Castle in the Air Read online

  “Great work!” said the soldier, and proceeded to make a large pother over poaching salmon in milk and making sure there were no bones the cat might choke on.

  The cat, Abdullah noticed, had all this while been peacefully licking at her kitten in the hat. She did not seem to know the genie was there. But she knew about the salmon all right. As soon as it started cooking, she left her kitten and wound herself around the soldier, thin and urgent and mewing. “Soon, soon, my black darling!” the soldier said.

  Abdullah could only suppose that the cat’s magic and the genie’s were so different that they were unable to perceive each other. The one good thing he could see about the situation was that there was plenty of salmon and milk for the two humans as well. While the cat daintily guzzled, and her kitten lapped, and sneezed, and did his amateur best to drink salmon-flavored milk, the soldier and Abdullah feasted on porridge made with milk and roast salmon steak.

  After such a breakfast Abdullah felt kinder toward the whole world. He told himself that the genie could not have made a better choice of companion for him than this soldier. The genie was not so bad. And he would surely be seeing Flower-in-the-Night soon now. He was thinking that the Sultan and Kabul Aqba were not such bad fellows either when he discovered, to his outrage, that the soldier intended to take the cat and her kitten along with them to Kingsbury.

  “But, most benevolent bombardier and considerate cuirassier,” he protested, “what will become of your scheme to earn your bounty? You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!”

  “I reckon I won’t need to do any of that now you’ve promised me a princess,” the soldier answered calmly. “And no one could leave Midnight and Whippersnapper to starve on this mountain. That’s cruel!”

  Abdullah knew he had lost this argument. He sourly tied the genie bottle to his belt and vowed never to promise the soldier anything else. The soldier repacked his pack, scattered the fire, and gently picked up his hat with the kitten in it. He set off downhill beside the stream, whistling to Midnight as if she were a dog.

  Midnight, however, had other ideas. As Abdullah set off after the soldier, she stood in his way, staring meaningly up at him. Abdullah took no notice and tried to edge past her. And she was promptly huge again. A black panther, if possible even larger than before, was barring his way and snarling. He stopped, frankly terrified. And the beast leaped at him. He was too frightened even to scream. He shut his eyes and waited to have his throat torn out. So much for Fate and prophecies!

  A softness touched his throat instead. Small, firm feet hit his shoulder, and another set of such feet pricked his chest. Abdullah opened his eyes to find that Midnight was back to cat size and clinging to the front of his jacket. The green-blue eyes looking up into his said, “Carry me. Or else.”

  “Very well, formidable feline,” Abdullah said. “But take care not to snag any more of the embroidery on this jacket. This was once my best suit. And please remember that I carry you under strong protest. I do not love cats.”

  Midnight calmly scrambled her way to Abdullah’s shoulder, where she sat smugly balancing while Abdullah plodded and slithered his way down the mountain for the rest of that day.

  Chapter 12

  In which the law catches up with Abdullah and the soldier.

  By evening Abdullah was almost used to Midnight. Unlike Jamal’s dog, she smelled extremely clean, and she was clearly an excellent mother. The only times she dismounted from Abdullah were to feed her kitten. If it had not been for her alarming habit of turning huge at him when he annoyed her, Abdullah felt he could come to tolerate her in time. The kitten, he conceded, was charming. It played with the end of the soldier’s pigtail and tried to chase butterflies—in a wobbly way—when they stopped for lunch. The rest of the day it spent in the front of the soldier’s jacket, peeping eagerly forth at the grass and the trees and at the fern-lined waterfalls they passed on their way to the plains.

  But Abdullah was entirely disgusted at the fuss the soldier made about his new pets when they stopped for the night. They decided to stay in the inn they came to in the first valley, and here the soldier decreed that his cats were to have the best of everything.

  The innkeeper and his wife shared Abdullah’s opinion. They were lumpish folk who had, it seemed, been put in a bad mood anyway by the mysterious theft of a crock of milk and a whole salmon that morning. They ran about with dour disapproval, fetching just the right shape of basket and a soft pillow to put in it. They hurried grimly with cream and chicken liver and fish. They grudgingly produced certain herbs which, the soldier declared, prevented canker in the ears. They stormily sent out for other herbs which were supposed to cure a cat of worms. But they were downright incredulous when they were asked to heat water for a bath because the soldier suspected that Whippersnapper had picked up a flea.

  Abdullah found himself forced to negotiate. “O prince and princess of publicans,” he said, “bear with the eccentricity of my excellent friend. When he says a bath, he means, of course, a bath for himself and for me. We are both somewhat travel-stained and would welcome clean hot water—for which we will, of course, pay whatever extra is necessary.”

  “What? Me? Bath?” the soldier said when the innkeeper and his wife had stumped off to put big kettles to boil.

  “Yes. You,” said Abdullah. “Or you and your cats and I part company this very evening. The dog of my friend Jamal in Zanzib was scarcely less ripe to the nose than you, O unwashed warrior, and Whippersnapper, fleas or not, is a good deal cleaner.”

  “But what about my princess and your sultan’s daughter if you leave?” asked the soldier.

  “I shall think of something,” said Abdullah. “But I should prefer it if you got into a bath and, if you wish, took Whippersnapper into it with you. That was my aim in asking for it.”

  “It weakens you—having baths,” the soldier said dubiously. “But I suppose I could wash Midnight as well while I’m at it.”

  “Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman,” Abdullah said, and went off to revel in his own bath. In Zanzib people bathed a lot because the climate was so hot. Abdullah was used to visiting the public baths at least every other day, and he was missing that. Even Jamal went to the baths once a week, and it was rumored that he took his dog into the water with him. The soldier, Abdullah thought, becoming soothed by the hot water, was really no more besotted with his cats than Jamal was with his dog. He hoped that Jamal and his dog had managed to escape and, if they had, that they were not at this moment suffering hardships in the desert.

  The soldier did not appear any weaker for his bath, although his skin had turned a much paler brown. Midnight, it seemed, had fled at the mere sight of water, but Whippersnapper, so the soldier claimed, had loved every moment. “He played with the soap bubbles!” he said dotingly.

  “I hope you think you’re worth all this trouble,” Abdullah said to Midnight as she sat on his bed delicately cleaning herself after her cream and chicken. Midnight turned and gave him a round-eyed scornful look—of course she was worth it!—before she went back to the serious business of washing her ears.

  The bill, next morning, was enormous. Most of the extra charge was for hot water, but cushions, baskets, and herbs figured quite largely on the list, too. Abdullah paid, shuddering, and anxiously inquired how far it was to Kingsbury.

  Six days, he was told, if a person went on foot.

  Six days! Abdullah nearly groaned aloud. Six days at this rate of expense, and he would barely be able to afford to keep Flower-in-the-Night in the state of direst poverty when he found her. And he had to look forward to six days of the soldier’s making this sort of fuss about the cats, before they could collar a wizard and even start trying to find her. No, Abdullah thought. His next wish to the genie would be to have them all transported to Kingsbury. That meant he would only have to endure two more days.

  Comforted by this thought, Abdullah strode off down the road with Midnight serenely riding his
shoulders and the genie bottle bobbing at his side. The sun shone. The greenness of the countryside was a pleasure to him after the desert. Abdullah even began to appreciate the houses with their grass roofs. They had delightful rambling gardens and many of them had roses or other flowers trained around their doors. The soldier told him that grass roofs were the custom here. It was called thatch, and it did, the soldier assured him, keep out the rain, though Abdullah found this very hard to believe.

  Before long Abdullah was deep in another daydream, of himself and Flower-in-the-Night living in a cottage with a grass roof and roses around the door. He would make her such a garden that it would be the envy of all for miles around. He began to plan the garden.

  Unfortunately, toward the end of the morning, his daydream was interrupted by increasing spots of rain. Midnight hated it. She complained loudly in Abdullah’s ear.

  “Button her in your jacket,” said the soldier.

  “Not I, adorer of animals,” Abdullah said. “She loves me no more than I love her. She would doubtless seize the chance to make grooves in my chest.”

  The soldier handed his hat to Abdullah with Whippersnapper in it, carefully covered with an unclean handkerchief, and buttoned Midnight into his own jacket. They went on for half a mile. By then the rain was pouring down.

  The genie draped a ragged blue wisp over the side of his bottle. “Can’t you do something about all this water that’s getting in on me?”

  Whippersnapper was saying much the same at the top of his small, squeaky voice. Abdullah pushed wet hair out of his eyes and felt harassed.

  “We’ll have to find somewhere to shelter,” said the soldier.

  Luckily there was an inn around the next corner but one. They squelched thankfully into its taproom, where Abdullah was pleased to discover that its grass roof was keeping the rain out very well.

  Here the soldier, in the way Abdullah was getting used to, demanded a private parlor with a fire, so that the cats could be comfortable, and lunch for all four of the party. Abdullah, in the way that he was also getting used to, wondered how much the bill would be this time, although he had to admit the fire was very welcome. He stood in front of it and dripped, with a glass of beer—in this particular inn the beer tasted as if it had come from a camel that was rather unwell—while they waited for lunch. Midnight washed the kitten dry, then herself. The soldier stretched his boots to the fire and let them steam, while the genie bottle stood in the hearth and also steamed faintly. Even the genie did not complain.

  They heard horses outside. This was not unusual. Most people in Ingary traveled on horseback if they could. Nor was it surprising that the riders seemed to be stopping at the inn. They must be wet, too. Abdullah was just thinking that he should firmly have asked the genie to provide horses instead of milk and salmon yesterday when he heard the horsemen shouting at the innkeeper outside the parlor window.

  “Two men—a Strangian soldier and a dark chap in a fancy suit— wanted for assault and robbery—have you seen them?”

  Before the riders had finished shouting, the soldier was over by the parlor window, with his back to the wall so that he could look sideways through the window without being seen, and somehow he had his pack in one hand and his hat in the other.

  “Four of them,” he said. “They’re constables, by the uniform.”

  All Abdullah could think to do was stand gaping in dismay, thinking that this was what came of fussing for cat baskets and bath-water and giving innkeepers reason to remember you. And demanding private parlors, he thought, as he heard the voice of this innkeeper in the distance saying smarmily that yes, indeed, both fellows were here, in the small parlor.

  The soldier held out his hat to Abdullah. “Put Whippersnapper in here. Then pick up Midnight and be ready to get out of the window as soon as they come into the inn.”

  Whippersnapper had chosen that moment to go exploring under an oak settle. Abdullah dived after him. As he backed out on his knees with the kitten squirming in his hand, he could hear distant boots clumping into the taproom. The soldier was undoing the latch on the window. Abdullah dropped Whippersnapper into his outstretched hat and turned around for Midnight. And saw the genie bottle warming on the hearth. Midnight was up on a high shelf across the room. This was hopeless. The boots were now much nearer, tramping toward the parlor door. The soldier was banging at the window, which seemed to be stuck.

  Abdullah snatched up the genie bottle, “Come here, Midnight!” he said, and ran toward the window, where he collided with the soldier backing away.

  “Stand clear,” said the soldier. “Thing’s stuck. Have to kick it.”

  As Abdullah staggered aside, the parlor door was flung open and three large men in uniform plunged into the room. At the same instant the soldier’s boot met the window frame with a bang. The casement burst open, and the soldier went scrambling out over the sill. The three men shouted. Two made for the window, and one dived for Abdullah. Abdullah overturned the oak settle in front of all of them and then sprinted for the window, where he hurdled the sill out into the drenching rain without pausing to think.

  Then he remembered Midnight. He turned back.

  She was huge again, larger than he had ever seen her, looming like a great black shadow in the space below the window, with her immense white fangs bared at the three men. They were falling over one another to get away backward through the door. Abdullah turned and ran after the soldier, gratefully. He was pelting toward the far corner of the inn. The fourth constable, who was outside holding the horses, started to run after them, then realized that this was stupid and ran back to the horses, which scattered away from him as he ran at them. As Abdullah bounded after the soldier through a sopping kitchen garden, he could hear the shouting of all four constables as they tried to catch their horses.

  The soldier was an expert at escapes. He found a way from the vegetable garden into an orchard and from there a gate into a wide field, all without wasting an instant. A wood stood across the field in the distance like a promise of safety, veiled in rain.

  “Did you get Midnight?” gasped the soldier as they trotted through the soaking grass of the field.

  “No,” said Abdullah. He had no breath to explain.

  “What?” exclaimed the soldier. He stopped and swung around.

  At that moment the four horses, each with a constable in the saddle, came jumping over the orchard hedge into the field. The soldier swore violently. He and Abdullah both sprinted for the wood. By the time they reached its bushy outskirts, the horsemen were well over halfway across the field. Abdullah and the soldier crashed through the bushes and leaped onward into open woodland, where, to Abdullah’s amazement, the ground was thick with thousands upon thousands of bright blue flowers, growing like a carpet into far blue distance.

  “What… these flowers?” he panted.

  “Bluebells,” said the soldier. “If you’ve lost Midnight, I’ll kill you.”

  “I haven’t. She’ll find us. She grew. Told you. Magic,” Abdullah gasped.

  The soldier had never seen this trick of Midnight’s. He did not believe Abdullah. “Run faster,” he said. “We’ll have to circle back and collect her.”

  They rushed forward, crunching bluebells, suffused with the strange wild scent of them. Abdullah could have believed, but for the gray, pouring rain and the shouts of the constables, that he was running over the floor of heaven. He was rapidly back in his daydream. When he made his garden for the cottage he would share with Flower-in-the-Night, he would have bluebells in it by the thousand, like these. But this did not blind him to the fact that they were leaving a trampled trail of broken white stems and snapped-off flowers as they ran. Nor did it deafen him to the cracking of twigs as the constables shoved their horses into the wood behind them.

  “This is hopeless!” said the soldier. “Get that genie of yours to make the constables lose us.”

  “Point out… sapphire of soldiers… no wish… day after tomorrow,” Abdullah panted.<
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  “He can give you one in advance again,” said the soldier.

  Blue steam fluttered angrily from the bottle in Abdullah’s hand. “I gave you your last wish only on condition you left me alone,” said the genie. “All I ask is to be left to sorrow alone in my bottle. And do you let me? No. At the first sign of trouble, you start wailing for extra wishes. Doesn’t anyone consider me around here?”

  “Emergency… O hyacinth… bluebell among bottled spirits,” Abdullah puffed. “Transport us… far off—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” said the soldier. “You don’t wish us far off without Midnight. Have him make us invisible until we find her.”

  “Blue jade of genies—” gasped Abdullah.

  “If there’s one thing I hate,” interrupted the genie, bellying forth in a lavender cloud, “more than this rain and being pestered for wishes in advance all the time, it’s being coaxed for wishes in flowery language. If you want a wish, talk straight.”