Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘Not so fast!’ Euphemia snapped, snatching the bottle away as Sybil made an excited grab for it. ‘Have you got what I told you to get?’

  ‘Yes!’ Sybil nodded nervously. ‘At least, I’ll have them by tomorrow. Six of them. It’s all I could get to start with but—’

  ‘SIX!’ Euphemia roared. ‘Six isn’t enough! We need a hundred!’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m still coming up with a plan to get the rest, but I’ll think of something. I may not be a powerful witch like you, Mother, but I am blessed with brainpower! How else could I have set up my spells-and-potions business when really . . .? Well . . . You know what I mean.’

  Euphemia looked amused. ‘I’ve never denied you had cunning, Sybil, even if you haven’t got much else. Here!’ She held out the bottle of magic sweat droplets.

  Cosmo stayed where he was as the two witches went over to the cauldron, which was bubbling away in the kitchen fireplace. As Sybil added the droplets, the bubbling got noisier, then there was a hissing and sizzling and what sounded like a mini-explosion inside the pot. Golden smoke started to rise out of the cauldron, more and more of it, until the whole kitchen was so full of smoke that Cosmo couldn’t see anything else. He knew he was going to start coughing if he didn’t get some fresh air and he hastily backed out into the garden where he sat taking deep breaths.

  Cosmo waited nervously outside the cat flap, nudging it open with his nose every few minutes to check whether the kitchen had cleared of smoke. Eventually he judged that it was safe enough to go back in.

  Over in the fireplace the cauldron was still bubbling away, and now that the smoke had cleared Cosmo could see yellow-coloured steam coming out of the top. Euphemia and Sybil were no longer in the room. Cosmo badly wanted to know what was inside that cauldron. He crept across the floor and carefully mounted the cat-steps that led up the side. When he reached the little platform where he had stood before, there was too much steam rising up to see the surface clearly. Some magic liquids were cold to the touch even though they gave off steam or smoke, but his father had warned him that if the liquid was a hot one, the steam from it could burn you just as badly as the liquid itself. Cosmo was leaning forward trying to judge the temperature better when Sybil entered the room.

  ‘Hey!’ she screeched.

  He got such a fright that he lost his balance, toppled forward, and only just managed to stop himself falling right into the cauldron. He miaowed as his right paw touched the steam and he leaped down to the ground, feeling as if his paw was on fire. Sybil was shouting at him, but he wasn’t taking in what she was saying as he dived between her legs and flew out through the cat flap.

  His mother, who was crossing the garden on her way back from next door, thought that twenty dogs must be after him from the way he was running.

  ‘I’ve burned my paw!’ Cosmo wailed as he reached her.

  ‘Burned it?’ India repeated, looking down at his paw in disbelief.

  Cosmo looked down too and saw why she was staring. He hissed with shock. The fur on his right paw wasn’t white any more. It was a shiny, shimmering gold.

  7

  When they told Mephisto what had happened, he took Cosmo back straight away to see what Sybil could do about his paw. Cosmo was scared and didn’t want to go back inside the witch’s kitchen again, but his father insisted.

  ‘You don’t want a golden paw for the rest of your life, do you?’ he said sternly. He had already had plenty to say on the subject of kittens who disobeyed their parents by going out on their own when they had been told to stay in the garage where it was safe, so Cosmo didn’t dare to argue with him further.

  Mephisto led the way into Sybil’s house, where the witch was standing at the cooker stirring up some hot chocolate for her bedtime snack. She turned as Mephisto jumped up on to the kitchen table.

  ‘Ah, Mephisto. You’ve brought him back, have you?’ She went over to Cosmo, who had stayed just inside the cat flap, scooped him up and placed him on the table. Then she began to examine his paw. ‘Well,’ she said finally. ‘It’s only the fur that has changed colour. That’s lucky. Probably because it only touched the steam and not the liquid. That spell of Mother’s is very powerful. You shouldn’t have been so nosy, Cosmo.’

  ‘What does she mean – only the fur?’ Cosmo asked, shuffling closer to his father.

  Mephisto didn’t reply. He started to miaow at Sybil, telling her that he wanted Cosmo’s paw changed back to its normal colour at once.

  ‘It’s no use shouting at me like that, Mephisto,’ Sybil said. ‘It wasn’t my fault! I don’t know how to change it back again, so he’ll just have to keep it like that.’ She looked at the paw again, adding, ‘It’s not so bad. Quite pretty, really. You can be the cat with the golden paw, Cosmo!’ For some reason, that seemed to really amuse her. She started humming a tune, then singing out, ‘GOLDFINGER!’ at the top of her voice, not very tunefully – it was the theme song to a James Bond movie she had seen recently on the television.

  ‘I don’t have fingers on my paw – I have toes,’ Cosmo mewed, fighting back tears. ‘It’s not fair! All the other cats will laugh at me!’

  Mephisto said, ‘No, they won’t,’ but secretly he thought that they probably would. Ordinary cats were a little jealous of witch-cats, so if a spell went wrong for a change, it was only natural that they should feel a bit smug and amused by it.

  ‘I hate you! You’re a horrible witch!’ Cosmo spat out, leaping down on to the floor. ‘I’m moving back into the garage with Mother!’

  Mephisto decided not to stop him doing that for one night, since he was so upset – but he would speak to him more firmly about his duties as a witch-cat (golden paw or no golden paw) the next day.

  It was the first time Cosmo had been in serious trouble. Mephisto was furious with him, because the next morning when he came to fetch him, Cosmo flatly refused to return to Sybil’s house with his father.

  ‘Cosmo’s upset because he had a bad dream in the night,’ India explained, doing her best to defend him.

  ‘I dreamed I fell into Sybil’s cauldron and when I came out, I was a frog,’ Cosmo mewed. ‘Then I fell in again and when I came out I was a mouse and you started to chase me! I’m scared, Father. I don’t want to be a witch-cat after all.’

  ‘It’s not a case of choosing, or not choosing to be one,’ Mephisto answered impatiently. ‘You are one, and that’s that!’

  ‘But I don’t have to act like one, do I? Not if I don’t want to. And I don’t want to. Being a witch-cat isn’t good! It’s horrid!’

  That was too much for Mephisto. He lifted one of his big front paws and whacked Cosmo on the nose with it.

  Cosmo cowered into a little bundle, backing nearer to his mother.

  ‘That’s no way to speak to your father, Cosmo,’ India said sternly, but she moved forward to make sure Mephisto didn’t try and hit her kitten a second time. ‘Perhaps if you both calmed down a little, that would help,’ she suggested.

  Mephisto glared at her. Cosmo saw his opportunity and ran full tilt for the hole in the garage door.

  ‘Come back!’ Mephisto growled, but India stopped him going after Cosmo by laying a patient white paw on one of his black ones.

  ‘He’s like you,’ she said, purring softly to calm him. ‘He needs time to think about things before he sees the sense in them.’

  Mephisto looked at her sharply because he wasn’t sure whether that was an insult or not, but she was looking at him so affectionately that he decided it couldn’t be.

  Outside, Cosmo didn’t know that his parents had decided not to give chase. He bounded round to Mia’s house and stuck his head through her cat flap. She was having a drink of water from her bowl and the noise of the flap opening made her jump.

  ‘Cosmo, what’s wrong?’ Then she spotted his paw. ‘WOW! How did you do that?’

  Cosmo told her. Mia was very sympathetic and said she thought him very brave to have gone into the witch’s kitchen and looked into the caul
dron like that all on his own. ‘I think you must be very brave just to live in that house!’ she added. ‘All the other cats round here are really scared of Sybil.’

  ‘That’s just silly,’ Cosmo said, though secretly he only half thought it was silly now. ‘I’m running away! Do you want to come with me?’

  Mia, who thought that running away sounded preferable to staying in and attending the lecture her mother was giving later that day, mewed, ‘All right. So long as we’re back by night-time.’

  Cosmo didn’t point out that the whole point of running away was not to be back by night-time, just in case he changed his mind about that as well once it got dark.

  As the two kittens set off together, Mia chattered excitedly. ‘We’ll have to catch a mouse to eat for dinner. I’ve never caught one before – have you?’

  But Cosmo was still too upset about his paw and the fight he had had with his father to concentrate much on what she was saying. He was glad she was with him though. It would have been lonely running away on his own.

  ‘Look!’ Mia suddenly said, after they had been following the pavement for a little while. ‘If we cut through the garden of that house we can get to the field behind it.’

  Cosmo let her lead the way and didn’t notice that she was taking them very close to the back of the house. Suddenly they heard a frenzied barking and a huge Rottweiler dog with massive yellow teeth leaped out of its kennel just in front of them. It was tied up with a chain, but it could still reach them, and before Cosmo could do anything, it had grasped Mia between its massive jaws. Cosmo was too frightened to move. He was fixed to the spot, dizzy with terror as the dog dragged Mia inside its kennel to get a better grip on her. Mia was hissing and biting and clawing at it but it was twenty times her size and she didn’t stand a chance.

  Suddenly a loose piece of wood in the neighbouring fence was pushed back and a blue-eyed Siamese cat appeared, wanting to know what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Help!’ Cosmo cried out to her. ‘That dog’s got my friend!’

  He didn’t know what he expected the Siamese cat to do, but he certainly didn’t expect what happened next. The cat moved right in front of the kennel and miaowed loudly at the dog, ‘Put that kitten down at once!’

  Even if the dog didn’t understand cat language, it must have guessed from the Siamese’s tone of voice what she was saying. And it was obviously afraid of her. It turned round, still holding Mia between its jaws, and dumped her on the ground.

  Cosmo could hardly believe what he’d just seen, but he didn’t have time to ask the cat any questions, because Mia was obviously in a really bad way. She was unconscious, one of her front paws looked floppy and broken, and she was bleeding from several places.

  ‘Come with me,’ the Siamese ordered, picking Mia up by the scruff and carrying her through to her own property.

  The Siamese took them inside her house and as soon as they stepped through the cat flap, Cosmo saw that this was a witch’s house. A whole family of witches lived here by the looks of things, although none of them seemed to be at home at that moment. A massive cauldron sat in the fireplace, just like the one in Sybil’s kitchen, and a child’s broomstick with stabilizers attached to the back was propped up in one corner. There were some books of organic spells on a shelf near by, together with several jars of different spell ingredients.

  Cosmo watched nervously as the strange cat gently laid Mia down in her own basket. Then she jumped first on to the table, then up on to the shelf with all the ingredients. From there she grabbed a bottle of pink-coloured liquid between her teeth and brought it back to where Cosmo was waiting. There was a stopper in the top and the Siamese told Cosmo to pull it out with his teeth while she held the bottle still.

  Cosmo managed to wrench the cork out and then he watched as the other cat took the open bottle over to Mia and shook the contents over her, circling round her the whole time until Mia’s body was drenched in the pink liquid. Then the cat dropped the empty bottle, sniffed deeply at some of her own loose tummy hairs until her nose started to twitch, and let out a massive sneeze.

  As the droplets of sneeze mixed with the liquid on Mia’s skin, the air around Mia started to glow. It glowed first white, then red, then a pink colour like the liquid itself.

  ‘The spell is healing her broken bones, stopping the bleeding and mending her torn muscles,’ the Siamese explained, as Cosmo watched in awe. ‘She’ll be fully recovered when she wakes up.’

  Cosmo was weak with relief. ‘Thank you,’ he gasped, over and over.

  The adult cat walked over to her dish to take a drink of water.

  ‘You’re a witch-cat, aren’t you?’ Cosmo said, watching her.

  ‘That’s right. My name is Tani,’ the Siamese replied. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m Cosmo and that’s my friend Mia. We were . . . We were running away . . . sort of.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Tani, casually licking her paw as she listened.

  ‘So that I didn’t have to be a witch-cat,’ Cosmo said in a small voice.

  ‘I see,’ said Tani, looking like she didn’t see at all, but had no intention of offering her services as some sort of counsellor about it. She yawned. She had been about to settle down for her nap when she had heard the noise from next door.

  ‘Can all witch-cats do what you just did?’ Cosmo asked.

  ‘Yes. But a witch-cat has to learn which are the right spells and magic potions for each situation. We all need someone to teach us that before we can use our magic sneezes to full effect.’

  Cosmo looked at Mia, who was still fast asleep in Tani’s basket. He liked the idea of being able to make her better if anything bad ever happened to her again. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing being a witch-cat after all. And the longer he sat in Tani’s kitchen waiting for Mia to wake up, the more certain he was about what he was going to do. As soon as Mia was ready to go home, he would take her back and tell his father that he did want to follow in his footsteps after all.

  They got back just in time for Professor Felina’s lecture. Cats from all around the neighbourhood had arrived for it. The subject was ‘Understanding Human Behaviour’, and it was being held in Amy’s front room while she was out at work. The cat flap had been propped open in readiness, and Felina had knocked over the bag of dried cat-food, which Amy kept in the kitchen, to make sure that the floor was covered in enough crunchy-munchies to provide her audience with snacks.

  Cosmo saw his parents sitting in the front row of cats, as Felina jumped up on top of the television, which she had decided to use as a platform from which to speak. The other adult cats – Cosmo and Mia were the only kittens – were starting to sit themselves down on the sofa. There were cats on the seat, the arms and along the back of it.

  ‘That sofa’s going to be really hairy when Amy comes home,’ Mia whispered. She was fully recovered now and Cosmo could hardly believe she had been so badly injured only a few hours before.

  ‘Will she be cross?’ Cosmo asked, thinking that Sybil certainly would be.

  ‘Yes – but Mother will go right up to her and lie on the floor at her feet and start purring very loudly. She always does that when Amy gets annoyed. Amy just gives in then and bends down and strokes her.’

  ‘Your mother must be a really clever cat,’ Cosmo murmured, finding himself a seat on the window ledge at the back of the room. ‘Come and sit here. We can look out of the window then, if we get bored.’

  Mia giggled that he was a very clever cat too.

  Cosmo was glad that they had a view out of the window as the professor’s talk went on and on and on. The grown-up cats seemed to be finding it fascinating. Even Mephisto, who had taken a lot of coaxing from India to come, seemed to be listening attentively. The only two cats who weren’t there were Jock and Tigger-Louise, who had stayed out in the kitchen chasing each other round the table legs like two kittens.

  From the window, Cosmo had a view of Sybil’s driveway. As he glanced out, h
e saw Sybil staggering up the drive carrying a large cardboard box. He immediately felt curious about what was inside. What if it was the secret ingredient for the spell Sybil was making? ‘Come on,’ he whispered to Mia, pointing at the witch with his gold paw, then putting it down self-consciously and pointing instead with his white one. ‘Let’s go and see what she’s got.’

  Mia was getting bored with her mother’s lecture too, so she was happy to follow Cosmo. Jock miaowed something at them as they passed through the kitchen, but they couldn’t understand what he said.

  Cosmo led the way to his own cat flap with Mia following close behind. When they got there he warned her that they would have to be very quiet if they didn’t want Sybil to hear them and throw them out. ‘She’s making a really big secret of her new spell,’ he explained. ‘She won’t even tell Father what it’s for.’

  He pushed the cat flap ajar and looked inside. He could see Sybil taking off her little-old-lady wig in the hall. ‘Come on,’ he said, leading the way inside. Sybil had already placed the cardboard box down on the kitchen table. ‘Stay here,’ he whispered to Mia. ‘I’ll jump up and see what’s in that box.’ But before he could, Sybil was marching back into the kitchen, shaking out her purple hair and looking determined. She didn’t see Cosmo and Mia as they scuttled to hide in the gap between the fridge and the washing machine.

  ‘Now, my pretties,’ she said, to whatever it was that was in the box and, as she opened it, a mewing sound came from inside. She put her hands into the box and pulled out a little grey kitten. Some more kittens of different colours put their heads up over the sides of the box and she pushed them back inside and shut the lid on them.

  ‘She can’t be going to use them in her spell,’ Cosmo murmured, staring at Sybil in disbelief as she started to walk towards the bubbling cauldron with the struggling kitten in her hand.