"I'm doing my best," she said mysteriously.
When Matilda left the dungeons, she climbed a long, winding stair to a small room at the top of the palace. Here, Billy's faithful attendant, Dorgo, awaited her. Dorgo was one of the beings who had inhabited Badlock long before the enchanter invaded and turned their world into the fearful, barren place it had become. There were many beings like Dorgo in the palace. They were all servants of one sort or another, and they all looked alike: their bodies short, square, and lumpy, their faces without eyebrows, their hair (if they had any) hidden in woolen caps.
And they shared one characteristic: Once they had befriended a master, they were loyal unto death.
Dorgo was a blacksmith of sorts. In the little room that Matilda had found for him, he had set up a modest furnace and, in a wooden tray, molded enough
soft clay to take the imprint of a key. Liquid metal was waiting in a bowl hanging from a beam above the furnace.
"Got it, Dorgo!" said Matilda as she leaped through the door. "How long will it take?"
Dorgo never said very much. He took the key from Matilda and, pressing it into the clay, murmured, "Short!"
It was difficult to guess how many minutes went into "short." But Dorgo didn't deal in minutes, so it was no use asking him for a precise time.
Matilda wasn't too sure about time anyway. The enchanter had a clock, a magical contraption that showed constellations and clouds as well as hours and minutes, and Matilda had learned that there were five hours between each meal. Her stomach told her that there were probably two hours to go before dinner, but she would have to get the key back to Oddthumb sooner than that.
"See you in an hour," Matilda told Dorgo, and leaving his makeshift smithy, she went down to the room where Count Harken kept his paintings. The enchanter was an excellent artist, but how much was skill and how much enchantment, Matilda couldn't guess. She was interested in only one painting anyway. Among the brightly colored landscapes and the pictures of incredible animals, there was a painting of Billy's city.
Matilda had spent many hours gazing at this city. Billy had told her where Bloor's Academy stood, close to the ruins of a great castle built by the Red King. The king who was her great-grandfather and also Billy's ancestor.
Sometimes, when she heard someone coming, Matilda would hide among the big canvases. She had never been forbidden to look in this room, but something made her afraid to be found there. One day while she was hiding, she had heard a woman's voice coming from the painting of Billy's city. The enchanter had replied to it. And that's how Matilda had found out about the woman named Titania, who was trying to help Count Harken to get back into the city. Why he found it so difficult, Matilda couldn't imagine.
The painting was beautiful, in its way. It was as if the count had painted it from a cloud, for you could see all the streets and buildings laid out in a great pattern, and yet the angle of the houses was not so steep that you couldn't see walls and doors and windows slanting away from the gray slate roofs.
Matilda would stare at the buildings, trying to guess what was happening behind their dark windows, and often she would hear a snatch of music, a dog barking, someone singing, or a hoot from one of the extraordinary-looking machines that filled the streets: cars, Billy called them. But most of all, Matilda liked to watch the house with a big tree in front of it, for this was where a boy named Charlie Bone lived, a boy who'd be brave enough to venture into Badlock, a boy who lived nine hundred years away. Could she get to Charlie's world, Matilda wondered. Could she?
Matilda put her hand on the painting. Her fingers touched a high window, just above the tree outside number nine Filbert Street. "Can I?" she whispered.
"Can I? Charlie, are you there?"
On Friday, Alice Angel decided to tidy up the spare room on the top floor.
Maisie never seemed to have the time. The shelves lining two walls were crammed with suitcases, old clothes, sets of china, books, newspapers, and boxes of goodness-knows-what. The floor space was occupied by long rolls of cloth, chairs in need of recaning, the occasional table, an ancient treadle sewing machine, and an old rocking chair. Alice pushed the rocker up to the window and sat down. "Hmmm. Windows need a wash," she observed, running her hand over the grimy pane.
A curious tingle shot through Alice's fingers. If she hadn't been who she was, she might have thought the surface of the glass had been electrified.
But being Alice, she thought nothing of the sort. And being Alice, she wasn't too surprised when a distant yet sweet, clear voice said, "Charlie, are you there?"
"Charlie's not here right now, my dear," said Alice, lightly touching the windowpane. "Try again later."
"Thank you," said the voice.
Alice smiled to herself. She wondered how far the voice had traveled? How many years?
"When shall I see him again?"
Alice didn't know how to reply. This time the voice sounded wistful and slightly hesitant. Alice had always found it impossible to lie. She could only tell the truth. "I don't know, my dear." She knew the girl had gone as soon as she had spoken.
"I wonder... ," Alice said to herself. She couldn't sit still any longer and so she continued to tidy up, dusting the books and stacking them neatly on the shelves.
It began to rain. Alice looked at the window, hoping another storm wasn't brewing. The last one had been ferocious. She knew who had brought it about, of course. Alice was well aware that Lord Grimwald was in the city, and she knew that he was trying to drown Lyell Bone. She made it her business to know these things. Intuition told her that Lord Grimwald wasn't around anymore.
But on rare occasions, intuition had let her down. She couldn't be absolutely sure.
The rain was now falling very heavily. It was extraordinary rain, the drops as large as cupfuls of water. The cupfuls soon became bucketfuls. Whoosh!
Splash! Cars hooted; birds flew for cover.
Looking down into the street, Alice saw a solitary pedestrian in a brown raincoat and a wide-brimmed waterproof hat. He was striding along, swinging an old-fashioned doctor's bag, and didn't seem at all concerned about the rain. He stopped at number nine and rang the bell.
The front door was opened and, from the hall far below, a little scream echoed up the stairwell. Alice dropped the book she had been dusting and ran down the two flights of stairs. When she got to the kitchen, she found the person in the waterproof hat, sitting at the table with the bag in front of him. The hat dripped, the raincoat dripped, and the man's large brown mustache dripped.
"Maisie!" cried Alice, staring at the stranger. "Is everything all right?"
"Yes, yes." Maisie frowned at the little pools of water forming on her freshly cleaned floor. "I'm just not used to seeing this young man with a mustache."
Tancred put a hand up to his mustache, and Maisie said, "No, no, don't take it off. Grandma Bone might see you."
Pressing his mustache firmly to his upper lip, Tancred said, "Sorry about the mess, Mrs. Jones. I've been practicing."
"Thought as much," muttered Maisie, reaching for the mop. "Alice, this is Tancred Torsson, a friend of Charlie's. Calls himself a storm boy."
"Ah, the rain!" Alice glanced at the window. "Not at school, then," she commented.
"I'm supposed to be dead," Tancred said gloomily. "A boy named Dagbert Endless drowned me—almost."
"I see." Alice understood immediately.
"I'm so bored," Tancred went on. "There's no one to talk to during the week.
I've no idea what's going on at school, and I just feel so out of it. I live miles away, you see. Up in the—" He suddenly stopped and frowned at Alice as if he was worried he'd said too much. "Excuse me," he said, "but who are you?"
"I'm Olivia Vertigo's godmother," said Alice. "Olivia is in trouble. That's why I'm here."
"Really?" Tancred leaned forward eagerly. "That's just it, you see. I never know anything now. What sort of trouble has Olivia gotten herself into?"