how and what to do, you’re far less likely to make that kind of mistake again.”
“Yes, but I’d probably do it on purpose,” Cat assured him. “You’ll be putting the means in my hands.”
“You have it there anyway,” Chrestomanci said. “And witchcraft will out, you know. No one who has it can resist using it for ever. What exactly makes you think you’re so wicked?”
That question rather stumped Cat. “I steal apples,” he said. “And,” he suggested, “I was quite keen on some of the things Gwendolen did.”
“Oh, me too,” Chrestomanci agreed. “One wondered what she would think of next. How about her procession of nasties? Or those four apparitions?”
Cat shivered. He felt sick to think of them.
“Precisely,” said Chrestomanci, and to Cat’s dismay, he smiled warmly at him. “Right. We’ll let Michael start you on elementary witchcraft on Monday.”
“Oh, please don’t!” Cat struggled out of the slippery chair in order to plead better. “I’ll bring a plague of locusts. I’ll be worse than Moses and Aaron.”
Chrestomanci said musingly, “It might be quite useful if you parted the waters of the English Channel. Think of all the sea-sickness you’d save. Don’t be so alarmed. We’ve no intention of teaching you to do things the way Gwendolen did.”
Cat trailed forlornly back to the schoolroom to find them having Geography. Mr Saunders was raging at Janet for not knowing where Atlantis was.
“How was I to know it’s what I call America?” Janet asked Cat at lunch-time. “Though, mind you, that was a lucky guess when I said it was ruled by the Incas. What’s the matter, Cat? You look ready to cry. He’s not found out about Mr Biswas, has he?”
“No, but it’s quite as bad,” said Cat, and he explained.
“This was all we needed!” said Janet. “Discovery threatens on all sides. But it may not be quite as bad as it seems, when I think. You might be able to work up a little magic if you practised first. Let’s see what we can do after school with Gwendolen’s books that the dear kind girl so obligingly left us.”
Cat was quite glad when lessons started again. He was sick of changing plates with Janet, and Julia’s handkerchief must have been worn to rags with the number of knots tied in it.
After lessons, he and Janet collected the two magic books and took them up to Cat’s room. Janet looked round it with admiration.
“I like this room much better than mine. It’s cheerful. Mine makes me feel like the Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, and they were both such sickeningly sweet girls. Now let’s get down to work. What’s a really simple spell?”
They knelt on the floor, leafing through a book each. “I wish I could find how to turn buttons into sovereigns,” said Cat. “We could pay Mr Baslam then.”
“Don’t talk about it,” said Janet. “I’m at our wits’ end. How about this? Simple flotation exercise. Take a small mirror and lay it so that your face is visible in it. Keeping face visible, move round widdershins three times, twice silently willing, the third time saying: Rise little mirror, rise in air, rise to my head and then stay there. Mirror should then rise – I think you ought to be able to manage that, Cat.”
“I’ll have a go,” Cat said dubiously. “What’s widdershins?”
“Anti-clockwise,” said Janet. “That I do know.”
“I thought it meant crawling,” Cat said humbly.
Janet looked at him consideringly. “I suppose you’re quite small still,” she said, “but you do worry me when you go all cowed. Has anyone done anything to you?”
“I don’t think so,” Cat said, rather surprised. “Why?”
“Well, I never had a brother,” said Janet. “Fetch a mirror.”
Cat got the hand-mirror from his chest of drawers and laid it carefully in the middle of the floor. “Like that?”
Janet sighed. “That’s what I mean. I knew you’d get it if I ordered you to. Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous. Anyway –” She took up the book. “Can you see your face in it?”
“Almost nothing else,” said Cat.
“Funny. I can see my face,” said Janet. “Can I do it, too?”
“You’re more likely to get it to work than I am,” said Cat. So they both circled the mirror, and they said the words in chorus. The door opened. Mary came in. Janet guiltily put the book behind her back.
“Yes, here he is,” Mary said. She stood aside to let a strange young man come into the room. “This is Will Suggins,” she said. “He’s Euphemia’s young man. He wants to talk to you, Eric.”
Will Suggins was tall and burly and rather handsome. His clothes looked as if he had brushed them carefully after working in a bakery all day. He was not friendly. “It was you turned Euphemia into a frog, was it?” he said to Cat.
“Yes,” said Cat. He dared say nothing else with Mary there.
“You’re rather small,” said Will Suggins. He seemed disappointed about it. “Anyway,” he said, “whatever size you are, I’m not having Euphemia turned into things. I take exception to it. Understand?”
“I’m very sorry,” said Cat. “I won’t do it again.”
“Too right you won’t!” said Will Suggins. “You got off too light over this, by what Mary tells me. I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry.”
“No you’re not!” said Janet. She marched up to Will Suggins and pushed Magic for Beginners threateningly towards him. “You’re three times his size, and he’s said he’s sorry. If you touch Cat, I shall—” She took the book out of Will Suggins’s chest in order to leaf hastily through it. “I shall induce complete immobility in the legs and trunk.”
“And very pretty I shall look, I’m sure!” Will Suggins said, much amused. “How are you going to do that without witchcraft, may I ask? And if you did, I daresay I could get out of it fast enough. I’m a fair warlock myself. Though,” he said, turning to Mary, “you might have warned me he was this small.”
“Not so small where witchcraft and mischief are concerned,” said Mary. “Neither of them are. They’re a pair of real bad lots.”
“Well, I’ll do it by witchcraft then. I’m easy,” said Will Suggins. He searched in the pockets of his slightly floury jacket. “Ah!” he said, and fetched out what seemed to be a lump of dough. For a moment he shaped it vigorously in both powerful hands. Then he rolled it into a ball and threw it at Cat’s feet. It landed on the carpet with a soft plop. Cat looked at it in great apprehension, wondering what it was supposed to do.
“That’ll lie there,” said Will Suggins, “until three o’clock Sunday. Sunday’s a bad time to be at witchcraft, but it’s my free day. I shall be waiting for you then in Bedlam field, in the form of a tiger. I make a good tiger. You can turn yourself into something as large as you like, or small and fast if you prefer, and I’ll teach you that lesson whatever you are. But if you don’t come to Bedlam field in the form of something, that lump of dough will start to work and you’ll be a frog yourself – for as long as I feel like keeping you that way. Right, Mary. I’m through now.”
Will Suggins turned and marched out of the room. Mary followed him, but she was unable to resist putting her head back round the door to say, “And see how you like that, Eric!” before she shut it.
Cat and Janet looked at one another and then at the lump of dough. “What am I going to do?” said Cat.
Janet threw her book on