered on it, till it seemed to be staring at Mary with green, jewelled eyes. Beside it a pen–an old-fashioned quill pen made of a grey goose feather–stuck upright in a pewter inkstand. There was a ruler marked in scribbly characters which might have been Greek, or Arabic, or just simply Spider. Then a cube, with strange marks on the faces. A triangle made of worn brass, engraved with a mermaid.
Idly, she glanced at the papers, then with more interest, as she saw that they were drawings of animals. She lifted the glass frog off the pile, and began to examine them.
They were certainly animals, but not any animals that she had ever seen. There was one she thought at first was a squirrel, until she saw it only had two legs, and a thin tail like a rat's. Then there was a bird with no feathers, not even on its wings. Then something that might have been a hedgehog, except that it had no eyes and nose, which made it look like a sea urchin with feet.
It was like the nursery rhymes. Each one seemed to start out right, then go suddenly, terribly wrong.
Mary hated them. She pushed them back under the glass frog, and looked at the clock. Five minutes to go. Madam Mumblechook was still talking, but work seemed to be finishing. One of the students was turning out the flame under a bubbling flask, and another had gone to a sink to wash out some apparatus. The young man with the microscope had put away his work, and now brought the book across to the desk where Mary sat, and put it with some others on a shelf beside her. Then he went out, and some of the other students with him.
Mary glanced at the book. It was just called Notes, which did not seem interesting, and the thick brown one beside it was called Metastasis, and was by somebody of the name of Dousterswivel. Mary decided not to read it. But the next looked more promising; it was bound in a soft dark red, and had a cat most beautifully embossed in gold on the spine.
It looked very old. Mary pulled it out of the shelf, and examined it under cover of the desk.
The cat was on the front cover as well, with the title of the book going round it in a circle like the lettering on a coin. The title was, apparently: Mafter Fpells.
She opened it. The paper inside was thick and supple, almost like skin, with wavy edges. On the fly-leaf was written in a large, flowing hand which she was sure was Madam Mumblechook's: For fenior ftudents only. Not to be taken away.
Once, in an old book Daddy had been studying, Mary had seen 'S's that looked like this. So that meant …She looked at the cover again. Yes, it made sense now. The book was called Master Spells. She opened it.
The pages were printed in the curious old print that she had seen in Daddy's book. Here and there were diagrams, like geometry, only not the same; curious arrangements of circles and triangles, and shapes she couldn't put a name to.
Then her eye caught one of the headings: How to Choose Subjects for Transformation. On the page opposite this was one much simpler: To Unfaften Locks.
And that, thought Mary, might be very useful, if Tib and I are to get out of here. Even to herself she did not like to admit that now she was very uneasy indeed. And Tib was uneasy, too, she was sure: even if he had, in a sense, brought her here–or arranged for her to come–and had seemed excited about it, why did he insist now on staying invisible?
The last of the students was packing up. Mary hesitated, then quietly slipped the red book into her pocket.
The clock checked, whirred, and struck six.
Madam Mumblechook came smiling down the length of the room, her diamonds glittering green in the dusk against the light of the flames.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Do, Do, What Shall I Do?
'And now, my dear,' said Madam Mumblechook, 'classes are over for the day. If you will come to my office and put your name down, I shall give you a prospectus, and we shall expect you in the morning.'
Mary got to her feet, relieved, and half ashamed of her fear. The book weighed heavy in her pocket. She put a hand down, hoping to slip it back unnoticed into its place, but Madam Mumblechook came swiftly round the desk to pause right beside the bookshelf–and it was too late.
'My books,' the Headmistress was saying, swooping on them with a rustle of the black robes. 'If you will just give me a moment, I will lock my books away. At night they go in the strong-room. None of them leaves this room. I'm sure you understand why, Miss Smith.' And she took the dozen or so books from the shelf and made for a door that Mary had not noticed, right behind the teacher's chair.
'Madam Mumblechook–' began Mary guiltily.
'One moment,' said Madam. 'Silence, if you please.'
Mary stopped. Madam Mumblechook, with the pile of books held against her chest, was facing the strong-room door, and chanting something very softly under her breath. Mary could not hear the words. There seemed to be no lock or key on the door, only a bronze handle shaped like a sea-horse.
Madam laid hold of this and pulled. There was a series of clicks, smooth and oiled, and the door began to swing open. It was a huge, heavy door, made of metal, and at least nine inches thick. To Mary's surprise there was a light inside the strong-room; not green this time, but a dim, ordinary yellow, like an oil lamp. Madam Mumblechook left the door standing wide, and went in with the books.
'Would you be so good, Miss Smith, as to bring the papers off my desk?' she called. 'And the paperweight as well, of course. I always lock him up at night, along with the others. One can hardly be too careful, can one?' And she gave a little chuckling laugh.
It was Mary's chance. She pulled the red book from her pocket, picked up the pile of papers and put them on top of it, then carried the whole lot, with the glass frog, into the strong-room.
And the strange thing was that Tib ran ahead of her, pulling eagerly on the raffia lead.
There was a big cupboard just inside the door, and in this Madam Mumblechook was stacking the books.
'I suppose you want this as well,' began Mary. 'I was just looking–' Then she stopped dead, with a gasp. She had seen what else the strong-room contained.
To begin with, it was a far bigger
room than she had thought. It was almost as big as the lab, and the soft light of the lamp near the door had only illumined the end of it, leaving the rest in shadow.
Mercifully in shadow. The whole of the long, dim room was lined from floor to ceiling with cages.
They were barred and meshed, and stacked on one another like the shelves in a huge library, and there were bays where other ranks of cages stuck out from the wall. Some of the cages–those nearest the door–were empty, but from those further back in the shadows peered eyes, the eyes of small creatures, silent and staring, caught by the lamplight. Here and there was a movement as a paw or a tiny foot reached through the bars, but mostly the little creatures, whatever they were, sat huddled and silent in the dark corners at the back of their prisons.
Madam Mumblechook turned at Mary's gasp.
'Interesting, is it not? I thought you would be impressed. Some of our students have reached quite advanced experiments in transformation. But of course we have our failures.' She laughed merrily as she pointed at the nearest cage where a forlorn-looking creature, its orange fur patched with scales like mange, lay unheeding, its back to the room. It had put two crooked paws over its eyes to shut out the light, and seemed to be sleeping. But Mary suspected that it was very wide awake. She had already recognised one of the drawings from Madam's desk.
'Marvellous,' she said.
Madam Mumblechook leaned over the cage, prodding irritably at the creature, which would not move. Without pausing to think why she did so, Mary slipped the red book of Master Spells back into her pocket. 'Here are your papers, Madam.'
'Ah, thank you.' Madam Mumblechook, abandoning the caged creature, thrust the papers and the glass frog into the cupboard and locked the door on them. She had not noticed the absence of the book. 'I will show you round in more detail tomorrow, my dear. But now you will want to be getting home.'
