Unexpected Magic (21 page)

I was a little annoyed. It seemed that we had got Good Thing just because the golden ball had escaped from Old Man, and not because of Boy's cleverness or my powers of thought. But though I knew the ball was down a crack just inside the place where Old Man usually drew his pentangle, I didn't mention it to Boy in case his feelings were hurt, too.

We had great good times for quite a long while after that, Boy, Good Thing, and I, and Old Man never suspected at all. He was away a lot around then, anyway. While he was away, there were always a jug of milk and a loaf that appeared magically every four days, but Boy and I would have half starved on that without Good Thing. Good Thing took me to the kitchen place every day at suppertime, and we came back with every kind of food in the invisible sack. When Good Thing was not around—it quite often went away in the night and left me in peace—I went out across the roofs. I led a lovely extra life on top of the town. I met other cats by moonlight, but they were never as clever as me. I found out all sorts of things and came and told them to Boy. He was always very wistful about not being able to go out himself, but he listened to everything. He was like that. He was my friend. And he was a great comfort to me when I had my first kittens. I didn't know what was happening to me. Boy guessed and he told me. Then he told me that we must hide the kittens or Old Man would know I had been able to go out. We were very secret and hid them in our cupboard in a nest of pigeon feathers.

I am good at having kittens. I'll show you presently. I always have three, one tabby, one ginger, and one mixed like me. I had three kittens then, and Old Man never knew, even though they were quite noisy sometimes, especially after I taught them how to play with Good Thing.

When Good Thing came out of me, I could see it quite well, though Boy never could. It was quite big outside me, up to Boy's shoulder, and frail and wafty, and it could float about at great speed. It enjoyed playing. I used to hunt it all round the house and leap on it, pretending to tear it to bits, and of course it would waft away between my paws. Boy used to guess where Good Thing was from my behavior and laugh at me hunting it. He laughed even more when my kittens were old enough to play hunting Good Thing, too.

By this time Boy was a fine, strong Boy, full of thoughts, and his soldier clothes were getting too short and tight. He asked Good Thing to get him some more clothes next time Old Man was away. So Good Thing and I went to another part of the mansion where the kitchen was. Boy said “house” was the wrong word for that place. He was right. It was big and grand. This time when we got there, we went sneaking at a run up a great stair covered with red carpet—or I went sneaking with Good Thing inside me—and along more carpet to a large room with curtains all around the walls. The curtains had pictures that Good Thing said were lords and ladies hunting animals with birds and horses. I never knew that
birds
were any help to people.

There was a space between the curtains and the walls, and Good Thing sent me sneaking through that space, around the room. There were people in the room. I peeped at them through a crack in the curtains.

There was a very fine Man there, almost as tall and fine as my Boy, but much older. With him were two of the ones in white hats from the kitchen. They held their hats in their hands, sorrowfully. With them was a Woman in long clothes, looking cross as Old Man.

“Yes indeed, sir, I saw this cat for myself, sir,” the Woman said. “It stole a cake under my very eyes, sir.”

“I swear to you, sir,” one of the white hats said, “it appears every evening and vanishes like magic with every kind of food.”

“It
is
magic, that's why,” said the other white hat.

“Then we had better take steps to see where it comes from,” the fine Man said. “If I give you this—”

Good Thing wouldn't let me stay to hear more. We ran on. “Oh, dear!” Good Thing said in my head as we ran. “We'll have to be very careful after this!” We came to a room that was white and gold, with mirrors. Good Thing wouldn't let me watch myself in the mirrors. The white-and-gold walls were all cupboards filled with clothes hanging or lying inside. We stuffed the invisible sack as full as it would hold with clothes from the cupboards, so that we would not need to go back. For once it felt heavy. I was glad to get back to Boy waiting in Old Man's book room.

“Great Scott!” said Boy as the fine coats, good boots, silk shirts, cravats, and smooth trousers tumbled out onto the floor. “I can't wear these! These are fit for a king! The Old Man would be bound to notice.” But he could not resist trying some of them on, all the same. Good Thing told me he looked good. I thought Boy looked far finer than the Man they belonged to.

After this, Boy became very curious about the mansion where the clothes and the food came from. He made me describe everything. Then he asked Good Thing, “Are there books in this mansion, too?”

“And pictures and jewels,” Good Thing said through me. “What does Master wish me to fetch? There is a golden harp, a musical box like a bird, a—”

“Just books,” said Boy. “I need to learn. I'm still so ignorant.”

Good Thing always obeyed Boy. The next night, instead of going to the kitchen, Good Thing took me to a vast room with a round ceiling held up by freckled pillars, where the walls were lined with books in shelves. Good Thing had one of its helpless turns there. “Which do you think our Master wants?” it asked me feebly.

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm only a cat. Let's just take all we can carry. I want to get back to my kittens.”

So we took everything out of one shelf, and it was not right. Boy said he did not need twenty-four copies of the Bible: one was enough. The same went for Shakespeare. And he could not read Greek, he said. I spat. But we gathered up all the books except two and went back.

We had just spilled all the books onto the floor of the room with the freckled pillars when the big door burst open. The Man came striding in, with a crowd of others. “There's the cat now!” they all cried out.

Good Thing had me snatch another book at random, and we went.

“And I daren't go back for a while, Master,” Good Thing said to Boy.

I saw to my kittens; then I went out hunting. I fed Boy for the next few days—when he remembered to eat, that was. I stole a leg of lamb from an inn, a string of sausages from the butcher down the road, and a loaf and some buns from the baker. The kittens ate most of it. Boy was reading. He sat in his fine clothes, and he read, the Bible first, then Shakespeare, and then the book of history Good Thing had me snatch. He said he was educating himself. It was as if he were asleep. When Old Man suddenly came back, I had to dig all my claws into Boy to make him notice.

Old Man looked grumpily around everywhere to make sure everything was in order. He was always suspicious. I was scared. I made Good Thing stay with the kittens in the cupboard and hid the remains of the sausages in there with them. Boy was all dreamy, but he sat on the book of history to hide it. Old Man looked at him, hard. I was scared again. Surely Old Man would notice that Boy's red coat was of fine warm cloth and that there was a silk shirt underneath? But Old Man said, “Stupid as ever, I see,” and grumped out of the house again.

Talking of sausages, when do you eat? Soon? Good. Now, go on stroking.

The next day Old Man was still away. Boy said, “Those were wonderful books. I must have
more.
I wish I didn't have to trust a cat and a spirit to steal them. Isn't there
any
way I can go and choose books for myself?”

Good Thing drifted about the house, thinking. At last it got into me and said, “There is no way I can take you to the mansion bodily, Master. But if you can go into a trance, I can take you there in spirit. Would that do?”

“Perfectly!” said Boy.

“Oh, no,” I said. “If you do, I'm coming, too. I don't trust you on your own with my Boy, Good Thing. You might go feeble and lose him.”

“I will
not
!” said Good Thing. “But you may come if you wish. And we will wait till the middle of the night, please. We don't want you to be seen again.”

Around midnight Boy cheerfully went into a trance. Usually he hated it when Old Man made him do it. And we went to the mansion again, all three of us. It was very odd. I could see Boy there the way I could see Good Thing, like a big, flimsy cloud. As soon as we were there, Boy was so astonished by the grandeur of it that he insisted on drifting all around it, upstairs and down, to see as much as he could. I was scared. Not everyone was asleep. There were gaslights or candles burning in most of the corridors, and someone could easily have seen me. But I stuck close to Boy because I was afraid Good Thing would lose him.

It was not easy to stay close. They could go through doors without opening them. When they went through one door upstairs, I had to jump up and work the handle in order to follow Boy inside. It was a pretty room. The quilt on the bed was a cat's dream of comfort. I jumped up and paddled on it, while Boy and Good Thing hovered to look at the person asleep there. She was lit up by the nightlight beside the bed.

“What a
lovely
girl!” I felt Boy think. “She must be a princess.”

She sat up at that. I think it was because of me treading on her stomach. I went tumbling way backward, which annoyed me a good deal. She stared. I glowered and wondered whether to spit. “Oh!” she said. “You're that magic cat my father wants to catch. Come here, puss. I promise I won't let him hurt you.” She held out her hand. She was nice. She knew how to stroke a cat, just like you. I let her stroke me and talk to me, and I was just curling up to enjoy a rest on her beautiful quilt when a huge Woman sprang up from a bed on the other side of the room.

“Were you calling, my lady?” she asked. Then she saw me.

She screamed. She ran to a rope hanging in one corner and heaved at it, screaming, “
That cat's back
!”

“Run!” Good Thing said to me. “I'll look after Boy.”

So I ran. I have never run like that in my life, before or since. It felt as if everyone in the mansion was after me. Luckily for me, I knew my way around quite well by then. I ran upstairs and I ran down, and people clattered after me, shouting. I dived under someone's hand and dodged through a crooked cupboard place, and at last I found myself behind the curtains in the Man's room. He ran in and out. Other people ran in and out, but the Princess really had done something to help me somehow and not one of them thought of looking behind those curtains.

After a bit I heard the Princess in that room, too. “But it's a
nice
cat, Father—really sweet. I can't think why you're making all this fuss about it!” Then there was a sort of grating sound. I smelled the smallest whiff of fresh air. Bless her, she had opened the Man's window for me.

I got out of it as soon as the room was empty. I climbed down onto grass. I ran again. I knew just the way I should go. Cats do, you know, particularly when they have kittens waiting for them. I was dead tired when I got to Old Man's house. It was right on the other side of town. As I scrambled through the skylight in the roof, I was almost too tired to move. But I was dead worried about my kittens and about Boy, too. It was morning by then.

My kittens were fine, but Boy was still lying on the floor of the book room in a trance, cold as ice. And as if that were not enough, keys grated in the locks and Old Man came back. All I could think to do was to lie around Boy's neck to warm him.

Old Man came and kicked Boy. “Lazy lump!” he said. “Anyone would think you were in a trance!” I couldn't think what to do. I got up and hurried about, mewing for milk, to distract Old Man. He wasn't distracted. Looking gleefully at Boy, he carefully put a jar of black powder away in his cupboard and locked it. Then he sat down and looked at one of his books, not bothering with me at all. He kept looking across at Boy.

My kittens distracted Old Man by having a fight in the cupboard about the last of the sausages. Old Man heard it and leaped up. “Scrambling and squeaking!” he said. “Mice! Could even be rats by the noise. Damn cat! Don't you ever do your job?” He hit at me with his stick.

I tried to run. Oh, I was tired! I made for the stairs, to take us both away from Boy and my kittens, and Old Man caught me by my tail halfway up. I was that tired. … I was forced to bite him quite hard and scratch his face. He dropped me with a thump, so he probably did not hear the even louder thump from the book room. I did. I ran back there.

Boy was sitting up, shivering. There was a pile of books beside him.

“Good Thing!” I said. “That was stupid!”

“Sorry,” said Good Thing. “He would insist on bringing them.” The books vanished into the invisible sack just as Old Man stormed in.

He ranted and grumbled at Boy for laziness and for feeding me so that I didn't catch mice, and he made Boy set mousetraps. Then he stormed off to the cellar.

“Why didn't you come back sooner?” I said to Boy.

“It was too marvelous being somewhere that wasn't this house,” Boy said. He was all dreamy with it. He didn't even read his new books. He paced about. So did I. I realized that my kittens were not safe from Old Man. And if he found them, he would realize that I could get out of the house. Maybe he would kill me like the cat before. I was scared. I wished Boy would be scared, too. I wished Good Thing would show some sense. But Good Thing was only thinking of pleasing Boy.