Stopping for a Spell by Diana Wynne Jones Read Free Book Online

tablecloth, lying half wrapped across the few prizes left. And the table stood still and was just a table. The jelly slid back into its bowl. Its feelers were gone, and it was just a jelly.
    The music stopped, too. Auntie Christa called out, “Well done, Philippa! You’ve won again! Come and choose a prize, dear.”
    â€œIt’s not fair!” somebody complained. “Philippa’s won everything !”
    Marcia came racing over to Simon as he tried to straighten the tablecloth. “Look, look! You did it! Look!”
    Simon turned around in a dazed way. There were still two chairs standing in the middle of the hall after the game. One of them was an old shabby striped armchair. Simon was sure that was not right. “Who put—?” he began. Then he noticed that the chair was striped in sky blue, orange, and purple. Its stuffing was leaking in a sort of fuzz from its sideways top cushion. It had stains on both arms and on the seat. Chair Person was a chair again. The only odd thing out was that the chair was wearing football socks and shiny shoes on its two front legs.
    â€œI’m not sure if it was the wand or the pillbox,” Simon said.
    They pushed the armchair over against the wall while everyone was crowding around the food.
    â€œI don’t think I could bear to have it on our bonfire after this,” Marcia said. “It wouldn’t seem quite kind.”
    â€œIf we take its shoes and socks off,” Simon said, “we could leave it here. People will probably think it belongs to the hall.”
    â€œYes, it would be quite useful here,” Marcia agreed.
    Later on, after the children had gone and Auntie Christa had locked up the hall, saying over her shoulder, “Tell your mother and father that I’m not on speaking terms with either of them!” Simon and Marcia walked slowly home.
    Simon asked, “Do you think he knew we were going to put him on our bonfire? Was he having his revenge on us?”
    â€œHe may have been,” said Marcia. “He never talked about the bonfire, did he? But what was to stop him just asking us not to when he was a Person?”
    â€œNo,” said Simon. “He didn’t have to set the house on fire. I suppose that shows the kind of Person he was.”

1
    Erg Gets an Idea
    Erg’s dad and Emily’s mum found they had to go away to a conference for four days, leaving Erg and Emily at home.
    â€œI want a house to come back to,” said Erg’s dad, thinking of the time Erg had borrowed the front door to make an underground fort in the garden.
    â€œWe’d better ask one of the grannies to come and look after them,” said Emily’s Mum, knowing that if Erg did not borrow a thing, Emily could be trusted to fall over it and break it. Emily was younger than Erg, but she was enormous. She needed bigger shoes than Erg’s dad.
    There were four grannies to choose from, because Erg’s dad and Emily’s mum had both been divorced before they married one another.
    Granny One was strict. She wore her hair scraped back from her forbidding face, and her favorite saying was, “Life is always saying No.” Since Life did not have a voice, Granny One spoke for it, and said No about once every five minutes.

    Granny Two was a worrier. She could worry about anything. She was fond of ringing up in the middle of the night to ask if Emily was getting enough vitamins, or—in her special, hushed worrying voice—if Erg ought to be sent to a Special School.
    Granny Three was very rich and very stingy. She was the one Emily hated most. Granny Three always arrived with a large box of chocolates. She would give Erg’s dad a chocolate, and Emily’s mum a chocolate, and eat six herself, and take the rest of the box away with her when she went. Erg agreed with Emily that this was mean, but he thought Granny Three was more fun than the others, because she had a new car and different