There really did seem to be more air now, though it was colder than ever. Abdullah was surprised, because Sophie’s method of casting a spell struck him as most unwitchlike—in fact, it was not much different from his own way of persuading the carpet to move—but he had to admit that it worked. “Yes. Many thanks, speaker of spells.”

“Talk!” said Sophie.

They were so high that the world below was out of sight. Abdullah had no trouble understanding Sophie’s terror. The carpet was sailing through dark emptiness, up and up, and Abdullah knew that if he had been alone, he might have been screaming. “You talk, mighty mistress of magics,” he quavered. “Tell me of this Wizard Howl of yours.”

Sophie’s teeth chattered, but she said proudly, “He’s the best wizard in Ingary or anywhere else. If he’d only had time, he would have defeated that djinn. And he’s sly and selfish and vain as a peacock and cowardly, and you can’t pin him down to anything.”

“Indeed?” asked Abdullah. “Strange that you should speak so proudly such a list of vices, most loving of ladies.”

“What do you mean, vices?” Sophie asked angrily. “I was just describing Howl. He comes from another world entirely, you know, called Wales, and I refuse to believe he’s dead—ooh!”

She ended in a moan as the carpet plunged upward into what had seemed to be a gauzy veil of cloud. Inside the cloud the gauziness proved to be flakes of ice, which peppered them in slivers and chunks and rounds like a hailstorm. They were both gasping as the carpet burst upward out of it. Then they both gasped again, in wonder.

They were in a new country, which was bathed in moonlight—moonlight that had the golden tinge of a harvest moon to it. But when Abdullah spared an instant to look for the moon, he could not see it anywhere. The light seemed to come from the silver-blue sky itself, studded with great limpid golden stars. But he could only spare that one glance. The carpet had come out beside a hazy, transparent sea and was laboring alongside soft rollers breaking on cloudy rocks. Regardless of the fact that they could see through each wave as if it were gold-green silk, its water was wet and threatened to overwhelm the carpet. The air was warm. And the carpet, not to speak of their own clothes and hair, was loaded with piles of melting ice. Sophie and Abdullah, for the first few minutes, were entirely occupied in sweeping ice over the edges of the carpet into the translucent ocean, where it sank through into the sky beneath and vanished.