The Pinhoe Egg Read online

  “I don’t think this is natural, Cecily,” Uncle Richard said while Mum was bandaging his hand. “Joy shouldn’t have cursed Gammer like that.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Dad, who had come in to make sure his brother was all right. “I stopped Joy before she started. This is something else.”

  Dad was about the only person who believed this. As the bad luck spread to people who were only distantly related to Pinhoes, and then to people who had no witchcraft at all, most of Ulverscote began to blame Aunt Joy. Aunt Joy’s face, as Mum said, would have soured milk from a hundred yards away.

  The bad luck extended to Woods House too. There, to Jane James’s annoyance, the man installing the new stove dropped it on his foot and then mystified her by limping away into the village saying, “Mother Cecily will fix me up. Don’t touch the boiler till I get back.”

  While Mum was dealing with what she suspected was a broken bone in this man’s foot, Marianne discovered—mostly by the severely bad smell—that the whole top shelf of jars in the storeroom had grown fuzzy red mold. And Nutcase disappeared again.

  Nutcase reappeared some time later in the hall of Woods House, just in time to trip Uncle Charles up, as Uncle Charles crossed the hall carrying a ladder and a bucket of whitewash. Uncle Charles, in trying to save himself, hit himself on the back of the head with the ladder and dropped the bucket of whitewash over Nutcase.

  The clang and the crash fetched Jane James and Irene from the kitchen and Janet, Julia, and Jason from what was going to be the dining room. Everyone exclaimed in sympathy at the sight of the house painter lying under a ladder in a lake of whitewash, while beside him the desperate white head of a cat stuck out from under the upturned whitewash pail.

  Uncle Charles stopped swearing at the sight of Jane James’s face, but continued telling the world at large just what he would like to do to Nutcase. As he told Marianne later, a bang on the head does that to you. And those two girls laughed.

  “But are you all right?” Jason asked him.

  “I’d be better off if that cat was dead,” Uncle Charles replied. “I didn’t chance to kill him, did I?”

  Janet and Julia, trying—and failing—not to laugh too much, tipped the pail up and rescued Nutcase. Nutcase was scrawny, clawing, and mostly white. Whitewash sprayed over everyone as Nutcase struggled. Janet held him at arm’s length, with her face turned sideways, while Irene and Jason dived to help Uncle Charles. “Oh, it’s a black cat!” Julia exclaimed as the underside of Nutcase became visible. Jason’s foot skidded in the whitewash. He tried to save himself by grabbing Irene’s arm. The result was that Jason fell flat on his face in the whitewash and Irene sat in it. Janet’s opinion of Irene changed completely when Irene simply sat on the floor and laughed.

  “All their good clothes ruined,” Uncle Charles told Marianne. He arrived, a trifle dizzily, at Furze Cottage with Nutcase clamped under one arm. “It just goes to show that even an enchanter can’t avoid a bad-luck spell. That fellow’s a full enchanter, or I’m a paid-up Chinaman. Don’t tell Gammer he is. She’d take a fit. He had me standing up while his face was still in the matting. Take your cat. Wash him. Drown him if you like.”

  Marianne took Nutcase to the sink and ran both taps on him. Nutcase protested mightily. “It’s your own fault. Shut up,” Marianne told him. Dad was sitting at the table assembling the flowers and frondy leaves of ragged robin in the careful overlapping pattern of a counter-charm, and Marianne was trying to listen to what he was saying to Uncle Charles about the bad-luck spell.

  “It’s an ill-chancing. Positive,” Uncle Charles was saying. “I knew that as soon as that damn ladder hit my head. But I don’t know whose, or—”

  Mum interrupted by bawling from the front room, where she was treating a small boy for a sudden severe cough. She wanted to know if Uncle Charles was concussed.

  “Just a bit dizzy like,” Dad bawled back. “He’s fine. Yes,” he said to Uncle Charles. “It feels like a nudge job to me. One of those that lies in wait for all the things you nearly get wrong, like you nearly trip and you nearly drop a pail of whitewash, and it gives those a nudge so that you do it really. It doesn’t have to be strong to have a big effect.”

  “That doesn’t account for the fox,” Uncle Charles objected. “Or they’re saying a lot of little ones have got the whooping cough. It can’t account for that.”

  “Those could be separate,” Dad said. “If they were a part of it, then I’d have to say, to be fair, that it’s stronger than a nudge—and nobody’s dead yet.”

  Meanwhile, Jason’s whitewash-spattered party was leaving Woods House in order to get some clean clothes. Jason looked particularly spectacular, as not only the front of him, but the tip of his nose and the fringe of his hair were white. He was annoyed enough to shout with rage when his car refused to start. He called the car more names than Uncle Charles had called the cat. Janet’s theory was that the car eventually started out of pure shame. Julia told her that Jason had used magic, a lot of magic.

  When the car was finally chugging, they drove out into the road and out beyond the last small houses of the village. There Jason stopped, with a screech and a violent jerk. He jumped out of the car and stood in the middle of the road, glaring around at the hedges.

  “What’s he doing?” Janet said.

  They all looked anxiously at Jason’s clownlike figure.

  “Magic,” Julia said, and got out too.

  Janet and Irene followed Julia just as Jason made a dive for a clump of plants growing on the verge. “And right in the middle of the artemisia to lend it power!” they heard him say. He hacked into the clump with the heel of his boot. “Come out, you!”

  A little black lump with trailing strings came out of the plants. It looked like a dirty lavender bag that someone had not tied up properly. Jason hacked it out of the grass and down the bank to the road. “Got you!” he said. Irene took one look at the thing and went back to the car, looking white and ill. Julia felt queasy. Janet wondered what was the matter with them both. It was only a greasy gray bag of herbs. “Keep back,” Jason said to her. He kicked the bag into the center of the road and bent over it warily. “Someone’s been very nasty here. This is a brute of an ill-wishing—it’s probably infecting the whole village by now. Get in the car while I get rid of the thing.”

  By this time even Janet was feeling something wrong about the bag. She stumbled and nearly fell over as Julia pulled her back to the car. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Julia said.

  They watched from inside the car while Jason levitated the bag fifteen feet into the air and made it burst into flames. It burned and it burned, with improbably long crimson flames, and gave off a whirl of thick black smoke. Jason kept collecting the smoke and sending it back to the flames to burn again. They all, even Janet, had the feeling that the bag was trying to fall on Jason and burn him too. But Jason made it stay in the air with batting motions of his left hand, the way you make a balloon stay in the air, batting and batting, while his other hand collected smoke and fed it back to the flames, over and over, until at last there was nothing left of it, not even the smallest flake of ash. He was sweating through the whitewash when he came back to the car.

  “Phew!” he said. “Someone around here is not nice at all. That thing was designed to get worse by the hour.”

  All this while, Cat was trotting blissfully on Syracuse along the bank of the river, following Joss on his big brown horse. Syracuse was drawing Cat’s attention to the smells of the river valley—the mildly churning river on one side with its rich watery smells, and the damp grassiness from the plants on its banks, and the way the scents from the rest of the valley were those of late summer. Cat sniffed the dry incense smells from the fields and thought he would know it was the end of August even if he suddenly went blind. Syracuse, who was feeling quite as blissful as Cat, helped him sense the myriad squishy things in the river going about their muddy lives, all the hundreds of creatures rustling about on its ba
nks, and the truly teeming life of birds and animals in the meadows above.

  Cat set a spell to keep off the midges and horseflies. They were teeming too. They came pouring out of the bushes in clouds. While he set the spell, he had the feeling that he always had now when he rode out, the same feeling he had first had in Home Wood, that despite the thronging of living things, there ought to have been more. Behind the bustle of creatures, and behind the flitting and soaring of birds, there was surely an emptiness that should have been filled.

  Cat was once again trying to track down the emptiness, when everything stopped.

  Birds stopped singing. Creatures stopped rustling among the rushes. Even the river lost its voice and seemed to flow milklike and silent. Joss stopped too, so suddenly that Syracuse nearly shot Cat off into the water, going sideways to avoid the rear end of Joss’s horse.

  Mr. Farleigh stepped into sight beyond a clump of willows, with his long gun under his arm.

  “Morning, Mr. Farleigh,” Joss said respectfully.

  Mr. Farleigh ignored the politeness, just as he ignored Cat too, sitting slantwise across the path behind Joss. His grim eyes fixed accusingly on Joss. “Tell the Pinhoes to stop,” he said.

  Joss clearly had no more idea than Cat did what this meant. He said, “Sorry?”

  “You heard me. Tell them to stop,” Mr. Farleigh said, “or they’ll be having more than a bit of ill-chancing coming down on them. Tell them I told you.”

  “Of course,” Joss said. “If you say so.”

  “I do say,” Mr. Farleigh said. He shifted a little, so that he was now ignoring Cat more than ever. Pointedly and deliberately ignoring him. “And you’ve no business letting Castle people out all over the place,” he said. “Keep the Big Man’s nose out of things, do you hear me? I had to take steps over that myself the other day. Do your job, man.”

  In front of Cat, Joss was making helpless movements. Cat could feel Syracuse, underneath him, making movements that suggested it would be a good plan to barge past Mr. Farleigh and tumble him into the river. Cat entirely agreed, but he knew this was not wise. He made movements back at Syracuse to tell him not to.

  “My job’s not to stop things, Mr. Farleigh,” Joss said apologetically. “I only report.”

  “Then report,” Mr. Farleigh said, “or I don’t know where it will all end. Take some steps, before I have to get rid of the lot of them.” He swung round on the heel of his big boot and plodded away down the river path.

  When Mr. Farleigh had vanished ahead of them behind the willows, Joss turned to Cat. “Got to go up through the meadows now,” he said. “It won’t do to shove Mr. Farleigh off the path.”

  Cat longed to ask Joss what was going on here, but he could tell Joss was hoping that Cat had not understood a word of what had been said. So he said nothing and let Syracuse follow Joss up through the fields at the side of the valley. Around them, birds flew and creatures rustled, and the river behind them went back to churning again.

  Chapter Eleven

  The egg started hatching that night.

  Cat was not really asleep when it did. He was lying in bed thinking. That night at supper, Julia had told everyone about the greasy gray lavender bag. Chrestomanci had not said anything, but he had looked unusually vague. When Chrestomanci looked vague, it always meant that he was attending particularly closely. Cat was not surprised when Chrestomanci took Jason away to his study afterward to ask him all about it. An ill-chancing was a bad misuse of magic, and it was, after all, Chrestomanci’s job to stop such things. The trouble was, Cat knew he should have told Chrestomanci about Mr. Farleigh too, because he was fairly sure that bag was one of the things Mr. Farleigh had been talking about by the river.

  He tried to work out why he had said nothing. One good reason was that Joss Callow was obviously some kind of spy, and telling Chrestomanci would give Joss away. Cat liked Joss. He did not want to get Joss into trouble—and it would be very bad trouble, Cat knew. But the real reason was because Mr. Farleigh had said these things while Cat was sitting there on Syracuse, hearing every word. It was as if Mr. Farleigh had no need to worry. If he was powerful enough to lock Chrestomanci himself away behind a barrier of chicken wire, then he had enough sour, gnarled power to get rid of everyone in the Castle if he wanted to. He had more or less said so.

  Let’s face it, Cat thought. It’s because I’m scared stiff of him.

  It was then that Cat began to hear a muffled tapping.

  At first he thought it was coming from the window again, but when he sat up and listened, he knew the noise was coming from inside his room. He snapped the light on. Sure enough, the big mauve-speckled egg was rocking gently in its nest of winter scarf. The tapping from inside it was getting faster and faster, as if whatever was in there was in a panic to get out. Then it stopped, and there was an exhausted silence.

  Oh, help! Cat thought. He jumped out of bed and quickly took off the safety spell and then the warm-sand spell, hoping this would make things easier for the creature. He bent anxiously over the egg. “Oh, don’t be dead!” he said to it. “Please!” But he knew the thing must have been for years in a cold attic. It was surely at the end of its strength by now.

  To his huge relief, the tapping started again, slower now, but quite strong and persistent. Cat could tell that the creature inside was concentrating on one part of the egg in order to make a hole. He wondered whether to help it by making the hole for it, from outside. But he was somehow sure this was a bad idea. He could hurt it, or it could die of shock. The only thing he could do was to hang helplessly over the egg and listen.

  Tap, tap, TAP, it went.

  And a hair-fine crack appeared, near the top of the egg. After that, there was another exhausted silence. “Come on!” Cat whispered. “You can do it!”

  But it couldn’t. The tapping started again, weaker now, but the crack did not grow any bigger. After a while, the tapping was going so fast that it was almost a whirring, but still nothing happened. Cat could feel the creature’s growing panic. He began to panic too. He didn’t know what to do, or what would help.

  There was only one person in the Castle that Cat knew could help. He rushed to his door, opened it wide, and then rushed back to the egg. He picked it up, scarf and all, and raced away down his winding stair to find Millie. He could feel the egg vibrating with terror as he ran. “It’s all right!” he panted to it. “Don’t panic! It’ll be all right!”

  Millie had her own sitting room on the next floor. She and Irene were sitting there, chatting quietly over mugs of cocoa before bed. Millie’s big gray cat, Mopsa, was on her knee, filling most of it, and Irene had two more of the Castle cats, Coy and Potts, wedged into her chair on either side. All three cats sprang up and whirled to safe, high places when Cat slammed the door open and rushed in.

  “Cat!” Millie exclaimed. “What’s wrong?”

  “It won’t break! It can’t get out!” Cat panted. He was almost crying by then.

  Millie did not waste time asking questions. “Give it to me, here on the floor. Gently,” she said, and kneeled quickly on the furry hearth rug. Cat, shaking, panting and sniffing, passed her the egg at once. Millie put it carefully down on the rug and carefully unwrapped the scarf from it. “I see,” she said, running her finger lightly along the thin, almost invisible crack. “Poor thing.” She put both hands around the egg, as far as they would reach. “It’s all right now,” she murmured. “We’re going to help you.”

  Cat could feel calmness spreading into the egg, along with hope and strength. He always forgot that Millie, apart from Chrestomanci and himself, was the strongest enchanter in the country. People said she had been a goddess once.

  Irene came to kneel on the hearth rug too. “The shell seems awfully thick,” she said.

  “I don’t think that’s the problem—quite,” Millie murmured. Her hands moved to either side of the crack and began gently, gently trying to spread it wider. Mopsa edged in under Millie’s elbow and stared as if she were t
rying to help. She probably was, Cat realized. All the Castle cats descended from Asheth temple cats and had magic of their own. Coy and Potts, on the mantle-piece, were staring eagerly too. “Ah!” Millie said.

  “What?” Cat asked anxiously.

  “There’s a stasis spell all round the inside of the shell,” Millie said. “I suppose whoever put it there was trying to preserve the egg, but it’s making things really difficult. Let’s see. Cat, you and Irene put your hands where mine are, while I try to get rid of the spell. Hold the split as wide as you can, but very gently, not to crack it further.”

  They kneeled with their heads touching, Cat and Irene—Irene rather timidly—pulling at the crack, while Millie picked at the tiny space they made. After a moment, Millie made an annoyed noise and grew the nails on her thumb and forefinger an inch longer. Then she picked again with her new long nails, until she succeeded in pulling a tiny whitish piece of something through.

  “Ah!” they all said.

  Millie went on pulling, slowly, steadily, gently, and the filmy white something came out farther and farther, and finally came out entirely, with a faint whistling sound. As soon as it was free, it vanished. Millie said, “Bother! I’d like to have known whose spell it was. But never mind.” She leaned down to the egg. “Now you can get to work, my love.”

  The creature inside did its best. It tapped and hammered away, but so feebly by then that Cat could scarcely bear to listen.

  Irene whispered, “It’s very weak. Couldn’t we just break the shell for it?”

  Millie shook her head, tangling her hair into Irene’s and Cat’s. “No. Much better to feed it strength. Put your hands on mine, both of you.” She took hold of the egg, with her fingernails normal length again. Cat laid his hands over Millie’s, and Irene doubtfully did the same. Cat could tell that Irene had no notion of how to give strength to someone else, so he did it for her and pushed Irene’s strength inside the egg, along with his own and Millie’s.