Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [77]
Cat was being Fiddle again while Chrestomanci talked. He climbed a tree, but the Willing Warlock and the Accredited Witch shook him out of it. He ran and he ran, and then jumped from between the Willing Warlock’s grabbing hands, a huge jump, from somewhere immensely high. It was such a sickening jump that Cat opened his eyes. The apple leaves fluttered against the sky. The apple he could see was nearly ripe.
“What do you want me to do?” he said. “I don’t know how to do anything.”
“I know,” said Chrestomanci. “I felt the same when they told me. Can you move your left hand at all?”
“Backwards and forwards,” Cat said, trying. “I can’t get it out of the rope though.”
“No need,” said Chrestomanci. “You’ve more ability in the little finger of that hand than most people—including Gwendolen—have in their entire lives. And the magic of the garden should help you. Just saw at the rope with your left hand and presume that the rope is made of silver.”
Cat tipped his head back and looked at Chrestomanci unbelievingly. Chrestomanci was untidy and pale and very much in earnest. He must be telling the truth. Cat moved his left hand against the rope. It felt rough and ropish. He told himself it was not rough rope, it was silver. And the rope felt smooth. But sawing was rather a strain. Cat lifted his hand as far as he could get it and brought the edge of it down on the silver rope.
Clink. Jingle. The rope parted.
“Thank you,” said Chrestomanci. “There go two watch-chains. But there seems to be a very firm spell on these handcuffs. Can you try again?”
The rope was a great deal looser. Cat fought his way out of it with a series of clatters and thumps—he was not sure quite what he had turned it into—and knelt up on the stone. Chrestomanci walked weakly towards him, with his hands still hanging limply in the handcuffs. At the same time, the Willing Warlock spilled out of the trees, arguing with the witch in the flower hat.
“I tell you the cat’s dead. It fell a good fifty feet.”
“But I tell you they always fall on their feet.”
“Then why didn’t it get up then?”
Cat realized there was no time to waste trying to imagine things. He put both hands to the handcuffs and wrenched.
“Ow!” said Chrestomanci.
But the handcuffs were off. Cat was suddenly very pleased with his newfound talent. He took the handcuffs in two and told them to be ferocious eagles. “Get after the Nostrums,” he said. The left handcuff took off savagely as ordered, but the right half was still a silver handcuff and it fell on the grass. Cat had to pick it up in his left hand before it would do as it was told.
Cat looked around then to see what Chrestomanci was doing. He was standing under the apple tree, and the talkative little man called Bernard was stumbling down the hillside towards him. Bernard’s Sunday cravat was comfortably undone. He was carrying a pencil and a newspaper folded open at the crossword. “Enchantment, five letters, ending in C,” he was murmuring, before he looked up and saw Chrestomanci green with tree mold. He stared at the two watch-chains, Cat, the rope, and the numbers of people who were hurrying among the trees around the top of the meadow. “Bless my soul!” he said. “I’m sorry—I had no idea I was needed. You need the others too?”
“Rather quickly,” said Chrestomanci.
The witch in the flower hat saw him standing away from the tree and raised her voice in a witch’s scream. “They’re getting away! Stop them!”
Witches, warlocks, necromancers, and wizards poured out into the meadow, with Gwendolen mincing among them, and hurriedly cast spells as they came. Muttering rolled around the garden. The smell of magic grew thick. Chrestomanci held up one hand as if he was asking for silence. The muttering grew instead, and sounded angry. But none of the people muttering came any nearer. The only ones who