About an hour later the bluebell leaves parted to let through a monster black paw. It seemed interested in Abdullah. It kept its claws sheathed and patted at him. Abdullah was so horrified that he tried to hop away backward.

Whereupon he found himself lying on his back among the bluebells.

He blinked up at the trees first, trying to adjust to the way he suddenly had thoughts in his head again. Some of those thoughts were unpleasant ones, about two bandits crawling beside an oasis pool in the shape of toads and about eating a fly and being nearly trodden on by a horse. Then he looked around and found the soldier crouching nearby, looking as bewildered as Abdullah felt. His pack was beside him, and beyond that, Whippersnapper was making determined efforts to climb out of the soldier’s hat. The genie bottle stood smugly beside the hat.

The genie was outside the bottle in a small wisp like the flame of a spirit lamp, with his smoky arms propped on the neck of the bottle. “Enjoy yourselves?” he asked jeeringly. “I got you there, didn’t I? That’ll teach you to pester me for extra wishes!”

Midnight had been extremely alarmed by their sudden transformation. She was in a small angry arch, spitting at both of them.

The soldier stretched out his hand to her and made soothing noises. “You frighten Midnight again like that,” he told the genie, “and I’ll break your bottle!”

“You said that before,” retorted the genie, “and you couldn’t, worse luck. The bottle’s enchanted.”

“Then I’ll make sure his next wish is that you turn into a toad,” the soldier said, jerking his thumb at Abdullah.

The genie shot Abdullah a wary look at this. Abdullah said nothing, but he saw it was a good idea and might keep the genie in order. He sighed. One way and another, he just could not seem to stop wasting wishes.

They picked themselves and their belongings up and resumed their journey. But they went much more cautiously. They kept to the smallest lanes and footpaths they could find, and that night, instead of going to an inn, they camped in an old empty barn. Here Midnight suddenly looked alert and interested and shortly slipped away into the shadowy corners. After a while she came trotting back with a dead mouse, which she laid carefully in the soldier’s hat for Whippersnapper. Whippersnapper was not very sure what to do with it. In the end he decided it was the kind of toy you leaped on fiercely and killed. Midnight prowled off again. Abdullah heard the small sounds of her hunting most of the night.

In spite of this, the soldier worried about feeding the cats. Next morning he wanted Abdullah to go to the nearest farm and buy milk.

“You do it if you want it,” Abdullah said curtly.