“Now what are you staring at?” said Mr Saunders.
“The tree-house is broken,” Roger said, looking moodily at Gwendolen.
“Perhaps Gwendolen would be kind enough to mend it again,” Mr Saunders suggested sarcastically.
If he was trying to goad Gwendolen into doing a kindly act, he failed. Gwendolen tossed her head. “Tree-houses are stupid babyish things,” she said coldly. She was very annoyed at the way the trees were retreating. “It’s too bad!” she told Cat just before dinner. By that time the trees were almost back to their usual places. The only ones nearer than they should be were those on the hill opposite. The view looked smaller, somehow. “I hoped it would do for tomorrow, too,” Gwendolen said discontentedly. “Now I shall have to think of something else.”
“Who sent them back? The garden warlocks?” Cat asked.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense,” said Gwendolen. “It’s obvious who did it.”
“You mean Mr Saunders?” said Cat. “But couldn’t the spell have been used up just pulling all the trees here?”
“You don’t know a thing about it,” said Gwendolen.
Cat knew he knew nothing of magic, but he found it queer all the same. The next day, when he went to see, there were no fallen twigs, torn-off branches or squashed grapes anywhere. The yew trees in the formal garden did not seem to have been hacked at all. And though there was not a trace of an apple underfoot round the kitchen, there were boxes of firm round apples in the courtyard. In the orchard, the apples were either hanging on the trees or being picked and put in more boxes.
While Cat was finding this out, he had to flatten himself hastily against one of the hedge-like apple-trees to make way for a galloping Jersey cow pursued by two gardeners and a farm boy. There were cows galloping in the wood, when Cat went hopefully to look at the tree-house. Alas, that was still a ruin. And the cows were doing their best to ruin the flowerbeds and not making much impression.
“Did you do the cows?” he asked Gwendolen.
“Yes. But it was just something to show them I’m not giving up,” said Gwendolen. “I shall get my dragon’s blood tomorrow and then I can do something really impressive.”
Gwendolen went down to the village to get her dragon’s blood on Wednesday afternoon. She was in high glee. There were to be guests that night at the Castle and a big dinner party. Cat knew that everyone had carefully not mentioned it before, for fear Gwendolen would take advantage of it. But she had to be told on Wednesday morning, because there were special arrangements for the children. They were to have their supper in the playroom, and they were supposed to keep out of the way after that.
“I’ll keep out of the way all right,” Gwendolen promised. “But that won’t make any difference.” She chuckled about it all the way to the village.
Cat was embarrassed when they got to the village. Everyone avoided Gwendolen. Mothers dragged their children indoors and snatched babies out of her way. Gwendolen hardly noticed. She was too intent on getting to Mr Baslam and getting her dragon’s blood. Cat did not fancy Mr Baslam, or the decaying pickle smell among his stuffed animals. He let Gwendolen go there on her own, and went to post his postcard to Mrs Sharp in the sweet shop. The people there were rather cool with him, even though he spent nearly two shillings on sweets, and they were positively cold in the cake shop next door. When Cat came out on to the green with his parcels, he found that children were being snatched out of his way, too.
This so shamed Cat that he fled back to the Castle grounds and did not wait for Gwendolen. There he wandered moodily, eating toffees and penny buns, and wishing he was back with Mrs Sharp. From time to time he saw Gwendolen in the distance. Sometimes she was dashing about. Sometimes she was squatting under a tree, carefully doing something. Cat did not go near her. If they were back with Mrs Sharp, he thought, Gwendolen would not need to do whatever impressive thing she was planning. He found himself wishing she was not quite such a strong and determined witch. He tried to imagine a Gwendolen who was not a witch, but he found himself quite unable to. She just would not be Gwendolen.
Indoors, the usual silence of the Castle was not quite the same. There were tense little noises, and the thrumming feeling of people diligently busy just out of earshot. Cat knew it was going to be a big, important dinner party.
After supper, he craned out of Gwendolen’s window watching the guests come up the piece of avenue he could see from there. They came in carriages and in cars, all very large and rich-looking. One carriage was drawn by six white horses and looked so impressive that Cat wondered if it might not even be the King.
“All the better,” said Gwendolen. She was squatting in the middle of the carpet, beside a sheet of paper. At one end of the paper was a bowl of ingredients. At the other crawled, wriggled or lay a horrid heap of things. Gwendolen had collected two frogs, an earthworm, several earwigs, a black beetle, a spider and a little pile of bones. The live things were charmed and could not move off the paper.
As soon as Cat was sure that there were no more carriages arriving, Gwendolen began pounding the ingredients together in the bowl. As she pounded, she muttered things in a groaning hum and her hair hung down and quivered over the bowl. Cat looked at the wriggling, hopping creatures and hoped that they were not going to be pounded up as ingredients too. It seemed not. Gwendolen at length sat back on her heels and said, “Now!”
She snapped her fingers over the bowl. The ingredients caught fire, all by themselves, and burnt with small blue flames. “It’s working!” Gwendolen said excitedly. She snatched up a twist of newspaper from beside her and carefully untwisted it. “Now for a pinch of dragon’s blood.” She took a pinch of the dark brown powder and sprinkled it on the flames. There was a fizzing, and a thick smell of burning. Then the flames leapt up, a foot high, blazing a furious green and purple, colouring the whole room with dancing light.
Gwendolen’s face glowed in the green and purple. She rocked on her heels, chanting, chanting, strings of things Cat could not understand. Then, still chanting, she leaned over and touched the spider. The spider grew. And grew. And grew more. It grew into a five foot monster – a greasy roundness with two little eyes on the front, hanging like a hammock amid eight bent and jointed furry legs. Gwendolen pointed. The door of the room sprang open of its own accord – which made her smile exultingly – and the huge spider went silently creeping towards it, swaying on its hairy legs. It squeezed its legs inwards to get through the door, and crept onwards, down the passage beyond.
Gwendolen touched the other creatures, one by one. The earwigs lumbered up and off, like shiny horned cows, bright brown and glistening. The frogs rose up, as big as men, and walked flap, flop on their enormous feet, with their arms trailing like gorillas. Their mottled skin quivered, and little holes in it kept opening and shutting. The puffy place under their chins made gulping movements. The black beetle crawled on branched legs, such a big black slab that it could barely get through the door. Cat could see it, and all the others, going in a slow, silent procession down the grass-green glowing corridor.
“Where are they going?” he whispered. Gwendolen chuckled. “I’m sending them to the dining room, of course. I don’t think the guests will want much supper.”
She took up a bone next, and knocked each end of it sharply on the floor. As soon as she let go of it, it floated up into the air. There was a soft clattering, and more bones came out of nowhere to join it. The green and purple flames roared and rasped. A skull arrived last of all, and a complete skeleton was dangling there in front of the flames. Gwendolen smiled with satisfaction and took up another bone.
But bones when they are bewitched have a way of remembering who they were. The dangling skeleton sighed, in a hollow singing voice, “Poor Sarah Jane. I’m poor Sarah Jane. Let me rest.”