The further adventures of Gobbolino and the little wooden horse

1 A MESSAGE FOR GOBBOLINO

One evening in late summer, Gobbolino the kitchen cat was basking on the steps of his happy home, and thinking how lucky he was to have arrived in such agreeable surroundings after all the adventures that had befallen him as a witch’s kitten.

"And I hardly deserve it," thought little Gobbolino, "for I was born and bred and brought up in the cavern of a witch. My little sister Sootica was happy enough learning to make wicked spells, and inventing naughty tricks to play on people. I wonder what has become of her now?"

He could hardly remember his mother, Grimalkin, but his sister had once been dear to his heart, and he could not help thinking of her now and again. True, she had teased and scoffed at him and called him all kinds of unkind names, but in the end she had saved his life when the witch wanted to get rid of him, and he hoped she had not suffered for it on his account.

While he lay drowsing in the sun the farm children were busy at their tasks on the farm. The girls were helping their mother in the dairy making butter, skimming the cream and scalding the shining pans. The boys were working in the fields with their father, and presently everyone would come home to tea in the farmhouse, where nobody would pass him by without a kindly word or a chuck under the chin. It was a happy life for a kitchen cat, and Gobbolino expected it to last for ever.

Presently twilight fell, and the farmer's wife closed the dairy doors. She and her daughters, tired but contented, clattered across the yard to the kitchen, carrying jugs of cream and milk.

Down in the fields, gates were opening and shutting, horses' hooves were stamping, and the iron-rimmed wheels of the hay carts could be heard grinding across the stones of the farm lane. Now the finished hayricks would be standing like sentinels at the edge of the fields — food for the cattle in the long winter days to come. The farmer and his boys were trudging home to tea, content that life was mainly as it should be, and that the last of the hay was cut and stacked.

They stabled the horses and tramped into the house, stopping for a moment to say a friendly word to Gobbolino, who would only wait a very few minutes before he followed them into the kitchen. He knew there would be a saucer of milk set down for him at the fireside, and when it was finished he might choose any lap he liked to sit on, for the rest of the evening.

But as the rim of the sun dipped behind the far-off purple mountains, a large owl flew silently up the lane and dropped a leaf on the farmhouse steps, close to Gobbolino’s feet.

In a minute the owl was gone, but the leaf flapped a little in the soft evening breeze, and came to rest by his paw. Even a moving shadow tempts a cat to chase it, so Gobbolino raised a forefoot and brought it down smartly on top of the leaf.

A flight of wild geese from the river below the farm flew over his head, uttering their strange cries. Gobbolino ducked with his ears pressed close against his head, and when they were gone the leaf had fluttered hallway across the yard and was still flapping. Gobbolino got up to follow it, but voices called him from the kitchen door:

"Gobbolino! Gobbolino! It is supper-time and your milk is ready by the fire! Where are you, Gobbolino?"

Gobbolino trotted indoors.

His milk was warm and fresh as usual. The fire was hot and glowing. When the family had finished eating he waited until the farmer’s wife sat down with her knitting, for the children were so restless he seldom got half an hour in peace upon their knees. While she cleared the table and washed the dishes he took a last, short stroll outside, and found that a great harvest moon had risen over the farmyard, making a new, white world of the barns and the straw stacks and the stables and the wagons quietly ranged beside the pond.

Halfway across the yard the leaf still lay, motionless now, because the breeze had followed the sun behind the hills to rest Gobbolino walked across the yard and sniffed at the leaf, not so much from curiosity but because it stood out in the moonlight like a finger that beckoned, spoiling the lovely quiet carpet of light spread out in front of him.

As he lifted a paw to flatten the leaf against the earth, the moonlight shone upon a number of words written across the leaf; a sight that Gobbolino found exceptionally strange, since leaves fall off trees, and do not provide sheets of writing paper any more than trees provide writing tables in their native state. He held down the leaf with his forepaw and carefully read the inscription upon it.

When he had made out the meaning of the words written there he nearly fell over backwards in his astonishment; and for a moment his heart almost stopped beating. He raised his paw for the briefest second and the leaf fluttered away from him, stirred by the very last echo of the evening breeze. It disappeared underneath the chicken house.

Gobbolino found it after a while, among the shadows. Holding it very firmly this time he read aloud:

"PLEASE COME AND HELP ME, BROTHER! OH, PLEASE DO! OH, DO! DO!"

It was such an extraordinary message to be written on a leaf. And it was such an extraordinary message for a kitchen cat to receive! Gobbolino did not know what to make of it.

There was only one person in the world who had the right to call him brother, and that was his little sister Sootica, who was a witch’s cat.

Long ago Gobbolino had been a witch’s cat himself, until he was saved by a spell, and became what he had always longed to be, an ordinary kitchen cat with a home of his own and a coat that was almost tabby.

Nobody really liked witches’ cats, or wanted them at their firesides. The farmer and his wife did not like them. Gobbolino remembered the day, now long ago, when they had turned him out into the wide world to fend for himself because he had blown sparks out of his ears, and turned himself into all kinds of grotesque shapes and sizes to make the children laugh.

It was such an extraordinary message

As he remembered those far-off days the old sensation of loneliness and not being wanted came back to him, and he shivered in the moonlight at the thought of his little sister Sootica feeling wretched and unhappy too, far up there in the Hurricane Mountains, or wherever else she might be now And yet… his sister Sootica had been glad to be a witch’s cat. Over and over again she had told him of her ambitions to know the book of magic by heart, to cast spells over people, and to fly down the night on a broomstick, making people cringe and shiver. She hoped to be the most famous witch’s cat in all the world!

What could have happened to make her call for help in this manner? Was it possible that the witch had punished her with some dreadful revenge because she had rescued Gobbolino when he was about to be flung down the Hurricane Mountains? And because he owed her his life ought he not to help her when she called out to him?

But where could she be now? Where?

The owl never came back.

Gobbolino waited outside in the yard until the children came and chased him indoors.

"The hobgoblins will get you!." they teased him, spreading out his blanket beside the fire.

But all night long Sootica’s message to him rang in his ears: "PLEASE COME AND HELP ME, BROTHER! OH, PLEASE DO!. OH, DO! DO!"