– my apologies, Cat. I wouldn’t have had Gwendolen here for a minute, except that we had to have Cat. Chrestomanci has to be a nine-lifed enchanter. No one else is strong enough for the post.”
“Post?” said Janet. “Isn’t it a hereditary title then?”
Mr Saunders laughed, and threw his bone to the dragon, too. “Heavens no! We’re all Government employees here. The job Chrestomanci has is to make sure this world isn’t run entirely by witches. Ordinary people have rights too. And he has to make sure witches don’t get out into worlds where there isn’t so much magic and play havoc there. It’s a big job. And we’re the staff that helps him.”
“And he needs us like he needs two left legs,” Bernard remarked, jerking about in the hammock as he tried to eat a jelly.
“Oh, come now!” said Chrestomanci. “I’d have been sunk without you today.”
“I was thinking of the way you found the next Chrestomanci,” Bernard said, spooning jelly off his waistcoat. “You did it, when we were just going round in circles.”
“Nine-lifed enchanters are not easy to find,” Chrestomanci explained to Janet. “In the first place, they’re very rare, and in the second, they have to use their magic before they can be found. And Cat didn’t. We were actually thinking of bringing someone in from another world, when Cat happened to fall into the hands of a clairvoyant. Even then, we only knew where he was, not who. I’d no idea he was Eric Chant, or any relation of mine at all – though I suppose I might have remembered that his parents were cousins, which doubled the chance of their children being witches. And I must confess that Frank Chant wrote to me to say his daughter was a witch and seemed to be using her younger brother in some way. Forgive me, Cat. I ignored that letter, because your father had been so very rude when I offered to make sure his children would be born without witchcraft.”
“Just as well he was rude, you know,” Bernard said.
“Was that what the letters were about?” said Cat.
“I don’t understand,” said Janet, “why you didn’t say anything at all to Cat. Why couldn’t you?”
Chrestomanci was still looking vaguely in Cat’s direction. Cat could tell he was very wary indeed. “Like this,” he said. “Remember we hadn’t known one another very long. Cat appears to have no magic at all. Yet his sister works magic far beyond her own abilities, and goes on doing it even when her witchcraft is taken away. What am I to think? Does Cat know what he’s doing? If he doesn’t, why doesn’t he? And if he does know, what is he up to? When Gwendolen removed herself, and nobody mentioned the fact, I hoped some of the answers might emerge. And Cat still does nothing—”
“What do you mean, nothing?” said Janet. “There were some fabulous conkers, and he kept stopping Julia.”
“Yes, and I couldn’t think what was happening,” Julia said, rather shamed.
Cat felt hurt and uncomfortable. “Leave me alone!” he said, and he stood up. Everyone, even Chrestomanci, went tense. The only person who did not was Janet, and Cat could hardly count her, because she was not used to magic. He found he was trying not to cry, which made him very much ashamed. “Stop treating me so carefully!” he said. “I’m not a fool, or a baby. You’re all afraid of me, aren’t you? You didn’t tell me things and you didn’t punish Gwendolen because you were afraid I’d do something dreadful. And I haven’t. I don’t know how to. I didn’t know I could.”
“My love, it was just that no one was sure,” said Millie.
“Well, be sure now!” said Cat. “The only things I did were by mistake, like coming here in this garden – and turning Euphemia into a frog, I suppose, but I didn’t know it was me.”
“You’re not to worry about that, Eric,” said Euphemia from the hillside, where she was sitting with Will Suggins. “It was the shock upset me. I know enchanters are different from us witches. And I’ll speak to Mary. I promise.”
“Speak to Will Suggins too, while you’re at it,” said Janet. “Because he’s going to turn Cat into a frog in revenge any minute now.”
Euphemia bounced round on the hillside to look at Will. “What?” she said.
“What is this, Will?” Chrestomanci asked.
“I laid it on him – for three o’clock, sir,” Will Suggins said apprehensively, “if he didn’t meet me as a tiger.”
Chrestomanci took out a large gold watch. “Hm. It’s about due now. If you don’t mind my saying so, that was a little foolish of you, Will. Suppose you carry on. Turn Cat into a frog, or yourself into a tiger, or both. I shan’t interfere.”
Will Suggins climbed heavily to his feet and stood facing Cat, looking as if he would prefer to be several miles away. “Let the dough work, then,” he said.
Cat was still feeling so upset and tearful that he wondered whether to oblige Will Suggins and become a frog. Or he could try being a flea instead. But it all seemed rather silly. “Why don’t you be a tiger?” he said.
As Cat expected, Will Suggins made a beautiful tiger, long-backed and sleek and sharply striped. He was heavy as he padded up and down the slope, but his legs slid so easily in the silky folds of his hide that he almost seemed light. But Will Suggins himself spoilt the effect by rubbing a distressed paw over his huge cat face and staring appealingly at Chrestomanci. Chrestomanci simply laughed. The dragon trotted up the hill to investigate this new beast. Will Suggins was so alarmed that he reared up on his great hind legs to get away from it. It looked so ungainly for a tiger to be doing that, that Cat turned him back to Will Suggins on the spot.
“It wasn’t real?” asked the dragon.
“No!” said Will Suggins, mopping his face with his sleeve. “All right, lad, you win. How did you do it so quick?”
“I don’t know,” Cat said apologetically. “I’ve really no idea. Shall I learn when you teach me magic?” he asked Mr Saunders.
Mr Saunders looked a little blank. “Well—”
“No, Michael,” said Chrestomanci, “is the right answer. It’s quite clear elementary magic isn’t going to mean much to Cat. I’ll have to teach you myself, Cat, and we’ll be starting on Advanced Theory, I think, by the look of it. You seem to start where most people leave off.”
“But why didn’t he know?” Janet demanded. “It always makes me angry not to know things, and I feel specially angry about this, because it seems so hard on Cat.”
“It is, I agree,” said Chrestomanci. “But it’s something in the nature of enchanters’ magic, I think. Something the same happened to me. I couldn’t do magic either. I couldn’t do anything. But they found I had nine lives – I lost them at such a rate that it soon became obvious – and they told me I had to be the next Chrestomanci when I grew up, which absolutely appalled me, because I couldn’t work the simplest spell. So they sent me to a tutor, the most terrifying old person, who was supposed to find what the trouble was. And he took one look at me and snarled, ‘Empty your pockets, Chant!’ Which I did. I was too scared not to. I took out my silver watch, and one and sixpence, and a silver charm from my godmother, and a silver tie pin I had forgotten to wear, and a silver brace I was supposed to wear in my teeth. And as soon as they were gone, I did some truly startling things.
