Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle 2)

The cat ignored the genie entirely. It just went on behaving as if there were a most enticing smell in the bottle.

In Zanzib everyone hated cats. People thought of them as very little better than the rats and mice they ate. If a cat came near you, you kicked it, and you drowned any kittens you could lay hands on. Accordingly Abdullah ran at the cat, aiming a flying kick at it as he ran. “Shoo!” he yelled. “Scat!”

The cat jumped. Somehow it avoided Abdullah’s lashing foot and fled to the top of the overhanging rock, where it spat at him and glared. It was not deaf then, Abdullah thought, staring up into its eyes. They were bluish. So that was what had sat on him in the night! He picked up a stone and drew back his arm to throw it.

“Don’t do that!” said the soldier. “Poor little animal!”

The cat did not wait for Abdullah to throw the stone. It shot out of sight. “There is nothing poor about that beast,” he said. “You must realize, gentle gunman, that the creature nearly took your eye out last night.”

“I know,” the soldier said mildly. “It was only defending itself, poor thing. Is that a genie in that flask of yours? Your smoky blue friend?”

A traveler with a carpet for sale had once told Abdullah that most people in the north were unaccountably sentimental about animals. Abdullah shrugged and turned sourly to the genie bottle, where the genie had vanished without a word of thanks. This would have to happen! Now he would have to watch the bottle like a hawk. “Yes,” he said.

“I thought it might be,” said the soldier. “I’ve heard tell of genies. Come and look at this, will you?” He stooped and picked up his hat, very carefully, smiling in a strange, tender way.

There seemed definitely to be something wrong with the soldier this morning, as if his brains had softened in the night. Abdullah wondered if it was those scratches, although they had almost vanished by now. Abdullah went over to him anxiously.

Instantly the cat was standing on the overhanging rock again, making that iron pulley noise, anger and worry in every line of its small black body. Abdullah ignored it and looked into the soldier’s hat. Round blue eyes stared at him out of its greasy interior. A little pink mouth hissed defiance as the tiny black kitten inside scrambled to the back of the hat, whipping its minute bottle brush of a tail for balance.

“Isn’t it sweet?” the soldier said besottedly.

Abdullah glanced at the wauling cat on top of the rock. He froze, and looked again carefully. The thing was huge. A mighty black panther stood there, baring its big white fangs at him.

“These animals must belong to a witch, courageous companion,” he said shakily.

“If they did, then the witch must be dead or something,” the soldier said. “You saw them. They were living wild in that cave. That mother cat must have carried her kitten all the way here in the night. Marvelous, isn’t it? She must have known we’d help her!” He looked up at the huge beast snarling on the rock and did not seem to notice the size of it. “Come on down, sweet thing!” he said wheedlingly. “You know we won’t hurt you or your kitten.”

The mother beast launched herself from the rock. Abdullah gave a strangled scream, dodged, and sat down heavily. The great black body hurtled past above him—and to his surprise, the soldier started to laugh. Abdullah looked up indignantly to find that the beast had become a small black cat again, and was most affectionately walking about on the soldier’s broad shoulder and rubbing herself on his face.

“Oh, you’re a wonder, little Midnight!” The soldier chuckled. “You know I’ll take care of your Whippersnapper for you, don’t you? That’s right. You purr!”

Abdullah got up disgustedly and turned his back on this love feast. The saucepan had been cleaned out very thoroughly in the night. The tin plate was burnished. He went and washed both, meaningly, in the stream, hoping the soldier would soon forget these dangerous magical beasts and begin thinking about breakfast.

But when the soldier finally put the hat down and tenderly plucked the mother cat off his shoulder, it was breakfast for cats that he thought about. “They’ll need milk,” he said, “and a nice plate of fresh fish. Get that genie of yours to fetch them some.”

A jet of blue-mauve spurted from the neck of the bottle and spread into a sketch of the genie’s irritated face. “Oh, no,” said the genie. “One wish a day is all I give, and he had today’s wish yesterday. Go and fish in the stream.”

The soldier advanced on the genie angrily. “There won’t be any fish this high in the mountain,” he said. “And that little Midnight is starving, and she’s got her kitten to feed.”

“Too bad!” said the genie. “And don’t you try to threaten me, soldier. Men have become toads for less.”

The soldier was certainly a brave man—or a very foolish one, Abdullah thought. “You do that to me, and I’ll break your bottle, whatever shape I’m in!” he shouted. “I’m not wanting a wish for myself!”

“I prefer people to be selfish,” the

genie retorted. “So you want to be a toad?”

Further blue smoke gushed out of the bottle and formed into arms making gestures that Abdullah was afraid he recognized. “No, no, stop, I implore you, O sapphire among spirits!” he said hastily. “Let the soldier alone, and consent, as a great favor, to grant me another wish a day in advance, that the animals might be fed.”

“Do you want to be a toad, too?” the genie inquired.

“If it is written in the prophecy that Flower-in-the-Night shall marry a toad, then make me a toad,” Abdullah said piously. “But first fetch milk and fish, great genie.”

The genie swirled moodily. “Bother the prophecy! I can’t go against that. All right. You can have your wish, provided you leave me in peace for the next two days.”

Abdullah sighed. It was a dreadful waste of a wish. “Very well.”

A crock of milk and an oval plate with a salmon on it plunked down on the rock by his feet. The genie gave Abdullah a look of huge dislike and sucked himself back inside the bottle.