Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

“I don’t think he’s there now.”
    Tonino sighed. “He will know when this room is cleared and he will come back then, but not before. I am fairly sure he is an enchanter.”
    “There’s nothing to stop us having a rest anyway,” Cat said. He dragged the two mattresses over to the wall and made a seat out of them. They both sat down thankfully. The mattresses were still extremely damp and they smelled horrible. Both of them tried not to notice. “How do you know he’s an enchanter?” Cat asked, to take his mind off the smell and the wetness.
    “The eyes,” said Tonino. “Your eyes are the same.”
    Cat thought of Master Spiderman’s round, glossy eyes and shuddered. “They’re nothing like the same!” he said. “My eyes are blue.”
    Tonino put his head down and held it in both hands. “Sorry,” he said. “For a moment I thought you were an enchanter. Now I don’t know what I think.”
    This made Cat shift about uncomfortably. It was frightening, if he let himself notice it, how whenever he thought about anything, particularly about magic, there seemed to be nothing to think. There seemed to be only here and now in this cold basement, and the horrible bad-breath smell coming up from the mattresses, and the damp creeping up with the smell and coming through his clothes.
    Beside him, Tonino was shivering again. “This is no good,” Cat said. “Get up.”
    Tonino climbed to his feet. “I think it is a spell to keep us obedient,” he said. “He told us we could lay the mattresses out after the room was clean.”
    “I don’t care,” said Cat. He picked up the top mattress and shook it, trying to shake the smell—or the spell—out.
    This proved to be a bad mistake. The whole basement became full, almost instantly, of thick, choking, bad-smelling, chaffy dust. They could hardly see one another. What Cat could see of Tonino was alarming. He was bending over, coughing and coughing, a terrible hacking cough, with a whooping, choking sound whenever Tonino tried to breathe in. It sounded as if Tonino were choking to death, and it frightened Cat out of what few wits he seemed to have.
    He dropped the mattress in a further cloud of dust, snatched up a broom, and in a frenzy of fear and guilt ran up the stairs, where he battered on the door with the broom handle. “Help!” he screamed. “Tony’s suffocating! Help !”
    Nothing happened. As soon as Cat stopped beating on the door, he could tell from the sort of silence beyond that Master Spiderman was not bothering to listen. He ran down again, into the thick, thick dust, seized the choking Tonino by one elbow, and pushed him up the stairs.
    “Get up by the door,” he said. “It’s clearer there.” He could hear Tonino choking his way upward as he himself ran toward the dirty, murky high-up window and slammed the end of the broom handle into it like a spear.
    Cat had meant to smash out a pane. But the grimy glass simply splintered into a white star and would not break any further however hard Cat poked at it with the broom. By this time he was coughing almost as wretchedly as Tonino. And angry. Master Spiderman was trying to break their spirits. Well, he was not going to! Cat dragged one of the heavy, splintery workbenches under the window and climbed on it.
    The window was one of the kind that slides up and down. Standing on the bench brought Cat’s nose level with the rusty old catch that held the two halves shut in the middle. He took hold of the catch and wrenched at it angrily. It came to pieces in his hand, but at least it was not holding the window shut anymore. Cat threw the broken pieces down and gripped the dirty frame with both sets of fingers. And pulled. And heaved. And rattled.
    “Let me help,” Tonino said hoarsely, climbing up beside Cat, and breathed out hugely because he had been holding his breath as he came across the room.
    Cat moved to one side gratefully and they both pulled. To their joy, the top half of the window