Too Much Witch

by Nicki Greenberg

  I glanced at Phoebe. She was staring at me intently, willing me to go on. To tell them what they really needed to know. I took a big breath and plunged in.

  I said that being a witch is complicated. That Ordinary people have all kinds of wild ideas about us. They find us fascinating, or scary, or icky, or all those things at once, and sometimes those feelings make it hard for them to see us as real people. But we’re not fairytale characters. We’re people, just doing our best to muddle through life like everyone else. I told them that my dearest wish was that we could all muddle through this year together, and learn from one another along the way.

  Phoebe was the first to start clapping.

  She was beaming. The rest of the class joined in and my heart bloomed like a rose. At last I’m setting an example I can be proud of.

  When the clapping died down, Danny raised his hand and said, ‘You’re not that scary, Ms Stitch.’ At that moment it felt like the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me.

  And then Zinnia chimed in: ‘I wish I was a witch!’

  Ahahahahahaha! Can you imagine?? Thank all the Oracles she’s not!

  Thursday 15 May

  I practically skipped home after school today. Not only was my class marvellous, but MM walked past the classroom and saw them being marvellous. Perfect behaviour, from front to back. And leading this orchestra of educational excellence: me!

  Things were going so well, I decided it would be okay to start telling them Barnaby stories again. He’s certainly making sure I don’t run out of material. When I was doing my meditation this morning, he crept up and deposited a dead rat right in front of me. My eyes were closed, so I didn’t see it at first. But with the next big breath, I most definitely smelled it. Ugghhhhhhh. It wasn’t a fresh one.

  I toppled sideways out of the lotus position and screamed, ‘Furball!’

  The rat shook violently and then shrank to the size of a cockroach. Barnaby ate it.

  I clearly still have some work to do.

  Briony says I should be grateful to Barnaby. She says he is my greatest teacher: if I can stay calm in the face of his outrageous behaviour, I’ll be the master of my own powers in no time. That’s easy for her to say. Her cat cooks breakfast for her every morning and makes her bed!

  Friday 16 May, 3am

  Aha! Thank you, Barnaby! I’ve just woken up with the answer!

  The smell in my classroom: it’s rats. There must be rats living in the roof. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that sooner. I’ll tell MM today and she can arrange to get them cleared out.

  Friday, 5.30pm

  MM was not grateful that I’d solved the Mystery of the Stinky Classroom. She was completely freaked out. When I told her, she turned pale and her eyes darted anxiously up to the ceiling. Then she shook her head and said, ‘We don’t have rats.’

  She was afraid. Imagine that! Ms Steely-Sides is afraid of something! She’s afraid of rats.

  Actually, I feel for MM. I know what it’s like. I was exactly the same with spiders, and I’m still not good with creepy-crawlies in general. Plus, lots of people – including witches – feel ashamed about rats. They think that rats only live in dirty places, which isn’t true. Rats are literally everywhere.

  I tried to reassure MM that there was nothing to worry about, we could just get the pest controllers in, but she didn’t let me finish. She repeated, ‘We don’t have rats!’ and walked out.

  Not sure what I’m supposed to do about this now. It isn’t the sort of thing I’d want to bother Principal B about. Especially since he’s still ducking for cover every time he sees me.

  Saturday 17 May

  My ‘greatest teacher’ is testing me, all right. I asked Barnaby if he’d like to try meditating with me, like Melvin does with Briony. He said that Melvin is a disgrace to feline dignity, and that he’d rather eat his own fur. If only. Instead, while I was working away at Inner Peace, he tore up the school camp information pack that I was supposed to read this weekend. I’ve been putting off looking at it all week, and now it’s in shreds.

  Breathe in…

  Breathe out…

  Saturday, 11.40am

  Clever me: I tried out a repair spell on the camp info pack, and it worked! I almost wish I hadn’t, though. Camp is going to be hideous.

  Four days, stuck in the middle of nowhere.

  Twenty kids to supervise, twenty-four hours a day.

  Canoeing, a high ropes course, something called a ‘mud run’, and a very ominous-sounding ‘survival sleep-out’. All in the company of my great mates, Melody ‘Gotcha’ Martin, and Steve ‘the Bullfrog’ Bullen.

  Is there any way I can get out of this?

  Maybe Briony could write me a note. She wouldn’t even have to lie: if I keep clenching my jaw like this, I really will have sore teeth.

  Sunday 18 May

  The gang were no help at all last night.

  We went to Pixies for dinner, and I told them about the impending Camp of Doom. Briony refused to write me a note, the big goody-goody. She said that camp sounded fantastic and went into raptures about how much she loved school camps when she was a kid. She said I’d love it too, once I gave it a go.

  Oh, right. So, which bit am I supposed to love, exactly? The grotty showers? The lumpy bunks? The spiders and snakes and mosquitoes? The leeches?

  Amanita and Jessamyn were full of sympathy, but I could have done without their horror stories. They might have hated school camps, but they certainly enjoyed dishing up the ghoulish details. Like the time Amanita woke up with a leech on her eyeball. Or when Jessamyn got melted marshmallows tangled in her hair, which then attracted a swarm of highly aggressive wasps. And so on.

  Barnaby was reading the camp program when I got home. I pointed out the bit that said NO PETS ALLOWED, and he said he was only reading it for laughs; nothing in the known universe could make him go out into the bush with a bunch of revolting children.

  It’s true: children in the wild can be worse than leeches and wasps put together. I’ll never forget my own Grade Five camp, and the humiliation of waking up with my left hand dangling in a bowl of cold water. Emily Groff and her nasty little crew thought it would make me wet the bed while I was asleep. They weren’t expecting it to set off a chill spell, though. Those bullies woke up with their teeth chattering and icicles hanging over their bunks like daggers. I almost got frostbite, but at least I didn’t wee the bed.

  Okay, Zelda: time to put on a brave face. Tomorrow you’re going to tell the class all about camp and how terrific it will be. How they’ll love the challenge of the activities. The fun of roughing it, and the joy of being surrounded by nature. Tell them how excited you are to share this experience with them.

  In other words, you’re going to lie through your teeth.

  Monday 19 May

  I have never seen my class so excited. Not even when I made them fly. They certainly didn’t need any convincing about how great camp would be.

  The buzz went on all morning, fuelled by legends of camps gone by. There was the time Lucy’s big sister rode the flying fox upside down. The canoe with eels in it. The fateful ‘Spaghetti Vom-ognese’ that gave a whole class food poisoning. And the daring midnight raid by one cabin on another’s stash of forbidden lollies, which ended in both groups being punished with ‘slush-puppies’. ‘Slush-puppies’, as Tom explained with great relish, means cleaning out the disgusting camp toilets. ‘And if you’re really bad, you have to do it with a toothbrush, after dark when the yowlies come out.’

  Not everyone was quite so thrilled by the prospect of slush puppies and yowlies (whatever they are). As the tall tales grew even taller, I could see Blake shrinking down into himself, trying to look occupied ruling margins in page after page of his exercise book. Rose chewed on her fingernails, and then her bottom lip started to tremble.

  I know just how they feel.

  Tuesday 20 May

  Clearly there is no shortage of imagination in my class. Pity it’s all funnelled i
nto just one topic, though.

  Yowlies.

  Yowlies in creative writing (‘Terror Night at Numbat Creek’, by Danny). Yowlies in maths (‘A kid has five litres of blood in her body. Three yowlies attack her and drink one third each…’, a demonstration of fractions, by Matilda). Yowlies in art (‘After Dark’, a study in charcoal and red paint, by Ollie). By the end of the day I’d heard so much about yowlies, I felt like I’d seen one with my own eyes.

  And I thought wasps and leeches were bad.

  The one voice of reason was Eleanor. She told the others not to be stupid, there was no such thing as yowlies. To which Zinnia replied, ‘You don’t know everything, Eleanor. My brother saw one. Are you saying my brother’s a liar?’

  Wednesday 21 May

  This yowlie nonsense is getting out of hand.

  The whole idea is so ridiculous, I didn’t think I needed to tell the kids that yowlies aren’t real. But I was wrong. For quite a few children in my class, they are very real indeed.

  I only comprehended how far things had gone when Rose didn’t come back to class after lunch. I found her hiding behind the water tank, sobbing. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong at first, but bit by bit it all came out. Zinnia has been telling everyone the ‘one-hundred-per-cent-true story’ about her brother being attacked by a yowlie on the way to the camp toilets at night. She says that the school covered up the whole incident so that parents wouldn’t panic. Poor Rose was bug-eyed with fear.

  I gave her a hug and told her that the ‘one-hundred-per-cent truth’ is that there are no yowlies. Then I marched back into class, determined to put a stop to the yowlie business altogether. Which wasn’t quite as simple as I’d hoped…

  Me: ‘We need to talk about these yowlie stories.

  Some people are finding them quite upsetting, so I think it’s time that everyone gave the subject a rest.’

  Zinnia: ‘But Ms Stitch, I was only trying to warn

  people so they don’t get attacked like my brother did!’

  Me: ‘Zinnia, your brother wasn’t attacked by a

  yowlie.’

  Zinnia: ‘He was! He told me! It had these long

  fangs like a vampire—’

  Marlo: ‘It’s true! My sister saw one on camp, too!’

  Ari: ‘And my brother said—’

  [Class degenerates into general uproar]

  Me: ‘QUIET, PLEASE! Quiet, everybody!

  Listening, please!’

  [Class reluctantly stops yammering]

  Me: ‘Let me be clear: there is no such thing as a

  yowlie. Yowlies do not exist. They’re just imaginary creatures cooked up to scare people, like vampires and werewolves and ghosts.’

  Zinnia: ‘Yeah, right. That’s what my parents said

  about witches.’

  I stayed late after the staff meeting so I could decorate the classroom with the children’s comic art stories (thankfully completed last week before their brains were consumed by yowlies). It was dark by the time I finished, and a bit eerie. Classrooms at night are always kind of strange, maybe because they’re so weirdly still and silent compared to the usual daytime ruckus. I was standing on a chair, pinning up the last row of pages, when I heard a screech from the ceiling. I screamed right back and almost fell sideways into the fish tank. Those yowlie stories must even be getting to me.

  It wasn’t any kind of monster, of course. It was the rats. I have got to do something to get rid of them. If MM won’t face up to the problem, I’ll have to hunt down Principal B and tell him. Make him act like he’s in charge, for a change.

  Thursday 22 May

  Now I’ve REALLY blown it.

  Phoebe’s cover.

  My career.

  All blown to brimstone. Gone, gone, gone.

  It’s not only my career that I’ve destroyed, either. Steve Bullen’s career is down the toilet as well.

  He’s sitting on my kitchen table right now with his tiny head in his tiny hands, ignoring the tiny bowl of crushed Tweezels I made for him and cursing me with language I won’t even repeat.

  I know I’m to blame. I lost control. Which is hardly surprising, considering what the Bullfrog did first. And yes, I know that ‘he started it’ is no excuse. But – he started it!

  I didn’t go looking for a fight. Honestly. I went to see if I could talk to him after PE, to arrange a meeting about camp planning. He had the class doing sprints up and down the oval, and Rose was coming last, gasping for breath as she tried to catch up to the others. The Bullfrog pointed at her and shouted, ‘Hey, pigtails! You’ll have to run faster than that on camp! The YOWLIES always pick off the slow-pokes first!’

  Result #1: Rose stopped running altogether and burst into uncontrollable sobs.

  Result #2: Zelda Stitch got mad. Seriously, hexatiously mad.

  You know how people say ‘I saw red’ when they’re angry? Well, I saw beyond red. I saw purple. My whole field of vision turned a vicious, burning violet, with the Bullfrog’s jeering face fixed in the middle. I felt the air rush into my lungs and my body seemed to expand, like a fireball sucking up oxygen when it explodes.

  But I didn’t grow bigger. Steve Bullen shrank.

  In a flash he was the same size as me. He stiffened and looked around in alarm. His baseball cap slipped off his head and he grabbed at the waistband of his shorts, which were suddenly several sizes too big.

  Zap! He was the height of a large dog. His t-shirt and shorts were enormous on him and his silly whistle was dangling down at his knees. He gave a strangled cry and dropped into a crouch to stop his clothes from falling off altogether.

  By now every kid in the class was gaping at him in silent amazement, their mouths a matching set of perfect ‘O’s. They were too astonished even to laugh.

  A moment later the Bullfrog was smaller than Barnaby. He was a pitiful sight, tangled in his pile of clothes and gibbering with fury. I caught my breath, suddenly afraid that he might disappear completely.

  That was when I saw her. Only a few metres away, on the other side of the kitty-sized Bullfrog, Phoebe was staring back at me. Her left hand was stretched out in front of her, and her fingers were splayed and trembling. It was only then that I realised my own left arm was doing exactly the same thing.

  Suddenly, as if a bell had sounded, the class broke out of their trance. All at once they were squealing and shouting and pointing, while the Bullfrog raged like Rumpelstiltskin. Phoebe and I lowered our arms and I tried to comprehend what had just happened. And which one of us had done it.

  Worse luck, the rest of the class had noticed Phoebe, too.

  Hey, look what Phoebe’s doing!

  Phoebe! Why were you pointing at Mr Bullen like that?

  Are you a witch too, Phoebe?

  EEEEEEEE!!! PHOEBE’S A WITCH!!!

  Phoebe went white. Her eyes darted desperately. She looked one hundred per cent guilty-as-charged. The class howled with excitement. I grabbed the Bullfrog’s whistle off the grass and blew blast after blast until they finally stopped. Then I said, in the strongest voice I could muster, ‘Listen to me: Phoebe did not do this. I did it. And I will fix it.’

  Zinnia shouted, ‘Nooooo! Leave him like that! He’s so cute!’ and the rest of them screamed with laughter. They clearly did not appreciate the seriousness of the situation at all.

  I swept them into the classroom and sat them in front of a video, hoping that Phoebe could fend for herself while I dealt with the Bullfrog. He was waiting for me in the storage room, wrapped up in his giant t-shirt like a possum in a bath towel. I tried to find some clothes for him in the lost property bin, but even the Prep gear was way too big. So I ended up making him a sort of toga by stapling together a couple of tea towels from the staff room. He wasn’t happy, and I don’t blame him. Let’s just say, my tailoring-with-office-supplies skills are still very, very basic.

  After school, I had to smuggle him out in a cardboard box with holes punched in the top, just like I did with the toad last term
. Except that the Bullfrog spat fury and outrage at me all the way home.

  Now I’ve got him here, and I can’t get him back to size. I managed to shrink his clothes down to fit him (I had to do it on the balcony, hunched down behind the wall, as he didn’t trust me to do any shrink spells inside), so at least he doesn’t have to wear a tea-towel toga anymore. But that’s all I’ve been able to achieve. I tried every grow spell I could think of, but none of them made a millimetre of difference. Which makes me wonder if maybe I didn’t shrink him in the first place. Maybe it was Phoebe.

  No. I can’t go shifting this onto her, just because I’m not witch enough to put it right. I need to take responsibility. But what will I tell MM?

  Thursday, 9.45pm

  Did an emergency ring-around to the gang. They all said the same thing: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should I tell MM anything about the Bullfrog. Not yet. Saturday is Full Moon, and they are all confident that with a giant May moon on our side, the four of us together will be able to reverse the spell. No point losing my job unnecessarily, they say. Just tell the Bullfrog to call in sick tomorrow, and keep him quiet until Saturday night when we can sort him out.

  Amanita scoffed when I said that maybe it wouldn’t work without Phoebe there. ‘She’s a child, Zelda! She’s barely out of her witchling. Four grown witches should be more than enough to fix your little goblin, no matter who hexed him.’

  Dear Hecate, I hope she’s right.

  As if I haven’t got enough to worry about, Barnaby has taken a dislike to our house guest. When I got off the phone, I found the Bullfrog under the kitchen table, cowering behind one of Barnaby’s bird-watching magazines, while Señor Claw swatted at him with his paws. I grabbed Barnaby and shut him in the bedroom. I’ll have to lock him outside tomorrow, which will not please His Majesty one bit.