CHAPTER 26
Bibby was a warm little bundle in Cat’s arms through the night, curled up against her in the bed. So much more comfortable than the chair, even though that was magical—no, it wasn’t, after all. Sepp was not the Septimissimus who made magical crafts. He was just very, very good at what he did. Guy, on the other hand—Cat was not going to think about Guy.
Sepp was snoring; probably an effect of the applejack. He certainly didn’t seem to have much of a head for alcohol. Cat heard Guy stirring, then a soft thump as he poked at his brother to make him be quiet. Sepp grunted and snuffled; then the sounds told Cat that he had rolled over. The snoring ceased, to be replaced by the deep, even breathing of the two sleepers, their rhythm offset from each other just a bit. Cat smiled into the darkness, hugged the baby closer, and drifted back to sleep.
The sound of crashing crockery startled her upright. Sunlight was streaming into the windows. Cat was staring around her, confused, disoriented; then her eyes fell on the men on the floor, both of whom were struggling to their feet, obviously just as sleep-drunk as Cat herself. Memory came flooding back: the night, the conversation, the revelation of Guy as Septimissimus, of Bibby’s mother, the explanation of the working of the bowls.
The bowls! Bibby! Cat swung her feet off the bed, hurriedly tugging the shift she was wearing for a nightshirt down to her knees with one hand and reaching for the blanket with the other. She wrapped it around herself like a shawl and ran after Guy and Sepp into the workshop, where the noise had come from. Cat pushed past the men, who stood stock-still in the doorway, and there was the little girl by the table, standing amidst the shards of Cat’s return bowl. The glaze was still glowing a faint turquoise on some of the pieces, but it was rapidly dulling to the rusty brown of the spent bowls.
Cat’s eye flew to the turquoise sheen of the second bowl, clasped in Bibby’s little hands.
“Bibby, no!” she cried, and reached out her hand for the small girl, but before she could get to her, Bibby had raised the bowl as high above her head as she could stretch, and then hurled it to the floor with all her might. The turquoise dish shattered into a hundred pieces.
“Boom!” said Bibby, thoroughly satisfied.
“Oh Bibby!” wailed Cat, “What have you done?” And then suddenly she knew. She knew exactly what Bibby had done, and she also knew why. A warm feeling spread through her from her head to her toes.
“Well,” she said, almost gleefully, “there goes my return ticket.” She took that last step towards Bibby and scooped her up into her arms. “You little monkey, you!” She tickled the little girl’s belly and made her giggle.
Bibby turned her large turquoise eyes on Cat.
“Bo bo fump!” she said, importantly.
“Yes, the bowls went thump,” confirmed Cat. “And someone will have to clean them up.” She looked at the smashed pieces on the floor, now all a dull rust colour, and then turned to Guy and Sepp, who were still standing in shock, staring at the shards.
“You can blink now,” she said, then stepped in front of Guy and looked him straight in the eyes. “Bibby did that on purpose,” she said seriously. “She does not want her mother back; she is happy here with—with you. You see?”
He stared at her for another second, then shook his head and blinked several times, as if to dislodge the image of what he had just seen. He rubbed his hands over his face, drawing them down his cheeks and leaving his fingers pressed against his mouth for just a moment. It was as if with his gesture, he had wiped away the last remaining traces of the darkness and hurt that had been gathered at the back of his eyes for so long, and a light began to shine from his eyes that Cat found almost hard to look at.
“Bibby, Karana!” he said, and stretched out his arms to his little girl. “Bubba!” she called, and launched herself out of Cat’s arms at her father as if she had springs under her. He caught her, wrapped his arms tightly around her small body and held her close. Bibby buried her face against his throat, wrapped her little arms around his neck, and squeezed with all her small might. They stood like this for a minute, perhaps two, Guy’s head bent over his little daughter, his darker red curls falling over her light feathery ones. Cat suddenly found she had a large lump in her throat.
“So, uh,” Sepp said, his voice studiedly casual, “who’s doing the clearing up?”
“You are,” said Cat, who saw the suspicious sheen of moisture in his eyes, mirroring her own. “I have no idea where a broom might be, if you even have such a thing around here.”
Their attention was drawn to Guy, who was making pretended choking noises. He had loosened his grip on the baby, but the baby had no intention of loosening hers—now it had become a game of Squeeze-the-Daddy. She hugged her little arms around her father’s neck in as tight a stranglehold as she could manage, giggling. Guy stuck out his tongue, rasping his mock choking breaths, while trying to pull her away from his neck, but she stuck like a limpet. Finally he resorted to a counterattack technique. The long fingers of one hand spanned her small back, his thumb tickling her under one arm, the middle finger under the other, while at the same time he put his lips to her pudgy cheek and blew a loud raspberry. Bibby squealed loudly and let go. Guy swung her out, holding her at arm’s length over his head, where she kept squealing and waving her little arms and legs with excitement. When he brought her back down and carefully placed her on her little feet on the floor, both father and daughter wore smiles of pure happiness.
Bibby toddled off to the cottage, and Guy set out to follow her.
“Broom—corner, door,” he said over his shoulder to his brother. Sepp found a bristle broom in the corner behind the outside door to the privy and a shovel-like scoop beside it.
“Here, hold that, will you?” he said, handing the scoop to Cat. Oh, a dustpan! Right. Clutching the blanket around her shoulders with one hand, Cat crouched on the floor and held the scoop for Sepp as he swept shards into it.
“Where to?” she asked.
“There’s a bin by the kiln, it’s got cracked pots in it. Just dump it in there. Or, wait, I’ll take it.”
“No—no, it’s all right. I’ll do it.”
Cat carefully picked her way in her bare feet over the ground, wet with morning dew. Yes, there it was, a wooden bin filled with broken pieces and warped pots. She looked down at the scoop in her hand, full of rusty brown pottery shards. There, that one came from ‘her’ bowl, the one that was meant to have taken her back to her own world. It was small, only an inch or two across, but the curve of the top made it clear which one of the two pots it had belonged to. Cat carefully picked it out and wrapped her fingers around it protectively. Just a memento.
But those, those were the shards that belonged to Ashya’s bowl. Suddenly Cat pulled back her arm, and with an overarm swing worthy of the best baseball pitcher flung the contents of the scoop into the bin as hard as she could. Not hard enough. She reached into the bin, took the largest piece of pottery she could find, and hurled it onto the shards with all her might. The crash was magnificent.
“So there!” Cat said, with a satisfied nod of her head. Then suddenly she became aware of what she was doing. Embarrassed, she looked behind her, but the open doorway into the shop was empty; Sepp must have gone back into the cottage. Phew, that was a relief—although, when Cat thought about it, she realised that she wouldn’t mind all that much if he had seen her acting silly. Guy, on the other hand… Don’t go there, Cat.
Cat went back into the cottage, collected her skirt, blouse, and comb, and took herself out back to get ready for the day. When she came back into the cottage, breakfast preparations seemed to be underway. Sepp had stoked the fire and was setting a large black iron pot on its three little legs into the embers.
“Oats in the storage hole?” he asked Guy over his shoulder as he opened the trap door in front of the dish shelf. Without waiting for an answer, he extracted a small sack made of tightly woven canvas. “Ah, yes. When’s the last time you used this? Probably before I left, w
asn’t it,” he stated positively.
Guy snorted dismissively.
“You’re not the only one who can cook, you know. Get off your high horse and get on with the porridge; my offspring is starving.”
The starving offspring was showing her acute suffering by dancing around the cottage, whirling in little circles until she got dizzy and plopped onto her plump little rear end.
“Fump!” she stated, then got up to begin again, singing to herself. “Bibbyfump, Bibbyfump, Bibbyfump…”
“She is so adorable!” Cat said, watching her. “And usually really cheerful, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Guy said, the tone of fond pride in his voice unmistakable. “It’s not much puts her out of humour.” He caught the little girl in mid-whirl and bore her off to the corner to change her out of her nightshirt into her daytime tunic. (Cat had a brief vision flitting through her head of Ryan’s face, his mouth curled into a sneer, calling the little kids in her library story time sessions ‘rug rats.’ But it was a very brief flash—she could barely remember his face any more… Goodbye, Ryan. And most excellent riddance to you.)
Last night’s mugs and the teapot were still sitting on the table, as Cat went to get out the dishes for breakfast.
“I guess we can re-use the mugs. Are we going to need the—what do you call this, anyway?” She gestured at Guy with the teapot.
“The brewpot? Brewpot, of course. Why, what do you call it?” asked Guy.
“Teapot!” replied Sepp and Cat simultaneously. She looked at him—he seemed to have learned a thing or two in her world. Cat wondered. What exactly had gone on between him and Nicky, in the almost two days they had been together?
“Tea-pah!” repeated Bibby, delighted at this new word to add to her vocabulary. Cat’s attention went to the little girl.
“Yes, teapot! Look, we even have a song about it.” She stood in front of Bibby, put her right hand on her hip, stuck her left in the air beside her head, and in her best story time manner began: “I’m a little teapot, short and stout…”
By the time the porridge was cooked, Bibby-the-teapot was tipping herself over and pouring herself out with the best of them and had to be forcibly sat on the bench to eat her breakfast, or she would have continued practising her newfound skill for the next hour. For all her psychic powers (no, her Unissima’s gift, Cat reminded herself), she was still just a little girl like any other. Cat loved her.