The Pinhoe Egg Read online

  The creature inside now hammered away with a will. Tap, tap, taptaptap, taptaptap, BANG. CRACK. And a thing that might have been a beak—anyhow, it was yellowish and blunt—came out through the mauve shell. There it stopped, seeming to gasp. It looked so tender and soft that Cat’s nose and mouth felt sore in sympathy. Fancy having to break this thick shell with that! he thought. Next second, the beak had been joined by a small, thin paw with long pink nails. Then a second paw struggled out, tiny and weak like the first.

  The cats were all on the alert now. Mopsa’s nose was almost on the widening dark crack.

  “Is it a dragon?” Irene asked.

  “I’m—not sure,” Millie said.

  As she spoke, the weak claws found the edges of the crack, scrabbled, and then shoved. The egg split into two white-lined halves, and the creature rolled loose. It was much bigger than Cat expected, twice the size of Mopsa at least, and it was desperately thin and scrawny and slightly wet, and covered with pale, draggled fluff. It opened two round yellow eyes above its beak and looked at Cat imploringly. “Weep, weep, weep!” it went.

  Cat did what it seemed to want and gathered it up into his arms. It snugged down against him with an exhausted sigh, beak and front paws draped over his right arm, and hind claws quite painfully hooked on his left pajama sleeve. It had a tail like a piece of string that hung down on his knee. “Weep,” it said.

  It was much lighter for its size than Cat thought it should be. He was just about to ask Millie what on earth kind of creature it was, when the door of Millie’s sitting room opened and Chrestomanci hurried in, looking anxious, with Jason behind him. “Is there some kind of crisis?” Chrestomanci asked.

  “Not exactly,” Millie said, pointing to the creature in Cat’s arms.

  Chrestomanci looked from the two broken eggshell halves on the hearth rug to the creature Cat was holding. He said, “Bless my soul!” and came over to look. He ran a finger down the creature’s back, from soft beak to stringy tail, and picked up the tail to look at the tuft on its end. Then he went to the other end of it and examined the long pink front claws. Finally, he spread out one of the two funny little triangular things that grew from the creature’s shoulders. “Bless my soul!” he said again. “It really is a griffin. These are its wings. Look.”

  They did not look much like wings to Cat. They had no feathers and were covered with the same pale fluff as the rest of it, but he supposed that Chrestomanci knew. “What do they eat?” he asked.

  “Blowed if I know,” Chrestomanci said, and looked at Jason, who said, “Me neither.”

  As if it had understood, the baby griffin promptly discovered that it was starving. Its beak opened like a fledgling bird’s, all pink and orange inside. “Weep!” it said. “Weep, weep, weep, weep! Weep. WEEP, WEEP, WEEP!” It struggled about in Cat’s arms so painfully that he was forced to put it down on the hearth rug, where it lay spread-eagled and weeping miserably. Mopsa rushed up to it and began washing it. The baby griffin seemed to like that. It hunched itself toward Mopsa, but it did not stop its shrill, miserable “Weep, weep, weep!”

  Millie stood up and did some quick conjuring. When she kneeled down again, she was holding a jug of warm milk and a large medicine dropper. “Here,” she said. “Most babies like milk, in my experience.” She filled the dropper with milk and gently squirted some into the corner of the gaping beak.

  The baby griffin choked and most of the milk came out on to the hearth rug. Cat did not think it liked milk. But when he said so, Millie said, “Yes, but it’s got to have something, or it’ll die. Let’s get some milk into it for now—it can’t do any harm—and in the morning we’ll rush it down to the vet—Mr. Vastion—and see what he can suggest.”

  “Weep, weep, weep,” went the griffin, and choked again when Millie squeezed some more milk into it.

  There followed three hours of hard work, during which they all five tried to feed the baby griffin and only partly succeeded. Irene was best at it. As Jason said, Irene had a knack with animals. Cat was next best, but he thought that by the time his turn came, the baby griffin had gotten the hang of being fed from a dropper. Cat got most of a jugful into it, but that seemed to do very little good. He had barely laid it down looking contented, when it raised its beak and went “Weep, weep, weep!” again. And it was the same for the other four. Eventually, Cat was so exhausted that he only stayed awake because he was so desperately sorry for the baby griffin. It needed a parent.

  Chrestomanci yawned until his jaw gave out a sort of clop. “Cat, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you come by this insatiable beast?”

  “It hatched,” Cat explained, “from the egg in Jason’s attic. A girl called Marianne Pinhoe said I could have it. The house belonged to her father.”

  “Ah,” Chrestomanci said. “Pinhoe. Hmm.”

  “It was under a stasis spell,” Millie said. “It must have been in that house for years.”

  “But Cat somehow succeeded in hatching it. I see,” Chrestomanci said, sighing. It was his turn to feed the baby griffin. He sat on the hearth rug, a very strange sight in a frilly apron that Millie had conjured for him, over his dark crimson velvet evening dress, and aimed the dropper at the griffin’s open beak. The griffin choked again and most of the milk dribbled out. Chrestomanci looked resigned. “I think,” he said, “that the only way to deal with this poor creature is to cast a four-hour sleep spell over it and get it to the vet as soon as it wakes up.”

  Everyone wearily agreed. “I’ll conjure a dog basket for it,” Millie said.

  “No,” Cat said. “I’ll have it in bed with me. It needs a parent.”

  He set off back to his room with the sleep-bespelled griffin draped on his arms. Millie went with him to make sure they got there safely, and Mopsa followed them. Mopsa seemed to have decided to be the griffin’s mother. No bad thing, as Millie said. Cat fell asleep with the baby griffin snuggled against him, snoring slightly, and Mopsa snuggled against the griffin. Between them, they had nearly pushed Cat out of the bed by the morning.

  He woke to find that the griffin had wet his bed. That was scarcely surprising after all that milk, Cat supposed. And here the poor thing was, going “Weep, weep” again.

  Millie arrived on the third “Weep!” as anxious as Cat was. “At least it’s still alive, poor little soul,” she said. “I’ve telephoned Mr. Vastion, and he says he can only see it this morning if we bring it down to his surgery now. He’s got to go and see to a very sick cow after that. You get dressed, Cat, and I’ll see if it will drink some more milk.”

  Cat climbed over the griffin and Mopsa and got out of his somewhat smelly pajamas, while Millie once more aimed the dropper at the griffin’s desperate beak. It spat the milk out. “Oh, well,” Millie said. “They’re going to have to change your bedding anyway. I’ve told Miss Bessemer. It’s lucky I thought to bring it a clean blanket. Are you ready yet?”

  Cat was just tying his boots. He had dressed all anyhow, in his old suit trousers and the red sweater he wore to ride in. Millie had done much the same. She was in a threadbare tweed skirt and an expensive lace blouse, and too worried about the griffin to notice. She spread out the fluffy white blanket she had brought and Cat tenderly lifted the griffin onto it. It was shivering. And it continued shivering even when it was wrapped in the blanket.

  They left Mopsa finishing the milk Millie had brought and hurried down to the main door of the Castle. Millie had not bothered to wake the Castle chauffeur. She had brought the long black car round to the front of the Castle before she came to wake Cat. The griffin was still shivering when Cat got into the passenger seat with it, and it went on shivering while Millie drove the short distance down into Helm St. Mary and along to the vet’s surgery on the outskirts of the village.

  Cat liked Mr. Vastion at once. He wore glasses like little half-moons well down on his nose and looked humorously at Cat and Millie over them. “Now what have we here?” he said. His voice was a gloomy kind of moan, with a bit of a grunt t
o it. “Bring it in, bring it in,” he told them, waving them through to his consulting room, “and put it down here,” he said, pointing with a thick finger at a high, shiny examining table. When Cat carefully dumped the bundle of blanket on the table, Mr. Vastion unwrapped it in a resigned way, moaning, “What a parcel. Is this necessary? What have we in here?”

  To Cat’s surprise, the griffin seemed to like Mr. Vastion too. It stopped shivering and looked up at him with its great golden eyes. “Weep?”

  “And weep to you too,” Mr. Vastion grunted back at it, unwrapping. “You shouldn’t coddle them, you know. Not good for any animal. Now—Oh, yes. You have a fine boy griffin here. Small still, but they grow quite quickly, you know. Does he have a name yet?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cat said.

  “Quite right,” Mr. Vastion moaned. “They always name themselves. Fact. I read up about griffins before you got here. Just in case this wasn’t a complete hoax. Very rare things in this world, griffins. First one I’ve ever seen, actually. Just a moment.”

  He paused, holding the griffin down with one expertly spread hand, while, with the other hand, he picked up a frog that had somehow appeared on the table and threw it out of the window.

  “Damn nuisance, these frogs,” he moaned, while he turned the griffin this way and that, feeling its stomach and its ribs and its legs and examining both sets of claws. “They’ve got a plague of frogs here,” he explained. “Came to me and asked me to get rid of them. I asked them what I was supposed to do—poison the duck pond? Told them to get rid of the things themselves. They’re Farleighs. Should know how. But there’s no doubt too many frogs are a pest. They get in everywhere. And they strike me as half unreal anyway. Some magician’s idea of a joke, I’d say.” He held the griffin’s beak open and looked down its throat. “Fine voice in there, by the look of it. Now let’s have you over, old son.”

  Mr. Vastion set the griffin on its feet and unfolded the little triangular stubs of its wings. He felt round the bottom of them. “Plenty of good flight muscles here,” he grunted. “Just need a bit of growing and fledging. The feathers will come, along with the proper coat at the back end. You’ll find this fluff will drop out as he grows. Just what were you worrying about?”

  “We don’t know what to give him to eat,” Cat explained. “He doesn’t like milk.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Mr. Vastion moaned. “The front half of him’s bird. Look.”

  He turned the griffin deftly over on its side, where it lay peacefully. Cat could see that it liked this firm handling. Mr. Vastion slid his hand over the creature’s beak, and then upward, so that its small tufty ears were flattened.

  “Now you’ve got the contours,” he grunted. “Reminds me of nothing so much as an osprey. Or a sea eagle, even more. Magnificent birds. Huge wingspan. Take that as your guide, but chop the food up small or he’ll choke. Sea eagles do take fish, but they take rabbits even more. Easier to catch. I expect this fellow will be quite happy with minced beef. But he’ll want raw vegetables chopped into it too, to keep him healthy. I’d better show you. Hold him for me a minute, Lady Chant.”

  Millie put both hands on the peacefully lying griffin. “He’s so thin and weak!”

  Mr. Vastion gave out a long moan. “Of course he is. Just hatched. All newborn creatures are like this. Skinny. Feeble. Bags under their eyes. Excuse me a moment. I’ll get him some puppy food.” He left the room in the sort of shuffling plod that seemed to be his way of walking.

  Another frog landed on the table while they waited. Cat picked it up and, like Mr. Vastion had done, threw it out of the window. A flopping feeling on his feet showed him two more frogs that had somehow landed on his boots. In the dim light down there, parts of them glowed transparent green, with touches of red. Cat saw Mr. Vastion had been quite right. These frogs were only partly real. He bent down and collected both frogs in his left hand, just as Mr. Vastion shuffled back into the room. The baby griffin leaped up from under Millie’s hands with its beak wide open, going, “Weep, weep, weep!” in such excitement that it seemed about to leap right off the table. Cat quickly sent all the frogs back to where they came from and dived to catch the griffin.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Vastion grunted. He was holding a large handful of raw mince mixed with shredded carrot. They watched him put the meat into his bunched-up fingers, so that his hand was roughly beak shaped. “Like this, see,” he moaned, and popped the handful expertly down the griffin’s throat. “Think you can do that?”

  The griffin swallowed, clapped its beak, and looked soulfully up at Mr. Vastion. “Weep?”

  “In a bit, fellow. Lady Chant will take you home and give you a square meal there,” Mr. Vastion moaned. “Bring him back again if you’re worried. That will be ten and sixpence, Lady Chant.”

  They got back into the car again, Cat carrying the griffin without the blanket. Millie tossed the blanket into the backseat, saying, “I think we were worrying too much, Cat. Raw meat! Thank goodness he told us!” She drove off, around the village green and up the long driveway to the Castle, where she did not stop at the main door; she drove on around to the kitchen door and stopped outside that.

  Cat was surprised at how many people were crowded into the kitchen to meet them. Mr. Frazier, the butler, opened the kitchen door to them. Mr. Stubbs, the head cook, met them as they came in, surrounded by his apprentices, and asked anxiously just what it was that griffins ate.

  “Raw mince,” Millie said, “with grated carrots—and chopped parsley, I think, for clean breath.”

  “I rather thought that might be it,” Mr. Stubbs said. “Eddie, fetch out that minced rabbit. Joan and Laurie, grate us some carrots, and Jimmy, you chop parsley. And you’ll be wanting breakfast yourselves while you feed him, I guess. Bert, coffee, toast.”

  Miss Bessemer the housekeeper was there too, hurrying to spread newspaper on a table for Cat to put the griffin down on. “A basket in your room?” she asked Cat. “I’ve found you a nice roomy one. And we’ll bespell the lining until he’s house-trained, dear, if you don’t mind.”

  As the mince arrived, the baby griffin stood up on wobbly legs, whirling its stringlike tail and going “Weep!” again. A crowd surrounded the table to watch. Cat saw Joe the boot boy, Mary, Euphemia and two other maids, several footmen, all the kitchen staff, Mr. Frazier, Miss Bessemer, nearly all the Castle wizards, Roger, Janet, Julia, Irene, Jason, and Mopsa, looking possessive. He even caught a glimpse of Chrestomanci, in a purple dressing gown, at the back of the crowd, watching over people’s heads.

  “We don’t get a griffin every day,” Millie said. “You feed him, love. He came to you, after all.”

  Cat took up a fistful of meat, made his fingers into a beak, and posted the lump down the griffin’s expectant throat. “Oh, bless!” someone murmured as the griffin swallowed, looked pleased, and looked up for more. “Weep?” That plateful went in no time. Cat had only time to snatch a piece of toast before there was a further, louder “Weep, weep!” and Mr. Stubbs had to fetch more meat. The baby griffin ate all the rabbit there was, followed by a pound of minced steak, and then went “Weep!” for more. Mr. Stubbs produced smoked salmon. It ate that. By this time its scrawny stomach was round, and tight as a drum.

  “I think that will do,” Millie said. “We don’t want him ill. But he obviously needs a lot.”

  “I sent an order down to the butcher, ma’am,” Mr. Stubbs said. “I can see it’s going to be quantities. Every four hours, if you ask me, if he’s anything like a human baby.”

  “Oh, help!” Cat said. “Really?”

  “Pretty certainly,” Mr. Frazier said, suddenly revealing himself as a bird fancier. “Your fledgling bird eats its own weight in food daily, and often more. Better weigh it, Mr. Stubbs. You may need to increase your order.”

  So the kitchen scales were fetched and the griffin was discovered to weigh over a stone already, sixteen pounds, in fact. It objected to being weighed. It wanted to go to sleep, pr
eferably in Cat’s arms. While Cat carried it away upstairs, with its beak contentedly resting on his shoulder and Mopsa following watchfully, Mr. Stubbs did sums on the back of an old bill. The total came to so much that he sent Joe down to the butcher’s to double his first order.

  Joe stopped to exchange an urgent look with Roger before he left. “I’ll wait,” Roger said. “Promise.”

  “Get going, Joe Pinhoe!” Mr. Stubbs said. “You lazy layabout, you!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Over in Ulverscote there was suddenly a plague of frogs.

  Nobody had seen the like before. There were thousands of them, and there was a sort of green-redness to them if you saw them in the shade. They got in everywhere. People trod on them when they got out of bed that morning and found them in the teapot when they tried to make tea. About the only inhabitant of the village who enjoyed the plague was Nutcase. He chased frogs all over Furze Cottage. His favorite place to hunt them into was Marianne’s bedroom. Then he killed them on Marianne’s bedside rug.

  Marianne picked up the strange, small black remains. The frogs seemed to shrink when they were dead and die away into something dark and dry with holes in. Not real, she thought. There was a smell coming off them that she knew. Where had she smelled that particular odor before? She knew Joe had been there when she smelled it. Was it when they stole the stuffed ferret? No. It was before that. It was when Gammer had sent that blast of magic at the Farleighs.

  That’s it, Marianne thought. These are Gammer’s.

  She went downstairs and put the dry remains into the waste pail. “I’m going round to see Gammer,” she told Mum.