Stealer of Souls by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

Wild service tree leaf, Cat thought, and wondered a little how he knew about trees. He looked sadly at the cluster of frail, quivering, greenish shapes gathered by the base of the lamp and realised that Tonino had been right to be doubtful in the first place. The green shapes might once have been enchanters – Cat thought Tonino was right about that – but they were not ghosts. These beings were soft, helpless and bewildered. It was like asking newly hatched butterflies for help.

“I don’t think they can help,” he said. “They don’t even know what’s happened to them.”

Tonino sighed. “They do feel awfully old,” he agreed. “But they feel new too. We shall have to help them instead. Make them hide from Master Spiderman.”

He tried to catch the old, stunted leaf, but it fluttered away from his fingers, frantically. This seemed to alarm the rest. They all fluttered and trembled and moved in a glowing group to safety behind the tin jug.

“Leave off! You’re frightening them!” Cat said. As he said it, he heard a sort of scuffling from behind him, at the end of the room. He and Tonino both whipped round to look.

There, glowing faintly among the draped cobwebs, another leaf-shaped thing, a big one, was struggling among the clinging, dusty threads. It was struggling even more frantically than the stunted leaf had struggled to get away from Tonino, but every flap and wriggle only brought it further into the midst of the tangled webs and lower and lower towards the black cannister.

“This is the dead enchanter!” Tonino said. “Oh, quickly! Help it!”

Cat got up slowly. He was rather afraid of the thing. It was like the times when a bird gets into your bedroom – a panic that was desperately catching – but when he saw the thing suddenly turn into a bean and plummet towards the black cannister he raced to the end of the room and pushed his hands nervously into the grey tangled shrouds of cobweb. He was just in time to deflect it with the edge of his left hand. The bean pinged against the cannister and bounced out on to the floor. Cat scooped it up. The instant it was in his hand, the bean split and grew and became a bigger, brighter and more pointed leaf-shape than any of the others. Cat carried it, whirring between his hands, and deposited it carefully beside the rest, where it lay beside the others as part of a transparent, pulsing, living group, shining under the lamp. Like a shoal of fish, Cat thought.

“He’s coming!” gasped Tonino. “Make them escape!”

Cat heard the door at the top of the steps opening. He flapped his hands at the cluster of leaf-shapes. “Shoo!” he whispered. “Hide somewhere!” All the leaf-shapes flinched from his hands but, maddeningly, they all stayed where they were, hovering behind the tin jug.

“Oh, go!” Tonino implored them as Master Spiderman came storming down the steps. But they would not move.

“What are you boys playing at?” Master Spiderman demanded.

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