Witch Week (19 page)

Horns were still sounding as they cleared the hedge on the other side of the road.

“Oh help!” gasped Nirupam. “Make for the woods, quick, before somebody gets the police!”

Larwood Forest was only a short hillside away and, luckily, their panic seemed to get through to the mop and the hoe. Both put on speed. The wagging and slewing of the mop nearly threw Charles off. The hoe helped itself along by digging its metal end fiercely into the ground, so that Nirupam went upwards like someone on a pogo stick, yelping at each leap. Horns were still sounding from the road as first Nirupam, then Charles reached the trees and plunged in among them. By this time, Nirupam was so far ahead that Charles thought he had lost him. Probably just as well, Charles thought. They might be safer going separate ways. But the mop had other ideas. After dithering a bit, as if it had lost the scent, it set off again at top wallow. Charles was wagged around tree trunks and swayed through prickly undergrowth. Finally he was slewed through a bed of nettles. He yelled. Nirupam yelled too, just beyond the nettles. The hoe tipped him off into a blackberry bush and darted gladly towards an old threadbare broomstick
which was leaning on the other side of the brambles. At the sight, the mop threw Charles into the nettles and went bouncing flirtatiously towards the broomstick too, looking just like a granny on an outing.

Charles and Nirupam picked themselves bad-temperedly up. They listened. The motorists on the road seemed to have got tired of sounding their horns. They looked. Beyond the jumping hoe and the nuzzling mop, there was a well-made campfire. Behind the fire, concealed by more brambles, was a small orange tent. Brian Wentworth was standing by the tent, glowering at them.

“I thought I’d got at least one of you arrested,” Brian said. “Get lost, can’t you! Or are you trying to get me caught?”

“No, we are not!” Charles said angrily. “We’re— Hey, listen!”

Somewhere uphill, in the thick part of the wood, a dog gave one whirring, excited bark, and stopped suddenly. Birds were clapping up out of the trees. And Charles’s straining ears could also hear a rhythmic swishing, as of heavy feet marching through undergrowth.

“That’s the police,” he said.

“You fools! You’ve brought them down on me!” Brian said in a screaming whisper. He grabbed the old broom from between the mop and the hoe and, in one practiced jump, he was on the broom and gliding away across the brambles.

“
He
did the birds in music,” Nirupam said, and snatched the hoe. Charles seized the mop and both of them set off after Brian, wavering and hopping across the brambles and in among low trees. Charles kept his head down, because branches were raking at his hair, and thought that Nirupam must be right. Those birds had appeared promptly in time to save Brian’s having to sing. And a parrot shouting “Cuckoo!” was exactly Brian’s kind of thing.

They were catching up with the broom, not because they wanted to, but because the mop and the hoe were plainly determined to stay with the broom. They must have spent years together in the groundsman’s hut and, Charles supposed irritably, they had got touchingly fond of one another. Nothing he or Nirupam could do would make either implement go a different way. Shortly, Brian was gliding among the trees only a few yards ahead of them.

He turned and glared at them. “Leave me alone! You’ve spoiled my escape and made me lose my tent. Go away!”

“It was the mop and the hoe,” said Charles.

“The police are looking for you, not us,” Nirupam panted. “What did you expect? You were missing.”

“I didn’t expect two great idiots crashing about the forest and bringing the police after me,” Brian snarled. “Why couldn’t you stay in school?”

“If you didn’t want us, you shouldn’t have written all that rubbish about a witch putting a spell on you,” said Charles. “There’s an inquisitor coming today because of you.”

“Well, you advised me to do it,” Brian said.

Charles opened his mouth and shut it again, quite unable to speak for indignation. They were coming to the edge of the woods now. He could see green fields through a mass of yellow hazel leaves, and he tried to turn the mop aside yet again. If they came out of the woods, they would be seen at once. But the mop obstinately followed the broom.

As they forced their way among whippy hazel boughs, Nirupam panted severely, “You ought to be glad to have some friends with you, Brian.”

Brian laughed hysterically. “Friends! I wouldn’t be friends with either of you if you paid me! Everyone in 6B laughs at you!”

As Brian said this, there was a sudden clamor of dog noises behind them in the wood. A voice shouted something about a tent. It was plain that the police had found Brian’s camp. Brian and the broomstick put on speed and surged out into the field beyond. Charles and Nirupam found themselves being dragged anyhow through the hazel boughs as the mop and the hoe tried to keep up.

Scratched and breathless, they were whirled out into the field on the side of the woods that faced the town. Brian was some way ahead, flying low and fast downhill, towards a clump of trees in the middle of the field. The mop and the hoe surged after him.

“I know Brian is nasty, but I had always thought it was his situation before this,” Nirupam remarked, in jerks, as the hoe kangaroo-hopped down the field.

Charles could not answer at once, because he was not sure that a person’s character could be separated from his situation in quite this way. While he was wondering how you said this kind of thing aboard a speeding, wallowing mop, when you were hanging on with one hand and holding your glasses with the other, Brian reached the clump of trees and disappeared among them. They heard his voice again, shrill and annoyed, echoing out of the trees.

“Is Brian
trying
to bring the police after us?” Nirupam panted.

Both of them looked over their shoulders, expecting men and dogs to come charging out through the edge of the woods. There was nothing. Next moment, they were swishing through low branches covered with carroty beech leaves. The mop and the hoe jolted to a stop. Charles put his nettled legs down and stood up in a windy rustling space surrounded by pewter-colored tree trunks. He stared at Estelle Green, looking as if she had mislaid a horse. He stared at Nan Pilgrim in ragged pink silk, with the broomstick hopping and sidling affectionately around her.

Brian was standing angrily beside them. “Look at this!” he said to Charles and Nirupam. “The place is alive with you lot! Why can’t you let a person run away in peace?”

“Will one of you please shut Brian up?” Estelle said, with great dignity. “We are just about to say a spell that will rescue us all.”

“These trees are called the Portway Oaks,” Nan explained, and bit the inside of her cheek in order not to laugh. Nirupam riding a hoe was one of the funniest things she had ever seen. And Charles Morgan’s mop looked as if he had slain an old-age pensioner. But she knew she and Estelle looked equally silly, and the boys had not laughed at them.

Brian was still talking angrily. Nirupam let the hoe loose to jump delightedly around the broom and clapped one long brown hand firmly over Brian’s mouth. “Go ahead,” he said.

“And make it quick,” said Charles.

Nan and Estelle bent over their fluttering piece of paper again. The old lady had written just one strange word three times at the top of the paper. Under that, as she had told them, she had written, in shaky capitals, how to say this word: KREST-OH-MAN-SEE. After that she had put,
Go to Portway Oaks and say word three times.
The rest of the paper was full of a very wobbly map.

Estelle and Nan pronounced the word together, three times. “Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci, Chrestomanci.”

“Is that all?” asked Nirupam. He took his hand from Brian’s face.

“Somebody swindled you!” Brian said. “That’s no spell!”

It seemed as if a great gust of wind hit the clump of trees. The branches all around them lashed, and creaked with the strain, so that the air was full of the rushing of leaves. The dead orange leaves from the ground leaped in the air and swirled around them all, around and around, as if the inside of the clump were the center of a whirlwind. This was followed by a sudden stillness. Leaves stayed where they were, in the air, surrounding everyone. No one could see anything but leaves, and there was not a sound to be heard from anywhere. Then, very slowly, sound began again. There was a gentle rustling as the suspended leaves dropped back to the ground. Where they had been, there was a man standing.

He seemed utterly bewildered. His first act was to put his hands up and smooth his hair, which was a thing that hardly needed doing, since the wind had not disturbed even the merest wisp of it. It was smooth and black and shiny as new tar. Having smoothed his hair, this man rearranged his starched white shirt cuffs and straightened his already straight pale gray cravat. After that, he carefully pulled down his dove-mauve waistcoat and, equally carefully, brushed some imaginary dust off his beautiful dove-gray suit. All the while he was doing this, he was looking from one to the other of the five of them in increasing perplexity. His eyebrows rose higher with everything he saw.

They were all thoroughly embarrassed. Nirupam tried to hide behind Charles as the man looked at his little blue shorts. Charles tried to slither behind Brian. Brian tried to knock the mud off the knees of his jeans without looking as if he was. The man’s eyes turned to Nan. They were bright black eyes, which did not seem quite as bewildered as the rest of the man’s face, and they made Nan feel that she would rather have had no clothes on at all than a ragged pink balldress. The man looked on towards Estelle, as if Nan were too painful a sight. Nan looked at Estelle too. Estelle, as she set her hard hat straight, was gazing adoringly up into the man’s handsome face.

That was all we needed! Nan thought. Evidently this was the kind of man that Estelle fell instantly in love with. So, not only had they somehow summoned up an over-elegant stranger, but they were no nearer being safe and, to crown it all, there would probably be no sense to be had from Estelle from now on.

“Bless my soul!” murmured the man. He was now staring at the mop, the hoe, and the broom, which were jigging about in a little group like an old folks’ reunion. “I think you’d
definitely
better go,” he said to them. All three implements vanished, with a faint whistling sound. The man turned to Nan. “What are we all doing here?” he said, a little plaintively. “And where are we?”

A
DOG BARKED EXCITEDLY
up the hill. Everyone except the stranger jumped.

“I think we must go now, sir,” Nirupam said politely. “That was a police dog. They were looking for Brian, but I think they’re looking for the rest of us now.”

“What do you expect them to do if they find you?” the man asked.

“Burn us,” said Charles, and his thumb ran back and forth over the fat blister on his finger.

“We’re all witches, you see, except Estelle,” Nan explained.

“So if you don’t mind us leaving you—” said Nirupam.

“How very barbarous,” said the man. “I think it would be much better if the police and their dogs simply didn’t see this clump of trees where we all are, don’t you?” He looked vaguely around to see what they thought of this idea. Everyone looked dubious, and Brian downright scornful. “I assure you,” the man said to Brian, “that if you go into the field outside and look, you will not see these trees any more than the police will. If the word of an enchanter is not enough for you, go out and see for yourself.”

“What enchanter?” Brian said rudely. But of course no one dared leave the trees. They all waited, with their backs prickling, while the voices of policemen came slowly nearer. Finally, they seemed to be just outside the trees.

“Nothing,” they heard the policeman saying. “Everyone go back and concentrate on the woods. Hills and MacIver, you two go down and see what those motorists by the hedge are waving about. The rest of you get the dogs back to that tent and start again from there.”

After that, the voices all went away. Everyone relaxed a little, and Nan even began to hope that the stranger might be some help. But then he went all plaintive again. “Would one of you tell me where we are now?” he said.

“Just outside Larwood Forest,” Nan said. “Hertfordshire.”

“In England, the British Isles, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way, the Universe,” Brian said scornfully.

“Ah yes,” said the man. “But which one?” Brian stared. “I mean,” the man said patiently, “do you happen to know
which
world, galaxy, universe, et cetera? There happen to be infinite numbers of them, and unless I know which this one is, I shall not find it very easy to help you.”

This gave Charles a very strange feeling. He thought of outer space and bug-eyed monsters and his stomach turned over. His eyes ran over the man’s elegant jacket, fascinated, trying to make out if there was room under it for an extra pair of arms. There was not. The man was obviously a human being. “You’re not really from another world, are you?” he said.

“I am precisely that,” said the man. “Another world full of people just like you, running side by side with this one. There are myriads of them. So which one
is
this one?”