Read Online Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online Page B

of it quite mysterious to me. I made for the glass cupboard full of various joints of meat. I could see they were fresh, although the thing was clearly not a refrigerator. “How do you open this?” I asked.
    Eggs looked down at his great hands, planted in encircling vapor on top of the glass table. “I don’t not know, Lady.”
    I could have shaken him. Instead, I clawed at the edges of the cupboard. Nothing happened. There it was, warmish, piled with a good fifty kilograms of meat, while three starving wolves prowled outside, and nothing I could do seemed to have any effect on the smooth edge of the glass front. At length I pried my fingernails under the top edge and pulled, thinking it moved slightly.
    Eggs’s huge hand knocked against mine, nudging me awkwardly away. “No, no, Lady. That way you’ll get hurt. It is under stass-spell, see.” For a moment he fumbled doubtfully at the top rim of the glass door, but, when I made a movement to come back and help, his hands suddenly moved, smoothly and surely. The thing clicked. The glass slid open downward, and the smell of meat rolled out into the kitchen.
    So you do know how to do it! I thought. And I knew you did! There was some hint he had given me, I knew, as I reached for the nearest joint, which I could not quite see now.
    â€œNo, no , Lady!” This time Eggs pushed me aside hard. He was really distressed. “Never put hand into stass-spell. It will die on you. You do this.” He took up a long, shiny pair of tongs, which I had not noticed because they were nested into the top of the cupboard, and grasped the nearest joint with them. “This, Lady?”
    â€œAnd two more,” I said. “And when did you last eat, Eggs?” He shrugged and looked at me, baffled. “Then get out those two steaks, too,” I said. Eggs seemed quite puzzled, but he fetched out the meat. “Now we must find water for them as well,” I said.
    â€œBut there is juice here in this corner!” Eggs objected. “See.” He went to one of the mysterious fixtures and shortly came back with a sort of cardboard cup swaying in one hand, which he handed me to taste, staring eagerly while I did. “Good?” he asked.
    It was some form of alcohol. “Very good,” I said, “but not for wolves.” It took me half an hour of patient work to persuade Eggs to fetch out a large lightweight bowl and then to manipulate a queer faucet to fill it with water. He could not see the point of it at all. I was precious near to hitting him before long. I was quite glad when he stayed behind in the kitchen to shut the cabinets and finish his cup of “juice.”
    The wolves had advanced down the garden. I could see their pricked ears and their eyes above the veranda boards, but they did not move when I stepped out onto the veranda. I had to make myself move with a calmness and slowness I was far from feeling. Deliberately I dropped each joint, one by one, with a sticky thump onto the strange surface. From the size and the coarse grain of the meat, it seemed to be venison—at least I hoped it was. Then I carefully lowered the bowl to stand at the far end of the veranda, looking all the time through my hair at the wolves. They did not move, but the open jaws of the big wolf, Annie, were dripping.
    The bowl down, I backed away into the living room, where I just had to sit down on the nearest blue block. My knees gave.
    They did not move for long seconds. Then all three disappeared below the veranda, and I thought they must have slunk away. But the two smaller ones reappeared, suddenly, silently, as if they had materialized, at the end of the veranda beside the bowl. Tails trailing, shaking all over, they crept toward it. Both stuck their muzzles in and drank avidly. I could hear their frantic lapping. And when they raised their heads, which they both did shortly, neatly and disdainfully, I realized that one of the