A Sudden Wild Magic

“Well, cancel it then,” she said. “I’m not having you go off and leave them. They’ll feel strange. And they know. They’re all here now — except that Jellaby. She knows too, but she’s hiding. Just a moment.” Gladys broke off to make a brief mental search around the house. Ah. Under the spare bed. After a struggling moment, tortoiseshell Jellaby landed in the midst of the other cats, glaring, distended, and angry. “Stupid,” Gladys said to her. “Aline’s nothing like the vet’s.” To the phone she said, “That’s all of them now, and you’ll find they’re no trouble. They all look after themselves, except they can’t open tins. I’ll send the cat food up with them. And you know what to do about the message, don’t you? Thanks. ‘Bye.”

This important matter being settled, Gladys shuffled to the strangely empty kitchen to pick up her fat black handbag. “There’s no point in traveling anything but light,” she told Jimbo, who still scuttled at her heels, “but I still don’t trust that place to make a proper cup of tea.” She took up her box of tea bags and emptied two-thirds of them into the bag. “Amanda’s going to need the rest when she comes,” she murmured, snapping the handbag closed. It was one of those that shut by twisting together two knobs the size of marbles. She stood considering what else she needed. “Nothing for Maureen — she’s not coming here at all,” she muttered. Then the grin spread on her face again. “And why not?” she said. “It’ll be far more fun if I dress up in style.”

She shuffled out of the kitchen and upstairs to her dark and cluttered bedroom, where she opened cupboards and chests and proceeded to array herself. She put on first a wondrous cocktail dress dating from the twenties (which had belonged to her great-aunt: Gladys was by no means as old as she liked people to think), an extraordinary creation of limp blue chiffon covered with swags and dangles of glass beads all over. The beads clacked gently with her every movement. To this, after some thought, she added a white feather boa and a flame pink scarf for warmth. To her head, with some puffing and critical grunting, she attached the crownlike headdress that reputedly went with the dress. Apart from further blue beads, its chief feature was a curling blue feather — somewhat crimped with age — which rose from the center of the creation in the middle of her forehead. With this nodding over her face, she bent to consider her feet.

Her normal tennis shoes did not seem to conform with the rest of her. “Got to be comfortable, though,” she observed, “and warm. And look expensive.”

Bearing these criteria in mind, she fetched out and laboriously trod into her most treasured footgear — a pair of large white yeti boots. She had never worn them much because she had always feared that someone had killed and skinned at least four persian cats to make those boots. But there was a time and a place for everything. She looked at herself critically in the mirror.

“Yes, I know, I know,” she said to Jimbo, who appeared to be crouched on her bed, probably surveying her finery with considerable astonishment, “but I don’t want anyone to take me too seriously, do I? You should know all about that. Besides, you may be all right, but I need to take my mind off that other Auntie Gladys over there.”

It only remained to consider what was the best way to take. Gladys half closed her eyes, cocked her feathered head on one side, and contemplated the defenses surrounding the pirate universe. The window Mark had found was no longer available to her. But there was one spot in the defenses she had had her eye on from the beginning. A careful person could use that spot, provided she had Jimbo to help. The plainest way to use it was to summon her faithful taxi and have it take her to the nearest place of power.

“No, no,” she said irritably. “Too much hassle, too obvious, too easily traced, and it’s not fair to mix Jim Driver up in this anyway. I’ll have a go at getting in from the garden, Jimbo. All we need is a wood of some sort.”

She gathered Jimbo in her arms and went downstairs, where twilight had arrived at midday with low, bruised clouds and a storm building. “Hm,” Gladys said as she hid the key in the usual place. “Something is brewing, isn’t it? This looks like a disturbed storm to me. But it can wait. Amanda can probably see to it when she gets here.”

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