The Magic City, E. Nesbit [top young adult novels TXT] 📗

hands over your ears if you like. I know you can hear me well enough. Now I am going to take hold of you again. Keep your hands where they are. I'm not particular to an ear or so. A nose will do just as well.'

The person on the Hippogriff put both hands[185] to her nose. Instantly the parrot had her again by the ear.

'Go back the way you came,' she cried; 'but I'll be even with you children yet.'

The Hippogriff did not move.

'Let go my ear,' screamed the lady.

'You'll have to say please, you know,' said Philip; 'not to the bird, I don't mean that: that's no good. But to the Hippogriff.'

'Please then,' said the lady in a burst of temper, and instantly the white wings parted and spread and the Hippogriff rose in the air. Polly let the ear go for the moment to say:

'I shan't hurt her so long as she behaves,' and then took hold again and his little grey wings and the big white wings of the Hippogriff went sailing away across the desert.

'What a treasure of a parrot?' said Philip. But Lucy said:

'Who is that Pretenderette? Why is she so horrid to us when every one else is so nice?'

'I don't know,' said Philip, 'hateful old thing.'

'I can't help feeling as if I knew her quite well, if I could only remember who she is.'

'Do you?' said Philip. 'I say, let's play noughts and crosses. I've got a notebook and a bit of pencil in my pocket. We might play till it's time to go to sleep.'[186]

So they played noughts and crosses on the Pebbly Waste, and behind them the parrot and the Hippogriff took away the tiresome one, and in front of them lay the high pebble ridge that was like a mountain, and beyond that was the unknown and the adventure and the Dwellers and the deed to be done.[187]

CHAPTER VII THE DWELLERS BY THE SEA

You soon get used to things. It seemed quite natural and homelike to Philip to be wakened in bright early out-of-door's morning by the gentle beak of the parrot at his ear.

'You got back all right then,' he said sleepily.

'It was rather a long journey,' said the parrot, 'but I thought it better to come back by wing. The Hippogriff offered to bring me; he is the soul of courteous gentleness. But he was tired too. The Pretenderette is in gaol for the moment, but I'm afraid she'll get out again; we're so unused to having prisoners, you see. And it's no use putting her on her honour, because——'

'Because she hasn't any,' Philip finished.

'I wouldn't say that,' said the parrot, 'of anybody. I'd only say we haven't come across it. What about breakfast?'[188]

'How meals do keep happening,' said Lucy, yawning; 'it seems only a few minutes since supper. And yet here we are, hungry again!'

'Ah!' said the parrot, 'that's what people always feel when they have to get their meals themselves!'

When the camel and the dogs had been served with breakfast, the children and the parrot sat down to eat. And there were many questions to ask. The parrot answered some, and some it didn't answer.

'But there's one thing,' said Lucy, 'I do most awfully want to know. About the Hippogriff. How did it get out of the book?'

'It's a long story,' said the parrot, 'so I'll tell it shortly. That's a very good rule. Tell short stories longly and long stories shortly. Many years ago, in repairing one of the buildings, the masons removed the supports of one of the books which are part of the architecture. The book fell. It fell open, and out came the Hippogriff. Then they saw something struggling under the next page and lifted it, and out came a megatherium. So they shut the book and built it into the wall again.'

'But how did the megawhatsitsname and the Hippogriff come to be the proper size?'

'Ah! that's one of the eleven mysteries. Some sages suppose that the country gave itself[189] a sort of shake and everything settled down into the size it ought to be. I think myself that it's the air. The moment you breathe this enchanted air you become the right size. You did, you know.'

'But why did they shut the book?'

'It was a book of beasts. Who knows what might have come out next? A tiger perhaps. And ravening for its prey as likely as not.'

'I see,' said Philip; 'and of course beasts weren't really needed, because of there being all the Noah's Ark ones.'

'Yes,' said the parrot, 'so they shut the book.'

'But the weather came out of books?'

'That was another book, a poetry book. It had only one cover, so everything that was on the last page got out naturally. We got a lot out of that page, rain and sun and sky and clouds, mountains, gardens, roses, lilies, flowers in general, "Blossoms of delight" they were called in the book and trees and the sea, and the desert and silver and iron—as much of all of them as anybody could possibly want. There are no limits to poets' imaginations, you know.'

'I see,' said Lucy, and took a large bite of cake. 'And where did you come from, Polly, dear?'[190]

'I,' said the parrot modestly, 'came out of the same book as the Hippogriff. We were on the same page. My wings entitled me to associate with him, of course, but I have sometimes thought they just put me in as a contrast. My smallness, his greatness; my red and green, his white.'

'I see,' said Lucy again, 'and please will you tell us——'

'Enough of this,' said the parrot; 'business before pleasure. You have begun the day with the pleasures of my conversation. You will have to work very hard to pay for this privilege.'

So they washed up the breakfast things in warm water obligingly provided by the camel.

'And now,' said the parrot, 'we must pack up and go on our way to destroy the fear of the Dwellers by the Sea.'

'I wonder,' Brenda said to Max in an undertone, 'I wonder whether it wouldn't be best for dear little dogs to lose themselves? We could turn up later, and be so very glad to be found.'

'But why?' Max asked.

'I've noticed,' said Brenda, sidling up to him with eager affectionateness, 'that wherever there's fear there's something to be afraid of, even if it's only your fancy. It would be[191] dreadful for dear little dogs to be afraid, Max, wouldn't it? So undignified.'

'My dear,' said Max heavily, 'I could give seven noble reasons for being faithful to our master. But I will only give you one. There is nothing to eat in the desert, and nothing to drink.'

'You always were so noble, dearest,' said Brenda; 'so different from poor little me. I've only my affectionate nature. I know I'm only a silly little thing.'

So when the camel lurched forward and the parrot took wing, the dogs followed closely.

'Dear faithful things,' said Lucy. 'Brenda! Max! Nice dogs!'

And the dogs politely responding, bounded enthusiastically.

The journey was not long. Quite soon they found a sort of ravine or gully in the cliff, and a path that led through it. And then they were on the beach, very pebbly with small stones, and there was the home of the Dwellers by the Sea; and beyond it, broad and blue and beautiful, the sea by which they dwelt.

The Dwelling seemed to be a sort of town of rounded buildings more like lime-kilns than anything else, with arched doors leading to dark insides. They were all built of tiny stones, such as lay on the beach. Beyond the[192] huts or houses towered the castle, a vast rough structure with towers and arches and buttresses and bastions and glacis and bridges and a great moat all round it.

'But I never built a city like that, did you?' Lucy asked as they drew near.

'No,' Philip answered; 'at least—do you know, I do believe it's the sand castle Helen and I built last summer at Dymchurch. And those huts are the moulds I made of my pail—with the edges worn off, you know.'

Towards the castle the travellers advanced, the camel lurching like a boat on a rough sea, and the dogs going with cat-like delicacy over the stones. They skirted large pools and tall rocks seaweed covered. Along a road broad enough for twelve chariots to have driven on it abreast, slowly they came to the great gate of the castle. And as they got nearer, they saw at every window heads leaning out; every battlement, every terrace, was crowded with figures. And when they were quite near, by throwing their heads very far back, so that their necks felt quite stiff for quite a long time afterwards, the children could see that all those people seemed quite young, and seemed to have very odd and delightful clothes—just a garment from shoulder to knee made, as it seemed, of dark fur.[193]