“A little, Tye. I’ve taken a little trip now and then, partly for experimental purposes, partly for pleasure.”
“Then let’s leave at once.”
“However, I feel I must point out to you, dearest Auntie, that this is not without an element of danger. It all depends on taking the right dose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Preposteror smiled at Tyrannia in a way which left her feeling not the least bit comfortable. “It means that you might land whoknowswhere, Tye-Tye,” he said. “If the dose is just the tiniest bit too small, you fall down into the Second Dimension. Once there, you would be completely flat, as flat as a film projection. You wouldn’t even have a backside, that’s how flat you’d be. And most important of all, you would never be able to ascend into our accustomed Third Dimension on your own. It’s possible that you would have to remain a two-dimensional screen image forever and ever, my poor old girl. If, however, the dose is too large, you are catapulted into the Fifth or the Sixth Dimension. Those upper dimensions are so confusing that you wouldn’t even know which parts belonged to you and which ones didn’t. It’s possible that you would return with a few parts missing, or falsely assembled—if at all.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.
Tyrannia knew that her nephew was desperately in need of her help for the time being. As long as they hadn’t finished brewing the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion, he could by no means do without her. And he knew that she knew it.
Now it was her turn to smile portentously. “Good,” she said slowly. “I expect you’ll do everything one hundred percent right. I’m relying fully on your egotism, Bubby.”
He drew the colorless liquid into the syringe and both rolled up their left sleeves; he checked the dose carefully and gave first her, then himself, the injection.
Their silhouettes started vibrating, blurring, and being pulled and stretched grotesquely out of shape, until they were no longer to be seen.
In the bowl of Cold Fire, however, the strangest things started happening, seemingly of their own accord . . .
“Now I’m supposed to play the good guy?” the raven cackled to himself. “Yes, indeed—some good guy! I could tear myself to pieces for having such a goody-good idea. I’ll never have another idea again, or else I’ll spend the rest of my days a pedestrian, so help me. Ideas are nothing but trouble; trouble is all they bring.”
But the cat didn’t hear him, for he had already climbed quite a bit farther, to the point where the sloped roof of the steeple began.
“He’s really going to make it!” Jacob muttered. “Well, I’ll be tarred and feathered, the guy’s going to make it.”
He gathered his last bit of strength and fluttered after the cat, but he couldn’t find him in the dark. He landed on the head of a stone angel, who was trumpeting the arrival of Judgment Day, and searched all over.
“Morris, where are you?” he screamed.
No reply.
He screeched desperately into the black night, “Even if you really do make it all the way up to the bells, you mini-knight, you, and even if the two of us really do manage to ring them . . . which we won’t . . . it’s still pointless . . . because . . . if we ring them now, then it won’t be the New Year’s bells but just any old sound. The bells aren’t the important thing; the important thing is that it must be the first stroke of twelve.”
Not a sound was to be heard except for the crying of the wind, which blew around the corners of the steeple and the stone figures. Jacob gripped the head of the trumpeting angel and screamed in panic, “Hey, kitty, you still around, or have you already fallen down with the other snowflakes?”
For a fraction of a second he imagined he had heard a weak, pitiful meowing somewhere up above. He lunged into the darkness and flapped in the direction of the sounds, turning a few cartwheels on the way.
Although he no longer knew how, Morris had in fact managed to reach a lancet window, through which he was able to enter the steeple. The last of his strength finally ebbed the moment Jacob landed beside him. The little cat fainted and tumbled down into the steeple, though luckily not too far. There he lay in the all-enveloping darkness, a tiny bundle of fur on the wooden beams of the belfry.
Jacob hopped down to him and nudged him with his beak. But Morris didn’t budge.
“Morris,” croaked the raven, “are you dead?”When he got no reply, he lowered his head slowly. A tremor shook his body.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, kitty,” he said quietly and solemnly, “you may not have had an awful lot of brains, but you were still a hero, somehow. Your fancy ancestors would have been pretty proud of you, if they had ever existed.”
Then everything went black before his eyes and he fell over. The wind whistled around the tip of the steeple and blew in snow, which gradually covered the two animals.
Just above them, the mighty bells hung huge and shadowy from the rafters black with age, waiting silently for the beginning of the New Year, which they were to herald with their powerful voices.
The potion whirled around in its bowl of Cold Fire at a terrifying speed, matching that of a centrifuge, for the tail of a comet, glistening and showering sparks, was circling within it like a giant goldfish run amok.
Meanwhile, Preposteror and Tyrannia had returned from the Fourth Dimension and were sprawled out on their chairs, completely exhausted. They would have loved to really let themselves go for a few minutes, just to unwind, but that was precisely what they could by no means permit themselves to do—it would have placed them in utmost jeopardy.
They stared glassy-eyed at the bowl.
Although the potion was basically finished and they didn’t have anything else to do, there was one more difficulty to overcome, possibly the greatest of all, in these remaining minutes before the completion of their devilish work. It consisted of not doing a certain something.
According to the very last instruction on the parchment scroll, they now needed only wait until the liquid had completely settled and all the sediment dissolved without leaving a trace. But until that moment they were not allowed to ask a single question, let alone as much as think one.
Every question (for example, “Will it work?” or “Why am I doing this?” or “What’s the point?” or “What is going to come of this?”) contains an element of doubt. And you were absolutely forbidden to doubt anything in these final moments. You were even forbidden to ask yourself in your thoughts why you were forbidden to ask any questions.
Because as long as the potion had not completely settled and become clear and transparent, it was in a highly sensitive and unstable state, which made it react even to thoughts and feelings. As much as the slightest doubt in its powers could make the entire brew explode like an atomic bomb and blow up not only the sorcerer and the witch but also the Villa Nightmare; yes, even the entire neighborhood.
Now, it is well known that nothing is more difficult than not thinking of a certain something you have been told. You don’t normally think of kangaroos, for example. But if you are forbidden to think about kangaroos for the next five minutes, how can you avoid thinking of just those kangaroos? There is only one way: you have to concentrate on something else, whatever it may be, with all your might.
And so Preposteror and Tyrannia sat there, their eyes literally popping from the fear and exertion of not thinking any questions.
The sorcerer was reciting quietly all the poems he had learned in his kinderdesert days (kinderdesert being for evil sorcerers what kindergarten is for normal people).
He muttered in a breathless monotone:
“I am a little monster swine
and stink and snort and snigger.
I want to be a little pain
until I get much bigger.”
and:
“The little boy couldn’t stop grinning
When he bit off the pollywog’s head,
’Cause he knew very well that sinning
I
s more fun than praying in bed.”
and:
“Goldilocks loves gently yanking
The legs from the bodies of bees,
For she knows that she could earn a spanking
By sparing the buggers their knees.”
And even the lullaby his mother used to sing to him when he was just a little baby:
“Rock-a-bye-baby!
Your dad’s in the navy.
He sails through the night
Sucking blood left and right.
Rock-a-bye-baby!
“Drink-a-bye-baby!
Your fangs grow like crazy.
Papa taught you right:
Here a bite, there a bite!
Drink-a-bye-baby!”
and other uplifting rhymes and songs.
Meanwhile, Tyrannia Vampirella was calculating in her head how much a single crown deposited in a savings account at 6 percent interest in the year zero would have accumulated in combined interest up to the present day—assuming, of course, that the bank still existed.
In doing so she used the formula known to all money sorcerers and witches:
Kn = Ko(1+i)η
She had already arrived at a sum of money corresponding in value to several gold balls the size of the earth, although she had still not reached the present day. She calculated and calculated, because she was calculating for her life.
But the longer the minutes stretched—the potion had still not completely settled and cleared—the more Preposteror had the feeling that his whole, long body was bending into the shape of a question mark. And it appeared to Tyrannia that all the endless columns of figures before her eyes consisted of myriads of microscopically small question marks, which swarmed about and refused to be lined up in neat little rows.
“By all the cloned genes!” Preposteror sighed at last. “I can’t go on much longer. I don’t know any more poems . . .”
And Tyrannia whispered fearfully, “I got my calculations mixed up. Soon . . . soon . . . I’m going to think of . . .”
Whack!
In decisive desperation, the nephew had dealt his aunt a mighty slap in the face.
“Ouch!” cried the witch furiously. “You just wait!”
And with that she gave her nephew such a wallop that his glasses went flying right across the laboratory.
An exchange of blows ensued which would have done the toughest of boxers proud.
When they finally stopped, they found themselves sitting on the floor, staring at each other breathlessly. The nephew had a black eye and his aunt a bloody nose.
“Nothing personal, Tye,” said Preposteror. Then he pointed at the bowl of Cold Fire.
“Look!”
In the meantime, the tail of the comet had stopped swishing and sparkling, all the sediment had disappeared, and the Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion shone still and clear in all the colors of the rainbow.
Both of them uttered a deep sigh of relief.
“That slap was our salvation,” said Tyrannia. “You are a good boy, after all, Bubby.”
“You know what, Auntie,” said Preposteror, “now that the danger is over, we can think whatever we want. And we should do just that to our hearts’ content, don’t you think?”
“I do, indeed,” said the witch, rolling her eyes with relish.
Preposteror smirked. Of course, he had something up his sleeve. Auntie had a surprise coming.
As the raven and the little cat slowly regained consciousness, they at first thought they were dreaming. The icy wind had settled down, everything was quiet, the stars sparkled in the nighttime sky, they were no longer cold, and the huge belfry was illuminated by a wonderful golden glow. One of the big stone figures, which had been gazing down upon the town from outside the lancet windows for centuries, had turned around and come in. But the statue no longer had a stony appearance; it looked very much alive.
The figure in question was a delicate old man in a long coat of gold brocade, the shoulders of which were heaped with snow. He wore a miter on his head and carried a shepherd’s crook in his left hand. His watery blue eyes gazed at the two animals from under bushy white eyebrows in a curious but not unfriendly manner.
One could have taken him for Saint Nicholas at first sight, but this could not be, for no beard adorned his chin. And who had ever heard of a clean-shaven Saint Nick?
The old gentleman raised his right hand, and Jacob and Morris suddenly realized that they could neither move nor utter the tiniest sound. They were both afraid, yet at the same time, they somehow felt safe.
“Well, you two scamps,” said the old gentleman, “what are you doing up here?”
He came a little closer and bent over them in order to get a closer look. He squinted a bit—apparently he was nearsighted.
The raven and the cat sat there and looked at him.
“I know what you’re up to,” the old gentleman said. “You shouted it loud enough while you were bouncing up here. You want to swipe my beautiful New Year’s chime. To tell you the truth, I don’t think that’s very nice. I’ve got nothing against a good joke, after all I’m Father New Year, but what you two were up to is a bad joke, don’t you think? Well, in any case, I got here just in the nick of time.”
The two animals tried to protest, but they still could not speak.
“I guess you didn’t know,” said Father New Year, “that I come here for a few minutes every year on this occasion to make sure everything is all right. Perhaps I should turn you into stone figures for a while and stick you between these pillars in return for the dumb joke you wanted to play on me. Yes, I guess that’s what I’ll do. At least until tomorrow morning, so that you can have time to think about your actions. But first I want to hear what you have to say for yourselves.”
But the animals sat motionless.
“Have you suddenly forgotten how to speak?” asked Father New Year in astonishment. Then he remembered. “Oh yes, of course, excuse me, I had completely forgotten . . .”
He raised his hand once again. “You can speak now, but one after the other, and no cheap excuses, if you please.”
And so our two misunderstood heroes were finally able to croak and meow their explanations of what had driven them up here and who they were and what the evil plans of the sorcerer and the witch consisted of. In their eagerness, they sometimes spoke simultaneously, which made it all the more difficult for Father New Year to get the whole story. But the longer he listened, the friendlier was the gleam in his eyes.
Meanwhile, Beelzebub Preposteror and Tyrannia Vampirella had maneuvered themselves into a deadlocked situation.
The sorcerer had had an insidious plan when he suggested that they give free rein to their thoughts in order to relax a little. He wanted to trick his unsuspecting aunt. The Notion Potion was ready and so he no longer needed her assistance. He had decided to cut her out, so as to have the unimaginable power of the magic brew all to himself. But of course, Tyrannia had only pretended to agree to a little break, for precisely the same reason: she also thought that the time had come to finally get rid of her nephew.
They both gathered all their magic powers once more at the same moment and attempted to paralyze each other with their magic gazes. They sat opposite one another and stared into each other’s eyes. A terrible, silent battle raged between them. But it soon became clear that they were a perfect match as far as willpower was concerned. And so they sat, without exchanging a word and without moving a muscle—and the sweat ran down their faces from sheer exhaustion. Neither one let the other out of his sight; they both hypnotized and hypnotized for all they were worth.
A fat fly, who had decided to spend the winter somewhere on one of the dusty shelves, suddenly woke up and buzzed around the laboratory. It felt something attracting it, as would a strong ray of light. Yet it was not light but rather the paralyzing power rays from the eyes of the witch and the sorcerer, flashing back and forth between them like powerful electrical discharges. The fly got caught in the midd
le and fell immediately to the floor with a soft plop, unable to so much as move a leg. And so it remained for the rest of its short life.
Meanwhile, the aunt and her nephew were also unable to move. They had each been hypnotized themselves right when they were most enjoying hypnotizing each other. And naturally, for that very reason, they could no longer stop hypnotizing one another.
By and by it dawned on them both that they had made a fatal error, but now it was too late. They were neither of them capable of moving so much as a finger, let alone turning their heads in another direction or closing their eyes in order to interrupt the magic gaze. Neither of them could do that anyway, at least not until the other did the same, or else they would have been helplessly at the mercy of the other’s power. The witch couldn’t stop before the sorcerer stopped, and the sorcerer couldn’t stop before the witch stopped. They had got themselves into something which, in conjuring circles, is known as a circulus vitiosus, that is to say, a vicious circle—and one of their own making at that.
“You never stop learning,” said Father New Year. “Just goes to show how even I can still make mistakes. I did you an injustice, my little friends, and I beg your forgiveness.”
“Don’t mention it, Monsignore,” said Morris with an elegant wave of his paw. “That kind of thing can happen even in the best circles.”
And Jacob added, “Forget it, Reverend Father, nothing to get worked up about. I’m used to being treated badly.”
Father New Year grinned, but then became serious again. “What are we going to do now?” he asked, a bit helplessly. “What you’ve just told me sounds truly awful.”
Filled with renewed heroic enthusiasm at such unexpected, and prominent, assistance, Morris suggested, “If Monsignore would be so kind as to ring the bells himself . . .”
But Father New Year shook his head. “No, no, my little ones, that is not the way! It doesn’t work like that at all. Everything in the world must have its proper place, time, and space: the end of the old year as well as the beginning of the new. One can’t just change things willfully or else everything will go topsy-turvy . . .”