But Gobbolino had not the heart to bring sorrow to anyone, however false. At the sight of their distress his beautiful blue eyes filled with tears, and he told them:“Indeed, indeed, it is not true!” although his mistress beat him every time he did so.
And he did not like to see the pretty girls bringing their hard-earned pence to the pedlar-woman to exchange for ribbons, satins, and pieces of silk. He knew that the first time they tied up their hair with the ribbons, and met their lovers decked out in their new silk dresses, the ribbons would rot to shreds, and the dresses fall into fragments, for such was the witch’s treachery.
“Don’t buy! Don’t buy!” he entreated them, but few would listen to him, and when she heard him at it the pedlar-woman boxed his ears.
At last their travels brought them to the foot of a high mountain range which the pedlar-woman told him would have to be crossed.
It seemed very high and dangerous to Gobbolino, but the donkey, who seldom spoke a word, assured him that there was a zig-zag path leading to the summit and down again the other side, and on the top there was a cave belonging to another witch, where they would probably spend the night.
Gobbolino looked forward rather fearfully to spending a night in another witch’s cavern.
“But after all,” he said to himself, “what else can I expect? Who am I to expect anything different? How ungrateful I am! – and how wicked! It comes of being born a witch’s cat, I suppose. I had better spend the rest of my life being a proper one.”
But nothing could make him harm people willingly, and the savage blackness of the mountains, the icy torrents, and the dark cavern filled him with dread.
Up and up they climbed, the pedlar-woman first, leading the little donkey, and Gobbolino last, on his three black paws, limping slightly on the white one that he had bruised with a stone.
“Perhaps one day we shall see the green fields and sunshine again!” he told himself. “And oh! How welcome they will be after this dreary witch-country!”
The higher they climbed the wilder the country became, and presently Gobbolino had the strange sensation that he had been here before.
He could not make it out at all.
“It comes of being born a witch’s cat, I suppose,” he said to himself. “Something inside me recognizes all this savagery, but oh! How dreary it is and how lonely!”
But the sensation grew stronger and stronger, till all of a sudden the mouth of an immense cavern yawned before them, at the entrance of which sat a black cat with emerald eyes, whom, in spite of her size, he recognized directly.
It was his little sister Sootica, and he was back on the Hurricane Mountains!
She knew him too, and her astonished cry of:“Gobbolino! My brother!” brought her mistress hurrying to the door of the cavern.
Gobbolino remembered her well, for she had not changed like his sister Sootica, whose sleek black coat, bright eyes, and forest of whiskers showed how much she enjoyed being a witch’s cat.
Once her surprise was over she looked him up and down, while the witches went into the cavern together.
“You have not grown so very much, brother!” she told him. “Your coat is almost tabby, your eyes are still blue, and only three of your paws are black. What are you doing tramping round with that old pedlar-woman, instead of living with a proper witch?”
Gobbolino had so much to tell her that he did not know where to begin.
He could only stand and look at her with joy shining in his beautiful blue eyes, as he purred over and over again:
“Oh, sister! How glad I am to see you! How well you look, and how happy! Oh, what good fortune to meet you again in this fashion, my dear sister Sootica!”
At that moment the witch called them inside to have supper, and soon the two young cats were sharing a bowl of soup, ladled out of the familiar cauldron by the witch of the Hurricane Mountains.
“And how have you been getting on, my little man?” she asked Gobbolino, when the dishes were empty. “You can see for yourself what a fine cat your sister has become. She has learned nearly all that I can teach her. Show them some of your tricks, Sootica my dear!”
Sootica at once went through some of the more difficult tricks of witchcraft. She made beautiful music come out of the cauldron and flying pigs swoop about the room like dragonflies.
She turned Gobbolino a bright scarlet colour, which he did not like at all, and made his own mistress invisible. All this she did without winking an eyelid, so clever had she become.
“Now, show us what you can do, Gobbolino!” said the witch of the Hurricane Mountains.
“Oh, he cannot do anything at all!” said the pedlar-woman scornfully. “If you say he is brother to this handsome Sootica of yours you may be right, but he is no true witch’s cat. He cannot even tell fortunes – any kitten could beat him at it. And as for his tricks, la! They are not worth a chicken’s liver, sister!”
Gobbolino was so angry at her scorn, and so anxious to show his little sister Sootica that he was quite a fine fellow after all, that he began to tell the story of his adventures, beginning with his swim down the river, right down to his being sold by the woodcutter’s granddaughter for a dress of gold satin.
“And here I am!” ended Gobbolino modestly, looking for his sister’s praise, but she and the two witches were looking coldly at him.
“There is nothing in all your adventures that is worthy of a witch’s cat,” said the witch of the Hurricane Mountains. “If your mother, Grimalkin, knew what a poor thing she had reared, she would have drowned you at birth. Bah! Get into the corner there, and let us hear no more of your sillyvoice. Witch’s cat indeed! You have the heart of a common kitchen mouser!”
Gobbolino sighed deeply as he wished the many homes that had rejected him had thought the same, but he crawled obediently into the corner and slept, while the two witches and his sister Sootica talked witchcraft half the night.
When Gobbolino awoke it was broad morning.
The fire beneath the cauldron was out, and the cavern was lit by the sun’s warm rays that sent the spiders scuttling to their holes, and shamed the dusty cobwebs hanging in festoons across the craggy roof.
Wrapped in her cloak, the witch of the Hurricane Mountains snored in a corner. Sootica slept at her side, her green eyes tightly closed, but Gobbolino could not see the pedlar-woman anywhere.
He was wide awake so he thought he would go outside and talk to the donkey, but when he trotted outside, it was nowhere to be seen either.
He looked high and low, but there were only jagged rocks and precipices with a couple of ravens sitting on a nearby pinnacle that croaked at him and flapped their wings and croaked again.
Gobbolino trotted a short way up the path, but there was no sign of the donkey anywhere, so he trotted back again and sat on the threshold of the cavern basking in the sunshine, and waiting for the pedlar-woman to come and tell him where the donkey was.
The day went by and the pedlar-woman did not come. The witch and Gobbolino’s little sister Sootica slept on too, while the sun mounted slowly, slowly over the top of the Hurricane Mountains, and began slowly, slowly to descend the other side.
Gobbolino sat in the entrance to the cavern basking in the sunshine and waiting for the donkey or the pedlar-woman to appear, but neither of them came, and presently long shadows crept up the side of the Hurricane Mountains and touched Gobbolino’s toes with their cold blue fingers, so that he scuttled inside the cavern to escape the evening chill.
His little sister Sootica was just stirring in her corner, stretching her long and shining claws, blinking her green eyes and yawning widely as she said:
“Good-day, brother! I hope you slept well? No unpleasant dreams, I trust?”
“Oh, very well, thank you, sister,” replied Gobbolino, glad to have company at last. “And you too, I hope? You have certainly slept very late.”