He wiped his hands on his velvet trousers, wondering how to say what he wanted.
“Out with it, Wizard Derk!” Querida snapped impatiently.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a bit difficult. I don’t like – I mean Mara’s a free woman and it’s not that I mind her dressing up and seducing tourists exactly—”
“I’ve done it for years,” said Querida. “It’s only more faking, if that’s what’s worrying you. At least Mara’s not a dried-up old snake like me and she won’t need to disguise herself with twenty different glamours—” Derk turned and looked her keenly in the face. Querida uneasily remembered that great black griffin of his staring at Mr Chesney. “It’s a shame she’s not being paid,” she said.
“No. There’s something else,” Derk said. “You and Mara are up to something, aren’t you? What’s going on?”
Querida, for once, had a little trouble controlling her face. It was something that had not happened to her for years. Mara did warn me, she thought. He’s not at all the farmerish fool he looks. Perhaps she ought to revise her plans and tell him, before he messed everything up trying to find out. “Now it’s interesting you should say that—” she began cautiously.
The yelling and baying of the dogs abruptly grew louder, mixed with squealing, grunting, sounds like hysterical laughter, and the hammering of paws, hooves and trotters. Before Querida could turn to see what was going on, or Derk could move, a confused crowd of excited animals swept round the corner of the paddock and galloped straight through the spot where Querida was standing.
Derk saw, horrified, Querida’s tiny dry body hurled into the air by a mixed crowd of galloping animals – and Pretty, of course. He saw her tossed aside, to land with a thwack against the paddock fence.
From Querida’s point of view, she was suddenly in an avalanche of careering creatures. As she sailed through the air, she saw waving tails, wings, excited bared fangs, and an eye-twisting blur of black and white zigzags that puzzled her slightly. Then something slammed into her, all along one side, and she heard a snapping noise from her own body. Rather to her surprise, the old dog Bertha leapt to her side and seemed to try to defend her. And I don’t even like dogs! Querida thought, as Bertha was pushed aside and Querida found herself lying on the ground being punched by hard trotters galloping across her. To her utter dismay, something else in her body snapped, towards the far end of her.
Derk was roaring at the creatures. The horses in the paddock galloped clear, trumpeting with dismay. Otherwise most of the noise stopped, except for Bertha’s indignant snarling. In fact, Bertha had made things worse by making the onrushing pigs swerve and trample Querida. “Shut up, Bertha!” Derk told her ungratefully as he dashed towards Querida lying against the fence. He hoped she had fainted. He could see her left arm was broken and he rather feared her left ankle was too. He knelt down beside her to see what he could do.
Querida sat up as he reached towards her leg. “Oh no!” she said. She did not trust Derk an inch.
“I do know about bones,” Derk pointed out. “Muscles too.”
That was probably true, Querida thought, trying not to scream with the pain, but she still did not trust Derk an inch. She stared beyond him through a dreadful throbbing mistiness. The black and white thing that had bowled her over was standing anxiously some way up the path. He was all long legs and a perky little fringe of mane. His big black and white flight feathers did indeed grow in eye-twisting zigzags. So he’s bred a winged horse, Querida thought. Derk made another move to help her. She pushed him off with her good hand. “I don’t want to grow wings like that creature!” she hissed. “And you should have reported it to the University.” It was unfair, but she did hurt so.
“Pretty,” said Derk. “Pretty’s only just weaned. He was playing with the dogs and the pigs. Do let me try to set those bones.”
“No!” snapped Querida. It was horrible the way a person could be a perfectly sound old lady one second and a wounded emergency the next. She felt dreadful. She wanted – passionately – to have her own home and own healer and a soothing cup of her own tea, and she wanted it all now. “I may be injured,” she said, “but I am a wizard still. If you’d just stay clear, I’ll translocate home and call my own healer, please.”
“Are you sure?” said Derk. Querida’s face looked like grey-blue withered paper. He knew he could not have translocated an inch in that state – not that he could go any distance at the best of times.
“Quite sure,” snapped Querida. And she was gone as she spoke, with a small whiff of moving air.
Derk stared at the empty place by the fence and hoped very much that Querida had arrived in the right place. He had better get Barnabas to go after her and make sure. But first, he turned to Pretty.
“Only playing,” said Pretty, who knew perfectly well what he had done.
“I’ve told you before,” said Derk, “that you have to look where you’re going when you rush about like that. If you cause any more accidents, I shall have to shut you up in a stall all day.”
Pretty tossed his head and gave Derk a resentful look over one feathery shoulder. Then he minced away sideways to where his pregnant grandmother was leaning anxiously over the fence to him. Derk thought it a pity the brood-mare could not talk. She might have talked some sense into Pretty. But all she could do was nose Pretty protectively. Pretty said to her, “Don’t like Derk.”
“And I don’t like you at the moment,” Derk retorted. “I told you not to let any of the visitors see you, and then you go and bowl one of them over. Come on, Bertha.”
Most of the wizards had left when Derk and the dog arrived back on the terrace. But Barnabas was still there and the young wizard Finn, enjoying another cup of coffee with Shona and Mara. Derk was making for Barnabas to tell him about Querida, when he was brought up short by the sound of something splintering up in the roof. “Where’s Kit?” he said.
“Still up there,” Shona said.
Derk backed to a place on the terrace where he could see the black feathery hump across the bent gutter. He could hear rafters creaking under Kit’s weight. “KIT!” he bellowed. “Kit, get down before the roof breaks!”
There was a squawky mutter from above. The politest it could have been was “Get lost!”
“What’s got into him?” Mara wondered anxiously.
“I don’t know,” said Derk, “and I don’t care. He could get hurt. Kit!” he yelled. “Kit, I give you three seconds to get down here. Then I fetch you down by magic. One. Two—”
Sulkily, Kit surged upright. Perhaps he meant to fly down to the terrace. Derk thought it more likely that Kit intended to take off for the hills, and wondered if bringing him back with a catch spell would damage Kit’s pride too badly. But he never got a chance to cast it, any more than Kit had a chance to fly. As Kit braced his powerful hind legs for take off, the roof fell in beneath him. And Kit fell with it. He simply vanished inwards, along with the centre part of the house. With him went tiles, a chimney, broken rafters, crumpled walls and smashed windows, in a billow of plaster dust and old cobwebs. The crash was tremendous.
“Oh ye gods!” said Mara. “He never even had time to spread his wings!”
“Be glad
