Unexpected Magic (37 page)

“The third,” said the Beast, “is, Who kills as lion and as human wins?”

“
The Beast of Ettmoor
!” I cried out. “Now I can tear
you
to pieces!” And I was so exultant that I sprang straight down from my perch near the ceiling to the top of the Beast's head, where I began scratching and tearing at its dirty mane with all four feet. Looking back, I can't think how I came to do anything so silly. I became totally entangled in long, filthy hair. I couldn't get loose. All I could think of to do then was to sink my teeth into its nearest smelly ear. The Beast screeched and swiped at me with its claws.

The outside door crashed open, shoved by Great-aunt Harriet's stick. I think she had been getting into her clothes ever since she heard Mr. Williams shrieking. She stormed in now, shouting, “What have you done to my poor little Willy-diddums?” and whacked at the Beast with her stick. Bang, bang. Clout. Feathers, dust, and hairs whirled.

Henry, who was in a toweling dressing gown and his bare feet, danced about uncertainly for a moment and then seized the nearest chair—revealing Madam Dalrymple, who ran for her life—and began bashing at the Beast with it from the other side. I could feel the Beast try to protect itself with magic. Henry replied with more magic, such a furious gust of it that the chair he was wielding sizzled and the long hair wrapped around me stood out like rods. That was too much for the Beast. It turned and dived for the door.

I was thrown aside as it crashed outside. I was flung across something hard. I was so winded and frightened that it took me a second to realize that I was spread-eagled across the Coop, which Big Dot must have brought near the kitchen when she moved her kittens into it. In that second, the Beast ran, bounding into the darkness on four legs, and Claws and Orange went pelting after it as hard as they could go. Maybe they were inspired by my example. On the other hand, they never could resist chasing anything that ran. And almost in the same moment, Great-aunt Harriet galloped outside and flung herself sidesaddle across the Coop.

“After it, after it! Make this thing move, Little Dot!” she shouted, bashing the wooden side with her stick.

While I was pulling myself to my feet, Mr. Williams landed on the Coop, too, and clung to Great-aunt Harriet's lap. He explained afterward that although the magic made him feel as if his teeth were coming loose, he had to come because Great-aunt Harriet was not behaving normally. “And one has to look after one's humans,” he said.

I started the Coop and we trundled toward the gate. By then, Henry was mincing after us, gasping when he trod on a nettle, shouting, “No! Stop! That Beast is a killer!” but we were getting up speed by then and, what with one thing and another, I was too dazed to stop.

Catsong came throbbing out of the night. When we swept out into the road, I saw Claws and Orange crouching in the way that led uphill, while the Beast hovered, wondering whether to kill them and go past, or turn the other way. That was clever of Claws and Orange, and brave, too. If the Beast had fled up into the hills, it might have been loose forever. But it saw us coming and turned downhill. It galloped away at astonishing speed. But, as I have explained, before long the Coop got up to astonishing speed too. We fair zoomed along, and began catching up steadily to the great dark shape galloping ahead.

“We're gaining!” Great-aunt Harriet shrieked, beating on the Coop. “Go faster! Faster!”

We were still a good fifty yards away when strong lights shone out from either side of the road, pinning the Beast in their glare. It faltered. There was a
BOOM
like the end of the world and several
crack-crack-cracks
, followed by echoes that bounced around the hills until I could hardly hear straight. The Beast jumped up in a great arch and flopped back on the road, where I thought it came into several pieces. I was so shocked that I stopped the Coop dead. We came down with a crunch.

“What happened?” I said.

“Oh good!” said Great-aunt Harriet. “I mean, oh dear. I think the farmers shot it.”

One of the hatches in the Coop slid aside and Big Dot stepped out. “I'll go and make sure,” she said, and went trotting along toward the lights and the shapes of men and guns.

“Does that mean her kittens are in this Coop?” Great-aunt Harriet said. “How
inconsiderate
of me! I hope the poor little things are all right.”

“They will be, or she wouldn't have left them,” Mr. Williams said soothingly.

Here Henry came limping up. But, to my huge indignation, he limped straight on past us, saying, “I'd better go and make sure they think they've just shot a lion. Take the Coop back to the yard, Little Dot.”

He passed Big Dot coming back. She said, “They used such a big gun that they blew her into several bits,” and climbed back in with her kittens again.

I took the Coop back to the kitchen door, where Great-aunt Harriet scrambled down, saying things about bottles and glasses and seeing to Mr. Williams's wounds. “Nothing! Just a scratch! I don't need seeing to!” I heard him saying as she banged the kitchen door shut. It took her three attempts. It was half off its hinges.

I waited, sitting on the Coop listening to Big Dot purring inside. I waited while Claws and Orange returned, very pleased with themselves. Henry was so long coming back that I got anxious. Suppose the Beast had just been faking dead and went for his throat when he got near. Then it would all be my fault. I set off out of the yard and down the road to look for him.

I'd only gone twenty yards or so, when there
was
Henry, limping along with a crowd of farmers, bringing them back to the farm for a drink. Exasperating. I sat down in the road and curled my tail primly around my legs.

Henry saw me and dashed forward, quite forgetting his sore bare feet. “Little Dot!” he cried out. And I forgot to be exasperated and leaped up his front into his arms and draped over his shoulder, purring. “There's my brave Turandot!” Henry said.

“You keep getting things the wrong way around,” I said. “I am not
your
Turandot. You are
my
Henry. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” he said.

Everard's Ride

T
he events in this story took place rather more than a hundred years ago, when Queen Victoria was on the throne and the division between rich and poor was much more important than it now is. Your grandfather's grandfather would then have been a boy of twelve, like the boy to whom these things happened.

His name was Alex Hornby; and it was his misfortune to occupy the uncomfortable upper end of that gap between rich and poor, where you were not quite gentry, but too well off to be anything else. His father, Josiah Hornby, was a farmer. The family lived in a low stone farmhouse halfway up a hill, looking out across a great river estuary. From the foot of the hill a long causeway ran out into the bay, to a small rocky island on which stood the ruins of a castle. So, though all their fires smoked in the sea-wind, they had the grandest view in the neighborhood. Above the farmhouse, the top of the hill had been cleared of trees, ready for the great new house Josiah Hornby intended to build the following summer.

Josiah, who was, like many Victorians, a grim and striving person, was changing into a gentleman-farmer as fast as he could afford to do it. He was a fairly wealthy man already. Twenty years or so before, he had bought shares in the railway which ran all around the bay beside the sea, and his shares had prospered. He had bought shares in other things. At the same time, out of what he had been paid for letting the railway run through his land, he bought the island in the bay. He had it for a song, because its owner was hard up, and because it was said to be haunted. But Josiah cared not a rap for ghosts, or gossip. He bought the island because it was cheap and because of its ruined castle. It was grand and gentlemanly, he thought, to own a castle.

Alex and his sister, Cecilia, were pleased with the castle, too, although they were not pleased with much else about starting to be rich. It meant that Alex had to go as a weekly boarder to a grammar school in the nearest big town. It meant that Cecilia had a governess. It meant—which was worst of all—that they dropped homely friends in the village and tried to be on visiting-terms with the Courcys of Arnforth Hall. The Courcys noticed them—just. Josiah went to the Hall once a week on business. The children were called in from time to time if more guests were needed at the Courcy children's parties. Cecilia had once refused to go to a Courcy party. Her father had been so angry that Alex hid in the loft and Cecilia set out across the bay to run away and make her fortune. She did not get very far that time. Josiah came after her on horseback and spanked her, right in the middle of the bay, beside the river channel.

The strange things began to happen just before Christmas, when Cecilia had turned sixteen. The governess had gone the week before. Cecilia was still in trouble about it.

“Mr. Hornby,” said the governess, standing up like a frozen steel ramrod and clasping her mittens in front of her, “I will not stay a day longer in the same house with that girl of yours. She is wild, impertinent, and disorderly. She is quite unteachable and utterly unladylike. I leave this evening.”

“Dash and bother it, madam!” cried Josiah Hornby. “Remember the child has no mother. What has she done?”

“I refuse to bear tales,” the governess said. “Kindly order the pony-trap around in time for the London train.”