Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci (8 page)

“Faster!” Master Spiderman snapped, as they all hurtled across the wood, too.

“Go as fast as he does, go as fast as he does,” Cat heard Tonino whisper.

This was exactly what seemed to happen. Master Spiderman snapped, “Faster!” several times, once when the moon vanished and there were suddenly a thousand more roofs and chimneys whirling beneath them, again when it came on to rain briefly, and yet again when there was a full moon shining down on some kind of park below. Yet the small green cluster of souls speeding ahead stayed precisely the same distance in front of them. The dark landscape underneath changed again, but they were still no nearer, and no farther away either.

“Curses!” panted Master Spiderman. “They’re traveling into the future. This is a hundred and fifty years now. Boys, give me your strength. I command it!”

Cat felt energy draining strongly out of him through the invisible cobwebs that were towing him after Master Spiderman. Although this was not a pleasant feeling, it seemed to lift some of the fuzzy blankness in his mind. Cat found dim memories flitting through his head as they sped on, of faces and places mostly—a castle, a handsome dark-haired man saying something sarcastic, a lady in mittens, a very old man lying in bed. And a smell. Around the very old man in bed there had hung the same musty, sick smell that came strongly, in gusts, off Master Spiderman as he whirled along in front. But Cat could not put these memories together to make sense. It was easier to notice that the chimney pots beneath now seemed to be growing out into the countryside, in lines along the sides of fields, and to listen to Tonino, who was still whispering, “Go as fast as we do, go as fast as we do!” over and over.

“Are you using his spell or something?” Cat whispered.

“I think so,” Tonino whispered back. “I seem to remember doing this before.”

Cat seemed to remember Tonino could do this sort of thing, too, but before he could discover how he knew, the landscape below jerked into another different shape. There were handsome gas streetlights down there now, trees lining wide roads and houses that stood apart from one another in gardens. Ahead, the small glowing group of souls hurtled across a village green and then over a dimly gleaming railway line.

“I
know
this place!” Cat said. “I think we were here this morning.”

Almost at the same time, Master Spiderman was making confused noises. “I thought he was taking them to his home,” he said, “but we have passed it. Where are they
going
then?”

In front of them, the souls streamed above some tall trees and almost instantly dived down beyond, toward a tall building with rows of lighted windows. Still making puzzled noises and grunting with the effort, Master Spiderman dragged himself and Cat and Tonino across the treetops after them.

They were in time to see the souls, in a luminous line with the big one still leading, go streaming sedately in through the big arched door in the middle of the building. At the sight, Master Spiderman yelled with rage and plunged them all downward so quickly that Cat had to shut his eyes. It was even quicker than falling.

They landed with a fairly violent bump on what was luckily a soft lawn. Tonino and Cat got up quickly, but Master Spiderman was winded and staggered about gasping, looking so thin and bent and hollow-faced that he might almost have been a real monkey. They could see him clearly, propping himself on his butterfly net and puffing, because there was a large light over the arched door of the building. The light shone on letters carved into the stone of the arch:
HOSPITAL OF THE SACRED HEART
.

“A
hospital
!” Master Spiderman panted. “Why would they want to come
here
? Don’t stand there staring, you stupid boys! We have to catch them!” And he was off again, using the butterfly net like a walking stick and muttering, “Oh,
why
do I always get so
old
when I come to the future? Come on, you wretched boys, come
on
!”

He dragged them in through the doorway into a most obvious hospital corridor, long, pale green, and well lit, and smelling so strongly of antiseptic that it drowned even the smell of Master Spiderman. Cat and Tonino both became extremely conscious of how dirty they were. They tried to hang back. But there near the end of the corridor, almost transparent yellow in the strong light, was the little cluster of souls, floating nervously near a staircase, as if they were again undecided what to do. The sight seemed to inspire Master Spiderman to a second wind. He broke into a gallop, waving his butterfly net, and the boys were dragged into a gallop, too.

When they were halfway along the corridor, a nun came out of a doorway, carrying a kidney dish. She was one of those nuns with a headdress that was made of big starched points, like a ship in full sail.

Not a headdress to dodge in, Cat would have thought. But dodge she did as Master Spiderman came charging down on her like a wild monkey in a flying black coat, with Cat and Tonino helplessly sprinting behind him. The nun’s headdress gave an outraged rattle, and she backed into a doorway, clutching her kidney dish and staring as they all rushed past.

The souls saw them coming and made up their minds. The big one darted for the staircase, and the others went streaming after, up alongside the crisp green line painted on the wall. Master Spiderman hopped on one foot in order to stop, spun around, and went hammering up the stairs behind them. So, perforce, did Cat and Tonino.

As they all got to the top, another nun was just coming through a swing door, holding it open with her back so that she could wrestle a big tray with bottles on it through the door, too. The souls swirled neatly around her huge starched headdress and on into the ward beyond. The nun did not see them. But she saw Master Spiderman with his face stretched into a grin of effort bounding toward the door like a maniac monkey, and the two dirty, perspiring, cobwebby boys behind him. She dropped the tray and screamed.

Master Spiderman barged her aside and dashed into the ward, dragging the boys with him.

They were in a long, dimly lighted space with a row of beds on either side. The souls were about halfway down the room, flitting cautiously in their usual cluster. But the place was not quiet. Cat had the strange feeling that they had just burst into a rookery. The air rang with peculiar cawing noises.

It took him a second or so to realize that the cawing was coming from little white cradles that were hooked to the bottom of each bed. All the people in the beds were ladies, all looking rather exhausted, and in each cradle there was a tiny, wrinkly, red-faced newborn baby—at least, there were two of them in the cradle nearest Cat—and it was the babies who were making the noise, more and more of them, as the nun’s scream and the crash of the bottles, followed by the thunder of the door and the shout of anger Master Spiderman gave as he towed Cat and Tonino between the beds, woke every single baby there up.

“We’re in a maternity ward,” Cat said, wishing he could back straight out of here again.

Tonino was horribly out of breath, but he managed to grin. “I know. The souls are being clever after all.”

Master Spiderman was shouting, “Stop them! Don’t let them get into any babies! They’ll be gone for good then!” He dived at the cluster of souls with his butterfly net raised.

The souls did seem to be showing intelligence at last. As Master Spiderman dived, they rose up in a group above his waving net and then peeled apart in eight different directions. For a second or so, Master Spiderman did manage to keep most of them up in the air by swatting at them and shouting, but then two dived over behind him.

Like a pair of shooting stars, the ivy leaf and the fig leaf shot downward to two of the cradles. Each poised for a moment over a yelling baby and then softly descended into the baby’s wide-open bawling mouth. And were gone. A look of acute surprise crossed the face of each baby. Then they were yelling louder than ever with their faces screwed up and their short arms batting the air. It must feel very strange, Cat thought, suddenly to find you had two souls, but he could not see that it did any harm. And it was the perfect place to hide from Master Spiderman.

He nudged Tonino. “I think we’d better help them.”

Tonino nodded. They set off down the ward just as things began to get difficult. Master Spiderman was speeding this way and that, scooping at darting souls, and most of the new mothers, tired as they were, were beginning to sit up and object. They could not seem to see the souls, but they could see Master Spiderman.

“What do you think you’re doing?” several ladies demanded.

Another said, “I’m not letting that madman near my baby!” She picked her howling baby out of its cradle, just as the fluttering maple leaf soul was poised above it, and hugged it to her chest. The maple leaf was forced to swoop on to the next cradle, where Master Spiderman’s butterfly net scooped at it and missed.

“He’s a lunatic,” said the mother in the next bed. “Ring the bell for help.”

“I already did,” said a mother in the bed opposite. “I rang twice now.”

“It’s too bad!” several mothers said. And several more shouted at Master Spiderman to get out or they would have the law on him.

Meanwhile soul after soul darted away from Master Spiderman and vanished into babies. By this time only two were left, the oldest and the newest. The oldest leaf was still stunted, though it seemed to have grown a little, but it was evidently bewildered and weak. All its efforts to get into babies were timid and slow, and whenever Master Spiderman’s butterfly net swept toward it, all it seemed able to do was to flutter up toward the ceiling again, where the newest and biggest leaf shape hovered, perhaps trying to tell the old leaf what to do.

The old soul timorously descended again as Cat and Tonino set off to help it. Master Spiderman pelted back to catch it. But he skidded to a stop when the ward doors clapped open, and an awesome voice asked, “And what, pray, is the meaning of this?”

It was the Mother Superior. It did not take the hugeness of her starched headdress, the severity of her dark blue habit, the large silver cross hanging from her waist, or even her six feet of height to tell you who and what she was. It was obvious. Such was the power of her personality that as she advanced down the ward, nearly all the babies stopped crying.

The big soul that had been Gabriel de Witt hastily plunged from near the ceiling and was just in time to vanish into the only baby still crying. The mothers who were sitting up all hurriedly lay down again, and the one who had picked her baby up guiltily popped it back into its cradle and lay down, too. Cat and Tonino, feeling as guilty as the rest, stood still and tried to look as if they were visiting a new little brother or sister. Master Spiderman’s flat mouth hung open as if the Mother Superior had cast a spell on him. But Cat did not think it was magic. As the Mother Superior’s cold eye passed over him, he knew it was pure personality. He wanted to sink into the floor.

“I do not,” said the Mother Superior to Master Spiderman, “wish to know what you are doing here, my good man. I want you simply to take your butterfly net and your filthy street urchins, and leave. Now.”

“Very good, ma’am.” Master Spiderman cringed. His hairy monkey face twisted with guilt. For an instant it seemed as if he were going to do as he was told and go away. But the stunted and bewildered old soul, which had been hovering miserably up near the ceiling, suddenly decided that the Mother Superior was the one to keep it safe. It came down in a fluttering spiral and landed on her great white headdress, where it nestled, frail and quivering, upon the highest starched point. Master Spiderman stared at it urgently, with round monkey eyes.

“Off you go,” said the Mother Superior, “my good man.”

Master Spiderman’s face bunched up. “I’ll have this one at least,” Cat heard him mutter. He made one of his throwing gestures. “Freeze,” he said.

The Mother Superior promptly became as stiff and still as a statue. Most of the babies started to cry again.

“Good,” said Master Spiderman. “I never did hold with nuns. Nasty religious creatures.” He stood on tiptoe to swat the roosting old soul into his net. But the Mother Superior’s headdress was just too high for him. It flapped and rattled as he hit it, and the Mother Superior herself swayed about, and the soul, instead of being swatted into the net, was shot off sideways into the cradle that contained the twins. Both were bawling just then.

Cat saw the soul dive thankfully, but he did not see which twin got it, because Master Spiderman pushed him angrily aside and tried to unhook the cradle from the bed. “I’ll have this one at least!” he cried out. “I’ll start all over again, but I’ll have
one
!”

“You will
not
!” said the mother of the twins. She climbed out of bed and advanced on Master Spiderman. She was enormous. She had huge arms that looked as if they had plowed and reaped fields, made dough, and pounded washing clean until they were stronger than the arms of most men. The rest of her was in a vast white nightgown with a frill around its neck, and on top of the frill was a surprisingly pretty and very determined face.

Cat took one look at her and respectfully handed her his butterfly net as she marched past him. She gave him a nod of thanks and absently turned it back to front, with the net near her hand. “Let go that cradle,” she said, “or I shall make you very sorry.”

Master Spiderman hastily hooked the cradle onto the bed again and backed away. “Let’s be reasonable here, madam,” he said in his most oily and placating manner. “You have two fine babies there. Suppose I were to give you a gold piece for the pair of them.”

“I never,” said the huge lady, “heard anything so disgusting in my life!” And she swung the shaft of the butterfly net with both hands.

Master Spiderman had just time to yell. “
Two
gold pieces then!” before the handle of the net met his head with a whistling crack. His hat came off, revealing his wispy brown scalp, and he tottered sideways, shrieking. Tottered some more and fell against the Mother Superior. Cat and Tonino were just in time to hold her upright by leaning against her as Master Spiderman slid howling down the front of her.