“He’s coming!” gasped Tonino. “Make them escape!”
Cat heard the door at the top of the steps opening. He flapped his hands at the cluster of leaf-shapes. “Shoo!” he whispered. “Hide somewhere!” All the leaf-shapes flinched from his hands but, maddeningly, they all stayed where they were, hovering behind the tin jug.
“Oh, go!” Tonino implored them as Master Spiderman came storming down the steps. But they would not move.
“What are you boys playing at?” Master Spiderman demanded. He went hurrying through the room towards the draped cobwebs. “According to my star chart, Gabriel de Witt died nearly twenty minutes ago. His soul must have arrived here by now. Why have you not knocked on the door? Are you too busy feeding your faces to notice? Is that it?”
He stormed past the lamp and the work bench without looking at them. All the leaf-shapes flinched as the angry gust of his passing hit them. Then, to Cat’s extreme relief, the big new leaf-shape lifted one side of itself in a sort of beckoning gesture and slid quietly over the edge of the bench into the shadows underneath it. The others turned themselves and flitted after it, like a row of flat fish diving, with the old, stunted one hastening after in last place. Cat and Tonino turned their eyes sideways to make sure they were hidden and then looked quickly back at Master Spiderman. He was hurling cobwebs right and left in order to get at the black cannister.
He snatched it up. He shook it. He turned round clutching it to his chest, in such amazement and despair that Cat almost felt sorry for him. “It’s empty!” he said. His face was the face of the saddest monkey in the most unkind zoo in any world. “Empty!” he repeated. “All gone – all the souls I have collected are gone! The souls of seven nine-lifed enchanters are missing and the new one is not here! My lifetime’s work! What has gone wrong?” As he asked this, the grief in his face hardened suddenly to anger and suspicion. “What have you boys done?”
Cat had been prepared to feel very frightened when Master Spiderman realised it was their fault. He was slightly surprised to feel more tense than frightened, and quite businesslike. It was a great help to have Tonino opposite him, looking calm and sturdy. “They got out,” he said.
“They started to grow,” Tonino said. “They were beans, you know, and beans grow. Why are you upset, sir? Were you meaning to swallow them?”
“Of course I was!” Master Spiderman more or less howled. “I have been intercepting the souls of dead Chrestomancis for more than two hundred years, you stupid little boy! When there were nine, and I swallowed them, I would be the strongest enchanter there has ever been! And you let them get out!”
“But there were only eight,” Tonino pointed out.
Master Spiderman hugged the cannister to himself and spread his mouth into a wide smile. “No,” he said. “Nine. One of you boys has my ninth soul – and the other eight have no way to get out of this room.” And he shouted, loudly and suddenly, “Where have they gone?”
Cat and Tonino both jumped and tried to look as if they had no idea. But the shout obviously terrified the dead souls lurking under the table. One of the middle-sized ones, the one like a fig leaf, made a dash for freedom, between the broken rungs of Cat’s chair and out towards the stairs and the open door at the top. The others all followed an instant later, as if they could not bear to be left behind, streaming after it in a luminous line.
“Aha!” shouted Master Spiderman. He dropped the cannister and ran at an incredible speed through the room and up the first three stairs, where he was just in time to block the path of the escaping souls. Above him, the door banged shut. The line of leaf shapes swirled to a stop almost level with the lowest stair, where they dithered in the air a little and then darted away sideways with the big new soul in the lead and the smallest, oldest one fluttering rather desperately in the rear.
At this, Master Spiderman leapt down the steps and snatched up a butterfly net from the heap of rubbish. “Lively, are you?” he muttered. “Soon put a stop to that!” Two more butterfly nets left the heap and planted themselves, one in Cat’s hand and one in Tonino’s. “You let them out,” he said. “You get them caught again.” And with that, he went leaping after the streaming line of souls with his butterfly net held sideways to scoop them up.
Cat and Tonino jumped up and began pretending to chase the fleeing souls too, getting in Master Spiderman’s way whenever they could. Tonino galumphed backwards and forwards, waving his net and shouting, “Got you!” and “Oh bother, I missed!” in all the wrong places, and particularly when he was nowhere near the streaming line of souls. Cat sprinted beside Master Spiderman and, whenever Master Spiderman lunged to scoop up the souls, Cat made sure to lunge too, and either to jog Master Spiderman’s elbow or to cross Master Spiderman’s butterfly net with his own so that he missed.
Master Spiderman howled and snarled at him, but he was too intent on catching the souls to do anything to Cat. Round the basement they sped, like people in a mad game of lacrosse, with Tonino galloping in the middle, upsetting broken furniture into their path, while the line of shining, desperately frightened souls sped round the room at waist level, swerved outwards to miss the draped cobwebs, and rushed along the wall with the window in it, slightly higher up.
Window! Cat thought at them as he chased beside Master Spiderman. Window’s open! But they were too frightened to notice the window and streamed on towards the steps again. There, the ivy-leaf soul must have had the idea that the door was still open and tried to dart up the steps. The others all stopped and swirled round to follow it.
Seeing this, Master Spiderman shouted “Aha!” again and rushed towards them with his net ready. Cat and Tonino had to do some fast and artistic jumping about on the stairs, or the whole lot would have been scooped up there and then.
Then separate, you fools! Cat thought. Why don’t you all fly different ways?
But this, it seemed, the terrified souls could not bear to do. Cat could feel them thinking that they would be lost if they were alone. They streamed on in a cluster, up into the corner of the room and then on round it again, just below the ceiling, with Master Spiderman close behind, net raised, and Cat pelting after him. There was a heart-stopping moment then when the old, small soul flew too near the draped cobwebs and got tangled in them. Again the other souls swirled to a stop and waited. Cat only got there just in time. Butterfly nets clashed as Cat managed to stumble into the cobwebs and carve them apart to let the trapped soul loose.
As it went fluttering after the others, Tonino galloped across the room and squeezed behind the bench that Cat had stood on to open the window. The bench went over with a crash. The line of souls had just gathered speed again, but this brought them almost to a standstill. Tonino stood waving his net back and forth beside the window, trying to give them a hint.
The souls understood – or at least the big new one which had been Gabriel de Witt seemed to. It made for the window in a glad swoop. The luminous green line of the others followed and all went whirling out through the gap into the dark night as if they had been sucked out by the draught.
Thank goodness! Cat thought, leaning on his butterfly net and panting. Now he won’t need to kill us either.
Master Spiderman uttered a great scream of rage. “You opened the window! You broke my spells!” He made a throwing motion towards Cat and then at Tonino. Cat felt a light, strong stickiness close about him. He had barely time to think that it felt remarkably like when you brush through a cobweb by accident, before Master Spiderman was rushing up the basement steps. Cat and Tonino, sweaty and breathless and covered with dirt as they were, found they were forced to rush up the steps behind him.
“I am not letting you out of my sight from now on!” Master Spiderman panted as they pelted through the room overhead. They were going too fast for Tonino, who nearly fell on his face as they reached the hallway. Cat dragged him upright while Master Spiderman was hurling open the front door, and they pelted on, out into the street. It was pitch dark out there. Curtains wer
e drawn over the windows of all the houses and there were no kind of streetlights anywhere. Master Spiderman stopped, panting heavily, and seemed to be staring wildly around.
For a second or so, Cat had hopes that the escaped souls had got away, or at least had had the sense to hide.
But the souls had no sense. They did not have proper brains to have sense with, Cat thought sadly. They were hovering in a little cluster at the end of the street, just as greenly luminous and easy to see as they had been in the basement, and bobbing anxiously together as if they were discussing what to do now.
“There!” Master Spiderman cried out triumphantly. He dived down the street, nearly pulling Cat and Tonino over.
“Oh fly away! Go somewhere safe!” Tonino panted as they stumbled on down the pavement.
The souls saw them at the last possible moment – or they made up their non-minds what to do, Cat was not sure which. At all events, as Master Spiderman’s butterfly net was sweeping towards them, they swirled upwards in a spiral, with the big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt’s leading, and vanished across the roof of the house on the corner.
Master Spiderman screamed with frustration and rose into the air too. Cat and Tonino were lugged up into the air after him, spinning and dangling sideways. Before they could right themselves, they were being towed across chimney pots and roofs at a furious speed.
By the time Cat had hauled on Tonino and Tonino had clutched at Cat, and they had discovered that they could use the butterfly nets they still held to balance themselves upright in the air, they were going even faster, with the wind of speed in their eyes and whipping at their hair. They could see the small green cluster of souls fleeing ahead of them above a ragged field with donkeys in it, and then above a wood. There was a big half moon that Cat had not noticed before, lying on its back among clouds, which served to show the souls up even more bright and green.
“Faster!” Master Spiderman snapped, as they all hurtled across the wood too.
“Go as fast as he does, go as fast as he does,” Cat heard Tonino whisper.
This was exactly what seemed to happen. Master Spiderman snapped, “Faster!” several times, once when the moon vanished and there were suddenly a thousand more roofs and chimneys whirling beneath them; again when it came on to rain briefly; and yet again when there was a full moon shining down on some kind of park below. Yet the small green cluster of souls speeding ahead stayed precisely the same distance in front of them. The dark landscape underneath changed again, but they were still no nearer, and no further away either.
“Curses!” panted Master Spiderman. “They’re travelling into the future. This is a hundred and fifty years now. Boys, give me your strength. I command it!”
Cat felt energy draining strongly out of him through the invisible cobwebs that were towing him after Master Spiderman. Although this was not a pleasant feeling, it seemed to lift some of the fuzzy blankness in his mind. Cat found dim memories flitting through his head as they sped on, of faces and places mostly – a castle, a handsome dark-haired man saying something sarcastic, a lady in mittens, a very old man lying in bed. And a smell. Around the very old man in bed there had hung the same musty, sick smell that came strongly, in gusts, off Master Spiderman as he whirled along in front. But Cat could not put these memories together to make sense. It was easier to notice that the chimney pots beneath now seemed to be growing out into the countryside, in lines along the sides of fields, and to listen to Tonino, who was still whispering, “Go as fast as we do, go as fast as we do!” over and over.
“Are you using his spell or something?” Cat whispered.
“I think so,” Tonino whispered back. “I seem to remember doing this before.”
Cat seemed to remember Tonino could do this sort of thing too, but before he could discover how he knew, the landscape below jerked into another different shape. There were handsome gas streetlights down there now, trees lining wide roads and houses that stood apart from one another in gardens. Ahead, the small glowing group of souls hurtled across a village green and then over a dimly gleaming railway line.
“I know this place!” Cat said. “I think we were here this morning.”
Almost at the same time, Master Spiderman was making confused noises. “I thought he was taking them to his home,” he said, “but we have passed it. Where are they going then?”
In front of them, the souls streamed above some tall trees and almost instantly dived down beyond, towards a tall building with rows of lighted windows. Still making puzzled noises, and grunting with the effort, Master Spiderman dragged himself and Cat and Tonino across the treetops after them.
They were in time to see the souls, in a luminous line with the big one still leading, go streaming sedately in through the big arched door in the middle of the building. At the sight, Master Spiderman yelled with rage and plunged them all downwards so quickly that Cat had to shut his eyes. It was even quicker than falling.
They landed with a fairly violent bump on what was luckily a soft lawn. Tonino and Cat got up quickly, but Master Spiderman was winded and staggered about gasping, looking so thin and bent and hollow-faced that he might almost have been a real monkey. They could see him clearly, propping himself on his butterfly net and puffing, because there was a large light over the arched door of the building. The light shone on letters carved into the stone of the arch: HOSPITAL OF THE SACRED HEART.
“A hospital!” Master Spiderman panted. “Why would they want to come here? Don’t stand there staring, you stupid boys! We have to catch them!” And he was off again, using the butterfly net like a walking stick and muttering, “Oh why do I always get so old when I come to the future? Come on, you wretched boys, come on!”
He dragged them in through the doorway into a most obvious hospital corridor, long, pale green and well lit, and smelling so strongly of antiseptic that it drowned even the smell of Master Spiderman. Cat and Tonino both became extremely conscious of how dirty they were. They tried to hang back. But there near the end of the corridor, almost transparent yellow in the strong light, was the little cluster of souls, floating nervously near a staircase, as if they were again undecided what to do. The sight seemed to inspire Master Spiderman to a second wind. He broke into a gallop, waving his butterfly net, and the boys were dragged into a gallop too.
When they were halfway along the corridor, a nun came out of a doorway, carrying a kidney dish. She was one of those nuns with a headdress that was made of big starched points, like a ship in full sail.
Not a headdress to dodge in, Cat would have thought. But dodge she did as Master Spiderman came charging down on her like a wild monkey in a flying black coat, with Cat and Tonino helplessly sprinting behind him. The nun’s headdress gave an outraged rattle, and she backed into a doorway, clutching her kidney dish and staring as they all rushed past.
The souls saw them coming and made up their minds. The big one darted for the staircase and the others went streaming after, up alongside the crisp green line painted on the wall. Master Spiderman hopped on one foot in order to stop, spun round and went hammering up the stairs behind them. So, perforce, did Cat and Tonino.
As they all got to the top, another nun was just coming through a swing door, holding it open with her back so that she could wrestle a big tray with bottles on it through the door too. The souls swirled neatly around her huge starched headdress and on into the ward beyond. The nun did not see them. But she saw Master Spiderman with his face stretched into a grin of effort bounding towards the door like a maniac monkey, and the two dirty, perspiring, cobwebby boys behind him. She dropped the tray and screamed.
Master Spiderman barged her aside and dashed into the ward, dragging the boys with him.
They were in a long, dimly lighted space with a row of beds on either side. The souls were about halfway down the room, flitting cautiously in their usual cluster. But the place was not quiet. Cat had the strange feeling that they had just burst into a rookery. The air rang with peculiar cawing noi
ses.
It took him a second or so to realise that the cawing was coming from little white cradles that were hooked to the bottom of each bed. All the people in the beds were ladies, all looking rather exhausted, and in each cradle there was a tiny, wrinkly, red-faced new born baby – at least, there were two of them in the cradle nearest Cat – and it was the babies who were making the noise, more and more of them, as the nun’s scream and the crash of the bottles, followed by the thunder of the door and the shout of anger Master Spiderman gave as he towed Cat and Tonino between the beds, woke every single baby there up.
“We’re in a maternity ward,” Cat said, wishing he could back straight out of here again.
Tonino was horribly out of breath, but he managed to grin. “I know. The souls are being clever after all.”
Master Spiderman was shouting, “Stop them! Don’t let them get into any babies! They’ll be gone for good then!” He dived at the cluster of souls with his butterfly net raised.
The souls did seem to be showing intelligence at last. As Master Spiderman dived, they rose up in a group above his waving net and then peeled apart in eight different directions. For a second or so, Master Spiderman did manage to keep most of them up in the air by swatting at them and shouting, but then two dived over behind him.
Mixed Magics (UK) Page 6