I'm beginning to think I've led a much too sheltered life. -- Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways
Life at the palace was rather dull with Solvej gone. Not that Hjalmar minded, at least not at first. After the excitement she had brought into his life, it was nice to have a nice, peaceful time with no ghosts or witches or spells. Well, one spell, but the parasite seemed happy to stay out of everyone's way for now.
Everything seemed to be going relatively well. There were no disasters, no emergencies, no extraordinary events of any sort.
That, unfortunately, was why Hjalmar was so nervous.
He had gotten so used to the chaos Solvej brought in her wake that the utter lack of said chaos was disorientating. He went down to breakfast expecting to see her there. He went to the library expecting to find her there. Both times he found an empty room. Both times he was abruptly reminded that she wasn't there. She was off under the sea, doing who-knew-what to solve the third challenge.
He wondered what the merfolk would make of her. Hopefully she wouldn't accidentally start some sort of war between Vardiholm and the merfolk's kingdom.
For about a day and a half, there was no sign of Solvej. Then, much sooner than anyone had expected, there she was. She just waltzed into the dining room without so much as a by-your-leave, smelling strongly of seaweed and grinning triumphantly.
"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.
"Then I won't bother trying to guess," Hjalmar said. "What happened? Can you solve the challenge?"
Solvej beamed. "Yes! The queen of the merfolk was very helpful! Apparently the Magician has made himself unpopular even among the merfolk -- something about kidnapping and pickling their children -- so they were all more than happy to help us."
Hjalmar refused to let himself think too deeply about the idea of pickling children. Instead he focused on the most important matter at hand.
"So what are we going to do?"
"Well, the queen of the merfolk is getting some of her best mages to cast a spell tonight. It's going to basically part the sea in a certain area of their land, so we can get to the seabed without you drowning. Of course, getting there will pose a challenge... but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Anyway, the mages are going to cast this spell, and then I'm going to cast a spell to turn that part of the seabed into a field, and you're going to plant a tree there. And then the queen of the merfolk herself is going to cast another spell to make the tree grow quickly."
Hjalmar tried to process all this information. "It sounds very complicated."
"Don't worry. I understand it all, even if you don't yet."
~~~~
And that was how Hjalmar found himself sitting on a flying carpet.
Well, it wasn't a flying carpet in the sense of "a carpet specifically designed to fly". It was a flying carpet in the sense of "Solvej cast a spell on a perfectly normal carpet to make it fly". And he wasn't sitting on it as much as he was clinging to it for dear life.
"Hjalmar, you're only a foot above the floor." Solvej managed to sound simultaneously amused and put-upon.
He opened his eyes briefly. Then he opened them wider upon realising that yes, he was only a foot above the floor. He relaxed his grip on the edge of the carpet.
Solvej gave him a sarcastic round of applause. "You're in no danger, idiot! I've put a spell on the carpet so no one can fall off it."
"I don't care how many spells you've put on it," Hjalmar retorted. "It's a carpet. It's meant to lie on the floor, not float in the air! Now get me down!"
"But I haven't even made it move yet," Solvej objected. "Wait a minute and you'll see."
"I don't want-- Argh!" Hjalmar let out a shriek as the carpet moved forward. It only moved about an inch, but he still clutched the edge and held on for dear life.
Solvej's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. "Are you scared of heights?"
"Of heights? No. Of falling? Yes."
The ghost sighed. "I've told you, there's no danger of anyone falling off this carpet."
Hjalmar said nothing. He clung to the carpet, kept his eyes tightly closed, and wondered how he had ended up in this predicament.
~~~~
"No. No. Nonononono--"
"What are you, a toddler?"
"I'm not getting on that thing!"
Solvej took a deep breath and counted to ten. What was it about flying carpets that made Hjalmar so terrified? "You've already been on "that thing", as you call it, and it didn't hurt you, did it?"
Hjalmar folded his arms. The look on his face suggested he would have pouted if his dignity would allow it. "No, but--"
"Then what's the problem?"
The flying carpet hovered in mid-air less than a foot above the soft grass of the palace garden. It looked perfectly innocuous, if somewhat out-of-place. Solvej could certainly see no reason why anyone would be afraid of it. But clearly, she and Hjalmar would have to agree to disagree on this.
"I don't trust it!"
Solvej blinked. She looked at Hjalmar. Then she looked at the carpet. "It's a carpet. How can you trust a carpet? It's a thing, not a person!"
"That's why I don't trust it!"
No doubt that sentence made sense to Hjalmar. It made no sense whatsoever to Solvej. She gave him a look that was just as baffled as some of the looks he'd given her.
"Look, it's perfectly safe." To prove her point, she sat on the edge of the carpet. It obligingly stayed as steady as any chair. "And I can assure you there's no chance of you falling off. I've already assured you of that, actually. Now get on it and we'll go for a test flight!"
Hjalmar looked at the flying carpet with the same fear and alarm one would show a man-eating tiger. Apparently no amount of proof that it was safe would convince him.
"All right then," Solvej said, moving to the centre of the carpet. "I'll go myself."
She willed it to move forward. The carpet drifted lazily through the air. She willed it to move faster. It sped up. She willed it to slow down. It slowed almost to a stop. Out of curiosity more than anything else, she willed it to do a loop-the-loop.
Seconds later, the carpet was still hovering in mid-air. But Solvej was sprawled in the middle of a flowerbed, and the lives of the flowers planted there had been cruelly cut short.
"Perfectly safe indeed," Hjalmar observed dryly.
The ghost struggled to her feet, brushing camellia petals off her clothes. "I put a spell on it to stop people falling off the sides. I forgot to extend that spell so no one can fall off the top," she said with a sheepish grin.
Hjalmar raised an eyebrow and said nothing.
"I know," Solvej said, dusting off her trousers. "This hasn't increased your confidence in its safety."
~~~~
It was nothing short of a miracle that Hjalmar was ever convinced to get on the flying carpet.
Well, actually it was nothing short of the Queen losing her patience.
An hour had passed since the flowerbed incident. Solvej had corrected her error and cast another spell. She had zoomed all around the gardens without incident. Yet Hjalmar still stayed beside the palace wall, refusing to come any closer.
That was when the Queen decided to make her opinions known.
She threw open a second-storey window and frowned down at them.
"What in Heaven's name do you think you're doing?" she asked in a voice so frosty the temperature seemed to drop. "This is no time for childish games!"
Solvej yelped and almost fell off the carpet. This time the spells stopped her. Hjalmar looked up to see who had spoken. He gasped and bowed hastily.
"Your Majesty! We're-- That is, Solvej is--"
"I've created a magic carpet," Solvej said.
The Queen gave her a disapproving look. "So I can see. But why? I can think of many more important things for you to do than to create toys out of furniture."
"Oh, it isn't a toy! It's so Hjalmar can meet with the merfolk without drowning."
"I see." The Queen's tone suggested that she didn't see. "Then why is he not on the carpet too?"
Hjalmar paled. He could already see where this was going.
"Because he isn't sure if it's safe yet," Solvej said, "so I'm taking it for a test run to show him that it is."
The Queen's frown intensified. Hjalmar felt the sudden urge to run away screaming. Not even the Magician, he was sure, could possibly be as terrifying as a displeased Queen Maibrit.
"It takes you the better part of an hour to do a test run?"
Solvej opened her mouth. So did Hjalmar. The Queen cut both of them off before they could speak.
"I have no time for your monkeying around. Do something useful, for God's sake!"
And that was how Hjalmar found himself flying the carpet all by himself.
~~~~
"This is a terrible idea," Hjalmar said quietly. "We're going to fall off, and I'm going to drown."
"Don't be silly." Solvej glanced up at the stars and altered the carpet's course slightly. "Even if you fall off, I'll rescue you before you drown."
For some reason, that did not reassure him.
The sun had just set, and the ocean below them was a mass of black occasionally interspersed with the white of waves breaking on a rock. The stars were tiny pinpricks of light high above them. The icy wind found its way through Hjalmar's heavy woolen coat and chilled him to the bone. All things considered, he felt he could be excused for not being ecstatic about this late-night trip.
"Are we there yet?" he asked plaintively, falling back on the question he had often used as a child to express his displeasure with a journey and to drive everyone within earshot to distraction.
"Not yet," Solvej said with annoying cheerfulness. "We should be there in about ten minutes."
Hjalmar closed his eyes and held onto the carpet for dear life. "How do you know where we're going? What if we're lost?"
"We're not lost. The queen of the merfolk told me which stars to follow. As long as we keep going straight towards those three stars there--" she pointed to three stars in a line towards the horizon "--we'll find the place they're going to cast their spell."
Hjalmar sighed and resigned himself to watching the stars overhead. No matter how fast the carpet moved, the stars stayed fixed in one place.
~~~~
It was only about ten minutes before they reached the place where the merfolk had gathered. To Hjalmar, however, it seemed much longer. His teeth chattered from the cold. He wanted to curl up in a little ball to stay warm, but didn't dare let go of the carpet. His hands had long since gone numb.
"Here we are!" Solvej exclaimed cheerfully.
He raised his head. At first his mind refused to process what he was seeing. It was only as they drew nearer that he realised yes, he was looking at a wall of water. The relatively even surface of the ocean suddenly rose up into a circular "tunnel" of water towering high above them. There was no way such a thing was possible. Hjalmar wasn't a scientist, but he was fairly sure that broke every law of physics.
"What. The. Hell?"
"Magic," Solvej said with a shrug.
That was both the most obvious and least helpful answer possible. Hjalmar sighed and resigned himself to wondering until someone deigned to explain things more clearly.
~~~~
The wall of water rose impossibly high above them, yet Solvej headed straight towards it. As they drew nearer, she altered course so that they were now climbing -- flying up along the side of it.
Hjalmar squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the world to start making sense again. At least Solvej's spells were working, or they'd both have fallen off as soon as the carpet began flying vertically.
The carpet shot up to the top of the wall of the water. It wasn't actually a wall, Hjalmar saw when he cracked his eyes open to look. It was a tunnel leading down to the seabed. And now they were going down that tunnel. Straight down. He muffled a groan and closed his eyes again.
The carpet went down, down, down, as if it intended to go right through the centre of the earth and come out on the other side.
"I don't like this," Hjalmar mumbled, hardly caring if Solvej heard him or not. "I do not like this!"
"Don't worry," she said. "It'll be over in a minute."
That was not comforting.