Abby the Witch (26 page)

Charlie
twitched his whiskers and snarled at a bird as it flew close by the
wall.

He could count
the conversations he'd had with Abby since they'd been thrown back
in time on one claw. Whatever she was thinking, whatever she had
found out, whatever she was planning - she hadn't bothered to let
him know a word of it.

He was close
to mutiny! He was close to a coup. He was close to marching right
up to her and swiping her in the face until she acknowledged his
existence with a painful cry.

It was all
that Pembrake's fault. Charlie stretched out his claws and let them
grate back along the stone as they retracted. He was bad news. Such
a cad.

The shrill cry
of a gull rang out overhead and Charlie was forced to blink open
his eyes to take a quick look as the gull swooped towards the
dock.

The seagulls
were out in force this morning, and their calls were not filled
with their usual inane chatter. They were not discussing the recent
catch of some trawler out in the bay, or the leftover fish guts
that were being washed off the dock. No, all their squawks were
quick and sharp like the chatter of a military unit.

Something was
going on, it appeared, something big.

Charlie sat up
and watched another pair of seagulls swoop low.

'The witches
are leaving!' squawked one fat-looking bird with a bent beak.

'Already?'
another seagull replied as it flew past Charlie's wall.

'What's this?'
Charlie sat up straight and glared at the birds. Stupid seagulls
never knew what they were talking about. They were always spreading
rumours and gossiping like a bunch of old women. Still....

Both the
seagulls settled on the drain of a roof nearby. The gull with the
bent beak tilted his head and looked at Charlie with one wild
yellow eye, obviously annoyed that a cat had interrupted his
conversation. 'What's it to you, walker?' the gull gulped through a
laugh, obviously reckoning that drawing attention to the fact cats
cannot fly, was the funniest damn insult this side of the
slumps.

Charlie
twitched his lips up into the most withering of grins. 'The world?'
He dearly wanted to threaten the bird with its life, but decided it
was best to keep him onside in case the flying rat would scoot off
without spilling the beans.

'Here,
Guthrie!' the second gull flapped a wing towards his friend, like a
human nudging someone with an elbow. 'That's a witch's cat, that
is.'

'Yesss,
Wilfred, I know that,' Guthrie obviously fancied himself the one in
charge and looked at Wilfred with disdain. 'But he's still a
cat!'

'But I reckons
he needs to know!' Wilfred bobbed his head up and down, 'what with
him being a witch's cat and all.'

'So what? He's
still a rotten, rat-eating, bottom-dwelling cat! Who cares if he
happens to sit on the end of a witch's broom?'

'Look, alls
I'm saying, Guth, is that those witches told us to spread the word!
Don't you think this here cat needs to know the witches are heading
off? That head witch said she didn't want none of her girls falling
pray to that Colonel!'

'It's prey,
Wilfred, and stop telling the cat everything already!'

Charlie shook
his head slightly, trying not to let his eyes glass-over too
clearly. Seagulls were quite easily the stupidest of birds. He
would really be doing evolution a hand if he just wiped these two
off the family tree.

Still, this
was worrying. Though these birds would not have enough brainpower
to excite a limpet, they didn't appear to be lying. Not with the
same call being carried by the two dozen or so gulls that were
circling overhead as well.

It seemed the
witches of Bridgestock were packing up and heading out of town. But
what witch in her right mind would ever leave her territory? There
were penalties for doing something like that - witches lost a whole
lot of their dignity and the powerful edge off their squint if they
went around fleeing from trouble. No one would fear an old Crone if
they knew she wouldn't stand in front of your cart till you brought
it to a shuddering halt a centimetre from her huffing nose. Witches
relied on their mild disdain in the face of apocalyptic terror to
beef up their image.

A witch who
would not stick it through was not a witch at all. So why would
Bridgestock's witches be leaving? And what was it that the Head
Witch feared the Colonel was going to do?

Did this have
something to do with the Witch Ban? As a cat, Charlie did not give
a hoot about history, but since he'd been thrown back in the past
it did seem like a useful topic to know. Charlie didn't know his
though, so, painfully, he was having to rely on a pair of recessive
seagulls to find out what the pleck was going on around here.

'So this
Colonel then,' Charlie was doing his finest job of keeping his
natural annoyance in check; he almost sounded friendly, 'what is he
supposed to want to do with the witches?'

'Capture one,'
Wilfred squawked before Guthrie could stop him.

'Capture one?
Why does he want to capture one?' Charlie flashed his tail from
side-to-side, the little white hairs on its tip standing on
edge.

'Because he
wants one,' Guthrie supplied with a snap, obviously determined to
be as unhelpful as possible.

'He's got some
kind of plan and he needs a witch he does!' Wilfred still bobbed
his head excitedly. 'It's got something to do with those Turn
Abouts, and an assassin, and the Royal Family!'

Charlie tried
to appear indifferent to the news, but could still feel his
whiskers twitching. 'And do you know what this plan is,
perchance?'

'Oh rack off,
cat,' snapped Guthrie, 'we're seagulls, do you really think we know
the secret plan of Bridestock's evil overlord?'

Charlie
couldn't help but growl. 'I thought perhaps the witch could have
told you.'

'Well she
didn't. Wilfred's already told you all that we know, so why don't
you just-'

'Rack off?'
Charlie asked through bared teeth. It was clear that the seagulls
weren't going to be of anymore use. But Charlie wasn't about to let
them leave with the upper hand. He stretched out and let his claws
scrape loudly across the stone. 'I would be delighted to rack off.
I'm very hungry, you see, and I'm rather preoccupied with finding
something to eat.'

Both seagulls
got the picture and flew off with a good measure of jostling
feathers and keening squawks. Charlie watched them leave and join
the flock of birds circling high overhead.

Well that had
been interesting.

So the Colonel
was up to something and he wanted a witch. No matter what angle
Charlie looked at this from, it did not look good.

He had been
willing to throw in the towel with Abby, sit on this warm wall and
wait for her to sort out what she needed to in order to take the
lot of them back home. But now, as always happened, it looked like
he would have to weigh in and save the day – rescue his incapable
mistress and the dim-witted Pembrake from a situation far beyond
their skills.

It was hard
being a cat sometimes.

Charlie licked
his paw once more and bounded off the wall, landing with a light
thump on the cobbles below.

With a final
look at the circling gulls above, he headed off to save the
day.

Charlie really
wasn't expecting to run into him of all people. And the look of
almost pleasant recognition that coloured Pembrake's features as
he'd spied Charlie walking along a wall, was sickening.

The troll
actually looked up and waved when he was sure no one was looking.
Charlie flicked his tail in response.

He'd been on
his way to find Abby, to warn her of the apparent trap the Colonel
was creating. There appeared to be a vacancy for a witch in town,
Charlie would say to her, but the Colonel probably wouldn't pay
very well. But on his way over the walls and rooftops to find her,
Charlie had been surprised to come across Pembrake standing by a
carriage. The carriage was parked outside of an expensive-looking
dress shop, and Charlie could just make out the pink-dress-clad
form of the Princess swanning around inside.

Pembrake waved
at Charlie again and pointed to his feet. If Charlie didn't know
any better, it appeared the human was trying to signal
something.

'Come over
here,' Pembrake mouthed obviously.

For a Naval
Commander, he certainly didn't seem to have any military skills. If
that was the best secrecy Pembrake could manage, then the Royal
Navy was doomed.

'Charlie!'
Pembrake hissed.

Finally
Charlie acquiesced and bounded off the wall, coming to a rest next
to one of the large yellow, ornate wheels of the cart.

'Charlie, I
don't have much time,' Pembrake fortunately had enough sense not to
face Charlie or bend down to meet him. He simply stared straight
ahead and moved his mouth as little as possible while he whispered
evenly.

'I'm so sorry
for you,' Charlie wasn't about to make this any easier for him.

'Look, have
you seen, Abby?' Pembrake's features appeared to take on an odd,
stretched look when he mentioned her name. 'I've been worried about
her.'

Charlie licked
at his paw.

'I honestly
don't have much time, Charlie, please.'

But as Charlie
looked on with twitching disdain, a plan began to form in his mind.
It was sometimes scary how brilliant his mind was. How, if he left
a query knocking long enough at the gates of wisdom, his brain
would come up with the most fantastic of strategies.

And now, as
Charlie looked sideways at the annoying Pembrake, his mind was
coming up with a truly epic plan indeed. All this time he'd been
intending on simply running back to Abby and telling her of what
he'd overheard from the seagulls. But knowing Abby, this would not
work.

Ever since
they had met, Abby had always had this strange attraction to
trouble. The witches who had informed her of her broken destiny,
the one filled with starvation and solitude, had been bang on the
money. That sounded exactly like how it would end for Abby. There
was just something so melancholy, so unfortunate about
how her life always ended up. She would go out to pick roses and
would end up with thorns. She went out to become a witch, and ended
up in the one city that hated witches more than anything.

But, and this
was hard to admit, there was something about Pembrake that changed
all that. It seemed his mere presence was enough to distract her
into being more fortunate. She was too busy hating him, arguing
with him, and berating him to remember how to court trouble.

Oh yes, going
back in time wasn't exactly fortunate. But they hadn't starved to
waifs yet, nor had they been chased by the Guards or been eaten by
wild dogs. Things were looking up, and as hard as it was to admit
this, things were looking up into the face of Pembrake.

'Stop looking
at me like that, Charlie, and just answer my question,' Pembrake
swivelled his head to either side carefully, obviously checking to
see if people were listening in.

'She's fine,'
Charlie lied, 'she's looking for you though.'

This time
Pembrake did look down. What was that look on his face exactly? Was
it surprise or something else?

'She's looking
for me?'

'Yes, of
course, she's waiting for you to finish all this gadding with the
Princess, so that you can meet up again and finish this quest.'

'She is?' his
cheeks had deepened in colour. 'I thought she'd be happy to see the
back of me honestly.'

'Well, you
don't know her,' though Charlie hated to engage in such a
horrendous lie, it was fun leading Pembrake on like this.

'Apparently
not,' Pembrake stared off down the street.

'When are you going to stop gadding? She can't do this on
her own, you know.' Charlie swallowed, finding the taste of his
next statement far too bitter, 'she needs you.'

Pembrake
blinked. 'Little Abby needs me? I don't think so.'

'You need each
other,' Charlie redoubled his efforts, 'so you can make a plan to
get the pleck out of here.'

Pembrake
looked down, a sudden cold frosting the edge of his lips and
freezing them in place. 'I already have a plan.'

Oh that's just
great. That had to be a fairly high score on the
creepy-ominous-voice stakes. By the sounds of his tone, Pembrake
was planning on smacking the past over the head with a huge
stick.

Before Charlie
could put Pembrake in his place re violent plans to change the
past, the Princess danced out of the shop, clutching a white dress
to herself and giggling wildly.

Pembrake
bubbled with false interest and Charlie took that as his cue to
go.

He wasn't
happy to leave Pembrake on his own, plotting whatever rotten plan
was in his head. It wasn't that Charlie was against changing the
past; he thought it was a great idea. You don't get thrown into the
past from a horrible future unless time intends you to fix it. But
Pembrake probably wasn't thinking of a healthy happy solution to
the futures ills. He was probably thinking of finding whoever was
responsible for turning Bridgestock into a festering, bigoted trash
heap – and knocking the pleck out of them.

As Charlie
trotted off down the street, he realised that Pembrake needed Abby
just as much as she needed him.

He'd
eventually found Abby walking aimlessly along a side street in
Bridgestock. The street in question eventually terminated in the
slumps. Not a cheery place to be, especially with Turn Abouts and
assassinations in the air.

She was
curling her hair around her finger and staring through the window
of a shop that sold hideous-looking dresses. She only ever curled
her hair like that, or had that almost childlike grin on her face,
when she knew no one was watching her. Because Abby, for better or
for worse, often put on the face of an experienced, unshockable
Crone. If she’d knew someone was looking at her now, she would
probably curl her toes with shame.