“Great work!” said the soldier, and proceeded to make a large pother over poaching salmon in milk and making sure there were no bones the cat might choke on.
The cat, Abdullah noticed, had all this while been peacefully licking at her kitten in the hat. She did not seem to know the genie was there. But she knew about the salmon all right. As soon as it started cooking, she left her kitten and wound herself around the soldier, thin and urgent and mewing. “Soon, soon, my black darling!” the soldier said.
Abdullah could only suppose that the cat’s magic and the genie’s were so different that they were unable to perceive each other. The one good thing he could see about the situation was that there was plenty of salmon and milk for the two humans as well. While the cat daintily guzzled, and her kitten lapped, and sneezed, and did his amateur best to drink salmon-flavored milk, the soldier and Abdullah feasted on porridge made with milk and roast salmon steak.
After such a breakfast Abdullah felt kinder toward the whole world. He told himself that the genie could not have made a better choice of companion for him than this soldier. The genie was not so bad. And he would surely be seeing Flower-in-the-Night soon now. He was thinking that the Sultan and Kabul Aqba were not such bad fellows either when he discovered, to his outrage, that the soldier intended to take the cat and her kitten along with them to Kingsbury.
“But, most benevolent bombardier and considerate cuirassier,” he protested, “what will become of your scheme to earn your bounty? You cannot rob robbers with a kitten in your hat!”
“I reckon I won’t need to do any of that now you’ve promised me a princess,” the soldier answered calmly. “And no one could leave Midnight and Whippersnapper to starve on this mountain. That’s cruel!”
Abdullah knew he had lost this argument. He sourly tied the genie bottle to his belt and vowed never to promise the soldier anything else. The soldier repacked his pack, scattered the fire, and gently picked up his hat with the kitten in it. He set off downhill beside the stream, whistling to Midnight as if she were a dog.
Midnight, however, had other ideas. As Abdullah set off after the soldier, she stood in his way, staring meaningly up at him. Abdullah took no notice and tried to edge past her. And she was promptly huge again. A black panther, if possible even larger than before, was barring his way and snarling. He stopped, frankly terrified. And the beast leaped at him. He was too frightened even to scream. He shut his eyes and waited to have his throat torn out. So much for Fate and prophecies!
A softness touched his throat instead. Small, firm feet hit his shoulder, and another set of such feet pricked his chest. Abdullah opened his eyes to find that Midnight was back to cat size and clinging to the front of his jacket. The green-blue eyes looking up into his said, “Carry me. Or else.”
“Very well, formidable feline,” Abdullah said. “But take care not to snag any more of the embroidery on this jacket. This was once my best suit. And please remember that I carry you under strong protest. I do not love cats.”
Midnight calmly scrambled her way to Abdullah’s shoulder, where she sat smugly balancing while Abdullah plodded and slithered his way down the mountain for the rest of that day.
Chapter 12
In which the law catches up with Abdullah and the soldier.
By evening Abdullah was almost used to Midnight. Unlike Jamal’s dog, she smelled extremely clean, and she was clearly an excellent mother. The only times she dismounted from Abdullah were to feed her kitten. If it had not been for her alarming habit of turning huge at him when he annoyed her, Abdullah felt he could come to tolerate her in time. The kitten, he conceded, was charming. It played with the end of the soldier’s pigtail and tried to chase butterflies—in a wobbly way—when they stopped for lunch. The rest of the day it spent in the front of the soldier’s jacket, peeping eagerly forth at the grass and the trees and at the fern-lined waterfalls they passed on their way to the plains.
But Abdullah was entirely disgusted at the fuss the soldier made about his new pets when they stopped for the night. They decided to stay in the inn they came to in the first valley, and here the soldier decreed that his cats were to have the best of everything.
The innkeeper and his wife shared Abdullah’s opinion. They were lumpish folk who had, it seemed, been put in a bad mood anyway by the mysterious theft of a crock of milk and a whole salmon that morning. They ran about with dour disapproval, fetching just the right shape of basket and a soft pillow to put in it. They hurried grimly with cream and chicken liver and fish. They grudgingly produced certain herbs which, the soldier declared, prevented canker in the ears. They stormily sent out for other herbs which were supposed to cure a cat of worms. But they were downright incredulous when they were asked to heat water for a bath because the soldier suspected that Whippersnapper had picked up a flea.
Abdullah found himself forced to negotiate. “O prince and princess of publicans,” he said, “bear with the eccentricity of my excellent friend. When he says a bath, he means, of course, a bath for himself and for me. We are both somewhat travel-stained and would welcome clean hot water—for which we will, of course, pay whatever extra is necessary.”
“What? Me? Bath?” the soldier said when the innkeeper and his wife had stumped off to put big kettles to boil.
“Yes. You,” said Abdullah. “Or you and your cats and I part company this very evening. The dog of my friend Jamal in Zanzib was scarcely less ripe to the nose than you, O unwashed warrior, and Whippersnapper, fleas or not, is a good deal cleaner.”
“But what about my princess and your sultan’s daughter if you leave?” asked the soldier.
“I shall think of something,” said Abdullah. “But I should prefer it if you got into a bath and, if you wish, took Whippersnapper into it with you. That was my aim in asking for it.”
“It weakens you—having baths,” the soldier said dubiously. “But I suppose I could wash Midnight as well while I’m at it.”
“Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman,” Abdullah said, and went off to revel in his own bath. In Zanzib people bathed a lot because the climate was so hot. Abdullah was used to visiting the public baths at least every other day, and he was missing that. Even Jamal went to the baths once a week, and it was rumored that he took his dog into the water with him. The soldier, Abdullah thought, becoming soothed by the hot water, was really no more besotted with his cats than Jamal was with his dog. He hoped that Jamal and his dog had managed to escape and, if they had, that they were not at this moment suffering hardships in the desert.
The soldier did not appear any weaker for his bath, although his skin had turned a much paler brown. Midnight, it seemed, had fled at the mere sight of water, but Whippersnapper, so the soldier claimed, had loved every moment. “He played with the soap bubbles!” he said dotingly.
“I hope you think you’re worth all this trouble,” Abdullah said to Midnight as she sat on his bed delicately cleaning herself after her cream and chicken. Midnight turned and gave him a round-eyed scornful look—of course she was worth it!—before she went back to the serious business of washing her ears.
The bill, next morning, was enormous. Most of the extra charge was for hot water, but cushions, baskets, and herbs figured quite largely on the list, too. Abdullah paid, shuddering, and anxiously inquired how far it was to Kingsbury.
Six days, he was told, if a person went on foot.
Six days! Abdullah nearly groaned aloud. Six days at this rate of expense, and he would barely be able to afford to keep Flower-in-the-Night in the state of direst poverty when he found her. And he had to look forward to six days of the soldier’s making this sort of fuss about the cats, before they could collar a wizard and even start trying to find her. No, Abdullah thought. His next wish to the genie would be to have them all transported to Kingsbury. That meant he would only have to endure two more days.
Comforted by this thought, Abdullah strode off down the road with Midnight serenely riding his
shoulders and the genie bottle bobbing at his side. The sun shone. The greenness of the countryside was a pleasure to him after the desert. Abdullah even began to appreciate the houses with their grass roofs. They had delightful rambling gardens and many of them had roses or other flowers trained around their doors. The soldier told him that grass roofs were the custom here. It was called thatch, and it did, the soldier assured him, keep out the rain, though Abdullah found this very hard to believe.