The Enchanter took Tom to his own part of the Hill, where he lived in
three caves, one leading into the other. The first cave was the kitchen,
full of pots and pipkins with fires under them. The fires were of
different colours, rose and scarlet, gold, blue, and green, and in the
pipkins the Enchanter brewed his charms and stewed his spells. It was to
be Tom’s job to look after the fires and clean the pots when necessary.
“Doos we cook the charms for supper?” asked Tom.
“No,” said the Enchanter, “we don’t trouble to cook supper.”
“Doos we goo without supper?” asked Tom.
“No,” said the Enchanter, “I just wave my wand.”
Tom was to sleep in the kitchen.
The second cave, which had a table in it, was where they lived, and it
was also the place where Ooney slept. Ooney was the Enchanter’s
daughter; she was about as old as sixteen, Tom thought, and she was very
beautiful. Like the other fairies, she had a sort of moonshine frock on,
but over it she wore a big check apron with pockets, and in her hand she
had a feather duster, with which she was dusting the table. The only
difficulty was that as her duster touched the dust, the dust turned into
silver pennies, which, pretty as they were, littered the table
dreadfully. The Enchanter looked rather crossly at her and said,
“What a lot of work you make!”
“One must make something,” said Ooney.
The Enchanter waved his wand and the dust all vanished, and Ooney’s
apron untied itself and hung itself up on the wall; but Ooney fetched it
down and put it on again, and taking a leather from the pocket, fell to
polishing the table vigorously, saying, “Who’s that, father?”
As she polished it, the table began to sing as sweet as a nightingale.
This pleased Tom, but it seemed to vex Ooney; she said, “Stop it, can’t
you? Stop it at once!” However, the table went on singing, so Ooney gave
it up and asked again, “Who’s that, father?”
“It’s Tom Cobble from Shortways,” said the Enchanter. “We fetched him
away to-night, and have got him for seven years.”
“Betsy Ware had a table with a leg in the middle like a lion’s foot,”
said Tom, “an’ she polished an’ polished the top till she polished it
right off and only the leg was there. So it runned away to the spinney,
an’ it met a lion without any legs because of William Jenks’es
rabbit-trapses, an’ the lion he sat down on the top on the leg and it
runned back to Betsy, so she has her dinner off the lion’s back now, and
when she has done he turns his head and licks off the crumbs. What’s in
the next room, mister?”
[Illustration:
“_I want half a cupful of morning dew._”
]
“That is _my_ room,” said the Enchanter, “and what is in it is no
concern of yours. Nobody goes in that room but me.”
And nobody did, during all the time Tom served as the Enchanter’s
kitchen-boy. The Enchanter kept all his magic in that room, and
sometimes when his charms were brewing he came out with a big brown book
under his arm, and read in it as he stirred the pot; then he might say,
“Give me a pinch of that fernseed, Tom Cobble,” or “I want half a cupful
of morning dew from the big round bottle,” or “Weigh me out an ounce of
last year’s thistledown,” or “Measure me out a yard and three-quarters
of spider-silk, quick now!” And Tom did as he was told, and tried hard
to find out what the Enchanter was doing, and sometimes he almost
succeeded. But there was always one little bit he could never quite
discover.
Nevertheless, he learned how to make the fires under the pots, and what
gave them their beautiful colours, but I shall not tell _you_, for this
very good reason: you might go doing it too. And who knows what would
happen then? For if you boil your breakfast egg over a fire-coloured
fire of coal or coke or wood or peat, it is still an egg for breakfast;
but if you boiled it over a blue or green or purple fire built of the
old Enchanter’s secret fuels, it might come out of the pot made of pure
gold, or of grey rubber, or it might have wings on it and fly away—but
whatever happened to it, it would no longer do for your breakfast.
At the end of his seven years, Tom was a nice tall lad of fourteen years
old, and Ooney was still a very pretty fairy of sixteen. She had taken
as good care of Tom as his own elder sister could have done. She had
washed his face and hands, and brushed his hair, and darned his jacket,
and she always got him clean and smooth and neat. Tom did not really
mind that after she had washed him his face underwent some change—it
might be that his skin gleamed as though it had been gilded, or his nose
was like a blackbird’s bill; and when she had brushed his hair it would
start growing up instead of down, or perhaps it would change into long
green grass with buttercups growing in it. As for his jacket, the holes
were mended right enough, but afterwards the jacket itself was never
twice the same—it might be a blue velvet coat with brass buttons, or a
bronze breastplate inlaid with copper, or a linen smock like Davy’s, the
Duke’s head shepherd. Whatever it was, Tom Cobble put it on, for it was
the only one he had. But as soon as the Enchanter saw him, he would wave
his wand, and in a moment Tom had his right face and hair and coat
again. Then the Enchanter would frown at Ooney and say,
“You see what a lot of work you make.”
“Well, father,” said Ooney, “who’s to look after the boy if not me?”
When his time was up, and Tom came to take leave of Ooney and her
father, the Enchanter said to him, “You’ve been a good boy, Tom Cobble,
and to reward you I’ll give you whatever you can carry away in your
pocket.”
“I’ll have your brown book,” said Tom, without thinking twice about it.
The Enchanter looked vexed and said, “Come now, let me give you the
Purse of Fortune.”
“No, thank you,” said Tom.
“The Invisible Cap, then.”
“Nor that neither,” said Tom.
“Take the Flying Slippers,” said the Enchanter.
“I’ll take the brown book,” said Tom.
The Enchanter saw there was no help for it, and gave him the book; but
at the same time he blew on Tom’s left eyelid.
Then Tom went back to Shortways.