by Ruth Chew
Before she reached the door, Matthew opened it. He was wearing a bathrobe and slippers. When he stepped into the hall, he skidded on something and almost fell.
“For goodness’ sake, be careful!” the cat said. “Look what you’ve done to my samples!”
Albert wriggled out of Holly’s grasp and landed softly on all four of his white paws. With his mouth, the cat began to pick up tiny sprigs of herbs that were laid in neat piles on the shiny wood floor.
Albert carried one of the piles into Matthew’s room. He put it near a wall. Then he went to get another pile. “Do you think you two could pick up these things without bruising them?” he asked.
“Of course.” Matthew took four sheets of notepaper from the desk and gave two to Holly. They each used one sheet of paper to push a pile of leaves onto another sheet. Soon all the piles were lined up along a wall in Matthew’s bedroom. He went to the bathroom to brush his teeth.
Albert trotted over to the bookcase. He put his paw on the book he was looking at the night before. “How about getting this out for me, Holly?”
Holly pulled the book out of the bookcase and put it open on the floor near the piles of leaves.
The cat turned the pages of the book until he came to one with pictures of plants. He began to compare his herbs with the pictures in the book.
“Holly, come here!” Matthew stood barefoot in the doorway of his room. The cat was busy trying to match his herb samples with the pictures in the book.
Holly walked over to her brother. He handed her one of his red corduroy slippers. “Take a look at the bottom of this.”
Holly saw that the sole of the slipper was smeared with some sort of green slime.
“I can’t get this gunk off,” Matthew said. “I have to get dressed now.”
“Give me the slippers. I’ll see what I can do.” Holly took the slippers to her room.
She heard her grandfather calling, “Matthew! Holly! Breakfast time!”
Holly pulled open the top drawer of the dresser, stuffed the red slippers into it, and closed the drawer tight.
Something smelled delicious. Holly went downstairs to the kitchen.
“Where’s Matthew?” Mrs. Dorrity asked. “Your grandfather is making waffles.”
“Matt isn’t dressed yet,” Holly said.
Mr. Dorrity put a waffle on her plate and poured batter into the waffle iron. “Don’t let this burn,” he said to his wife. “I’m going to get that boy. You have to eat waffles when they’re hot.” He rushed out of the room.
Mrs. Dorrity smiled. “Your grandfather gets very excited when he cooks anything.”
As soon as the waffle was ready, Mrs. Dorrity took it out of the waffle iron and put it into the oven.
Mr. Dorrity came downstairs with the cat under one arm and the book under the other. Matthew followed him into the kitchen. His grandmother gave him the waffle she was keeping warm.
“Good thing I went upstairs,” Mr. Dorrity said. “Albert was into the books again. This is a very interesting old cookbook. I bought it at a garage sale. I’m sure I’ll never find another copy. I’ll just have to lock it up. Albert must be after a recipe for catnip tea.”
Mr. Dorrity laughed and put the cat on the floor. He took the book into the dining room and locked it in a cabinet. Then he came back into the kitchen. “Anybody ready for another waffle?”
Both Matthew and Holly were hungry for more. Their grandfather poured batter into the waffle iron.
Holly felt sorry for Albert. He was sitting quite still, and his white whiskers drooped.
Mrs. Dorrity leaned over to scratch the cat behind the ears. Then she filled his bowl with leftover roast chicken and put it down beside him.
After he finished his breakfast Albert went upstairs. Holly and Matthew followed him. The black cat went all the way down the hall to Matthew’s room.
Mr. Dorrity had hooked the door.
Albert leaped up and knocked the hook out of the eye with one forepaw. At the same time he used both hind legs to kick the door open. The cat sailed into the room and landed in front of the little piles of herbs.
“Grandpa’s right,” Holly said. “You really do belong in the circus.”
“You’re terrific, Albert!” Matthew told him.
Albert’s whiskers perked up. “I’ve had practice.” He checked all the little piles. “I ought to keep them separate. I still don’t know if I have the herbs I need.”
Matthew shut the door. He took some envelopes off the desk. “You could put a different herb in each envelope and write the names on them.”
“I’ve learned to read,” the cat said, “but I haven’t figured out how to write yet.”
“You can tell us what to write and we’ll do it for you,” Holly told him.
Matthew and Holly set to work and wrote names like Chervil and Tansy on the envelopes. Albert inspected each pile of leaves, looking carefully and sniffing even more carefully. Then he showed them which herb to put into each envelope.
“Don’t let them get mixed with each other,” the cat warned them.
“What are you going to do with the herbs?” Holly asked.
The tip of Albert’s tail twitched. “I’ve seen herbs boiled and burned and scattered to make different kinds of magic. It’s what herbs you use together and how you blend them and the words you speak that make the difference. But I never learned the secret. I was going to find out from your grandfather’s book.”
“Grandpa said it was a cookbook.” Matthew picked up the envelopes and put them on the desk. “They’re here whenever you want them, Albert.”
The cat’s whiskers drooped. “Maybe that’s why the book said ‘Use to flavor soups and fish.’ Why would anybody want to flavor fish?”
Holly opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I’m going to ask Granny for her book.” She looked at the cat. “Albert, what’s the matter with you?”
The cat’s green eyes gleamed and his white whiskers bristled. All his shiny black fur was standing on end. He sniffed the air. “I thought I smelled something I never smelled in this house before, but it was very faint, and I couldn’t be sure. It’s getting stronger and stronger.”
The cat sniffed the floor. Still sniffing, he crept silently out the door and down the hall.
Holly and Matthew tiptoed after him.
Albert went into Holly’s room and started sniffing everywhere.
Matthew and Holly watched him from the doorway. The cat stopped in front of the dresser and stood on his hind legs to sniff each drawer. He jumped onto the dresser and leaned over to sniff at the one on the top.
Albert turned to look at the children. His green eyes seemed enormous. “Magic!” he said softly. “Powerful magic! What is in there?”
“Matt’s bedroom slippers.” Holly went over to the drawer and pulled out the two red corduroy slippers.
At once one slipper began to get bigger. Holly dropped the other one so she could hold on to the growing one with both hands. It kept getting bigger. She put the slipper on her foot over her shoe, and stood on it to keep it down. But the slipper went on growing.
Soon it was big enough for Holly to put her other foot in the slipper too. Then it was big enough to sit down in.
“Move over, Holly. After all, it’s my slipper.” Matthew stepped in and sat down beside his sister.
The cat had been watching from the top of the dresser. Now he jumped down and landed in Holly’s lap. “Stop growing, Slipper!” he commanded. “You’re quite big enough now.”
The slipper stopped growing.
“When you’re dealing with magic,” Albert explained, “it’s important to make sure the enchanted object knows who is Master of the Magic.”
“What makes you Master of the Magic?” Holly wanted to know.
“I gathered the herbs that are smeared together on the bottom of this slipper,” Albert explained. “They produced a certain mixture Nell Fisher always found very handy.”
“Who is Nell Fis
her?” Holly asked.
“A good friend of mine,” the cat said. “She never would tell me the secret of her magic, but by accident your brother stumbled onto it.”
“Then why isn’t Matt the Master of the Magic?” Holly asked.
“He didn’t gather the herbs,” Albert said. “If I knew which herbs are crushed together, maybe I could make more of the mixture, but I’d have to know just what time of day it was, the phase of the moon, how much of each herb was used, how much pressure was applied, and what the magic words were.”
The cat thought for a moment. “We’ll have to make do with the mixture we have here,” he told the children. “There’s no time to lose! Nell Fisher is in trouble, and we have to help her.”
“What are we waiting for?” Matthew said. “Let’s go, Albert!”
The cat sat up straight in Holly’s lap. “Slipper,” he said, “we have to travel back in time to find Nell Fisher. Can you do this?”
For almost a full minute the slipper did not move.
“What’s the matter?” Holly asked.
“Time travel is a special skill,” Albert told her, “and the slipper is new to magic.”
The slipper gave a little jiggle.
Holly stroked the soft red corduroy. “You’re so bright,” she whispered. “I’m sure you can learn.”
Very slowly the slipper floated up into the air and headed for the open window. Holly was sure the window was too small for them to go through, but it became bigger and bigger. The windowsill was as wide as a highway by the time they sailed over it into the open air.
Everything outdoors was enormous too.
“Matt,” Holly said. “How did everything become so big so fast?”
“I think we became small,” her brother told her.
“That’s clever of the slipper,” the cat said. “We’re so small nobody notices us.”
The slipper was rising straight up now. It travelled so fast that, before they knew it, they could hardly see the streets and houses down below.
Very soon the daylight turned to darkest night. The Earth they had left became smaller and smaller until it was just a blue ball whirling through space. Then it was so small that it looked like a star. The two children lost sight of it among the many bigger stars that they rushed past.
For a while they seemed to be lost in a crowd of stars, all different sizes and colors, and all going different ways.
Then, far, far off, a small blue star came in sight. Matthew grabbed his sister’s arm. “Holly! We must have gone in a circle. That looks like our Earth!”
The sky was getting lighter. It seemed to be very early in the morning. They sank down and down. At last the slipper landed gently on the water of a narrow winding river.
Holly patted the side of the slipper. She was surprised that it felt hard, not like corduroy at all!
The two children and the cat looked around. They were sitting on the seat of a strange wooden boat with both ends curving up into high points. Around them dragonflies darted over the water.
There was a hole in each side of the boat with an oar poking through it. Matthew grabbed one oar, and Holly took hold of the other.
“Watch how you handle those!” Albert jumped to the front of the boat. “I don’t want to be splashed.”
Boats are always rowed backward. Matthew and Holly had to keep turning their heads to see where they were going. Albert sat in the front of the boat and told them what was up ahead.
“Watch out!” the cat said. “We’re coming to a big rock in the water.”
They steered around the rock and rowed between tall green reeds.
A cool breeze blew around them. A bird chirped. The sun came up from behind a long row of rocky hills.
“Look, Matt!” Holly pointed to a mother sheep with a little lamb. They were nibbling wild grass in a field on one side of the river.
On the other side was a deep wood. “That looks like a good place to camp,” Matthew said.
They rowed around a bend in the river. A grove of willows grew at the edge of the water. Before they reached the trees, a harsh voice said, “Drat! You’ve scared the fish!”
Matthew and Holly stopped rowing, but the boat drifted closer to the trees.
Someone was sitting on a branch that hung over the water, fishing with a long pole. At first the children couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
Albert became very excited. “Nell Fisher! What are you doing here?”
“Fishing. What else would I be doing?”
Now Holly and Matthew saw that it was a tall bony woman with big hands and feet. She had scraggly gray hair, dark piercing eyes, a long pointed nose, a sharp chin, and a thin crooked mouth.
The woman edged her way along the branch until she could slide off onto the ground. She stood up. Her clothes were torn and dirty. She waded into the water, lifted the cat out of the boat, and held him against her bony neck. “I never thought I’d see you again, Cat. Those clods told me they were going to drown you. They tried to drown me too, but I found an underwater tunnel and escaped.” She stroked Albert. “You seem unharmed. Maybe that brew I rubbed on your nose helped.”
“It smelled terrible,” Albert told her. “I could hardly breathe. And when those people held me under the water, I sank. I woke up later in a bed of herbs. I want you to meet Holly and Matthew. It was their grandmother who grew the herbs. They travelled with me from a place unknown to people here.”
Still holding the cat, Nell Fisher curtsied to Holly and Matthew. They took off their shoes, rolled up the legs of their jeans, and climbed out of the boat. Then they dragged it ashore.
“Albert told us you’re in trouble,” Holly said. “We want to help you.”
“Who’s Albert?” Nell Fisher asked. “Oh, you mean Cat?”
“Our grandpa says he’s the cleverest cat he ever saw, so he named him after a clever man,” Matthew told her.
Nell Fisher’s crooked mouth cracked into a grin. “He’s a nice cat,” she said. “But I always thought he was stupid.”
Albert bumped his furry head against her bony shoulder and purred.
Nell Fisher pulled a string of small fish out of the river. “It’s lucky I caught these before you folk came splashing along. Who’s ready for breakfast?”
The waffles seemed to have been eaten long ago. Everybody was hungry.
Nell Fisher took Matthew, Holly, and Albert into the woods and showed them her campground. There was a small fire burning in a hollow in the ground.
Nell cooked the fish whole by pushing sticks through them and laying them across the hollow where the fire burned. She kept turning the sticks as the fish cooked.
“What happened to your pots and pans, Nell?” the cat asked.
“I don’t know,” Nell Fisher told him. “After my neighbors took you away, they set fire to my cottage and destroyed everything in my herb garden. They roped bags of stones around my waist and tied my hands and feet. Then they threw me into the river.”
“Why did they do that?” Matthew asked.
“It was really all my fault,” Albert told him. “Nell let me live with her and even talked to me. Around here people who keep cats are thought to be witches. After a while, whenever anybody fell into a ditch and hurt his leg or if a cow stopped giving milk, people thought Nell had worked an evil spell.”
“Isn’t there a law here against killing someone just because you think she’s a witch?” Matthew asked.
“Of course,” Albert said. “This was a trial to see if Nell really was a witch. It’s called Trial by Water. They tie up the suspect and throw her into deep water. If she sinks, she’s innocent, because a witch would have magic to save herself from the water. If she doesn’t sink, she’s guilty. As punishment she is either hanged or burned.”
“As long as none of these people see me,” Nell Fisher said, “they believe I’m innocent, but if they see me alive and well, I’m in trouble.”
The fish were brown and crisp now. Holly picked som
e big green leaves to use as plates.
“Why does everything taste so good when you eat it with your fingers?” Matthew said.
“Maybe because there are no dishes to wash afterward,” Holly told him.
After breakfast Nell Fisher led the children to a blackberry patch growing in a sunny little glade. “Watch out for the thorns,” she warned them. “I don’t have any herbs to put on scratches. And eat what you pick. They taste best right off the bush.”
“That’s what I try to tell Mom,” Matthew said. “Blackberries get squishy when you try to keep them.”
“I want to talk to Cat. Come back to the campground when you’ve had enough berries.” Nell Fisher left the glade.
After they’d eaten their fill of blackberries, Holly and Matthew started to follow a little path back to Nell Fisher’s campground. They came to a place where the path became two paths.
“Too bad we didn’t notice this on the way here,” Matthew said. “The paths look so much alike that I don’t know which one we should take.”
“We can take either,” Holly told him. “If we find it’s the wrong one, we’ll come back and take the other.”
They started along the path to the right. When they had been walking for some time and had not come to Nell Fisher’s campground, Matthew said, “We’d better go back and take the other path.”
Holly put her finger to her lips. “Listen!”
They heard a crashing sound coming toward them. Matthew pulled his sister off the path and into the underbrush. They lay on their stomachs and peeked through the tangled leaves.
A reddish-brown deer with spreading antlers came bounding along the path. He was followed by a pack of hounds barking in deep, long tones.
Close behind the hounds galloped a group of horseback riders.
Suddenly the deer left the path and leaped away in a circle, going through the woods in the opposite direction from the dogs and the people. In their hurry to turn, the dogs and the horses banged into each other. One rider fell off.