Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

  Gwyneth Rees is half Welsh and half English and grew up in Scotland. She went to Glasgow University and qualified as a doctor in 1990. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist but has now stopped practising so that she can write full-time. She is the author of Mermaid Magic, Fairy Dust, Fairy Treasure, Fairy Dreams, Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze and, for older readers, The Mum Hunt, The Mum Detective and My Mum’s from Planet Pluto. She lives in London with her two cats.

  The Mum Hunt won the Younger Novel category of the Red House Children’s Book Award 2004.

  Visit www.gwynethrees.com

  Also by Gwyneth Rees

  Mermaid Magic

  Fairy Dust

  Fairy Treasure

  Fairy Dreams

  Fairy Gold

  Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

  For older readers

  The Mum Hunt

  The Mum Detective

  The Mum Surprise

  (for World Book Day 2006)

  My Mum’s from Planet Pluto

  The Making of May

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  First published 2007 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2007 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-47072-8 in Adobe Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47073-5 in Adobe Digital Editions format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47074-2 in Microsoft Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47075-9 in Mobipocket format

  Copyright © Gwyneth Rees 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Samuel Hearn 2004, 2007

  The right of Gwyneth Rees and Samuel Hearn to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  This book is for my almost-nephew, Ethan, with lots of love

  I would like to acknowledge the input of the following people and cats: Sarah Davies, Alice Burden and the rest of the brilliant team at Macmillan Children’s Books, Caroline Walsh, Polly Nolan, Rebecca McNally, Caroline Brown, Matthew Howard, the late (great) Tani Rees, Sooty Hyland and Matilda Rees, and the very present Magnus and Hattie Rees, Chloe Christie, Sparky Howard and the real Tigger-Louise.

  1

  Cosmo hated it when his mother gave him one of her really thorough washes. Her tongue was relentless as it cleaned his face, under his chin, the top of his head and even inside his ears. That bit was ticklish and Cosmo always wriggled, but his mother just placed her big white paw on top of him to stop him getting away.

  Cosmo’s mother was called India and she was a beautiful, pure white, short-haired cat with emerald-green eyes. Her great-great-great-grandmother had been a cat of a high pedigree flown to this country from India when her human family had moved here.

  ‘Are there witch-cats in India too?’ Cosmo asked her now, as India finished licking and moved back to inspect her work.

  ‘Of course,’ his mother answered. ‘And in China and Africa and Australia and every other country in the world. Now sit there and keep clean until your father arrives. If I see you move from that spot, there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘I’m glad your ancestors came from India,’ Cosmo chattered. ‘Because it’s such a beautiful name. It would have been awful if your ancestors came from a country with a horrible name, wouldn’t it?’

  His mother just smiled and said that if they had then she wouldn’t have been named after it.

  ‘You’d have been named Snowie or something, wouldn’t you, Mother?’ Cosmo said. ‘Like that white cat down the road.’

  ‘I don’t think I would ever have been named anything as common as that,’ India replied. Sometimes she found herself sounding a little bit snobbish although she tried not to be. She was always having to remind herself that, just because she had pedigreed ancestors, it didn’t make her any better than other cats, especially in this family, when all that mattered was whether you were a witch-cat or not. And she wasn’t.

  She looked at her six-month-old kitten with pride. Cosmo was nearly all black like his father, but had white paws and a white tip to his tail. Cosmo was her first kitten – an only one – and India thought him so beautiful that it constantly surprised her that other cats in the street didn’t stop to admire him more than they did.

  Today was the day India had been dreading ever since Cosmo had been born. If only Cosmo’s father, Mephisto, was an ordinary cat like her instead of belonging to a long line of witch-cats.

  ‘Mother, tell me again what’s going to happen today,’ Cosmo said.

  His mother tried to sound calm as she replied, ‘You are to be tested to see if you are a witch-cat like your father or just an ordinary cat like me.’ The witch-cat test involved mixing a drop of a special clear magic potion with a drop of kitten blood and seeing if the blood changed colour from red to green.

  ‘I hope I’m a witch-cat!’ Cosmo said enthusiastically. Witch-cats were different to ordinary cats. Only witch-cats could assist witches with their spells and get to ride on a broomstick and do all the other exciting things Cosmo’s father had told him about.

  India hoped he was too, even though she had never liked the witch Mephisto worked with who was called Sybil.

  It was a good thing to be a witch-cat though and, if Cosmo passed the test, India knew that Mephisto would be very proud and pleased. Witch-cats were becoming quite rare and difficult to get hold of and witches paid a lot of money to buy new ones. As well as helping generally in all witching activities, witch-cats were especially valued for their powerful sneezes. India hadn’t noticed anything special about Cosmo’s sneezes so far, but Mephisto had told her that didn’t mean anything. A witch-cat sneeze was only magical if it was mixed with the other ingredients of a spell, and even then the sneeze of a kitten like Cosmo might not contain that much magic power. That was why the only true way to determine whether a kitten was going to turn into a witch-cat was to perform the special blood test.

  India turned to look at the huge black cat entering their home through the gap in the garage door. Mephisto had the shiniest jet-black coat of any cat India had ever seen, and the darkest-green eyes. His big paws were twice the size of her delicate white ones. No wonder she had fallen in love with him when they’d met by the goldfish pond last year.

  ‘So?’ Mephisto asked Cosmo. ‘Are you ready?’

  Cosmo twitched his whiskers nervously. He greatly admired his
father, but he was also very much in awe of him. Cosmo knew how important it was that his father had a kitten who could follow in his footsteps, and he also knew he could only do that if he was a witch-cat.

  Cosmo asked, ‘Isn’t Mother coming?’

  India walked up to her son and gave him a last affectionate lick on top of his head. ‘I’ll see you later. I am not welcome in the witch’s house. You know that.’ India shivered at the thought of getting that close to Sybil. It was silly – and something that had caused a lot of arguments between herself and Mephisto – but there was just something about Sybil that made India’s fur stand on end.

  ‘Will I be welcome?’ Cosmo asked, anxiously glancing across at his father. ‘I’ve never been allowed inside before.’

  ‘Today is different,’ Mephisto said. ‘Today is a special day. Come on. My mistress is waiting for us.’

  Sybil was getting her witch-cat potion ready. That morning she had been to the special witches’ section of the local supermarket to get some last-minute ingredients, and she was still wearing her human clothes. She decided it was time she got changed.

  She went upstairs to her bedroom and took off the clothes she had stolen from various washing lines – she didn’t see why she should have to pay for this disgusting human clothing – and stood looking at herself in the long mirror, admiring her green belly button and bright-green toenails and fingernails. She went to her wardrobe and flung open the door. She had already decided to wear a red outfit today. That way, if the kitten spilt any of its blood on her then it wouldn’t show.

  Sybil smiled when she heard a familiar miaow from downstairs. Mephisto was here. She knew she mustn’t get her hopes up, because Mephisto’s kitten had an ordinary cat for a mother, but she was hopeful that it would still pass the witch-cat test. She could do with another witch-cat to help her with her spells.

  ‘Just coming, my precious!’ she called downstairs to Mephisto. He was more precious than he knew, she thought. If it wasn’t for Mephisto, Sybil wouldn’t be able to operate her spells-and-potions business at all – though she made sure Mephisto never knew that.

  Mephisto was waiting for her in the kitchen. He had originally belonged to Sybil’s grandmother and had been inherited by Sybil when the old witch had died. Sybil had had an idea that she could breed from him and sell the kittens to make an enormous profit, but Mephisto had ruined her plan by going all potty over that stuck-up white cat in the garage. Sybil had wanted to get rid of India, but she hadn’t quite dared. She had seen an item on the Witch News telling how, in some parts of the country, witch-cats were starting to select their owners rather than the other way round. Sybil wasn’t prepared to risk upsetting Mephisto too much, though she doubted he had any new-fangled ideas of that sort since he still called her ‘mistress’ and believed that a witch-cat must always remain loyal to his witch, no matter what. Sybil had seen a film once about a butler who was so loyal to his master that he wouldn’t give him up to the police even when it turned out he was a murderer. Mephisto was like that, Sybil thought. Though she wasn’t quite sure how he’d react if he found out the truth about her.

  Still . . . if she was careful, there was no reason why he should find out, was there?

  Cosmo followed his father through the witch’s cat flap. He was used to cat flaps, because his friend Mia, who lived next door, had one and she often invited him inside to play. Mia’s cat flap was see-through like a window, so you could peek into the kitchen from outside to check there were no humans about before entering. Sybil’s cat flap had a cat-sized poster pasted on to it, which showed a cat being strangled by a pair of green hands. Mephisto had told him it was just a deterrent to warn off strange cats, but Cosmo still got a fright every time he saw it.

  Inside the kitchen Cosmo stayed on the doormat while Mephisto jumped up on to the kitchen table and miaowed his loudest miaow.

  From the ground, the figure that entered the kitchen looked enormous. She was dressed entirely in bright red and her purple hair had rubber bats hanging from it. Rubber bats were quite popular with witches as hair accessories.

  The witch beamed a big welcoming smile at the kitten. ‘So,’ she said in a loud voice. ‘You are Mephisto’s offspring!’

  ‘What’s an offspring?’ Cosmo asked his father nervously.

  ‘It’s another name for a kitten,’ Mephisto replied. ‘Now hush! This is a very serious occasion.’ Mephisto’s eyes looked different, Cosmo thought. Suddenly he realized that his father was nervous too – even though Mephisto was never normally afraid of anything.

  ‘Well, Mephisto,’ the witch addressed him, her dark eyes gleaming slightly. ‘Are you ready to put your kitten to the test?’

  ‘I am, mistress.’

  ‘Then you know what to do.’

  Sybil placed a rack containing two test tubes on the table beside Mephisto. One held a clear liquid. The other was empty. ‘All I need is the final ingredient and the potion will be ready,’ she said, shoving a pot of pepper in Mephisto’s direction.

  ‘What’s the final ingredient?’ Cosmo asked his father anxiously.

  ‘A witch-cat sneeze,’ Mephisto replied, leaning over the pepper pot and taking a deep breath. His black nose immediately started twitching and he quickly placed it just above the test tube with the liquid inside. ‘A-A-A-TISHOO!’ he sneezed, and Cosmo could see little droplets of the sneeze falling into the tube.

  ‘SPLENDID!’ Sybil congratulated him as the liquid started to bubble and green smoke began wafting out from the top. She turned to Cosmo. ‘Now, my pretty . . .’ She had been saying that a lot since seeing The Wizard of Oz on television the previous Christmas. The wicked witch in that film was one of her favourite characters and Sybil loved the way she called everybody ‘my pretty’ and cackled loudly afterwards. Sybil had been trying to perfect the cackle too, but she wasn’t very good at it yet. She pointed at Cosmo. ‘Get up on the table and hold out your paw.’

  2

  With Mephisto standing next to him on the table, Cosmo held up his paw as Sybil approached them with a large needle. Cosmo began to tremble as his father licked the top of his head and told him to remain still, so it wouldn’t hurt too much.

  ‘Ouch!’ Cosmo tried to pull his paw away, but Sybil held it firmly over the empty tube until the blood droplet she had drawn trickled down into it. Then she let go of Cosmo’s paw and, using a glass pipette, sucked up some of her magic potion from the other tube and squirted it into the one with the kitten blood in it.

  Cosmo was licking his hurt paw and not even looking at the test tubes when Mephisto said, ‘Look! It’s changing colour!’

  Cosmo looked. Inside the glass tube his blood was changing from red to green.

  ‘Look at the chart! Look at the chart!’ Sybil cried out, holding the test tube against a shiny plastic-backed card on which were rectangles of different shades of green, from faint wishy-washy green, to medium green, right up to bright witch-green itself, which corresponded to one hundred per cent witch-cat.

  Cosmo’s blood was the same colour as one of the green rectangles towards the end of the row – only two shades less green than the brightest witch-green of all. ‘He’s eighty per cent pure,’ Sybil screamed in delight. ‘That means I’ve got another witch-cat! Ha! Ha!’

  Cosmo looked at his father and saw that he was pleased, so he couldn’t help feeling pleased too. But all the same, he didn’t feel as excited as he’d expected. There was just something about Sybil that scared him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mephisto asked him, as Cosmo jumped down from the table.

  ‘To tell Mother,’ Cosmo replied, shooting out through the cat flap before his father could call him back.

  India was at the goldfish pond where she was deep in conversation with Professor Felina. The professor was Mia’s mother, who lived next door to them with a human called Amy. Professor Felina was a very clever tortoiseshell cat who was so studious that she rarely ventured outside. Felina was a professor of human behaviour – or
Humanology as she liked to call it – and she had written several books on the subject.

  ‘I didn’t expect to see you this far away from your library,’ India had said, when she came across the older cat staring down at the orange fish streaking about in the water.

  ‘I’ve decided I need to start taking more exercise,’ the professor replied, lifting her head and blinking her big amber eyes at India. ‘I’ve been putting on weight and Amy has been buying in some sort of low-calorie cat-food. Of course I haven’t touched it and she’s feeding me boiled chicken now instead, but I am a little worried that I might be a trifle on the large side. What do you think?’

  India had always thought that the professor was a rather plump cat, but she was far too polite to say so. ‘Well, you do have a very thick coat compared to me, and that’s bound to make you look fatter,’ she said tactfully.

  The two cats patted the water a bit together, but they were too busy talking to try very hard to catch a fish.

  ‘How’s Mia?’ India asked. ‘I heard that Amy decided to keep her as company for you.’ Mia was Felina’s only remaining kitten from her last litter. The other two had gone off to live with Amy’s sister – also a great cat lover – when they had reached the age of four months.

  ‘Very well, thank you, though I’m worried she might not have inherited much of my intelligence. She really can be very silly at times.’ Felina frowned.

  ‘All kittens are silly,’ India purred, thinking about her own. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’

  ‘How is Cosmo?’

  Now it was India’s turn to frown as she told Felina about the witch-cat test and the bad feeling she had always had about Sybil.

  Felina wasn’t a witch-cat herself, but she knew all about the subject from her extensive reading. ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry too much about that, India. It’s a documented fact that no witch can harm a cat. So if Cosmo is a witch-cat, he’ll be perfectly safe with Sybil. Safer than he’d be with a lot of humans. It’s all explained in one of my encyclopedias.’