“You have not grown so very much, brother!” she told him. “Your coat is almost tabby, your eyes are still blue, and only three of your paws are black. What are you doing tramping round with that old pedlar-woman, instead of living with a proper witch?”
Gobbolino had so much to tell her that he did not know where to begin.
He could only stand and look at her with joy shining in his beautiful blue eyes, as he purred over and over again:
“Oh, sister! How glad I am to see you! How well you look, and how happy! Oh, what good fortune to meet you again in this fashion, my dear sister Sootica!”
At that moment the witch called them inside to have supper, and soon the two young cats were sharing a bowl of soup, ladled out of the familiar cauldron by the witch of the Hurricane Mountains.
“And how have you been getting on, my little man?” she asked Gobbolino, when the dishes were empty. “You can see for yourself what a fine cat your sister has become. She has learned nearly all that I can teach her. Show them some of your tricks, Sootica my dear!”
Sootica at once went through some of the more difficult tricks of witchcraft. She made beautiful music come out of the cauldron and flying pigs swoop about the room like dragonflies.
She turned Gobbolino a bright scarlet colour, which he did not like at all, and made his own mistress invisible. All this she did without winking an eyelid, so clever had she become.
“Now, show us what you can do, Gobbolino!” said the witch of the Hurricane Mountains.
“Oh, he cannot do anything at all!” said the pedlar-woman scornfully. “If you say he is brother to this handsome Sootica of yours you may be right, but he is no true witch’s cat. He cannot even tell fortunes – any kitten could beat him at it. And as for his tricks, la! They are not worth a chicken’s liver, sister!”
Gobbolino was so angry at her scorn, and so anxious to show his little sister Sootica that he was quite a fine fellow after all, that he began to tell the story of his adventures, beginning with his swim down the river, right down to his being sold by the woodcutter’s granddaughter for a dress of gold satin.
“And here I am!” ended Gobbolino modestly, looking for his sister’s praise, but she and the two witches were looking coldly at him.
“There is nothing in all your adventures that is worthy of a witch’s cat,” said the witch of the Hurricane Mountains. “If your mother, Grimalkin, knew what a poor thing she had reared, she would have drowned you at birth. Bah! Get into the corner there, and let us hear no more of your silly voice. Witch’s cat indeed! You have the heart of a common kitchen mouser!”
Gobbolino sighed deeply as he wished the many homes that had rejected him had thought the same, but he crawled obediently into the corner and slept, while the two witches and his sister Sootica talked witchcraft half the night.
When Gobbolino awoke it was broad morning.
The fire beneath the cauldron was out, and the cavern was lit by the sun’s warm rays that sent the spiders scuttling to their holes, and shamed the dusty cobwebs hanging in festoons across the craggy roof.
Wrapped in her cloak, the witch of the Hurricane Mountains snored in a corner. Sootica slept at her side, her green eyes tightly closed, but Gobbolino could not see the pedlar-woman anywhere.
He was wide awake so he thought he would go outside and talk to the donkey, but when he trotted outside, it was nowhere to be seen either.
He looked high and low, but there were only jagged rocks and precipices with a couple of ravens sitting on a nearby pinnacle that croaked at him and flapped their wings and croaked again.
Gobbolino trotted a short way up the path, but there was no sign of the donkey anywhere, so he trotted back again and sat on the threshold of the cavern basking in the sunshine, and waiting for the pedlar-woman to come and tell him where the donkey was.
The day went by and the pedlar-woman did not come. The witch and Gobbolino’s little sister Sootica slept on too, while the sun mounted slowly, slowly over the top of the Hurricane Mountains, and began slowly, slowly to descend the other side.
Gobbolino sat in the entrance to the cavern basking in the sunshine and waiting for the donkey or the pedlar-woman to appear, but neither of them came, and presently long shadows crept up the side of the Hurricane Mountains and touched Gobbolino’s toes with their cold blue fingers, so that he scuttled inside the cavern to escape the evening chill.
His little sister Sootica was just stirring in her corner, stretching her long and shining claws, blinking her green eyes and yawning widely as she said:
“Good-day, brother! I hope you slept well? No unpleasant dreams, I trust?”
“Oh, very well, thank you, sister,” replied Gobbolino, glad to have company at last. “And you too, I hope? You have certainly slept very late.”
“Late?” said Sootica, staring. “Why, it is barely sundown! My mistress and I never stir before the sun has set. Whatever should we do by daylight? Come, you can help me light the cauldron and prepare the evening meal.”
Gobbolino obligingly blew sparks out of his whiskers until the fire began to smoke and the cauldron to bubble.
“You can be quite useful, I see!” said Sootica agreeably, casting some herbs into the mixture. “Now I think all is ready, and if you will call your mistress I will call mine, for we are ready to dine.”
“I don’t know where my mistress is gone to!” said Gobbolino. “I can’t see her anywhere outside, and the donkey is not to be found either.”
“What?” screamed his little sister Sootica. “Mistress! Mistress! Do you hear that? Gobbolino says his mistress is gone and the donkey too. When did you find that out, Gobbolino?”
“Why, early this morning when I awoke!” said Gobbolino, quite frightened at the angry glances of his sister and her mistress the witch, who had bounced out of her corner and was standing over him in a threatening attitude.
“Why didn’t you go after her, you dunderhead?” she said in a fury.
“Why! I expected her to come back again at any moment!” said Gobbolino, wringing his paws and crying. “I waited all day long, but she never came! How could I tell she did not mean to return?”
“Blockhead! Numbskull!” cried the witch. “Do you mean to say you have been sitting outside the whole day long without saying a word about it? Don’t you know she meant to get rid of you? Don’t you know she meant to leave you behind so that she would not be plagued with you any longer?”
“Oh, no! No! No!” sobbed Gobbolino. “Indeed I never thought of that, ma’am! I am very sorry to have been so foolish, but such a thought never entered my head!”
“Send him after her!” said Sootica.
“She will be a thousand leagues away by now,” said the witch. “She may have been a poor witch, but she knew a trick or two, and she wouldn’t be caught that way – not she! No – such a poor cat as this is not worth keeping. I shall throw him down the mountainside!”
“Oh, no! No! No!” sobbed Gobbolino, while his little sister Sootica, although rather more composed, pleaded:
“Pray, mistress, think again. He is my bloodbrother and although I am very ashamed of him, I do not wish to see him die. Perhaps if we were to keep him a little while, mistress, you might teach him better ways, for you are very clever, and, after all, if you do not succeed, there is plenty of time to throw him down the mountain by and by.”
“True enough,” said the witch rather less fiercely. “Well, take your soup and let us get to work.”
As Sootica shared her bowl of soup with him, Gobbolino thanked her gratefully for saving his life.
“Don’t thank me!” said Sootica tartly. “Try to be a better cat, and worthy of our mother Grimalkin, for if you do not succeed, my mistress will certainly throw you down the mountainside and nothing that I can do will save you then.”
“I will try, sister,” said Gobbolino meekly.
After their meal the witch gave Gobbolino a bundle of spells to disentangle, so mixed and muddled, like a tangle
of giant cobwebs, that he did not know where to begin or end.
“See, it goes like this – and this!” said Sootica, deftly dividing them with her paws, but Gobbolino fumbled and snatched at the spells, tearing and knotting them, until they were in as fine a muddle as before.
The witch and Sootica left him at it when they set out on their broomstick some time later.
Gobbolino toiled a little longer and then fell asleep, utterly weary, beside the tangle of spells.
His sister and the witch returned at dawn. The witch went straight to bed, but Sootica trotted to his side and woke him up.
“Brother! Brother! Wake up! Where are the spells? Don’t you know my mistress will throw you down the mountainside if they are not ready by sunset?”
“I can’t do it! Indeed I cannot!” sobbed Gobbolino, sitting up while the tears sprang to his beautiful blue eyes. “My goodness, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Don’t cry, brother. I will help you this time, just for once!” said Sootica, and with a few deft twists of her paw the spells fell apart and lay in neat piles upon the cavern floor. “There, that is how it is done! Thus! – and thus! – and thus! Now you will know for another time! Goodnight, brother, and try to be a better cat, or my mistress will certainly throw you down the mountainside!”
“Yes, sister!” replied Gobbolino meekly, as he too curled up and slept again.
The next night the witch set Gobbolino to catch a hundred lizards for her in the rocks round the cavern. She wanted to make a very strong kind of spell, and in order to make it she must have a hundred lizards first.
So while she and Sootica flew away on the broomstick Gobbolino trotted out among the rocks, but although he saw thousands of lizards, green, scarlet, and blue ones, all frisking about in the moonlight, he could not catch a single one.
They knew all the tricks he had learned as a kitten, for they had not lived in witch-country for nothing.
When he turned himself into a piece of cheese they laughed at him and squealed like mice. When he changed into a fly they mocked and danced about the rocks like a thousand bluebottles. When he became invisible they held their sides and told him just exactly where he was hiding. Not one would come within a paw’s length of him.
At last, tired out, Gobbolino crept into the cavern and fell asleep, and there his sister Sootica found him when she returned at sunrise with her mistress the witch, who went straight to sleep, wrapped in her cloak in the corner.
“Brother! Brother! Wake up, brother!” cried Sootica, shaking the sleeping Gobbolino with her paw. “Where are the hundred lizards my mistress wanted? Don’t you know she will throw you down the mountainside if she does not have them by sundown?”
“Oh, I couldn’t catch them, sister, indeed I could not!” sobbed Gobbolino, waking up in a hurry. “I tried and tried! They mocked and laughed at me, and would not come near me! I never even caught one, sister, and oh, my goodness, whatever is to become of me?”
“Don’t cry, brother! I will help you, just this once!” said his sister Sootica, trotting out into the daylight with Gobbolino at her heels.
Out on the rocks she sat upright looking at the sun and admiring her shadow and very soon the lizards peeped out in their thousands to look at her.
“I can see you all,” said Sootica sedately. “I came out to look at you and to catch a hundred of you, if I can, for my mistress to put in her spell.”
“Oh, you can’t catch us!” said the lizards, wriggling with delight. “Your stupid brother has been at it all day, and he hasn’t so much as touched our tails!”
“Catch you indeed!” said Sootica with great contempt. “Why, I should not even try! For one thing, I do not expect there are fifty of you, far less a hundred, that are fine enough for what my mistress requires!”
This made the lizards very indignant.
“Fine enough?” they chattered. “Why, look at me! – and me! – and me! – and me!” and they came scuttling out of their holes to show Sootica how fine and handsome they were.
“Why, yes!” she said. “You will do – and you! – and you! – and you!” So saying she scooped up the first hundred that showed themselves in her paw, and stalked with them into the cavern.
“Why, how clever you are, sister!” said Gobbolino admiringly, trotting at Sootica’s heels. “I played all the tricks I knew upon them, but they would not come near me!”
“Ah! You would never catch such lizards as these by witches’ tricks,” said Sootica wisely. “They live too near our cavern and are always in and out – they pick up everything. Go to bed now, brother, and try to be a better cat. Good-day to you.”
On the third night the witch told Gobbolino to do nothing but stir the cauldron all night. She was brewing her great spell, and before she left the cavern she told the young cats about it.
“Far, far away from here there is a castle with a princess in it,” she said. “Tomorrow she will be twenty-one. Twenty-one years ago, when she was born, her parents did not invite me to her christening. Now I am going to have my revenge. When this spell is ready I will mould it in the form of a golden dove. This I shall take her as a birthday present, dressed in my best clothes so she will think me her fairy godmother. But the moment she holds it in her hands the dove will peck her, and she will fall asleep for a hundred years. Then her parents will be sorry they did not invite me to her christening.”
“Oh, how beautiful, mistress! How beautiful!” cried Sootica clapping her paws in delight, but Gobbolino’s blue eyes grew round with horror and dismay.
“Unless the spell is put upon her on her twenty-first birthday, it will have no power over her,” said the witch. “And in order to be ready it must boil all night. You must stir it, Gobbolino, and never stop a moment, or it will be spoiled.”
“At least you cannot fail with that!” said Sootica joyfully, as she bade her brother goodbye, and set off behind her mistress on the broomstick.
But the moment they were gone Gobbolino sprang off the stool on which he had been standing to stir the cauldron, and began to pace up and down the cavern.
“Oh, my goodness, how wicked! How cruel! How wrong!” he said to himself. “Think of the parents’ sorrow and distress! Think of the lovely girl doomed to a hundred years of sleep on her birthday! Oh, no! No! No! Never will I take part in such cruelty! Oh, why was I born a witch’s cat? Oh, why?”
And leaving the cauldron to bubble as it chose, he curled up in a corner and fell asleep.
The witch and Sootica were early in returning.
All night long, as she flew about her errands, the witch had been uneasy and anxious about her spell.
“Suppose he stirs it too fast! Suppose he stirs too slowly? Suppose he lets the fire out? Or scalds himself and drops the ladle? I ought not to have left it, Sootica, for if that spell fails then all my hopes are lost.”
“Indeed it cannot fail, dear mistress!” said Sootica. “Stupid and ignorant as my brother is, the merest kitten could stir a spell all night. I am sure you have no cause for fear!”
But the witch was not easy, and long before the dawn she had turned the broomstick for home and was speeding back towards the Hurricane Mountains with the wind whistling through Sootica’s whiskers as she clung behind her.
“Whee-eew!” they whistled, and people in the towns and villages below murmured: “There goes Sootica, the witch’s cat!”
Once at the cavern’s mouth the witch leapt off her broomstick and rushed inside. Sootica followed her, but more sedately, for she felt sure Gobbolino would not have been so foolish as to stop stirring the cauldron as he had been told to do so.
What was her horror to see the ashes grey under the cauldron, the bubbling silent, and worst of all, Gobbolino asleep in a ball in his usual corner!
“Miserable cat!” shrieked the witch, picking him up by the scruff of his neck. “What do you mean by this, you wretched creature?”
“It was so cruel!” sobbed Gobbolino. “I couldn’t do it! Indeed I
couldn’t do it, ma’am!”
“Cruel! What word is ‘cruel’ for a witch’s cat?” asked the witch, shaking him. “Don’t you want to be cruel? Don’t you want to be bad? Don’t you want to be wicked? Don’t you want to be ungrateful? You have the heart of a kitchen cat, the ambitions of a kitchen cat, and the looks of a kitchen cat! Henceforward you shall be a kitchen cat!”
And with one shriek of rage she hurled him into the cauldron.
16
Gobbolino the Kitchen Cat
The bubbles rose and broke about him as Gobbolino struggled in the cauldron. Had it been boiling he might have died, but he had let the fire out and it was almost cold.
At last the witch fished him out with a stick, and set him, dripping miserably, on the floor.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!” she jeered. “If only your mother could see you now! If she was ashamed of you before she would be ten times more so to look at you as you are this minute! Ho! Ho! Ho! Kitchen cat! Kitchen cat!”
“I should like to be a kitchen cat!” said Gobbolino. “I never wanted to be a witch’s cat – not I! Witches are cruel and wicked and bad! They do evil and make people miserable! They come to a bad end, and nobody is sorry! They are bad! Bad! BAD!!”
“What! Haven’t I silenced you yet?” shrieked the witch, making a snatch at him to hurl him down the mountainside, but Gobbolino skipped aside, and next moment Sootica had mounted the broomstick and called to him: “Jump up behind me, brother, quick!”
Gobbolino made one leap just as the witch made another grab at his tail.
Up-up-up! soared the broomstick, higher and higher, till the witch’s shrieks and angry cries could no longer be heard and the grey peaks of the Hurricane Mountains were like shadows below.
Dizzy and sick with fright, Gobbolino could only close his beautiful blue eyes and cling to his sister Sootica as he thanked her over and over again for saving his life.
“Don’t thank me!” said Sootica. “You are a disgrace to the family, and I never want to see your face again. But you are my blood brother after all, and I did not want to see you hurled down the mountainside.”
Gobbolino the Witch's Cat Page 9
