Free Hilda - Cats by Paul Kater Page A

these
kids..."
    "I do. But not all the time. And not when
they are in this howling mood..." Esmee stared at the castle and
felt the urge to make her way into it, when Hilda said: "Well, we
may have to make sure you are not around then."
    Baba Yaga cackled and summoned her broom.
Hilda's and William's came flying also. Esmee's blue eyes grew
large. "You're not leaving me alone here, are you?" Babs muttered
something about pink and then whispered a spell that made Esmee's
broom fly up to them. The pink witch, surprise all over her, caught
it. Her broom appeared to be chased by two black cats that sat down
and looked up at their magical humans. Clearly they did not want to
miss out on any action. Or the kids were too much for them as
well.
    "Up and away, folks," Hilda suggested. Four
broomed shapes, two with furry navigators, flew off from the castle
gardens.
    "Where are we going?" Esmee asked.
    "Away from the castle," was Hilda's simple
answer. "We're going to snoop around the area a bit, looking for
clues. Maybe go shopping in the villages nearby. You never know who
you run into on nice days like this."
    William looked at the sky. It looked like
rain. His witch was incorrigible.
    They flew over the forests that lay around
the castle, when Grimalkin suddenly started meowing, her tail
twitching as she stared down. "Stop, people," Hilda said as she did
just that. "What is it, kitty cat? Did you see something to play
with?"
    "Marrrrw!" was the response she got. Slowly
the magicals flew back until Grim's tail twitched again, and this
time Obsi joined in, scratching at the bristles of William's broom.
They descended to the ground, where the two cats leapt from the
brooms and ran off. Four brooms were put against a tree and their
owners walked after the cats. Only a few dozen paces into the
forest, the two cats were sniffing at the floor. William brushed
away some ferns and floor-crawling greens.
    "Crappedy crap. Did she see that all the way
from up there?" Hilda was truly amazed. The two cats had led them
to another paw-print. As they went around the area a bit, they
discovered more prints. There was quite a trail of them. It
started, for some odd reason, just off a gravel path that according
to Esmee was frequented by travelers and salesmen with their
carriages. The prints led down into the forest quite far where they
suddenly stopped, as if the creature that had made them had flown
off or evaporated.
    "This has to be the same creature," William
said. "If there's a nest of them, then someone should have seen
them by now. Especially if it's a flying kind of uber-cat."
    "Unless they can become invisible," Baba Yaga
pointed out. William had not considered that option.
    "Whatever they are, they don't seem to shed
their hair easily," Hilda pointed out. She had tried to find more
bits of hair, but with no success. "Two scrawny bits of it, both
from the castle garden, that's all we have." The four magicals
tried to locate more evidence, magical or visible, but there was
nothing for them to find.
    Hilda picked up Grimalkin and stroked the
black head. "Good girl, at least we now know that the creature gets
around a bit." That was true; they had gone quite far from the
castle already. They walked back to their brooms and soon they were
over the trees again. After some cruising and keeping their eyes on
the two cats, they decided that this was not going to deliver
anything better, so Esmee took the lead and set course towards the
village.
    "Oh, uhm, please, when we get there, could
you try to be a bit calm? The villagers know only me as the witch,"
Esmee asked them as they approached the spread-out collection of
houses that with some imagination could be called a village. Baba
Yaga laughed. It made Esmee worry, with reason.
    Their appearing in the middle of the village
caused moderate commotion. Within half a minute everyone that was
in the houses near the village square had come outside and stared
at the four. Most of the assembled gapers