Sophie and Abdullah followed the noise to the end of the cloister and out into a huge cloudy hall. There they stopped prudently behind a pillar, and Sophie said, “Our main room. They must have blown it up like a balloon!”

It was a very big hall. The screaming child was in the middle of it. She was about four years old, with fair curls and wearing a white nightdress. Her face was red, her mouth was a black square, and she was alternately throwing herself down on the green porphyry floor and standing up in order to throw herself down again. If ever there was a child in a temper, it was this one. The echoes in the huge hall yelled with it.

“It’s Princess Valeria,” Sophie murmured to Abdullah. “I thought it might be.”

Hovering over the howling princess was the huge dark shape of Hasruel. Another djinn, much smaller and paler, was dodging about behind him. “Do something!” this small djinn shouted. Only the fact that he had a voice like silver trumpets made him audible. “She’s driving me insane!”

Hasruel bent his great visage down to Valeria’s screaming face. “Little princess,” he boomingly cooed, “stop crying. You will not be hurt.”

Princess Valeria’s answer was first to stand up and scream in Hasruel’s face, then to throw herself flat on the floor and roll and kick there. “Wah-wah-wah!” she vociferated. “I want home! I want my dad! I want my nurse! I want my Uncle Ju-ustin! WaaaAH!”

“Little princess!” Hasruel cooed desperately.

“Don’t just coo at her!” trumpeted the other djinn, who was clearly Dalzel. “Work some magic! Sweet dreams, a spell of silence, a thousand teddies, a ton of toffee! Anything!”

Hasruel turned around on his brother. His spread wings fanned agitated gales, which flapped Valeria’s hair and fluttered her nightdress. Sophie and Abdullah had to cling to the pillar, or the force of the wind would have blown them backward. But it made no difference to Princess Valeria’s tantrum. If anything, she screamed harder.

“I have tried all that, brother of mine!” Hasruel boomed.

Princess Valeria was now producing steady yells of “MOTHER! MOTHER! THEY’RE BEING HORRID TO ME!”

Hasruel had to raise his voice to a perfect thunder. “Don’t you know,” he thundered, “that there is almost no magic that will stop a child in this kind of temper?”

Dalzel clapped his pale hands across his ears—pointed ears, with a look of fungus to them. “Well, I can’t stand it!” he shrilled. “Put her to sleep for a hundred years!”

Hasruel nodded. He turned back to Princess Valeria as she screamed and thrashed upon the floor and spread his huge hand above her.

“Oh, dear!” said Sophie to Abdullah. “Do something!”