‘I suppose –’ Peggy began, but she was interrupted by someone shouting.
‘The disgusting smoke smell is almost completely gone from your hair now!’
‘Thank you,’ replied someone who sounded very familiar.
Tiga and Peggy looked at each other.
‘FLUFFANORA!’ they cried before racing down the corridor to the room where their friend was being pampered and prodded and pruned by eight Sunken Ship Road Spa witches.
Tiga burst out laughing when she saw her. Not because a witch was rubbing a fish in her hair but because she was still wearing the jeans! She’d teamed them with a ruffled black top and hundreds of beaded necklaces that covered her whole neck.
‘I couldn’t help myself,’ said Fluffanora as she pointed at the jeans and smiled.
‘I thought you said you were leaving,’ said the irritable spa witch. She grabbed Tiga’s arm.
‘Release my friend!’ said Fluffanora.
‘It’s OK,’ said Tiga. ‘We’d better get going anyway. We sank down here by accident and we need to get back up there. So we have to get the lift to the bottom of Wavely Way and then swim out the exit door back to the top and then –’
‘WHAT?’ said Fluffanora, glaring at the spa witch.
The spa witch looked sheepishly at her feet and backed out of the door.
‘Nonsense talk,’ said Fluffanora. ‘We’ll take the hairdryer back to land.’
She patted the seats on either side of her. Above them hung large dome-shaped hairdryers.
Fran coughed.
Fluffanora picked up a small hand-held hairdryer and Fran scuttled over and stood under it.
‘Right, now pull the dryer down over your heads,’ she said.
And, just like that, the hairdryers started up and they were sucked up and away to somewhere else.
In less than a second they were smack bang back in the middle of Brew’s. Hundreds of little witches were stocking the shelves again.
Tiga and Peggy looked at each other. Their hair was now in ridiculously elaborate up-dos.
Fran’s hair was also in an elaborate up-do. But, then again, it always was.
‘Oh! I almost forgot,’ said Tiga, handing Fluffanora the little leather folder of Eddy Eggby’s fashion findings.
‘For me?’ said Fluffanora, beaming at Tiga. She flicked through it.
‘The ruffled skirts!’
‘I know!’ said Tiga.
‘The bonnets!’
‘I know!’ said Tiga.
‘Do you still wear those?’ Fluffanora asked, sounding a bit disgusted.
‘Nah,’ said Tiga, ‘everything in there is from hundreds of years ago. That’s when Eddy Eggby explored above the pipes.’
‘This is honestly the best thing anyone has ever given me!’ Fluffanora said, squeezing Tiga. ‘Thank you so much!’
One of the little Brew’s witches poked her head through the clothes hanging on the rail next to them. ‘So what’s your next move?’
‘Yes,’ said Fluffanora. ‘What now?’
‘Felicity Bat stole a clue so we’re not really sure …’ Tiga explained.
‘Oh, I was so annoyed Felicity Bat destroyed a clue before everyone had seen it!’ said the little witch, pushing the rail to the side and sending it flying across the room. ‘There was talk of getting her disqualified! But it’s allowed apparently. I’d call it cheating, but she’s playing it sneaky, just like her gran Celia Crayfish did … At least Crispy found her and is filming her now.’
Tiga’s eyes lit up.
‘TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV!’ she cried.
A huge image appeared on the wall of Brew’s. It was Felicity Bat and Aggie Hoof. They were walking along a foggy street lined with big black houses and snow-tipped trees.
‘Pearl Peak,’ said Peggy, stepping so close to the screen she banged into the wall.
‘Where’s Aggie Hoof’s hat?’ asked Fran, her nose scrunched and her arms crossed. ‘She should have her hat on.’
‘The clue must’ve led them to Pearl Peak. Maybe we should go there,’ said Tiga.
‘Pearl Peak is miles away. That’s a silly move,’ said Fluffanora, adjusting Peggy’s skew-whiff hat.
Peggy nodded. ‘We have to go, though. We have nothing else to go on.’
Fluffanora grabbed a long sequinned jacket from one of the rails.
‘MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM! GET HERE RIGHT NOW! WE NEED A LIFT!’
Fluffanora spotted Tiga and Peggy’s shocked faces.
‘What?’ said Fluffanora. ‘We were planning to go for dinner at the Little Leaf restaurant in the treetops a couple of miles from Pearl Peak. And she loves driving Ratty Ann.’
‘Ratty Ann?’ Tiga and Peggy said at the same time.
‘Ratty Ann,’ Fluffanora said with a smile.
Ratty Ann was Mrs Brew’s car, but it wasn’t like any car Tiga had ever seen before. For starters, it didn’t have any sides, just five black squishy sofa-like chairs that were joined together by some sparkly black metal. Each chair had a little table in front of it, apart from one, which had a huge ornate steering wheel. And on each table were grey squares that looked like buttons.
‘Oooh, I’ve heard about these!’ Peggy cried as they zoomed along Ritzy City’s main street.
Fluffanora turned round. Mrs Brew’s head bobbed along in front, topped with an enormous grey hat with little pompoms round the edge. ‘Get some food if you want – you must be starving,’ she said.
Tiga was STARVING. Clearly so was Peggy, because she started dribbling.
‘Do you know how it works?’ Fluffanora called back.
‘I think so!’ Peggy said, turning to Tiga. ‘OK, so this is cool. Each square is a button for the shops and restaurants we’re passing. So just say you wanted some shoes from that shoe shop there …’
Tiga looked where Peggy was pointing. It was a shoe shop called Heks’s Heels. ‘Like Miss Heks!’ Tiga laughed.
‘Oh yeah!’ Peggy laughed. ‘Well, you press the Heks’s Heels button on your table, and then look! It shows you all the shoes in the shop, and as long as you’re not too far away from the shop you just press the ones you want and then it should …’ Peggy stared at the table. Tiga heard a noise behind her. She looked round and saw a pair of shoes whizzing through the air. They landed with a little thud on Peggy’s table. Peggy pressed a button with a cross on them and then they whizzed away.
‘Cool, huh? And so you can do the same with the restaurants you pass. Any restaurants on the grey squares that appear on the table.’
Tiga couldn’t believe it. She looked down and scanned the little grey squares. Inventive Ice Creams, Knobbly Noodles, the Gull and Chip Tavern … ‘It’s AMAZING!’ she cried.
Fluffanora shook her head. ‘Oh no, not the food at the Gull and Chip Tavern. It’s anything but amazing,’ she said.
Peggy laughed as a huge bowl of noodles from Knobbly Noodles landed on her table. They weren’t like noodles Tiga had seen before – they were all knobbly. She laughed and ordered exactly the same.
‘So how is it all going?’ Mrs Brew asked. ‘I haven’t had time to watch Witch Wars.’
Fran butted in and explained that Peggy and Tiga had been doing really well, but were now doing really badly. There was the Wavely Way detour and also, Fran explained through gritted teeth, the Brollywood disaster.
‘We needed to find out who nominated Tiga for Witch Wars,’ Peggy explained.
‘And did you?’ Mrs Brew asked.
‘No,’ Tiga said glumly. ‘All I know is that they sent this anonymous letter.’
She pulled the letter out of her pocket and a gust of wind nearly whipped it away into the darkness.
‘Guard that letter with your life – it’s the only evidence you have!’ said Fluffanora as Tiga stuffed it back in her pocket.
‘An anonymous letter … intriguing,’ said Mrs Brew as the car veered on to a dark country road.
‘And weird,’ Peggy mumbled through a mouthful of noodles. Sh
e pressed a button and a huge tower of ice-cream balls landed in front of her. ‘Tiga has never met anyone from Sinkville.’
‘Well, someone here must know you,’ said Mrs Brew.
‘If she wins, she’ll have all the time in the world to look for whoever sent that letter,’ Peggy spluttered as she shovelled mouthfuls of ice cream into her mouth. ‘But if she loses she’ll have to go back to horrible Miss Heks above the pipes.’
Mrs Brew turned round and looked at Tiga.
‘You can do it,’ she said.
‘You’d better do it,’ said Fluffanora. ‘Ritzy City is so much more fun with you in it. And you brought jeans!’
Peggy nodded enthusiastically – so much so that the ice cream dribbling down her face splattered all over Tiga.
Fluffanora and Mrs Brew waved as they sped off into the distance, leaving Tiga and Peggy next to a twisting black road. Up and up the hill it went, before swirling around a tall and pointy white-tipped mountain half hidden in the thick fog.
‘Pearl Peak,’ Peggy said, pointing at it and yawning. ‘You know, it must be really late now. Maybe we should get some sleep and head up there first thing in the morning. I doubt Felicity Bat and Aggie Hoof are doing much at this hour either.’
Tiga mumbled ‘TV’ a lot and a screen appeared on the road. The coverage of Felicity Bat and Aggie Hoof was just a black screen. It was the same when it clipped to Lizzie Beast and Patty Pigeon.
‘See,’ Peggy said. ‘Everyone has to sleep at some point.’
The screen changed to show them standing at the side of the road.
Peggy waved into Fran’s camera.
‘Stop that!’ Fran said. ‘You’re not meant to look into the camera! That’s rule number one of acting!’
‘But we’re not acting!’ Tiga said. She leapt into view and stuck her tongue out. Peggy started doing a silly dance.
Fran huffed and puffed. ‘Ladies, this is not professional.’
Tiga looked around her. On one side of the road was a steep drop and on the other were beautiful leafy trees with spindly branches that dipped down low. The trees were covered in pretty white lights.
‘Where do we sleep?’ Tiga asked.
Peggy glanced around her. ‘Let’s camp over here!’ she said, taking a couple of steps into the trees. She took off her shoe, just one, and mumbled a spell. ‘Little laces and heels in a heap, Make me a better place to sleep.’
‘What on EARTH are you doing?’ Tiga asked as the shoe began to shake.
‘Ah, clever,’ said Fran, pointing her camera at the shoe.
The shoe rose up into the air.
CRACK!
Peggy moved Tiga backwards slightly as a giant shoe landed with a thud in front of them. There was a small door in the heel.
‘Climb in! Climb in!’ Peggy said.
When Tiga stepped inside, her eyes grew so wide they looked more like oranges. It wasn’t just a big, empty shoe, as she assumed it would be. There was a rickety old kitchen and a wooden table, and some paintings hanging wonkily on the walls. And there was a small, skew staircase that led to two little beds on a wooden balcony overlooking the kitchen.
‘This’ll do,’ Peggy said, straightening up one of the pictures. ‘Sorry I don’t have better shoes. The better your shoes, the better the place you get.’
Tiga looked down at the shoes Mrs Brew had given her.
‘We could try mine …’
‘This was a good idea,’ said Peggy, fluffing up the pillows on her gigantic bed. Huge pearly chandeliers hung overhead in the sitting room where Tiga was standing. Soft stripy cushions were scattered everywhere and there was a swing attached to the ceiling.
‘This reminds me of an old rhyme I heard once,’ Tiga said. ‘It was about an old woman who lived in a shoe! It said, “She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”’
Peggy nodded. ‘Yup, she was a witch.’
‘What?’ Tiga said, jumping on the bed.
‘She was a witch,’ Peggy repeated. ‘She was the one who invented the shoe thing. It changed camping forever. We used to camp in these things called tents.’
Tiga laughed. ‘We still do that above the pipes.’
‘Well, once we win Witch Wars you’ll be camping in shoes forever more!’ Peggy said, curling up in bed. ‘And, just think, you’ll be able to make the rules and help other witches … You could make mean witches wear silly hats when they’re nasty. Or you could clean up the horrible parts of Sinkville and make it nicer for the witches who live there, and you could …’
There was a long silence.
‘I could what?’ Tiga asked, but Peggy had fallen asleep.
The swing in the sitting room moved only slightly at first. It creaked forward, and then it creaked back. The pearly chandelier rocked too, and the beds Tiga and Peggy were sleeping in began to shake.
Tiga woke first and shook Peggy.
‘Huh, what? Where? Why? Frogs in hats!’ Peggy said with a sleepy snort.
There was a bang, and then another one. And another after that.
‘Someone’s outside,’ Tiga whispered.
Peggy leapt to her feet and put on her hat. ‘Come on, Tiga.’
They crept to the door. It was shaking.
Boom.
Someone was trying to knock it down!
BOOM.
Tiga leaned against the door. ‘We can’t go out there.’
Peggy was peeking out of the kitchen window. ‘I can’t see anything. The heel is in the way!’ She closed the curtains.
The door stopped shaking.
‘You try,’ a voice outside said.
Tiga looked at Peggy, her eyes wide, and then …
Knock, knock, knock.
It was the quietest little knock Tiga had heard. Like a little bird gently tapping the door with a pen.
Tiga took a deep breath and turned the handle.
There, standing in the doorway, light flooding in from behind her, was a familiar little figure.
‘Patty Pigeon!’ Peggy growled, charging towards her.
‘I come in peace! I come in peace!’ said Patty, holding her hands in the air.
Sally the fairy hovered in the air next to her and waved. She was hit in the face by a wing belonging to Julie Jumbo Wings.
‘I’m here too,’ Lizzie Beast grunted as she peeked her huge head round the door.
‘I think the competition is over,’ Patty Pigeon said. ‘Can we come in?’
‘Over?’ Peggy shouted. ‘OVER? Ah, frograts, I knew I shouldn’t have gone to bed!’
‘Well, it’s not completely over,’ Patty Pigeon explained. ‘Felicity Bat and Aggie Hoof are definitely ahead now. We got to the Coves before them – Lizzie swam and I sat on her back – and we saw the clue before they destroyed it, but we can’t figure it out. We thought perhaps you could. We don’t care about winning; we just definitely don’t want Felicity Bat or Aggie Hoof to win. We watched the footage of you that Fran’s been filming.’
‘It’s excellent, isn’t it?’ said Fran.
Patty Pigeon nodded. ‘We think you might have what it takes to beat them and so we want to give you the clue.’
Tiga held her hand to her mouth. ‘You want to give me the clue from the Coves?’
Lizzie Beast nodded and then pointed at Patty Pigeon, who recited perfectly:
‘I see most things in circles,
At times the wrong way round,
But why is it I never lose track
Of where it is I’m bound?’
Peggy laughed. It sounded a lot like a relieved laugh. But Tiga eyed the other witches suspiciously.
‘How do we know this isn’t a trap? You could’ve just made that clue up. You could be working with Felicity Bat.’
Patty Pigeon took a step forward, her hands clasped neatly in front of her. ‘I can assure you that is not the case: Felicity Bat and I are NOT friends. Peggy, you know that.’
‘It’s true,’ said Peggy. ‘Felicity Bat is always lifting her up
by the pigtails and levitating up really high and then dropping her on prickly hedges.’
Patty Pigeon shivered. ‘And into swamps, and down small holes, and once down a chimney, and on to a lamp post, and into many bins, and once through the roof of Cakes, Pies and That’s About It Really.’
Tiga nodded at Peggy and put her arm round Patty. ‘OK, let’s figure out this clue. What moves in circles and at times the wrong way round?’
‘How can you move in a circle the wrong way round? Peggy asked. ‘It’s a circle.’
‘And it never loses track …’ Tiga mumbled.
‘Track, like train tracks perhaps,’ suggested Peggy.
Tiga leapt about on the spot and hugged her. ‘Sort of like a train, only it goes backwards and it circles! The answer is a ROLLER COASTER! Didn’t Aggie Hoof say Sinkville’s only roller coaster is in Pearl Peak?’
‘YES!’ Peggy and Patty Pigeon cried.
‘WOOHOO!’ Lizzie Beast cheered, jumping up and knocking one of the chandeliers off the ceiling. It fell to the ground and smashed.
And squashed Patty Pigeon.
‘Ouch!’ she cried from under it. Then Tiga saw the smoke.
Lizzie Beast gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to –’
She lifted the pearly chandelier off Patty Pigeon. Smoke was billowing up her legs.
Fran wiggled in the air. ‘Wait for the pop!’
Tiga, Peggy and Lizzie Beast glared at her as Patty Pigeon disappeared with a pop.
‘What?’ said Fran. ‘I love the pop.’
PATTY PIGEON
IS OUT!
The girl for whom nobody in Sinkville has been cheering is out!
Reporter: Patty, most of us forgot you were in the competition because Lizzie Beast has been blocking the camera, and now she’s accidentally knocked you out. Are you angry? Are you FURIOUS?
Patty Pigeon: Um, I don’t think so …
Reporter: WILL YOU BE GETTING REVENGE ON LIZZIE BEAST FOR RUINING YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING?
Patty Pigeon: Pardon?
Reporter: WILL YOU BE KEEPING A BEADY EYE ON HER, WATCHING HER EVERY MOVE, WAITING FOR THE CHANCE TO GET YOUR REVENGE?’
Witch Wars Page 9
