Chapter Four
The piercing shriek of the running pigs made Jarvit wince. Yelling he drove them out of the dark interior of the single roomed smoky building. A windowless hovel of low turf walls, topped by a woven twig thatch formed the home of Quilp Spellbinder. Keeping the animals out of the building was a task Jarvit had set himself since his arrival. The mess and smell that the five pigs and other animals made inside turned Jarvit’s stomach. The squelchy mud of the floor had rotted away Jarvit’s worn shoes within a week. The lack of a door to the hut and the free ranging animals kept Jarvit busy. He had started by beating the pigs with a stick to keep them out. This had amused Quilp so much one day that he had laughed and said:
‘Don’t you think they have a right to be inside considering this is the farmer and his family who used to live here before I did?’
‘You mean you turned them into pigs?’ Jarvit said in horror, stopping his arm in mid air. Quilp’s grime encrusted head nodded. Jarvit stared at the pigs in disbelief.
‘The chickens are others I’ve had to deal with. So you see what I can do if you cross me. I think you would make a fine calf, ripe for sacrifice. Heh, heh! May as well get me water and tidy the bedding seeing as you’re so house proud snivelling.’ Quilp had sneered before turning back to his bench of jars, powders and odious liquids. After that Jarvit treated the pigs with a little more kindness. But they were, now, still pigs.
Barefooted Jarvit walked to the river for fresh water. Mud and muck oozing up between his toes. At the rear of the building a small stream came rippling in through the shimmering transparent pink dome that covered Quilp’s property. It took a sharp bend and rippled back out again. Jarvit could understand why it would not want to be inside the barrier for very long. The wavering mesh walls kept wholesome life out and its occupants in. Outside he had been unable to see the cage of spells.
When he had been pulled from D’Braggatio’s carriage he had wondered what they were doing in the middle of nowhere. He could not understand why they had stopped among the trees.
‘Heh, heh!’ the old man wheezed as he appeared in front of Jarvit. ‘That surprised you didn’t it boy.’ Jarvit stepped back in horror at the sight. A stooping, wrinkled old man with wild dirty white hair, wearing only a long ragged skirt, who stepped out of thin air at him was not what he had expected.
‘Can’t see through my spell barrier can you boy? No, heh, heh! Well you shall see through it from the other side but you won’t be able to get through it. We shall have plenty of time to get to know each other.’ With that Jarvit had been hauled through the outwardly invisible barrier and into a circle of squalor. He was greeted by the sight of chickens wandering around in a sea of mud. There was hardly any grass under the covering of spells. The grunting of the pigs came from the hut that was set on a small rise in the ground. Outside the barrier Jarvit could see the lane, grass and trees, but inside was only mud and filth. The old man unbound him and left him gazing around as he wandered into the building. Jarvit hoped that this was not where he was to live, but soon discovered it was. Quilp seemed not to pay him much attention and so he began trying to improve the state of the place where he lay down to sleep. Quilp laughed at his efforts but made no move to stop him. Jarvit washed the few scraps of blankets that he had rescued from the mess. He scraped the worst of the mud out of the hut and cleared the surface of the floor so that he could sleep in a dry area.
Jarvit did not dare to ask for food but in searching the barren hut had found oats in a jar set beside the constant fire. He ate porridge made with water every day. Using the one available pot and swinging it out over the fire on a metal bracket set for that purpose. The mysterious jar never emptied and the old man ate nothing that Jarvit could see. The central fire puzzled him, burning in its ring of stones. There was no wood in the compound for it. Quilp never went outside the barrier to collect any and yet it burned, night and day. It hew up acrid thin black fumes on occasion that made Jarvit’s eyes water. Then it would issue thick choking smoke that set Jarvit coughing. But Quilp seemed unaffected by the fire and laughed at Jarvit’s discomfort. The small stone lamps set around the walls followed the same pattern, endless small flames that smoked when the fire did and which died down, when Quilp slept, to a soft glow.
Jarvit dipped the bucket into the clear stream and gazed out through the fluctuating barrier in longing. A month of nothing but mud and stench had passed since his arrival. He thought of Silva and Lady D’Braggatio. He had not heard the voice in his head since his arrival. He began to believe it had been his own thoughts after all. Jarvit studied the spell barrier to try and discover a way out. It whispered at an almost inaudible volume and he was unable to pick out any single words from its constant murmuring. It appeared to him to be woven together in a haphazard manner, threads of spells tucked under and over each other. Intertwining twists of transparent pink charms that made a resistant shield between Quilp’s home and the outside world. There were waving loose ends, like fern fronds, all over it. He had pushed against it and while the wall had given slightly it had not yielded or torn open. Jarvit could feel its strength despite its delicate appearance.
As he squatted at the river’s edge he noticed an area of earth beside him quiver. Then it began to crumble and rise upward. Jarvit stood and looked down at the small mound that was appearing.
‘Pah! Disgusting! What muck!’ The mole that pushed a snout up through the earth spat out a mouthful of soil. His paddle like claws supported him half out of the mound and he peered round. His eyes squinted closed against the daylight. ‘Poor eyesight, such poor eyesight,’ the mole muttered. Jarvit bent down to take a closer look. He could not believe what he’d just heard. His hearing had gone wrong he told himself. There was no such thing as a talking mole. The creature was turning his head in all directions as if he were looking for something.
‘Er, can I help at all?’ Jarvit ventured.
‘Help? You help me? Pah! Get rid of the filthy soil you have here that would help me.’ The mole peered up. ‘You are Jarvit?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘Do me a favour, come down here. Don’t give me a crick in the neck. Mole's aren’t built for looking up you know. We don’t have the eyes for it either.’ The imperious tone reminded Jarvit of D’Braggatio. But he lay down on the muddy ground to get on eye level with the mole.
‘Talk about hard to find. What did you want to go and hide yourself away up here for?’ The mole gave Jarvit no time to protest. ‘But she said I’d find you here. And here you are. I hope you appreciate how far I’ve had to come to get you. Are you ready to go?’
‘Go? How can I go?’ Jarvit stared at the spell wall.
‘Dig your way out of course, like me.’
‘I am a bit bigger than you and I don’t have anything to dig with.’
‘Oh well if you are going to be difficult about it - ’ the mole made as if to go back down into its hole.
‘No, please,’ Jarvit glanced back to the hut. He was unwilling to lose someone to talk to even it was a supercilious mole. ‘How can I dig my way out?’
‘Humans, so unimaginative, so restricted. Magic of course use magic. There’s plenty about here I can tell. Use some.’
‘Use some.’ Jarvit repeated in a flat tone. The mole sighed.
‘Pluck a strand from the wall.’
‘But it’s all woven together.’
‘Do you think that anyone who lives in this state would make tidy magic? Quilp doesn’t care about the tightness or neatness of things. He’s good at spontaneity and innovation. He even puts great strength into his magic. Why else do you think D’Braggatio regards him so highly? But he lacks organisation, precision and tidiness.’
