He led them to a cupboard and pulled out a plate with something on it. It looked like a very troubled banana which had died in its sleep.
After that, the Hag lost heart completely. When she got back to her kitchen at Number 26, she found it full of friends who had come from all over the town to drink tea and tell her how sorry they were to hear of her trouble. A retired River Spirit, a man who now worked for the Water Board, offered to climb into the drains and look for an animal that had been flushed down: perhaps a water snake or a small alligator which someone had got for Christmas and didn’t want anymore. But the Hag said it was now clear to her that she wasn’t meant to have a familiar, and that the Powers-That-Be intended her to be shamed at the meeting, if indeed she went to the meeting at all.
And when all her visitors had gone, she put on her hat and smeared some white toothpaste on her blue tooth and left the house. She wanted to put magic and strangeness behind her and talk to someone who belonged to a different world. Someone completely ordinary, and friendly—and young!
CHAPTER
3
THE BOY
The Riverdene Home for Children in Need was not a cheerful place. It was in one of the most run-down and shabby parts of the city. Everything about it was gray: the building, the scuffed piece of earth which passed for a garden, the walls that surrounded it. Even when the children were taken out, walking in line through the narrow streets, they saw nothing green or colorful. Though the war against Hitler had been over for years, the bomb craters were still there; the people they met looked weary and shuffled along in dingy clothes.
Ivo had been in the Home since he was a baby, and he did not see how his life was ever going to change. He was not exactly unhappy but he was desperately bored. He knew that on Monday lunch would be claggy gray meat with dumplings, and on Tuesday it would be mashed potato with the smallest sausage in the world, and on Wednesday it would be cheese pie—which meant that on Wednesday the boy called Jake who slept next to him would be sick, because while cheese is all right and pies are all right, the two together are not at all easy to digest. He knew there would be lumps in the mashed potato and lumps in the custard and lumps even in the green jelly which they had every Saturday, though it is quite difficult to get lumps into jelly.
He knew that Matron would wear her purple starched overall till Thursday and then change it for a brown one, that the girl who doled out the food would have a drop on the end of her nose from September to April, and that the little plant which grew by the potting shed would be trampled flat as soon as its shoots appeared above the ground.
Ivo’s parents had been killed in a car accident; there seemed to be no one else to whom he belonged, and he did his best to make a world for himself. There was an ancient encyclopedia in the playroom—a thick tattered book into which one could almost climb, it was so big—and a well at the bottom of the sooty garden—covered up and long gone dry—but sitting on the edge of it one could imagine going down and down into some other place. There was a large oak tree just outside the back gate which dropped its acorns into the sooty soil of the orphanage garden.
It was at the back gate that Ivo liked to stand, looking out between the iron bars onto the narrow street. Sometimes people would stop and talk to him; most of them were busy and only said a word or two, but there was one person—a most unlikely person—who talked to him properly and who had become a friend. The other boys always scuttled away when they saw her coming, and she certainly looked odd, but Ivo was always pleased when she came. She was someone who said things one did not expect and he did not know anybody else like that.
The Hag did not have a grandson. She would have liked to have one, but since she had never married or had any children it was not really possible. But if she had had one, she thought, he would have been like Ivo, with a snub nose, a friendly smile, and intelligent hazel eyes. She had started by just saying hello to him on the way to the shops, but gradually she had stopped at the gate longer and longer, and they had begun to have some interesting conversations. Today, though, the Hag was so upset that she almost forgot she was talking to an ordinary human boy and one she had met only through holes in a gate, and almost straightaway she said: “I have had such bad news, Ivo! I have been betrayed by my toad!”
“By Gladys?” said Ivo, very much surprised. “But that’s terrible—you lived with her for years and years in the Dribble, didn’t you? And you gave her your mother’s name.”
“Yes, I did. You’ve no idea what I did for that animal. But now she won’t do any more work. She says she’s tired.”
There was a pause while Ivo looked at the Hag from under his eyebrows. He had guessed that Gladys wasn’t just an ordinary pet, but he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to know and what he wasn’t.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I mean I thought . . . familiars . . .” He paused, but the Hag didn’t snub him or tell him to stop. “I thought familiars didn’t ever . . . I thought they served for life.” And under his breath, “I would if I was a familiar.”
The Hag stared at him. She had never actually told him that Gladys was a familiar, but she wasn’t surprised that he had guessed. She had realized all along that he was a most unusual boy.
“They do. They’re supposed to. And it’s such a bad time . . .” It was no good holding back now. “There’s a meeting . . . of the London branch of all the people who are . . . well . . . not ordinary. And some of them think they are very powerful and special and show off like anything—even though the world is so different for people like us. If I go without a familiar they’ll despise me, I’m sure of that.” She sighed. “I suppose I must give up all idea of going. After all I’m so old and I’m an . . .”
She was about to say she was an orphan, but then she remembered that Ivo was an orphan, too.
But the boy was thinking his own thoughts.
“Can’t you find another familiar?” he asked. “There must be lots of animals who would be proud to serve you.”
“Oh, if only you knew. I’ve been everywhere.” And she told him of all her disappointments.
There was a long pause. Then: “Why does it have to be an animal?” asked Ivo. “Why can’t a familiar be a person? They’re just servants, aren’t they—people that help a witch or a wizard?”
The Hag sighed. “I don’t know where I’d get hold of one. And they’d have to be trained . . . Though I suppose if it was just for the meeting . . . It might be rather grand to sweep in with an attendant. But it’s too late now.”
Ivo was grasping the bars of the gate with both hands.
“I could be one,” he said eagerly. “I could be your familiar. It says in the encyclopedia that they can be goblins or imps or sproggets, and they’re not so different from boys.”
The Hag stared at him. “No, no, that would never do. You’re a proper human being like Mr. Prendergast. It’s not your fault but that’s how it is, and you shouldn’t get mixed up with people like us. It’s very good of you but you must absolutely forget the idea.”
But Ivo was frowning. . . . “You seem to think that being a proper human is a good thing but . . . is it? If being a proper human means living here and knowing exactly what is going to happen every moment of the day, then maybe it’s not so marvelous. Maybe I want to live a life that’s exciting and dangerous even if it’s only for a little while. Maybe I want to know about a world where amazing things happen and one can cross oceans or climb mountains . . . or be surprised.”
“You mean . . . magic?” said the Hag nervously.
“Yes,” said Ivo. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
CHAPTER
4
A MEETING OF UNUSUAL CREATURES
It was Ulf who persuaded the Hag to let Ivo come. As far as he could see it was only necessary to get her through the meeting; after the Summer Task had been given out she wouldn’t worry so much about whether she had a familiar or not. So on the following day he tucked his long hair under a cap and the Hag wound
a muffler around the fiercest of her whiskers, and they went to see the principal of the Riverdene Home for Children.
“We’ve just discovered that you have a boy here whose father we knew,” they told her.
And they asked if they could have Ivo to stay for a few days.
In those days it wasn’t nearly so difficult to get a child to come for a visit, and after they had filled out a few forms and produced a letter from Dr. Brainsweller to say how respectable they were, Ivo appeared with a small suitcase.
“Only he must be back by Monday,” said the principal.
Ivo was still wearing the dreary uniform of the Riverdene Home: gray shorts, gray sweater, gray socks—but his eyes were shining, and as they took him back to Whipple Road, it was all he could do to stop himself jumping for joy.
And it was clear from the start that he meant to take his duties as a familiar very seriously.
“Oughtn’t I to have . . . you know, tests? Inductions, I think they’re called?” he asked the Hag when she had shown him the attic where he was to sleep. “Like . . . you know . . . having a live louse applied to my eyeballs. Or . . . swallowing a worm to show that I’m not squeamish. It could be a magic worm, the kind that tells you what to do from inside your stomach. I read about one in the encyclopedia.”
But the Hag said she did not keep lice in her house, and the only worms went to Gladys, who had behaved badly but still needed to eat. She set him to dry the dishes, which he did very well.
“Though I do wonder,” he said. “I mean, couldn’t you just say a spell and the dishes would get dry by themselves?”
The Hag shook her head.
“You see, Ivo, there’s a code about magic,” she explained. “It mustn’t be used for ordinary things like boiling an egg—things one can do quite well without it. People who use it for everyday jobs are looked down on, and rightly.”
“You mean it’s a sort of force which mustn’t be wasted?” asked Ivo, and the Hag nodded, because that was exactly what she meant.
“And of course there are more and more of us whose powers are getting weaker,” she went on. “I used to be able to give people smallpox when I was young, and now I’d be hard put to even manage chicken pox. It’s modern life. Switching on an electric light instead of waving a wand, airplanes instead of levitation, and all that scoffing and sneering. Our magic has been worn down by it.”
There were only two days now to the meeting, but Ivo fitted in so well that it was quite difficult to remember that he was an ordinary boy and not an Unusual Creature. Gertie had really taken to him. She had always wanted a little brother, and she had made him a black cloak out of an old curtain, and they found a pointed cap for him in an old trunk. A proper grandson with Hag blood in him couldn’t have looked better, they all agreed.
The Great Day had come and the party from Number 26 were in the kitchen, ready to leave for the meeting. The troll did not dress up but he had polished the staff of rowanwood, which he had brought from his homeland. The Hag’s other lodger had gone to spend the night with a friend and wouldn’t be back till after the weekend, but Dr. Brainsweller was there. His mother had brought him earlier and asked the Hag if she would take him to the meeting because she had to go north to wail at a funeral, and she didn’t think he would manage to get there on his own.
Then the door opened and the Hag entered. She wore a long Dribble-colored dress; all the colors of water shimmered and blended in the velvet, and she had polished her tooth.
And behind her came Ivo, in his black outfit, walking in her shadow as familiars should, but looking so attentive, so eager and intelligent, that everyone let out a sigh of relief. There was no possible danger of him being noticed and cast out as an ordinary boy, and they set off with a glad heart for the Hotel Metropole.
The Metropole was a luxury hotel in the center of town, the kind with deep carpets and gilt-edged mirrors and interesting things for sale in the foyer. As they made their way upstairs, the Hag looked at Ivo a little anxiously because some of the people they mingled with really were rather strange: a fortune-teller pulling along a large white gorilla on a lead; a family of fuaths, those tall faeries with green hair and a single eye; a Strong Man from a circus dressed in glittering silver who had been dipped in a magic river when he was a baby so that no knife or bullet could pierce him.
But there was no need to worry about Ivo, the Hag soon realized. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. The big conference room on the first floor was filling up fast, and the party from Number 26 slipped quietly into a row near the back. Everyone was whispering and talking among themselves, hoping that the Summer Task would be something far out in the country.
“I do so long for fresh air,” said an old brownie in the row in front of them.
There was a stage at the back of the room, and now the curtains swished apart and the organizer came on with a bundle of papers. Her name was Nellie Arbuthnot and she was a comfortable, homely sort of witch, plump, with a feathery hat. Her familiar was a parrot in a cage, and she had slipped a green baize cover over it so that it wouldn’t interrupt.
Nellie started by welcoming everybody and telling them that the refreshments in the interval would be served in the Blue Room across the corridor.
“The charge this year will be half a crown, but you will get value for your money, I promise you.”
Ivo turned his head as the Hag gave a small squeak of annoyance. “I’ve forgotten my purse,” she whispered. “I must have left it on the kitchen table.”
No one else from Whipple Road had any money. They would have to do without refreshments when the time came.
On the stage, Nellie shuffled her papers and cleared her throat. At the same time an assistant witch pulled down a screen and set up the Magic Lantern.
“You will want to know about the Summer Task,” Nellie said, “and I’m happy to tell you that this year we have been asked to go to Mr. Barber’s Holiday Camp in the New Forest and rid the camp—and in particular the Fun Fair which is attached to the camp—of a plague of mice.”
Murmurs of pleasure spread through the audience. A Fun Fair sounded good, and the New Forest was very beautiful. A picture of the camp now came on the screen. It looked really nice, with colored chalets and well-kept flower beds. A picture of the fair came next—swings and merry-go-rounds and a giant slide under a sunny sky—and then came one of the Barber family: Mr. and Mrs. Barber, and Penelope and Timothy Barber, nicely dressed children smiling into the camera.
“You may ask why the Barbers don’t just bring in a lot of cats, and the answer is that the family is allergic to cats. Cat fur brings them out in terrible bumps. So Mr. Barber has invited us to spend a week, as guests in his camp, and concentrate in particular on the Fun Fair, where the mice are breeding at a terrifying rate. He leaves it to us how we get rid of the mice—shape-changing . . . luring . . . the evil eye. . . . Leading them on a hill like in the Pied Piper of Hamelin is of course a possibility.”
She waited for a moment while the tired creatures who had worked all summer in the city talked delightedly among themselves. This was going to be the best Summer Task ever!
“Now we come to the arrangements for the journey,” began Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We will travel from—”
But at that moment something extraordinary happened. The curtains swished together. The lights flickered and went out. An icy draught crept through the room—there was a single roar of thunder, followed by complete silence.
And then . . . from behind the curtains . . . came a slow and eerie noise.
Creak . . . creak . . . creak.
The lights came on again. The curtains parted, but there was no sign of Nellie Arbuthnot or her parrot. Instead, on the stage was a most extraordinary contraption. A gigantic circular bed on wheels. A movable hospital bed? A deathbed? Nobody knew . . .
And on the bed crouched three women.
But what women! They were older than time with cracked and hideous faces, tangles of long white hair, and ghastly
stares.
Panic spread through the audience. The Hag took Ivo’s hand; she was clammy with fear.
“Norns!” The terrified whisper could be heard all over the room. “It’s the Norns!
“It’s the Old Ones!”
Norns are the eldest beings in the world. They were there at the beginning of time and they never quite die. Anyone who sees them feels an unstoppable dread because the Norns are the Fates; they spin the threads of the future and foretell what is to come.
The frightful things crouched on the bed, peering at the rows of people watching them. At the same time, on the screen behind them, the cheerful faces of the Barber family vanished, and instead there appeared a landscape of towering black cliffs, lashed by a stormy sea. White spray dashed against the rocks; they could hear the howling of the wind.
The picture moved inland through a cleft in the cliffs and stopped in front of an enormous castle with turrets and towers and places for pouring boiling oil. The windows were barred with iron; blackbirds circled the battlements.
Again the picture changed. They were inside the castle now, in a huge banquet hall, its walls hung with death-dealing instruments and the antlers of slaughtered animals. And then came gasps and cries of “Oooh” from the audience—because what they were seeing was a head.
But what a head! Swollen and loathsome, with hate-filled eyes, a pockmarked nose . . . a mouth opened to show bloodstained teeth.
The Norns pointed to the picture with their deformed fingers.
“It is the Great Ogre,” intoned the First Norn.
“The flesh-eating Ogre of the North,” pronounced the Second Norn.
“The dreaded Ogre of Oglefort,” uttered the Third Norn.
For a moment the camera stayed on the fearful head. Then it pulled back to show the figure who knelt at the monster’s feet: a young girl with long hair streaming down her back, her hands clasped beseechingly. But just as the ogre’s hands came down toward the trembling girl, the screen went dark.