Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [59]
Before they reached the door, they were quarrelling again from sheer tiredness.
“It’s going to take all night to get out of here!” Angelica grumbled.
“Oh shut up!” said Tonino. “You make more fuss about things than my Aunt Gina!”
“Is your Aunt Gina bruised all over because you hit her?” Angelica demanded.
When they came to the half-open door at last, there was only another room, slightly smaller. This one had a carpet. Gilded sofas stood about like Dutch barns, and large frilly armchairs. Angelica gave a wail of despair.
Tonino stood on tiptoe. There seemed to be cushions on some of the seats. “Suppose we hid under a cushion for the night?” he suggested, trying to make peace.
Angelica turned on him furiously. “Stupid! No wonder you’re slow at spells! We may be small, but they’ll find us because of that. We must stink of magic. Even my baby brother could find us, and he may be a baby but he’s cleverer than you!”
Tonino was too angry to answer. He simply marched away into the carpet. At first it was a relief to his sore feet, but it soon became another trial. It was like walking through long, tufty grass—and anyone who has done that for a mile or so will know how tiring that can be. On top of that, they had to keep going around puffy armchairs that seemed as big as houses, frilly footstools and screens as big as hoardings. Some of these things would have made good hiding places, but they were both too angry and frightened to suggest it.
Then, when they reached the door at last, it was shut. They threw themselves against the hard wood. It did not even shake.
“Now what?” said Tonino, leaning his back against it. The moon was going down by now. The carpet was in darkness. The bars of moonlight from the far-off windows only touched the tops of armchairs, or picked out the gold on the sofa backs, or the glitter from a shelf of colored glass vases. It would be quite dark soon.
“There’s an Angel over there,” Angelica said wearily.
She was right. Tonino could just see it, as colored flickers on wood, lit by moonlight reflected off the shelf of glass vases. There was another door under the Angel, or rather a dark space, because that door was wide open. Too tired even to speak, Tonino set off again, across another mile of tufty carpet, past beetling cliffs of furniture, to the other side of the room.
By the time they reached that open door, they were so tired that nothing seemed real anymore. There were four steps down beyond the door. Very well. They went down them somehow. At the bottom was an even more brutally tufted carpet. And the window here was the other side from the moon. It was quite dark.
Angelica sniffed the darkness. “Cigars.”
It could have been scillas for all Tonino cared. All he wanted was the next door. He set off, feeling around the walls for it, with Angelica stumbling after. They bumped into one huge piece of furniture, felt their way around it, and banged into another, which stuck even farther into the room. And so they went, stumbling and banging, climbing across two rounded metal bars, wading in carpet, until they arrived at the four steps again. It was quite a small room—for the Palace—and it had only one door. Tonino felt for the first step, as high as his head, and did not think he had the strength to get up them again. The Angel had not been a guide after all.
“That part that stuck out,” said Angelica. “I don’t know what it was, but it was hollow, like a box. Shall we risk hiding in it?”
“Let’s find it,” said Tonino.
They found it, or something like it, by walking into it. It was a steep-sided box which came up to their armpits. There was a large piece of metal, like a very wide door knocker, hung on the front of it. When they felt inside, they felt sheets of stiff leather, and crisper stuff that was possibly paper.
“I think it’s an open drawer,” said Tonino.
Angelica did not answer. She simply climbed in. Tonino heard her flapping and crackling among the paper—if it was paper. Well!