“Do what for you?” I said. I was scared again, but I stretched as if I didn’t care. I do not like to be bullied. You should remember that.
“Go to the cellar in my invisible sack and tell Boy where the golden ball is,” Good Thing said. “Tell him to fetch it out of the floor and give it to you.”
I stretched again and strolled past Old Man. His face was scratched all over, I was glad to see, but he was collecting things to work spells with now. I strolled quite fast to the cellar door. There Good Thing scooped me up and went inside, in near dark. Boy was sitting against the wall.
“Nice of you to come,” he said. “Will Good Thing fetch Princess again tonight?” He did not think there was any danger. He was used to Old Man behaving like this. But I thought of my kittens. I showed him the place where the golden ball had got lost down the crack. I could see it shining down there. It took me ages to persuade Boy to dig it out, and even then he only worked at it idly, thinking of Princess. He could only get at it with one little finger, which made it almost too difficult for him to bother.
I heard Old Man coming downstairs. I am ashamed to say that I bit Boy, quite hard, on the thumb of the hand he was digging with. He went “Ow!” and jerked, and the ball flew rolling into a corner. I raced after it.
“Put it in your mouth. Hide it!” said Good Thing.
I did. It was hard not to swallow it. Then, when I didn’t swallow, it was hard not to spit it out. Cats are made to do one or the other. I had to pretend it was a piece of meat I was taking to my kittens. I sat in the corner, in the dark, while Old Man came in and locked the door and lit the tripod lamp.
“If you need Brindle,” Boy said, sulkily sucking his hand, “you can look for her. She bit me.”
“This doesn’t need a cat,” Old Man said. Boy and I were both astonished. “It just needs you,” he told Boy. “This is the life transfer spell I was trying on the black cat. This time I know how to get it right.”
“But you said you couldn’t do it without a special powder!” Boy said.
Old Man giggled. “What do you think I’ve been away looking for all this year?” he asked. “I’ve got a whole jar of it! With it, I shall put myself into your body and you into my body, and then I shall kill this old body off. I won’t need it or you after that. I shall be young and handsome, and I shall live for years. Stand up. Get into the pentangle.”
“Blowed if I shall!” said Boy.
But Old Man did spells and made him. It took a long time because Boy resisted even harder than I usually did and shouted spells back. In the end Old Man cast a spell that made Boy stand still and drew the five-pointed star around him, not in the usual place.
“I shall kill my old body with you inside it rather slowly for that,” he said to Boy. Then he drew another star, a short way off. “This is for my bride,” he said, giggling again. “I took her into my power ten years ago, and by now she’ll be a lovely young woman.” Then he drew a third star, overlapping Boy’s, for himself, and stood in it chuckling. “Let it start!” he cried out, and threw the strong, smelly black powder on the tripod. Everything went green-dark. When the green went, Princess was standing in the empty star.
“Oh, it’s you!” she and Boy both said.
“Aha!” said Old Man. “Hee-hee! So you and she know one another, do you? How you did it, boy, I won’t inquire, but it makes things much easier for me.” He began on his chanting.
“Give the golden ball to Princess,” Good Thing said to me. “Hurry. Make Boy tell her to swallow it.”
I ran across to Princess and spit the golden ball into her star. She pulled her skirt back from it.
“Brindle wants you to swallow it,” Boy said. “I think it’s important.”
People are peculiar. Princess must have known it was very important, but she said faintly, “I can’t! Not something that’s been in a cat’s mouth!”
Old Man saw the golden ball. He glared, still chanting, and raised his stick. The ball floated up and came toward him. Princess gave a last despairing snatch and caught it, just in time. She put it in her mouth.
“Ah! Back again!” said Good Thing.
Princess swallowed. She changed. She had been nice before but sort of stupid. Now she was nice and as clever as Boy. “You toad!” she said to Old Man. “That was part of my soul! You took it, didn’t you?”
Old Man raised his stick again. Princess held up both hands. Magic raged, strong enough to make my fur stand up, and Old Man did not seem to be able to do much at first. It was interesting. Princess had magic, too, only I think it had all gone into Good Thing. But not quite enough. She started to lose. “Help me!” she said to Boy.
Boy started to say a spell, but at that moment the door of the cellar burst open, and half the wall fell in with it. The Man rushed in with a crowd of others.
“Father!” said Princess. “Thank goodness!”
“Are you all right?” said the Man. “We traced you through those kittens. What are you trying to do here, Old Man? The life transfer, is it? Well, that’s enough of that!” The Man made signs that stood my coat up on end again.
Old Man screamed. I could tell he was dying. The spell had somehow turned back on him. He was withering and shrinking and getting older and older. Boy jumped out of his star and ran to Princess. They both looked very happy. Old Man snarled at them, but he could do nothing but round on me. Everyone does that. They all kick the cat when they can’t kick a person. “So you had kittens!” he screamed. “This is all your fault, cat! For that, you shall have kittens to drown for the next thousand years!”
“I soften that curse!” the Man shouted.
Then everything went away, and I was not in the town I knew anymore. I have been wandering about, all these years, ever since. Old Man’s curse means that I am good at having kittens. It is not a bad curse because the Man has softened it. Old Man meant my kittens to be drowned every time. But instead, if I can find an understanding person—like you—who will listen to my story, then my kittens will have good homes, and so will I for a time. You won’t mind. They’ll be beautiful kittens. They always are. You’ll see very soon now. After supper.
NAD AND DAN ADN QUAFFY
She had struggled rather as a writer until she got her word processor. Or not exactly struggled, she thought, frowning at her screen and flipping the cursor back to correct adn to and. For some reason, she always garbled the word and. It was always adn or nad; dna or nda was less frequent, but all of them appeared far oftener than the right way. She had only started to make this mistake after she gave up her typewriter, and she felt it was a small price to pay.
For years she had written what seemed to her the most stirring sort of novels, about lonely aliens among humans, or lonely humans among aliens, or sometimes both kinds lonely in an unkind world, all without ever quite hitting the response from readers she felt she was worth. Then came her divorce, which left her with custody of her son, Daniel, then thirteen. That probably provided an impetus of some sort in itself, for Danny was probably the most critical boy alive.
“Mum!” he would say. “I wish you’d give up that lonely-heart alien stuff! Can’t you write about something decent for a change?” Or, staring at her best efforts at cookery, he said, “I can’t be expected to eat this!” After which he had taken over cooking himself: they now lived on chili con carne and stir-fry. For as Danny said, “A man can’t be expected to learn more than one dish a year.” At the moment, being nearly fifteen, Danny was teaching himself curry. Their nice Highgate house reeked of burned garam masala most of the time.