Part 6 (2/2)

”No,” said Mary. ”Your sister's been hard at it again. And where she gets the strength from, a little girl like her, beats me!”

Feeling tired and Mondayish, Cat dragged himself out of bed and found he could not see out of the windows. Each window was a dark crisscross of branches and leaves-green leaves, bluish cedar sprays, pine needles, and leaves just turning yellow and brown. One window had a rose pressed against it, and there were bunches of grapes squashed on both of the others. And behind them, it looked as if there was a mile-thick forest. ”Good Lord!” he said.

”You may well look!” said Mary. ”That sister of yours has fetched every tree in the grounds and stood them as close as they can get to the Castle. You wonder what she'll think of next.”

The darkness made Cat weary and gloomy. He did not want to get dressed. But Mary stood over him, and made him wash too. The reason she was so dutiful, Cat suspected, was that she wanted to tell someone all about the difficulties the trees were causing. She told Cat that the yew trees from the formalgarden were packed so tight by the kitchen door that the men had to hack a path for the milk to come through. There were three oak trees against the main front door, and no one could budge it. ”And the apples are all underfoot among the yew trees, so it smells like a cider press in the kitchen,” Mary said.

When Cat arrived wearily in the playroom, it was even darker there. In the deep greenish light, he could see that Gwendolen was, understandably, white and tired. But she looked satisfied enough.

”I don't think I like these trees,” Cat whispered to her when Roger and Julia had gone through to the schoolroom. ”Why couldn't you do something smaller and funnier?”

”Because I'm not a laughingstock!” Gwendolen hissed back. ”And I needed to do it. I had to know how much power I could draw on.”

”Quite a lot, I should think,” Cat said, looking at the ma.s.s of horse-chestnut leaves pressed against the window.

Gwendolen smiled. ”Better still when I've got my dragons' blood.”

Cat nearly blurted out that he had seen dragons' blood in Mr. Saunders' workshop. But he stopped himself in time. He did not care for mighty works like this.

They spent another morning with the lights on, and at lunchtime, Cat, Julia, and Roger went out to have a look at the trees. They were disappointed to find that it was quite easy to get out of their private door.

The rhododendrons were three feet away from it. Cat thought Gwendolen must intentionally have left them a way out, until he looked up and saw, from their bent branches and mashed leaves, that the bushes had indeed been squashed against the door earlier. It looked as if the trees were retreating.

Beyond the rhododendrons, they had to fight their way through something like a jungle. The trees were rammed so tight that, not only had twigs and leaves broken off by cartloads, but great branches had been torn away too, and fallen tangled with smashed roses, broken clematis, and mangled grapes. When the children tore themselves out on the other side of the jungle, blank daylight hit them like a hammer blow.

They blinked. The gardens, the village, and even the hills beyond were bald. The only place where they could still see trees was above the old, gray, ruined wall of Chrestomanci's garden.

”It must have been a strong spell,” said Roger.

”It's like a desert,” said Julia. ”I never thought I'd miss the trees so much!”

But halfway through the afternoon it became clear that the trees were going back to their proper places.

They could see sky through the schoolroom window. A little later the trees had spread out and retreated so much that Mr. Saunders turned the light off. Shortly after that Cat and Roger noticed the ruins of the tree house, smashed to bits in the crowding, dangling-out of a chestnut tree.

”Now what are you staring at?” said Mr. Saunders.

”The tree house is broken,” Roger said, looking moodily at Gwendolen.

”Perhaps Gwendolen would be kind enough to mend it again,” Mr. Saunders suggested sarcastically.

If he was trying to goad Gwendolen into doing a kindly act, he failed. Gwendolen tossed her head. ”Tree houses are stupid babyish things,” she said coldly. She was very annoyed at the way the trees were retreating. ”It's too bad!” she told Cat just before dinner. By that time the trees were almost back to their usual places. The only ones nearer than they should be were those on the hill opposite. The view looked smaller, somehow. ”I hoped it would do for tomorrow too,” Gwendolen said discontentedly. ”Now Ishall have to think of something else.”

”Who sent them back? The garden warlocks?” Cat asked.

”I wish you wouldn't talk nonsense,” said Gwendolen. ”It's obvious who did it.”

”You mean Mr. Saunders?” said Cat. ”But couldn't the spell have been used up just pulling all the trees here?”

”You don't know a thing about it,” said Gwendolen.

Cat knew he knew nothing of magic, but he found it queer all the same. The next day, when he went to see, there were no fallen twigs, torn-off branches, or squashed grapes anywhere. The yew trees in the formal garden did not seem to have been hacked at all. And though there was not a trace of an apple underfoot around the kitchen, there were boxes of firm, round apples in the courtyard. In the orchard, the apples were all either hanging on the trees or being picked and put in more boxes.

While Cat was finding this out, he had to flatten himself hastily against one of the hedge-like apple trees to make way for a galloping Jersey cow pursued by two gardeners and a farm boy. There were cows galloping in the wood when Cat went hopefully to look at the tree house. Alas, that was still a ruin. And the cows were doing their best to ruin the flowerbeds and not making much impression.

”Did you do the cows?” he asked Gwendolen.

”Yes. But it was just something to show them I'm not giving up,” said Gwendolen. ”I shall get my dragons'

blood tomorrow and then I can do something really impressive.”

8.

Gwendolen went down to the village to get her dragons' blood on Wednesday afternoon. She was in high glee. There were to be guests that night at the Castle and a big dinner party. Cat knew that everyone had carefully not mentioned it before, for fear Gwendolen would take advantage of it. But she had to be told on Wednesday morning because there were special arrangements for the children. They were to have their supper in the playroom, and they were supposed to keep out of the way after that.

”I'll keep out of the way, all right,” Gwendolen promised. ”But that won't make any difference.” She chuckled about it all the way to the village.

Cat was embarra.s.sed when they got to the village. Everyone avoided Gwendolen. Mothers dragged their children indoors and s.n.a.t.c.hed babies out of her way. Gwendolen hardly noticed. She was too intent on getting to Mr. Baslam and getting her dragons' blood. Cat did not fancy Mr. Baslam, or the decaying pickle smell among his stuffed animals. He let Gwendolen go there on her own, and went to mail his postcard to Mrs. Sharp in the sweet shop. The people there were rather cool with him, even though he spent nearly two s.h.i.+llings on sweets, and they were positively cold in the cake shop next door. When Cat came out onto the green with his parcels, he found that children were being s.n.a.t.c.hed out of his way too.

This so shamed Cat that he fled back to the Castle grounds and did not wait for Gwendolen. There he wandered moodily, eating toffees and penny buns, and wis.h.i.+ng he was back with Mrs. Sharp. From time to time he saw Gwendolen in the distance. Sometimes she was das.h.i.+ng about. Sometimes she was squatting under a tree, carefully doing something. Cat did not go near her. If they were back with Mrs.

Sharp, he thought, Gwendolen would not need to do whatever impressive thing she was planning. He found himself wis.h.i.+ng she was not quite such a strong and determined witch. He tried to imagine a Gwendolen who was not a witch, but he found himself quite unable to. She just would not beGwendolen.

Indoors, the usual silence of the Castle was not quite the same. There were tense little noises, and the thrumming feeling of people diligently busy just out of earshot. Cat knew it was going to be a big, important dinner party.

After supper, he craned out of Gwendolen's window watching the guests come up the piece of avenue he could see from there. They came in carriages and in cars, all very large and rich-looking. One carriage was drawn by six white horses and looked so impressive that Cat wondered if it might not even be the King.

”All the better,” said Gwendolen. She was squatting in the middle of the carpet, beside a sheet of paper.

At one end of the paper was a bowl of ingredients. At the other crawled, wriggled, or lay a horrid heap of things. Gwendolen had collected two frogs, an earthworm, several earwigs, a black beetle, a spider, and a little pile of bones. The live things were charmed and could not move off the paper.

As soon as Cat was sure that there were no more carriages arriving, Gwendolen began pounding the ingredients together in the bowl. As she pounded, she muttered things in a groaning hum, and her hair hung down and quivered over the bowl. Cat looked at the wriggling, hopping creatures and hoped that they were not going to be pounded up as ingredients too. It seemed not. Gwendolen at length sat back on her heels and said, ”Now!”

She snapped her fingers over the bowl. The ingredients caught fire, all by themselves, and burned with small blue flames. ”It's working!” Gwendolen said excitedly. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a twist of newspaper from beside her and carefully untwisted it. ”Now for a pinch of dragons' blood.” She took a pinch of the dark brown powder and sprinkled it on the flames. There was a fizzing, and a thick smell of burning. Then the flames leaped up, a foot high, blazing a furious green and purple, coloring the whole room with dancing light.

Gwendolen's face glowed in the green and purple. She rocked on her heels, chanting, chanting strings of things Cat could not understand. Then, still chanting, she leaned over and touched the spider. The spider grew. And grew. And grew more. It grew into a five-foot monster-a greasy roundness with two little eyes on the front, hanging like a hammock amid eight bent and jointed furry legs. Gwendolen pointed.

The door of her room sprang open of its own accord-which made her smile exultantly-and the huge spider went silently creeping towards it, swaying on its hairy legs. It squeezed its legs inward to get through the door, and crept onward, down the pa.s.sage beyond.

Gwendolen touched the other creatures, one by one. The earwigs lumbered up and off, like s.h.i.+ny horned cows, bright brown and glistening. The frogs rose up, as big as men, and walked flap, flop on their enormous feet, with their arms trailing like gorillas. Their mottled skin quivered, and little holes in it kept opening and shutting. The puffy place under their chins made gulping movements. The black beetle crawled on branched legs, such a big black slab that it could barely get through the door. Cat could see it, and all the others, going in a slow, silent procession down the gra.s.s-green glowing corridor.

”Where are they going?” he whispered.

Gwendolen chuckled. ”I'm sending them to the dining room, of course. I don't think the guests will want much supper.”

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