‘I KEEP TELLING YOU,’ THE Psammead snapped. ‘I didn’t grant any wishes.’
‘Yes you did!’ the Lamb said, through gritted teeth. ‘Edie wished we were at home, and then we were. If you didn’t grant it, who did?’
‘I don’t know! It happened by itself and I’m as puzzled as you are.’
The Psammead had been very tired after the trip to London. He had insisted on spending the whole weekend in his sand bath, and Anthea had begged them not to dig him out. It was now Monday afternoon, and the Lamb raced up to the attic the moment he got back from school. Term was about to end, and all anyone could talk about was the holidays. The Lamb had spent most of the day dreaming up the wishes he would make in all that glorious free time, and was very annoyed that the Psammead wasn’t even trying to grant them.
‘I know what this is – you’re still frightened of that skeleton woman who told you to repent.’
The Psammead’s whiskers stiffened furiously. ‘Frightened – of her? Certainly not!’
Edie was up there too, perched on top of an old suitcase. She’d been deep in conversation with the Psammead and was irritated at the interruption. ‘Look, if he says he can’t do wishes, you should just believe him.’
‘He’s afraid old whatsername will reveal more of his crimes,’ the Lamb said.
‘My dear Lamb, I was a god, and gods don’t commit crimes.’
‘Stop it!’ Edie hissed. ‘Leave him alone!’ Her school had already broken up for the holidays, and she’d just been to a children’s tea party at the vicarage – people were making a special effort not to let the war ruin Christmas. It had been great fun, and only slightly spoiled by horrid Agnes Foster being there too. Edie had been in the middle of telling the Psammead about Agnes blatantly cheating at ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’ when the Lamb came crashing in.
‘Oh, I’ll leave him alone.’ The Lamb stood up. ‘He’s no earthly use to anyone – all he does is moan! I’m going downstairs to get warm.’ Both children were still wearing their coats; the attic was bitterly cold, and they didn’t have a cosy sand bath to sit in.
‘Nobody understands me,’ the Psammead said. ‘All you care about is your shallow notion of “fun”, while I’m fighting for my very existence!’
‘Maybe you should do as the skeleton said, and start repenting,’ Edie suggested.
The sand fairy took this very badly; he pulled in his eyes until they were invisible. ‘SHE didn’t understand either!’
‘That’s a good idea, Edie.’ The Lamb was interested and changed his mind about going downstairs. ‘What do you have to do, exactly? In the olden days people used to repent by walking to Jerusalem or somewhere with pebbles in their shoes.’
‘That’s just for humans,’ the Psammead huffed. ‘What do you people know about gods, anyway? Oh, the loneliness! I WISH I could talk to another fallen idol!’
A force like strong hands made of cloud and wind lifted them off their feet.
‘Good stuff!’ yelled the Lamb. ‘I knew you could do it!’
And suddenly they weren’t in the attic anymore. It was bright daylight and they were in a large formal garden covered with snow. The garden belonged to an enormous and rather ugly grey building with turrets like a castle.
‘Where are we?’ Edie looked around wildly. ‘Where’s the Psammead? I can’t see him!’
‘Don’t flap, old thing, he can’t have gone far.’ This sudden adventure had put the Lamb in a very good temper. ‘He wished to meet another fallen idol. This must be the idol’s castle.’
‘It doesn’t look a bit like the castles in fairy tales,’ Edie said. ‘It’s more like one of those big hotels at the seaside.’
‘Crikey, I hope we’re still in England – suppose they speak another language here? I don’t know any other languages. I’m rubbish at French and Latin at school.’
‘Nor do I,’ Edie said. ‘All I can remember from French lessons is “Maître corbeau sur un arbre perche,” and that won’t be much use, wherever we are. Are we going to be captured by guards?’
‘There don’t seem to be any guards. I’ll sneak a look through the windows.’ The Lamb scrambled across the snowy flowerbed to the nearest of the great windows and cautiously looked in. The room was furnished and decorated with grandeur, partly like a fairy tale and partly like the advertisement for Waring & Gillow’s that lined Mother’s sewing box. The portraits were of people wearing crowns and carrying swords. The room was deserted. ‘It’s all right, there’s no one here.’
Edie scrambled after him. ‘No Psammead?’
‘No – but this place is huge. We just need to find a way to get inside, then we can make a proper search for him. Whoops – that’s torn it. Keep still!’
Through the glass they saw a neat, grey-haired manservant walk into the empty room. They both froze. To their horror, the man walked towards the window. Hardly daring to breathe, they watched as he halted right in front of them – and calmly stared straight through them.
‘He can’t see us!’ the Lamb hissed. ‘I think we’re invisible! OYOYOY!’ he yelled at the top of his lungs and waved his arms wildly.
‘Don’t!’ Edie was horrified, but the man carried on staring calmly. He then turned his back and strolled out of the room.
‘This is more like it,’ the Lamb said in his normal voice. ‘Being invisible was on my list of wishes – though I actually wanted to be invisible at school. And it makes our Psammead-hunt a lot easier.’
‘Ugh!’ Edie shrieked. ‘What’s happened to your arm?’
‘Eh?’ He looked down and gulped ‘Cripes!’ His arm was buried up to the elbow in the grey stone wall, as if the bricks had turned to sponge.
‘Pull it out!’ Edie took a step backwards. ‘It looks so horrid!’
The Lamb thought it looked hilarious. He tried sticking his arm in deeper, up to his shoulder. ‘This is peculiar – it’s sort of solid and sort of nothing, like a cloud, only thick and soupy. Is just my head sticking out now?’
‘Yes! It’s beastly.’ The sight of the castle wall with the Lamb’s head sticking out of it made Edie’s blood run cold. ‘Stop it!’
‘Wait a moment – this is getting better and better.’ The Lamb half stepped out of the wall. ‘We don’t need to look for a way in now, we can simply walk in through the walls. I’ve always wanted to do this.’ He took a long leap through the curious, soupy cloud, and found himself inside the splendid empty room. ‘Oh, Edie, come on – don’t be so WET!’
‘I’m not being wet!’ She was standing beside him on the rich, soft carpet. ‘I just didn’t like seeing your head all by itself. It looked as if you’d been executed.’
The Lamb passed his hand through a large, yellow satin sofa. ‘We’re sort of here, and sort of not here.’
‘Are we dead?’ Edie asked.
‘Of course not!’
‘We’re like ghosts.’
‘If I was a ghost I wouldn’t be hungry, would I? And I’m exactly as starving as I was in the attic just now.’
This was good reasoning and they both cheered up. It was fascinating to stroll in and out of the magnificent, glittering, over-stuffed, deserted rooms, beneath the blind gazes of huge painted kings and queens. Occasionally they saw a quiet, unhurried servant. Otherwise, all they saw was emptiness, and not a sign of the Psammead.
‘If we can’t find him,’ Edie said, ‘does that mean we won’t be able to get home?’
‘We’re inside his wish.’ The Lamb didn’t want Edie to know that he was worried about this too. ‘We’ll go where he goes.’
‘I’m getting tired. I want to sit down, but if I sit on something here I’ll just sink right through it.’
‘Look, stop fretting. The Bigguns always got home all right, didn’t they?’
‘But that was different – they made their wishes on purpose.’
‘Stop acting like a little girl,’ the Lamb said sternly. ‘You’re spoiling the adventure.’ He wandered through the nearest fireplace – vast and cavernous and made to burn entire trees – and emerged into another empty sitting room.
Edie followed him. ‘Funny, I can smell the soot when I walk through fireplaces. And walking through anything is a bit frightening – I can feel it right in the middle of my bones.’
The Lamb stopped mid-yawn and went over to a small table. ‘A newspaper – this should tell us where we are.’
The newspaper was called De Telegraaf.
‘I think that’s German,’ Edie said. ‘We’re in an enemy stronghold.’
‘It says “Amsterdam” there, and that’s in Holland,’ the Lamb said. ‘Which means this language must be Dutch – my hat!’ He suddenly let out a gasp and grabbed Edie’s hand. ‘Look at that!’
‘Let go – look at what?’
‘The date!’
There it was, printed in stark black and white – ‘10 December 1938’.
For a long moment they were both silent, taking in the incredible fact that they were in the distant future.
‘This isn’t what I expected at all,’ Edie said. ‘What’s the Psammead doing in Holland in 1938?’
‘It’s a rum place to find a fallen idol.’ The Lamb tried to pick up the newspaper, but his hand went right through it. ‘It’s a shame we can’t take this back with us – think how useful it’d be to have a paper from the future!’
‘I’d really like to go home. This is a creepy place, even without the spongy walls,’ Edie said.
‘I told you – we’ll find him in a minute.’
They resumed their search through the splendid emptiness – until they turned a corner and heard a familiar voice floating from an open door. It was the dusty drone of their sand fairy in the middle of one of his rants. Edie gasped with relief; she could stand this castle if she knew he was safe.
‘My people were very ungrateful,’ the Psammead was saying. ‘The fact that I kept the streets spotless and built decent roads didn’t cut any ice at all! I ordered my soldiers to kill the troublemakers – but they REFUSED! Isn’t it awful when your army turns on you?’
‘Yes, it cuts to the very heart,’ another voice said. ‘You are a wise creature.’ The voice was old and rasping, with a slight foreign accent. ‘You will understand how I felt when my people overthrew me and bundled me off on a train – with practically nothing except the dress uniform I stood up in! And I’ve been in this poky castle, in this boring little country ever since.’
The children followed the voices into a small, cluttered room, its walls hung with antique weapons and stuffed animal heads. The Psammead sat on a red satin cushion in front of the blazing fire, holding his skinny paws out to the flames.
‘Their so-called new government turned out to be a total mess, and I was so sorry for them that I offered to come back – but they said they didn’t want me!’
The Psammead turned his head and saw the Lamb and Edie. ‘Oh, it’s you. I’ve been having a fascinating time with this very badly treated man, who used to be an emperor. I could talk to him all night – we have so much in common!’
An old man with a white beard and a suit of checked tweed was sitting in a large armchair near the fireplace. When he saw the two children his mouth dropped open and he started shaking violently.
‘Hello,’ Edie said. ‘We’ve come to collect our sand fairy.’
The old man mumbled something that ended in ‘Himmel!’
‘You’re transparent,’ the Psammead said casually. ‘He thinks you’re ghosts.’
‘Transparent!’ The Lamb held up his hand, which was disappointingly solid and normal. ‘Can he see our bones? Why can’t I see them?’
‘Because you are guests in my vision. I am solid here because my body moves through time and space with equal ease. Yours don’t, so you’re not quite here. That’s why he can see through you.’
Edie was sorry for the terrified old man. ‘We’re honestly not ghosts,’ she told him kindly. ‘We’re visiting from the past – from 1914. You might remember there was a war that year.’
When she said 1914, the old man flinched as if she’d slapped him.
‘I feel your time tugging at me,’ the Psammead said. ‘And I’m dreadfully tired – pick me up.’
‘No good waiting for you to say please,’ the Lamb said. He went over to the cushion and picked up the Psammead. ‘Do take us home, there’s a good chap.’
The Psammead peeped over the Lamb’s shoulder at the old man. ‘Nice to meet you.’
And in a second the castle and the fire and the old man melted into a darkness that quickly arranged itself into the attic at home.
‘Lovely hard floor!’ Edie said.
‘Lovely furniture that we can sit on!’ said the Lamb. ‘I was getting jolly tired of the general sponginess in that castle.’ He put the Psammead into his sand bath. ‘Who was the old man?’
‘I told you.’ The Psammead sank into the soft sand. ‘He’s an ex-emperor. You’d recognise him if you saw him as he is now, because he’s a lot more famous here in 1914. Back in these days, he’s still Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.’