Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [38]
“In Chrestomanci Castle,” said Cat. “Chrestomanci had us to live here about a year after our parents died.”
“There you are!” said Janet. “My mum and dad are alive and kicking—or they were when I said good night to them last night. Who’s Chrestomanci? Could you just sketch your life history for me?”
Puzzled and uneasy, Cat described how and why he and Gwendolen had come to live in the Castle, and what Gwendolen had done then.
“You mean Gwendolen really was a witch!” Janet exclaimed.
Cat wished she had not said was. He had a growing suspicion that he would never see the real Gwendolen again. “Of course she is,” he said. “Aren’t you?”
“Great heavens, no!” said Janet. “Though I’m beginning to wonder if I mightn’t have been, if I’d lived here all my life. Witches are quite common, are they?”
“And warlocks and necromancers,” said Cat. “But wizards and magicians don’t happen so often. I think Mr. Saunders is a magician.”
“Medicine men, witch doctors, shamans, devils, enchanters?” Janet asked rapidly. “Hags, fakirs, sorcerers? Are they thick on the ground too?”
“Most of those are for savages,” Cat explained. “Hag is rude. But we have sorcerers and enchanters. Enchanters are very strong and important. I’ve never met one.”
“I see,” said Janet. She thought for a moment and then swung herself out of bed, in a sort of scramble that was more like a boy’s than a girl’s, and again quite unlike the way Gwendolen would have done it. “We’d better have a hunt around,” she said, “in case dear Gwendolen has been kind enough to leave a message.”
“Don’t call her that,” Cat said desolately. “Where do you think she is?”
Janet looked at him and saw he was miserable. “Sorry,” she said. “I won’t again. But you do see I might be a bit cross with her, don’t you? She seems to have dumped me here and gone off somewhere. Let’s hope she has a good explanation.”
“They spanked her with a boot and took away her magic,” Cat said.
“Yes, you said,” Janet replied, pulling open drawers in the golden dressing table. “I’m terrified of Chrestomanci already. But did they really take away her magic? How did she manage to do this, if they did?”
“I don’t understand that either,” Cat said, joining in the search. By now, he would have given his little finger for a word from Gwendolen—any kind of word. He felt horribly lonely. “Why were you in the bath?” he said, wondering whether to search the bathroom.
“I don’t know. I just woke up there,” said Janet, shaking out a tangle of hair ribbons in the bottom drawer. “I felt as if I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and I’d no clothes on, so I was freezing.”
“Why had you no clothes on?” Cat said, stirring Gwendolen’s underclothes about, without success.
“I was hot in bed last night,” said Janet. “So naked I came into this world. And I wandered about pinching myself—especially after I found this fabulous room. I thought I must have been turned into a princess. But there was this nightdress lying on the bed, so I put it on—”
“You’ve got it on back to front,” said Cat.
Janet stopped scanning the things on the mantelpiece to look down at the trailing ribbons. “Have I? It won’t be the only thing I’m going to get back to front, by the sound of it. Try looking in that artistic wardrobe. Then I explored outside here, and all I found was miles of long green corridor, which gave me the creeps, and stately grounds out of the windows, so I came back in here and went to bed. I hoped that when I woke up it would all have gone away. And instead there was you. Found anything?”
“No,” said Cat. “But there’s her box—”
“It must be in there,” said Janet.
They squatted down and unpacked the box. There was not much in it. Cat knew that Gwendolen must have taken a lot of things with her to wherever she had gone. There were two books, Elementary Spells and Magic for Beginners,