Unexpected Magic (36 page)

She had all kinds of ideas, so many that I began to suspect that Madam Dalrymple had been dumped in that pigpen by the enraged human she once owned. And whatever she suggested, we did. Millamant came back dripping with green slime and plastered herself lovingly up the fronts of things, Mr. Williams pulled down a pile of white things and wriggled in them, and, while the rest of us bit and pulled threads, Orange went along methodically making messes in all the shoes. It was fun. When everything was thoroughly treated, we went away—although Millamant paused to roll the last of her slime off on the pillows—and spent the rest of the day persuading Great-aunt Harriet to give us titbits.

You should have heard Fara shrieking when Henry came home.

“Perhaps that wasn't such a good idea,” Great-aunt Harriet said, after she had been to borrow some tea the following morning. “She's telling Henry to fetch the laundry hamper and take you all down to the vet. He hasn't quite agreed yet, but he will.”

“Let's get on the Coop and go away!” Madam Dalrymple said, shivering.

I didn't know what to do. I was miserable. I crouched wretchedly beside the water butt all day, hoping and hoping that Henry would come out and comfort me, but he never did, until Mr. Williams came rushing across the yard, mewing excitedly. There never was a cat like Mr. Williams for mewing. “Come and see! Come and look!” he mewed. “Everyone come in through the dining room window and see!”

Mill surged out of the water butt, Madam Dalrymple materialized from a hay bale, Orange and Claws shot out of the coach house, and we all galloped after Mr. Williams, consumed with curiosity. He led us through the dining room and upstairs to the spare room. There was a strange new smell there. It was not coming from the shoes, which had been bundled into a plastic sack in the passage, nor the clothes, which had been thrown across the sack. It was coming from the bed, inside the room. We stood on our hind legs to look.

Big Dot was lying in the middle of the duvet there, looking tired, surrounded in rather a mess that was full of small squirming bodies. Six of them, there were six … “Kittens?” I said. “Oh, Big Dot, why did you have to have them
here
?
”

“I didn't
mean
to,” Big Dot said weakly. “But it was so comfortable—and I got rather taken short.”

“We'll have to guard you,” I said. “If Fara finds them … ”

“I know. I'll move them the moment I feel stronger,” Big Dot said. “Not just yet, please.”

She went to sleep. Having kittens is obviously quite tiring. The rest of us crouched where we were, around the bed, waiting for what we knew was going to happen. Sure enough, just before suppertime, when the kittens had begun to move about and make squeaky noises, the door opened and Fara came in.

She stopped. She stared. Then she screamed, “Oh, this is the
last straw
! On
my
bed, of all places!”

“It isn't your bed. It belongs to Henry,” I said.

She didn't hear me. She plunged forward, with both her hands out to grab. “These are going in the water butt,” she said. “I'll drown them myself.”

We all acted at once. We poured up over the edges of the bed, and stood there growling and spitting, so that the bed was full of our lashing tails, arched backs, and glaring eyes. Big Dot stood up in the center of us, twice her usual size, growling loudest of all.

“
Get out of my way
!” Fara screamed and grabbed for the kittens. Upon this, Mr. Williams, who was nearest—timid, nice-mannered Mr. Williams—put a paw-full of claws in each of her arms and dragged. He left two rows of dark, oozing blood on her. She screamed even louder and hit Mr. Williams, so that he flew across the room and crashed into the chest of drawers.

“What on earth is going on?” Henry said from the doorway.

Fara turned to Henry and went on screaming. She was so angry that she seemed to forget how to speak. “Middle of the bed!” she howled. “Water butt. Drown them. Horrible little ratty things! Drown, drown,
drown
!”

Henry walked around her and looked down at the bed. “Kittens,” he said.

“
In the middle of my bed
!” Fara screamed.

“There are other beds,” Henry said. “Pull yourself together, Fara. May I?” he said to Big Dot. Big Dot, very nervously, moved aside and let him sort through her kittens. “Six,” Henry murmured. “One of every color—black, gray, white, ginger, this one's tortoiseshell, and here's a tabby. Oh, well done, Big Dot!”

“Henry,” Fara said to him, in a hard, yowling voice, “I'm telling you to get rid of these cats and drown these kittens.
All
of them. Now.”

“Don't talk nonsense,” Henry said. He put the kittens gently back beside Big Dot. “Three boys and three girls, I make it.”

“I
mean
it!” Fara shouted. “Henry, if you don't get rid of every single cat
this minute
, I shall leave!”

We all stared intensely at Henry, except for Mr. Williams, who was washing his bruises beside the chest of drawers. Henry looked at Mr. Williams. “The black cat,” he said, “belongs to Great-aunt Harriet.”

“But he scratched me!” Fara said. “They're all horrible creatures. So which is it to be? Do you get rid of them, or do I leave?”

Henry looked from one to another of our urgently staring pairs of eyes, and then at Fara. He seemed almost bewildered, the way he is when he wakes up in the morning. “There's no question,” he said to Fara. “If that's your attitude, you'd better leave.”

Fara's chest heaved with emotion. She glared. “All right,” she said. “You'll regret this.” And she left. She swung around and stormed out of the room. I heard her feet galloping down the stairs. I heard the kitchen door crash shut behind her. But I didn't relax until I heard her feet distantly swishing through the farmyard and then pattering on the road. Then I was so relieved that I burst out purring. I couldn't help it.

Henry sighed and said sadly, “Oh well. She did complain a lot. And she hates opera.”

We had a perfect, peaceful evening. Henry invited Great-aunt Harriet to supper and played her two operas. One was
Turandot
, of course. But, although I sat on his knees to comfort him, I could tell he was sad.

The next morning, all the farmers arrived again, looking grim and serious. During the night, the Beast of Ettmoor had attacked the farm next to Henry's and killed six sheep, a sheepdog, and the farm cat. They were very worried because, according to the plans, the Beast should by now have been herded down the valley inside the final ring of magical generators.

Henry was equally worried. I sat on the dining room mantelpiece and watched him show the farmers the map and scratch his hair over it. “I think,” he said at last, “that what
may
have happened is that a crucial—er—field-static generator must have got moved slightly, just enough to let the Beast slip back out of our trap. This one, I think.” He pointed to the wobbly little marker that I had tried to play with.

My heart banged under my fur with guilt and terror.

Henry didn't even look at me. When the farmers said they were going to patrol this area with guns in future, he said, “Yes, that seems the only thing to do. And I'll strengthen the outer ring of generators to stop it escaping back into the hills. I'm truly sorry about this. I'll go and see to it now.”

He drove off in his car and he was out all that day. He came home exhausted, but instead of settling down to another opera, he went into the dining room and worked on the map all evening. I felt so guilty that I kept well out of his way. I had messed up his magics and, on top of that, I had driven his lady away. I punished myself by not sleeping on Henry's head that night. I crouched by the kitchen fire instead and was miserable.

“There's no need to take on,” Millamant said from the coal scuttle. “It's horrible Fara's fault just as much. She made him forget his magics.”

“And we're all safe from the Beast as long as we stay indoors,” Madam Dalrymple said placidly from the footstool.

“That's not the point!” I said.

Orange and Claws sat up uneasily in the best chair. They had all chosen to keep me company in my sorrow. “Speaking of the Beast,” Orange said, “did you know that Big Dot has moved her kittens out into the Coop? Are they safe there?”

“Oh Lord!” I said, springing up. “They are
not
! And Mr. Williams
will
stay out all night!”

I was on my way to the catflap to go and reason with Big Dot when we heard Mr. Williams shriek with terror, or with pain, or both, out in the farmyard. Next second, the catflap clapped open. Mr. Williams shot in through it, streaked across the kitchen, and went to ground under the Welsh dresser, which was almost too low even for me to get under these days.

“Hide, hide, hide!” he yowled. “It's coming!”

I stared stupidly at the path of blood Mr. Williams had made from the door to the Welsh dresser.

“
What's
coming?” said Claws.

“The Beast, the Beast!” Mr. Williams gibbered. “You can't smell it till it's
there
!”

Everyone was suddenly elsewhere, Madam Dalrymple with a most unladylike howl. I did a vanishment such as I had never managed in my life before and found myself at the very top of the Welsh dresser, almost up by the ceiling. And only just in time. Something was coming through the catflap.

My outstretched hair caught on the ceiling. A big dark face was forcing its way indoors, a face twice the size of Henry's and growing bigger as it came. For a moment, I thought the thing would get stuck, but that was a vain hope. I watched the wood of the catflap and then of the door spread and enlarge, as if the wood were so much rubber, to let the Beast's shoulders follow its head, and I realized hopelessly that this Beast was a magical creature. It was almost inside now. Catfight song burst from my throat as I watched it come. This was not the growling I had done at Fara, but the full-voiced, throbbing, yowling, wailing song of defiance you make when you encounter an alien cat. Amidst my terror, I was quite surprised at the noise I could make.

The others joined in, Madam Dalrymple shrilly and Millamant with deep echoes booming from the coal scuttle. Claws and Orange screamed and throbbed from two sides of the room, and Mr. Williams produced unearthly yodellings from under the Welsh dresser.

But the Beast kept coming. It dragged its massive hind quarters through the door and then pulled in its long tail. The room was filling with its smell, something like tomcat and something like rotten rat, and it was beginning to rise to its hind feet, when the passage door slammed open and Henry snapped on the lights. “What … ?” he began.

We all blinked and stared in the dazzle for a moment. I think that was the worst moment of all. There was a human sort of face on the front of the Beast's head, blinking enormous cat's eyes, and the face was surrounded in filthy, tangled hair. It had mangy little wings dangling from its huge shoulders. Its body had patches of elderly fur on it, clinging to bare, dirty, wrinkled skin. Everything about it was old, old and decaying. The claws on the ends of its great feet were stuck with rotting meat and shreds of grass, and they were splitting with age underneath.

But the worst of it was that we all recognized the face.

“
Fara
?” Henry said. “My God, you're the Sphinx!”

The Beast opened its mouth, full of blue-rotting fangs, and chuckled. Oh, Henry! I thought. I'm
sorry.
I got it here. I'll never bully you again if you can only just get
rid
of it!

“You're going to ask a riddle,” Henry said shakily. “Don't bother. You're going to ask what goes on four legs at dawn, on two legs at midday, and three legs in the evening. And I know the answer. It's a man.”

The Beast chuckled again. “Wrong,” it said. It had a flat, cold voice. “I
used
to ask one riddle. Now I ask three. And I'm not going to ask
you.
I'm going to ask that conniving little spotted pet of yours, up there on top of the shelves. And when she can't answer, I shall be free to tear the lot of you to pieces. I shall gut the cats in front of you and then make you swallow those kittens before I tear your head off. Are you ready to answer, plague-spot?”

I quivered all over at this. I thought I knew now why Bastet had made me remember those three nonsense sayings. “Ask away,” I said, and licked at my shoulder to make my nervous fur lie flatter.

The Beast said, “Why is a mouse when it spins?”

“Oh, I know that one!” Henry said, and he and I answered together, “
The higher the fewer.
” I couldn't think how he came to know it. It made much more sense to a cat than a human. “And?” I said.

The Beast grinned, filling the air with bad-meat smell. “When is ceramic begonias?” it said.

“That makes no sense to me,” Henry said. It didn't to me, either. Nor did the answer.

“
Chocolate herrings are impure,
” I said. And I guessed that the riddles—and their answers—were the result of an ancient, tired, rotting brain. In the electric light, the Beast looked older than any creature I had ever seen. Its Fara-face was all sags and wrinkles. “And your third?” I asked. This is all back to front, I thought. I am Turandot the princess and I should be asking the riddles. Has Henry told me the opera wrong?