by Gwyneth Rees
‘How curly?’ Cosmo asked as he steered the broomstick out of the way of a large mother blackbird who was too busy concentrating on keeping hold of the worm in her mouth to look where she was going. He was thinking back to the curly toenail clippings the witch-midwife had dropped. He had told Mia about finding them and how, in the end, he had left them in the garden, just in case the midwife realized she had lost them and came back to look for them.
‘I don’t really know – but the other thing Mother told me about witch-babies,’ Mia suddenly remembered, ‘is that they have magic in their toenails.’
Cosmo didn’t have time to ask any more questions because they had just reached the hospital. ‘Scarlett said we had to fly up to the top floor and then go to the third window from the right,’ he said. ‘It’s this way, I think.’
‘There’s Scarlett!’ Mia mewed a few minutes later, and Cosmo brought the broomstick to such an abrupt stop that Mia nearly fell out of the basket. They were directly outside the window of Goody’s room now.
Scarlett saw them and rushed to the window to open it just as Bunty and Gabriel came back with four steaming cups of eye-of-newt tea (which was well known for having a soothing effect on witches, though unfortunately it tended to have a more allergic effect on humans). ‘Cosmo! Mia! I can’t wait to show you my baby brother. He’s really cute,’ Scarlett gushed.
‘Where is Spike?’ Gabriel asked, seeing that he was no longer in his cot, and Goody explained that he had just been taken to get weighed again.
‘They’ve got catnip tea in the canteen,’ Bunty told the kittens. ‘But I expect you’d prefer a saucer of milk, wouldn’t you?’ She started to undo one of the little plastic pots of long-life milk which had come with the tea.
Mia mewed softly to Cosmo, ‘That stuff tastes horrible. Amy gave it to us once – before Mother trained her to only serve us the fresh kind.’
‘It’s OK – we’re not thirsty,’ Cosmo miaowed to Bunty, because Scarlett’s aunt was one of the few witches who actually understood cat language.
‘That sounds like Spike,’ Goody suddenly said as a baby’s cries became audible from outside their door. ‘Gabriel, can you go and see?’
They could all hear the baby crying now, and as Gabriel opened the door, he almost tripped over a little white bundle that was lying on the floor. The bundle immediately started to bawl even louder and Gabriel quickly picked it up and brought it into the room.
‘It’s Spike,’ he said. ‘At least I think it is.’ He was peering at the baby’s face as if to make absolutely sure.
‘Oh, how could they just leave him on the floor like that?’ Goody sounded very upset, and her husband quickly put the wailing baby into her outstretched arms.
‘One of my friends at school has a mum who’s a nurse in a hospital,’ Scarlett put in helpfully, ‘and she says they’re very short-staffed.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ Goody snapped. ‘Gabriel, go and fetch somebody! I’m going to make a complaint about this!’
Gabriel went away and came back a few minutes later with the head midwife. She was totally perplexed when Goody explained what had happened.
‘There’s nothing wrong with our weighing scales,’ she said. ‘Which midwife did you say it was who took him?’
‘I’d never seen her before,’ Goody replied. ‘She said she’d only just come on duty.’
At that moment Cosmo and Mia heard raised voices coming from further up the corridor.
‘Come on,’ Mia said to Cosmo. ‘Let’s go and see what’s happening.’
So Cosmo and Mia slipped out into the corridor and headed towards a room at the far end, where another witch-mother was clearly very angry about something. The two kittens went right into the room, where the distraught mother was telling a worried-looking midwife that her baby girl had just been taken off to be weighed – and been returned with all her toenails clipped off. She was showing the midwife the baby’s feet, and Cosmo and Mia jumped up on to an empty chair to get a closer look. Instead of the long, curly glowing toenails that should have been there, all that was left were some short, straight green stumps.
The kittens raced back to Goody’s room, where the witch family were still engaged in a heated conversation with the head midwife.
Cosmo leaped straight up on to the bed. ‘Check Spike’s toenails!’ he mewed. ‘Quickly!’ When nobody seemed to take any notice of him he grabbed the end of Spike’s blanket in his teeth and tugged the covers right off the baby’s feet.
And then they saw that Spike’s beautiful curly green toenails were gone. They had been trimmed right back.
After that everything happened in a whirl.
‘That midwife must have been an imposter!’
‘Oh, I never should have given Spike to her!’
‘It’s not your fault,’ Gabriel tried to soothe his wife. ‘How were you to know?’
As the head midwife rushed off to raise the alarm and the other midwives rushed from room to room, checking on the rest of the babies, Cosmo and Mia jumped back on to the window ledge to see if they could spot any suspicious broomstick traffic outside. ‘I wonder if that midwife who stole Spike’s toenails was the same one I saw flying over our garden,’ Cosmo said to Mia. ‘Maybe the toenails she dropped were ones that she’d already stolen.’
‘You should tell the others about her,’ Mia said. ‘It might be important.’
So Cosmo tried to interrupt the witches’ conversation, but found that it was very difficult to make himself heard. Finally Scarlett realized that Cosmo had something important to tell them, and she persuaded her family to be quiet so that he could speak.
‘This is very worrying,’ Bunty said after she had translated Cosmo’s story for the others. ‘I think I’d better go and report everything that’s happened to the Good Witches’ Society. Witch-babies’ toenails contain a lot of magic. It’s protective magic – that’s what makes the toenails glow like they do – but if that magic gets into the wrong hands . . .’ She shuddered.
‘Will Spike be all right?’ Scarlett suddenly asked. ‘Doesn’t he need his toenails to protect him?’
Before anyone could answer, the head midwife came back into their room and announced that all visitors must leave at once and that all the babies must now be kept in hospital under strict observation for at least the next few days. Their mothers were of course expected to stay in hospital with them. ‘We don’t know how this is going to affect the babies,’ she added gravely. ‘But they will definitely be more vulnerable to bad spells and nasty germs without their toenails.’
‘I think the fathers had better stay too,’ Gabriel said. ‘I intend to be here if the witch who did this comes back again.’
‘Scarlett had better come home with me then,’ Bunty said. ‘And Cosmo, I want you to go home too and tell Mephisto what’s been happening. All witch-cats must be informed about this immediately.’
Cosmo and Mia rode home at top speed and when they got there Cosmo landed his broomstick in the garden where he had left the bag of toenails earlier. He wanted to take them to show to his father but, when he reached the flower bed where he had left them, he found that they were gone.
‘That witch who dropped them must have come back for them,’ Mia mewed. ‘Unless . . .’ She started to sniff around the flower bed just to make sure there was no unpleasant smell present, which might indicate that a dog had been there recently. Dogs were known for eating anything they came across – even toenails – because they didn’t have such highly refined taste buds as cats.
‘I wonder why the toenails were stolen?’ Mia said, when she had satisfied herself that no dogs had visited this part of the garden recently.
‘So they can be used as spell ingredients, probably,’ Cosmo said.
‘What sort of spells have witch-babies’ toenails in them?’ Mia asked.
‘Very powerful ones, I guess,’ Cosmo replied. ‘But come on. Let’s go and ask Father.’
3
When Cosmo and Mia burst in thro
ugh the cat flap, they found that the kitchen was full of visitors. It looked as if Cosmo’s parents were entertaining several of the neighbourhood cats. As well as Mia’s mother, Professor Felina, there was a Siamese witch-cat called Tani, and her two Siamese kittens, Hagnus and Matty. Cosmo and Mia had first met Tani when she had rescued Mia from the jaws of a huge dog whose kennel they had got a bit too close to when they were younger kittens. Since then Cosmo’s family had got to know Tani’s family, and Cosmo and Mia had become friends with Hagnus and Matty, who were also witch-cats. There was another adult cat in the kitchen, who Cosmo didn’t recognize. He was a scruffy-looking short-haired grey with one blue eye and one green eye – and he had a very loud miaow.
Cosmo was used to the loud voices of his Siamese friends – his mother had told him that all Siamese cats spoke like that – but he was very surprised to hear such a loud voice coming from a cat who looked like he ought to have a perfectly ordinary miaow.
Hagnus and his sister came charging towards Cosmo and Mia, very excited to see them. Hagnus playfully grabbed Cosmo by the scruff and knocked him over and while the two boy kittens were tumbling around, Mia asked Matty who the strange grey cat was.
‘That’s Meowface Smith,’ Matty explained. ‘He’s a quarter Siamese, which is why he’s got such a loud miaow. His grandfather was Mother’s great-uncle or something. He’s a travelling cat – and guess who he’s been travelling with for the past six months?’
‘How should I know?’ Mia replied.
Matty took a deep, important-looking breath and announced, ‘Meowface has been travelling with Cleo Cattrap.’
Mia stared at her. ‘The Cleo Cattrap?’
‘That’s right,’ Matty said proudly.
Cosmo had overheard and now he stopped play-fighting with Hagnus in order to listen better.
Cleo Cattrap was one of the most famous cats in the country, chiefly because he had set up a travelling catwalk show, which he had named after himself. Cleo Cattrap’s Amazing Catwalk Extravaganza drew in crowds of cats from far and wide whenever it came to town. So many cats wanted to enter the catwalk competition that Cleo was now having to hold auditions in each town he visited, where he invited cats to compete for the title of catwalk king or queen.
‘Cleo wants to set up one of his catwalk competitions here, and Meowface is his chief assistant. They’re looking for somewhere to hold the competition, so Meowface came to ask Mother if she knew of anywhere. It’s got to be somewhere with quite a lot of space, where we won’t be disturbed by any humans or witches.’
Cosmo and Mia were so excited they forgot all about the toenail robbery as they listened to the discussion that was taking place among the adult cats.
‘If only I wasn’t expecting nine kittens,’ India said, ‘I could have entered the competition myself.’
‘India is one of the most elegant cats in the neighbourhood,’ Mephisto told Meowface proudly. ‘In fact, we are very well matched. However, I would never enter a beauty contest myself. I think it would be most undignified.’
‘This isn’t just a beauty contest,’ Meowface told him. ‘Cats are also judged on deportment and vocal ability.’
‘What does that mean?’ Cosmo whispered.
‘It means they’re judged on how well they walk and talk,’ Mia whispered back excitedly. ‘Oh – this is so exciting! I wonder if kittens can enter!’
Unfortunately her mother, the professor-cat, overheard her. ‘I would not wish you to waste your time on any competition that did not test your brain ability, Mia,’ she mewed. ‘Does this competition do that as well?’ she asked Meowface.
‘Well . . .’ Meowface looked a little uncertain about that. ‘All I can tell you is that Cleo Cattrap is looking for what we in the business call the F factor.’
‘The F factor?’ The other cats looked none the wiser.
‘The Feline factor,’ Meowface explained grandly.
The professor-cat looked at him as if she thought he was incredibly stupid. ‘Feline means catlike,’ she told him. ‘And all cats are catlike, so what are you talking about?’
Meowface looked confused himself then. ‘Cleo Cattrap will explain everything when he arrives,’ he miaowed back quickly. ‘In the meantime, has anyone got any ideas about where we could hold the competition?’
‘How about in our garage?’ India suggested.
‘It’s not big enough,’ Meowface replied. ‘We usually get a huge audience of spectator cats on the day. We need some sort of human-sized hall, but a hall that isn’t actually in human use, if you see what I mean.’
‘What about Scarlett’s school hall?’ Cosmo said. Scarlett, like most other witch-children, attended the local human school (as well as having special Saturday morning witch lessons from a witch-tutor as well). ‘It’s the school holidays at the moment so the school will be shut and there won’t be any humans there.’
‘Brilliant!’ Meowface said, grinning at him like a Cheshire cat instead of a quarter-Siamese one. ‘Let’s go and take a look at it.’
Just then the telephone started ringing.
Mephisto went to listen to the message while the others continued talking, and when he came back a few minutes later he told them they must turn on the television immediately.
‘Why?’ India asked.
‘That was Scarlett. She says there’s something very important on the local Witch News.’
Cosmo put his paw to his mouth in alarm as he remembered that he still hadn’t told anyone about the incident at the hospital. ‘Father, there’s something I was meant to tell you,’ he began, as all the cats trooped through to the front room, where Mephisto knocked the TV remote control on to the floor and trod all over it until he managed to switch it to the correct channel.
The Witch News’s reporter was looking very serious.
‘Reports are coming in from all over the region that newborn babies’ toenails are being stolen by witches posing as midwives. These fake midwives are entering hospitals and private homes and secretly clipping off the babies’ toenails. All parents of newborn witch-babies in the area are advised to be very wary in the wake of these extraordinary reports . . .’
‘Father, that’s what I was meant to tell you,’ Cosmo mewed anxiously. ‘Spike’s toenails have been stolen and Bunty says that all witch-cats have to be on the alert!’
The two adult witch-cats in the room – Mephisto and Tani – looked very alert indeed as they heard this.
‘I lived with a human once who used nail-clippers to clip my claws,’ Meowface told them. ‘I didn’t like it because it stopped me scratching the stair carpet properly – but I didn’t report my claws as stolen. Do you think I ought to have done?’ He flexed his claws in a teasing sort of way at the kittens.
‘Be quiet, Meowface,’ Mephisto snapped. ‘This isn’t something to joke about. Witch-baby toenails have a lot of magic in them – they are one of the most powerful of all spell ingredients. Since you aren’t a witch-cat you wouldn’t know about these things, but—’
‘How powerful exactly?’ India interrupted him, sounding worried.
‘Extremely powerful,’ Mephisto replied.
Tani started to speak then. ‘You know, witch-babies’ toenails were once used in a very famous robbery,’ she said. ‘Two witch-sisters who specialized in bad magic – the Broom sisters – used them to make a spell that deactivated the electronic tags that shops attach to their goods to prevent them being stolen.’
‘The kind of tags that make that beeping noise if you try and leave the store?’ India asked. (She had once spotted a very pretty silk scarf in a shop window, which she had thought would make an excellent sari, but when she had tried to drag it outside she had been deafened by the terrible beeping – and the loud laughter of the security guard. ‘And to think I was going to leave them two live mice in exchange for it!’ India had told Mephisto indignantly afterwards.)
‘That’s right,’ Mephisto replied now. ‘I remember the Broom sisters only too well. Belinda
and Murdina Broom invented a spell that helped them steal the entire contents of an indoor shopping centre. They were caught because someone saw them trying to transport a whole lot of stolen televisions home on their broomsticks. They got reported to the Good Witches’ Society and they ended up in prison.’
‘Bunty said she was going to report Spike’s stolen toenails to the Good Witches’ Society,’ Cosmo said. ‘Will they be able to catch who did it and get the toenails back again?’
Mephisto and Tani looked at each other. Hagnus and Matty noticed that their mother’s tail was beginning to go slightly bushy at the tip – which only happened when she was very worried about something.
‘I don’t know,’ Mephisto finally said.
‘What will happen if they can’t find the toenails?’ Hagnus asked.
‘I’m not sure, but if that many toenails have been stolen, I can’t help thinking that whoever is behind this must be planning to use them for something big,’ his mother replied. ‘And since the toenails will have to be used while they are still glowing – that means they will have to be used soon.’
‘Couldn’t they have been stolen to sell on individually to other witches?’ India asked. ‘A single bag of witch-baby toenails would fetch quite a high price, by the sound of it.’
‘Perhaps,’ Tani agreed – but she didn’t sound convinced.
‘Well . . .’ Meowface had stood up while they were talking and he was now walking towards the cat flap. ‘Toenail robbery or no toenail robbery, the show must go on, as we say in the business! Perhaps you could show me the way to this school hall, Cosmo?’
‘It’s just down the road,’ Cosmo replied. ‘I can help you get inside if you like. Scarlett left her gloves in the cloakroom once and I snuck in through a broken window in the toilets to get them for her.’
‘I’ll come with you, Cosmo,’ Mia said excitedly, but her mother quickly intervened.
‘I don’t believe you have finished your lessons for the day, Mia,’ she told her sharply. ‘I have a dead shrew at home that I want you to dissect.’
