The Further Adventures Of Gobbolino And The Little Wooden Horse

17 THE MAGIC CIRCLE

Gobbolino and the little wooden horse waited only long enough to hear the first snore from the sleeping witch. Then they fled from the cavern down the mountainside in the first rays of the sun, their hearts throbbing with anxiety.

They fully expected to arrive too late, and to find the good priest had been frizzled up in trying to cross the circle of magic fire. As they ran they met a few late bats, making their way home, and sure enough, some of them flying high had seen the old man advancing across the plain, and these were triumphantly certain that this must have been his fate.

"Yes! We saw him coming! And, yes, it was the priest from the church and none other! And, yes, if he has arrived he has probably been frizzled up by now! And serve him right, the horrid old man! Why couldn’t he let us alone? He can’t complain about us any morel We aren’t going back to his old church ever again! We don’t want to! We are quite comfortable where we are, with nobody flapping cloths at us, or shooting us with pellets if we dare to fly about outside! And those horrid, noisy old bells? We couldn’t move without their jangling, and whoever wants to hear them again?

"The young ones? Yes, they are grumbling and complaining outside the magic ring, but there aren’t many of them, and they ought to have come in with the rest of us. As far as we can tell they are making themselves some kind of homes in the rabbit burrows. Serve the priest right, we say, if he has met with the fate he deserves! The witch isn’t such a tiresome hag as she might seem!"

Gobbolino and the little wooden horse did not stop to listen to them. They were feeling more and more concerned for the old priest, and fairly galloped down the last part of the track, cutting and bruising themselves on the rough stones, and looking always ahead of them, where the pink flames of the magic fire had faded into the daylight and could no longer be seen.

And as they rounded the last corner before the mountain merged into the plain they came suddenly upon the old priest, not fifty yards beyond the rocks; his kind face broke into smiles as he saw them, and he held out his hands in delight at finding them safe and sound.

He was hurrying towards them when Gobbolino and the little wooden horse stopped short in their tracks and screamed at him to stop too, but a crowd of young bats flocked out of the rabbit burrows and twittered round his head.

It seemed at first as if they were warning him of the secret danger lying between him and the mountain, but soon it became apparent that on the contrary they were deafening his ears to the cries of Gobbolino and the little wooden horse. With shrill screams they were reproaching him, and blaming him for their exclusion from the mountain caves, and the homeless plight in which they found themselves. He struggled on, brushing them good-humouredly from his face and head.

"No! No!" Gobbolino cried out to him. "Don’t come any nearer! You will be burned alive!"

"There is a magic circle round the mountain!" the little wooden horse said. "The witch made it! You mustn’t come any closer!"

The priest could hardly hear their warning for the bats that were buzzing around his head.

"Throw us the blessing! Throw us the blessing!" Gobbolino urged. He knew by the warmth under their feet that they were very close to the edge of the spell.

"Throw it high in the air! Throw it very high!" the little wooden horse directed him, as the priest took the ear out of his pocket. He took a step or two forward in order to hurl it towards them.

"No! No!" cried Gobbolino. "Go back! Go back! You will be frizzled to pieces if you come any nearer! Throw it as high as you can!"

They danced on the edge of the spell while the priest, raising his arm to throw the little wooden ear, brushed away the swarming bats.

A small morning breeze came gusting across the plain, picking up sand and the odd leaf and tossing the priest's cassock about his legs.

He shook his right arm free of the bats.

"Higher! Throw it higher!" called Gobbolino and the little wooden horse.

The bats pettishly lost interest and flew to the ground, where they sat about on the stones like little black goblins.

The priest hurled the wooden ear high into the air.

At the same moment the breeze hurtled round the rocks and snatched up the wooden fragment like a leaf. Up it soared into the sky, turning over and over as if it had been made of paper.

The priest ran after it. Gobbolino and the little wooden horse dashed forward to catch it as it fell. All three collided, and met where the magic circle tinged the earth with a warm, invisible glow.

In this glow they all stood for a moment, one opposite the other, their feet warm, but not uncomfortable — no sign of frizzling, none of burning, though the bats on their stones squeaked with dismay, and the ear of the little wooden horse fell harmlessly to the ground.

"Throw it higher!" called Gobbolino and the little wooden horse.

The priest stooped down and picked it up. He was now standing inside the ring of magic fire, and he handled with interest the scorched morsel of wood that had been the ear of the little wooden horse.

"I scorched it when I threw it over the circle," the wooden horse explained. "I thought it would be completely burnt up!"

Seeing that the three of them were safe, the young bats tried to follow them across the circle, to the mountain. They hoped for the opportunity to find their way into the caves with the rest of their relations, but they very soon retreated, squeaking with pain, as their ears and toes and wings met invisible hot flames, so powerful that one could smell the singeing of their fur.

The hullabaloo they made brought the older bats out of their bedrooms, and a dozen or more came flying from the caverns to find the cause of the commotion.

"Those people went through the magic fire!" the younger bats squeaked, sucking their burnt toes. "Not one of them was burnt, not one! But when we tried to follow them we were driven back by the most dreadful flames!"

"Only the perfectly good can go through witches’ fire!" said the bats wisely "It serves you right! You will just have to go on living outside in the rabbit holes!" and they went back to their caverns.

The younger bats sat down and cried.

The priest, the little wooden horse and Gobbolino looked at each other in perfect astonishment.

"If it is quite true that we can go through unhurt we might just be able to help them," said the little wooden horse, advancing very cautiously across the warm circle of the magic ring.

"And then we must go home!" said Gobbolino, who could hardly wait to put the Hurricane Mountains far behind him. But he too went forward to help his friend, and the priest did not hesitate to join them.

A dozen bats crowded on to the back of the little wooden horse. More clung to Gobbolino’s fur, hiding themselves in the ruff round his neck. The rest crept into the folds of the old priest’s cassock.

The little wooden horse put on his ear again.

Together they walked quietly back to the slopes of the mountain, the little bats squealing with joy and gratitude, and praising their rescuers at the tops of their voices.

There was ample room for double their number to live in the caves, which soon resounded to their chattering and squeaking and their noisy thanks.

The older bats were quite impressed; and sent a delegation to call on the rescuers.

"Thank you for helping our careless children!" they said politely. "It is more than they deserved; but now they can see for themselves that Good is more powerful than Evil. If we can do anything in our turn to help you, we will be glad to be of service."

Gobbolino and the little wooden horse remembered how the bats had flown them across the plain from the village; and longed to ask them to do it again. They were both tired and longing to go home; but the bats could hardly carry the priest as well as themselves, besides which Gobbolino could not put out of his mind the sad picture of the old witch waking to find herself alone in the cave at the top of the mountain.

Bad she might be, but she was also a lonely old woman, already deserted by her cat, and now about to be deserted all over again. Yet the old priest and also the little wooden horse had come so far to help him, how could he refuse to go home with them now?

For all he knew, the witch would take the most terrible vengeance on him for the breaking of her spell, and for bringing the priest into her territory. She might throw them all three down the mountainside, and that would be the end of them.

It was thinking of their possible fate that decided him to turn his back on the Hurricane Mountains, and to follow his friends once more across the magic circle and across the plain in the direction of the village.