Diana Jones - The Land of Ingary Trilogy

The dog bent its already bent back and somehow hoisted itself on to its lean hind legs. That made it almost as tall as Sophie. It held its front legs stiffly out and heaved upwards again. Then, as Sophie had her mouth open to yell to Howl, the creature put out what was obviously an enormous effort and surged upwards into the shape of a man in a crumpled brown suit. He had gingerish hair and a pale, unhappy face.

“Came from Upper Folding!” panted this dog-man. “Love Lettie – Lettie sent me – Lettie crying and very unhappy – sent me to you – told me to stay—” He began to double up and shrink before he had finished speaking. He gave a dog howl of despair and annoyance. “Don’t tell Wizard!” he whined and dwindled away inside reddish curly hair into a dog again. A different dog. This time he seemed to be a red setter. The red setter waved its fringed tail and stared earnestly at Sophie from melting, miserable eyes.

“Oh, dear,” said Sophie as she shut the door. “You do have troubles, my friend. You were that collie dog, weren’t you? Now I see what Mrs Fairfax was talking about. That Witch wants slaying, she really does! But why has Lettie sent you here ? If you don’t want me to tell Wizard Howl—”

The dog growled faintly at the name. But it also wagged its tail and stared appealingly.

“All right. I won’t tell him,” Sophie promised. The dog seemed reassured. He trotted to the hearth, where he gave Calcifer a somewhat wary look and lay down beside the fender in a skinny red bundle. “Calcifer, what do you think?” Sophie said.

“This dog is a bespelled human,” Calcifer said unnecessarily.

“I know, but can you take the spell off him?” Sophie asked. She supposed Lettie must have heard, like so many people, that Howl had a witch working for him now. And it seemed rather important to turn the dog into a man again and send him back to Upper Folding before Howl got out of bed and found him there.

“No. I’d need to be linked with Howl for that,” Calcifer said.

“Then I’ll try it myself,” Sophie said. Poor Lettie! Breaking her heart for Howl, and her only other lover a dog most of the time! Sophie laid her hand on the dog’s soft, rounded head. “Turn back into the man you should be,” she said. She said it quite often, but its only effect seemed to be to send the dog deeply to sleep. It snored and twitched against Sophie’s legs.

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Sophie ignored that too. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Pooot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer’s logs rolled off on to the hearth.

“All right, all right, I get the message!” Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. “It’ll be green slime next. Calcifer, make sure that dog stays where it is.” And she climbed the stairs, muttering loudly, “Really, these wizards! You’d think no one had ever had a cold before! Well, what is it?” she asked, hobbling through the bedroom door on to the filthy carpet.

“I’m dying of boredom,” Howl said pathetically. “Or maybe just dying.”

He was lying propped on dirty grey pillows, looking quite poorly, with what might have been a patchwork coverlet over him, except that it was all one colour with dust. The spiders he seemed to like so much were spinning busily in the canopy above him.

Sophie felt his forehead. “You do have a bit of a fever,” she admitted.

“I’m delirious,” said Howl. “Spots are crawling before my eyes.”

“Those are spiders,” said Sophie. “Why can’t you cure yourself with a spell?”

“Because there is no cure for a cold,” Howl said dolefully. “Things are going round and round in my head – or maybe my head is going round and round in things. I keep thinking of the terms of the Witch’s curse. I hadn’t realised she could lay me bare like that. It’s a bad thing to be laid bare, even though the things that are true so far are all my own doing. I keep waiting for the rest to happen.”

Sophie thought back to the puzzling verse. “What things? Tell me where all the past years are?”

“Oh, I know that,” said Howl. “My own, or anyone else’s. They’re all there, just where they always were. I could go and play bad fairy at my own christening if I wanted. Maybe I did and that’s my trouble. No, there are only three things I’m waiting for: the mermaids, the mandrake root, and the wind to advance an honest mind. And whether I get white hairs, I suppose, only I’m not going to take the spell off to see. There’s only about three weeks left for them to come true in, and the Witch gets me as soon as they do. But the Rugby Club Reunion is Midsummer Eve, so I shall get to that at least. The rest had all happened long ago.”

“You mean the falling star and never being able to find a woman true and fair?” said Sophie. “I’m not surprised, the way you go on. Mrs Pentstemmon told me you were going to the bad. She was right, wasn’t she?”

“I must go to her funeral if it kills me,” Howl said sadly. “Mrs Pentstemmon always thought far too well of me. I blinded her with my charm.” Water ran out of his eyes. Sophie had no idea if he was really crying, or whether it was simply his cold. But she noticed he was slithering out again.

“I was talking about the way you keep dropping ladies as soon as you’ve made them love you,” she said. “Why do you do it?”

Howl pointed a shaky hand up towards the canopy of his bed. “That’s why I love spiders. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.’ I keep trying,” he said with great sadness. “But I brought it on myself by making a bargain some years ago, and I know I shall never be able to love anyone properly now.”

The water running out of Howl’s eyes was definitely tears now. Sophie was concerned. “Now, you mustn’t cry—”

There was a pattering outside. Sophie looked round to see the dog-man oozing himself past the door in a neat half-circle. She reached out and caught a handful of his red coat, thinking he was certainly coming to bite Howl. But all the dog did was to lean against her legs, so that she had to stagger back to the peeling wall.

“What’s this?” said Howl.

“My new dog,” Sophie said, hanging on to its curly hair. Now she was against the wall, she could see out of the bedroom window. It ought to have looked out on the yard, but instead it showed a view of a neat, square garden with a child’s metal swing in the middle. The setting sun was firing raindrops hanging on the swing to blue and red. As Sophie stood and stared, Howl’s niece, Mari, came running across the wet grass. Howl’s sister, Megan, followed Mari. She was evidently shouting that Mari should not sit on the wet swing, but no sound seemed to come through. “Is that the place called Wales?” Sophie asked.

Howl laughed and pounded on the coverlet. Dust climbed like smoke.

“Bother that dog!” he croaked. “I had a bet on with myself that I could keep you from snooping out of the window all the time you were in here!”

“Did you now?” said Sophie, and she let go of the dog, hoping he would bite Howl hard. But the dog only went on leaning on her, shoving her towards the door now. “So all that song and dance was just a game, was it?” she said. “I might have known!”