Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

by Gwyneth Rees

  India still looked worried, but at that point she heard Cosmo calling her. ‘I’d better go and find out what happened,’ she sighed.

  When India heard that Cosmo was a witch-cat, she was pleased for Mephisto’s sake – until Mephisto announced that from now on Cosmo would have to live in Sybil’s house with him instead of in the garage with her.

  ‘But, Mephisto, surely he can still sleep here with me if he spends the day in Sybil’s house with you?’ India pleaded.

  Mephisto shook his head. ‘He needs to learn to be a witch-cat, by day and by night.’

  Cosmo didn’t want to move out of the garage either. He liked sleeping next to his mother on the old magic carpet that Sybil had dumped there because it had run out of magic. He also liked playing in the heap of old curtains that Sybil had thrown out when she had got new ones. He especially loved to watch his mother roll herself up in those curtains, pretending she was wearing a sari. With the red-and-gold material draped around her, Cosmo couldn’t imagine even an Indian cat looking as beautiful as his mother did.

  ‘But I always sleep curled up with Mother,’ Cosmo said. Sometimes in the night he had scary dreams that made him twitch in his sleep, and his mother was always there if he woke up, with both her paws draped over him. She usually gave him a warm lick and told him a story to help him go back to sleep again. Cosmo couldn’t imagine his father doing that.

  But Mephisto would not budge on the subject, except to say that Cosmo could spend one last night in the garage with his mother. Then he left, saying that he would be back to fetch Cosmo first thing in the morning.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ India told him, when Mephisto had gone. ‘I’m going to take you to see Professor Felina. She’ll know what to do.’

  Cosmo cheered up slightly when he heard that. He liked visiting his friend Mia. India led her kitten into the neighbouring garden and told him to hush as they approached Felina and Mia’s cat flap. Inside, a soft human voice could be heard talking. India peered through the cat-flap window and could just make out Felina sitting at the head of the kitchen table, a plate of fish in front of her. Felina’s chair was pulled up close to the table. Her back paws were on the chair while her front paws rested on either side of her plate. Mia was trying to maintain the same position on her side of the table, and Amy was sitting on her chair on the other side. All three seemed to be eating identical food.

  India greatly admired the way Felina ran her household. Felina had the human Amy completely at her beck and call. Felina said it came from years of strict behavioural management, which basically consisted of rewarding Amy’s good behaviours and ignoring the bad ones. Felina was rewarding Amy now by fixing her lovingly with her big amber eyes and purring at her loudly between mouthfuls.

  After the meal was finished, Amy dumped the dishes in the sink without rinsing them, just in case either cat wanted another lick of the fishy plates a bit later on. Then she went through to the front room to watch television.

  India tapped the cat flap once to let Felina know she was there. The cat professor immediately miaowed for them to come inside.

  Mia was excited to see her friend. ‘I’ve made a great scratching post out of the bottom stair,’ she told him, as India explained to Felina why they were there. ‘Come and see!’

  But Felina had other ideas. ‘Before anyone goes off to play there is some learning to be done,’ she said firmly.

  Mia groaned. She hated that word. Learning was the thing her mother valued above everything else, but to Mia learning was just boring. So far her mother was teaching her to read and write cat language, to understand rudimentary human and dog language, and to play the piano by walking up and down on the keys. Mia really envied Cosmo, who got to play outside a lot more than she did and whose mother seemed to think that the only thing a kitten needed to learn was how to keep itself clean. Keeping yourself clean was pretty easy, Mia thought, especially if you were a tabby cat like she was, with no white bits to show up the dirt.

  Felina led them upstairs to her study. (Amy was constantly surprised by how her books seemed to multiply by themselves. If she had looked at them more often she would have been even more surprised to find that some of them were written in a strange language made up of different scratches.)

  ‘So,’ Felina repeated, starting to flick through one of her cat encyclopedias. ‘You say Cosmo has passed the witch-cat test and Mephisto wants him to move in with Sybil . . .’

  ‘That’s right. Are you sure witches can’t harm cats?’ India asked her.

  Felina had already laid the encyclopedia on the floor, and opened it at the letter W for Witch. There were lots of pictures in the book, which the kittens rushed forward to look at, but Felina miaowed at them to keep back. ‘I don’t want paw prints all over my lovely encyclopedia, thank you very much. Now, listen.’ And she started to tell them a story.

  ‘Long, long ago,’ she began, ‘humans and witches and cats and dogs and all the other creatures didn’t exist like they do now. They only came to exist through a process called Evolution. Do you know what that is?’

  Felina had taught Mia all about Evolution only the previous week, and thankfully she could still remember some of what had been said. (Her mother got very cross when she couldn’t remember her lessons.) ‘It’s about when humans were apes,’ she piped up. ‘And cats were really big and scary.’

  ‘Very good,’ Felina purred, looking at her kitten in surprise. Maybe there was hope for her academic progress after all. ‘But humans weren’t the only ones who started out as apes.’ She flicked a page over and pointed with her paw to a picture of an ape-like creature with a green belly button and green fingernails and toenails, wearing a pointed hat made out of tree bark. ‘That,’ Felina said, ‘is a Neanderthal witch.’

  ‘A what?’ Cosmo and Mia and India all miaowed together.

  ‘An early type of witch,’ Felina explained patiently. ‘The difference between the prehistoric humans and the prehistoric witches was that the early witches befriended the cat species whereas the early humans didn’t. When the apemen set traps, the ape-witches would warn our cat ancestors about the traps. In return, our cat ancestors helped the ape-witches with their spells. We know that one of the first things the earliest witches used their magic for, was to make a binding spell which bound them forever with the cat species so that no witch would ever be physically capable of harming a cat. If she tried then she went up in a puff of smoke. Look, there’s a picture here of that happening.’ She pointed to a colour illustration, which showed a witch stabbing a cat. In the next picture the same witch was turning into what looked like a large green smoke-cloud. ‘In return for that, cats have always remained loyal to witches,’ Felina finished, closing the book.

  India listened to all of this in silence. She had never had a very scientific mind and she found it hard to understand how cats and humans and witches had developed in the way Felina had described. As for dogs . . . Well, she had always been told that they hadn’t developed much at all from their primitive ancestors.

  ‘Wow!’ Cosmo miaowed. ‘That’s cool! But what about witch-cats? Where did they come from?’

  ‘We have Evolution to thank for witch-cats too,’ Felina went on. ‘Some cats were better than others at assisting witches with their spells, and those cats became more and more closely associated with witches. After this had happened for generations and generations, two types of cat were created – witch-cats who had magic sneezes, and non-witch-cats who had ordinary sneezes. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Wow!’ Cosmo exclaimed again. He didn’t think it was simple at all. He looked at his mother to see how she was taking this new information.

  India was looking a bit overwhelmed. ‘I never considered myself particularly uneducated,’ she said. ‘But all this is news to me.’

  Felina closed the book. ‘You should learn to read, India,’ she said a little sternly. ‘All cats should learn to read and write. I keep saying this, but nobody will listen to me.’

/>   ‘Mephisto says reading and writing is unnecessary,’ India said, watching out of the corner of her eye as the two kittens headed off together to play a game behind the long curtains.

  ‘Typical!’ Felina scoffed. ‘Fighting, catching mice and spraying your territory – those are the only things that matter to the male of our species!’

  India smiled. ‘Well, they are quite important things when your family lives in a garage,’ she said. ‘You’re very lucky, Professor, to live in a house like this, with a human who really cares about you.’

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it!’ Felina hissed. ‘As I say to all my students, knowing how to select a good human at the outset is the most important thing any young cat can learn. You don’t think I went up and purred at every human who came to the cat-rescue centre looking for a pet, do you? If you want a good home, you have to arrange it for yourself.’

  But before India could reply, she was distracted by Cosmo, who was winding himself up in the curtain the way he had seen his mother do, but had got himself all twisted up. Mia was tugging at the material with her claws.

  ‘Cosmo, stop struggling!’ India miaowed. ‘You’re getting more caught up.’

  Suddenly there were footsteps on the stairs and a human voice could be heard calling out Felina and Mia’s names.

  ‘Come on,’ India whispered, unravelling the tangled curtain to free her kitten. ‘Let’s go home. At now I don’t have to worry about you coming to any harm in Sybil’s house, Cosmo, since we know that no witch can ever harm a cat.’

  Cosmo didn’t reply. He still thought Sybil was scary – even if she was a witch and theoretically more trustworthy than a human.

  3

  When Sybil woke up the next morning she was excited to see that some witch post had been delivered during the night. Every witch household had two posts – the ordinary one delivered by the human postman every morning, and the witch post that was delivered during the night. Witch post was delivered down the extra chimney that each witch had added to her house when she moved in. Sybil’s second chimney was purple in colour though, like all witch chimneys, it was painted with magic paint, so it was only visible to other witches.

  Sybil picked up the letter. The postmark told her it had been sent by her mother, Euphemia. Euphemia was a very old and very evil witch who didn’t have a very high opinion of her daughter, so it was most unusual for her to be sending Sybil a letter.

  Before Sybil could open it, the bell rang and Sybil opened the door to find Bunty Two-Shoes standing there with a child Sybil didn’t recognize. Bunty and her sister, Goody, were the joint heads of Witches Against Bad Spells, a society which closely monitored all spells-and-potions businesses, including Sybil’s. All witches were capable of making spells and potions if they had a recipe to work from, but it was a bit like cooking – some witches couldn’t be bothered or didn’t have the time to spend slaving over a hot cauldron all day long and preferred the convenience of buying ready-made products. So Sybil had gone into business several years ago, selling spells and potions by mail-order catalogue.

  Sybil despised Bunty, who reminded her of the golden-haired Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Bunty didn’t actually have golden hair, but she did have an angelic face (with cheerful blue eyes and rosy-red cheeks), which made Sybil irritated whenever she saw her. Bunty and her sister had already been responsible for banning her potion to make puppies’ teeth fall out when it was put in their drinking water, and they had also ruined her plan to sell some spells that were past their sell-by-date to a blind witch who lived round the corner. Most annoyingly of all, Bunty’s sister, Goody, had started encouraging witches to make potions that were totally organic, made out of free-range frogs and toads (instead of the cheaper, mass-produced variety that were bred in captivity and never saw the light of day before ending up as an ingredient in a witch’s recipe). Sybil didn’t see the need to sell organic products at all, and she didn’t care in the least what kind of life frogs and toads had before they ended up in her cauldron.

  ‘Sybil, may we come in?’ Bunty demanded crisply. She pointed to the child standing next to her, who had long, straight, dark hair and looked about nine or ten. ‘This is my niece, Scarlett. She’s staying with me at the moment.’

  Sybil ignored the little girl. She couldn’t stand children and if it wasn’t against the law to invent a spell to do away with them, she would certainly be working on one. ‘Hurry up then,’ she snapped. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A refund on behalf of Granny Brown,’ Bunty said, pulling a bottle out of her pocket, which had one of Sybil’s unmistakable purple labels stuck on the side. Granny Brown was the oldest witch in the neighbourhood and was too frail to mix her own spells any longer. ‘This potion you sold her has been watered down.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Sybil took the bottle from her, took it into the kitchen and tipped some out on to a saucer. It was very watered down indeed, a bit more obviously so than she had intended. ‘I can’t think how that can have happened,’ she lied.

  ‘I can,’ Bunty replied curtly. ‘You’ve been trying to cut costs again, haven’t you?’

  As Bunty and Sybil argued, Scarlett wandered out through the open back door into the garden, where Mephisto was giving Cosmo his first lesson on how to ride a broomstick. All broomsticks were made out of a special type of wood that made them and anyone riding them invisible to the human eye, but Scarlett, being a witch, could see it. At the moment, the broomstick was hovering no more than a cat’s height above the ground and Cosmo was perched on the stick, looking terrified, as Mephisto nudged it along gently from behind.

  ‘Shouldn’t you start him off with stabilizers on the back?’ Scarlett called out to them. ‘That’s how my mother taught me to ride my first broomstick!’

  Cosmo turned to look at her, lost his balance and tumbled to the ground.

  Mephisto hissed impatiently. ‘How many times do I have to tell you – you must concentrate!’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault!’ said Scarlett, running over and sitting herself down on the grass beside them. ‘Don’t be cross with him.’ She stroked Mephisto from his head right down to the tip of his tail. ‘Wow! You’re a really beautiful cat!’

  Mephisto couldn’t help purring slightly.

  With her other hand, Scarlett tickled Cosmo on his tummy. Cosmo brought his back legs up to thump her, accidently scratching her because he hadn’t yet learned how to play gently. He immediately rolled over and rubbed his head against her hand to try and make the scratch better. Scarlett laughed, stroking him on the head. ‘Don’t worry, it’s just a little scratch. Anyway, it’s my fault for tickling you.’

  ‘Scarlett!’ Her aunt was calling her.

  ‘Got to go now. See you again, I hope!’ she called back to the two cats.

  ‘Come on,’ Mephisto said, turning to his son. ‘Let’s try this again. One of our jobs is to deliver Sybil’s spells and potions to her customers. To start with, you can ride with me. Then you’ll be able to make deliveries on your own.’

  ‘When will I get to help make a spell?’ Cosmo asked eagerly.

  ‘Later,’ Mephisto answered firmly. ‘Now get back up on to that broomstick. It’s not really difficult. It’s just like walking along the top of a garden fence. You can do that without losing your balance, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but a fence doesn’t move while you’re walking on it,’ Cosmo pointed out, climbing back on again. ‘Father, you won’t let go, will you?’

  ‘Not until you’re ready,’ Mephisto said. In fact, he had already let go, but he didn’t tell Cosmo that.

  As soon as Bunty had gone – with the promise that another bottle of potion from Sybil’s new batch would be delivered to her that night so that she could inspect it before taking it to Granny Brown – Sybil tore open her letter.

  Inside was a recipe, carefully written in green ink on black paper, with a note attached in her mother’s spiky handwriting. This is what she read.

  Dear Sybil,


  Though you are not at all dear to me, I have just discovered a new, very evil, spell that only you can help me with. You will see what I mean when you read the enclosed recipe. Nobody will be able to make this spell except you and I together, and so long as the ingredients are never discovered by anyone else, we should be able to become very rich indeed. Read the recipe and let me know if you think you can do your bit.

  Your ever hopeful mother,

  Euphemia

  (Ever hopeful that you might not continue to be such a sorry excuse for a witch)

  Sybil wasn’t surprised by the unfriendliness of the letter. Her mother had always taken every opportunity to insult her. What surprised her was that Euphemia was requesting her help with something. Euphemia was a very powerful witch, and Sybil couldn’t imagine what her mother could possibly need her help with.

  She picked up the recipe and started to read it.

  Mephisto and Cosmo were entering the kitchen as Sybil read down to one particular ingredient.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said out loud. Then she started to laugh. ‘Of course! That’s why she needs me!’ She was so excited that she didn’t even notice the cats in her rush to go across the road and show the recipe to her friend Doris. Doris was rather a dim witch (she preferred dogs to cats and owned a poodle) who never noticed when Sybil was horrible to her, which is what enabled the two of them to remain friends.

  ‘Why is Sybil so excited?’ Cosmo asked his father, but Mephisto’s attention had been caught by something else. He was getting peckish and Sybil had left some fillets of fish to defrost on the side.

  ‘Come on,’ he instructed Cosmo. ‘Let’s take these to your mother.’

  The cat family were just tucking into their fish dinner when a loud miaow sounded outside the garage door. It was a miaow that could only belong to Jock, Doris’s large ginger witch-cat with chewed ears, whose thick Scottish accent was unmistakable. He had been sent to Doris from a witch relative up in Scotland and he got on surprisingly well with her poodle.