Читать книгу The Magic Faraway Tree - Enid blyton - Страница 7

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Jo, Silky and Moon-Face were so very pleased that Jo was the right way up again.

“It feels funny,” said Jo. “I feel quite giddy the right way up after standing upside-down for so long. Thank you, witch. How much is the spell?”

“One piece of gold,” said the witch. Moon-Face put his hand into his large purse. He brought out a piece of gold. The witch threw it into the fire, and at once bright golden smoke came out. She took up her knitting-needles and began to knit the yellow smoke into the stockings she was making.

“I wanted a yellow pattern,” she said, pleased. “Your piece of gold came just at the right moment.”

“Golly, this is a very magic land, isn’t it?” said Jo, as the three of them walked out of the queer shop. “Fancy knitting stockings out of smoke! Don’t let’s go home yet, Moon-Face. I want to see a few more things.”

“All right,” said Moon-Face, who wanted to explore a bit, too. “Come on. I say, look at the gnome who is selling a spell to make cats sing! Somebody has brought her cat to him—I wonder if the spell will really work!”

The servant of a witch had brought along a big black cat. He handed the gnome two silver pieces of money. The gnome took the cat on his knee. He opened its mouth and looked down it. Then he took a silver whistle and blew a tune softly down the cat’s pink throat. The cat swallowed once or twice and then jumped off the gnome’s knee.

“Will it sing now?” asked the witch’s little servant. “I daren’t go back to my mistress unless it does.”

“It will sing whenever you pull its tail,” said the gnome, turning to another customer.

The witch’s servant went off with the cat following behind. Jo took hold of Moon-Face’s arm and whispered to him!

“I’m going to pull the cat’s tail. I do SO want to hear if it really will sing!”

Moon-Face and Silky wanted to as well. They giggled to see Jo running softly after the big black cat. He took hold of its tail. He gave it a gentle pull.

And then, oh, what a peculiar thing! The cat stopped, lifted up its head, and sang in a very deep man’s voice:

“Oh, once my whiskers grew so long

I had to have a shave!

The barber said: ‘It’s not the way

For whiskers to behave.

If you’re not careful, my dear cat,

They’ll grow into a beard,

And then a billy-goat you’ll be,

Or something very weird!’

“Oh, once my tail became so short

It hadn’t got a wag,

The grocer said ...”

But what the grocer said about the cat’s short tail nobody ever knew. The servant of the witch turned round in surprise when he heard the cat singing, for he knew that he hadn’t pulled the cat’s tail. He saw Jo and the others grinning away near by, and he was very angry.

“How dare you use up the cat’s singing?” he cried. “You wait till I tell the witch. She’ll be after you. And you won’t sing if she catches you!”

“Quick! Run!” said Moon-Face. “If he does fetch the witch we’ll get into trouble.”

So they ran away fast, and were soon out of sight of the cat and the servant. They sank down under a tree, laughing.

“Oh, dear! That cat did sing a funny song!” said Jo, wiping his eyes. “And what a lovely deep voice it had. Do you suppose its whiskers really did grow very long?”

Just then the three heard a loud noise coming along: “Clankily-clank, rattle, bang, crash!”

“The Saucepan Man!” they all cried. “He’s come up here, too!”

And sure enough, it was old Saucepan, grinning all over his funny face. He had so many kettles and saucepans on that day that nothing could be seen of him except his face and his feet.

“Hallo, hallo!” he said. “I guessed you were up here. Been having fun?”

“Yes,” said Jo. “I’m all right again—look! It’s so nice to walk the proper way up again. And oh, Saucepan, we’ve just heard a cat sing!”

Saucepan actually heard what Jo said—but he couldn’t believe that he had heard right, so he put his hand behind his ear and said, “What did you say? I thought you said you’d heard a cat sing—but I heard wrong, I know.”

“No, you heard right,” said Moon-Face. “We did hear a cat sing!”

“It’s funny, but I thought you said again that you heard a cat sing,” said Saucepan. “I must be very deaf this morning.”

“Saucepan, you’re not deaf to-day; you heard right!” shouted Jo. But it was no good. The Saucepan Man couldn’t believe that he had heard right, so they just gave it up.

“Let’s go and explore a bit more,” said Jo. So up they got and off they went.

A witch was selling a spell to make ordinary broomsticks fly through the air. The four watched in amazement as they saw her rubbing a pink ointment on to a broomhandle belonging to an elf.

“Now get on it, say ‘Whizz away!’ and you can fly home,” said the witch. The elf got astride the broom-stick, a smile on her pretty face.

“Whizz away!” she said. And off whizzed the broom-stick up into the air, with the elf clinging tightly to it!

“I’d like to buy that spell,” said Jo. “I wonder how much it is.”

The witch heard him. “Three silver pieces,” she said. Jo hadn’t even got one. But Moon-Face had. He took them out of his large purse and gave them to the witch.

jo took hold of the cat’s tail and gave it a gentle pull.

“Where’s your broom-stick?” she said.

“We haven’t got one with us,” said Jo. “But can’t you give us the ointment instead, please?”

“Well, I’ll give you just a little,” said the witch. She took a tiny pink jar and put a dab of the pink ointment into it. Jo took it and put it into his pocket. Now maybe his mother’s broom-stick would learn to fly!

At the next stall a goblin was selling a spell to make things big. The spell was in big tins, and looked like paint.

“Just think what a useful spell this is!” yelled the goblin to the passers-by. “Have you visitors coming to tea and only a small cake to offer them? A dab of this spell and the cake swells to twice its size! Have you a suit you have grown out of? A dab of this spell and it will grow to the right size! Marvellous, wonderful, amazing and astonishing! Buy, buy, buy, whilst you’ve got the chance!”

Saucepan heard all that the goblin said, for he was shouting at the top of his voice. He began to look in all his kettles and saucepans.

“What do you want?” asked Jo.

“My money,” said the Saucepan Man. “I always keep it in one of my kettles or saucepans—but I never remember which. I simply must buy that spell. Think how useful it would be to me. Sometimes when I go round selling my goods a customer will say to me, ‘Oh, you haven’t a big enough kettle!’ But now I shall be able to make my kettles just as big as I like! And we can dab the Pop Biscuits with the spell, too, and make them twice as big.”

He found his money at last and paid it to the goblin, who handed him a tin of the spell. Saucepan was very pleased. He longed to try it on something. He took the brush and dabbed a daisy nearby with the spell. The daisy at once grew to twice its size. Then Saucepan dabbed a bumble-bee and that grew enormous. It buzzed around Moon-Face and he waved it away.

saucepan took the brush and dabbed a daisy nearby.

“Saucepan, don’t do any more bees,” he begged. “I expect their stings are twice as big, too. Look—let’s go to that sweet-shop over there and buy some sweets. It would be fun to make them twice as big!”

They hurried to the shop—but on the way a dreadful thing happened! Saucepan fell over one of his kettles and upset the tin in which he carried the spell. It splashed up—and drops of it fell on to Moon-Face, Silky, Jo—and the old Saucepan Man, too! And in a trice they all shot up to twice their size! Silky grew to three times her size because more drops fell on her.

They stared at one another. How small the Land of Spells suddenly seemed! How little the witches and goblins looked, how tiny the shops were!

“Saucepan! You really are careless!” cried Moon-Face, vexed. “Look what you’ve done to us. Now what are we to do?”

Silky clutched hold of Moon-Face’s arm. “Moon-Face!” she said, “oh, Moon-Face—do you suppose we are too big to go down the hole through the cloud?”

Moon-Face turned pale. “We’d better go and see,” he said. “Come on, everybody.”

Frightened and silent, all four of them hurried to where the hole led down to the Faraway Tree. How little it seemed to the four big people now! Moon-Face tried to get down. He stuck. He couldn’t slip down at all.

“It’s no use,” he said. “We’re too big to go down. Whatever in the world shall we do?”