Septimus Heap, Book One_ Magyk - Angie Sage [11]
If she had bothered to pay attention, she would have been amazed at people’s reactions to her. It was eight o’clock in the morning, what Silas Heap called rush hour. Hundreds of pale-faced people were making their way to work, their sleepy eyes blinking in the gloom and their thin, cheap clothes pulled around them against the deep chill of the damp stone walls. Rush hour in the East Side passageways was a time to avoid. The crush would carry you along, often way past your turning until you managed to somehow wriggle through the crowd and join the stream in the opposite direction. The rush hour air was always full of plaintive cries:
“Let me off here, please!”
“Stop pushing me!”
“My turning, my turning!”
But Marcia had made the rush hour disappear. No Magyk was necessary for this—just the sight of Marcia was enough to stop everyone in their tracks. Most people on the East Side had never seen the ExtraOrdinary Wizard before. If they had seen her at all, it would have been on a day trip to the Wizard Tower Visitor Center, where they might have hung around the courtyard all day, hoping to catch a glimpse if they were lucky. For the ExtraOrdinary Wizard to be walking among them in the dank corridors of the East Side was unbelievable.
People gasped and shrank away. They melted into the shadows of the doorways and slipped away down side alleys. They muttered their own small spells to themselves. Some froze and stood stock-still like rabbits caught in the glare of a brilliant light. They gazed at Marcia as though she were a being from another planet, which she may well have been for all the similarities between her life and theirs.
But Marcia did not really notice this. Ten years as the ExtraOrdinary Wizard had insulated her from real life, and however much of a shock it had been when it first happened, she was now used to all giving way before her, to the bowing and the respectful murmuring that surrounded her.
Marcia swept off the main thoroughfare and headed down the narrow passage that led to the Heap household. On her travels Marcia had noticed that all the passages now had numbers that replaced the rather whimsical names they had had before, such as Windy Corner and Upside-Down Lane.
The Heaps’ address had previously been: Big Red Door, There and Back Again Row, The Ramblings.
Now it appeared to be: Room 16, Corridor 223, East Side. Marcia knew which one she preferred.
Marcia arrived at the Heaps’ door, which had been painted regulation-black by the Paint Patrol a few days ago. She could hear the noisy hubbub of a Heap breakfast going on behind the door. Marcia took some deep breaths.
She could put off the moment no longer.
5
AT THE HEAPS
Open,” Marcia told the black Heap door. But, being a door belonging to Silas Heap, it did nothing of the sort; in fact, Marcia thought she saw it tighten up its hinges and stiffen its lock. So she, Madam Marcia Overstrand, ExtraOrdinary Wizard, was reduced to banging on the door as hard as she could. No one answered. She tried again, harder and with both fists, but there was still no reply. Just as she was considering giving the door a good kick (and serve it right too) the door was pulled open, and Marcia came face-to-face with Silas Heap.
“Yes?” he said abruptly as if she were no more than an irritating salesperson.
For a brief moment Marcia was lost for words. She looked past Silas to see a room that appeared to have been recently hit by an explosion and was now, for some reason, packed full of boys. The boys were swarming around a small, dark-haired girl who was sitting at a table covered in a surprisingly clean white cloth. The girl was holding on to a small