The giant sadly shook his head. "An impossibility. Go now, Charlie."
Charlie flung his arm around Runner Bean. "I'll come back, Otus. I promise. I'll find a way to get you out of Badlock." Gazing at the moth, he cried, "Claerwen, take me home."
The room around him began to jerk and jolt. Defying gravity, the table, chair, and bed tumbled sideways, then became airborne. Charlie was treading air. Now he was upside down. His ears were bombarded with a thousand sounds. He felt Runner's coarse hair melting under his fingers and tried to grip it tighter, but something or someone was trying to tear the dog from his grasp. And then his hand was empty and he was whirling away.
Charlie caught one last glimpse of his ancestor's kind, incredulous face before he was thrust through time, through a sparkling, shifting web of sounds, smells, and sensations.73He landed with a light bump on the cold cellar floor of number nine Filbert Street. The painting of Badlock stood against the wall behind him. Giving it one brief glance, Charlie ran to the steps and climbed up to the hall. He could hear voices arguing above him.
"Mercy on us!" yelled Maisie, jumping out of her chair. "Charlie's back!"
There was a sudden silence in the living room. Uncle Paton stepped out, followed by Fidelio, Benjamin, and Olivia.
"Charlie!" cried Benjamin. "Have you got Runner?"
Charlie still felt unsteady. Grasping the railing for support, he said, "Bit of a problem there, Ben."74CHAPTER 4
GREEN VAPOR
Charlie Bone, I hate you!"
Benjamin's sudden explosion was so out of character, Charlie could only stare at his friend in astonishment.
"You're always doing it," yelled Benjamin. "You're always losing my dog. That time he nearly drowned, and that other time when the enchanter came and..."
"Benjamin Brown," roared Uncle Paton, "control yourself."
Benjamin's mouth closed in a grim pout. His usually pale face had turned an angry red and his eyes were filled with tears.
Charlie stared miserably at his feet. "I'm sorry, but I tried to bring Runner back with me, I really did."
"You saw him?" Benjamin almost choked on his words. "How come you got out and he couldn't? He's trapped in that awful place... and... and ..."75Uncle Paton put a hand on Benjamin's shoulder and gently propelled him toward the kitchen. "Come and sit down, all of you. We need to discuss things carefully."
A voice called from the living room, "Oh, what a to-do!"
"I suppose this is some devilish plan of yours, Grizelda," Uncle Paton retorted.
"Mine?" came the plaintive cry. "I know nothing whatever about it. That painting was all wrapped up. How did I know Charlie would start prying?"
"You knew all right," muttered Uncle Paton. Having gotten everyone into the kitchen, he slammed the door.
"I'll make some sandwiches," said Maisie in her soothing, matter-of-fact voice.
Everyone sat at the kitchen table while Maisie started slicing bread. Uncle Paton paced up and down, pinching his chin and scratching his head.
"Charlie, aren't you going to tell us what happened?" Olivia demanded.76Charlie looked at Benjamin, sitting hunched at the end of the table. "OK... if you all want to know."
"Of course we do," said Fidelio. "That's why we're here."
"It was weird," Charlie began, with another glance in Benjamin's direction. "I was just standing there, looking at the painting, when I felt myself being kind of dragged toward it. It was all wrapped up, but I heard a sound coming from it - the wind."
"The wind?" Uncle Paton stopped pacing and came to sit at the table.
"Go on," urged Olivia.
"So I unwrapped the painting, just a bit, and then suddenly I was there. I hardly traveled at all. It was as if the painting reached out and sucked me in." Charlie looked around at the expectant faces; even Benjamin was staring at him.
"Yes," Uncle Paton prompted, "and then?"
"And then I met a giant."
"A GIANT!" everyone exclaimed, including Maisie,77who squeaked as well, having accidentally slammed her fingers in the fridge.
"A sort of giant," Charlie amended. He went on to tell them about Oddthumb and the troll army, about the squirras and blancavamps, the black fortress on the mountain, and finally, how Runner Bean had arrived, with Charlie's moth hidden in his ear.
Not once during Charlie's long account did anyone say a word, and when he came to the end, such a deep silence had fallen in the room that no one seemed inclined to break it until Benjamin said, very softly, "What will happen to Runner if the trolls want his fur?"
Before anyone dared to make a guess, Maisie put a huge plate of sandwiches on the table, saying, "Have some food, kids."
"I hope that applies to me, too," said Uncle Paton, reaching for a sandwich with apple and walnut clearly visible along one side. "Charlie," he continued, "you told us that you saw a black fortress in Badlock."78"In the distance," Charlie spoke through a mouthful of cheese and pickle. "The enchanter's fortress. Just looking at it gave me the creeps."
"Hmm." Uncle Paton smoothed back a long lock of black hair that he had almost eaten with the sandwich. "It occurs to me that Harken the Enchanter is at work again."
"He can't be," Fidelio argued. "Charlie and the others got rid of him when they chanted that spell around the king's tree."
"He MUST have gone," cried Olivia, jumping up and down in her seat, "because Charlie's mother was saved and... and his father woke up and... and Joshua's mother, the witch, has vanished."
"And he doesn't live in Kingdom's Department Store anymore," Benjamin assured them,
"because Mom and Dad met the new owner when they were on a shoplifting case there, and they said he was quite normal, except for being overweight, in Mom's opinion, anyway."79"Nevertheless." Uncle Paton turned to Charlie. "Is there still a shadow in the king's portrait?"
Charlie confessed that there was. The portrait hung in the King's room at Bloor's Academy, and Charlie had often tried to enter it, but a dark shadow behind the king always prevented Charlie from meeting his famous ancestor.
"I rest my case," said Uncle Paton.
Olivia raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean, Mr. Yewbeam?"
Uncle Paton sighed. "It means, my dear Olivia, that if there is a shadow in the king's portrait, a shadow remains in our lives; it's very faint," he added, observing the children's anxious faces, "but it's a shadow, nevertheless. It seems to me that someone is still communicating with Harken the Enchanter, hence the arrival of that painting and the unusual manner of Charlie's journey into Badlock."
Uncle Paton found the five pairs of eyes trained expectantly upon him rather disconcerting. Realizing80that he would have to come up with something better, he said,
"But who, or what, or why ... I can't yet fathom. Unless ..." He scratched his chin. "Unless someone is using the mirror."
"The Mirror of Amoret was cracked," Charlie said slowly, "when Joshua stole it from me."
"Perhaps it's been fixed," Benjamin suggested as he tried to wish away the awful vision of his starved dog, chained to a block of stone, while Oddthumb, the troll, approached with a large pair of shears.
The Mirror of Amoret had not been fixed. Mrs. Tilpin, formerly Miss Chrystal, might have been a witch, but she had her limitations. She had tried every spell she could find in The Collected Charms and Enchantments of Steffania Sugwash (a book she had inherited from her uncle, the notorious Silas Sugwash), all to no avail. So she had decided to enroll some of the endowed students of Bloor's Academy in a small weekend class, where she hoped their special81powers could be combined to fix the precious, but sadly damaged, Mirror of Amoret.
With Manfred Bloor's assistance, Mrs. Tilpin had managed to hide herself away in the basement of Bloor's Academy. Here she lived with her son, Joshua, who resented every moment spent in the two damp and dingy rooms, while his mother chanted and hummed and burned herbs in iron bowls and sometimes made him dance horrible dances with her.