So did everyone except Miss Perkle and her teachers and students. And of course Kate and her mother.
“They won’t widen the road,” said Kate to Miss Perkle. “And they won’t tear down the school, either.”
She made another motion with her hand and the spiny, thorny, prickly vine withered and shriveled and dried up and blew away, leaving the road empty except for the bulldozers.
Miss Perkle looked extremely alarmed.
“Don’t worry,” said Kate. “The vine will grow again any time they try to work on the road.”
“My dear child,” said Miss Perkle, “how on earth do you do that? All of us excel at causing warts and summoning bats and making things fall down or fly up, but never, not since the days of the famous witch Hephzibah Carew, have we been able to cause the magic thorn tree to grow. Where did you learn that marvelous spell?”
"I'm not sure,” said Kate. “I think I heard it once in a dream.”
They all walked back then, along the narrow, twisting old road to the school. And Miss Perkle and Kate and her mother had tea in the ebony parlor, where the portraits of the famous old graduates looked down from their frames and the drapes were drawn against the sun and a single candle burned on the table.
“Kate does have power, you see,” said Kate’s mother. “I tried to tell you. Even if she is a foundling and we don’t know who her real mother is, she has power.”
“A foundling?” said Miss Perkle.
“Left on my doorstep,” admitted Kate’s mother. “She was only a tiny thing. But she has power, even if she isn’t descended from a graduate.”
Miss Perkle looked puzzled. Could an ordinary child be a real witch? Then Miss Perkle looked over her shoulder at one of the dim old pictures that hung on the dark wall. And Miss Perkle took the candle from the table and held it up next to the picture. She looked at the painted face and the painted face looked back at her. It was like looking at a picture of Kate. The girl in the painting was older, of course, but unmistakably like Kate.
“Of course,” said Miss Perkle. “I should have noticed. Kate is not an ordinary child. She is without any doubt the descendant of Hephzibah Carew, our most brilliant graduate. The resemblance is striking, and she does have the power.”
“Not always,” admitted Kate. “Once the Phelps kid swiped my roller skates and I tried to turn him into a frog. It didn’t work.”
“No?” said Miss Perkle.
“No. He turned into a bumblebee and stung me.”
“Never mind.” Miss Perkle put the candle back on the table. “You’re young. Wait until you’ve finished your education and are a proper witch with a proper diploma.”
“Then you’ll take me?” cried Kate.
“You may begin classes on Monday,” said Miss Perkle.
Kate looked happily around the ebony walls. She thought of the collection of antique cobwebs, and the herb garden with its wolfbane, and the cellar jammed with delightful toadstools. Then she thought of something else.
“What about the entrance exam?” she asked.
“Dear Katherine,” said Miss Perkle. “Do not worry your head about an entrance exam. You have already passed it.”
The Boy Who Drew Cats
Lafcadio Hearn
This young artist found that “Practice makes purrfect”
* * *
A long, long time ago, in a small country village in Japan, there lived a poor farmer and his wife, who were very good people. They had a number of children, and found it hard to feed them all. The elder son was strong enough when only fourteen years old to help his father; and the little girls learned to help their mother almost as soon as they could walk.
But the youngest child, a little boy, did not seem to be fit for hard work. He was very clever—cleverer than all his brothers and sisters; but he was quite weak and small, and people said he could never grow very big. So his parents thought it would be better for him to become a priest than to become a farmer. They took him with them to the village temple one day, and asked 202 / the good old priest who lived there if he would have their little boy for his pupil, and teach him all that a priest ought to know.
The old man spoke kindly to the lad, and asked him some hard questions. So clever were the answers that the priest agreed to take the little fellow into the temple as an acolyte, and to educate him for the priesthood.
The boy learned quickly what the old priest taught him, and was very obedient in most things. But he had one fault. He liked to draw cats during study hours, and to draw cats when cats ought not to have been drawn at all.
Whenever he found himself alone, he drew cats. He drew them on the margins of the priest’s books, and on all the screens of the temple, on the walls, and on the pillars. Several times the priest told him this was not right; but he did not stop drawing cats. He drew them because he could not really help it. He had what is called “the genius of an artist,” and just for that reason he was not quite fit to be an acolyte; a good acolyte should study books.
One day after he had drawn some very clever pictures of cats upon a paper screen, the old priest said* to him severely, “My boy, you must go away from this temple at once. You will never make a good priest, but perhaps you will become a great artist. Now let me give you a last piece of advice, and be sure you never forget it. Avoid large places at night; keep to small!”
The boy did not know what the priest meant by saying, ‘Avoid large places; keep to small!” He thought and thought, while he was tying up his little bundle of clothes to go away; but he could not understand those words, and he was afraid to speak to the priest anymore, except to say good-bye.
He left the temple very sorrowfully, and began to wonder what he should do. If he went straight home he felt his father would punish him for having been disobedient to the priest: so he was afraid to go home. All at once he remembered that at the next village, twelve miles away, there was a very big temple. He had heard there were several priests at that temple; and he made up his mind to go to them and ask them to take him for their acolyte.
Now that big temple was closed up but the boy did not know this fact. The reason it had been closed up was that a goblin had frightened the priests away, and had taken possession of the place. Some brave warriors had afterwards gone to the temple at night to kill the goblin; but they had never been seen alive again. Nobody had ever told these things to the boy; so he walked all the way to the village hoping to be kindly treated by the priests.
When he got to the village it was already dark, and all the people were in bed; but he saw the big temple on a hill on the other end of the principal street, and he saw there was a light in the temple. People who tell the story say the goblins used to make that light, in order to tempt lonely travelers to ask for shelter. The boy went at once to the temple, and knocked. There was no sound inside. He knocked and knocked again; but still nobody came. At last he pushed gently at the door, and was glad to find that it had not been fastened. So he went in and saw a lamp burning—but no priest.
He thought that some priest would be sure to come very soon, and he sat down and waited. Then he noticed that everything in the temple was gray with dust, and thickly spun over with cobwebs. So he thought to himself that the priests would certainly like to have an acolyte, to keep the place clean. He wondered why they had allowed the place to get so dusty. What most pleased him, however, were some big white screens, good to paint cats upon. Though he was tired, he looked at once for a writing box and found one, and ground some ink, and began to paint cats.
He painted a great many cats upon the screens; and then he began to feel very, very sleepy. He was just on the point of lying down to sleep beside one of the screens, when he suddenly remembered the words: “Avoid large places—keep to small!”
The temple was very large; he was alone; and as he thought of these words—though he could not quite understand them—he began to feel for the first time a little afraid; and he resolved to look for a small place in which to sleep. He
found a little cabinet, with a sliding door, and went into it and shut himself up. Then he lay down and fell fast asleep.
Very late in the night he was awakened by a most terrible noise—a noise of fighting and screaming. It was so dreadful that he was afraid even to look through a chink of the little cabinet; he lay very still, holding his breath for fright.
The light that had been in the temple went out; but the awful sounds continued, and became more awful, and all the temple shook. After a long time silence came; but the boy was still afraid to move. He did not move until the light of the morning sun shone into the cabinet through the chinks of the little door.
Then he got out of his hiding place very cautiously, and looked about. The first thing he saw was that all the floor of the temple was covered with blood. And then he saw, lying dead in the middle of it, an enormous monstrous rat—a goblin rat—bigger than a cow!
But who or what could have killed it? There was no man or other creature to be seen. Suddenly the boy observed that the mouths of all the cats he had drawn the night before were red and wet with blood. Then he new that the goblin had been killed by the cats which he had drawn. And then also, for the first time, he understood why the wise old priest had said to him:—“Avoid large places at night; keep to small."
Afterwards that boy became a very famous artist. Some of the cats which he drew are still shown to travelers in Japan.
87032672-67
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Boston Public Library
SOUTH BOSTON BRANCH LIBRARY
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Anthologies edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh
YOUNG MUTANTS
YOUNG EXTRATERRESTRIALS
YOUNG MONSTERS
YOUNG GHOSTS
YOUNG STAR TRAVELERS
Jacket art © 1987 by Deborah Healy Jacket © 1987 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.
Other books by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and. Charles G, Waugh
YOUNG MUTANTS
“An intriguing collection gets off to a fine start with Ray Bradbury’s ‘Hail and Farewell’ and Frederic Brown’s ‘Keep Out,’ the first as poignant as the second is chilling. This is one of the best in the series of theme-oriented anthologies of science fiction that Asimov, Greenberg, and Waugh have compiled.... The book is notable for the high quality and the variety of selections.”
—Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
YOUNG EXTRATERRESTRIALS
“In a post-ET world, the appeal of an anthology of 11 short stories about Young Extraterrestrials seems assured....Junior and senior high . school readers will enjoy the contacts with usually superior alien civilizations described in these stories.” —School Library Journal,
YOUNG MONSTERS
“Vampires, werewolves, zombies and assorted ghouls haunt the pages of YOUNG MONSTERS, a superb collection of macabre short stories. The editors have done a masterful job of arranging the stories to alleviate tension. YOUNG MONSTERS will have young readers feverishly turning the pages to the end. And when they are done—if it’s late at night—the lamp will stay on to keep ‘young monsters’ at bay.” (Starred Review) —School Library Journal
Young Witches & Warlocks Page 15
