Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

He held his head on one side and hummed as he went happy and harmless. That is to say, harmless to me so far. Though he walked like a great, hopping puppet, those huge hands were certainly strong enough to rip a throat out.
    â€œWho killed that girl?” I asked him. “Was it the Master?”
    His head snapped around, swayingly, and he stared at me, appalled, balancing on the path as though it were a tightrope. “Oh, no, Lady. The Master wouldn’t not do that!” He turned sadly, almost tearfully, away.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said.
    His head bent, acknowledging that he had heard, but he continued to walk the tightrope of the path without answering, and I followed. As I did, I was aware that there was something moving among the trees to either side of us. Something softly kept pace with us there, and, I was sure, something also followed along the path behind. I did not try to see what it was. I was quite as much angry with myself as I was scared. I had let my shock at seeing that corpse get the better of my judgment. I saw I must wait to find out how the redheaded girl had got herself killed. Caution! I said to myself. Caution! This path was a tightrope indeed.
    â€œHas the Master got a name?” I asked.
    That puzzled Eggs. He stood balancing on the path to think. After a moment he nodded doubtfully, shot me a shy smile over his shoulder, and walked on. No attempt to ask my name, I noticed. As if I was the only other person there and “Lady” should be enough. Which meant that the presences among the trees and behind on the path were possibly not human.
    Around the next bend I found myself facing the veranda of a chaletlike building. It looked a little as if it were made of wood, but it was no substance that I knew. Eggs tripped on the step and floundered toward the door at the back of the veranda. Before I could make more than a move to help him, he had saved himself and his great hands were groping with an incomprehensible lock on the door. The humming was more evident here. I had been hoping that what I had heard at the edge of the wood had been the flies on the corpse. It was not. Though the sound was still not much more than a vibration at the edge of the mind, I knew I had been right in my first idea. Something artificial was being maintained here, and whatever was maintaining it seemed to be under this house.
    In this house, I thought, as Eggs got the door open and floundered inside ahead of me. The room we entered was full of—well, devices. The nearest thing was a great cauldron, softly bubbling for no reason I could see, and giving out a gauzy violet light. The other things were arranged in ranks beyond, bewilderingly. In one place something grotesque stormed green inside a design painted on the floor; here a copper bowl smoked; there a single candle sat like something holy on a white stone; a knife suspended in air dripped gently into a jar of rainbow glass. Much of it was glass, twinkling, gleaming, chiming, under the light from the low ceiling that seemed to come from nowhere. There were no windows.
    â€œGood heavens!” I said, disguising my dismay as amazement. “What are all these?”
    Eggs grinned. “I know some. Pretty, aren’t they?” He roved, surging about, touching the edge of a pattern here, passing his huge hand through a flame or a column of smoke there, causing a shower of fleeting white stars, solemn gong notes, and a rich smell of incense. “Pretty, aren’t they?” he kept repeating, and, “ Very pretty!” as an entire fluted glass structure began to ripple and change shape at the end of the room. As it changed, the humming, which was everywhere in the room, changed, too. It became a purring chime, and I felt an indescribable pulling feeling from the roots of my hair and under my skin, almost as if the glass thing were trying to change me as it changed itself.
    â€œI should come away from that if I were