The boy threw up his arms to protect his mice. At the same time, the mice leaped for the safety of the pram.
Some of them were quicker than others. The three on the boy’s head waited until the very last minute, as if they couldn’t bear to desert him. By the time they jumped, the cat was already changing direction. It landed squarely on the board across the pram and spread its claws, ready to scoop up the last three mice as they arrived.
The Cat
But somehow they too managed to change direction. With their feet flailing and their little eyes bulging with fright, they missed the pram altogether and fell onto the cobblestones.
The cat sprang after them, its eyes blazing.
‘No!’ cried Goldie. And she grabbed Toadspit’s still-folded knife from her pocket and threw it with all her strength.
It hit the cat on the side of the head and stunned it momentarily. The mice raced across the cobblestones and dived into a drain. Before the cat could gather its wits and follow them, the boy threw himself upon it.
‘Be careful!’ cried Goldie, remembering what had happened to Harrow’s fighting dog.
The boy quickly bent his head and crooned something, and although the cat hissed and yowled it kept its claws sheathed.
Goldie picked up the knife and put it back in her pocket. The boy raised his eyebrows at her, as if he was asking a question, then looked towards the drain.
‘You want me to get the mice?’ said Goldie, who was still worried about the cat and what it might do.
The boy nodded. The cat twisted in his arms, but he held it against his chest and began to whistle to it, the way he had whistled to the mice.
Goldie crouched in front of the drain. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could just make out three bundles of trembling white fur.
She reached out her hand. ‘Here, mousie,’ she whispered. Three pairs of pink eyes blinked nervously at her. ‘I’m sorry about the cat,’ she said. ‘I should’ve known it’d turn up again. It’s been following me.’
She kept her voice low and her hand very still and, before long, one of the mice began to groom itself. The others joined in, slicking their fur and cleaning their paws and whiskers. Gradually their trembling stopped.
Goldie glanced over her shoulder. The boy’s eyes were half-closed and he was blinking sleepily down at the cat. To Goldie’s astonishment, the cat was blinking back at him and purring in a crackly, unpractised voice. All of its fierce, sharp angles had softened, and now she could see the elegance that lay beneath.
‘I think your boy has tamed the cat,’ she whispered to the mice. ‘You can come out now.’
The mice gave their paws a final lick, and tidied their whiskers. Then, one by one, they trooped towards her hand, inspected it carefully, and climbed on board.
Goldie had no idea what the cat might do when it saw the mice again, so she hid them against her jacket. They wriggled in her hand, full of life and warmth, and she wished she could keep them there forever.
But the boy was already lowering the cat to the ground and holding his own hand out for his pets. Reluctantly, Goldie gave them back. When they smelled their enemy on the boy’s skin they squeaked in protest.
The cat’s ears swivelled. It crouched down, its eyes fixed on the boy’s hand, its tail lashing.
It was then that the white-haired boy did something that amazed Goldie. With the palm of his hand flat, and the three mice sitting there, unprotected, he squatted next to the cat.
‘I don’t think—’ she began.
But the boy wasn’t listening to her. He was explaining to the cat and the mice that they must be friends. At least, that’s what it sounded like to Goldie, although the noise he made was nothing more than a humming croon.
The cat’s ears flicked back and forth as if it was thinking unfamiliar thoughts. Slowly, its fierceness drained away. It took a step forward. For a moment the mice looked as if they were trying to be brave, but then their nerve broke and they ran up the boy’s arm and dived inside his jacket.
The boy crooned a bit more. The cat sat down so close to his hand that its whiskers touched his fingertips. Its spotted limbs were as still as a statue of Great Wooden. Its eyes blinked sleepily.
One by one, the mice poked their heads out from inside the boy’s jacket. One by one they crept back down his arm to the palm of his hand. They craned forward until they were almost touching the cat’s whiskers. Their noses crinkled. They shook their little heads and sneezed.
Then they sat down and began to clean themselves, as if they were in the safest place in the world.
Goldie let out her breath with a loud huff. ‘How did you do that?’
The boy stood up, grinning, and put the mice back in the pram. The cat lounged amiably against his feet, as if it had never in its life thought of harming another creature.
Very quickly and lightly, the boy put his hand on Goldie’s arm, then took it away again.
‘What?’ said Goldie.
The boy pointed at the pram.
‘You want me to wheel the pram? No. You want to give me the pram? No, I didn’t think so. Oh, you want to tell my fortune.’
The boy nodded. Goldie swallowed, thinking of Toadspit and Bonnie. A fortune might tell her where to find them. Or at least give her some sort of clue. ‘I haven’t got any money,’ she said.
The boy shrugged and whistled.
This time, when the mice scrambled up onto the board with their scraps of paper, Goldie knew what to expect. She waited impatiently while the boy shifted the scraps around, making a picture of shapes and colours that pleased him.
By the time he had finished, there were only four bits of paper left. The first was a picture of a very high mountain. The second one simply said danger. The third said friendship is. The fourth was two entire sentences that looked as if they had been torn from a book. You are still here, Herro. Does this mean you will help me?
Goldie’s heart sank. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with Bonnie and Toadspit, except perhaps for the bit about danger. But why was there a picture of a mountain?
‘Does it mean mountains are dangerous?’ she said. ‘But we’re not near any. So maybe it’s not meant to be a real mountain. Just— Just something rocky. No, something big. Look at it, it’s huge. So maybe it means, um, huge danger. No, great danger, that’s it.’
A shiver ran down her spine. Harrow . . .
The boy touched her arm again, as light as a moth.
‘Sorry,’ said Goldie, and she read the second half of her fortune out loud. The boy’s eyes widened. He tapped his chest, then pointed to the mice and the cat.
‘Friendship,’ said Goldie. ‘And someone to help me. Do you think it means you?’
The boy pointed to the mice and the cat again.
‘You think it means all of you?’
The boy beamed at her. Then he grabbed the handle of the pram and set off across the plaza with the cat close at his heels. Goldie didn’t move.
When he realised that she wasn’t following him, the boy turned and beckoned. Goldie was tempted to go with him. But she was heading into great danger, and did not want anyone else to be harmed because of it. So she waved instead and called out, ‘Thanks for the fortune.’
The boy beckoned again. In the back of Goldie’s mind, the little voice whispered, Go with him. She ignored it and turned away.
She had not gone far when she felt something bump against her legs. The cat gazed up at her. ‘M-rrow?’
She tried to keep walking, but with every step it wound itself between her ankles. ‘Watch out,’ she said.
‘Frrr-own,’ said the cat, almost as if it was talking to her. And it sat down directly in front of her.
Goldie stepped around it. It shifted so quickly that she barely saw it move, and sat down again.
She glared at it. ‘What do you want?’
‘Prrrowl,’ demanded the cat, and it raised its ragged tail high in the air and began to stalk back the way it had come, stopping occasionally to look over its shoulder. On the other side of the plaza, the boy watched them both.
Go with them, whispered the little voice.
‘No,’ said Goldie. ‘I don’t want to.’
It was a lie and she knew it. The sun had almost disappeared behind the buildings that surrounded the Spice Market, and a cold wind was blowing up from the harbour. Soon it would be dark. If she walked away now, she realised, she would have to spend another night alone. And perhaps another one after that.
She didn’t think she could bear it.
The cat turned towards her. ‘All right,’ said Goldie quickly. ‘I’ll come.’
‘Nnnn-ow?’ said the cat.
‘Yes. Now.’