Iwon’t cut it in half, whatever he says!’
Mistress Split had the little black spaniel on her knee ‘ and she was bending over it like half a mother. ‘What do you call this little love, this little dove? A dog, you say? Never seen one in all my born days, not that I have born days, being made like I am and not born in the way common to all.’
Jack’s mother didn’t know what to say.
After she had left the house of Mother Midnight, she had felt the strong pull of the magnet and followed it as it guided her through the empty, eerie late and misty London alleys.
She could not shake off the feeling that she was being followed. Now and again she looked around, and fearfully behind her, thinking that a footpad with a pistol, or a fiend with a red face must be close behind. But she saw nothing.
At length, the heat and the vibration of the magnet intensifying, she wound her way through the twists and turns of deformed streets that were more like a labyrinth than a passage. She was tired, lost, losing heart, and so she sat down for a moment on a rough stone mounting-block and with the little leather magnet bag in her lap she put her head in her hands.
Something wet licked her. Something warm snuggled its face against her face. Something made of love sent its love straight into her heart.
She opened her eyes, her hands, her heart, and there was Jack’s spaniel looking up at her with his deep brown eyes.
Max!
Max jumped on to her knee, and they sat awhile, quiet and together, and the woman took the courage of the little dog, that feared nothing but only wanted to find . . .
Jack.
‘We’ll go together,’ she said, and together they went, and came to the high forbidding walls of the Dark House, just as dawn was breaking, and just as the strangest creature on earth came hopping out of the back door with a pail of slops for the pigs.
Woof!
The Creature had dropped her pail in fright, and then, Max being just a dog and a very young dog at that, he had grabbed a bone from the pail and jumped in the air with it like a pirate with the crown jewels.
‘What is before me?’ said the Creature, amazed.
‘A spaniel,’ answered Jack’s mother, now cautious and alert because the magnet was throbbing. This must be the house, this must be the place.
‘Lived in this house all my born days – not that I have any born days, for I never was born, but never seen a Thing so black and beautiful and shiny and like thick bubbling tar.’
Jack’s mother sensed that she must show no fear and win over this odd creature, but it was Max who bounded forward, straight through the back door, woofing with merriment, and the Creature hopping after him with her pail.
And that is how they had ended up in the kitchen.
‘Lived in this house all my . . . all my what? Not my born days, no . . . what then . . . yes, my bottle days!’ said the Creature, chuckling with pleasure at her own wit, ‘for I was made here, in a bottle, and what I see here is all I see, and what I know here is all I know. All my bottle days, tra la!’
Jack’s mother was about to say that dogs in London were as often seen as rats, but the Creature had gone back to her first thought, ‘And I won’t cut him in two!’
‘Why would you wish to kill the poor dog?’ asked Jack’s mother, but the Creature was shaking her head.
‘All in half, all in half, all in half.’
The door flew open and in hopped Wedge.