Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

by Gwyneth Rees

  Bunty turned to the others, looking cross. ‘She’s up to no good. Just where did she get those gold cats?’

  ‘Maybe she flew to Egypt on her broomstick and stole them from there,’ Scarlett suggested. She had learned at school how the ancient Egyptians – being a very advanced civilization – had made statues of cats in order to honour them. ‘Or maybe she stole a whole lot of gold from somewhere, melted it down—’

  ‘I wonder . . .’ Bunty interrupted thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole thing is a hoax. She’s probably collecting the money in advance, when she hasn’t really got any more gold cats to sell.’

  ‘But would people give her their money before she gave them a cat?’ Scarlett asked. ‘I mean, nobody trusts Euphemia, do they?’

  ‘Nobody with any sense,’ Bunty agreed. ‘But a lot of people don’t have any sense when it comes to parting with their money.’

  Everyone in the room looked glum.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, is there?’ Scarlett said, starting to get bored with talking about Euphemia. ‘Come on, Cosmo. I want to show you Aunt Bunty’s magic carpet. It’s really cool.’

  Scarlett took Cosmo to a room at the back of the house. It had two comfortable-looking sofas piled with cushions, and on the floor in front of the fireplace there was a patterned rug. ‘That’s just like the one in our garage!’ Cosmo miaowed excitedly.

  Scarlett couldn’t understand what he said, but she knew that he could understand her. ‘The good thing about magic carpets is that they never run out of magic,’ she told him. ‘But the bad thing is that whenever a witch steps on one they rise up into the air – it’s sort of an automatic reflex for them. Of course you can always tell it to go back down to the ground again or to fly off to wherever it is you want to go, but the thing is, if you tread on one by accident, you find yourself being lifted up when you don’t expect it. Aunt Bunty got a nasty bump on her head last time that happened – she lost her balance and toppled right over. After that she tried hanging the carpet up on the wall when we weren’t using it, but it got so used to being in that position that it kept tipping sideways instead of lying flat when we needed it to take us anywhere.’

  Cosmo touched the edge of the carpet cautiously with one paw, but nothing happened. Evidently magic carpets didn’t respond to witch-cats – only to witches – but he thought Scarlett must be mistaken in saying that magic carpets couldn’t ever run out of magic. Sybil’s had and that was why she had dumped it in the garage.

  ‘Watch!’ Scarlett said, stepping carefully on to the carpet and standing on it with both legs slightly apart to balance herself. As if it sensed her presence, the carpet immediately started to rise off the ground, flapping slightly at the edges. ‘It only does that if a witch stands on it,’ Scarlett explained. ‘Lots of humans have a magic carpet in their house and they never know because every time they stand on it, it just acts like an ordinary carpet.’

  Cosmo had never seen a magic carpet actually flying before and he wanted to get on them a nice smooth ride to the ceiling and back, and Cosmo decided that it must have been Mephisto’s driving – with all that speeding up and slowing down again – that had made him feel so queasy on the broomstick.

  Cosmo wasn’t sick on the way home – Mephisto made a big effort to drive carefully – but his stomach was much happier when they had landed.

  India was waiting anxiously inside the garage door, and while Mephisto was seeing to the broomstick, Cosmo poured out all his news. ‘Bunty’s magic carpet looks just the same as ours!’ he finished excitedly. Their carpet was almost identical to the one he had been riding on earlier, except for the fact that it was covered in white cat hairs where India had been rolling about on it.

  ‘Cosmo, come and help me fetch supper, please,’ Mephisto said, giving India a quick sniff as he passed. Cosmo’s father sniffed his mother a lot, Cosmo had noticed, especially when he hadn’t seen her for a few hours.

  ‘I’ll look in Amy’s bin first,’ Mephisto told his kitten once they were outside. Since Sybil never put down enough food for all of them, Mephisto always took it upon himself to raid Amy’s bin for the rest. (Amy frequently threw away perfectly good bits of chicken because Felina would rarely agree to eat anything but the breast.) ‘You go and see what Sybil has put in our cat bowl.’

  Cosmo obediently head-butted his way in through their cat flap, but before he reached the bowl in the corner he was distracted by the sound of Sybil talking on the phone in the hall. She was saying, ‘Yes, Mother.’

  Cosmo moved into the doorway to hear better.

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ Sybil said again.

  Euphemia must be a very scary person to have as your mother, Cosmo thought, remembering her appearance on the Witch News.

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ Sybil said for a third time.

  It reminded Cosmo of a day a few weeks back when India had miaowed out a string of orders about how he musn’t roll in the dirt, musn’t play in rubbish bins and musn’t rub himself against fences that had just been painted. When he had started to miaow back lots of reasons why a kitten couldn’t always avoid doing those things, India’s whiskers had shot forward and she’d hissed, ‘Cosmo, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop arguing with me and just say, “Yes, Mother”!’

  He wondered if Sybil’s mother was cross with her now.

  ‘But . . .’ Sybil was attempting to interrupt. ‘But Mother . . . Yes, Mother, Yes, Mother, Of course, Mother . . . But . . .’ Sybil’s voice was beginning to sound quite weak. Then she blurted out in one long rush, ‘But, Mother, I didn’t realize you needed the spell so quickly! I’ll go and get the ingredients straight away in that case. It’s just the main ingredient I’m not sure about. I mean, how am I going to get hold of that many—?’ She broke off abruptly as she noticed Cosmo sitting listening. She took off one of her red pointy-toed slippers and hurled it at him, shouting, ‘Stop spying on me, you wretched cat, or I’ll get my mother to turn you into a toad! She can do spells down the phone, you know! That’s how powerful she is!’

  Cosmo fled out through the cat flap, forgetting all about checking the cat bowl for food.

  ‘Cosmo, what’s wrong?’ India asked, standing up as he flew in through the hole in the garage door with his tail bushed up at the end.

  Cosmo told her what Sybil had said, and India immediately felt the fur on her own back starting to rise. ‘How dare she threaten you?’ she growled. ‘I won’t have it! I’m going to tell your father that he’s got to do something about it or—’

  ‘Mother, don’t . . .’ Cosmo interrupted, because he hated it when his parents argued, especially when it was about him. To distract her, he told her the rest of the conversation he had overheard – about how Sybil intended to go and fetch the ingredients for her spell straight away. ‘It must be the spell that Euphemia sent her in the post, Mother – the one that Jock said was really evil!’

  India’s green eyes seemed to get larger. She sat down again but she still looked alert.

  ‘She said she didn’t know how she was going to get hold of the main ingredient,’ Cosmo added. ‘What do you think it is, Mother?’

  ‘I dread to think,’ India replied. ‘Something that no other witch would dream of putting in a spell, probably. Baby frogs, baby toads . . .’ She shuddered. ‘I just hope it isn’t baby mice. I know that sometimes cats have to eat mice if the only other option is to starve, but I do hate the idea of killing them for any reason other than hunger – especially baby ones.’ India was an unusual cat in that she disapproved of blood sports of any description.

  Just then they heard Sybil’s front door opening.

  ‘Come on,’ India growled quietly. ‘Let’s follow her.’

  6

  Sybil was going to the supermarket. She was wearing one of her shabbier human outfits and carrying a shiny green handbag on one arm.

  India, whose white fur coat looked immaculate, led Cosmo along the street. They kept to the side of the p
avement close to the hedge so that they could take cover if Sybil turned round to look behind her, and halted outside the main entrance to the supermarket as Sybil disappeared inside.

  ‘We’d better use the other entrance,’ India said. She knew that a cat would look out of place in the human part of the supermarket, and most likely some well-meaning human would think they were strays and call the RSPCA to have them taken away.

  They slunk round the side of the huge building until they reached the back, where some men were unloading boxes from a lorry. The two cats dodged past them and headed for a large, sliding metal shutter, which looked quite ordinary until you touched it in a certain place with your paw, when it slid up to reveal a little entrance hall. From there you could take a lift down to the witches’ supermarket, which was situated directly under the human one. (It could also be reached from the main store by stepping through an invisible gap between the fish counter and the meat counter and taking the witch-escalator down to the basement.)

  Cosmo had never been in a supermarket before. When they stepped out of the lift, two witches were waiting to step in, both of them laden down with shopping. There was a notice-board just inside the shop on which were pinned three large notices in green ink.

  NO DOGS.

  SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE

  PROSECUTED.

  NO KITTENS UNLESS

  ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT.

  Cosmo couldn’t read the words but the meaning of each notice was perfectly clear, because there was a picture illustrating each one. The last picture showed a kitten on its own with a big green cross drawn underneath it, and another kitten, with a green tick under it, holding its mother’s paw. Cosmo nuzzled up closer to India to make it perfectly clear that he belonged with her. He was starting to think that supermarkets were quite scary places.

  ‘OK, let’s find Sybil,’ India said. ‘And don’t touch anything.’

  Cosmo felt too nervous to dream of touching anything, but that didn’t stop him from having a good look as his mother led him up and down the aisles where witches and cats were doing their weekly shop.

  ‘VISIT OUR FOOD AND DRINK SECTION!’ a voice boomed out over the tannoy, making Cosmo jump. ‘CHECK OUT OUR SPECIAL OFFERS ON EYE-OF-NEWT TEA, FROGSPAWN TAPIOCA AND SQUASHED-FLY BISCUITS!’

  ‘It’s the spell department we want,’ India told him. ‘I expect that’s where Sybil is headed.’

  The spell department made up a good half of the shop. It sold a few ready-made spells, but mostly the shelves were laden with spell ingredients. As far as Cosmo could make out, the ingredients seemed to be divided up into solids, liquids and gases. In the section selling solids, Cosmo stared in amazement at all the things on display.

  There were jars of pickled insects, tins of toenail clippings, spiders’ webs wound round sticks, boxes of birds’ feathers of every possible sort, tubes of snake venom, bags of assorted skin cells, pots of maggot paste, packets of squashed mosquitoes (with or without human blood), and many more items that Cosmo didn’t have time to look at properly.

  They passed the liquids next – rows and rows of bottles and glass jars – and Cosmo recognized some of the items Sybil had on her kitchen shelves at home, such as Loch Ness water, serpent saliva, donkey dribble and scented armpit sweat (they were running out of that and he wondered if Sybil would remember to buy some more).

  They spotted Sybil in the gases section, where a witch could hand in her own container and purchase wind refills of any description. Sybil was checking out the price of stinky dog-breath compared with polar bear burps, which were both on special offer. She handed over her empty bicycle pump and asked for it to be filled up with stinky dog-breath, then headed off towards the fresh-produce counter with its rows of dead mice, frogs, toads and shrews. (Whenever India passed that counter she always vowed to become a total vegetarian.)

  ‘Hey, Cosmo!’ somebody suddenly shouted.

  Cosmo turned to see Scarlett waving to him from the children’s lucky dip. The lucky dip contained an assortment of items selected by foxes from rubbish bins, each one wrapped in brown paper so you couldn’t see what was inside. You paid fifty pence for a ticket, and if you were lucky you might get a very good spell ingredient in your parcel, though more often than not all that you pulled out was an old sock.

  Sybil turned round as well when she heard Scarlett’s voice, and the two cats only just managed to dodge behind a nearby stack of tins in time. Fortunately Sybil’s attention was immediately taken up again by the shop assistant asking her if she wanted the frogs and toads wrapped up separately or together.

  Scarlett mouthed, ‘Sorry!’ at the two cats as they crept out from behind the tins. Sybil was such a horrible witch, she thought, that it was no wonder her cats felt like they had to hide from her.

  Sybil marched down the aisle towards the checkout, swinging a bag of frogs in one hand and a bag of toads in the other. She had left her trolley in the checkout queue to keep her place, which had made all the other witches in the queue very irritated. Sybil totally ignored Scarlett as she passed her – children didn’t rate saying hello to as far as she was concerned – but just as she was about to reclaim her trolley she remembered there was something she needed to buy in the kitchenware section.

  India and Cosmo followed her there, taking care to keep well out of sight this time.

  ‘I need the sharpest knife you’ve got,’ Sybil barked at a nearby shop assistant. ‘It has to be able to slice through the body of a small furry animal.’

  ‘A rat or a mouse, you mean?’ the shop assistant asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ Sybil giggled, and something about the way she was laughing made the fur on Cosmo’s back stand on end.

  The first thing Sybil did when she got home was rummage around in her shopping to find the chocolate she’d bought herself for a treat. Cosmo came in through the cat flap to see her biting the head off a chocolate kitten. She laughed when she saw Cosmo and put the rest of the kitten in her mouth whole.

  Cosmo turned his head away in disgust. He wished he didn’t have to stay in the kitchen, but his mother had asked him to. She wanted him to try and find out what Sybil was putting in her recipe.

  Cosmo watched Sybil lay out all her shopping on the table, then take out her recipe book and open it at the last page. She started to check off each ingredient against her shopping. ‘Human toenail clippings – yes. Two Golden Delicious apples with worms inside – yes. Cobwebs – yes. Frogspawn – yes. Iguana skin cells – yes. Centipede legs – yes. One golden eagle feather – yes. Two tubs of gold paint – yes. Serpent spit – got that already. One jar of sunlight . . .’ She picked up the jar, tutted in disapproval at the price, and banged it back down again. ‘Four frogs – yes. Three and a half toads . . . Ah . . . I can try out my new knife . . .’

  She noticed Cosmo sitting watching her, and he wondered if she was going to ask him to contribute a sneeze to her magic potion. But she didn’t seem to need any witch-cat help at all today. Instead she screeched at him to get out.

  Cosmo hurried back to the garage where his parents were lying stretched out together on the rug. India was giving Mephisto’s ears a wash, but she stopped when her kitten came in. ‘Well?’ she asked him.

  ‘Sybil’s making a spell for sure,’ Cosmo said, reeling off all the ingredients that he could remember.

  India looked at Mephisto. ‘Do those ingredients mean anything to you?’

  Mephisto shook his head. He had witnessed the making of many spells and potions in his life, but, as he pointed out now, witches were always coming up with new ones. ‘It’s good that she’s finally making something without witch-cat help,’ he yawned. ‘She’s never done that before. Perhaps she’s getting more confident.’

  ‘Or more powerful,’ India added, looking worried.

  ‘It’s good for a witch to be powerful, isn’t it?’ Cosmo said.

  India sniffed. ‘It’s good for a good witch to be powerful – yes.’

  ‘Sybil must be a goo
d witch, otherwise Father wouldn’t work for her,’ Cosmo pointed out.

  Both his parents gave him a fond look.

  ‘I work with her, not for her,’ Mephisto corrected him gently.

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ India murmured, speaking so close to his ear that the words tickled.

  Mephisto gave her an irritated growl in reply.

  After they had eaten supper (Mephisto hadn’t found much in Amy’s bin, but had got them some very juicy leftovers from the bins at the back of the Kentucky Fried Chicken shop), India went to visit Felina to wish her good luck for the important lecture she was giving the next day. Mephisto went off on his evening prowl around the block. Cosmo had been told to stay in the garage, but he started to feel more and more curious about Sybil’s spell. She must have finished mixing it by now. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to sneak inside the kitchen and take a peek.

  Cosmo headed back to the house and stopped outside to listen at the cat flap. He could hear voices inside. Cautiously, he pushed the flap open halfway and peered through. Sybil was standing with her back to him. On the opposite side of the kitchen table there was another witch. Cosmo gulped. The black cloak, green hair and wrinkled face were unmistakable. Then she opened her mouth to speak, and Cosmo saw the gold teeth. It was Euphemia.

  ‘Well,’ Euphemia was saying. ‘Here it is – my own special ingredient. Even more powerful than a witch-cat sneeze. I made it myself with my very own sweat.’ She cackled loudly and scarily in a way that witches only ever did in the privacy of their own homes.

  Cosmo pushed himself further through the cat flap to see better. Euphemia had pulled a clear test tube with a stopper in it out of her bag and she was tipping it up against the light for Sybil to see. Trickling down the inside of the tube were several large beads of green sweat, each of which was surrounded by a golden glow.