Witch Catcher (13 page)

"Oh, good on ye, Jen," Kieryn squeaked. Whiskers twitching, she led me through a small hole and into safety between the walls of the house.

Beyond the thick plaster, we heard Mr. Ashbourne. Simkins, and the cook, whose name seemed to be Rose, running up and down the hall, searching the rooms, peering under beds, and finding nothing—of course.

"Rose must've had a nip of the cooking sherry," Simkins grumbled. "For there ain't a sign of a cat anywhere I can see."

"I ain't drunk a drop of nothing but coffee all day," Rose protested. "I seen those cats, and I got the scratches to prove it."

"Wed, my dear friends," Mr. Ashbourne said in his lovely voice, "we've searched every conceivable feline hiding place. If the odious creatures were indeed in this house, they must have run out a door or jumped from a window."

"Too bad Cadoc ain't here," Simkins added. "I never seen a cat that could escape that dog."

Their footsteps and voices faded as they trudged downstairs. Kieryn and I fixed our beady black eyes on each other. We would have sighed in relief if we hadn't been mice.

"Can we change back to cats now?" I asked hopefully. "I don't like being so small."

"Not yet. We be safer this way." Kieryn turned and headed down the tunnel. "Let's see where this goes."

We hadn't gone far when she stopped me. "Shh! There's mice up ahead."

At first all I heard was chittering and chattering and squeaking, but the longer I listened, the more I understood. The mice were talking to each other—about Kieryn and me.

"Two strangers in tunnel five," one was saying.

"Big'uns hunt'em."

"They hide."

"Afeared."

"Should we be helping?"

Silence. Little scribbles and scrabbles, pitters and patters. After a while, one said. "I be scared of strangers."

"They smell funny," another said. "Not quite right."

"Cat whiff."

"Big'un whiff."

Kieryn nudged me forward. "Let's talk to 'em."

Cautiously, I crept around a curve behind Kieryn. Ahead was a mouse-sized room packed with dozens of mice—dainty pink paws, beady black eyes, long tails. They bunched together and watched Kieryn and me approach.

An elderly mouse came forward, pushed by those behind him, and regarded us with shiny eyes. "Who you?" His voice shook a little. "Why for you come to House of Ashbourne?"

Kieryn stepped ahead. The mice moved back, their noses wrinkled in disgust. "Cat whiff." one whispered. "Big'un whiff," another muttered.

"Most honorable Thane of Ashbourne," Kieryn began. "It's true we stink of cat and big'un. We mean ye no harm, and we most humbly apologize for our bad whiff."

The thane waved his hand as if our smell were not important. "Whyfor here?" he asked again.

"
Him
is my foe," Kieryn replied. "
Him
keeps my brother, Brynn, and my aunties in traps. I've come to take them home. Do ye know where
him
hides the traps?"

The mice pressed together, whispering in high voices and staring at Kieryn and me. I still couldn't understand them completely—too many were squeaking at once—but I caught words like "witch," "spells," "evil," "magic," "shape changer," "
him,
" "Ashbourne," and so on. I moved a little closer to Kieryn. "What are they saying?"

"Aw, they be mushy-headed timtimmies," Kieryn whispered. "They're afeared I'll change back to cat shape and gobble 'em up. Pish on 'em. I should do it. Serve 'em right."

Finally, the thane spoke. "Tell how traps look."

"They be skitzy glass globes, all pretty with color," Kieryn said. "They hang on long shiny silver chains. Maybe from beams in the ceiling. Maybe in a window. Turn and twist, turn and twist, like fire in sunlight and ice in moonlight. Magic, they be. Bad magic."

The squeaking began again. A little mouse darted forward and tugged at the thane's tad. The thane listened to his high piping voice and then turned to Kieryn and me.

"Short Tail knows where traps be. Promise no harm to him and he take you there."

Kieryn and I made a solemn promise which involved kissing the thane's paw and walking around him three times with our eyes closed. When the thane raised his paw in dismissal. Short Tail raced into a tunnel. Kieryn and I scampered after him.

The tunnel turned upward through the walls, steep, narrow, hard to climb. When we finally reached the top, all three of us sprawled on our bellies, too exhausted to say a word.

Short Tail recovered first. "Not many come up here," he told us. "No food. But good window for looking out. See far. Sky, clouds, treetops. Higher than birds fly."

"Where be the traps?" Kieryn asked. She spoke with her head down—fearful, I guessed, of being sucked inside another globe.

"This way." Short Tail led us out of the tunnel and into a large room. "There." He pointed upward. A globe like the one I'd found in the tower hung in a tall window, slowly revolving in the night breeze. Others hung from rafters above our heads, dozens of them, glittering and glowing, swaying in the moonlight, clinking together now and then, beautiful beyond words.

Without looking up, Kieryn whispered, "Be it true, Jen? Do ye see a trap?"

"Lots of them. Keep your eyes closed."

Short Tail stared at Kieryn. "The thane were right. You be a witch." He backed away uneasily.

Kieryn ignored the mouse. "Ye must break em, Jen. Every last one."

"I can't. I'm too small to reach them."

"Think yerself back to yer true self, ye great twit," Kieryn said. "Ye don't want to stay a mousie, do ye?"

I sniffed and snuffled and rubbed my eyes with my little pink paws. "I don't know how to change back," I whimpered tearfully. "Can't you change first and then hold my hand and help me?"

"Ye know I cannot. With these skitzy globes hanging over me head, I'd soon be trapped again."

"Then tell me how," I begged in a little whiny mouse voice. "I don't think I can do it without you."

Kieryn sighed so loudly that Short Tad retreated to the tunnel's opening, ready to vanish at the first sign of real danger.

"Do what ye did afore ye changed into a cat and then to a mousie," Kieryn said, making an obvious effort to be patient. "Think as hard as ye can about yerself. How ye looked, how ye were. Picture yer old girly self. Feel what ye felt in yer head. See yerself. Be yerself."

I crouched on the floor and thought hard about the girl I'd been just a little while ago. Tall and thin, untidy brown hair, teeth a little too big for my mouth, freckles ad over my face, arms, and legs, twelve years old, good at reading, bad at math, a scar on my arm from a bike accident. I concentrated on the image of myself for what seemed like a long time. My head ached with the effort, but nothing happened. My mouse tailstill twitched, my little pink feet still gripped the floor, my whiskers still quivered.

Both Kieryn and Short Tail watched, she with angry impatience and he with terror.

At last, I saw my true self—scared and lonely Jen, Jen the shy one, Jen the sad one, left out of games, daydreaming my way through school. With a great flash of pain, I burst out of my mouse skin and sprawled on the door, a girl again, too exhausted to move.

Short Tail turned and fled into the tunnel. "Big'un!" I heard him cry. "Not mouse. Big'un witchery!"

"Rise ye up, goosey," Kieryn squeaked at me, "and break them traps!"

I got to my feet, dizzy and weak. I felt so big. Huge. A giant. A big'un. Like Alice when she ate from the wrong side of the mushroom. I swayed to the right and then to the left. I was sure I'd hit my head on the rafters. To keep from falling. I leaned against a wall and struggled to find my balance.

Kieryn remained crouched on the floor, her nose on her paws, her eyes shut tight. Over our heads, the globes swayed, touching each other gently.
Gink, clink. Clink, clink.

"Music it be, their own evil music," Kieryn whispered. "Tempting me. I mustn't look. I mustn't!"

A shaft of moonlight stabbed through the open window. The globes glowed like jewels, casting a shifting pattern of kaleidoscope colors on the floor, on the walls, on me, on Kieryn's furry back.
Clink, clink. Clink, clink.

"Break 'em!" Kieryn cried to me. "Smash 'em to bits. They be things of evil, full of pain and hurt."

"But they're so beautiful," I protested. "Can't we—"

"No!" Kieryn shouted. "Break all of 'em! Or doom Brynn and me."

Reluctantly I searched the room for something to use, but the globes' colors whirled and swirled around my head, blinding me. The sound they made was like the ringing of tiny silver bells. Dizzy again, I stumbled.

"I can't," I sobbed. "I can't break them."

"You must!" Kieryn cried. "Hit 'em with a chair, a table, a book, ye simple timtimmy. Pull 'em down with yer bare hands and smash 'em on the floor. So many traps make the magic strong. It's pulling at me like magnets pull iron."

With shaking arms, I grabbed a globe and yanked it down. The glass burned my hands, and I threw it against the wall.
Smash.
I reached for another and another.
Smash, crash.
One by one, I hurled them across the room, wild now to destroy them. They burst like bombs, sending colored glass dying. Several exploded with flashes of green light and puffs of smoke. I thought I saw some shapes fly out the window into the night, but I had no idea what I'd freed.

At last, the only globe remaining was the most beautiful of all. It hung by itself in the tall window and turned slowly in the night breeze, its colors glowing in the moonlight.

"There's only one left," I told Kieryn.

"Be quick, be quick!" Kieryn pleaded. "They'll come soon."

I climbed onto the windowsill and reached for the globe. When my fingers brushed the hot glass, it swung away from me, out into the darkness. I teetered, sure I was about to plunge to the ground far below. Somehow I kept my balance and reached for the globe as it swung back toward me. But once again I missed it and barely kept my balance on the windowsill.

Making a huge effort, I grabbed at the globe again, and this time I got it, falling to the door with it, snapping the chain. The glass shattered and a burst of green light nearly blinded me.

A
TINY WADDED-UP
thing flopped around on the door, buglike and slimy, the size of a cicada. I drew back, repulsed. My first impulse was to step on it, squash it. But before I had the chance, the creature began to grow and stretch and change. In less than a minute, a boy slightly smaller than Kieryn crouched at my feet, his face greener than hers, his eyes huge with fear.

"Who be ye? Where are my aunties?" he asked, ready to run.

"Brynn!" Kieryn squeaked. "Tis I, Kieryn! Here on the floor."

Brynn picked up the mouse and cuddled it against his cheek. "Kieryn, I feared ye were lost forever," he whispered. "I never thought to see ye again or to be free of that skitzy globe."

"I'd never desert ye, foolish boy," Kieryn said. "I be yer sister, yer kinkind, truer than true forever and ever."

Brynn looked at me, more suspicious now than fearful. "Who be that? She smells of humankind."

"She be Jen, my true heart friend."

Brynn stared at his sister. "There's nae friendship between our kind and her kind."

Kieryn squirmed away from Brynn and came to me. "That be old-time nonsense. Brynn. It's Jen who freed ye from that skitzy globe. Ye might thank her. ye ungrateful dimbob."

But Brynn wasn't in a mood to thank me. "Where be the aunties?" He looked at me as if I'd done something with them.

"Did ye sec them when ye was a-smashing things. Jen?" Kieryn asked.

"There were green flashes all around me, and things flying every which way. Most went out the window."

"Never ye mind," Kieryn said. "The aunties will find us. They was most likely discombobulated."

The noise of footsteps on the stairs startled us. Mr. Ashbourne, Simkins, and the cook were coming, shouting and cursing as they climbed toward us. The very wads seemed to shake with their anger.

"Quick, we must all be mousies." Kieryn cried.

In a flash, Brynn shrank to Kieryn's size, but I froze where I stood, too scared to move, to think, to change my shape. I was a twelve-year-old-girl trapped in a tower room with three enemies rushing closer and closer. How could I be anything else?

"Jen!" Kieryn ran up my leg, her tiny paws tickling my skin. "Think mousie, as I taught ye!"

"I can't," I whispered. "I'm so tired. So tired." It was true. I wanted to lie down on the door and sleep and then wake up at home in my own bed. I had to be dreaming, had to be. Nothing made sense. I was a girl. How could I become a mouse?

Kieryn perched on my shoulder and peered at me from her jet black eyes. "Ye must! They're almost here."

They were in the hair now, running toward us. In just a few seconds, they'd be at the door, they'd see me.

"Mousie, mousie, mousie," Kieryn chanted. "Long tail, pink feet, soft fur, whiskers, twitchy nose. Be small, be shy. Run and hide from
him,
quick, quick, quick."

"Leave her here," Brynn begged. "Humankind with humankind. Fairykind with fairykind."

"Danger!" Kieryn cried. "
Him
and
her.
Run and hide, mousie, run and hide!"

Hidden in darkness, I saw Ashbourne in the doorway. His scary glasses glowed with a spinning light of their own. "Who's there?" he shouted.

I shut my eyes and shrank from him. shrank small, smaller. Mousie, mousie, mousie. Pain, pressure on all sides, squeezing me into a furry ball. Tail, whiskers, little pink feet. Twitchy nose, shiny black eyes.
Squeak, squeak, squeak—\
ran for the tunnel.

"The mice," Ashbourne cried. "Don't let them get away!"

Feet rushed toward us, stomping, eager to crush us. We zigged and zagged away from them and their big hands. With Kieryn and Brynn just ahead, I dashed into the tunnel and scurried down through the walls. Behind us, Ashbourne cursed.

Finally, we careened into the mouse meeting hall and stopped, face to face with the thane and several dozen of his subjects.

Short Tail gasped. "Big'uns," he cried, "Witchy big'uns back again!"