In his dream, Colin was with his best friend, a boy named Christopher. They had dared each other to go into the haunted house in the mountains. Colin, at that time, was only ten, and when they snuck in, the door creaking and floorboards moaning, instead of running away in fright and giggling madly like they had always done, the door slammed shut, leaving them to their fate, as a white, pearly, and angry-looking ghost came floating down the hallway. Colin and Christopher clutched each other, eyes opening wide with fear. It was coming.. coming.. coming..
Colin sat bolt upright in his bed, waking in a cold sweat. Finally scanning the familiar outlines of the bedroom in which he had grown up, he finally managed to heave a relieved sigh that the ghost hadn't been after him, and managed to fall back asleep.
Before his head had even hit the pillow, however, the doorbell rang.
Ding-Dong!
Groaning, he pushed his covers away and got out of bed and tried to get dressed, struggling over to his wardrobe.
Blearily, he pulled open the doors, discovered layers upon layers of clean, perfectly ironed white dress shirts, none of them which looked familiar.
Ding-Dong! Ding-Dong! Ding-ding-ding!
Reality hit him. He wasn't in his old, beautiful, familiar home back in Mockingbird; no, only an identical replica he had designed himself in the Castle of Illusions. Lupine had said the visitors, the other wizards from other countries, were coming today, and Lupine had told him to answer the door and be a polite, well-bred wizard apprentice.
Groaning, he stared at the wardrobe, picturing the exact suit he wanted to wear today; a dark, navy-blue suit with black cuffs. He had left all his belongings back in Mockingjay except for a select treasured items, but this would do just fine. Lupine had said the charm worked this way, as well as the whole house; sure enough, once he had closed the wardrobe door and opened it again, there it was. Pulling it out and quite satisfied with himself, he finally managed to pull it on, staggering a bit. He had made it a bit too small. Oh well.
Yawning, he staggered into the hallway, encountering a bleary-eyed, Lupine in her nightgown. Seeing him, she said, "Oh, good. You're up. Could you show our guests to the parlor? Across the kitchen, turn right. I'll be in my room if you need me." And she simply staggered back into her room and there was a distant Flop! sound as she fell onto the bed.
Grumbling bitterly at the unfairness of this, Colin glided down the stairs, waking a bit at this. However, it must have taken a bit longer than he had realized to get the door, because he could hear voices through it.
"Are you sure this is the right house, Peter?" It sounded like an old man, thin and elderly.
"Quite positive, after all, I used to live around here." A young man, a rather confident tone to his voice.
"Huh! We've been ringing for fifteen minutes! I say we go check around somewhere else, obviously we've got the wrong house." Cross and impatient sounding, almost like Lupine, but a bit more cross. Lupine was just plain bossy.
"I'm sure!" This time the voice sounded annoyed. "How many castles in the mountains of montalbino can there be?"
"Hmph! So? You couldn't tell your way from right to left if you don't have pieces of colored string around your fingers! How can you be sure this is the right house?"
This would have sounded quite entertaining to Colin if he hadn't needed to answer the door. The voices raised quite a bit and started quarreling, while Colin could swear that the old man just sighed, as if he were used to them bickering.
"Let's just try one more time, maybe Lupine's not up yet." Before they could reach the doorknob however, Colin swung it open, revealing quite a sight. A red-headed fierce, thin, scary-looking girl, maybe one or two years older than him, and a boy around her age with neat tawny curls, were both glaring at each other with absolute fury in their eyes.
Colin coughed, uncomfortable.
They looked at him then, as if they hadn't realized he was there before, and he managed a small, quivery smile. "Um, right this way?" and led them to the parlor. They turned their backs on each other, gave a "Hmph!" and stalked off. The old man rolled his eyes and followed Colin in.
After seating them in the parlor and getting some decent pasties and tea from the pantry (it worked the same way as the wardrobe, even if the taste did end up a bit odd.), he placed it on the solitary table, said, "I'll go get Lupine," And rushed off. They scared him, rather.
He was beginning the descent of the large, marble white staircase when Lupine appeared from the hallway and peered down at him. She was wearing a rather pretty looking emerald green dress, which matched her eyes perfectly. Of course, the way those eyes looked at you made Colin nervous as ever, and rather ruined the whole effect. "Who was it?" she asked.
"Um, I think it was the High Norland." She had given him a list of who each of their soon-to-be guests were, what they looked like, where they were from, and so on. Of course, that didn't help much when confronted by the real ones.
"Okay, that was expected. High Norland is rather close, they should have walked here. Strangia and Thayack are close as well, they should be arriving in half an hour or so. Wizard Suliman and his apprentice next, Lettie's in labor, I think. I don't know when Howl and Sophie come, I have no idea how quickly the moving castle goes.."
"Moving castle?" She hadn't mentioned that before.
"Yes, yes. Moving castle. They have a fire demon, too, Calcifer or something. Be extra polite to him."
"You didn't tell me that before." He said sulkily. What in the world was a fire demon? It sounded scary, but what did it eat? Did it eat people? Was it going to eat them all?
"You should've asked." Lupine stuck up her nose in what Colin had long associated with annoyance. "Go and entertain our guests, I need to take care of some things."
He was halfway down again (it really was a big staircase- Colin was actually a bit afraid of slipping and rolling down like in the cartoons, so he went extra slowly.) when the doorbell rang again.
This time, Lupine rushed out, and to Colin's amazement, sat on the edge of the banister and slid down. It was much quicker and she was past Colin and down to the floor in seconds. Colin shrugged and followed her lead- however, he landed much less gracefully and skidded into the floor. "Ow." He grumbled, rubbing his sore head.
The door revealed a little kid, maybe ten or so, with dirt-brown hair and eyes, freckles, and a huge smile. "Hey there!" He said cheerfully. "I'm Theodore! But you can call me Theo! You're Sorceress Lupine right? I'm from-"
Lupine shut the door in his face. The kid looked nice, but he annoying and way too talkative.
"Okay! I'll wait out here!"
Lupine rolled her eyes and beckoned to Colin to join her, Colin with an expression of reproach on his face. He liked the kid already- anybody who could annoy Lupine within five minutes of being near her was plain amazing.
"Hey, where are you going? I thought you invited us here! I'm from Strangia, but my sister and the Royal Witch Alexandria-"
"Curses." Lupine muttered. "I was hoping he was just a little lost kid I wouldn't have to bother with."
While Colin was pondering what this meant, she stomped back to the door and let him in, soon joined by a small, auburn-haired witch who smiled friendily at Lupine and a girl, around Colin's age, with curly brown hair. Colin thought she was rather cute, but she barely spared him a glance and ran after her brother, who had rushed into the parlor, and judging by the sounds and protests, had proceeded to take the rest of the pasties and with shouts of excitement stuff it into his cheeks. Lupine had no choice but to follow and 'entertain' them.
An hour later, when the only person left to arrive was the mysterious moving castle ones, Colin decided that he better go into the parlor to when the door rang. Of course.
Swiveling around and unlatching the door, he was met by a reddish-gold haired young woman, her son, a brown haired, rather plump two or three year old, and her husband, a rather tall, blond, and dashing man who rather made Colin gape, whose thoughts were immediately replaced by envy.
"Er, you're Colin, right?"
Snapping out of his reverie, Colin nodded, "And you must be Howl and Sophie Pendragon?"
The young woman nodded, smoothing down the edges of her pretty yellowish-orange dress in what Colin made out to be nervousness. The man just smiled at him, looking so positively dashin that Colin was amazed Mrs. Pendragon wasn't swooning in awe or anything. Of course, she was married to him, so that might have been it. The boy- Morgan, Lupine had said- just looked around the inside of the house in amazement.
"Um, okay. Come in."
"Oh, I forgot- you know about Calcifer, right?"
"Your fire demon?"
"Yes, he'll be putting the moving castle somewhere in the back of your castle, and is it alright if he joins us in the parlor fireplace?"
Colin nodded, and showed them in. Maybe the fire demon really wasn't going to eat them or anything. He had been rather worried about that.
They walked right into the middle of a conversation.
"..king has provided us with all the ingredients, from mandrake roots to- Oh!" Beaming, Lupine smiled at the three of them. "Good, we're all here now. We can discuss the arrangements and everything now. Colin, could you maybe take the other apprentices and Morgan and-"
"No!" Morgan frowned at Lupine. "Toys!" Lupine looked flustered and said, "Er, okay then. You can have.. toys."
"Dinosaur!"
"You want a stuffed dinosaur?"
"No! Real dinosaur!"
Sophie intervened then. "No, Morgan. You can't have a dinosaur." Morgan frowned and began beating his hands on his knees and crying.
"Um, Sophie, can you-" Sophie nodded and took Morgan out of the room into the nearby kitchen, where she then began to sternly lecture him.
"Oh, I do apologize for that." Howl smiled apologetically- it was such a dashing smile that practically all of the females in the room blushed slightly. Lupine just rolled her eyes and said. "Alright, Colin. Go and give the apprentices a tour of the castle, they can then show their mentors around. I'll tell you about our arrangements with the king. This way it'll save time."
Colin nodded and beckoned them to follow. Charmain, Peter, Theodore and his sister Elizabeth as well as the dark-haired Christian that had come with the other royal wizard of Ingary, Ben Suliman.
"..you are all going to have to stay here for easy access, but the king will have a good shipment of ingredients sent over every day.."
Once they were out of earshot, Colin turned around, and trying to ignore the nervousness in his chest that all of them were no doubt more experiences and awesomer at magic than he was, he began.
"This is the broom closet, this is the foyer, out back's the swimming pool, there's the dining room.."
By the time they were up to the pink dining room, past the blue dining room, nobody had spoke except for little Theodore, who just didn't seem to be able to shut up at all.
"Does this house bend space and time as well?"
Colin turned around, confused. "What do you mean?"
Peter from High Norland had asked it, and replied to his question. "Like, in our house, it looks to be quite small, but there's a doorway that leads you to different rooms in the house if you turn the right way. There is no way this place can actually be that big, it just doesn't show from the outside."
"Oh." Colin had to think a bit before he answered. "I think Lupine mentioned something about this whole place being just an illusion. Like, she just has to think of how it should look and it just happens. The outside and the inside are two different things, but she said something about them being 'illusions made real'."
Peter nodded, digesting this. Charmain just said, "Do we really need to see the rest of the house then? I imagine it must go on forever if that's really the case." The rest of the group murmured their consent.
"Oh, well, no." He admitted, and just as well, because just then Lupine called out for him.
"Colin! Bring the rest down! We're working on the antidote immediately, but you need to make dinner!"
Yes, I'm aware that the magic cupboard makes all the meals, just wait for the next chapter and you'll see.