Jones, Diana Wynne Wizard's Castle Omnibus (bks 1 & 2)

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Phrases like terrible old biddy and won t listen to aword ! were quite easy to hear, even though Calcifer was roaring, Howl, stop her! She s killing usboth!But all Howl said, when Michael let go of him, was Did you kill any spiders? Of course not! Sophie snapped.Her aches made her irritable. They look at me and run for their lives.What are they? All the girls whose hearts you ate?Howl laughed. No, just simple spiders, he said and went dreamily away upstairs.Michael sighed.He went into the broom cupboard and hunted until he found an old folding bed, a strawmattress, and some rugs, which he put into the arched space under the stairs. You d better sleep heretonight, he told Sophie. Does that mean Howl s going to let me stay? Sophie asked. I don t know! Michael said irritably. Howl never commits himself to anything.I was here six monthsbefore he seemed to notice I was living here and made me his apprentice.I just thought a bed would bebetter than the chair. Then thank you very much, Sophie said gratefully.The bed was indeed more comfortable than a chair,and when Calcifer complained he was hungry in the night, it was an easy matter for Sophie to creak herway out and give him another log.In the days that followed, Sophie cleaned her way remorselessly through the castle.She really enjoyedherself.Telling herself she was looking for clues, she washed the window, she cleaned out the oozingsink, and she made Michael clear everything off the workbench and the shelves so that she could scrubthem.She had everything out of the cupboards and down from the beams and cleaned those too.Thehuman skull, she fancied, began to look as long-suffering as Michael.It had been moved so often.Thenshe tacked an old sheet to the beams nearest the fireplace and forced Calcifer to bend his head downwhile she swept the chimney.Calcifer hated that.He crackled with mean laughter when Sophiediscovered that soot had got all over the room and she had to clean it all again.That was Sophie strouble.She was remorseless, but she lacked method.But there was this method to her remorselessness:she calculated that she could not clean this thoroughly without sooner or later coming across Howl shidden hoard of girls souls, or chewed hearts or else something that explained Calcifer s contract.Upthe chimney, guarded by Calcifer, had struck her as a good hiding place.But there was nothing there butquantities of soot, which Sophie stored in bags in the yard.The yard was high on her list of hiding places.Every time Howl came in, Michael and Calcifer complained loudly about Sophie.But Howl did notseem to attend.Nor did he seem to notice the cleanliness.And nor did he notice that the food closetbecame very well stocked with cakes and jam and the occasional lettuce.For, as Michael had prophesied, word had gone round Porthaven.People came to the door to look atSophie.They called her Mrs.Witch in Porthaven and Madam Sorceress in Kingsbury.Word had goneround the capital too.Though the people who came to the Kingsbury door were better dressed thanGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlthose in Porthaven, no one in either place liked to call on someone so powerful without an excuse.SoSophiewas always having to pause in her work to nod and smile and take in a gift, or to get Michael toput up a quick spell for someone.Some of the gifts were nice things pictures, strings of shells, anduseful aprons.Sophie used the aprons daily and hung the shells and pictures round her cubbyhole underthe stairs, which soon began to look very homelike indeed.Sophie knew she would miss this when Howl turned her out.She became more and more afraid that hewould.She knew he could not go on ignoring her forever.She cleaned the bathroom next.That took her days, because Howl spent so long in it every day beforehe went out.As soon as he went, leaving it full of steam and scented spells, Sophie moved in. Nowwe ll see about that contract! she muttered at the bath, but her main target was of course the shelf ofpackets, jars, and tubes.She took every one of them down, on the pretext of scrubbing the shelf, andspent most of a day carefully going through them to see if the ones labeled SKIN, EYES, and HAIRwere in fact pieces of girl.As far as she could tell, they were all just creams and powders and paint.Ifthey once had been girls, then Sophie thought Howl had used the tube FOR DECAY on them and rottedthem down the washbasin too thoroughly to recall.But she hoped they were only cosmetics in thepackets.She put the things back on the shelf and scrubbed.That night, as she sat aching in the chair, Calcifergrumbled that he had drained one hot spring dry for her. Whereare thehot springs ? Sophie asked.She was curious about everything these days. Under the Porthaven Marshes mostly, Calcifer said. But if you go on like this, I ll have to fetch hotwater from the Waste.When are you going to stop cleaning and find out how to break my contract? In good time, said Sophie. How can I get the terms out of Howl if he s never in? Is he always awaythis much? Only when he s after a lady, Calcifer said.When the bathroom was clean and gleaming, Sophie scrubbed the stairs and the landing upstairs.Thenshe moved on into Michael s small front room.Michael, who by this time seemed to be accepting Sophiegloomily as a sort of natural disaster, gave a yell of dismay and pounded upstairs to rescue his mosttreasured possessions.They were in an old box under his worm-eaten little bed.As he hurried the boxprotectively away, Sophie glimpsed a blue ribbon and a spun-sugar rose in it, on top of what seemed tobe letters. So Michael has a sweetheart! she said to herself as she flung the window open it opened into thestreet in Porthaven too and heaved his bedding across the sill to air.Considering how nosy she hadlately become, Sophie was rather surprised at herself for not asking Michael who his girl was and how hekept her safe from Howl.She swept such quantities of dust and rubbish from Michael s room that she nearly swamped Calcifertrying to burn it all. You ll be the death of me! You re as heartless as Howl! Calcifer choked.Only his green hair and ablue piece of his long forehead showed.Michael put his precious box in the drawer of the workbench and locked the drawer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Linki