Witch Snitch

by Sibéal Pounder

  ‘That means there’s only …’ Fran tailed off.

  Lizzie Beast put the camera down.

  ‘Well, she can’t do it!’ Tiga cried. ‘Lizzie Beast is the camera witch! The most important person here!’

  Fran tapped her chin and flew back and forth. ‘Well, it’s between Felicity Bat and Lizzie Beast. I know! Why don’t you lie down next to the hole and see which one fits better.’

  They both looked at each other before flopping down next to the hole. Felicity Bat appeared tiny and weedy next to the almighty pit of a hole. But Lizzie Beast fitted perfectly.

  ‘But the camera,’ Tiga protested.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Lizzie Beast said with a smile. ‘I can teach you how to use it in two seconds.’

  ‘Stop speaking, I’m trying to get you out of this,’ Tiga whispered.

  ‘Look,’ Idabelle said sternly. ‘We’re going to be here all day if we don’t decide soon. How about Lizzie Beast does it and Toad Chops will make sure, with her advanced and expert spells, that Lizzie Beast hovers right before she hits the hole, and then we’ll CUT! And it will look dramatic and perfect.’

  Fran clapped loudly. ‘Oh, bravo!’

  Felicity Bat flipped her book open again. ‘Now, according to this, the first witch who landed in Sinkville came from pipe 997 on West 51st row of pipes.’ She looked up. ‘So it’s … that one.’

  Tiga took her position behind the camera. Fluffanora sat in her trunk, sipping Clutterbucks and watching the action unfold, like she was in a box seat at the Ritzytwig Theatre.

  ‘We should probably be in costume,’ Fran said, as with a single wrinkle of the nose and forceful BOOM, all of them were suddenly in old black cloaks and frilly bonnets.

  ‘Oi!’ Fluffanora cried from the hatch. ‘I’m in charge of Wardrobe.’

  ‘Tell it to the nose,’ Fran said, tapping hers proudly.

  Fluffanora grumpily closed the hatch. Tiga watched as the trunk wriggled. Clearly Fluffanora was marching down the corridor inside to get a better outfit.

  Felicity Bat flicked her finger and Lizzie Beast began to rise higher and higher until she was nothing more than a speck in the air, a Fran-sized blob below a wall of dripping pipes.

  Fran rubbed her hands together with glee.

  ‘It was a windy day,’ Idabelle said sinisterly into the camera, wiggling her nose to magic up some extra wind. Tiga looked up and saw Lizzie Beast being swept to the left and smacking into a pipe.

  ‘I’M FINE!’ she called down to them.

  ‘And Sinkville,’ Idabelle said, lowering her voice to a whisper, ‘was empty. But then something happened that changed the course of witch history for ever, although how true it is we don’t know.’

  ‘WE DO KNOW AND IT’S TRUE,’ Felicity Bat interjected, not taking her eyes off Lizzie Beast, who was now hovering just inside pipe 997.

  ‘What we do know for sure,’ Idabelle said, gliding over to the hole, ‘is that this here is where –’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘THE FIRST WITCH LANDED IN SINKVILLE!’

  Tiga swung the camera up to the pipe, and watched, gripping the camera fiercely as Lizzie Beast came somersaulting down, skirt over her head. Tiga nervously looked to Felicity Bat, who seemed completely in control of the situation.

  ‘Remember,’ Tiga whispered. ‘Stop her before she hits the hole and I’ll cut the camera.’

  Felicity Bat nodded, which only served to speed Lizzie Beast’s fall.

  ‘The witch fell from the pipe!’ Idabelle was having to commentate more quickly. ‘From the world above! With incredible speed!’

  Tiga caught a glimpse of something darting across the ground, past Felicity Bat and towards the hole. She frantically scanned the area, but couldn’t catch sight of it.

  ‘Tiga, keep the camera on Lizzie Beast,’ Fran hissed.

  Tiga peered through the lens. Lizzie Beast was close now, just two more seconds, and then –

  ACHOOOOOOO!

  There was an almighty crunch! A dusty cloud of soil and stones burst from the hole, completely covering them.

  Tiga coughed as the dust cleared. Felicity Bat was angrily wiping her runny nose.

  ‘The micro cat,’ Tiga said. ‘I saw it darting past!’

  ‘That stupid micro cat! I told you to keep it away from me!’ Felicity Bat roared. ‘I sneezed and broke the spell!’

  Fran turned to Tiga. ‘Tiga, why were you not looking after the micro cat?’

  ‘Because no one asked me to!’ Tiga said, racing over to where Felicity Bat was hovering by the hole. ‘I can hardly see the micro cat! How could I possibly look after it?’

  ‘Grizzly Feast is gone,’ Idabelle announced flatly.

  ‘It’s Lizzie Beast,’ Felicity Bat corrected her.

  ‘DEAD?!’ Tiga cried.

  ‘No,’ Idabelle said, dusting off her skirt. ‘She’s gone to wherever this shortcut leads.’

  ‘It’s a shortcut?’ Tiga asked.

  ‘Obviously,’ Felicity Bat said. ‘Do you know nothing about Sinkville history? The witch who landed here also invented shortcuts. Holes in the ground around Sinkville that link with one of the towers in The Towers.’

  Fran began whistling loudly for the micro cat. She stopped near the hole and picked up a tiny lead. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said, peering into the hole. ‘I think the micro cat might’ve been under Lizzie Beast. Serves it right for running away, really.’

  ‘Well, we need to go to the towers and find out where she’s gone to,’ Tiga said.

  ‘There’s an easy way to find out where she’s gone,’ Idabelle said with a sinister smile.

  And before Tiga could reply, she felt the unmistakeable shove of magic as she tumbled head first into the hole.

  Five Things You Didn’t Know About Idabelle Bat, by Tiga

  1.Idabelle is one of a group of popular witches at Pearl Peak Academy called The Points. They are called The Points because they wear pointy witch hats to prove they’ve travelled up the pipes to scare human children, which isn’t allowed.

  2.Her favourite shop in Pearl Peak is Squeal Records, which sells lots of old music and chunky earrings.

  3.She secretly likes working at the First Witch Who Landed in Sinkville Historical site because she likes how quiet it is, and she can practise spells and not have to be popular.

  4.Her best friend is Melodie McDamp, who is also in The Points.

  5.She and Melodie are saving up their money from their weekend jobs to make their own line of earrings called Bling by Bat & McDamp.

  How to Make Splat Cakes

  WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

  For the batter

  •110 g butter

  •110 g caster sugar

  •2 free-range eggs

  •1 tsp vanilla extract

  •110 g self-raising flour

  For the icing

  •140 g butter

  •280 g icing sugar

  •1 tbsp milk

  •Black food colouring

  •Chocolate sprinkles

  •Chocolate balls

  •Chocolate buttons

  •Edible glitter

  HOW TO MAKE THEM:

  Cake bit

  1.Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4.

  2.Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl. Beat in the eggs and stir in the vanilla extract.

  3.Fold in the flour.

  4.Spoon the mixture into paper cases.

  5.Bake in the oven for 10–15 minutes, or until golden-brown on top.

  6.Set aside to cool.

  Icing bit

  1.Beat the butter in a large bowl until soft.

  2.Add half the icing sugar and beat until smooth.

  3.Add the rest of the icing sugar with the milk (add more if necessary).

  4.Add a couple of drops of black food colouring.

  Cake assembly bit

  1.Now scrunch up your fist and – SPLAT. Squash the cakes.

  2.Spoon some icing on to each of them.

  3.Add chocolate sprink
les and round chocolate balls and buttons (so it looks a little like rocky ground), and finish with edible glitter.

  Cat Hospital in the Towers

  Unfortunately, the shortcut led to Sinkville’s only cat hospital.

  Lizzie Beast, however, was fine, once they gave her seven stiches and removed the cat ears that had accidentally been transplanted on to her head.

  Tiga winced as she made her way down the corridor. The meows in the cat hospital were shrill, and for some reason every witch was bewitched to look like a gigantic mouse walking on two legs and wearing a doctor’s coat, which just made the whole place seem like one big nightmare.

  ‘Right, Lizzie Beast is not, as we suspected, dead or maimed, so it’s time I returned home,’ Felicity Bat said, making for the window.

  ‘I can’t believe Idabelle shoved us down that hole,’ Fran cried.

  ‘Thanks for being nice to us, Felicity,’ Tiga said with a smile.

  ‘Oh please,’ Felicity Bat said, jumping out of the window and hovering effortlessly. ‘I’m never nice. See you at Witchoween.’

  ‘We need to find that micro cat,’ Fran hissed in Tiga’s ear. ‘It knows too much. It must be in here somewhere.’

  A witch bewitched to look like a mouse toddled past pushing a cart crammed full of cats.

  ‘It’s not going to be easy to find,’ Tiga said. ‘Where’s Fluffanora?’

  ‘In her trunk,’ Fran said, pointing to where it sat below the window.

  A letter came gliding past and slotted neatly into the side of the trunk’s hatch. Tiga watched as it was yanked inside. It was purple, with the unmistakeable messy handwriting of Peggy.

  ‘What’s wrong with your face?’ Fran said, zooming up close to Tiga.

  Tiga lowered her voice to a fairy-level whisper. ‘I think Fluffanora and Peggy are up to something. I have a feeling … Fluffanora was being weird at the Toad magazine offices. She was very defensive about what Peggy was doing, as if Peggy was doing something and she didn’t want me to know about it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Fran said, furrowing her brow like she did when she starred in the fairy detective drama Detective Buzz: Is it a bee? Is it a wasp? No, it’s a fairy who can only say buzz (because she had an accident when she was a teenager and forgot every single word, except for buzz).

  Lizzie Beast came limping down the hall and picked up the camera. ‘So sorry about that.’

  ‘Just don’t do it again,’ Fran said.

  ‘Fran!’ Tiga cried. ‘Lizzie Beast nearly died. And that wasn’t her fault.’

  ‘I have an idea,’ Fran said excitedly. ‘Ready the camera, Lizzie Beast.’

  Tiga sighed as Fran started making irritating warm-up gurgling noises.

  ‘HERE WE ARE, IN THE CAT HOSPITAL!’ Fran cheered. ‘But we aren’t here to tell you all about it. We’re here to hunt down the micro cat. So come with us on this exciting adventure!

  Nomicrocats were har med during the making of this do cumentary.’

  ‘Sorry, CUT!’ Tiga said, her eyes wide. ‘What did you say at the end?’

  ‘No-micro-cats-were-harmed-during-the-making-of-this-documentary,’ Fran repeated more slowly. ‘For legal reasons.’

  A tiny grey cat next to them meowed cutely.

  ‘This is Dust,’ a squat little witch doctor explained, her mouse nose twitching. ‘She’s been at the hospital for two weeks now. She’s a stray, so we’re hoping someone can adopt her.’

  Fran looked lovingly at the cat. Tiga had never seen Fran look lovingly at anything like that – except her own face in the mirror, or her reflection in a mirror, or her reflection in Julie Jumbo Wings’ caravan, or Crispy’s caravan, or her reflection in Tiga’s eyeball. Any reflection of herself, really.

  ‘I wish I could take Dust home with me,’ Fran said, ‘but she’ll grow bigger and eventually eat me. But I can help! We shall add an appeal to my fans! FAAAAAAANS! Dust has been here for two weeks and needs a loving home,’ Fran said, looking into the camera, her eyes big and filled with tears.

  Tiga could feel her eyes welling up. Fran was good.

  ‘And Dust also needs a makeover,’ Fran said, taking it in an inappropriate direction.

  ‘I don’t think Dust really does need a makeov–’ the witch doctor tried.

  ‘SILENCE, NOVICE!’ Fran roared, flicking her finger and covering Dust in glittery dust. ‘Dust shall henceforth be called not Dust but GLITTERYDUST! If you think you can give Glitterydust a home –’

  Glitterydust looked annoyed to be covered in glitter.

  ‘– then fly on down to the cat hospital!’

  The next room was the worst.

  ‘This, viewers,’ Fran whispered, her face practically touching the camera, ‘is the Plaster Room.’

  Tiga ducked as a large plaster went soaring magically through the air and tried to fix itself to a cat. The room was barely a room at all – more a mass of flying plasters covered in cat hair, and a lot of angry cats. Tiga was sidestepping slowly towards a tiny pot of wobbling jam. Fran had given her a mission: catch the micro cat. The whole Plaster Room scene was a setup. They knew the micro cat was in there, now they just had to catch it.

  ‘The Plaster Room was built ten years ago by a witch called Sticky Berta. Most witches believe plasters are no good for cats, except for pulling off their hair, but Sticky Berta believed otherwise and so here we are – NOW, TIGA!’ Fran roared.

  Tiga dived for the jam jar and caught hold of it, along with something small and wriggly.

  ‘I have the micro cat!’ she announced triumphantly, before the little thing leapt at her, sending her tumbling forward.

  Fran flew over to Lizzie Beast and flicked on the camera.

  Tiga rolled around, wrestling with it, hair flying everywhere.

  ‘This is award-winning footage,’ Fran whispered to Lizzie Beast. ‘You couldn’t fake this action.’

  Tiga went crashing through a large window and into the next room, where a bunch of witches bewitched to look like mice were tucking cats into little beds.

  The cats looked horrified.

  Tiga rolled from left to right, knocking beds over and sending cats tumbling, while the mice doctors scuttled around squeak-screaming.

  ‘What dress are you going to wear to the award ceremony?’ Fran asked Lizzie Beast. ‘I think I’ll wear my sparkly blue one because it’ll go with the Best Action Film trophy, which also happens to be blue and sparkly.’

  There was a loud clanging noise as a cat pelted into the kitchen next door.

  ‘Erm,’ Fran said, scanning the room. ‘We seem to have lost Tiga.’

  Slowly, like a hero, Tiga emerged, fur-covered and scratched, from the pile of cats in the centre of the room.

  She held up a fist in triumph. ‘I have the micro cat,’ she wheezed. ‘I HAVE THE MICRO CAT!’

  ‘Bravo!’ Fran said, zooming about her head and clapping loudly. So loudly it momentarily startled Tiga, and with one swift movement the micro cat leapt from her grasp and dived straight up –

  It turns out there is one thing that will make Fluffanora roar with laughter. And that thing is an X-ray of Tiga with a micro cat lodged up her nose.

  [THERE IS NO FOOTAGE OF THIS INCIDENT, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT PRETTY]

  Five Things You Didn’t Know About Sticky Berta, by Tiga (for fun)

  1.Sticky Berta has one blue eye and one brown eye.

  2.She invented cat plasters – they peel off without balding the cat.

  3.She knows where Lumpy the cat is but refuses to reveal the location to Aggie Hoof.

  4.She believes that cats make witches happier. Unless the cat is mean.

  5.She wrote the jingle to the Sticky Berta Cat Plaster advert, featuring a soft flute and cats wailing.

  The Cauldron Islands

  ‘I need a holiday after that,’ Tiga said, rubbing her red nose. ‘I think there’s a micro claw still stuck up there.’

  ‘Well then,’ Fran said with a smile. ‘The next place on the list is perfect for a holida
y! A great place to unwind and recover from a micro cat to the nose.’

  ‘THE CAUDRON ISLANDS!’ Tiga cheered.

  Lizzie Beast nodded and pulled out a bottle of Flappy Flora’s Sloppy Suncream. Tiga stared at it, intrigued. She thought they’d stopped making Flappy Flora’s floral products, because it was a really difficult brand name to say.

  ‘I HATE THE CAULDRON ISLANDS,’ Fluffanora screamed.

  Tiga patted her on the shoulder. ‘Yes, we all know about your irrational hatred of the Cauldron Islands.’

  ‘But,’ Fluffanora added quietly, ‘I do really want to know who the “confidential for security reasons” witch is.’

  ‘Me too!’ Tiga said, as the four of them skipped out of the door to the sound of a thousand shrill miaows.

  Tiga pulled some cool pastel-pink sunglasses and a pineapple-patterned headband from Fluffanora’s trunk and strolled out to where the others were standing by the shore of Bubble Beach.

  ‘We need to find Upper Cave Four,’ Tiga said, tapping the list in her notebook.

  Fran rolled over on her floating sun lounger. ‘Do we?’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ Fluffanora said, finishing off her Clutterbucks and dusting the sand off her skirt.

  Lizzie Beast was nearly one hundred per cent Flappy Flora’s Sloppy Suncream. Just two eyeballs and suncream. She was barely recognisable as a witch at all. She did the thumbs up.

  A drumming sound started up nearby.

  ‘Who is making that racket?’ Fran scoffed, lifting her sunglasses on to her head and squinting through the sunlight.

  Tiga, Fluffanora and Lizzie Beast shrugged.

  ‘Ah,’ Fluffanora said, clicking her fingers. ‘That’s the Silver Rats.’

  The Silver Rats had recently become the biggest and bestselling band in Sinkville. Fluffanora wasn’t a fan.

  ‘I love them!’ Tiga cried. She had been a huge fan of the Silver Rats ever since Aggie Hoof made Felicity Bat listen to all their albums, who then made Peggy listen to them, who then made Tiga listen to them.

  She made her way over to a cluster of caves. ‘It sounds live,’ she said excitedly as she climbed up on the rocks, being careful not to fall. They were covered in lazing frogs. ‘Pardon me, sorry, excuse me,’ she mumbled.