Read Mixed Magics: Four Tales of Chrestomanci for Free Online Page B

tomato and some lettuce, and they did have Millie’s five shillings. He followed Mr. Roberts downstairs, thinking of doughnuts and station pies.
    Luckily there was a cab just clopping along the road as they reached the front gate. It was one of those old-fashioned horse-drawn hackneys, like a big upright box on wheels, with the driver sitting up on top of the box. It was shabby and the horse was scrawny, but Mr. Roberts hailed it with strong relief and paid the driver for them as the boys climbed in. “You can just catch the twelve-thirty,” he said. “Hurry it along, driver.”
    He shut the door and the cab set off. It was smelly and jolting, and its wheels squeaked, but Cat felt it was worth it just to get away so soon. It was not far to the station. Cat sat back in the half dark inside the box and felt his mind go empty with relief. He did not want to think of Gabriel de Witt again for a very long time. He thought about station pies and corned beef sandwiches instead.
    But half an hour of jolting, smelling, and squeaking later, something began puzzling him. He turned to the other boy in the dimness beside him. “Where were we going?”
    Tonino—if that was his name; Cat found he was not at all sure—shook his head uncertainly. “We are traveling northeast,” he said. “I feel sick.”
    “Keep swallowing then,” Cat told him. One thing he seemed to be sure of was that he was supposed to look after this boy, whoever he was. “It can’t be that far now,” he said soothingly. Then he wondered what, or where, was “not far.” He was a little puzzled to find he had no idea.
    At least he seemed to be right about its not being far. Five minutes later, just as the other boy’s swallowing was getting quite desperate, the cab squealed to a stop with a great yell of “Whoa there!” from the driver up above, and the door beside Cat was pulled open. Cat blinked out into gray light upon a dirty pavement and a row of old, old houses as far as he could see in both directions. We must be in the outskirts of London, he thought. While Cat puzzled about this, the driver said, “Two blondie lads, just like you said, governor.”
    The person who had opened the door leaned around it to peer in at them. They found themselves face-to-face with a smallish elderly man in a dirty black gown. The peering round brown eyes and the brown whiskery face, full of lines and wrinkles, were so like a monkey’s that it was only the soft black priestly sort of hat on the man’s head that showed he was a man and not a monkey. Or probably not. Cat found, in some strange way, that he was not sure of anything.
    The monkey’s flat mouth spread in a grin. “Ah, yes, the right two,” the man said, “as ordered.” He had a dry, snapping voice, which snapped out, “Out you get then. Make haste now.”
    While Cat and Tonino obediently scrambled out to find themselves in a long street of the old tumbledown houses—all slightly different, like cottages built for a town—the man in the black gown handed up a gold coin to the driver. “Charmed to take you back,” he muttered. It was hard to tell if he was speaking to himself or to the driver, but the driver touched his hat to him anyway with great respect, cracked his whip, and drove away, squealing and clattering. The cab seemed to move away from them up the tumbledown street in jerks, and each jerk seemed to make it harder to see. Before it quite reached the end of the street, it had jerked out of sight entirely.
    They stared after it. “Why did that happen?” Tonino asked.
    “Belongs to the future, doesn’t it?” the monkeylike man snapped. Again he might have been talking to himself. But he seemed to notice them then. “Come along now. No stupid questions. It’s not every day I hire two apprentices from the poorhouse, and I want you indoors earning your keep. Come along.”
    He turned and hurried into the house beside them. They followed, quite bewildered, past an unpainted front