He looked at Casimir in the little mirror. “Look,” he said, “I haven’t had my wish today and since it means so much to you, my wish is that your carpet will be made new again.”
Casimir looked at Lewis blankly. As a powerful magician, he wasn’t exactly used to being on the receiving end of simple, everyday acts of kindness and Lewis’s words rather took him aback. Then, as their import hit home, his expression cleared and, too full of emotion to speak, he merely nodded.
Lewis felt the carpet stir under his fingers and watched in amazement as it started to thicken perceptibly. Its colours brightened and grew stronger and its silken threads gleamed and shone in the light of his bedside lamp. When it was whole again, the carpet rippled with joy and took off round the room, whizzing around in circles until it forgot itself completely and wrapped itself round Lewis in sheer joy.
“How would you like to take a trip on the carpet?” Casimir asked, his usually sour face smiling and happy. “After you’ve had your breakfast, that is.”
“Won’t people see me?”
Casimir shook his head. “It’s a magic carpet,” he said, “and as you’ll be travelling with me inside you, you’ll be invisible!”
Lewis thought about it. “I could,” he said. “Mum and Dad are going back to the hospital today and then visiting some aunt or other.”
“Then we’ll wait until they’ve left. How’s that?”
“Great,” Lewis said, and went downstairs feeling happier than he had for a long time.
Flying on the carpet was cold, but fun. It hadn’t needed Casimir to tell him that it was freezing outside for Edinburgh, covered in an unseasonably early fall of snow, had turned into a fairytale city overnight. At Casimir’s suggestion, he’d spread a blanket over the carpet to keep it warm and put on a couple more sweaters. Now, zipped up in his anorak with the hood pulled tightly round his face, he peered over the edge of the carpet as they passed over Princes Street, the snowy ramparts of Edinburgh Castle and the turreted splendour of George Heriot’s School. He looked at it with interest for once the October holiday finished he would be going there for the remainder of the term. His mother had already bought him the uniform! The snow-covered slopes of the Meadows floated by underneath the carpet and then more houses but it was only when they crossed the City Bypass and continued to head north that Lewis realized that it was not just taking him for a short flight round the city. He fished in a pocket and brought out the small mirror.
“Where are we going?” he asked anxiously, as Casimir’s face appeared. “Where are you taking me?”
“We’re going to visit my house,” Casimir said, soothingly.
“Where is it? Is it far?”
“Quite a long way. I should have told you, I know, but I haven’t been there for hundreds of years and, well … I’d like to see what it’s like now.”
There wasn’t much Lewis could say to this but if the magician had a house of his own that was miles away from Edinburgh, he saw future problems looming and as the hours passed and the carpet showed no signs of slowing down, he started to get really worried.
“Casimir,” he demanded, “is it much further? At this rate it’ll be dark by the time we get back to Edinburgh! My mum and dad will freak! Especially after what happened at Al Antara. I don’t want to get into any more trouble if I can possibly avoid it!”
“Almost there,” Casimir promised, but it was actually a good half hour before the carpet lost height and started to circle a snow-covered mountainside.
Lewis fished out the mirror again. “Are we here?” he asked. “I don’t see any houses.”
Casimir looked over the slopes of the bleak mountain and spoke, through Lewis, to the carpet which started to circle the area very slowly. Then it stopped.
“Get off the carpet and move forward, Lewis. Slowly! Hold your hands out in front of you and stop when you touch something.”
“But … but there’s nothing to touch,” Lewis said. “The mountain’s …” He stopped suddenly as his hand touched something invisible that sent a shock through him. “I’m touching something, Casimir. It’s …” he moved his hand and walked round the object, “it’s like a pillar. Look, my footprints have made a circle in the snow.”
Casimir looked through Lewis’s eyes at the carpet. “Where did you come from, if it wasn’t from Ardray?” he asked.
The carpet trembled. “Old Agnes mended me,” it said. “Prince Kalman asked me what had happened when you were fleeing from the storm carriers and … and I told him. But he didn’t keep me. He didn’t need to, master. He has his own carpet. So I stayed with Agnes. Master, I didn’t know that this had happened to Ardray, I swear it! If she knew, she didn’t tell me!”