Урсула Уильямс - Gobbolino Тhe Witch's Cat

At last, tired out, Gobbolino crept into the cavern and fell asleep, and there his sister Sootica found him when she returned at sunrise with her mistress the witch, who went straight to sleep, wrapped in her cloak in the corner.

“Brother! Brother! Wake up, brother!” cried Sootica, shaking the sleeping Gobbolino with her paw. “Where are the hundred lizards my mistress wanted? Don’t you know she will throw you down the mountainside if she does not have them by sundown?”

“Oh, I couldn’t catch them, sister, indeed I could not!” sobbed Gobbolino, waking up in a hurry. “I tried and tried! They mocked and laughed at me, and would not come near me! I never even caught one, sister, and oh, my goodness, whatever is to become of me?”

“Don’t cry, brother! I will help you, just this once!” said his sister Sootica, trotting out into the daylight with Gobbolino at her heels.

Out on the rocks she sat upright looking at the sun and admiring her shadow and very soon the lizards peeped out in their thousands to look at her.

“I can see you all,” said Sootica sedately. “I came out to look at you and to catch a hundred of you, if I can, for my mistress to put in her spell.”

“Oh, you can’t catch us!” said the lizards, wriggling with delight. “Your stupid brother has been at it all day, and he hasn’t so much as touched our tails!”

“Catch you indeed!” said Sootica with great contempt. “Why, I should not even try! For one thing, I do not expect there are fifty of you, far less a hundred, that are fine enough for what my mistress requires!”

This made the lizards very indignant.

“Fine enough?” they chattered. “Why, look at me! – and me! – and me! – and me!” and they came scuttling out of their holes to show Sootica how fine and handsome they were.

“Why, yes!” she said. “You will do – and you! – and you! – and you!” So saying she scooped up the first hundred that showed themselves in her paw, and stalked with them into the cavern.

“Why, how clever you are, sister!” said Gobbolino admiringly, trotting at Sootica’s heels. “I played all the tricks I knew upon them, but they would not come near me!”

“Ah! You would never catch such lizards as these by witches’ tricks,” said Sootica wisely. “They live too near our cavern and are always in and out – they pick up everything. Go to bed now, brother, and try to be a better cat. Good-day to you.”

On the third night the witch told Gobbolino to do nothing but stir the cauldron all night. She was brewing her great spell, and before she left the cavern she told the young cats about it.

“Far, far away from here there is a castle with a princess in it,” she said. “Tomorrow she will be twenty-one. Twenty-one years ago, when she was born, her parents did not invite me to her christening. Now I am going to have my revenge. When this spell is ready I will mould it in the form of a golden dove. This I shall take her as a birthday present, dressed in my best clothes so she will think me her fairy godmother. But the moment she holds it in her hands the dove will peck her, and she will fall asleep for a hundred years. Then her parents will be sorry they did not invite me to her christening.”

“Oh, how beautiful, mistress! How beautiful!” cried Sootica clapping her paws in delight, but Gobbolino’s blue eyes grew round with horror and dismay.

“Unless the spell is put upon her on her twenty-first birthday, it will have no power over her,” said the witch. “And in order to be ready it must boil all night. You must stir it, Gobbolino, and never stop a moment, or it will be spoiled.”

“At least you cannot fail with that!” said Sootica joyfully, as she bade her brother goodbye, and set off behind her mistress on the broomstick.

But the moment they were gone Gobbolino sprang off the stool on which he had been standing to stir the cauldron, and began to pace up and down the cavern.

“Oh, my goodness, how wicked! How cruel! How wrong!” he said to himself. “Think of the parents’ sorrow and distress! Think of the lovely girl doomed to a hundred years of sleep on her birthday! Oh, no! No! No! Never will I take part in such cruelty! Oh, why was I born a witch’s cat? Oh, why?”

And leaving the cauldron to bubble as it chose, he curled up in a corner and fell asleep.

The witch and Sootica were early in returning.

All night long, as she flew about her errands, the witch had been uneasy and anxious about her spell.

“Suppose he stirs it too fast! Suppose he stirs too slowly? Suppose he lets the fire out? Or scalds himself and drops the ladle? I ought not to have left it, Sootica, for if that spell fails then all my hopes are lost.”

“Indeed it cannot fail, dear mistress!” said Sootica. “Stupid and ignorant as my brother is, the merest kitten could stir a spell all night. I am sure you have no cause for fear!”

But the witch was not easy, and long before the dawn she had turned the broomstick for home and was speeding back towards the Hurricane Mountains with the wind whistling through Sootica’s whiskers as she clung behind her.

“ Whee-eew! ” they whistled, and people in the towns and villages below murmured: “There goes Sootica, the witch’s cat!”

Once at the cavern’s mouth the witch leapt off her broomstick and rushed inside. Sootica followed her, but more sedately, for she felt sure Gobbolino would not have been so foolish as to stop stirring the cauldron as he had been told to do so.

What was her horror to see the ashes grey under the cauldron, the bubbling silent, and worst of all, Gobbolino asleep in a ball in his usual corner!

“Miserable cat!” shrieked the witch, picking him up by the scruff of his neck. “What do you mean by this, you wretched creature?”

“It was so cruel!” sobbed Gobbolino. “I couldn’t do it! Indeed I couldn’t do it, ma’am!”

“ Cruel! What word is ‘cruel’ for a witch’s cat?” asked the witch, shaking him. “Don’t you want to be cruel? Don’t you want to be bad? Don’t you want to be wicked? Don’t you want to be ungrateful? You have the heart of a kitchen cat, the ambitions of a kitchen cat, and the looks of a kitchen cat! Henceforward you shall be a kitchen cat!”

And with one shriek of rage she hurled him into the cauldron.

16

Gobbolino the Kitchen Cat

The bubbles rose and broke about him as Gobbolino struggled in the cauldron. Had it been boiling he might have died, but he had let the fire out and it was almost cold.

At last the witch fished him out with a stick, and set him, dripping miserably, on the floor.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” she jeered. “If only your mother could see you now! If she was ashamed of you before she would be ten times more so to look at you as you are this minute! Ho! Ho! Ho! Kitchen cat! Kitchen cat!”

“I should like to be a kitchen cat!” said Gobbolino. “I never wanted to be a witch’s cat – not I! Witches are cruel and wicked and bad! They do evil and make people miserable! They come to a bad end, and nobody is sorry! They are bad! Bad! BAD!!”

“What! Haven’t I silenced you yet?” shrieked the witch, making a snatch at him to hurl him down the mountainside, but Gobbolino skipped aside, and next moment Sootica had mounted the broomstick and called to him: “Jump up behind me, brother, quick!”

Gobbolino made one leap just as the witch made another grab at his tail.

Up-up-up! soared the broomstick, higher and higher, till the witch’s shrieks and angry cries could no longer be heard and the grey peaks of the Hurricane Mountains were like shadows below.

Dizzy and sick with fright, Gobbolino could only close his beautiful blue eyes and cling to his sister Sootica as he thanked her over and over again for saving his life.