Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘It’s called Sticky-End Cottage now,’ Scarlett said.

  ‘Well, first thing tomorrow I’ll ask the Good Witches’ Society to find out who lives there.’

  After the two witches had gone, Mephisto told Cosmo it was time he got some rest. India had already curled up for the night on top of Goody and Gabriel’s bed, and Mephisto told Cosmo to go upstairs and join her. ‘You’ve got a big day ahead tomorrow,’ Mephisto reminded his kitten, ‘and you should be trying to get as much sleep as possible – not racing around after stray broomsticks.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ Cosmo replied meekly. He was always being told by his parents that sleep was very important, and that every cat must try and fit as much of it as possible into its daily routine. The trouble was, Cosmo thought as he bounded upstairs, a lot of the time life was so exciting that you couldn’t help wanting to stay awake.

  At Sticky-End Cottage the telephone was ringing. Selina Slaughter, who had lived there since the Broom sisters had been forced to move out, hurried to answer it. She was feeling grumpy because she had just given her white mice some Stilton cheese for their supper as a special treat and they had rather ungratefully left it untouched, saying that they preferred cheddar.

  ‘You’re lucky I feed you anything at all!’ she shouted at them as she went to answer the phone. ‘One of these days I’m going to feed you as supper to the local cats! Do you think they’ll complain? Oh, Selina, I’m afraid we don’t really like white mice – we only eat grey ones. I don’t think so!’

  She picked up the phone and found that the person at the other end was Murdina Broom.

  ‘We’re only allowed one phone call a week, so Sybil’s asked me to ring you on her behalf,’ Murdina said, keeping her voice low. ‘She wants to know if you managed to recover her broomstick?’

  ‘Of course I have – it’s just arrived,’ Selina replied, feeling a little irritated at being checked up on.

  ‘Excellent. Well, I’m going to need a broom as well, and since there should be a couple of spare ones kicking about in the basement of my cottage I was wondering if—’

  ‘Don’t you mean my cottage?’ Selina interrupted her coldly.

  ‘What? Oh, yes, yes . . . of course . . . I keep forgetting . . . anyway, if you could bring me one too I’d be most grateful.’ Murdina dropped her voice even further as she added, ‘Sybil also wants to let you know that the Great Escape must take place tomorrow!’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow is community-service day. She says we can’t wait another week until the next one – the magic in the toenails might have worn off by then.’

  ‘But I haven’t collected the hairballs yet!’

  ‘Well, surely you can do that tomorrow morning. And one more thing . . . Sybil thinks that we ought to provide some sort of extra distraction for that interfering Two-Shoes family, just to make sure they stay out of our way. We’ve already agreed to send a nasty spell in the direction of baby Spike – but Sybil’s just had another idea. She says that the Two-Shoes family have a daughter and she thinks it might be a good idea to kidnap her. Sybil knows you’re busy, but she was wondering if she could trouble you to arrange that as well.’

  Selina quickly assured Murdina that kidnapping Scarlett Two-Shoes would be no trouble at all. ‘On the contrary, it will be an absolute pleasure!’ she said, smiling at the thought of it.

  And the two witches had a very pleasant cackle together until Murdina’s phone credit ran out and she was obliged to hang up.

  The following morning, the ten kittens and ten adult cats who had been chosen as catwalk finalists were all waiting in the school assembly hall for the judges to appear. Neither Mia nor the adult cat who still owed its entry fee had managed to produce a hairball yet, though the adult – a handsome black cat with a white moustache who went by the name of Albert-of-the-street – swore that he could feel one sitting in his tummy. ‘I’m sure I’ll have it out by lunchtime at the latest,’ he told the others confidently.

  ‘You’d better or you’ll be disqualified from the competition,’ piped up a fluffy grey kitten (who might have had a bit of Persian in him, but certainly not a lot). ‘And so will you, Mia!’ the kitten added, looking quite pleased at the prospect of losing one of his rivals.

  The adult Persian, whose name was Tallulah Poppypuss, was standing a little apart from the others, licking her front paws. ‘This competition is not just about winning, you know,’ she said in a very silky voice. ‘It’s a celebration of feline-ness!’

  ‘Yeah . . . right . . .’ Albert-of-the-street replied, looking as if he thought the Persian was totally dippy.

  The cats all fell silent as the three judges and Meowface entered the room.

  ‘Welcome to Cleo Cattrap’s Catwalk Finals,’ Cleo announced grandly, walking around the group of cats as he spoke.

  Cosmo noticed that he avoided looking at Tallulah, whose big blue eyes seemed full of admiration for him.

  ‘First we will have a rehearsal, so that you all know how to behave on the catwalk,’ Cleo told them. ‘The kittens will rehearse first, then they can go off and play while I spend the rest of the morning with the adults. The competition itself will start at midday. Meowface has been telling all the neighbouring cats about it, so we are expecting a large audience.’

  For the next hour Cosmo and the other kittens practised how to walk along the catwalk bench in as elegant a manner as possible – and how to pause dramatically at the end and lift one paw fetchingly off the ground, posing like that for several seconds in front of the audience. ‘You must keep your faces very serious-looking the whole time,’ Cleo told them. ‘No grinning is allowed, and any cat who gets a bushy tail will be disqualified.’

  ‘And no chasing your tails – or anybody else’s,’ Felina added, looking sternly at her daughter.

  Hagnus was already so excited that the fur on his tail was starting to stand on end, and now he had to lick it furiously to get it to stay flat. Matty, who was watching from the side, rushed over to help him.

  After the kittens had finished rehearsing, Meowface told Cosmo that his mother was waiting to speak to him. Apparently she was feeling too heavy to jump through the toilet window today, and she wanted him to meet her outside instead.

  India told Cosmo that Scarlett had just called at the house. ‘Bunty wanted her to take me to see the vet, would you believe?’ India miaowed indignantly. ‘Apparently it’s suddenly occurred to her that I might be pregnant. Well, if she thinks she’s getting me anywhere near that dreadful-smelling vet with all his needles and his waiting room full of nasty yapping dogs, she’s quite wrong. Fortunately I managed to escape through the cat flap while the child was off hunting for the cat-carrier.’ India paused to lick her tummy protectively before continuing. ‘But Scarlett had something she wanted to tell you, Cosmo. She kept rambling on about some cottage you’d been to together, and how she’d found out something important about the witch who lives there.’

  Cosmo’s ears pricked up. ‘I’d better go and speak to her,’ he said. ‘Mother, will you tell Meowface I’ll be back in time for the competition, but that I’ve got something I need to do first?’ And he quickly raced off towards home.

  By the time Cosmo got back to the house, Scarlett had gone. Two kitchen chairs were turned over and so was the rubbish bin, and Cosmo could only assume that India had had to make more of an effort to escape from Scarlett than she’d let on. Feeling slightly puzzled, Cosmo borrowed Goody’s broomstick and headed for Bunty’s house.

  He arrived there just as Bunty was coming out through her front door. ‘Is Scarlett with you?’ he asked her.

  ‘No, Cosmo. Actually she’s taken your mother to see the vet – just for a check-up you understand. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘It’s just that Scarlett said she had something she wanted to tell me,’ Cosmo mewed, deciding it was best not to mention that his mother had skipped her appointment and that Scarlett was probably out looking for her right now.
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  ‘Oh, well I can tell you what that was, Cosmo,’ Bunty replied. ‘This morning we found out that the witch who lives in Sticky-End Cottage is called Selina Slaughter. We put her name into the Witch Computer and when her picture came up on the screen, Scarlett recognized her as the fake midwife who stole Spike’s toenails. Two of my colleagues from the Good Witches’ Society have just gone to her cottage to question her. Apparently she’s got a criminal record and she’s known to be an old crony of Sybil’s. I’m on my way to the prison now, to ask Sybil what she knows about all this.’ Bunty paused. ‘Actually, it might help if you came too, Cosmo. You know Sybil better than I do and you might be able to tell better than I can whether she’s lying or not. If I promise not to leave you alone with her and I let you sit on my lap the whole time, will you come with me?’

  Cosmo bravely agreed, but he couldn’t stop the tight feeling at the back of his throat from turning into a very uneasy growl at the prospect of coming face to face with Sybil again.

  10

  At the Witch Prison there was quite a party atmosphere evident in the communal kitchens, where some of the prisoners were helping to prepare the lunch. None of them usually enjoyed community-service day, because doing good deeds instead of bad ones made most of them feel quite squeamish, but today was different. Today was the day they had all been waiting for. In just a few hours time, as long as nothing went wrong with Sybil’s Great Escape plan, one hundred of them would be free. And so every witch was very excited.

  ‘This community won’t know what’s hit it when I get out of here,’ Murdina Broom was saying – and all the other witches cackled with laughter as they thought about their own plans to take revenge on the community that had imprisoned them.

  Sybil was in the middle of mixing up a large bowl of lumpy custard when one of the prison guards came to tell her that she had a visitor – Bunty Two-Shoes.

  ‘I don’t want to see her,’ Sybil protested vehemently, but the guard told her she had no choice.

  Fortunately Murdina Broom managed to whisper some words of warning in Sybil’s ear. ‘Stay calm, Sybil. You don’t want them to suspect anything is wrong.’

  Sybil managed to compose herself before entering the visiting room, so much so that she shocked Bunty by smiling at her quite warmly. (She had a very good pretend smile which she had been working on ever since she’d been in prison.) She even managed to stay calm when she saw Cosmo, though her mouth turned down at both ends for a second or two, before she extended her hand towards him.

  Cosmo hissed at her.

  ‘Dear Cosmo,’ she said as she snatched her hand back, ‘I was only going to stroke you. There’s no need for you to be afraid. Why, I’ve been completely rehabilitated here in prison. I’ve seen the error of my ways and I’m quite reformed.’ She let out a laugh that was almost a cackle, but not quite.

  Cosmo didn’t believe her. Sybil seemed exactly the same to him as when he’d last seen her – apart from the red ear-tag she wore, which looked a bit like an earring but that Cosmo knew was her prison security tag.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cosmo,’ Bunty said. ‘I won’t let her hurt you.’

  ‘Shame!’ Sybil hissed, then added quickly, ‘Shame the poor little dear thinks I’d want to hurt him, I mean!’

  ‘Sybil, we’ve come to ask you about your friend Selina Slaughter,’ Bunty said.

  ‘Oh, but I haven’t been friends with her for years!’

  ‘Then why has she visited you every week since you’ve been in prison?’ (Bunty had asked to see the prison visitors’ book on her arrival and had noted that Selina had been Sybil’s only visitor.)

  ‘Oh, she has visited me, yes,’ Sybil quickly agreed. ‘But I would hardly call her a friend. I would say she is more a . . . well . . . a role model. You see, Selina was once a bad witch too. That’s why she’s been visiting me – to teach me how to become a good witch instead of a bad one. Only a good witch who has once been very bad herself can help someone like me, you see.’ Sybil placed both her palms together under her chin in an attempt to look angelic.

  Bunty glared at her. ‘Your broomstick was observed entering Selina’s chimney last night. Did you give her permission to take it?’

  ‘Permission? Now, let me think . . . I might have mentioned that my broomstick was at my old house . . . just in passing. But Selina couldn’t have stolen it. Selina is as honest as the day is short . . . or should I say long?’ Sybil gave a sly smile.

  ‘Someone who is certainly not honest has just organized the stealing of a great many witch-babies’ toenails,’ Bunty said sharply.

  Sybil looked shocked. ‘I don’t believe it! Who would steal the toenails from poor little darling witch-babies? How dreadful!’

  ‘Yes,’ Bunty said. ‘It is dreadful. And we know for a fact that your friend Selina is involved. My niece, Scarlett, has already identified her as the midwife who stole my baby nephew’s toenails just a few days ago.’

  ‘Ah, but then it can’t be Selina! Selina isn’t a midwife. Oh no! The very idea of it! Selina doesn’t even like babies! She’d certainly never do a job where she was helping them to get born!’ Sybil burst out laughing, as if she had just made a hilarious joke.

  ‘Sybil, do you know of any reason why Selina would want to steal witch-babies’ toenails?’ Bunty asked her sternly. ‘And remember . . . if we find out later that you’ve been hiding something from us, you’ll be punished too.’

  ‘You don’t mean I’ll have to spend even more time in prison, do you?’ Sybil said. ‘Because the strange thing is, I’m beginning to rather like it here! I’ve made so many new friends and I just love doing my community service. I never realized that helping old ladies to cross the road could be so much fun. And as for working at the flea clinic and getting rid of those pesky cats . . . sorry . . . I mean pesky fleas from those dear little cats . . . that is most rewarding also.’ She beamed at Cosmo. ‘Have you any fleas you’d like me to squeeze out for you while you’re here, my dear? I’ve grown my fingernails nice and sharp so I’m very good at digging out the little pests. It’s a little painful for the cats, I’m told – but no worse than being at the vet! And you know what they say – no pain, no gain!’

  ‘Sybil, you have been most unhelpful, just as I expected,’ Bunty told her coldly. ‘But we’ll be keeping an eye on you – and we will find out the truth!’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Sybil murmured, but so quietly that only Cosmo heard her, because cat-hearing is extra sharp.

  As soon as they had left the prison, Bunty used her mobile phone to call the chairwoman of the Good Witches’ Society, who told her that her two colleagues had failed to find Selina at her house.

  ‘She’ll show up sooner or later,’ Bunty said as she put her phone back in her handbag. ‘And then we’ll get to the bottom of all this. I’d better go up to the hospital and tell Goody and Gabriel what’s been happening. Do you want to come, Cosmo? Scarlett might be there by now.’

  ‘I have to go somewhere else,’ Cosmo said. ‘But tell Scarlett I’ll see her later!’

  Cosmo arrived back at the school just in time for the kittens’ catwalk competition. The kittens were all gathered in the toilets giving themselves final preparatory licks, and the audience of cats in the assembly hall was making a loud din as it got ready to watch the show.

  ‘Where’s Mia?’ Cosmo asked Hagnus, seeing that she wasn’t with the others.

  ‘I haven’t seen her since rehearsals,’ Hagnus replied. ‘I thought she must be with you.’

  Felina suddenly appeared, also looking for Mia. ‘Cleo says it’s time for you to go through now,’ she told the kittens.

  ‘Mia hasn’t been disqualified from the competition for not producing a hairball, has she?’ Cosmo asked, thinking that if that was the case Mia might well have gone home in a huff.

  ‘No,’ Felina replied. ‘Mia and Albert-of-the-street were both told that they could be in the competition, so long as one of them gave Cleo a hairball before they went home today. Com
e to think of it, I haven’t seen Albert-of-the-street recently either.’

  And suddenly Cosmo didn’t care about the catwalk competition any more. He had a feeling that he couldn’t explain – a feeling that made him shiver all down his spine.

  ‘We’d better start looking for them,’ he told Felina. ‘You search inside the building and I’ll search outside.’

  ‘But you’ll miss the contest,’ Felina said in surprise.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I just want to find Mia.’

  Half an hour later when Cosmo and Felina met up again in the assembly hall, the kitten competition was over. The grey fluffy kitten had been chosen as the winner. Cleo had had a tear in his eye as he’d announced that the grey kitten reminded him of himself at that age – which was the reason he had awarded him first place.

  Cosmo hurried over to Mephisto. ‘Father, we can’t find Mia anywhere! I’m worried something’s happened to her.’

  ‘Albert-of-the-street is missing too,’ Felina added.

  ‘How odd. Do you think the two of them could have gone off somewhere together?’ Mephisto suggested.

  ‘Mia would never go off with a cat she hardly knows!’ Felina hissed crossly. (She was very upset about losing her kitten, and when she was upset she always got extremely hissy.)

  ‘Now, now . . . there’s nothing to be alarmed about,’ Cleo said, looking a little flustered. ‘I can tell you exactly where they are. You see, my witch friend arrived earlier to collect her hairballs, and when I told her I was one short she got rather cross with me. So I explained that two cats still owed me hairballs and she said that she would . . . err . . . well . . . borrow those two cats until they had produced them. She assured me they would get a very nice tea if they went with her to her cottage. So I sent them outside where she was waiting for them. She must have persuaded them to go with her, I suppose.’

  ‘Persuaded them?’ Felina hissed.