House of Many Ways
A chaotically magical sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, from the bestselling children’s author and ‘godmother of fantasy’, Diana Wynne Jones.Charmain Baker is in over her head. Looking after Great Uncle William's tiny cottage while he's ill should have been easy, but Great Uncle William is better known as the Royal Wizard Norland and his house bends space and time. Its single door leads to any number of places - the bedrooms, the kitchen, the caves under the mountains, the past, to name but a few.By opening that door, Charmain is now also looking after an extremely magical stray dog, a muddled young apprentice wizard and a box of the king's most treasured documents, as well as irritating a clan of small blue creatures.Caught up in an intense royal search, she encounters an intimidating sorceress named Sophie. And where Sophie is, can the Wizard Howl and fire demon Calcifer be far behind?
Читать House of Many Ways онлайн беплатно
Dear Reader,
Here is my new book, House of Many Ways, which I hope you will enjoy. It is a sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, set in the world where such things as seven-league boots and flying carpets are not only possible but real. For this one we move to the mountainous kingdom of High Norland, where the elderly King and his almost equally elderly daughter are busy cataloguing their huge library, but not too busy to notice that they are getting poorer and poorer. Their Royal Wizard falls ill and is unable to help them, which is how we come to meet Charmain, a cross-grained teenager who has been brought up so respectably that she knows almost nothing about anything except books. Charmain is volunteered to look after the Royal Wizard’s house while he is ill. But of course a wizard’s house is bound to be peculiar, and this one is, very.
While Charmain struggles with its peculiarities and with a very small and very greedy dog called Waif, she runs into the fearsome lubbock, a cocksure boy called Peter, a tribe of kobolds, and the inhabitants of the moving castle – Sophie, her son Morgan, Calcifer the fire demon and Wizard Howl in a very irritating disguise. Oh, and there are elves too, not to speak of Jamal the cook and his surly dog.
I had fun writing this. I hope you will have equal fun reading it.
Diana Wynne Jones
Illustrated by Tim Stevens
To my granddaughter, Ruth, together with Sharyn’s laundry and also to Lilly B.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER ONE | 9 |
| In which Charmain is volunteered to look after a wizard’s house | |
| CHAPTER TWO | 23 |
| In which Charmain explores the house | |
| CHAPTER THREE | 39 |
| In which Charmain works several spells at once | |
| CHAPTER FOUR | 55 |
| Introduces Rollo, Peter and mysterious changes in Waif | |
| CHAPTER FIVE | 77 |
| Wherein Charmain receives her anxious parent | |
| CHAPTER SIX | 103 |
| Which concerns the colour blue | |
| CHAPTER SEVEN | 122 |
| In which a number of people arrive at the Royal Mansion | |
| CHAPTER EIGHT | 151 |
| In which Peter has trouble with the plumbing | |
| CHAPTER NINE | 169 |
| In which Great Uncle William’s house proves to have many ways | |
| CHAPTER TEN | 196 |
| In which Twinkle takes to the roof | |
| CHAPTER ELEVEN | 215 |
| In which Charmain kneels on a cake | |
| CHAPTER TWELVE | 231 |
| Concerns laundry and lubbock eggs | |
| CHAPTER THIRTEEN | 247 |
| In which Calcifer is very active | |
| CHAPTER FOURTEEN | 263 |
| Which is full of kobolds again | |
| CHAPTER FIFTEEN | 282 |
| Wherein the child Twinkle is kidnapped | |
| CHAPTER SIXTEEN | 299 |
| Which is full of escapes and discoveries |
CHAPTER ONE
In which Charmain is volunteered to look after a wizard’s house
“Charmain must do it,” said Aunt Sempronia. “We can’t leave Great Uncle William to face this on his own.”
“Your Great Uncle William?” said Mrs Baker. “Isn’t he—” She coughed and lowered her voice because this, to her mind, was not quite nice. “Isn’t he a wizard?”
“Of course,” said Aunt Sempronia. “But he has—” Here she too lowered her voice. “He has a growth, you know, on his insides, and only the elves can help him. They have to carry him off in order to cure him, you see, and someone has to look after his house. Spells, you know, escape if there’s no one there to watch them. And I am far too busy to do it. My stray dogs’ charity alone—”
“Me too. We’re up to our ears in wedding cake orders this month,” Mrs Baker said hastily. “Sam was saying only this morning—”
“Then it has to be Charmain,” Aunt Sempronia decreed. “Surely she’s old enough now.”
“Er—” said Mrs Baker.
They both looked across the parlour to where Mrs Baker’s daughter sat, deep in a book, as usual, with her long, thin body bent into what sunlight came in past Mrs Baker’s geraniums, her red hair pinned up in a sort of birds’ nest and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. She held one of her father’s huge juicy pasties in one hand and munched it as she read. Crumbs kept falling on her book and she brushed them off with the pasty when they fell on the page she was reading.
“Er… did you hear us, dear?” Mrs Baker said anxiously.
“No,” Charmain said with her mouth full. “What?”
“That’s settled, then,” Aunt Sempronia said. “I’ll leave it to you to explain to her, Berenice, dear.” She stood up, majestically shaking out the folds of her stiff silk dress and then of her silk parasol. “I’ll be back to fetch her tomorrow morning,” she said. “Now I’d better go and tell poor Great Uncle William that Charmain will be taking care of things for him.”
She swept out of the parlour, leaving Mrs Baker to wish that her husband’s aunt was not so rich or so bossy, and to wonder how she was going to explain to Charmain, let alone to Sam. Sam never allowed Charmain to do anything that was not utterly respectable. Nor did Mrs Baker either, except when Aunt Sempronia took a hand.
Aunt Sempronia, meanwhile, mounted into her smart little pony trap and had her groom drive her out of the other side of town where Great Uncle William lived.
