“Only he must be back by Monday,” said the principal.
Ivo was still wearing the dreary uniform of the Riverdene Home: gray shorts, gray sweater, gray socks — but his eyes were shining, and as they took him back to Whipple Road, it was all he could do to stop himself jumping for joy.
And it was clear from the start that he meant to take his duties as a familiar very seriously.
“Oughtn’t I to have… you know, tests? Inductions, I think they’re called?” he asked the Hag when she had shown him the attic where he was to sleep. “Like… you know… having a live louse applied to my eyeballs. Or… swallowing a worm to show that I’m not squeamish. It could be a magic worm, the kind that tells you what to do from inside your stomach. I read about one in the encyclopedia.”
But the Hag said she did not keep lice in her house, and the only worms went to Gladys, who had behaved badly but still needed to eat. She set him to dry the dishes, which he did very well.
“Though I do wonder,” he said. “I mean, couldn’t you just say a spell and the dishes would get dry by themselves?”
The Hag shook her head.
“You see, Ivo, there’s a code about magic,” she explained. “It mustn’t be used for ordinary things like boiling an egg — things one can do quite well without it. People who use it for everyday jobs are looked down on, and rightly.”
“You mean it’s a sort of force which mustn’t be wasted?” asked Ivo, and the Hag nodded, because that was exactly what she meant.
“And of course there are more and more of us whose powers are getting weaker,” she went on. “I used to be able to give people smallpox when I was young, and now I’d be hard put to even manage chicken pox. It’s modern life. Switching on an electric light instead of waving a wand, airplanes instead of levitation, and all that scoffing and sneering. Our magic has been worn down by it.”
There were only two days now to the meeting, but Ivo fitted in so well that it was quite difficult to remember that he was an ordinary boy and not an Unusual Creature. Gertie had really taken to him. She had always wanted a little brother, and she had made him a black cloak out of an old curtain, and they found a pointed cap for him in an old trunk. A proper grandson with Hag blood in him couldn’t have looked better, they all agreed.
The Great Day had come and the party from Number 26 were in the kitchen, ready to leave for the meeting. The troll did not dress up but he had polished the staff of rowanwood, which he had brought from his homeland. The Hag’s other lodger had gone to spend the night with a friend and wouldn’t be back till after the weekend, but Dr. Brainsweller was there. His mother had brought him earlier and asked the Hag if she would take him to the meeting because she had to go north to wail at a funeral, and she didn’t think he would manage to get there on his own.
Then the door opened and the Hag entered. She wore a long Dribble-colored dress; all the colors of water shimmered and blended in the velvet, and she had polished her tooth.
And behind her came Ivo, in his black outfit, walking in her shadow as familiars should, but looking so attentive, so eager and intelligent, that everyone let out a sigh of relief. There was no possible danger of him being noticed and cast out as an ordinary boy, and they set off with a glad heart for the Hotel Metropole.
The Metropole was a luxury hotel in the center of town, the kind with deep carpets and gilt-edged mirrors and interesting things for sale in the foyer. As they made their way upstairs, the Hag looked at Ivo a little anxiously because some of the people they mingled with really were rather strange: a fortune-teller pulling along a large white gorilla on a lead; a family of fuaths, those tall faeries with green hair and a single eye; a Strong Man from a circus dressed in glittering silver who had been dipped in a magic river when he was a baby so that no knife or bullet could pierce him.
But there was no need to worry about Ivo, the Hag soon realized. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. The big conference room on the first floor was filling up fast, and the party from Number 26 slipped quietly into a row near the back. Everyone was whispering and talking among themselves, hoping that the Summer Task would be something far out in the country.
“I do so long for fresh air,” said an old brownie in the row in front of them.
There was a stage at the back of the room, and now the curtains swished apart and the organizer came on with a bundle of papers. Her name was Nellie Arbuthnot and she was a comfortable, homely sort of witch, plump, with a feathery hat. Her familiar was a parrot in a cage, and she had slipped a green baize cover over it so that it wouldn’t interrupt.
Nellie started by welcoming everybody and telling them that the refreshments in the interval would be served in the Blue Room across the corridor.
“The charge this year will be half a crown, but you will get value for your money, I promise you.”
Ivo turned his head as the Hag gave a small squeak of annoyance. “I’ve forgotten my purse,” she whispered. “I must have left it on the kitchen table.”
No one else from Whipple Road had any money. They would have to do without refreshments when the time came.
On the stage, Nellie shuffled her papers and cleared her throat. At the same time an assistant witch pulled down a screen and set up the Magic Lantern.
“You will want to know about the Summer Task,” Nellie said, “and I’m happy to tell you that this year we have been asked to go to Mr. Barber’s Holiday Camp in the New Forest and rid the camp — and in particular the Fun Fair which is attached to the camp — of a plague of mice.”
Murmurs of pleasure spread through the audience. A Fun Fair sounded good, and the New Forest was very beautiful. A picture of the camp now came on the screen. It looked really nice, with colored chalets and well-kept flower beds. A picture of the fair came next — swings and merry-go-rounds and a giant slide under a sunny sky — and then came one of the Barber family: Mr. and Mrs. Barber, and Penelope and Timothy Barber, nicely dressed children smiling into the camera.
“You may ask why the Barbers don’t just bring in a lot of cats, and the answer is that the family is allergic to cats. Cat fur brings them out in terrible bumps. So Mr. Barber has invited us to spend a week, as guests in his camp, and concentrate in particular on the Fun Fair, where the mice are breeding at a terrifying rate. He leaves it to us how we get rid of the mice — shape-changing… luring… the evil eye.… Leading them on a hill like in the Pied Piper of Hamelin is of course a possibility.”
She waited for a moment while the tired creatures who had worked all summer in the city talked delightedly among themselves. This was going to be the best Summer Task ever!
“Now we come to the arrangements for the journey,” began Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We will travel from—”
But at that moment something extraordinary happened. The curtains swished together. The lights flickered and went out. An icy draught crept through the room — there was a single roar of thunder, followed by complete silence.
And then… from behind the curtains… came a slow and eerie noise.
Creak… creak… creak.
The lights came on again. The curtains parted, but there was no sign of Nellie Arbuthnot or her parrot. Instead, on the stage was a most extraordinary contraption. A gigantic circular bed on wheels. A movable hospital bed? A deathbed? Nobody knew…
And on the bed crouched three women.
But what women! They were older than time with cracked and hideous faces, tangles of long white hair, and ghastly stares.
Panic spread through the audience. The Hag took Ivo’s hand; she was clammy with fear.