Roger looked pained. " I think," he said, "that I'll go get a glass of hard cider."
Upstairs, later, Roger was in Prospero's room helping him pack into a green plush carpetbag such essentials as tarot cards, extra tobacco, and pocket magic books. The magic mirror, after plaguing the two men with questions, was finally beginning to understand what was going on.
"You mean," it said with a scarcely suppressed giggle, "that you're going to make yourselves ... smaller?"
"Yes," said Prospero, blushing. "What of it?"
The mirror broke into hysterical cackles and began to chant in a falsetto voice:
"I'll wager," said Prospero, "that I have the only mirror that wallows in the trash of future centuries."
Roger was nervously opening and shutting the casement window. "I'm worried." he said. "What do you suppose hell do when he finds we've gone? Will he destroy your house or go down the road and attack the village?"
"I think he will try to find us. He hasn't reached his full strength yet by any means-that is, if the book is as evil as I think it is-and I don't think he'll waste his powers destroying a village or a house out of anger. It has occurred to me that he may not be able to injure my house anyway The hearthstone was laid by Michael Scott, my teacher, and it has many powerful spells on it. He built a good deal of the house, too, and there are still things about it I don't understand. Why, there's a cupboard that-oh, the devil! Some other time. I guess I've got everything. Good-by, mirror. I trust you can entertain yourself while we're gone."
"I should hope so. I think I'll scare the wits out of the cleaning lady when she comes. I have a very nice scream."
A little later, downstairs, Prospero wrote a note in black crayon and left it on the kitchen table under a bust of the Emperor Pupienus.
Dear Mrs. Durfey,
Will be gone for an indefinite period. Pay no attention to the mirror if it acts up, and in any case, you know where the harp case is. You can slip it over him when he's not looking. Don't forget to water the trailing arbutus and the creeping Charlie. Change the water in the large onyx water clock; the other one takes care of itself. Help yourself to the cheese and anything else. The Cheshire gets dry and crusty if you don't eat it. With luck, I should be back for the big Christmas party. Say hello to His Lordship the Mayor for me,
Prospero
P.S. Unexplained noises are best left unexplained.
He looked around the house sadly. "I do hate to leave. Oh, well. Are the windows closed,, Roger? Grab your bag and let's get going."
Soon, the secret door had closed behind the two wizards and they had placed the boat in the black water, where it rocked gently, moored by a pair of wispy cords. The ship was close to the low bank, and a rope ladder hung down from the muddy edge to the port side rail. Roger Bacon and Prospero stood looking doubtfully at the tiny craft.
"Well," said Roger, " I don't suppose we can put it off."
"No," said Prospero, "I don't suppose we can."
He thumbed a small book, which looked like a pocket dictionary, until he found the page he wanted.
"All together now:
Roger and Prospero shrank and shrank, until they looked like two odd chess pieces standing by the brown sloping sides of the boat. They made faces at each other, laughed a little, and then climbed aboard.
Inside the low, echoing wet-dirt tunnel, the noise of the rushing water was weirdly magnified and distorted into a hollow tinny roar. A shout or a handclap came whanging back at you immediately from a low curving roof. Prospero and Roger, sliding farther and farther into this claustrophobic gloom, stood on the high ornamented poop of their absurd ship and watched the shrinking half moon of light cast by the lantern they had left on the floor of the cave. Two tiny alcohol-burning stern lamps cast a flickering moth-light on the wizards, who now turned to the task of keeping up their spirits until the Actaeon sailed out into the sunny lake.
The ship itself was entertaining, because it was so incredibly detailed: There were gleaming rows of brass cannon, nickel-plated swinging lanterns that worked, and, in the captain's cabin, rows of books, real books, mostly on nautical subjects. Even the purple liquid in the little flattened decanter turned out to be wine. Though they were, if anything, too small for the ship, the wizards still thought of it as tiny, and were endlessly fascinated by the discovery of new details-a cupboard that opened on scrolled brass hinges, a box within the cupboard that held delicate jade-and-ivory chessmen. The wheel of course, worked, and Prospero had roped it down, so that the ship would follow the straight flow of the current. Though all the lamps, lanterns, and candles on board were lit, the sides of the cave could not be seen, and periodic flashes of magic lightning were needed to assure them that the little bobbing toy was still in the middle of the stream.
As the Actaeon sailed on into the noisy darkness, Prospero and Roger heard faintly disquieting sounds: the plip! that might be a clot of earth falling from the ceiling into the water, the splop! that probably was a small water animal sliding off some unseen shore into the stream. And, there was another sound, one which was harder to single out from the others and define: It was only a little different from the normal rushing-water sound, yet it was there-a hissing and foaming that was getting more and more distinct. At first, Prospero thought "Rapids!" and shivered. But, it was the sound of water flowing through something, not over it. He got up from the powder keg on which he had been sitting and motioned to Roger, who was up on the quarterdeck, trying to compute the speed of the ship. Together, they went to the forecastle and stood peering into the blackness ahead. The little swinging lamps that hung near them were not much help, so Prospero and Roger struck their staffs together-a bright red light, dripping like a fireworks flare, hung around them for a few minutes, and by that garish light, they saw a mesh of some kind strung across their path. It was held by a rigid black square frame that was awkwardly jammed into the tunnels rough walls at a point where the opening was lower and narrower than usual.
Prospero and Roger struggled with the capstan, but the anchor was either decorative or stuck. The ship drifted on, yawing a little in the current, until it bumped-more gently than Prospero had hoped-against the strange wall. Prospero set off another flare and suddenly realized what the obstruction was: It was a window screen. His window screen. He saw the place where he had scratched with a nail "Bedroom SE Corner," and he remembered the theft, the broken cellar window of three years before. Roger stared at him with understanding and fear.
The ship bumped against the screen, and the water shed through a thousand tiny openings. As Prosperos eyes got used to the dark, he saw that there was a little ledge nearby on one side of the tunnel. And behind it was the deep blackness of a cave. Now, from the cave came a scrabbling, grunting clumping sound, and out of the ragged opening crawled a hairy, angular shape. Two red eyes glowed in the darkness. Prospero could have lit the tunnel for a better look, but the magic was not endless, and anyway, he knew what the thing was. So did Roger, who gripped his own staff tightly.