Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [79]
“Cat! Stop that!” Gwendolen screamed from the crowd.
“Oh, shut up!” Cat shouted back. “It’s mine!”
At his feet, the little spring ran bubbling out of the grass again. Cat was looking down at it, wondering why it should, when he noticed a sort of gladness come over the anxious Family around him. Chrestomanci was looking upwards, and a light seemed to have fallen across his face. Cat turned around and found Millie was there at last. He supposed it was some trick of the hillside that made her look tall as the apple tree. But it seemed no trick that she also looked kind as the end of a long day. She had Fiddle in her arms. Fiddle was draggled and miserable, but purring.
“I’m so sorry,” Millie said. “I’d have come sooner if I’d known. This poor beast had fallen off the garden wall and I wasn’t thinking of anything else.”
Chrestomanci smiled, and let his hand go. He did not seem to need it to hold back the crowd anymore. They stood where they were, and their muttering had stopped. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But we must get to work now.”
The Family got to work at once. Cat found it hard to describe or remember afterward just how they did. He remembered claps and peals of thunder, darkness, and mist. He thought Chrestomanci grew taller than Millie, tall as the sky—but that could have been because the dragon got extremely scared and Cat was kneeling in the grass to make it feel safer. From there he saw the Family from time to time, striding about like giants. Witches screamed and screamed. Warlocks and wizards roared and howled. Sometimes there was whirling white rain, or whirling white snow, or perhaps just whirling white smoke, whirling and whirling. Cat was sure the whole garden was spinning, faster and faster. Among the whirling and the whiteness came flying necromancers, or Bernard striding, or Mr. Saunders, billowing, with snow in his hair. Julia ran past, making knot after knot in her handkerchief. And Millie must have brought reinforcements with her. Cat glimpsed Euphemia, the butler, a footman, two gardeners and, to his alarm, Will Suggins once, breasting the whiteness in the howling, spinning, screaming garden.
The spinning got so fast that Cat was no longer giddy. It was spinning rock-steady, and humming. Chrestomanci stepped out of the whiteness and under the apple tree and held out one hand to Cat. He was wet and windswept, and Cat was still not sure how tall he was. “Can I have some of your dragons’ blood?” Chrestomanci said.
“How did you know I’d got it?” Cat said guiltily, letting go of the dragon in order to get at his crucible.
“The smell,” said Chrestomanci.
Cat passed his crucible over. “Here you are. Have I lost a life over it?”
“Not you,” said Chrestomanci. “But it was lucky you didn’t let Janet touch it.” He stepped to the whirling, and emptied the whole crucible into it. Cat saw the powder snatched away and whirled. The mist turned brownish-red and the humming to a terrible bell note that hurt Cat’s ears. He could hear witches and warlocks howling with horror. “Let them roar,” said Chrestomanci. He was leaning against the right-hand pillar of the archway. “Every single one of them has now lost his or her witchcraft. They’ll complain to their MPs and there’ll be questions asked in Parliament, but I daresay we shall survive it.” He raised his hand and beckoned.
Frantic people in soaking-wet Sunday clothes came whirling out of the whiteness and were sucked through the broken arch like dead leaves in a whirlpool. More and more and more came. They sailed through in crowds. Out of the whirling many, Chrestomanci somehow collected the two Nostrums and put them down for a minute in front of Cat and the dragon. Cat was charmed to see one of his eagles sitting on Henry Nostrum’s shoulders, pecking at his bald pate, and the other eagle fluttering around William, stabbing at the stouter parts of him.
“Call them off,” said Chrestomanci.
Cat called them off, rather regretfully, and they fell on the grass as handcuffs. Then the handcuffs were swept away with the Nostrum