Fog Hounds, Wind Cat, Sea Mice

  Poor, poor Doubleman, thought Tad. If only he had known. If only he had kept the golden sprig, he would have been safe from the hounds. If he had kept the sprig, this would have been happening to him, not to me.

  But then Tad wondered: Perhaps Doubleman meant to leave the sprig in that builders’ skip? Perhaps he meant me to find it? How shall I ever be sure?

  At last, at very long last, Tad went back home. He said goodnight to the Fog Hounds; he patted and stroked their cloudy, downy heads, he hugged the Fog Puppy who had first licked his hand; and he opened the door of the house and went in. How shall I ever begin to explain to Ermina what has happened to me? he wondered.

  But Ermina, listening to the radio, had not even noticed how late her brother came home. She was pale and shocked and wide-eyed with news.

  “Just listen to this!” she said. “The King is dead! The old King! He died at the age of a hundred and eighteen! And—only think!—he has left no heir! All his sons died before him, and all their sons too. There is nobody left in direct line.”

  “How in the world will they choose the next King then?” asked Tad.

  “The Fog Hounds are going to choose,” said Ermina. “That is what I just heard on the radio. The man that the Fog Hounds recognize, and take as their master, that person will be the next King, whoever it is … Why, Tad, where in the world did you get those flowers?”

  She had just noticed the sprig of golden flowers that her brother carried in his hand. Ever since Tad had picked the sprig, the flowers had been growing, and now they were as big as roses, and they seemed to shine and give out light.

  They shone, indeed, as brightly as the eyes of the Fog Hounds, who lay in silence outside the cottage, ring upon ring upon ring of them, keeping guard over their new King until night was over, and the sun rose again.

  Wind Cat

  TWO HOUSES FACED EACH OTHER cornerways over a crossroads: one of them was called Carfax, and the other one Bide-a-Wee. Carfax was very old, long and low, built of stone with a stone roof; Bide-a-Wee was much bigger, and built of bright pink brick, with red tiles, yellow thatch, and colored glass in the front door. It looked like a house from a picture book. In pink-and-yellow Bide-a-Wee lived Mr. and Mrs. Blyde, with their dog Spot and their cat Tib; while in the stone house called Carfax, Lukey Web had just come to live with her Aunt Mildrith.

  “Is that your cat, Aunt Mildrith?” asked Lukey, when she first caught sight of striped Tib, crouched in the fork of a walnut tree, watching a pair of blackbirds who were watching him.

  “No, he’s not my cat, he belongs to the Blydes. I don’t keep a cat anymore,” said Aunt Mildrith, who was thin and gray-eyed, quite young for an aunt, and had dark hair which she wore in a bun. “Not since old Priam died.”

  “Why don’t you?” Lukey thought that a house ought to have a cat.

  “Well … Tib, the Blydes’ cat, can come into our garden whenever he wants to, and catch our mice. So that’s almost as good. And if an elderly lady living alone keeps a cat, people are bound to say that she is a witch, and that the cat is her Familiar.”

  “But you aren’t very elderly.”

  “You don’t have to be very elderly to be a witch.”

  “What exactly is a Familiar, Aunt Mildrith?”

  “Any animal who helps a witch with her witchery. Mostly a cat or a hedgehog.”

  “You used to be a witch, though, didn’t you?” Lukey persisted.

  “Yes, for a while. But I gave it up.” Lukey thought this a pity. “Why did you?”

  “Oh,” said her aunt, “with all these private health insurance schemes, nobody these days needs witches.”

  In fact this was not the whole reason. When Lukey’s parents died and she came to live at Carfax, Aunt Mildrith had thought it best to give up witchcraft. People are apt to tease you at school if your aunt is a witch, and teachers or parents sometimes complain. So, instead of witchcraft, Aunt Mildrith had begun writing a book on the history of magic mirrors. Besides this she spent a great deal of time studying footprints in the sky through a powerful telescope and taking photographs of them; she had a first-rate collection of pictures.

  Mr. and Mrs. Blyde, who lived in Bide-a-Wee, did not greatly care for their neighbor on the opposite corner of the crossroads. In fact they hardly spoke to Aunt Mildrith, except when they were about to leave on one of their trips to Bournemouth. Mr. Blyde was a retired bank manager who collected silver sugar tongs, and his wife spent her time complaining because the wooded country around the crossroads was so very different from Bournemouth, where Mr. Blyde had managed his bank.

  “It’s so quiet here! And half an hour to the village, if you walk. And all those dreary hills and trees wherever you look. At least in Bournemouth there was something to see out of the window.”

  At least once a month Mr. and Mrs. Blyde returned to Bournemouth to spend a few days at a hotel or visit friends.

  “If only we could afford to go on living there!” sighed Mrs. Blyde. “But our house belonged to the Bank, you see, and we had to leave it when Mr. B retired. You can’t get a house in Bournemouth now for less than two hundred thousand pounds.” She sighed again. Mrs. Blyde was a fat woman with bright yellow hair, like the thatch on Bide-a-Wee and eyes the color of tinned peas. “I like this house,” she said, gazing peevishly at Bide-a-Wee, “I like it all right, but just look where it is! Your little niece settling in all right, is she, Miss Web?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Lukey politely. But Mrs. Blyde went on, without waiting for an answer, “Well, then, if you won’t mind feeding Tib again while we’re away, Miss Web—” and she handed Aunt Mildrith nine tins of salmon and one of dried milk, hurried back to her husband’s big fawn-colored car, shouted, “See you on the twentieth,” jumped in, and slammed the car door.

  The Blydes always took their dog Spot with them when they went for a trip to Bournemouth. Spot thoroughly enjoyed a scamper on the sands, Mrs. Blyde said. But you can’t take a cat to a hotel. Cats prefer to stay at home.

  Lukey thought that Tib was a stupid name for the Blydes’ cat, who was large and striped and glossy and alert. Aunt Mildrith sometimes addressed him as Carfax, which suited him better. Carfax means “facing four ways” and the Blydes’ cat often seemed able to do that. He was a very watchful cat, and seemed to have eyes at the end of his tail and whiskers. He loved wind, going wild when it blew, dashing like a crazy creature up and down the trunks of trees, in and out of bushes, leaping high into the air, spinning round in a spiral and chasing his tail. At those times he seemed more like a kitten, though Mrs. Blyde said he was ten years old—seventy cat years. To herself, Lukey thought of him as Wind Cat, and she sometimes called him that when they were out in the woods together; he often accompanied her for quite long walks.

  “You’d better not spend too much time with him, though,” Aunt Mildrith warned, “or the Blydes will start saying that he’s never at home, and always over with us.”

  “Well he never comes indoors,” argued Lukey, and she tossed a ping pong ball for Carfax, or Wind Cat, who shot after it like a striped rocket.

  Very regrettably, the dog Spot, who was growing old and slow and short-sighted, had the misfortune to be run over by a bus in Bournemouth. The Blydes immediately bought a new dog, a big rangy active young Airedale whom they christened Tinker. Tinker was not used to cats, and the first thing he did, on arriving at Bide-a-Wee, was to chase the cat Tib out of the house and up a cherry tree, barking and scrabbling at the trunk and yelling as if he had sighted a Tasmanian devil.

  “TINKER! Naughty boy! Mustn’t chase Pussums!” shrieked Mrs. Blyde, but she might as well have spoken to the doormat.

  Nothing would stop Tinker from chasing the cat, whom he looked on as his lawful prey. From that day on Tib, or Carfax, or Wind Cat, spent most of his days in Aunt Mildrith’s garden, which was protected by a high wall, whether the Blydes were in Bide-a-Wee
or Bournemouth.

  “It’s a bit bothering, his spending so much time here,” sighed Aunt Mildrith.

  “You mean we should send him home to be killed?” said Lukey tearfully. “Look what that horrible beast has done!” She was bathing a gash in Wind Cat’s leg where Tinker’s razor-sharp teeth had grabbed him just before he leapt to the top of the wall. “You have got to tell the Blydes to get rid of that awful dog,” Lukey told Aunt Mildrith.

  “It really isn’t our business. And they may be able to train the dog.”

  “Why don’t you put a spell on them?”

  “Oh, I’ve given up all that sort of thing,” said Aunt Mildrith hastily. “I handed over my books and globes and my divining rod to a college of witchcraft.”

  “But you can still make weather,” objected Lukey.

  “Any beginner can make weather. That’s the easiest thing of all.”

  It was true that Aunt Mildrith often tossed off a quick shower, when the garden required watering, or, if the day was gray and cold, spread a patch of sunshine on the lawn for Lukey and Carfax to bask in. When, as sometimes happened, Mr. Blyde noticed this, it annoyed him very much. He would glare across the road and mutter, “Meddling with Nature! Funny sort of goings on! Shouldn’t be allowed, if you ask me!”

  Nobody did ask him; perhaps this was what irritated him so much. The flowers and vegetables in Aunt Mildrith’s garden were always three times the size of his, despite the sacks of expensive plant-food and weedkiller and all the complicated garden machines that he kept in his shed.

  One day Lukey found Carfax, or Wind Cat, very badly hurt indeed, lying in a clump of thyme in Aunt Mildrith’s garden. This time he had not managed to get away fast enough. Horrified, Lukey ran for her aunt, and together they carried the hurt cat indoors on a strip of matting.

  “This calls for powdered vervain and a pinch of mandragora,” muttered Aunt Mildrith, and she fetched out a little muslin bag from the back of a cupboard. From the same place she took out a battered old black book which seemed to have been overlooked when she gave away her library to the witches’ college. Very carefully she laid a tassel of cobweb over wounded Wind Cat and said some words.

  Meanwhile her niece, too furious for good manners, flew across the road to where Mr. Blyde was busy cutting his front grass border with a Hover-Mow.

  “Your horrible beast of a dog has nearly killed your poor cat!” Lukey stormed at Mr. Blyde. “You don’t deserve to have a cat at all! And that dog ought to be sent to prison!”

  “You just mind your own business, young lady!” snapped Mr. Blyde, very angry indeed. “Anyway, you’ve no call to say Tinker did it. Much more likely it was a fox from the woods.”

  “I saw the dog, barking and carrying on outside our gate. If your cat dies, it will be his fault.”

  “If you don’t go back home this minute, my girl, you’re going to get the rough side of my tongue. And I’ll have a word to say to your auntie. That’s no way to address an adult. Run along now, I’m in a hurry to get this done, we’re off to Bournemouth this afternoon.”

  “I wish you’d stay in Bournemouth for ever!” shouted Lukey, crying, and she ran home. After lunch Mrs. Blyde came round with tins of dried milk and Pussymix.

  “We’re ever so obliged to you for taking care of poor Tibbies while we’re away,” she said hurriedly. “And, of course, if there should be a vet’s bill, we’ll be glad to pay it.”

  “I should think so, the pigs,” muttered Lukey as the big shiny fawn-colored car purred off into the woods.

  Whether due to Aunt Mildrith’s clever nursing, or because he had not yet used up all his nine lives, the wounded cat recovered before his owners returned from Bournemouth. For six days Aunt Mildrith had kept a continuous patch of sunshine on the lawn, and Wind Cat basked in it, limp and dozing on his bit of mat while Lukey squatted beside him, reading bits out of Aunt Mildrith’s old black book.

  “It’s very interesting, Wind Cat, this book,” she told him; and she had an idea that he was listening, as he licked and licked at the terrible gashes that Tinker’s teeth had made.

  Now and again Lukey would glance up at the sky and murmur a few words. Sometimes nothing happened, but sometimes she would laugh with pleasure and excitement as a tiny spiral of cloud whirled round above them and blew a few yellowing leaves off an apple tree. Wind Cat sometimes stretched out a lazy paw and tapped one of the leaves as it scuffled by.

  “Wait a while, Wind Cat!” Lukey warned him. “Not just yet! Not until you are quite better.”

  “Oh dear, have you got your head stuck in that old book again?” sighed Aunt Mildrith, passing by with a garden trowel or her sky-watching telescope. “Don’t you think it would be better if you put it back in the cupboard and invited a couple of your school friends to tea?”

  But Lukey said that her school friends found two miles from the village too far to walk.

  By the time the Blydes came back from Bournemouth, Wind Cat’s wounds were healed, and he no longer limped. But now he had discovered how comfortable it was in Aunt Mildreth’s kitchen, where he had lain on a blanket in front of her glowing stove while his wounds were at their worst. And he was not at all inclined to return to Bide-a-Wee. In fact he simply refused to go. Time after time Aunt Mildrith picked him up and carried him round.

  Before she was back at her front door, Wind Cat would be there before her, or through the kitchen window. He made it plain that was where he preferred to live.

  Mr. Blyde was very annoyed about this. He came round to say so.

  “Much obliged to you, of course, for taking care of Tib while we were away—but what’s the use of having a cat that’s never at home? In my opinion your niece plays with Tib too much. That’s the truth of the matter. I’d be obliged if you’d tell her to stop. She ought not to encourage him to come round here. People should not entice away other people’s animals.”

  He was in the middle of saying all this to Aunt Mildrith, standing, very red-faced and indignant on her front doorstep, when Wind Cat shot through the open garden gate, closely pursued by the barking, yelling, snapping, slavering Tinker. Wind Cat dashed round the corner of Aunt Mildrith’s house.

  Mr. Blyde, rather discomposed, made a grab for the dog’s collar.

  “Now, Tink! Now you stop that! Bad boy. Well, as I was saying, Miss Web, I’d be greatly obliged if you’d tell your niece to stop enticing the cat round here,” he told Aunt Mildrith, and he strode off homewards, dragging the agitated and noisy Tinker by his collar.

  Just out of sight round the corner of the house, boiling with rage, Lukey held and stroked and soothed Wind Cat, whose heart was thudding like a kettledrum.

  “There, there, it’s all right now, poor Wind Cat, he’s gone, he’s gone; and this time he’s going to stay gone. But you’ve got to help me, Wind Cat, I can’t manage by myself.”

  Frowning with concentration, Lukey opened Aunt Mildrith’s old black book.

  After about five minutes the sky had turned as black as burnt toast. The wind rose up and began to howl, making a sound like a chainsaw, wheeeee-oo. A lot of leaves, and some green apples, flew off the apple trees.

  Aunt Mildrith, glancing from the kitchen window, observed that the house called Bide-a-Wee began to spin round and round like a chimney-cowl, slowly at first, then so fast that it was just a red, pink, and yellow blur. Then house, garage, garden, and inhabitants rose from the ground, still spinning, and vanished from view. Nothing remained on the opposite side of the crossroads but a bald patch of ground.

  “Mysterious Appearance of House in Laburnum Road,” said the headline in the Bournemouth Weekly Chronicle.

  “Bournemouth residents were startled last Friday to find that a complete house had apparently been erected overnight on an empty plot of land where the Sunnyside Infants’ School had recently been demolished. The Housing Department says that no application fo
r Planning Permission had been made or granted.”

  Aunt Mildrith, reading this paragraph in the paper, sighed, and looked out of the window to where Lukey and Wind Cat were chasing one another in and out of swiftly moving patches of sunshine. An autumn gale had been blowing all day. By now the patch of ground where Bide-a-Wee had stood was covered with fallen beech leaves from the woods.

  Oh well, thought Aunt Mildrith, I did my best not to influence the child. But the habit is in the family and I suppose it was bound to come out sooner or later. And I daresay she will be able to make a living as well that way as any other.

  Taking her camera from the kitchen dresser, Aunt Mildrith strolled out on to the lawn, looked up, focused the lens on the windy sky, and took some pictures of an extremely interesting set of dinosaur prints which went clear across the middle from one horizon to the other.

  Sea Mice

  ONCE THERE WAS A GIRL called Hella who lived in a small wooden house on a cold northern coast. Each night in winter she could look out of her bedroom window and see the Northern Lights flashing in the sky. They looked like the fingers of a giant hand, beckoning red and green above the black sea.

  Hella had a plum tree that was all her own. Her father, a sea captain, had planted it for her on the day she was born, at the top of the sandy cliff where their house was built. The tree grew faster than Hella, and spread its branches wide, but bore no fruit until her seventh birthday, when it produced one tiny plum, clear as glass.