Part Two
Chapter Eight: Mount Banana
There were no stairs.
That was the first thing Codette noticed, and she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved. Smile had spent the whole of the previous evening muttering about the “dreadful stairs” up Mount Banana, painting a picture of ten thousand crumbling steps, each one a little steeper and a little more murderous than the last. But when the four of them stepped out of the pine glade at dawn and looked up, there was only a path.
It was a narrow, winding, earthen path, no wider than a garden walk, curling away up the flank of the mountain between dark ferns and wet black rock. It looked ordinary. It looked, in fact, rather inviting. A thin ribbon of pale light lay along it, and the mist that clung to the slope had a soft, gold, early-morning glow.
“Well,” said Tom, after a moment. “That doesn’t seem so bad.”
“It never does,” said Smile.
They started up.
For the first hour, nothing happened. The path rose steadily, in long, lazy switchbacks, through a forest of tall, dripping trees whose bark was the color of old honey. The air smelled of rain and moss and something sweet, like ripe fruit left in the sun. Birdsong rose from somewhere in the canopy, a high, liquid trill that Codette couldn’t place. Phillip trotted at the front, consulting his brass compass every few minutes and murmuring, “North. Still north. Definitely north.”
It was Tom who noticed the first thing.
“Phillip,” he said, slowly. “Didn’t we pass that rock?”
“Which rock?”
“That rock. The one that looks like a face.”
Phillip turned. A big, mossy, lumpy boulder stood at the side of the path, with two round hollows for eyes and a long crack for a mouth. It did look rather like a face. It looked, to Codette’s eyes, rather like a face that had just been told a joke it didn’t find funny.
“We didn’t pass it,” said Phillip. “I’d have remembered.”
“I’m telling you, we did.”
“It’s a different rock.”
“It’s the same rock.”
“There are thousands of rocks on a mountain, Tom, it stands to reason that—”
“Look,” said Codette, quietly.
She was pointing at the ground. In the soft earth beside the path, just in front of the boulder, a long line of footprints ran off into the ferns: four sets, side by side. Two big, rounded ones. One small, neat, delicate one. And one that was just a smear of bare, human heel.
“That’s us,” said Tom, in a hollow voice. “That’s our footprints.”
“We were here an hour ago,” said Smile.
Nobody said anything.
“But the path went up,” said Phillip, plaintively. “It’s been going up the whole time. We haven’t turned once. We haven’t doubled back. We — I’ve been watching the compass. We’ve been going north the entire—”
“Phillip,” said Smile.
“What?”
“Turn around.”
Phillip turned.
Behind them, where the path had been, there was only forest: a tall, silent, unbroken wall of honey-colored trunks. No path. No opening. No sign that any road had ever run through it. A long, curling strand of mist drifted lazily through the gap where they had walked, and slid away.
“Oh,” said Phillip, in a very small voice.
“The path changes,” said Smile. He said it softly, to himself. “Every time you turn your back. That’s the stories. ‘The road up the mountain is never the same road twice.’ I always thought it was a figure of speech.”
“So how do we—”
“We don’t turn our backs.”
“That’s absurd!”
“That’s the mountain.”
They went on, walking backward for a while, which was very slow and rather silly, and then sideways, and then, finally, in a long, awkward, crab-like shuffle, keeping the whole trail in sight. It was Phillip, in the end, who solved it. He took a long length of Smile’s rope and tied one end around a tree and paid the line out as they walked, keeping it taut, so that no matter which way their eyes went, they always had a thread to the last place they’d been.
“A thread through the labyrinth,” he said, with some pride. “Theseus. I read it in a book. Well. A human book. I’m told it’s not strictly accurate.”
“It’s accurate enough,” said Codette.
“Is it? What happens?”
“A hero goes into a maze, and he fights a monster, and he comes out again.”
“That sounds very strenuous.”
“It was.”
“I’ll stick to the rope,” said Phillip.
The bananas began at midday.
She saw the first one by accident, out of the corner of her eye: a pale yellow gleam in the crook of a cliff. When she turned her head, it was gone. She turned back, and there it was again, a long, curved, faintly glowing fruit, hanging from a spur of grey rock, as bright and soft as a night-light.
“Do you see that?” she whispered.
“I see it,” said Tom.
“What is it?”
“A banana.”
“Bananas don’t glow.”
“This one does.”
By the afternoon they were everywhere. They grew in great clusters from the cliff-face, in fistfuls from the crevices, in dangling hands from the branches overhead. Each one gave off a faint, steady, golden luminescence, like a small, shy sun, and the whole mountainside shimmered with them, a thousand points of soft yellow light, strung up through the mist like lanterns at a festival. The air was thick with their perfume.
“They’re beautiful,” said Codette, softly.
“They’re bait,” said Smile.
“Bait for what?”
“I don’t know. But nothing on this mountain is free.” He caught her hand as she reached for one. “Don’t touch.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was only looking.”
“It starts with looking.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. He looked so earnest, so fierce, and so very damp, with a fern stuck behind one ear. He saw her laughing, and scowled, and then, unwillingly, the corner of his mouth began to twitch.
It was at that moment they heard the laugh.
It was very faint. It came from somewhere above them, high, high up in the cloud, so soft and distant that for a moment Codette thought it was the wind. But it rose, and fell, and rose again: a thin, cracked, silvery cackle, like a kettle on the boil. It was the laugh of an old woman. A very old woman, very far away, who had just heard something exceedingly funny.
All four of them froze.
“That’s,” said Phillip, in an awed whisper. “That’s — Smile.”
“I heard it.”
“That’s not a bird.”
“I know it’s not a bird.”
“That’s her. That’s the Cat Witch. She’s real.” Phillip’s eyes had gone enormous behind his cracked spectacles. He pressed both paws to his chest. “She’s real, she’s really, truly — oh, goodness. Oh, I think I might be sick.”
“Don’t be sick.”
“I’m going to try very hard.”
The laugh came again, closer now, and with it, drifting down the mountain on a long swell of mist, came a voice. Words, thin as thread, but clear: “Come along, my dears. Don’t dawdle. The kettle’s on.”
Tom’s tail fluffed to twice its size. “I don’t like this.”
“Nobody likes it,” said Smile.
“Then why are we—”
“Because we’re here,” said Codette.
They looked at her.
She stood in the middle of the path, with the golden light on her face and the long rope in her hand, small and muddy and tired, in a ruined yellow hoodie. Her ankle ached. Her palms were blistered. Every part of her wanted to turn and run back down the mountain. But she had come four hundred miles, through a forest and a desert and a swamp, to follow one thin thread of hope. And it was right there, on the other end of an old woman’s laugh.
“We’ve come this far,” she said. “We might as well find out.”
For a moment nobody spoke.
“Sergeant Sensible,” said Tom, at last, gruffly.
“Sergeant Sensible,” said Phillip.
“Oh, shut up, the pair of you,” said Codette, and set off up the path.
By late afternoon the mist had thickened to a dense white wall, and the glow of the bananas had turned from gold to a pale, eerie green. The path had steepened. They were climbing now in earnest, scrambling up crumbling ledges, hauling each other over boulders, with their breath coming hard and the long drop falling away on their left, down into a gulf of cloud. The wind plucked at their clothes.
Codette was concentrating so hard on her feet that she almost didn’t notice.
She was walking behind Smile. It was an old habit by now, a trick of the road: he went first, she went second, and Tom and Phillip brought up the rear. She liked the rhythm of it. She liked watching the flick of his tail, the loose, easy swing of his shoulders. He always moved like water, like he’d never put a foot wrong in his life.
But he was moving differently today.
It was small. It was so small she might have missed it. A tightness in the set of his neck. A stiffness in his stride. And then, as she watched, he stepped up onto a low slab of rock, and his right hind leg gave a very slight, very quick tremble.
She stopped.
It’s the cold, she told herself. He’s tired. He’s hurt. It’s nothing.
He took another step, and the other leg shook too.
She looked at his face.
He had his chin up, and his ears forward, and his mouth set in a bright, easy, careless line. He was whistling under his breath. He looked, in every way, like a cat who hadn’t a worry in the world. But his whiskers were drawn back so tight that they quivered. And his eyes, when they flicked, very briefly, to the sheer gray wall of cloud on his left, were very wide and very dark.
He’s terrified.
It hit her all at once. He’d been terrified since the pines. He’d been terrified since the first night. He’d said it himself, in a hundred small, light, joking ways: Nobody comes back. Nobody sane goes near that mountain. He’d said it, and then he’d climbed it, a step at a time, with that bright easy whistle, never once letting on, never once saying a word.
She didn’t say anything.
She just took a quick step forward, and slipped her hand into his.
He stopped dead.
For a moment, he didn’t move. He stood perfectly still, with his paw wrapped in her fingers, and looked down at it as if he’d never seen it before. His mouth had come a little open. His whistle had cut off, mid-note. A wisp of cloud blew across the slab, and parted, and drifted away, and the silence between them stretched out thin and long.
Then, very slowly, his fingers curled around hers.
“Oh,” said Smile, quietly.
“Hi,” said Codette.
“I’m not—” He swallowed. “I’m not scared.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s just — the altitude. It affects me. It’s a — a medical condition.”
“I know.”
“It’s the cold.”
“I know.”
He looked up at her. His eyes were bright, and wet, and enormous, and for a long, long moment, he said nothing at all.
“If the road gets too dangerous,” he said finally, very low, so that only she could hear. “If — if something happens. You stay close to me. All right? You stay right by my side. Don’t wander off. Don’t go ahead. I don’t — I don’t want to lose sight of you. Promise.”
“I promise.”
“Good.” He drew a long, steadying breath. His grip tightened. His whole body relaxed, an inch at a time, like a bowstring easing. “Good. That’s — thank you. That’s all I ask.”
They walked on, hand in hand, through the mist.
Tom, who had been watching all of this from a few paces behind, with an expression of exquisite innocence, leaned over to Phillip and whispered, “Not a word.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Phillip whispered back.
“Good.”
“I’m just noting it.”
“Don’t note it.”
“Too late,” said Phillip, and wrote it down.
They reached the summit at dusk.
It came on them suddenly. One moment the path was a steep and slippery scramble through white fog; the next, the ground leveled out beneath their feet, and the mist tore open like a curtain, and they stood on a high, wide plateau under an enormous violet sky.
The air was very clear. A thousand stars hung close overhead, huge and silver, so near that Codette felt she could have reached up and plucked one. Far below, on every side, the world lay folded away under a vast white sea of cloud, glimmering faintly in the starlight. And in the center of the plateau, in a little hollow of green grass, stood a house.
It was shaped like a banana.
There was no other way to describe it. It was an enormous, curved, golden-yellow fruit, forty feet long, with a round door in its belly and two small windows for eyes. A thin chimney rose from the stalk. Smoke curled out of it, in a slow, lazy, silvery ribbon. A little garden surrounded it, full of peculiar plants, with a gate that said, in large, cheerful, hand-painted letters, WELCOME, DEARIES. PLEASE WIPE YOUR PAWS.
The four of them stood there, staring.
“Well,” said Smile, in a faint voice. “That’s not what I expected.”
“It’s a banana,” said Tom.
“I can see that.”
“It’s a house.”
“I can see that too.”
“It’s so — it’s—” Phillip made a small, strangled noise. He had taken off his cracked glasses and was holding them against his chest. His eyes were shining. “It’s real. It’s really — she’s real! I’ve been right all along! I’ve been right for nine years! I have to — I need to — oh, I want to write this down—”
“Phillip.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe wipe your paws first.”
The door opened before any of them could knock.
It swung inward, with a long, rich, comfortable creak, and a rectangle of warm light fell across the grass. In the middle of it stood a very small figure.
It was an old woman.
She was tiny, no taller than Codette’s shoulder, and bent nearly double with age, with a back as curved as the banana itself and a face like a crumpled walnut. A pair of sharp, bright, humorous eyes twinkled out of the folds. She wore a long, shapeless cloak of yellow wool, patched at the elbows and frayed at the hem, and on her head, at a rakish angle, sat a tall, floppy, pointed hat with a drooping brim and a single, battered banana-leaf stuck in the band. She leaned on a gnarled stick. In her other hand, quite casually, she held a teapot.
“Well, now,” said the Cat Witch. “There you are.”
Nobody breathed.
“I was beginning to think you’d lost your way. It’s very easy to lose your way on this mountain. Very easy. I had a gentleman here in my youth who walked in circles for a fortnight. Poor soul. Ended up marrying a goat.” She cackled, a long, rolling, delighted cackle, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Come in, come in. Don’t stand about on the lawn. You’ll catch your death. There’s tea.”
She turned and hobbled back inside.
They stood there for a long, bewildered moment.
“Is that — is she—” said Tom.
“I think so,” said Smile.
“She seems nice.”
“That’s what worries me.”
The inside of the banana was a single, vast, golden room, warm as a hearth. The walls curved up and around them in a great soft yellow arch, hung with bunches of dried herbs, strings of tiny lanterns, and a bewildering assortment of crooked shelves. A fire crackled in a grate. A long, scarred oak table stood in the middle of the floor, laden with plates of tiny sandwiches, a plum cake, a bowl of steaming dumplings, and a very large pot of something that smelled strongly of cloves and ginger.
“Sit,” said the Cat Witch. “Sit, sit. Don’t be shy. I’ve had it all laid out since Tuesday.”
“Since Tuesday?” said Phillip.
“I knew you were coming.”
“How—”
“Banana,” said the Cat Witch, tapping the side of her nose. “They tell me everything.”
They sat. It seemed the only thing to do. Tom wolfed down four dumplings before he caught himself and blushed. Phillip held his teacup in both paws and stared into it as though it might contain the secrets of the universe. Smile sat stiff and upright on the very edge of his chair with his tail curled around his feet, and watched the old woman with narrowed eyes.
She poured the tea. She lowered herself, by degrees, into a high-backed chair at the head of the table. Then she folded her small, knotted hands in her lap, and looked around at the four of them, one by one, with those bright, black, penetrating eyes.
They paused on Tom. “A strong heart,” she said, “in need of a reason.”
They paused on Phillip. “A great mind, in love with a small fear.”
They paused on Smile.
For a long moment she said nothing. Her face did something curious. The twinkle faded, just slightly. A shadow crossed it, soft and quick as a cloud over a field. Then she smiled, a small, secret, rather sad smile, and said, “And a boy with a secret he hasn’t even told himself.”
Smile’s whole body went rigid.
“I’m sorry?” he said, in a voice that was almost steady.
“Never mind, dear. All in good time.” She turned her head. And then she looked at Codette, and her whole face lit up. “And you.”
Codette’s heart thumped.
“The human girl,” said the Cat Witch, with enormous satisfaction. “In the cat’s hood. With the borrowed ears. Oh, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to meet you. I’ve been watching you for weeks. I saw you fall through the door. I saw you at the windmill. I saw you in the Yarnwood, with the yarn, and the scratching. Very clever. I laughed for an hour.”
Nobody moved.
“You knew?” said Tom.
“Of course I knew.”
“About — about—”
“That she’s a human? Darling. I made this kingdom.” The old woman tilted her head. “There’s nothing in it I don’t know.”
Codette had gone very still. She was gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles had turned white. “Then you know I’m not a threat,” she said. Her voice cracked. “I didn’t come to hurt anybody. I just — I need to get home. That’s all. I only want to go home.”
“I know, dear.”
“They told me that humans can’t leave. That there’s a law. That if we come in, we can never—”
“Pah,” said the Cat Witch.
She said it so sharply that Codette jumped.
“Law,” said the old woman. “Whoever told you that was a fool. Or a liar. There’s no law against humans in the Kingdom of Pate. Never was. Oh, there’s a rumor. A story the cats tell their kittens, to frighten them off the stairs. ‘The humans are coming to get you.’ But I never wrote it. Not a word.” She leaned forward. Her eyes were very bright. “What’s forbidden, child, in my Kingdom, is not the human. It’s the betrayal.”
“The—”
“Betrayal. Between those who have passed trials side by side.” She tapped the table, once, with a crooked finger. “That’s the oldest law there is. When a group of friends has stood together before danger, when they have bled for each other and starved for each other and held each other’s hands in the dark, and one of them turns on the rest—” She drew a long, rattling breath. “That’s the thing I can’t forgive. That’s the only sin I ever wrote down.”
The room was very quiet. The fire popped.
“And a human girl,” said the Cat Witch softly, “who crosses a desert and a swamp for the sake of three cats she’s known for a month, and stands in front of a crocodile pond rather than leave them? Why, that’s no betrayal. That’s the very opposite.”
Codette’s eyes burned.
“Oh, dear. Oh, my. Don’t cry. You’ll make me cry, and I’m a terrible weeper. It ruins the tea.” The old woman dabbed her own eyes with a corner of her cloak. “Now. Where was I? Ah, yes. Business.”
She set down her cup.
“You’ve come a very long way,” she said. “You’ve passed my three guardians: the yarn, the sand, the swamp. You’ve outwitted my greedy king, which is very hard, and not many manage it. You have shown courage, and wit, and loyalty, and a rather impressive skill with ropes.” She nodded at Smile. “I’m told I’m obliged to reward that. It’s in the bylaws.”
“Reward?” said Tom.
“A wish.”
The silence that fell was absolute.
“A wish,” said Phillip, hoarsely. “Each?”
“Each. One apiece.” She spread her small hands. “A single wish for every one of you. Anything you like. But—” She raised a bony finger. “There’s a test. Of course there’s a test. It’s a trial. It’s known as the Trial of the Four Hearts.”
“What does it involve?” said Smile.
“A little walk.”
“Where?”
“Through the Maze of Banana Shadows,” said the Cat Witch, quite cheerfully, “at the back of my garden. In the middle of it, there’s a banana. A very special banana. The Sun Banana. It ripens once every hundred years. Bring it to me, and I’ll grant your wishes.”
“A maze,” said Tom. “Is that — is it dangerous?”
“Oh, no. It’s perfectly safe.” She smiled. “It doesn’t test your strength. It doesn’t test your speed. It doesn’t test your wits, my dear, or your skill with a rope. It’s much, much simpler than that.”
“Then what does it test?”
The old woman leaned back.
“Your heart,” she said. “That’s all.”
She took a long, slow sip of tea.
“It will show you,” said the Cat Witch, “the thing you want most in all the world. Your deepest, truest, most secret longing. It’ll make it so real that you can touch it. And then it will ask you to give it up.”
“Give it up?” said Phillip.
“With your own hands. Willingly. To save somebody else.”
Nobody said anything.
“That’s the test,” said the old woman. “That’s all it is. There are no monsters. No pits, no traps, no fire. Just a wall of mirrors, and a lot of dark. But I’m told—” Her eyes twinkled again, though there was something sharper behind it now. “I’m told it’s rather difficult.”
The maze began at the end of a long, narrow, moonlit garden.
It was a hedge, at first glance. A tall, thick, impenetrable wall of black-green leaves, twelve feet high, dense as a fortress. There was no gate. There was no arch. There was only a narrow, curving gap, just wide enough for one cat to pass, and beyond it, a darkness so complete that it seemed to swallow the starlight whole.
The four of them stood at the edge of it, in a row.
“I don’t like this,” said Tom.
“You’ve said that,” said Phillip.
“I’m saying it again.”
“It doesn’t help.”
“It makes me feel better.”
“It’s very straightforward,” said the Cat Witch, from behind them, in her sweet, cracked, cheerful voice. “Just walk in. Keep going. The Sun Banana’s in the middle. And remember.” She lifted one finger. “Whatever you see, it isn’t real. But it feels real. And the only way out is to let it go.”
“That doesn’t sound so hard,” said Tom.
“No, dear. It never does.”
Smile took a long, slow breath. He stepped up to the opening and looked into the dark. His tail was fluffed. His paws were tight at his sides.
Then he felt a small hand slide into his. And another, large and warm, close over his shoulder. And a third, tiny and shaking, grip the tail of his scarf.
“Together,” said Codette.
“Together,” said Tom.
“I’ll go first,” said Phillip, in a very small voice, “if somebody could give me a push.”
They went in together.
It was dark. It was very, very dark. For ten paces, perhaps twenty, they walked in a close, tight cluster, with their hands knotted together and their breath loud in the silence. The walls pressed close on either side. A faint, sweet, rotting smell rose from the leaves. Above them, through a narrow slit of sky, the stars burned cold.
And then, all at once, the hand in Codette’s was gone.
She stopped.
“Smile?”
There was no answer.
She spun. The path behind her was empty. The path ahead was empty. The leaves rustled, and the darkness deepened, and from somewhere very far away, she heard, soft and thin as a thread, the sound of a bell.
“Tom? Phillip?”
Nothing.
She was alone.
Tom saw the arena.
It rose around him out of the dark in a great, roaring, golden bowl: a vast stadium, ringed with tier on tier of seats, packed to the rafters with cats. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. They stood and stamped and roared. They waved banners. They threw flowers. And every banner, every voice, every blazing face, was turned toward the sand at its center, where a single, striped, enormous cat stood with his paws raised in the air.
“TOM!” they bellowed. “TOM! TOM! TOM!”
He turned in a slow circle, blinking.
He was bigger. That was the first thing. Bigger, and harder, and sleeker, a mountain of rippling muscle under a coat of burnished bronze. A gold belt was buckled round his waist. A garland of laurel hung from his neck. At his feet lay the broken bodies of a hundred defeated fighters, and the crowd was rising, wave after wave, in a thunder of adoration.
“The Strongest Cat in the Kingdom!” cried a herald. “The Great Master! The Unbeaten! TOM THE MIGHTY!”
It was everything he’d ever wanted.
Tom stood in the middle of the sand, in a daze, with tears running down his face. It was real. He could feel the heat of the lamps on his skin. He could smell the dust, and sweat, and the sweet, heavy smoke of a thousand torches. He could hear, rising from the stands, a single high, clear voice, a voice he’d have known anywhere, a voice he hadn’t heard in nineteen years:
“That’s my boy!”
His mother.
She was sitting in the front row, in her best blue dress, with her hands clasped under her chin and her face shining like a lamp. She was crying. She was laughing. She was waving.
“That’s my boy!” she cried. “Oh, Tommy! Look at you! I’m so proud!”
Tom’s knees gave way.
He fell to the sand and sat there, shaking, with both paws pressed to his mouth. All his life he had been told he was too slow, too fat, too clumsy, too much. All his life he had wanted to hear it. I’m proud of you. Just once. Just once.
It’s not real, said a small, stubborn voice at the back of his mind.
I don’t care, he thought.
It isn’t real, Tom.
I don’t care.
“Tom!”
It was a different voice.
It was high, and thin, and cracked with terror. It came from somewhere far away: not from the stands, not from the roaring crowd, but from deep inside the dark behind the arena, through a gap in the wall that hadn’t been there a moment before.
“Tom! Tom, please! Help! I can’t — I can’t find — it’s so dark, I can’t see, I can’t — oh, please, Tom, I’m scared! I’m so scared!”
Tom lifted his head.
“Phillip?” he whispered.
“TOM!” cried the herald. “TOM THE MIGHTY!”
“Tom! Please!”
The stadium roared. The lights blazed. His mother, in the front row, stretched out her arms.
And Tom, slowly, painfully, got to his feet.
He looked at the crowd. He looked at his mother’s smiling, shining, impossible face. He drew a long, shuddering breath, and put out one trembling paw, and touched the golden belt at his waist.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Mum. But I can’t.”
He tore it off.
It came away in his hand like a dry leaf. The stadium shuddered. The roar of the crowd cut off, as if a hand had been laid across a mouth. The banners dissolved. The lights flickered. And Tom, with his torn ear and his tired old body and his enormous, battered, aching heart, turned his back on all of it, and ran.
“Phillip! I’m coming!”
Phillip saw the library.
It was the most beautiful room he had ever seen.
It was a cathedral of books. It rose in tier on tier of dark mahogany shelves, a hundred feet high, lit by a thousand hanging lamps, with ladders on rails and spiral staircases and long, gleaming reading tables stretching away in every direction. The air smelled of leather and parchment and polish. The silence was deep and soft and golden. Every shelf was filled. Every book was open. And every one, he knew, without being told, held a secret, a spell, a truth, that nobody had ever learned.
He sank slowly to his knees.
“Oh,” said Phillip. “Oh.”
He reached out, with a trembling paw, and touched the nearest spine. It was warm. It purred, faintly, under his fingers. A hundred thousand volumes, a million, a hundred million, and every one of them his. Every spell. Every theory. Every great lost work of the ancient world. He had only to reach, and read.
He had only to stay.
“No one will ever interrupt you,” said a gentle voice at his shoulder.
He turned.
It was a tall, grave, silver-whiskered cat in a long gown, with a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. He carried a stack of scrolls. He smiled at Phillip with enormous kindness.
“You may study here as long as you like,” he said. “There are no deadlines. No examinations. No one to tell you you’re wrong. You’ll never be afraid of failing again.”
Phillip’s eyes filled.
Never be afraid.
All his life he had been afraid. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of the dog. Afraid of the teacher with the cane. Afraid of the little voice at the back of his head that said, you’re not good enough, you’ll never be good enough, everybody will see. He’d been afraid of the Witch, and the mountain, and the maze, and the long, bleak road back. And now here was a room where it could all just stop.
“I could stay,” he whispered.
“You could.”
“I could learn. I could finally understand.”
“Of course.”
“Just — just for a little while.”
“As long as you wish.”
He took a step toward the nearest shelf.
And a thought came to him.
It came very quietly. It came as a small, forgotten, humming sound, from a long way off. It was the sound of someone purring.
Right there, a voice had said. I know. I’ve got you.
He stopped.
He saw it: a patch of lavender, under a sky full of tangled yarn. A girl kneeling beside him in the grass, scratching gently under his chin. A hand on the back of his neck. A voice that said stay here, keep your eyes on me, and a smile, small and warm, that said you’re all right. The first time anybody had ever looked at him, a nervous, timid, spectacled little scholar, and said, simply: you counted.
That’s a start.
“Phillip,” said the silver-whiskered cat, gently. “Come along.”
“No,” said Phillip.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m sorry. I do apologize. But I think — I think I’ve got to go.” His voice shook. He pushed himself to his feet. “Somebody’s waiting for me. A great many somebodies. I’ve left them in the dark, and I’ve no business at all to be reading.” He took a slow step backward. “I’ve a rope to find. And a friend to lead.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“Yes,” said Phillip, with dignity. “I expect I shall. For about a week. I’m terribly fond of libraries.” He drew a deep breath. “But I counted. And I held on. And I’d rather go back to a dark corridor with Tom than stay in a lovely, bright, empty room alone.”
He closed his eyes. He put out one small paw, and pushed against the nearest bookcase with all his strength.
It crumbled. It came apart in his hands, like sand.
The library fell.
Phillip found himself standing in the dark, under a thin gash of stars, in a narrow corridor of leaves, with his heart hammering and tears streaming down his face. His spectacles were crooked. His tail was shaking. But he was grinning.
“Tom!” he shouted. “Tom, I’m here! I’m coming back! I’m coming to find you! Stay where you are!”
Codette saw her family.
She was standing at the end of her own street.
It was exactly as she’d left it. The tall brick houses, the crooked chestnut tree, the rusty lamp-post with a dent in the base where her brother’s bicycle had hit it. A pale gray September evening, smelling of rain. A yellow square of light in a downstairs window. And on the front step of Number Fourteen, a woman in a green cardigan, with her hair coming loose from its clip, and a small boy in a striped jumper with a dog’s lead in his hand.
“Mum,” said Codette.
It came out as a whisper. She couldn’t feel her legs. She walked down the pavement in a daze, one slow step after another, with her sneakers squeaking on the wet stone and her heart so loud she thought it might crack her ribs.
The woman looked up.
She had been staring at the road, as though she had been staring at it for a very long time. Her face was lined, and drawn, and puffy with weeping. But as her eyes found Codette, standing in the lamplight, with the rain in her hair, the whole thing changed. It opened. It lit. It broke apart with a joy so raw and so naked that Codette couldn’t bear to look.
“Codette,” said her mother.
“Mum—”
“Oh, Codette. Oh, my baby.” She was running. She was down the steps, across the garden, through the gate, with her arms flung out. “Oh, my darling girl. You’re home. You’re home.”
They collided. Codette felt her mother’s arms close around her, and her cardigan, and her smell, soap and tea and wool, and the long, shuddering sob that went through her whole body. She buried her face in her shoulder. She was crying so hard she couldn’t breathe. A small, warm, wriggling weight hit her around the knees, and she looked down, and her brother was there, tugging at her coat, shouting, “Cody! Cody! Cody’s back! I told you! I told you she’d come back!”
“I’m here,” said Codette. “I’m here. I’m here, I’m—”
“We looked everywhere,” said her mother, brokenly. “Everywhere. Every park. Every wood. Your father drove all night. I’ve been out of my mind, I’ve — I’ve been—”
“I’m sorry,” Codette sobbed. “I’m so sorry, Mum, I’m so sorry—”
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now. You’re home. Come inside. Come in, darling. It’s cold. I’ve made your tea. Shepherd’s pie. Your favorite. Come in, come in, come in.”
She tugged at her hand.
The door stood open. Warm light spilled down the steps. Behind it, down the hall, she could see the kitchen, and the table laid for four, and a fire in the grate, and the old gray cat asleep on the rug. She could smell the pie. She could hear, faintly, a radio, a murmur of voices, the whole warm, ordinary, endless music of home.
It was real. It was so real.
She took a step. And another.
And then a thought rose, quietly, at the back of her mind.
Where’s Smile?
She stopped.
“Darling?” said her mother.
“Mum,” said Codette. “There’s — I’ve — I’ve got to—”
“Come inside.”
“I can’t.”
“Of course you can.”
“Mum. Please.” Her voice shook. “I left somebody. Back in the — back in the dark. I was holding his hand. I let go. I didn’t mean to. I just — I need to find him. I promised. I promised I wouldn’t—”
“Codette,” said her mother, very gently, “look at me.”
She looked.
“You’ve been so brave,” said her mother. “You’ve been so brave for so long. You don’t need to go back. Whoever it is, whatever you promised, it can wait. It’s over. You’re home.” She stroked the hair from Codette’s forehead. Her eyes were full of tears. “This is what you wanted. All this time. It’s all you ever wanted. Isn’t it?”
It was.
It was. It was the only thing she had wanted, every day, every hour, every step of the long road: the sound of that voice, the smell of that kitchen, the warmth of those arms. She could stay. She could stay forever. She could close the door on the dark, and the dust, and the blood, and never be afraid again.
She stood on her own front step, with her mother’s hand in hers, and thought about a cheese bun, wrapped in a napkin, in the pocket of her hoodie.
Ninety percent sure it’s a clean bun.
“Yes,” said Codette. “It is what I wanted.”
Her mother smiled.
“But it’s not all I want.”
The smile faltered.
“Mum, I love you.” She said it clearly, and carefully, and with the whole of her heart. “I love you so much. And I’m going to come home. I promise. I’m going to come home as soon as I can. But not like this.” She drew a breath. “I can’t leave him. Not alone. Not in the dark. He’d never leave me.”
She let go.
It was the hardest thing she had ever done.
She felt it go: the hand, the warmth, the smell of soap and wool. She watched her mother’s face begin to crumble, and her brother’s, and the golden light of the doorway, and the little gray cat on the rug. They dissolved like breath on a window. They melted away into the dark. She stood alone in the middle of an empty, silent, leaf-lined corridor, with her palms pressed over her mouth and tears streaming down her face, sobbing so hard she thought she’d break in two.
“Smile!” she cried. “Smile! Where are you?!”
She began to run.
Smile saw a house.
It was a small one. That was the strange part. He’d always imagined, in his wilder moods, a palace, a castle, a vast golden hall. But this was only a cottage: a low, whitewashed, thatched cottage, at the end of a little country lane, with a crooked chimney and a garden gate. The sun was low. The sky was the color of apricots. Honeysuckle climbed the walls.
He stood at the gate, and looked at it, and did not move.
There was a lamp in the window. There was a curl of smoke from the chimney. There was a smell of baking drifting down the lane: warm bread, and woodsmoke, and cinnamon. A rocking chair stood on the porch, with a folded blanket over its arm.
It was the kind of house that said, very plainly, you belong here.
He opened the gate.
Inside was one room, low and snug, with a flagged stone floor and a table by the window and a fire in the hearth. A shelf of books. A kettle singing. And in the corner, under a patchwork quilt, the softest, deepest, plumpest bed he had ever seen: a nest of feather-down and flannel and warm, rumpled sheets, with a pillow in the exact shape of his head.
On the table lay a letter.
He picked it up. It was on thick cream paper, in a clear, firm, official hand. To the Householder, it said. We are pleased to inform you that all outstanding debts owed by the above named party have been paid in full. Any claims by the party known as Nack are hereby rescinded. You are free.
You are free.
His paws were trembling.
He sat down very slowly on the edge of the bed. He ran his hand over the quilt. It was real. It was warm. He could feel the stitching under his fingers. There was a smell of lavender in the pillow. Outside the window, a robin was singing.
Nobody would ever come for him. Nobody would ever demand a thing. He would never be cold, or hungry, or hunted. He would never again lie awake at night, listening for the sound of boots in the lane. He could stay here, in this little white house, in this long, golden evening, and the whole terrible, tiring, endless race would be over.
No debts, he thought. No more running. No more leaving.
A house of my own.
I’m home.
He lay back on the pillow, and closed his eyes.
It took a very long time. A minute, perhaps, or an hour, or a year. The robin sang. The kettle whistled. A bar of gold light moved slowly across the floor. He lay perfectly still, with a feeling in his chest he’d never had before, a vast, soft, wondering peace, like a bird settling on a branch after a lifetime in the air.
And in the stillness, very faintly, somebody called his name.
“Smile?”
His eyes snapped open.
It was a small voice. It was very far away. It came from somewhere outside the cottage, thin and ragged and breathless, and it was so full of fear that for a moment he thought it was a trick.
“Smile! Smile, please! Where are you?!”
He sat up.
“Smile!”
Codette.
He knew that voice. He’d have known it in a crowd of a thousand. He’d have known it in the dark, in a storm, at the bottom of the sea. It was the voice that had said Smile, look at me, in a forest full of yarn. It was the voice that had said I’m not going to leave you, on the back of a swamp.
He stood up.
The cottage trembled. The firelight wavered, and shrank. The scent of baking caught, and flickered, and went out, like a snuffed candle. All around him, the whitewashed walls seemed to lean, very softly, toward him, like the branches of a tree.
Stay, said the cottage.
It didn’t speak. But he heard it anyway, in the creak of the beams, in the slow, soft hush of the fire. Stay. Stay. You’re tired. You’ve done enough. You’ve suffered enough. Stay.
“I know,” said Smile, in a hoarse whisper. “I know. I’m so tired.”
Then rest.
“I want to.”
Then stay.
“I want to.” He was crying, he realized. The tears were running down his face, and into his whiskers, and onto the quilt. “I want to so much. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. A little house. A fire. A bed that doesn’t have a — a landlord in it.” He laughed, a thin, cracked sound. “It’s so pretty.”
Stay.
“But she’s out there.”
Let her go.
“I can’t.”
She’ll be fine.
“She won’t.” He was shaking his head. “She’s lost. She’s frightened. She’s in the dark, and she’s calling for me, and I’ve — I promised. I promised her. I said I’d never leave.” His voice cracked. “I’ve never kept a promise in my life. I’ve never had anybody to keep one for. And now I do. And I—”
It’s only a girl.
“No.”
It’s only a human.
“No,” said Smile.
He stood very straight, in the middle of the little room, with his fists clenched and his chin high and tears pouring down his face. He was shaking from nose to tail. But his eyes were clear, and fierce, and utterly steady.
“She’s not ‘only’ anything,” he said. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
The walls shuddered.
“A house without Codette in it, even if it’s a palace, even if it’s made of gold and roses and every good thing in the world—” His voice broke. He steadied it. “It’s just another cage.”
The cottage screamed.
It was a long, thin, terrible, tearing sound, like a sheet of silk being ripped in half. The walls peeled away. The ceiling blew back like smoke. The fire went out. The quilt dissolved. The robin’s song snapped off in the middle of a note. And Smile, with a sob, with a laugh, with a great, ragged, wondering cry, turned his back on the little white house and its lamp in the window, and flung himself out into the dark.
“Codette!” he shouted. “Codette! I’m here! I’m here! I’m coming!”
They found each other at the heart of the maze.
It was a small round clearing, ringed with black hedge, open to the stars. In the middle of it stood a single tree. It was an old, twisted, silver-barked thing, no taller than Codette, bent nearly double, with a crown of broad green leaves. And from the end of one low branch, glowing like a captured sun, hung a single banana.
It was enormous. It was fat and curved and golden, and it burned with a soft, steady, living light, like a lamp in a cathedral. It lit the whole clearing as bright as day.
They came out of the hedge from four different sides, at the same moment.
Tom, with his fur in tatters and tears on his face. Phillip, with his glasses crooked, dragging a half-eaten length of rope. Codette, her hair in wild disarray, her cheeks streaked with tears. Smile, wild-eyed and gasping, covered in leaves.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other.
Then all four of them were running.
They collided in the middle of the clearing in a great, whooping, sobbing, laughing tangle of arms and fur and tears. Tom lifted Phillip clean off his feet. Phillip clung to his neck. Codette threw herself at Smile, and Smile caught her, and held her so tight her feet left the ground, and for a long, wordless moment, nobody said anything at all.
“I heard you,” said Tom, hoarsely. “I heard you calling.”
“I heard you,” said Phillip.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“I thought I’d lost you.”
“I saw my mum.”
“I saw a library.”
“I saw—” Codette stopped. She was still clutching Smile. Her face was wet. “I saw everything I wanted.”
“Me too,” said Smile, very quietly.
She drew back, and looked at him. He looked back. In the glow of the Sun Banana, his face was pale and drawn and streaked with tears, and his eyes were enormous and bright. He lifted one paw, hesitantly, and wiped a smear of leaf-mold from her cheek.
“I came back,” he said.
“I know.”
“I turned around.”
“I know,” said Codette. “So did I.”
Tom coughed. “It’s very touching,” he said, wiping his nose. “It really is. But somebody ought to pick the banana.”
They all looked at it.
“Who?” said Phillip.
“We all do,” said Codette.
They reached up together. Four hands, two paws and two small, scarred, determined ones, closed around the golden fruit, and it came free in a soft pale flash, like a firefly closing its wings.
It lay in her arms, warm and heavy, humming gently. It smelled of summer, and honey, and rain on dry earth.
“Right,” said Smile unsteadily. “Let’s go and see a witch.”
She was waiting for them at the garden gate.
She sat on a low stone bench in the moonlight, with her teapot beside her and her hat tipped back, swinging her little feet. She looked up as they came out of the hedge, and her whole face lit with delight.
“Ah,” said the Cat Witch. “There they are. All four. I knew you’d do it. I had a bet with myself. I’d have lost a perfectly good scone.”
“We got it,” said Tom.
“I can see that.”
“It was — that was—” Phillip seemed unable to finish. “That was awful.”
“Yes, dear. It generally is.” She patted the bench. “Sit. Sit. Let me see it.”
Codette laid the banana in her lap.
The old woman bent over it. She touched it, very gently, with one gnarled finger, and a long ripple of golden light ran up her arm. A soft sigh escaped her. Her eyes were suddenly bright with something that looked, in the moonlight, very like grief.
“A hundred years,” she murmured. “I’d almost forgotten how beautiful it was.”
“Is it—” said Codette.
“It’s ripe.” She looked up. Her eyes were clear and bright and old. “Now. You’ve done what I asked. You’ve given up the thing you wanted most, for the sake of someone else. I’m very proud of every one of you.” She drew a long breath. “Who’d like to go first?”
Nobody spoke.
Then Codette took a step forward.
“I will,” she said.
“Very well, dear. What’s your wish?”
Her mouth was dry. She’d rehearsed it a thousand times, over the long road, in the dark, in the heat, in her sleep: a thousand clever, careful, perfect little sentences. Now they’d all gone. She was left with one thing, plain and bare and simple.
“A door,” she said. “A door that’ll take me home. To my family.”
The Cat Witch smiled.
“Of course,” she said. “Of course it is.”
She broke off a tiny sliver of the banana, no bigger than a thumbnail, and laid it on Codette’s palm. It glowed, and sank into her skin, and she felt a warm, soft, humming sensation run through her whole body, from her head to her heels. “It’s done,” said the old woman. “Not tonight. When the time is right. But it’s yours.”
Codette let out a long, shaky breath.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Next.”
“Me,” said Tom. He stepped forward. He drew himself up. He seemed, for a moment, almost to have grown. “I’d like to wish for — I’d like — enough strength. That’s it. Just enough. To protect the ones I love.”
“Strength?” said the Cat Witch.
“Not to win. Not to fight. Not — I don’t need a manual. I’ve got that. I just—” He swallowed. “I never want to stand there again, and watch somebody I love go down, and be too weak to stop it.”
“A fine wish,” said the old woman softly. “Very fine.”
She gave him a piece. He swallowed it. A shiver ran through him. His chest swelled, and his shoulders squared, and his old, scarred, cheerful face, for one brief second, looked as though it had been lit from inside.
“Phillip?”
“Oh!” said Phillip. “Yes. Right. Well. I — magic.” He blushed. “I’d like to be able to do magic. Real magic. Not for me. I mean, not only for me. I’d like to learn how to use it to—” He hesitated. “To help. People. Whoever needs it. I’d like to be of use.”
“A teaspoon at a time?” said the Cat Witch, kindly.
“A teaspoon at a time,” said Phillip. “To begin.”
“That,” said the old woman, “is the best wish I’ve heard in three hundred years.”
She gave him a piece. He took it in both paws, with enormous reverence, and ate it, and for a moment he stood perfectly still, with his eyes shut and his face lifted to the stars. A tiny silver spark flickered between his fingertips. It leapt. It danced. It spun into a single, perfect, glittering spiral.
“Oh,” said Phillip.
And then he sat down very suddenly in the grass.
“Smile,” said the Cat Witch.
He hadn’t moved.
He stood a little apart from the others, in the shadow of the hedge, with his paws knotted in front of him and his eyes on the ground. He’d been silent since they came out of the maze. His face was very pale. And for the first time since she’d known him, Codette thought, he looked afraid of something other than danger.
“Come, dear,” said the old woman, gently. “It’s your turn.”
He came slowly across the grass. He stopped in front of the bench. For a long moment, he stood there, saying nothing, with his head bowed and his fingers working.
“Everybody thinks,” he said, in a low, rough voice, “that I’m going to ask for the debt.”
“Do they?”
“Forty coins. Nack. The moon’s almost round. It’d be the sensible thing. It’s what I came for.” He gave a small, broken laugh. “I’ve been planning it for weeks. I had a whole speech.”
“And?”
“And I don’t want it.”
Nobody spoke.
“I don’t,” said Smile. He lifted his head. His eyes were enormous. He was looking, not at the old woman, but over her shoulder, at a small, still, tear-streaked figure in a yellow hoodie. “I’ve been thinking about it. In there. In the dark. About what I’d wish, if I could have anything. And I realized I only want one thing. I only ever really wanted one thing. I didn’t know what it was until I saw a house, and I didn’t want it.”
“Smile,” whispered Codette.
“I wish—” His voice shook. He drew a long breath. “I wish to become human.”
The silence fell like a knife.
“I wish to be human,” said Smile, “so I can stay by Codette’s side. So I can go home with her. So I can walk beside her, in her world, on two legs, like a person, and never have to say goodbye.”
Codette couldn’t breathe.
She stared at him. He stared back. His face was soft, and open, and terrified, and absolutely resolute. A single tear ran down his cheek and fell.
“That’s all,” said Smile. “That’s it. That’s my wish.”
“Smile,” said Tom, in a strangled voice.
“Oh, my dear,” said the Cat Witch.
She had gone very white.
She sat, perfectly still, on the stone bench, with the Sun Banana glowing in her lap and her hands clenched on the stick. She was staring at Smile. Her eyes were wide, and bright, and horrified, and something in her face, some age-old, buried, terrible certainty, rose slowly to the surface and looked out.
“Oh, you poor, foolish, beautiful boy,” she said. “Oh, no. No. No.”
“What?” said Smile. “What is it? What did I—”
“That wish,” said the Cat Witch, in a low, shaking voice. “Of all the wishes in the world. That is the one thing I cannot grant.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s forbidden.”
The wind had stopped. The stars seemed to hold their breath.
“It’s the oldest rule,” said the old woman. “The first one I ever made. A cat may not wish to become a human. Ever. It’s written in the foundation of the Kingdom. It’s carved on the bones of the mountain. It’s forbidden. And when it’s spoken—” She drew a breath. It rattled in her throat. “When it’s spoken aloud, in my presence, on my mountain, with a Sun Banana in my hands—”
“What?” said Tom. “What happens?”
She looked up.
“The Dragon wakes,” said the Cat Witch.
The ground shuddered.
It began with a low, deep, subterranean rumble, like thunder under the earth. A crack opened in the flagstones at the foot of the bench, with a long, sharp, splintering sound. The air filled with a smell of smoke and hot metal. The glowing bananas on the mountainside flared, all together, from gold to white, and a great, silent, shivering radiance spilled out over the plateau.
The Sun Banana, in the old woman’s lap, burst into flame.
It was a pure gold fire, bright as the sun, without smoke or sound. It ran up her arms, her shoulders, her neck. It engulfed her cloak. It sprang up around her hat in a blazing crown, and her small, bent body stood outlined in a pillar of light.
She didn’t scream. She sat perfectly upright, with her head high, and her old, bright, wise eyes fixed on Smile’s face.
“Listen to me,” she said.
Her voice was very calm. It rang out over the roar of the fire like a bell.
“Listen. All of you. There isn’t much time. I made that rule for a reason. I made it a very long time ago, in a sorrow I’ve never told. There’s a curse. A Banana Dragon. It sleeps beneath my mountain. It’s bound to my wish-fruit. It wakes whenever the forbidden thing is asked.” The flames climbed higher. “I can’t stop it. I’ve tried. I—”
“Stop!” cried Codette. “Stop, please, take it back, he didn’t know! He didn’t know!”
“It’s too late, child.”
“Then — then unwish it! Undo it! There must be a—”
“There isn’t.”
“There has to be!”
“There isn’t, dearest.” The old woman smiled at her. It was a very sweet smile, and very sad. “It’s the law. It can’t be unspoken. And there’s one thing more. One last thing, and you must hear it. It’s the heart of the curse.” She turned her face toward Smile. Her eyes burned like twin stars. “Whoever makes the forbidden wish—”
The roar of the flames swallowed her voice. She raised it, and it rang out through the fire, clear and terrible.
“—must die before the wish is fulfilled.”
“NO!” screamed Codette.
The Cat Witch lifted her hand. A golden light ran along it, and flared, and burst, and the whole old, bent, ragged, laughing figure of her, hat and cloak and teapot and smile, dissolved in a roar of light.
The mountain shook.
It heaved. It split. A thousand glowing bananas burst from their stalks and rained across the plateau like falling stars. The ground cracked from the garden gate to the foot of the hedge. The banana house groaned, and split down the middle, and fell apart in two great halves, and out of the broken center, in a pillar of golden flame, something rose.
It was enormous.
It was a dragon. It was the size of a cathedral: a vast, serpentine, golden-scaled thing, with a long, whipping tail and wings as wide as a battlefield. Its scales shone like beaten gold. Its claws were like scythes. Its eyes were two blazing furnaces, and a mane of living fire streamed down its neck. It rose into the night sky with a roar that shook the stars, and wheeled once above them, trailing flame, and then it lowered its great, horned, terrible head, down, and down, and down, until it hung directly above the little group of four, in a rolling, burning cloud.
Nobody moved.
Nobody even breathed.
The Dragon’s gaze swept slowly over them. Over Tom, frozen, with his arm around Phillip. Over Phillip, white as paper. Over Codette, on her knees in the dirt, with her hands over her mouth.
And then it stopped on Smile.
He stood quite still. He hadn’t run. He hadn’t flinched. He stood in the middle of the burning plateau, small and white and shaking, looking up into those blazing, ancient, merciless eyes, and he did not look away.
For a long, endless moment, the Dragon and the cat regarded each other.
Then the great head bent. It bent, slowly, deliberately, until the vast, gleaming muzzle hung only a few feet from Smile’s face. Smoke curled from its nostrils. Its breath was a furnace. And out of that cavernous, fiery throat, in a voice that was not a roar, not a bellow, not the voice of any beast, but a small, bright, cracked, familiar, human voice, thin and sweet and horribly calm, came a single sentence.
“The one who made the forbidden wish,” said the Dragon, in the Cat Witch’s voice, “must die.”