Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones Page A

could not afford to leave their jobs.
    The first day was terrible. Anne’s temperature went up and up, and the higher it got, the more hungry she became. By the time her father got off work early and came home, she was starving.
    â€œBut people aren’t supposed to get hungry with a temperature!” Mr. Smith said, grinning at the sight of Anne’s great purple face.
    â€œI don’t care. I want five sausages and two helpings of chips and lots of ketchup,” said Anne. “Quickly, or I’ll die!”
    So Mr. Smith raced out to the chip shop. But when he came back, Anne could not open her mouth far enough to get a bite of sausage. She could not chew the chips. And the ketchup stung the inside of her face like nettles.
    â€œI told you so,” said Mr. Smith.
    Anne, who was usually a most reasonable person, burst into tears and threw all the food on the floor. “I’m so hungry!” she yelled. “It’s torture!” Of course it hurt to shout, too.
    Mr. Smith was reasonable, too, except when he had to clean ketchup off the carpet. He lost his temper and shouted, “Do that again, and I’ll spank you, mumps or not!”
    â€œI hate you,” said Anne. “I hate everything.” And she sat and glowered, which is the only way to be angry with mumps.
    â€œI think she’s got grumps as well as mumps,” Mrs. Smith said when she got in from work.
    It did seem to be so. For the next few days, nothing pleased Anne. She tried wandering about the house—very slowly, because moving jiggled her great mauve face—looking for things to do. Nothing seemed interesting. She tried playing with Tibby, the cat, but Tibby was boring. She tried watching videos, but they were either boring or they made her laugh, and laughing hurt. She tried reading, but that was the same, and her fat, swollen chin kept getting in the way. Everything was boring. Mrs. Harvey next door had kindly agreed to come in and give Anne lunch. But it did not seem to occur to Mrs. Harvey that things like crusty pizza and stewed rhubarb are the last things you want to eat with mumps.
    Anne told her parents all this when they got home. The result was that her parents stopped saying, “It’s the way you feel with mumps.” Instead, they said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Anne, do stop grumbling!” every time Anne opened her mouth.
    Anne took herself and her great purple face back to bed, where she lay staring at the shape of her legs under the bedclothes and hating her parents. I’m seriously ill, she thought, and nobody cares!
    The next minute she had invented Enna Hittims.
    It all happened in a flash, but when she thought about it later, Anne supposed it was because the shape of her legs under the bedspread looked like a landscape with two long hills in it and a green jungly valley in between. The long wrinkle running down from her left foot looked like a gorge where a river might run. Even through her crossness, Anne seemed to be wondering what it would be like to be small enough to explore those hills and that valley.
    Enna Hittims was small enough. The name was Anne Smith backward, of course. But there is no way you can say “Htims” without putting in a noise between the H and the t , so Enna’s second name had to be Hittims. It suited her. She was a bold and heroic lady, even if she was only an inch or so high. She was tall and slim and muscular, and she wore her raven locks cut short around her thin brown face. There was no trace of mumps about Enna Hittims, and no trace of cowardice either. Enna Hittims was born to explore and have adventures.
    Enna Hittims started life on her parents’ farm beside the Crease River, just below Leftoe Mountain. She was plowing their cornfield one day, when the plow turned up an old sword. Enna Hittims picked it up and swished it, and it cut through the plow. It was an enchanted sword that could cut through anything. Enna