Granny Magic

by Elka Evalds

  The study was really just a cupboard with a tiny table and chair in it, and it didn’t take very long to build a wall of blankets and pillows in front of the door. (Ha, thought Will. We DO need all of these sofa cushions.) But then Dad opened the door.

  ‘What are you two—?’ He watched the pile of cushions skid across the floor.

  ‘Shhh,’ said Sophie. ‘We’re making it quiet.’

  ‘Oh, is that it?’ said Dad. For a second he closed his eyes and looked like he was trying not to laugh. ‘That is very, very thoughtful of you, Sophie.’ He crouched down. ‘But the real noise isn’t out here,’ he said gently. ‘It’s in here.’ He tapped the side of his head.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ said Mum from behind them. ‘Let’s leave Dad in peace.’ She patted their backs and led them into the kitchen. ‘Is that the jumper you took from Gran’s?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Will, running to get the bowls out for breakfast.

  ‘I thought it was too small for you,’ said Mum. ‘Look how it fits Sophie.’

  Will felt his mouth drop open as he looked at Sophie. The jumper fitted her perfectly. But Sophie was only five, and little, like Gran had been. Will was nine, and tall, like Dad.

  There was definitely something odd about that jumper.

  He got it back when Mum took Sophie to karate. It was a bit of a squeeze pulling it over his head, but the sleeves seemed to grow as he pushed his arms through. The bottom did the same when he tugged it down over his stomach. It was like it was knitting itself as he pulled it on. The happy feeling poured into him again, like hot cocoa on a cold day.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with us, Will?’ Mum called up the stairs.

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Will, looking around him. It was like he was seeing his own house for the first time. ‘I have – um – stuff to do!’

  It wasn’t hard to find things that Gran had made. Wherever there were funny, bright colour combinations – red and purple spots on a lime-green background, say – and wherever things were made to look like something else – the tea cosy that was also an elf house, for instance – there was Gran.

  Most of them, like Mum’s patchwork cardigan or Sophie’s Kitty Hat, seemed pretty ordinary when Will tested them. If they did anything special, Will couldn’t work it out. But some of the things he found were different. They did their jobs with extra strength. A pair of Mum’s mittens kept his hands electric-warm even when he held a bag of frozen peas for ten minutes. A knitted flannel under the bathroom sink cleaned the grass stains from his jeans without any soap or water or anything.

  And two of the knitted things were downright cosmic.

  The first was a pair of Dad’s socks with multi-coloured stripes and sparkly gold heels that Will found in the bottom of the laundry basket. Would they keep his feet extra warm? he wondered. He started towards the freezer to fetch the frozen peas again, and a strange thing happened. It was as if something was pushing him, gently, behind his ankles. His steps came out extra long. Weird.

  He tried jumping.

  ‘Wow!’ It was like there were tiny engines under his feet. How had Dad not noticed this? He could jump a good three centimetres higher wearing these socks! But then again, when did grown-ups ever jump?

  Then there was the loo-roll cover on the back of the toilet. It was knitted to look like a Dalek. Will tried putting it on his head. ‘Exterminate!’ he said, turning his head round the bathroom. Nothing happened.

  Hmmm, he thought. If I were Gran, what power would I give to a loo-roll cover?

  It was then that he remembered his sheep. Gran had made it to put in his pocket, back when he first went to school. She had said that if he squeezed it, it would give him courage. Where was it now?

  He went to his room and looked under his pillow, in his Lego box, and in the pocket of his winter coat.

  ‘Where. Is. That. Sheep?’ he asked out loud.

  As soon as he finished saying this he was startled by a tugging at the front of his eyeballs. It was as if his eyes were made of iron, and the bottom drawer of his desk was a magnet. His head followed his eyes, and his body followed his head, until he was sitting just in front of the desk, his heart pounding. He pulled the drawer open. Sliding his hand in, he felt his way back. Plastic dinosaurs. A cricket ball. Felt-tip pens. Back, further, lower. Something soft.

  He wiggled it out. His sheep!

  Just as he remembered, it had four horns, because of course Gran wouldn’t make a regular old two-horned sheep. It was the colour of walnut coffee cake, and when he held it up in the sunlight, it sparkled with gold.

  Will laughed out loud. What was going on? Was this something to do with the toilet-roll cover he was wearing on his head?

  He tried the same trick with his dinosaur pencil, the missing tin opener, and Dad’s Victorian penny that had been lost since Easter. It worked every time. All he had to do was ask the question, then let his face follow his eyeballs, and walk towards wherever he was looking. Only when Will asked where he might find a suitcase full of banknotes and a skateboard did it stop working.

  ‘Where is Sophie’s knitted corgi?’ he asked finally.

  Will waited. The now-familiar tug pulled his eyeballs towards the stairs. His face and his legs came after. Down to the kitchen he went, following the pull, over to the boot room, through the swamp of wellies, and right up to the back door. He stopped for just a minute to ask himself if he was really brave enough to leave the house wearing a loo-roll cover on his head, and then ducked outside into the back garden.

  Next door, Arthur and Rosie were weeding their striped flowerbeds. All of their flowers were striped, and some of the leaves. They liked to wear stripes too.

  ‘Hello, Will! Like to come have a look at the tiger rose? It’s just come out!’

  ‘Sorry! Can’t stop!’ said Will. His eyes were pulling him towards the back gate.

  Next door on the other side, the Pingles were working on their latest invention: a trebuchet, which was an ancient kind of catapult, taller than Dad.

  ‘Nearly ready to fire, Will!’ said David. ‘Want to give it a go?’

  ‘Another time!’ said Will, unlatching the gate and slipping through.

  ‘Like to help fill the bird feeders, Will?’ Miss Violet called from across the alley. She was president of the Knittington Bird Club, and had about a hundred different bird feeders.

  ‘Not just now, thanks!’

  ‘Nice hat, Will!’ Olive and Annie’s heads were bobbing up and down over their back fence. They were on pogo sticks. ‘Come and race with us!’

  ‘Sorry! Gotta run!’

  Down the alley, over the road, across the abbey cloister, and out on to the high street Will went. Then suddenly his eyeballs stopped outside a shop. He blinked and stared. A puffy chair sat in the window, and next to it a shelf full of old teacups and a mannequin in a spotted summer dress with a floppy straw hat on its head. Why would the loo-roll cover have brought him to a shop in the high street when he had asked to find Sophie’s dog?

  He looked again. Actually, the hat wasn’t straw at all. It was knitted. It had stripes of mint green, royal blue, cherry red and, along the edge . . . sparkling gold.

  Will stepped back to look at the sign above the window. Oxfam. This must be where Mum had brought the bags from Gran’s flat. This shop might be full of Gran’s knitting! There might be more high-jumping socks or who-knew-what fun in there!

  Will whipped the loo-roll cover off his head, stuffed it into his pocket, and pushed the door open.

  The shop smelt like dust, strong laundry soap and old-fashioned mothballs. There were shelves with shoes and hats, shelves with lampshades and saucepans, and shelves with puzzles and games. Tall metal racks were hung with jackets and dresses and jeans and pyjamas and coats.

  A lady in a blue pinny was bending down behind the front counter, arranging china hedgehogs under the glass. As Will stepped up to ask about the hat, something sparkled on the counter top. It was a shoe box full of mittens. Car
efully, so no one would tell him off for making a mess, he stirred through the box. Yellow with purple, turquoise with olive, pink with red and orange. Definitely made by Gran! There was even one like his jumper: battleship grey and navy blue, with golden speckles running through one of the stripes.

  ‘I’d like to buy this box of mittens, please,’ he said. ‘How much are they?’

  ‘Oh,’ the lady laughed, ‘I should think you could have them all for a pound. You see, they’re all singles. None of them match.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Will said, pulling a pound coin from his pocket.

  ‘There’s been quite a run on hand-knitted things today,’ said the lady, as she took the coin. ‘I’ve never seen woolly items sell so well in July!’

  ‘Perhaps everyone is planning ahead.’

  Will didn’t have to turn around. He knew that smooth-oboe voice – it was Mr Fitchet. So he was right! Mr Fitchet must have Sophie’s dog. That was why the knitted hat had brought him here.

  ‘I had my eye on that box myself.’ He stepped forward, next to Will. ‘You see, I’m always losing my mittens,’ he said, looking under his wolf-tail eyebrows at Will. ‘If all my mittens were mismatched to start with, I wouldn’t have to worry.’

  Will tried to speak, but when he opened his mouth, no sound came out.

  ‘I’d be prepared to pay ten pounds for that box of mittens,’ the man went on, turning to the counter with a stiff ten-pound note in his hand. The lady in the pinny looked very surprised.

  ‘Stop! Wait!’ Will burst out. ‘I have ten pounds too! Or, at least, I think I might have nearly seven. I’d very much like to buy these mittens, please,’ he said to the lady. ‘My gran knitted them, you see. Only she’s dead now.’

  ‘Bless the boy!’ said the lady, putting her hand over her heart. ‘Of course you can have them.’

  Mr Fitchet’s jaw twitched and his bright eyes seemed to simmer, like tiny pots of boiling oil. Will’s mouth went dry. He wrapped his arms round the shoe box and slid it off the counter.

  ‘Cheerio!’ said the lady, bending back down to the china hedgehogs.

  Will turned towards the door but, quick as a wink, Fitchet slithered in front of him, blocking the exit.

  ‘I see you have a head for business, Will Shepherd,’ he said softly. He looked Will up and down, his little grin widening slightly. ‘What’s your price then, boy?’ He opened his wallet so Will could see the stack of twenty-pound notes inside.

  Will’s hands had gone sweaty and his legs felt like they’d just pedalled all the way up the hill to Gran’s. But he stood up straight and raised his chin high.

  ‘My sister’s dog,’ said Will, finding his voice. ‘She was crying for it this morning. I know you have it.’

  Mr Fitchet chuckled.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know why I’d need a woolly dog.’

  ‘I don’t know either,’ said Will, forcing himself to speak slowly and calmly. ‘And I don’t know why you’d want these mittens or our cushion or anything else, but I do know that Gran wouldn’t want you to steal her things.’

  Mr Fitchet’s skin turned spook-white. He bent down and put his pointy little nose up to Will’s face.

  ‘You just might be clever enough to figure it all out, Will Shepherd,’ he said. ‘But you will not be clever enough to stop me.’

  Will ran all the way home. Only after he’d shut the back gate behind him did his hands relax around the shoe box. He took a deep breath, smelling the minty scent of Mum’s herb garden. His heart went from gallop to canter to trot to walk.

  But what in Gran’s name was going on?

  ‘What did you get up to today, Will?’ asked Dad over their tofu-cabbage stew at dinner.

  ‘Looking at some things Gran made,’ Will said. Should he tell them? He hated it when they kept things from him. ‘Did you know that the knitted flannel in the bathroom can clean practically anything?’ he said. ‘I think it might have special powers.’

  Mum stared at him as if she were looking for signs of tropical plague. Then she laughed. Very hard.

  ‘Well, if it’s got you interested in cleaning I’d say it’s definitely magical.’

  No, Will thought. Grown-ups couldn’t handle magic. They would think there was something wrong with him if he tried to make them believe it. And he didn’t know what to say about Mr Fitchet.

  ‘You really miss Gran, don’t you?’ Mum asked, squeezing his hand.

  ‘Actually, yes,’ said Will.

  ‘Cronk does too,’ said Sophie. Cronk was Gran’s cat, who lived with them now. Cats did not rate as highly as dogs in Sophie’s world, but they ran a close second. ‘He’s sad we can’t go on holiday.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Mum. They’d been planning to go on holiday with Gran this year. ‘But at least we’ll be here for the fete.’

  They talked about the fete, and then Will asked, ‘Did Gran always knit?’

  ‘I think she was born knitting,’ said Dad. ‘She won a Blue Peter award when she was younger than you, knitting for the Seafarer’s Fund. In fact, she met Grandad at a charity knit-a-thon.’

  ‘Grandad used to knit?’ asked Will. ‘I thought he was a mechanic at the motorbike factory.’

  ‘He was,’ said Dad. ‘And he played the fiddle, and he was a huge knitter. Lots of country people used to knit then, and sailors and fishermen too.’ Dad still had Grandad’s fiddle, and played in a folk band.

  ‘But who taught her to knit?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t have been her own mum – my grandmum, that is. She was more of a cook than a knitter. But Gran’s gran used to knit bandages for soldiers in both of the World Wars. She probably taught Gran.’

  Will’s head was spinning.

  ‘It seems to skip generations,’ said Mum. ‘Like being left-handed.’

  ‘I’m left-handed,’ said Will.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Dad. ‘Skiffy. Just like Gran.’

  ‘Perhaps he has the gift!’ said Mum.

  ‘What gift?’

  ‘I’m only joking!’ Mum laughed. ‘It was special, though, Gran’s knitting,’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it,’ said Dad.

  Mum smiled. ‘OK, yes, it was crazy-looking. You couldn’t wear half of it outside of the house. But I remember how she made me a knitted rabbit to take to the hospital when I had Will. I was supposed to squeeze it for the pain.’

  ‘You swore it worked too!’ said Dad. ‘And she made me a little knitted lion to take to school in my pocket, to squeeze whenever I felt shy.’

  Will nearly dropped his fork. That was just like his sheep.

  Suddenly Mum stood up and started clearing plates. ‘Who wants a butterscotch biscuit?’ she said. But there was a tiny teardrop at the top of her cheek.

  Will tried on one of the mittens before he got into bed. It didn’t feel any different from any other mitten, but that meant nothing. He put the box on his desk and got under the covers. Tomorrow he’d figure out if the mittens did anything special. He smiled as his head hit the pillow. Maybe this summer, which had started off so sadly, would turn out to be fun after all.

  Will woke in the darkness. Something had slithered or slid or very softly clicked. He opened his eyes. His furniture made black shapes in the grey air. Nothing moved except his curtains in the night breeze, filmy and colourless. A slice of moon showed him the outlines of the window, open much wider than when he’d gone to sleep.

  There was no sound except his pounding heart. But a shape was moving. Something dark was scurrying across his floor. And something smelt like wet, dirty socks.

  Will couldn’t move a finger.

  It looked like a cat. A slithering, loping cat. Then it stood upright, like a fur-covered snake with tiny hands. It had something in its mouth.

  There was more than one. They were all over the floor.

  Will opened his mouth to shout, but no sound came out. One of the shapes jumped up to the windowsill, silhouetted in
the street lamp, and in less than a second it had disappeared, with nothing but the smallest rustle of sound. One by one, just as quietly, the others flowed out of the window, each with something in its mouth.

  Like a ball released from a ruck, Will found he could move again.

  He shot out of bed and over to the window. The strange humpbacked things were loping across the back garden in the moonlight. Ferrets! With mittens in their mouths!

  Will whipped his head round. The shoe box lay empty on the floor.

  He pulled on his magic jumper, and courage rushed into him like oil into an engine. He tied on his trainers and, almost as silently as the thieving ferrets, ran down the stairs and out through the back door. His bike was leaning up against the shed. Will pushed it quickly into the alley, and looked up and down for the ferrets. There! Off to the right!

  Never had Will pedalled so fast, not even when he and Ben had crashed a cricket ball into Rafi’s brother’s bike. Around the corner he pedalled, following the bobbing tails and humping backs, across the marketplace, and over the paving stones of the ruined abbey cloister. The ferrets flitted round corners, under fences and over curbs, but Will knew all the twists and turns of Knittington.

  Down the hill towards the river the ferrets flew, and then over the little bridge, turning sharply into the trees along the riverbank. Will sped after, ducking through the wet branches, twigs cracking below. He could just make out the furry humps of the ferrets bobbing through the ferns, mittens in their mouths. They were heading for the back of the Woolman factory. Will let his bike fall on to its side and ran to the building, just in time to see the ferrets dive through a cat flap in a wide wooden door.

  Creeping up to one of the yellow-lit windows, Will peered in to the basement of the factory. A row of iron columns ran down the centre of the stone floor, supporting a ceiling of thick wooden beams. Lined up in two rows on either side of the columns were steel machines on splayed legs, looking like giant spiders. Steel circles hung in the air above them, fitted with spools of coloured yarn. In the midst of them crouched Mr Fitchet, the ferrets streaming towards him, and jumping up on to his legs. As he took the mittens from their mouths, he gave each animal a treat.