The Enchanted Castle · Chapter 6 (3/3)

“Curtain! curtain! quick!” cried Beauty-Mabel, in a voice that wasn’t Mabel’s or the Beauty’s. “Jerry⁠—those things have come alive. Oh, whatever shall we do?”

Gerald in his hearthrugs leaped to his feet. Again that flat padded applause marked the swish of cloths on clothesline as Jimmy and Kathleen drew the curtains.

“What’s up?” they asked as they drew.

“You’ve done it this time!” said Gerald to the pink, perspiring Mabel. “Oh, bother these strings!”

“Can’t you burst them? I’ve done it?” retorted Mabel. “I like that!”

“More than I do,” said Gerald.

“Oh, it’s all right,” said Mabel. “Come on. We must go and pull the things to pieces⁠—then they can’t go on being alive.”

“It’s your fault, anyhow,” said Gerald with every possible absence of gallantry. “Don’t you see? It’s turned into a wishing ring. I knew something different was going to happen. Get my knife out of my pocket⁠—this string’s in a knot. Jimmy, Cathy, those Ugly-Wuglies have come alive⁠—because Mabel wished it. Cut out and pull them to pieces.”

Jimmy and Cathy peeped through the curtain and recoiled with white faces and staring eyes. “Not me!” was the brief rejoinder of Jimmy. Cathy said, “Not much!” And she meant it, anyone could see that.

And now, as Gerald, almost free of the hearthrugs, broke his thumbnail on the stiffest blade of his knife, a thick rustling and a sharp, heavy stumping sounded beyond the curtain.

“They’re going out!” screamed Kathleen, “walking out on their umbrella and broomstick legs. You can’t stop them, Jerry, they’re too awful!”

“Everybody in the town’ll be insane by tomorrow night if we don’t stop them,” cried Gerald. “Here, give me the ring⁠—I’ll unwish them.”

He caught the ring from the unresisting Mabel, cried, “I wish the Uglies weren’t alive,” and tore through the door. He saw, in fancy, Mabel’s wish undone, and the empty hall strewed with limp bolsters, hats, umbrellas, coats and gloves, prone abject properties from which the brief life had gone out forever. But the hall was crowded with live things, strange things⁠—all horribly short as broom sticks and umbrellas are short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed white face with red cheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips said something, he could not tell what. The voice reminded him of the old beggar down by the bridge who had no roof to his mouth. These creatures had no roofs to their mouths, of course⁠—they had no⁠—

“Aa oo ré o me me oo a oo ho el?” said the voice again. And it had said it four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently to understand that this horror⁠—alive, and most likely quite uncontrollable⁠—was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite persistence:

“Can you recommend me to a good hotel?”