by Hiawyn Oram
But this only got me more into boil and bubble and no closer to going after Sassy.
HA was furious to find me there. Especially when the girls crowded around and made a huge fuss of ME!
“Thank you and enough,” she snapped. “I don't know who this cat is or what it's doing here.
Let' watch TV.”
“TV!?” cried Tulip. “who wants to watch TV when there's real witch and her cat to play with!
And now we want you to make us a real spell.”
Zin dragged the porta-cauldron out of the shed.
“Make us a spell to turn all the girls we don't like at school INTO SLIMY TOADS.”
Tulip presented HA with a basket. “We've collected ingredients. All the horrid things you witches put in spells.”
And suddenly I saw ALL WAS NOT LOST.
The basket was full of everything HA loves to protect: frogs, snails, a bat, a jar of newts, and a Terrified shrew.
Little did those girls know how the idea of using them would upset HA.
As they shrieked and demanded their spell, I could see A full-on witch's fit brewing.
“ A spell!” she cried, going puce. “Using these dear living creatures? To turn girls you don't like into toads?
We'll see about that!!”
She grabbed the ingredients I'd put in the shed, flew up on her broomstick, and sprinkled the girls with them, chanting:
Ghastly girls who are not kind In this moment we will find You're frogs and snails, You're bats, a shrew Not living—that's too good for you So wish you'd watched TV with me
FOR GARDEN ORNAMENTS YOU BE!
And—since she is a great witch when she's willing—immediately those girls were STONE.
Then yelling at me to join HER on her broomstick, she set off at the speed of lightness for This Side!!
And all I can say is: was our luck in or what?
We were just back over the Horizon when we met the Hags—being led by the Snoop and making for Tulip's—to catch HA IN THE ACT!
Instead, they found us together on a broomstick, as we should be, HA flying it in top-to-toe black.
As they stopped, in surprise, I called out, “Evening, Your Hagships. Going to the Other Side, are you? Well, while there, go to House Number 5, Partridge Close, and check out one of Hagatha's New Moon spells. And for your info, those garden ornaments were all once GIRLS.”
“And they will be again, when the spell wears off,” called HA, “only wiser for the experience!”
The Hags spluttered—while Sassy went into such a spin of disappointment, she actually fell off her broomstick!! And HA did the last thing I was expecting.
She called out: “Well, we can't hang around up here. We must get over to the Steeplechase!”
And, knock me over with a dandelion, she added, “Oh, and by the way, Amuletta. Rumblewick MUST be allowed to race even if he did miss the Heats.
And if you won't let him, I'll turn you into a MOM!”
Well, clear Amuletta didn't want to run that risk, because I did get to race.
And, as I am the best, I WAS the best and won—and have the trophy to prove it!!
Better still—Sassy didn't even make the race. When she fell off her broomstick, we were over the Tanglewoods. Of course, she wouldn't she wouldn't have come to any harm because—like name, like nature—she could right herself even if she fell off the evening star.
But here's the thing: it takes almost a moon to walk it back to ANYWHERE from the Tanglewoods.
So all I can say to Sassy is—you got your just reward, Snoop … AND KEEP WALKING!
WITCHES' CHARTER OF GOOD PRACTICE
1. Scare at least one child on the Other Side into his or her wits—every day (excellent), once in seven days (good), once a moon (average), once in two moons (bad), once in a blue moon (failed).
2. Identify any fully grown Othersiders who were not properly scared into their wits as children and DO IT NOW. (It is never too late for a grown Othersider to come to his or her senses.)
3. Invent a new spell useful for every purpose and every occasion in the Witches' Calendar. Ensure you or your Familiar commits it to a spell book before it is lost to the Realms of Forgetfulness forever.
4. Keep a proper witch's house at all times—filled with dust and spiders' webs, mold, and earwigs' underthings; and ensure the jars on your kitchen shelves are always alive with good spell ingredients.
5. Cackle a lot. Cackling can be heard far and wide and serves many purposes such as (i) alerting others to your terrifying presence and (ii) sounding hideous and thereby comforting to your fellow witches.
6. Make sure your Familiar keeps your means of proper travel (broomsticks) in good repair and that one, either, or both of you exercise them regularly.
7. Never fail to present yourself anywhere and everywhere in full witch's uniform (i.e., black everything and no ribbons upon your hat ever). Sleeping in uniform is recommended as a means of saving dressing time.
8. Keep your Familiar happy with a good supply of comfrey tea and slime buns. Remember, behind every great witch is a well-fed Familiar.
9. At all times acknowledge the authority of your local High Hags. As their eyes can move 360 degrees and they know everything there is to know, it is always in your interests to make their wishes your commands.
Can't get enough of Rumblewick's diaries? Check out My Unwilling Witch Starts a Girl Band
available November 2009
Here's a note from Rumblewick about Haggy Aggy's latest articles:
* * *
Dear Reader,
HA's nearly driving me over the edge and into the cauldron! She doesn't want to behave like a proper witch and fly her broom or practice her cackle—she wants to be a STAR. Haggy Aggy is dead-set on entering the Girl Bands Are Us contest and becoming a magma-hot rocker. But how am I to stop her and avoid the wrath of the High Hags if I can't stop my head from ting-zinging and my paws from tap-rapping along with the music? Am I starstruck, or what?
Want to hear more about my daily trials and tribulations with the only witch in witchdom who doesn't want to be one? I've described more in this diary.…
TURN THE PAGE FOR A SNEAK PEEK!
Very sincerely,
Girl Band Discovery Day Night
Dear Diary,
What a day it has been at The Righton.
After a stare-filled lunch (well, HA's hat WAS bigger than an alien wizard's flying saucer), she was attracted by a sign near the hotel entrance. “Oh, RB!” she cried. “Do look! It's covered in glitzy stars so it must have something very important to communicate. Now you read Otherside better than I do, so read it to me, please, at the triple presto!”
So I did and in between the STARS it said:
At that point we did not know what a Girl Band or a Girl Band audition was but HA insisted we go up to the Starstruck Room to find out.
And find out we did: a Girl Band is Otherside girls dressing up (or wearing clothes that nearly fall off), dancing on a shiny platform and singing like their voices just jumped out of their bodies and got dancing too.
An audition is when a Girl Band does all the above in front of three Othersiders who are called the Producers and Promoters.
When the PPs have watched many Girl Band auditions over many moons, they will choose the band they like best and make it “bigger” than it ever dreamed it could be.
And being bigger than you ever
dreamed
you could be means
1 dancing and singing on TV and shiny platforms all over the universe,
2 having zillions of your songs heard by Othersiders in what they call ALBUMS,
3 appearing on pocket-sized TVs that Othersiders keep close at all times (and also use for nonstop stalking to OTHER othersiders probably because they don't have broomsticks to get there and talk for real).
Well, no prizes for guessing what HA is going to do now.
Oh YES!
The moment we left the Starstruck Roo
m, she announced it.
She is going to start her own Girl Band. And enter it in the next
GIRL BANDS ARE US
audition in seven days' time!!
WARNING TOP SECRET
And here, dear Diary, is where I am going to make a CONFESSION because that's what diaries are for—admitting the secret thoughts you can't actually admit to anyone else.
So this is it.
My secret confession:
I LIKE GIRL BAND MUSIC.
Up there in the Starstruck Room it got me going—my head ting-zinging and my paws tap-rapping.
And when my witch announced she was going to start a Girl Band, I did not think YUKSTRAW and TRIPLE YIKES, which any proper Witch's Familiar should think.
I thought EXPLODING SUPERNOVAS and OVER THE MOON.
THIS COULD BOIL AND BUBBLE! Naturally, I did not admit any of this to HA. When we got back to our room, I did what I am trained to do when my witch strays from being a proper witch. I tried to talk her out of it.
THE DIARY THIEF AWARD REVERSAL SPELL
(For when somebody steals your prized and secret diaries right from inside your log basket and in their sticky trickery sells them to an Otherside Book Wiz for a lifetime supply of most unwitchy, dainty, pointy, pink shoes.)
Reverse your mad-cat state of fume. When darkness falls, balance upside-paw, point tail-wise at your sleeping thief and recite:
You're a sneaky, slimy trickster,
A witch of mine or not.
Your sticky hands found my diaries,
And you sold the entire lot!
Now your feet twitch as you shoe dream
All snuggled in your bed.
But the pretty pink heels are turning
To SLIME BUNS for me instead!
Hello, this is the Publisher's Familiar here. Since our last interview with Rumblewick Spellwacker Mortimer B, this wise and witty Otherside phenom has been world-trotting and hot-rocking. Once again, the fantastic feline sat down with Yours Truly to discuss broomstick bucking, the wizardry of girl band lyrics, and his hatred of Otherside food.
PUBLISHER'S FAMILIAR: How did you know that Familiar-ism was the job for you?
RUMBLEWICK: I come from a long line of highly qualified witch's Familiars. My parents were both famous Familiars in their day and took me to work with them from when I was knee high to a cauldron leg. So there was never a question of doing anything else.
PF: But if you weren't a Familiar, what else would you like to be doing?
RB: Well, unless the High Hags send me spinning into The Blue Beyond the Blue and/or I get catnapped by Alien Wizards and turned into a Space Time Serf, I won't be giving up Familiar-ing in any of my lives. But I don't mind mentioning I am rather brilliantly starry at writing song lyrics and wearing dark shades as discovered when Haggy Aggy tried to start her own Girl Band and asked me to be its manager. So, if I wasn't what I am and always will be, I'd get mixed up in foot-tapping, hot-bop, and rocking music.
PF: And are you still bound to Haggy Aggy, or are your terms of contract null and void upon your famousness?
RB: N.O. spells no in this case. The High Hags, who rule and drew up my contract, ignore my famousdom on the Other Side and continue pointing their pointing fingers at me as if it is my fault Haggy Aggy wants to be anything and everything in the universe except what she is—a witch.
PF: How difficult is it to maneuver a broomstick? How long did it take you to learn to fly?
RB: I was riding a broomstick before I could walk. To maneuver well, you have to have a relationship with the sticks. Trim them, tune them, talk to them and keep them warm. And always warn them of an upcoming turn, well in advance, or don't be surprised if you're free-falling. You'll just have been BUCKED.
PF: Haggy Aggy's desires have you traveling across the Horizon Line quite often. What is your favorite thing about the Other Side?
RB: Certainly NOT the food which is total GRUBSPIT and GRUMSPEW for no matter how hard you look you can't get a single Slime Bun, Fleabane Finger, Wig-You-Not Lushti or Begone Berry Nugget—NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL. What I suppose Ido like, aside from hot-rocking girl bands, are the ratlets that they call children over there. When it comes down to it, they and I have a lot in common. They have to think on their feet (since they don't have paws, worst luck for them), be inventive in the face of high disappointment, keep out of the Abyss of Trouble, avoid the Narrow Avoid and not let their High Hags—whoever they are—hang them over a hot cauldron till their hair curls.
Dear Precious Children,
The Publisher asked me to say something about these Diaries. (As I do not write Otherside very well, I have dictated it to the Publisher's Familiar/assistant. If she has not written it down right, let me know and I'll turn her into a fat pumpkin.)
This is my message: I went to a lot of trouble to steal these Diaries for you. And the Publisher gave me a lot of shoes in exchange. If you do not read them the Publisher may want the shoes back. So please, for my sake—the only witch in witchdom who isn't willing to scare you for her own entertainment—ENJOY THEM ALL.
Yours ever,
Your fantabulous shoe-loving friend, Hagatha Agatha (Haggy Aggy for short, HA for shortest) xx
* The High Hags run everything around here. They RULE.
