DER HAUSHALT

German, "the housekeeping"

Sometimes, Tiffany thought, I am so fed up with being young. -- Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

Diarnlan lay awake for most of the night. As soon as the sun rose she got up and set to work on the kitchen. To avoid using too much magic she used only simple cleaning spells, but she cast them again and again until the place was spotless.

She turned the tap on. Nothing happened. There wasn't so much as a rattle from the pipes.

I'm not going to waste money hiring a plumber, was her first thought. Her second was, I wonder if there's a well.

There was no back door to the house. She went into each room to check. In the process she got a good look at the bathroom for the first time. Never in all of her lifetimes had she seen such an appalling sight. The sink was broken in half and the half lying on the floor had a nest of mice in it. They scurried away when she opened the door. The bath was coated in grime and sand. Some mysterious plant grew out of the grain. And as for the toilet... Well, the only way to make this place fit for use would be to set it on fire and build a new bathroom.

Diarnlan forgot about looking for a well in the face of this much more serious problem. She cast anti-fire spells on the hallway and walls outside. Then she set up a containing spell around the bathroom door and window. Finally she conjured up the strongest fire spell she could manage and hurled it straight into the room. The place exploded into flames. None of them got through the containing spell, but the heat they created certainly did. Diarnlan staggered back, feeling as if she'd just stepped out of a snow-drift and into an oven.

The fire blazed in the bathroom, destroying everything it touched. Diarnlan left it to do its work while she went in search of a well.

Karandren awoke slowly. His eyes opened long before his mind started working. For ten minutes he blinked blearily at his surroundings, understanding as much of them as he would of a book written in a foreign language. Gradually his memories returned. A sinking feeling filled his chest. He sat up and looked down at himself. It wasn't a dream. He really was stuck in the body of a toddler.

In disgust he picked up a brick -- one of the ones he'd used for his ill-fated mattress-making attempt -- and hurled it at the wall. When it struck it caused a minor avalanche of plaster. Karandren watched in alarm as cracks appeared on the wall and ceiling.

"We've got to get out of here before the roof falls on our heads," he said. Diarnlan didn't answer. He looked over at where she'd slept and was annoyed to see she was gone. "If you've run off and left me here--" He broke off and sniffed. "Smoke? Diarnlan! What have you done?"

No one answered. Karandren got up and went to investigate. He didn't have to search for long. He stepped out of the living room and found himself staring into an inferno.

If he was older and taller he would have run into the kitchen to get water. Unfortunately he couldn't reach the sink in this body. All he could do was scream for help. "Diarnlan! Diarnlan! Call the fire brigade!"

The front door opened and Diarnlan scowled at him. "What are you yelling about? Can't you see it's under control?"

Karandren gawked at her. Then he looked at the fire. To his embarrassment he saw the flames were trapped behind a barrier. "What happened?"

"I'm doing some renovations."

Diarnlan swept past him into the kitchen without elaborating further.

Karandren looked at the fire, warily examined the walls to make sure they weren't about to collapse, then followed her.

There was no sign of any food in the kitchen. Half-humans and magicians could do without food for much longer than ordinary humans, but the last thing Karandren had eaten had been his ice cream yesterday. He'd been looking forward to some sort of breakfast.

"What's for breakfast?"

Diarnlan didn't look up from casting cleaning spells on all of the cupboards. "Who do you think I am? Your mother?"

All right then. If she wanted to go without food, let her. But Karandren didn't intend to starve. He went back into the living room. Diarnlan had left her coat lying on the floor where she'd slept. He picked it up and went through the pockets. They had spells woven into them to make them larger. After rummaging for several minutes he found a heavy sack that clinked when he pulled it out. He opened it and helped himself to a handful of coins.

Diarnlan was still busy in the kitchen. The fire was starting to dwindle in the bathroom. Karandren slipped out the front door and headed for the village.

As it turned out he didn't need to buy anything. The butcher had very carelessly left his door open while he went over to the post office. Karandren went in, climbed onto a chair so he could take a steak off the counter, wrapped it up in paper, and left before the butcher came back.

Next he went to the greengrocer. The boxes of apples outside were unattended. He grabbed one and ate it as he walked back to the house. When he finished it he tossed the core in a ditch. Then he paused. Why not try practicing magic now, when Diarnlan wasn't around to stop him or interfere?

Instinctively Karandren fell back on dark magic. Through his various lifetimes he had used it much more than light magic. The problem was that dark magic didn't make things grow. He tried and tried to make the apple seeds turn into an apple tree. All he succeeded in doing was making the seeds, the grass around them, and the fence beside the road wither and crumble to dust.

On the bright side, now he had some control over dark magic. Not nearly as much as he used to, but it was a start.

After the bathroom was reduced to ash Diarnlan extinguished the fire and cast spells to blow the dust away through the window. The walls were still standing, but the plaster had been ripped off them and there was nothing left but bare stone. She examined the remains of the room. A new bathroom could be created by magic, but not by a fourteen-year-old. She'd have to hire someone who specialised in magic related to interior design.

Why don't you ask Teivain-ríkhorn-hrair? a little voice whispered.

Diarnlan ignored it. Going to her teacher hadn't helped much in her last lifetime. But then, it had taught her that breathing-underwater spell. She still remembered how to do it. Now she had plenty of time to practice, and the nearest part of the sea was open and conspicuously devoid of rocks.

She left the house and ran down to the beach. It was a considerable distance away from the house although it could be seen from the front door. When she reached it she found it was covered with shingle rather than sand.

So much the better, she thought. No one will come to swim here.

She waded out into the water and cast the spell.

Karandren opened the front door and promptly had a coughing fit. The house was so full of smoke it was almost impossible to breathe. He propped the door open. It didn't help much. He dived into the kitchen, left the steak on the table, and ran back outside before he suffocated.

"Diarnlan? Diarnlan! Where are you?"

She didn't answer. Damn it, that meant he had to figure out how to cook the steak himself. Karandren growled imprecations under his breath.

Years and lifetimes ago he had learnt how to cook at the academy. But then he'd been exiled to Miavain and never cooked again. At first because he had no opportunity or resources -- he'd survived by stealing from people's kitchens or catching rabbits and eating them raw -- and later because he had no need. He'd just forced the palace cooks to make his meals for him. Still, it couldn't be too hard to cook a steak.

Karandren took a deep breath, steeled himself for the misery of the smoke, and went back into the house.

Like all people who lived near the sea Diarnlan knew how to swim. She hadn't done it often, but she still remembered how. She dived under the surface and cast the spell. While it worked she took stock of her surroundings. There were rocks underwater, but they were far from the shore and too small to be a danger as long as she was careful.

She stayed down for two minutes and twenty-four seconds before the spell wore off. On her next attempt she managed just under six minutes. By the time she swam back to the shore she'd reached eight minutes and fifty seconds.

A bit more practice and the spell will work for twenty minutes. Now all I need is a boat.

That pesky little voice just had to pipe up again. What if the hole in the veil isn't underwater?

Now that she was back on dry land Diarnlan found herself shivering even though the air wasn't cold. Then I'll find a spell for flying and search the air.

As for what she'd do when she found it... Well, she'd figure that out later. No point in worrying too much about that yet.

Karandren shoved a chair against the cooker and climbed onto it. There were no pots in the house, so he made do by taking a baking tray out of the oven and putting it on the stove. Nothing happened when he turned the stove on. Instead he cast a heating spell on the baking tray itself. Then he dropped the steak on it and waited.

When Diarnlan returned to the house she found Karandren poking at a lump of black... something. She eyed it suspiciously.

"What's that? Charcoal?"

He shrugged helplessly. "It was a steak. I think I cooked it too long."

She risked venturing closer. The thing reeked so strongly of burnt meat that she could smell it over the smoke from the bathroom. It looked as edible and appetising as a plateful of clay.

"I hope you didn't waste any of my money on that."

He shook his head. "Don't worry, I stole it. Should we bury it or throw it in the sea?"

Diarnlan snorted. "Throw it in the sea? We'd poison all the fish for miles around. Go and bury it in Old Radulf's garden." Karandren blinked at her in non-comprehension. Diarnlan sighed and explained. "His tomatoes always got first prize and mine never did. Make sure you bury it near his tomato plants."

Life settled into a very odd sort of routine. Karandren practiced all the spells he could remember, both dark and light. Diarnlan continued practicing the breathing-underwater spell and spent ages searching for any sign of the hole in the veil. They got water from a river which Diarnlan diverted to flow closer to them -- in the process accidentally flooding the house. They stole food from the village shops and accidentally started rumours about unusually hungry ghosts. Karandren measured himself against the kitchen doorpost every day and lamented that he'd grown only an inch in two weeks.

It was peaceful and quiet and boring beyond belief. If this lasted for much longer Karandren would go stark raving mad.

So he fell back on a tried and true way of amusing himself: annoying Diarnlan. But this time he went a step further.

When Diarnlan opened the kitchen door she screamed and jumped back. The knife balanced above the door fell harmlessly at her feet. She stared at it. Then she turned and glared at Karandren.

"What are you trying to do, you lunatic?"

He shrugged innocently. "Assassination attempts. So you won't forget how to fight."

Dinner that day tasted funny. Karandren took a few spoonfuls before pushing his bowl away. One look at Diarnlan's badly-hidden smirk told him all he needed to know.

"What sort of poison did you put in the soup?" he asked conversationally.

She said nothing and continued to eat her own soup. He learnt the answer a few hours later when he started seeing pink caterpillars climbing the walls. The drug took a full day to wear off. It was the most surreal day of Karandren's life.

From then it was war.