Magic for Beginners: Stories (12 page)

“What’s your name?” Small says. He’s never talked to the witch’s
cats before.

The cat lifts a leg and licks herself in a private place. Then
she looks at him. “You may call me Mother,” she says.

But Small shakes his head. He can’t call the cat that. Down
under the blanket of cats, under the windowpane, the witch’s
Spanish heel is drinking in moonlight.

“Very well, then, you may call me The Witch’s Revenge,” the cat
says. Her mouth doesn’t move, but he hears her speak inside his
head. Her voice is furry and sharp, like a blanket made of needles.
“And you may comb my fur.”

Small sits up, displacing sleeping cats, and lifts the brush out
of his pocket. The bristles have left rows of little holes indented
in the pink palm of his hand, like some sort of code. If he could
read the code, it would say: Comb my fur.

Small combs the fur of The Witch’s Revenge. There’s grave dirt
in the cat’s fur, and one or two red ants, who drop and scurry
away. The Witch’s Revenge bends her head down to the ground, snaps
them up in her jaws. The heap of cats around them is yawning and
stretching. There are things to do.

“You must burn her house down,” The Witch’s Revenge says.
“That’s the first thing.”

Small’s comb catches a knot, and The Witch’s Revenge turns and
nips him on the wrist. Then she licks him in the tender place
between his thumb and his first finger. “That’s enough,” she says.
“There’s work to do.”

So they all go back to the house, Small stumbling in the dark,
moving farther and farther away from the witch’s grave, the cats
trotting along, their eyes lit like torches, twigs and branches in
their mouths, as if they plan to build a nest, a canoe, a fence to
keep the world out. The house, when they reach it, is full of
lights, and more cats, and piles of tinder. The house is making a
noise, like an instrument that someone is breathing into. Small
realizes that all the cats are mewing, endlessly, as they run in
and out the doors, looking for more kindling. The Witch’s Revenge
says, “First we must latch all the doors.”

So Small shuts all the doors and windows on the first floor,
leaving open only the kitchen door, and The Witch’s Revenge shuts
the catches on the secret doors, the cat doors, the doors in the
attic, and up on the roof, and the cellar doors. Not a single
secret door is left open. Now all the noise is on the inside, and
Small and The Witch’s Revenge are on the outside.

All the cats have slipped into the house through the kitchen
door. There isn’t a single cat in the garden. Small can see the
witch’s cats through the windows, arranging their piles of twigs.
The Witch’s Revenge sits beside him, watching. “Now light a match
and throw it in,” says The Witch’s Revenge.

Small lights a match. He throws it in. What boy doesn’t love to
start a fire?

“Now shut the kitchen door,” says The Witch’s Revenge, but Small
can’t do that. All the cats are inside. The Witch’s Revenge stands
on her hindpaws and pushes the kitchen door shut. Inside, the lit
match catches something on fire. Fire runs along the floor and up
the kitchen walls. Cats catch fire, and run into the other rooms of
the house. Small can see all this through the windows. He stands
with his face against the glass, which is cold, and then warm, and
then hot. Burning cats with burning twigs in their mouths press up
against the kitchen door, and the other doors of the house, but all
the doors are locked. Small and The Witch’s Revenge stand in the
garden and watch the witch’s house and the witch’s books and the
witch’s sofas and the witch’s cooking pots and the witch’s cats,
her cats, too, all her cats burn.

You should never burn down a house. You should never set a cat
on fire. You should never watch and do nothing while a house is
burning. You should never listen to a cat who says to do any of
these things. You should listen to your mother when she tells you
to come away from watching, to go to bed, to go to sleep. You
should listen to your mother’s revenge.

You should never poison a witch.

In the morning, Small woke up in the garden. Soot covered him in
a greasy blanket. The Witch’s Revenge was curled up asleep on his
chest. The witch’s house was still standing, but the windows had
melted and run down the walls.

The Witch’s Revenge woke and stretched and licked Small clean
with her small sharkskin tongue. She demanded to be combed. Then
she went into the house and came out, carrying a little bundle. It
dangled, boneless, from her mouth, like a kitten.

It is a catskin, Small sees, only there is no longer a cat
inside it. The Witch’s Revenge drops it in his lap.

He picked it up and something shiny fell out of the loose light
skin. It was a piece of gold, sloppy, slippery with fat. The
Witch’s Revenge brought out dozens and dozens of catskins, and
there was a gold piece in every skin. While Small counted his
fortune, The Witch’s Revenge bit off one of her own claws, and
pulled one long witch hair out of the witch’s comb. She sat up,
like a tailor, cross-legged in the grass, and began to stitch up a
bag, out of the many catskins.

Small shivered. There was nothing to eat for breakfast but
grass, and the grass was black and cooked.

“Are you cold?” said The Witch’s Revenge. She put the bag aside
and picked up another catskin, a fine black one. She slit a sharp
claw down the middle. “We’ll make you a warm suit.”

She used the coat of a black cat, and the coat of a calico cat,
and she put a trim around the paws, of grey-and-white-striped
fur.

While she did this, she said to Small, “Did you know that there
was once a battle, fought on this very patch of ground?”

Small shook his head no.

“Wherever there’s a garden,” The Witch’s Revenge said,
scratching with one paw at the ground, “I promise you there are
people buried somewhere beneath it. Look here.” She plucked up a
little brown clot, put it in her mouth, and cleaned it with her
tongue.

When she spat the little circle out again, Small saw it was an
ivory regimental button. The Witch’s Revenge dug more buttons out
of the ground—as if buttons of ivory grew in the ground—and sewed
them onto the catskin. She fashioned a hood with two eyeholes and a
set of fine whiskers, and sewed four fine cat tails to the back of
the suit, as if the single tail that grew there wasn’t good enough
for Small. She threaded a bell on each one. “Put this on,” she said
to Small.

Small put on the suit and the bells chime. The Witch’s Revenge
laughs. “You make a fine-looking cat,” she says. “Any mother would
be proud.”

The inside of the cat suit is soft and a little sticky against
Small’s skin. When he puts the hood over his head, the world
disappears. He can see only the vivid corners of it through the
eyeholes—grass, gold, the cat who sits cross-legged, stitching up
her sack of skins—and air seeps in, down at the loosely sewn seam,
where the skin droops and sags over his chest and around the gaping
buttons. Small holds his tails in his clumsy fingerless paw, like a
handful of eels, and swings them back and forth to hear them ring.
The sound of the bells and the sooty, cooked smell of the air, the
warm stickiness of the suit, the feel of his new fur against the
ground: he falls asleep and dreams that hundreds of ants come and
lift him and gently carry him off to bed.

When Small tipped his hood back again, he saw that The Witch’s
Revenge had finished with her needle and thread. Small helped her
fill the bag with gold. The Witch’s Revenge stood up on her hind
legs, took the bag, and swung it over her shoulders. The gold coins
went sliding against each other, mewling and hissing. The bag
dragged along the grass, picking up ash, leaving a trail of green
behind it. The Witch’s Revenge strutted along as if she were
carrying a sack of air.

Small put the hood on again, and he got down on his hands and
knees. And then he trotted after The Witch’s Revenge. They left the
garden gate wide open and went into the forest, towards the house
where the witch Lack lived.

The forest is smaller than it used to be. Small is growing, but
the forest is shrinking. Trees have been cut down. Houses have been
built. Lawns rolled, roads laid. The Witch’s Revenge and Small
walked alongside one of the roads. A school bus rolled by: The
children inside looked out their windows and laughed when they saw
The Witch’s Revenge walking on her hind legs, and at her heels,
Small, in his cat suit. Small lifted his head and peered out of his
eyeholes after the school bus.

“Who lives in these houses?” he asked The Witch’s Revenge.

“That’s the wrong question, Small,” said The Witch’s Revenge,
looking down at him and striding along.

Miaow,
the catskin bag says.
Clink.

“What’s the right question, then?” Small said.

“Ask me who lives under the houses,” The Witch’s Revenge
said.

Obediently, Small said, “Who lives under the houses?”

“What a good question!” said The Witch’s Revenge. “You see, not
everyone can give birth to their own house. Most people give birth
to children instead. And when you have children, you need houses to
put them in. So children and houses: most people give birth to the
first and have to build the second. The houses, that is. A long
time ago, when men and women were going to build a house, they
would dig a hole first. And they’d make a little room—a little,
wooden, one-room house—in the hole. And they’d steal or buy a child
to put in the house in the hole, to live there. And then they built
their house over that first little house.”

“Did they make a door in the lid of the little house?” Small
said.

“They did not make a door,” said The Witch’s Revenge.

“But then how did the girl or the boy climb out?” Small
said.

“The boy or the girl stayed in that little house,” said The
Witch’s Revenge. “They lived there all their life, and they are
living in those houses still, under the other houses where the
people live, and the people who live in the houses above may come
and go as they please, and they don’t ever think about how there
are little houses with little children, sitting in little rooms,
under their feet.”

“But what about the mothers and fathers?” Small asked. “Didn’t
they ever go looking for their boys and girls?”

“Ah,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “Sometimes they did and
sometimes they didn’t. And after all, who was living under
their
houses? But that was a long time ago. Now people
mostly bury a cat when they build their house, instead of a child.
That’s why we call cats house-cats. Which is why we must walk along
smartly. As you can see, there are houses under construction
here.”

And so there are. They walk by clearings where men are digging
little holes. First Small puts his hood back and walks on two legs,
and then he puts on his hood again, and goes on all fours: He makes
himself as small and slinky as possible, just like a cat. But the
bells on his tails jounce and the coins in the bag that The Witch’s
Revenge carries go
clink, miaow,
and the men stop their
work and watch them go by.

How many witches are there in the world? Have you ever seen one?
Would you know a witch if you saw one? And what would you do if you
saw one? For that matter, do you know a cat when you see one? Are
you sure?

Small followed The Witch’s Revenge. Small grew calluses on his
knees and the pads of his fingers. He would have liked to carry the
bag sometimes, but it was too heavy. How heavy? You would not have
been able to carry it, either.

They drank out of streams. At night they opened the catskin bag
and climbed inside to sleep, and when they were hungry they licked
the coins, which seemed to sweat golden fat, and always more fat.
As they went, The Witch’s Revenge sang a song:

I had no mother

and my mother had no mother

and her mother had no mother

and her mother had no mother

and her mother had no mother

and you have no mother

to sing you

this song

The coins in the bag sang too,
miaow, miaow,
and the
bells on Small’s tails kept the rhythm.

Every night Small combs The Witch’s Revenge’s fur. And every
morning The Witch’s Revenge licks him all over, not neglecting the
places behind his ears, and at the backs of his knees. And then he
puts the catsuit back on, and she grooms him all over again.

Sometimes they were in the forest, and sometimes the forest
became a town, and then The Witch’s Revenge would tell Small
stories about the people who lived in the houses, and the children
who lived in the houses under the houses. Once, in the forest, The
Witch’s Revenge showed Small where there had once been a house. Now
there were only the stones of the foundation, upholstered in moss,
and the chimney stack, propped up with fat ropes and coils of
ivy.

The Witch’s Revenge rapped on the grassy ground, moving
clockwise around the foundation, until both she and Small could
hear a hollow sound; The Witch’s Revenge dropped to all fours and
clawed at the ground, tearing it up with her paws and biting at it,
until they could see a little wooden roof. The Witch’s Revenge
knocked on the roof, and Small lashed his tails.

“Well, Small,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “shall we take off the
roof and let the poor child go?”

Small crept up close to the hole she had made. He put his ear to
it and listened, but he heard nothing at all. “There’s no one in
there,” he said.

“Maybe they’re shy,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “Shall we let
them out, or shall we leave them be?”

“Let them out!” said Small, but what he meant to say was, “Leave
them alone!” Or maybe he said
Leave them be!
although he
meant the opposite. The Witch’s Revenge looked at him, and Small
thought he heard something then—beneath him where he crouched,
frozen—very faint: a scrabbling at the dirty, sunken roof.