“Oh, hush, most outspoken lady!” Abdullah whispered. “These are no statues, but the two hundred attendant angels spoken of by the djinn!”

The sound of their voices attracted the attention of the nearest cloudy shape. It stirred mistily, opened a pair of immense moonstone eyes, and bent to survey the carpet as it slunk past it.

“Don’t you dare try to stop us!” Sophie said to it. “We’re only coming to get my baby.”

The huge eyes blinked. Evidently the angel was not used to being spoken to so sharply. Cloudy white wings began to spread from its sides.

Hastily Abdullah stood up on the carpet and bowed. “Greetings, most noble messenger of the heavens,” he said. “What the lady says so bluntly is the truth. Pray forgive her. She is from the north. But she, like me, comes in peace. The djinns are minding her child, and we do but come to collect him and render them our most humble and devout thanks.”

This seemed to placate the angel. Its wings melted back into its cloudy sides, and though its strange head turned to watch them as the carpet slunk on, it did not try to stop them. But by now the angel across the way had its eyes open, too, and the two next were turned to stare as well. Abdullah did not dare sit down again. He braced his feet for balance and bowed to each pair of angels as they came to it. This was not easy to do. The carpet knew how dangerous the angels could be as well as Abdullah did, and it was moving faster and faster.

Even Sophie realized that a little politeness would help. She nodded to each angel as they whipped past. “Evening,” she said. “Lovely sunset today. Evening.” She had not time for more because the carpet was fairly scuttling up the last stretch of avenue. When it reached the castle gates, which were shut, it dived through like a rat up a drainpipe. Abdullah and Sophie were suffused with foggy damp and then out into calm goldish light. They found they were in a garden. Here the carpet fell to the floor, limp as a dishrag, where it stayed. It had little shivers running through the length of it, as a carpet might that was shaking with fear, or panting with effort, or both.

Since the ground in the garden was solid and did not seem to be made of cloud, Sophie and Abdullah cautiously stepped onto it. It was firm turf, growing silver-green grass. In the distance, among formal hedges, a marble fountain played. Sophie looked at this, and looked around, and began to frown.