Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac

warehouse, grabbing the sign as he went, and zigzagged off down the
road.
    A few
moments later Pickle returned without a policeman.
    ‘He’s
gone,’ said Cedric.
    ‘Oh my
goodness!’ groaned Pickle. ‘He’s nuts! Raving on about magic and flying. Even
said he’d cure my hay fever if I gave him an old inn sign.’ Pickle stopped
suddenly and stared at the dog daisy in Cedric’s buttonhole. It was the worst
thing possible for making him sneeze, and his nose wasn’t even tickling.
‘Here,’ he said curiously, ‘can I borrow that for a moment?’
    Cedric
handed him the flower and Pickle sniffed deeply at it for some moments and
waited for the sneeze. Nothing happened. There was no doubt about it — his hay
fever had gone.
    ‘That
old feller did it,’ he whispered with awe. ‘He said he could Well, as far as
I’m concerned, he can take whatever he likes!’
     

    Meanwhile,
Catweazle was careering down a steep hill, moaning with fear. Unable to stop,
he crashed through a fence at the bottom, tumbled down an embankment and
finished up sitting bruised and dazed on the railway line. When the stars had
finished winking and spinning before his eyes, he found himself staring into
the mouth of a tunnel.
    ‘The
mighty cave,’ he muttered, as he got unsteadily to his feet. A rumbling sound
came from the tunnel and he drew back. The noise grew louder and the earth
shook. Catweazle cowered in fear and a moment later a train roared out of the
tunnel and thundered away down the line.
    Catweazle
opened his eyes. It was the dragon! The runes had not lied.
    He
picked up the tricycle and walked forward into the tunnel, balancing his
precious sign across the handlebars. He felt the presence of unknown demons all
around him in the sooty blackness, but he muttered spells to drive them away
and came out at last into the daylight.
    Several
hours later he reached a branch in the line, and turned off down an overgrown
track which reminded him of the dried-up bed of a stream. It was hard work
pushing his rattling tricycle along it, but he believed his magic was helping
him and leading him forward.
    As the
sun was setting he reached a tiny derelict railway station, almost hidden among
the trees. The windows had been boarded up for years and grass grew between
cracks in the platform. Convolvulus almost covered the weather-beaten notice
which would have told Catweazle, had he been able to read it that he had
arrived at Duck Halt.
    ‘Our
journey is over, Touchwood,’ he said quietly as he showed his familiar their
new home. ‘Here shall we gather together the Signs and make our magic.’

GEMINI
     
    Catweazle spent several
days turning Duck Halt into a magician’s chamber. He collected various herbs in
the surrounding woods and hung them from the ceiling. There were bunches of
wild garlic to keep out evil spirits, foxgloves for healing spells and hemlock
and vervain for darker magic. Peeled wands of hazel stood in the four cobwebbed
corners and ferns lay on the floor to protect the building from storms.
    Now the
time had come to make the magic Zodiac.
    Catweazle
knelt on the dusty floor and drew a large circle with a lump of chalk. He sang
the flying spell as he worked.
    ‘
“Twelve are they that circle round.
    If
power you seek they must be found.
    Then
look for where the thirteenth lies.
    And
mount aloft the one who flies.” ’
    Touchwood,
who had made his home in an old Wellington boot, crawled out with a croak. He
liked Duck Halt because there were so many ants and earwigs.
    ‘Hast
no thought but thy empty guts!’ grumbled Catweazle. ‘I too am hungry, thou
creeping cleek!’ But all the same, he picked up a milk bottle he had thieved
from a door-step and poured a little into a dirty saucer, and the toad crawled
towards it as his master sat down and unrolled an old railway timetable. He
studied it intently and then turned it upside down. ‘I shall never read this
magic,’ he groaned.
    Then
Cedric, who had tracked Catweazle to his lair the previous day, pushed open the
door. He was dressed in his best suit and his hair had been carefully combed.
    ‘Hello,’
he said miserably, ‘I can’t stop.’
    ‘Stop
what?’ asked Catweazle anxiously.
    ‘Look
at me!’ said Cedric. ‘It’s my birthday and they’ve made me put this on. I’ve
got to keep clean. Mum’s invited half the kids in the neighbourhood to tea. I
mean, it stops being my birthday. Just becomes an excuse for s. bun
fight.’
    ‘Canst
thou read