A Change In The Weather

Chapter 22: Nimrod

Scarlet and Thomas’s parents had been carefully clearing the tangle of overgrowth from the garden and were now concentrating on digging up the remaining weeds. They’d been gardening for the best part of the morning and both seemed to be blissfully ignorant to everything else happening around.

They were particularly oblivious to the grotesque figure that was attempting to creep past under their noses like a mischievous child. They’d also failed to notice the three pairs of yellow slit-like eyes that were watching them from the shadows of the rickety timber fence that bordered Bracken Wood.

As a precaution, Toadflax and his cousins had sprinkled themselves with what remained of the enchanted toothdust; the effects of which wouldn’t last long. Even so, he felt no need to hurry as he edged ever closer to the kitchen, taking care so as not to be seen.

Keeping to the overgrown privet hedge, and using the sprawling rhododendron bush for cover, he was almost within range.

He unsheathed his sword and ducked down once more as he readied himself.

* * * * *

The family cat, a fearless black tom called Nimrod, sat there on the roof of the coal shed, basking in the midday sun. He was bemused, not least because he’d spotted the goblin from the very moment it set foot in the garden, and the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to himself. As there were no other cats around, he claimed the rights to hunt it himself. But he had to remain calm and collected. He didn’t want his human masters to shun him like the time he delivered the half-dead rat to them. Somehow, deep down, he’d known a rat was too small to impress them.

What he felt was needed was something bigger.

He turned to look at the creature again. It was certainly brave, he gave it that, but he couldn’t be sure as to whether or not it was brave and stupid. So he continued to watch whilst the goblin silently crept across the garden towards the back door. It turned around to sneer at the humans in the garden before it disappeared into the shadows of the kitchen.

Nimrod waited for a moment, then gracefully jumped to the floor with a quiet hiss and cautiously followed the goblin inside.

He sniffed the air in the kitchen. The smell of the goblin was terrible. It reeked of death, like a sickly combination of toadstools and almonds. Of-course, humans would have missed it completely, but not cats - to them smell was almost a physical sensation - their senses were far superior, having been carefully honed over millions of years of evolution.

Nimrod felt quite smug, in fact if he was honest, he always felt smug.

He was a cat after all.

* * * * *

Toadflax danced up the hallway, giggling and grinning with impish mischievousness.

His curved sword, which looked far too big for him, trailed lazily behind as he held it in his newly-cured sword arm with a strength that belied his tiny frame. He was going to make them pay for the damage they’d inflicted on him and his cousins in the wood. Since then, he’d been slowly fanning the flames of rage until he could take it no longer. He’d watched and waited from the wood, biding time until the children had left.

The first room he’d been in had been thoroughly trashed, strewn with the contents of drawers, tables and cushions that he’d savagely destroyed. Pottery lay shattered on the floor, and he’d taken his sword to the remaining items of furniture, which now lay broken and splintered in an effort to find what it was he was looking for.

The little goblin flitted from room to room, leaving them all in the most atrocious state.

There was just one room left on the ground floor - it was a girl’s room, painted pink.

There was a wardrobe next to a little single bed.

Toadflax turned the room upside down working his way forward and backward like a miniature whirlwind, lacerating the mattress with his razor-sharp sword.

And then suddenly something made him stop, and he fell to his knees, pushing the bed out of the way. He’d almost missed the little box that lay hidden in the shadows beneath. He picked it up and placed it on the bed, and then, with the strength of a man, smashed the stout little box to splinters with a rain of blows from his sword.

Delicately, he lifted the item from the wreckage and into a black cord-tie bag, which he fastened securely to his belt. From the window he could see the humans still working in the garden. What strange creatures they were. He couldn’t fathom them at all. They were a complete mystery.

He hated and despised them.

As he turned to leave, he spotted the dragon mask that Hillary had given Scarlet at the carnival.

It lay there on the ground staring up at him.

With a smile Toadflax spitefully crunched it under his heel on the way out.

* * * * *

Nimrod watched silently from the shadows as the loathsome creature went to work through the cottage. He decided, as he watched and waited, that he was more than a match for the goblin. If only his human masters had known how many times he’d skulked off into the wood at night to find one to kill.

Yet he couldn’t understand why this one was running around in the daylight. The ones he’d brought back dead from the wood had disappeared by the morning, and he’d watched with utter curiosity in the way that only cats can, when one turned to ash before his eyes as the rays of the morning sun fell upon its black skin. By the time his masters had woken, the ash had blown away with the breeze, leaving nothing in its wake. And so he’d resigned himself to catching rats and mice once more.

The new home was much better than the twilight streets of the city he used to prowl. There had been no goblins in the city for a start. Of-course there were lots of rats, sometimes nearly as big as he was, but no goblins. It was in his nature to hunt, and it was ironic that his human masters had called him Nimrod – the mighty hunter. If only they knew the truth! Well, he’d show them. They’d be pleased with the trophy this time. With any luck they’d forgive him the half-dead rats.

Nimrod hid in the shadows, silently waiting, his large reflective eyes the only thing to shine through the blackness. He knew that the goblin would have to come back this way if it wanted to get back outside, and so he waited.

And then little child-like footsteps came pitter-pattering down the hallway.

Sure enough, Toadflax passed by below, and Nimrod pounced from the top of the bookcase like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box, landing with some force on the goblin’s back.

The attack forced Toadflax to drop his sword out of surprise, but he managed to shake the cat off him as he fought to find his weapon, which had come to rest under a nearby table.

Nimrod stood over the sword and hissed a warning. His fur bristled and his claws were extended, ready for battle.

There they stood for a moment, each trying to weigh the other up. Toadflax looked up past the cat at the kitchen and the wood beyond, as if trying to work out a way past. And then, Toadflax knew that he’d made a mistake. Nimrod struck, this time catching the goblin with a claw, which forced him to jump backwards holding his arm, and wincing as black blood seeped through the material of his shirt.

Nimrod backed off slowly, until – once more – he stood over the sword.

Toadflax kicked the wall and gave a growl of frustration.

And then with murderous intention, he leapt towards the cat.

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