by Maeve Friel
Chapter Four
The food in the Hags’ Express Diner was awful, and made even worse by an old crone who sawed away tunelessly at a violin all the time they were there. While Miss Strega checked her shopping list on her clipboard, Jessica riffled through the pages of her Spelling Made Easy and slyly dropped her untouched dumplings under the table for Felicity and Berkeley.
“What we need now are some of the old traditional Shock Brew ingredients,” Miss Strega said, removing a bit of gristle from her teeth and reaching for her broom. “So we’d better take to the skies again.”
“Hang on,” said Jessica, pointing at a picture in her book. “What about the Dragons’ Teeth that Gonzina told us about? It says here that if you plant Dragons’ Teeth, they turn into heroes and builders-of-cities and bodyguards. There must be millions of witches who’d like one of those. Shouldn’t we go and visit the dragon dentist, Torquemada?”
Miss Strega sighed. “Right,” she said, slipping two rompedenti under her plate as a tip for the cook and the violin crone. “Ig-Fo-Li then. But be warned, dragons in their lairs can be very unpredictable.”
Torquemada’s dental clinic was in a cave deep in the middle of a dark secret forest. Jessica imagined that yellow-eyed wolves tiptoed in the shadows and sad wandering lost babes scattered breadcrumbs on the forest paths. It was so creepy that she put all her lucky charms on full alert, especially the lighthouse pin that Pelagia had given her and which was really a Safe Harbour Charm. If the dragon turned out to be cantankerous, all she had to do was blink and count to ten and she could fly away to safety.
But Torquemada’s lair was not as terrifying as she had feared. When Jessica and Miss Strega flew in, there was just one old toothless dragon sitting on a hoard of gold. He looked up from the newspaper he was reading, evidently not a bit surprised by the unexpected arrival of two witches, and pointed at the headline:
DRAGON AUTHORITY DENIES
EXISTENCE OF ST GEORGE.
“What do they know?” he lisped. “It was that St George that smote me with his sword. Broke my jaw and all my teeth. My life as a dentist has been ruined. Ruined.”
Jessica and Miss Strega looked at one another. The dragon with no teeth was Torquemada. The dragon dentist. As it turned out, having no teeth was only one of Torquemada’s problems.
“I haven’t always been a dentist, you know,” he wheezed when they explained why they had come. “I was a warrior once. But a lifetime of breathing fire has done me in. I’ve permanent heartburn, my breath is nasty, my nostril hairs are all singed, my throat aches, I’ve terrible wind, and, I’m sorry, I know my cave smells like old fireworks.”
Torquemada, Jessica and Miss Strega all gloomily gazed at the blackened walls, the soot dust that lay everywhere, the scorched furniture.
“And, as you can see, business is awful so I can’t give you any samples,” he lisped gummily. “But I’m happy to trade some dragon products if you can Brew up something to Spell some of my troubles away.”
Miss Strega stroked her chin thoughtfully. She really was very keen to get some Dragons’ Teeth now that she had come this far. “Hamamelis! Snapping Hazelnuts!” she shouted. “The Universal Cure! Fetch me a cauldron at once and I’ll Brew up. That ought to fix everything. Except your teeth. I fear they are as lost and gone as the snowmen of yesteryear.”
Before you could say “Winking cats and frisky bats”, Miss Strega and Jessica had a pot of Snapping Hazelnut Syrup brewing up. As Jessica Mingled the explosive mixture, Miss Strega chanted,
“Burns, scalds, windy bottom or very sore eyes,
At the snap of these Hazelnuts De-ma-te-ri-a-lize!”
She made Torquemada take three large tablespoonfuls at once, carefully poured the rest into a brown bottle and wrote out the instructions on the label.
The dragon was so grateful that he got out a box containing baby Dragons’ Teeth and some interesting adult dragon extractions. “Take your pick,” he urged Miss Strega through little puffs of smoke, “and, because I like you,” he went on, I’ll give you some Dragon’s Blood as well.”
“What can we do with that?” asked Jessica, doubtfully, as she watched him decanting some green sticky goo from a big barrel into a tray of little bottles.
“Two things,” he replied with a polite burp. “First, you can add a few drops to your bath water to protect yourself from injury – but be sure to immerse yourself completely. One unfortunate princess forgot to wash her ears.”
“And what happened to her?” enquired Miss Strega.
“Let’s just say, after the Bad Fairy put the Wart Maker Spell on her, she didn’t look too pretty. Princess Cauliflower, they call her now.”
Miss Strega shuddered. “And the second thing?”
“Well, a strong solution of Dragon’s Blood can be used to make things invisible, especially print. So it’s excellent for sending private messages, secret instructions, treasure maps.” As he spoke, he rubbed a bit of the goo over the instructions on the medicine bottle and, as he had said, the writing disappeared.
“Golly, that’s nifty,” Miss Strega whistled and tucked the bottles of Dragon’s Blood into her saddlebag. “Now, we’d love to stay and chat, Torquemada, but we must fly. Do keep taking that Snapping Hazelnut mixture.”
Jessica and Miss Strega mounted their broomsticks and carefully edged their way towards the cave exit, taking care not to touch the sooty walls. At the door, Jessica turned back. “By the way, what do you use to restore the writing?”
Torquemada looked glum. “Mandragora. The Mandrake Root.”
Miss Strega gasped. Mandrake Root was the most valuable magic ingredient in the whole W3 Rule Book – and the most difficult to find. If she could find some Mandrake Root, she’d be the richest witch in the Witches World Wide Web. “You don’t say! You know where the mandrake grows?”
“Sadly, no,” Torquemada looked glummer than ever. “You see, the mandrake stinks to high heaven and since I can’t smell anything any more, it’s years since I’ve been able to find any. But the forest used to be full of it. By the way, what did it say on this medicine bottle?”
But Miss Strega and Jessica had already fast-forwarded out of the door.
All that night, they blundered about on their brooms in the mist searching for the mandrake until, just before dawn, they spotted a red glow down by the swampy shores of a dark lake.
“It might be the mandrake, or it might not, but it’s worth having a look. Re-Pa-De, please,” Miss Strega declared, giving the order to Reverse, Pause and Descend.
They smelt the mandrake long before they saw its red glow again – as Torquemada had warned, its leaves gave off an awful pong. Felicity clapped both her paws over her nose and Berkeley flew off squawking in disgust.
But worse was to come. As soon as Miss Strega and Jessica tried to pull it out of the ground, the plant began to shriek. It shrieked and roared and screamed, “Blue murder!”
Behind them, in the swamp, Jessica and Miss Strega could hear rustlings, scamperings, all manner of footsteps, and twigs snapping. They looked around nervously as a hundred eyes bored into their backs.
“Moonbones and marrowrays,” whispered Miss Strega, all in a flutter. “What shall we do? There are hundreds of whatevers out there watching us. We should never have sent the Cover of Darkness blankets back with the homing brooms. In fact, I haven’t got a single thing to Spell or Brew us out of this mess.”
“Don’t worry,” Jessica whispered back. “I’ve got my Safe Harbour Charm and I’ll activate it right now. Felicity, get back on the broom. Berkeley, pocket! Miss Strega, hold my hand.”
Jessica blinked and counted to ten backwards. When she opened her eyes, the forest had quite disappeared and they were flying over a pretty valley of orange orchards.
Miss Strega paused her broom and fanned herself with her hat. “Ooof! All that shopping and excitement has worn me out. I could do with a good Brew,” she said. “Let’s pitch camp down there beside the river. We’ll mak
e some muncheon and have a Brewing Workshop.”
“Brilliant,” said Jessica, putting her broom into fast-descend.
Chapter Five
Jessica had not always loved camping. Before she met Miss Strega, she hated it. The tent was always falling down. The ground sheet leaked. The fire wouldn’t light properly and the smoke got in everyone’s eyes. But now that she was a witch-in-training, she knew that Charming was the name of the game. With the help of the tips she had picked up from Pelagia at Charm School, she soon had the tent pitched, the hammocks strung up, the mosquito nets in place and a jug of freshly squeezed orange juice cooling in a pool in the river.
Meanwhile, with a wave of her wand and a Spell or two, Miss Strega got a cauldron of muncheon bubbling on the campfire. (Muncheon, if you don’t know, is what witches eat at night-time under the moon and the stars and is Jessica’s favourite meal of the day.) The marvellous thing about muncheon is that it tastes of whatever you want. So from the same pot, Miss Strega could enjoy a soufflé with smelly blue cheese while Jessica could have spaghetti and meatballs, with double chocolate chip ice cream to follow.
Then Miss Strega set up a little light show of falling stars just for fun and turned the moonlight to ‘mellow’. Berkeley was so enchanted she perched on the top of a mandarin tree and sang a selection of her own compositions in her very best silvery voice. (The bad news was that Felicity joined in too until Jessica threw an orange at her and got the Putasockinit™ out of her saddlebag. Felicity promptly decided to leg it and hunt lizards instead.)
Finally Miss Strega set up the Brewing Workshop around the campfire. Jessica waited patiently on a three-legged stool with her arms wrapped around her knees, all excited. Like any witch-in-training, she was dying to make a Brew full of nasty things like Eye of Newt, Rat Droppings and Goblin Snot, even if it was a bit pongy and disgusting.
“Now, let’s begin,” Miss Strega began, tapping the rim of her Brewing cauldron with her long owl feather.
“Are we going to make a Shock Brew?” asked Jessica, excitedly.
Miss Strega sniffed loudly. “No, we are not. Back in the old days, when witches still flew their broomsticks the wrong-way-round, the Shock Brew was all there was. In its day, it was very useful. However, I like to think we’re all Modern Witches now.”
Jessica looked a bit disappointed but she nodded loyally. Although Miss Strega was very, very old – she had been running her hardware shop since 991 – she didn’t like anyone to think she was at all old-fashioned.
Miss Strega continued, tapping her nose wisely, “In fact, I’ve been giving the matter a lot of thought and I’ve invented the Modern Witch’s Brewing Pyramid.” She flipped over a page on her easel, drew a large pyramid and divided it into seven wide bands which she labelled Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Smell, Noise, Liquid and Seasoning. “There are the seven essential things every Brewing Spell must include, whether it is a good Spell, a wicked Spell or a mischievous Spell.”
Jessica nodded again although she really hadn’t a clue what Miss Strega was talking about.
Miss Strega continued. “Starting at the narrow top end, you choose a little animal extract or tissue, just a small tube of Snails’ Drool, say…”
and then, as you move down the pyramid, you can use more and more of each category, for example, a cup of Buttercup Dew for your vegetable bit…”
“…then maybe a handful of Moondust for your mineral.”
“For the fourth band, you can use as much smell as you like, say the whole bottle of that Aroma of Lion’s Den you sniffed in the attic.”
“Or the pong of Torquemada’s cave? Or the stink of the mandrake leaves?” quipped Jess.
“Exactly so.” Miss Strega filled in the smell band.
“Next comes as much noise as you want.”
“Like an hour of fiddle music from the Hags’ Express Diner?” suggested Jessica.
“Bravo Jess! You’re getting the hang of this.”
“Then pour in plenty of water or whatever.”
“Hot or cold?” asked Jess.
Miss Strega stroked her long chin. “Why don’t you find yourself a cauldron and make up a Brew yourself to see how it works.” She filled in the seventh band of the pyramid and ripped off the page. “Use whatever you can find in the orchard. And remember, a good brewer always adds that special something, a bit of herself.”
“Mmm,” thought Jessica, taking the page from Miss Strega and reading the bottom line.
She knitted her brows. “What kind of seasoning? What sort of Spell would you like me to make?”
But Miss Strega had already picked up her book (The Brewing Year by Delia Catessen) and wasn’t listening.
Jessica picked up a cauldron and set off to make her Pyramid Brew. She hadn’t gone very far before she found a very interesting snakeskin. It was quite transparent and had bulges where the snake’s eyes would have been before it had slithered off in its shiny new skin. Perfect for the Animal bit. Then she gathered a handful of scarlet poppy flowers and scooped up a trowel of red earth. That took care of the Vegetable and Mineral bits. Next in were the smells of the orchard – a good whiff: clementine blossom and burning orange wood. For noise, she added all the sounds of the orchard, the whoosh of a cloud of crickets rising, a far-off donkey braying and eight tolls from the village bell. After that, she filled the cauldron to the brim with lots of clear water from the river.
“This is too nice,” she thought, frowning. “Not a bit like a Shock Brew.” She read the last line of the Brewing Pyramid diagram again.
She glanced over at Miss Strega, quietly reading beside the campfire; at Berkeley trilling on the clementine tree; at Felicity watching her own reflection in the river and at the homing brooms just coming in to land. It was all far too charming.
“Have you finished yet?” Miss Strega called out over her reading glasses. “Muncheon’s ready.”
Jessica picked up her long-eared owl Mingling feather. “What this needs,” she thought, “is a bit of me. Some seasoning to give it a bit of oomph, something like the Wart Maker Spell, or the Lifelong Hat Hair Curse. Or maybe a non-stop Sneeze Attack. Because I am a witch after all, not a good fairy with a sticky-out dress and silly moondust.”
She pondered for a moment more, and then intoned:
“Biting lice, sucking lice,
true bugs and beetles,
Grasshoppers, stick insects,
mantis and locusts,
Fleas and mosquitoes,
thistles and burrs,
Hairy pullovers and spindly
dwarf furze.”
Her fingers moved rapidly over the cauldron as she Mingled her Spell. If anyone had been watching her, they would have seen that she was smiling a very old-fashioned witchy smile. The spell began to work in the middle of the night.
First the homing brooms began to shudder and shake their feathery heads.
Then, out of the blue, Felicity leapt out of her hammock and dashed off. Jessica could hear her frantically rubbing her back against the trunk of a nearby tree.
Berkeley was restless too, fidgeting and moving about in Jessica’s pocket. Suddenly, she shot out and began to groom and poke at her feathers. “Hu-eet,” she complained, trying to dislodge imaginary balls of pocket fluff and bird seed from under her wings. Eventually, she flew off to sing protest songs from a perch on a telegraph wire.
Miss Strega was not happy either. She tossed and turned and scratched between her shoulder blades with a long bony finger.
“Pesky mosquitoes,” she muttered, jabbing at her back with the point of her wand.
Jessica smiled to herself in the warm silent darkness. “No, not mosquitoes. It’s the Modern Witch’s Pyramid Brew with added twenty-four hour Out-of-Reach Itch!”
Chapter Six
In the morning, Jessica woke to find Miss Strega writing out a list of things for Jessica to find in the orchard.
“These,” Miss Strega said, poking at an itch behind her knee, “are the kind
of things the common or garden witch likes to keep in her stock cupboard. Even we Modern Witches need them too in small doses.”
Jessica read the list and wrinkled her nose. “Beetles, Crickets, Moth Wings, Spider Silk, Gnats’ Spittle… I’m not killing anything,” she said sharply.
“Did I ask you to?” Miss Strega peered over the top of her spectacles. “Seek and you will find.”
Jessica soon discovered an interesting thing about hunting and collecting. Wherever she went, crawling under the orange trees or peering into the ditches, she found what she was looking for. There were shiny beetles with bodies of metallic green armour, crickets which looked like dried papery leaves, moths with delicate transparent wings and huge webs of spider silk dangling between trees with their dead owners shrivelled up like dried raisins. Her specimen boxes were half full before Berkeley had even returned from her night out.
Miss Strega busied herself bottling dew and gathering seedpods from the magic jacaranda trees. Needless to say, it was Jessica who had to collect all the disgusting things like snails’ drool, and persuade every gnat in the orchard to spit into a glass bottle. When a herd of bearded goats strolled past, swishing their tails, it was Jessica again who had to follow them and pick up their droppings with tweezers. Miss Strega just whistled old Brewing songs, filled matchboxes with nice clean poppy seeds and scratched and poked and prodded between her shoulder blades.
“Perhaps, the Modern Witch’s Pyramid Brew is a good idea, after all,” Jessica huffed.
“Actually, some day you may find the goats’ poo very useful,” Miss Strega declared. “Say a gang of rude goblins is partying on your rooftop, or the coven at the crossroads are screaming like banshees, a goats’ poo stink potion will soon send them packing.”
