Not Just a Witch

by Eva Ibbotson

‘Tell us, dear,’ said Heckie. ‘How is . . . he?’

  ‘Yes, how is . . . he?’ asked Dora.

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen him myself because they don’t let children into the prison,’ said Daniel. ‘But Sumi’s mother goes sometimes. She says he doesn’t like the food, but the other prisoners don’t bully him or anything. And they’re teaching him to sew mailbags which must be useful, I suppose?’

  For Mr Knacksap had not ended up as a statue or a louse. The witches had planned to do dreadful things to him, but when they found him in the maze, felled by cheese, they had looked at each other and left him where he was. They had both loved him truly and though they knew what an evil man he was, they could not bring themselves to use their magic powers against him.

  So they had dropped a note in at the police station, and when the police reached him with their tracker dogs, they had taken him straight to the police station and charged him with attacking Daniel. And when they began to ask questions, they found a lot more things that he had done: bouncing cheques, cheating on his income tax, embezzling – and now he was Prisoner Number 301 in Wellbridge jail.

  The rest of the evening passed in a flash and then it was bedtime.

  ‘Am I sleeping in the room with the wardrobe?’ Daniel asked hopefully.

  ‘Of course, dear,’ said Heckie.

  When he had brushed his teeth and put on his pyjamas and placed the tank with his hat in it on a chair where he could see it first thing in the morning, Daniel opened the window and drank in the cool, fresh country air. He was much happier now in the tall, grey house in Wellbridge. His parents had not forgotten the shock of finding their son in hospital with his head in bandages. They nagged him less and tried to spend more time with him, and he knew that, in their own way, they loved him. But home for him would always be where Heckie was, and as he burrowed down between the sheets, he sighed with contentment because there were days and days of the holidays still to come.

  He was just closing his eyes when he heard the wood spirit’s reedy little voice.

  ‘Don’t chop—’ it began.

  And then the dragworm, firm and strict, like an uncle. ‘Now that’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word about chopping. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Will you tell me a story, then?’

  ‘Oh, all right.’

  There was a rustle while the spirit settled itself among the coathangers.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ began the dragworm, ‘there was a fierce and mighty dragon.’

  ‘Like you?’ asked the wood spirit.

  ‘Like me,’ agreed the dragworm. ‘In the spring this dragon flew up to heaven and in the autumn he plunged down into the sea, but in the winter he lived in a crystal cave high on a bare and lonely rock . . .’

  It was a beautiful story with everything in it that a story should have: knights in armour and princesses and noble deeds. But long before everyone lived happily ever after, Daniel was asleep.