Unexpected Magic (19 page)

By that time her eyes had grown used to the orange light. She saw Carruthers lying stretched out on the hall carpet. The middle of him seemed to be bulging.

Elizabeth forgot about the noises. She fell on her knees beside him. “Carruthers! What's the matter?” she whispered. “Are you ill?”

Carruthers did not answer. He was bulging from the silver collar below his hook to the ferrule at his tail, heaving, and swelling to two or three times his normal width. Though Elizabeth was sure it was only the result of greed, tears ran down her face. She wondered what sort of doctor you took a sick stick to.

The noises from the living room became more definite. There were quiet footsteps, and the sound of things being moved. Elizabeth shot the swelling, heaving Carruthers a helpless look and crawled over to the living room door.

It was a real burglar. A wide-shouldered, strong-looking young man was packing Father's tape recorder into a suitcase. He already had the radio. He was taking down the silver golf trophies when Elizabeth backed away and turned to Carruthers again. Just as she turned, Carruthers stopped swelling and burst, with a sharp
crack.
The noise from the living room stopped. So did the noises from the kitchen. Elizabeth knelt in the hall, between what were certainly two burglars, and stared at Carruthers.

The split in Carruthers grew wider. Something that seemed to be a gauzy green color bulged from the split and might have been struggling to get out. A second later, the struggling was definite. The filmy green something heaved, shoved, and finally pushed the dead halves of the stick apart and climbed out on the carpet. Elizabeth gasped. Whatever it was, it was impossibly beautiful. It had long curled antennae. Its back legs were long and thin—a little like a grasshopper's—and it seemed to have long thin arms too. It had a small piquant face, with little slanting eyes which caught the orange light and glowed blue-green beneath the antennae. Its body was draped and covered in beautiful shimmering diaphanous green, which might have been multitudes of long wings—or might have been something quite different. The creature rested, quivering, for a second or so. Then it rose on its long green legs and performed a slow, airy arabesque. Elizabeth smiled. It was Carruthers all right.

The living room burglar still had not moved, but she could hear him breathing. It occurred to Elizabeth that, if he knew she was in the hall, he might run away and leave her in peace with Carruthers. So she said out loud:

“You were a chrysalis!”

There was no sound from either burglar, but the new gauzy Carruthers turned its little face and long, nodding antennae toward her. For one miserable minute, Elizabeth thought it could not speak. But it must have been just finding out how. “That's right,” it said. The new voice was a good deal more silvery than the old one. “I think I've been a chrysalis for the last month.”

“Then how did you rob the larder then?” asked Elizabeth.

“For the Easter egg, you mean?” asked the creature.

“No,” said Elizabeth. “All the other times.”

“I don't think I did,” said Carruthers. “Being a chrysalis is like being asleep. But don't I look beautiful now I'm hatched?” It twirled slowly and elegantly along by the foot of the stairs. The gauzy draperies fluttered. Elizabeth could not but agree that it was the most exquisite being. “I think,” said Carruthers, meditatively sinking into a curtsey, “that I need to go away now and find a mate. I have to lay some eggs. Good-bye.”

“No!” said Elizabeth. At least she had an excuse to keep Carruthers close at hand—two of them. “Don't go yet. There's a burglar in the living room and a burglar in the kitchen.” There were startled rustles from both places. “You've got to stay and help me catch them.”

Carruthers gave a little fluttering jump. “Oh, I couldn't! Besides, I must be quite the most valuable thing in the house. Just phone the police.”

Elizabeth crawled over to the phone, reflecting that Carruthers was probably quite right about his—her, that is—value. It was rather stupid of him—her, that is—to let the burglars know. The silence behind the living room door sounded like a distinctly interested one.

Elizabeth picked up the phone. Even before she dialed 999, she knew it was dead. The burglars had been thorough. She was almost frightened for the first time. Carruthers was now fluttering slowly across the hall. Some of the gauzy drapery was beginning to act like wings. Elizabeth took hold of him—her, that is—by a transparent flowing edge. “Ow!” said Carruthers.

Elizabeth let go and whispered: “Keep talking, as if you were both of us. I'll fetch Father.”

“You don't still want me to hit him, do you?” Carruthers asked loudly.

Elizabeth shook her head frantically at him—her—and crawled for the stairs. Carruthers took the point and said, “You dance exquisitely,” and danced exquisitely. “Yes, I do, don't I?” she replied. “You fly wonderfully. Indeed I do, but, wouldn't you say, my antennae are perhaps a trifle too long?” she asked. “Not at all,” she answered. “Oh, thank you,” she replied. “You must keep telling me things like that. I'm a poor ignorant weak thing, only just hatched. But,” she told herself, “beautiful. Yes, indeed,” she answered, losing her place in the conversation a little, “a beautiful unearthly being, fragile and lovely … ”

The silvery voice faded out of Elizabeth's hearing as she burst open her parents' bedroom door. “Father! There are two burglars downstairs. One's got the radio and the golf cups and cut off the telephone!”

“Eh?” Father sat up in bed, and seemed to understand at once. “Be down directly. Go and call Stephen and then stay safely in your bedroom.”

Elizabeth sped to her own old room. It was empty. Stephen must have heard the burglars and gone down already. There was no sign of Father coming. But downstairs Carruthers was suddenly making a great deal of noise. Elizabeth pelted for the stairs. The door of the room she shared opened.

“What is it?” Ruth hissed.

“Burglars,” said Elizabeth.

“I thought so,” Stephanie said from behind Ruth. “Who's shouting?”

“Carruthers,” gasped Elizabeth, and galloped downstairs.

The burglar from the living room was out in the hall. She recognized him by his wide shoulders. He had heard what Carruthers said about her value. In the dim light, his gloved hands were snatching at the green filmy draperies, while Carruthers, to Elizabeth's admiration, was circling and swooping and fluttering, just out of reach, like an enormous moth. “You can't catch me!” Carruthers shouted. “You can't catch me!”

“Silly thing,” said Elizabeth. “You'll get hurt.” She snatched up what was left of the walking stick, but was not sure what to do after that.

“Whoopee!” screamed Carruthers, swooping across the hall. “Beautiful me!”

The burglar dived after her. Elizabeth stuck her foot out. The burglar tripped over it and fell on his face—the oddest part of the whole thing, Elizabeth thought afterward, was that she never saw his face at all. Carruthers wheeled briskly and planed down to land on the burglar's neck. After that, it seemed to be all over.

“Hands up!” Ruth said.

“Is he dead?” asked Stephanie. They were both on the stairs with Stephen's toy guns. They seemed disappointed to have missed killing the burglar themselves.

Elizabeth cautiously poked at the burglar with her toe. He did not move.

“He's just unconscious,” Carruthers said, standing up on the burglar's back and settling her fluttering gauzeries. “I seem,” she said modestly, “to have a sting in my—er—tail. I expect it's to paralyze my prey. Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “it's my mate I should paralyze. No doubt I shall find out.”

“That's never Carruthers!” said Stephanie.

“I take it back,” Ruth said handsomely, “about him being only a stick.”

“Yes, aren't I beautiful?” Carruthers said, with feeling.

“Give me a gun,” said Elizabeth. “There's another burglar in the kitchen.”

“No, there isn't,” Stephen said, rather wobbly and cautious. They all turned to the kitchen door. Stephen switched the hall light on and stood sheepishly in his pajamas. He had a slice of cake—most of a cake, in fact—in one hand, and one cheek bulged. “Burglar under control?” he asked airily.

Elizabeth looked at him with the deepest contempt. Not only had he kept hidden in the kitchen rather than face the burglar, but, for a whole month, he had let her take the blame for robbing the larder. “You're not my boyfriend any longer,” she said. She knew she would only have to say it that once.

Father came hurrying downstairs, fully dressed and knotting his tie. “I told you girls to stay in safety,” he said.

Elizabeth looked up at him and found she felt differently about Father too. It was not Stephen's kind of cowardice which had made Father arrive just too late: it was because he could not face even a burglar without proper clothes on. Father lived by rules—narrow rules. Elizabeth did not feel afraid of him anymore. Nor did she want Carruthers to hit Father. It did not matter enough. And she said to herself, with the most enormous feeling of relief, “Thank goodness! I needn't do ballet anymore!”

Typically, Father ignored the toy guns Ruth and Stephanie were holding and looked at Stephen, and then at the prone burglar. “Nice work, Stephen,” he said.

Before Stephen could swallow enough cake to look brave but modest, Ruth and Stephanie said in chorus, “It wasn't him. It was Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth avoided Father's astonished eye and looked around for Carruthers. She wanted Father to know it was really Carruthers. But the hall was bright and empty. She's flown away, Elizabeth though miserably.

Then a filmy shadow glided in front of the hall light. A gauzy something flittered at Elizabeth's cheek. Elizabeth realized that it had been a trick of the orange streetlights which had made Carruthers look green. In the bright electric light she was all but invisible.

“Good-bye,” whispered Carruthers. “I'll be back when I've laid some eggs.”

I
am a cat. I am a cat like anything. Keep stroking me. I came in here because I knew you were good at stroking. But put your knees together so I can sit properly, front paws under. That's better. Now keep stroking, don't forget to rub my ears, and I will purr and tell.

I am going to tell you how I came to be so very old. When I was a kitten, humans dressed differently, and they had great stamping horses to pull their cars and buses. The Old Man in the house where I lived used to light a hissing gas on the wall when it got dark. He wore a long black coat. The Boy who was nice to me wore shabby breeches that only came to his knees, and he mostly went without shoes, just like me. We slept in a cupboard under the stairs, Boy and I. We kept one another warm. We kept one another fed, too, later on. The Old Man did not like cats or boys. He only kept us because we were useful.

I was more useful than Boy. I had to sit in a five-pointed star. The Boy would help Old Man mix things that smoked and made me sneeze. I had to sneeze three times. After that things happened. Sometimes big purple cloud things came and sat beside me in the star. Fur stood up on me, and I spat, but the things only went away when Old Man hit the star with his stick and told them, “
Begone
!” in a loud voice. At other times the things that came were small, real things you could hit with your paw: boxes, or strings of shiny stones no one could eat, or bright rings that fell
tink
beside me out of nowhere. I did not mind those things. The things I really hated were the third kind. Those came inside me and used my mouth to speak. They were nasty things with hateful thoughts, and they made
me
hateful. And my mouth does not like to speak. It ached afterward, and my tongue and throat were so sore that I could not wash the hatefulness off me for hours.

I so hated those inside-speaking things that I used to run away and hide when I saw Old Man drawing the star on the cellar floor. I am good at hiding. Sometimes it took Boy half the day to find me. Then Old Man would shout and curse and hit Boy and call him a fool. Boy cried at night in the cupboard afterward. I did not like that, so after a while I scratched Old Man instead. I knew none of it was Boy's fault. Boy made Old Man give me nice things to eat after I had sat in the star. He said it was the only way to get me to sit there.