by Maeve Friel
When the last witch had left, Jessica helped Miss Strega count the money in the till.
Miss Strega seemed very pleased with herself. “I hope you remember that recipe,” she remarked as she totted up the groats and the maravedis. “Dr Krank is famous throughout the W3 for her medicinal brews. They are jolly good and smell divinely. Naturally, she wouldn’t dream of using those Eye of Newt or Lung of Skunk concoctions.”
“I was just wondering,” Jessica probed, “when you were Mingling your feather over the Alphabet Soup, if perhaps you planted the Cheery-ade thought in Dr Krank’s brain?”
Miss Strega’s hand flew to her chin. “Great honking goose feathers, Jessica, I don’t know where you get some of your ideas. Now, let’s finish the last of the Cold Smelly Voles and have a quick moon-vault before supper!”
Chapter Four
“Whoops,” shouted Jessica as she hurtled through the shop door. “Gangway!” Somehow she had hit the Fast-Forward twig of her broomstick instead of the Pause control. Miss Strega only just got out of her way before Jessica collided with a display of new brooms, toppled over a stack of cauldrons and sent Felicity flying off the counter.
“Moonrays and marrowbones!” exclaimed Miss Strega, scratching the cat between the ears. “There’s no call for that kind of rough behaviour.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Jessica. “I must have pressed the wrong twig by mistake.”
Miss Strega sniffed noisily and reached for her broomstick. “We’d best get started. Today we are doing Transformation Spells, using the Wand Method.”
The lesson went badly from the very beginning. Miss Strega was in an awful grump and Jessica couldn’t do anything right.
“Don’t hold your wand like that!” Miss Strega objected as Jessica demonstrated her wand-whooshing to Berkeley. Or she complained, “Stop lolling on your broom, back straight, knees tucked up.”
Later, while they were waiting for an experiment to work – Jessica was attempting to change a coin into a chocolate drop – she tut-tutted, “This is taking far too long.”
“This is horrible,” thought Jessica.
Miss Strega popped the chocolate drop in her mouth. “Changing money into sweets is all very well but Transformation Spells are mostly used to transform living things. For example, say a huge flock of rooks were chasing you on your broomstick, what could you change them into?”
Jessica thought hard. “A feather pillow?” she joked.
Miss Strega did not smile. “On the other hand, you might find yourself in a spot of bother and decide to turn yourself into something else. Could you give me an example of that?”
“Perhaps if I was on the Milky Way, and a huge fire-breathing dragon was heading straight for me and I was going to get run over, I could turn myself into a red traffic light and the dragon would have to stop.”
“Woolly walrus tusks!” groaned Miss Strega. “What do you think your Ducking and Diving twigs are for? Any witch worthy of her flying licence can nip out of the way of a dragon without having to do a Transformation Spell. Come on, think!”
“Maybe, if I was in a room with a very bad-tempered monster, I could change myself into a rug.”
“And get stamped and trodden on?” Miss Strega raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” Jessica said to herself – but not out loud – and with a casual wave of her wand, “maybe if I was in a room with a very bad-tempered monster, I could change her into a wasp.”
Miss Strega’s broom suddenly fell to the floor with a loud clatter. The space where Miss Strega had been was empty. She had vanished.
Jessica’s mouth flew open. Felicity’s eyes blazed two warning orange beacons.
An angry buzzing noise was coming from one of the small panes of the shop window. Jessica tiptoed towards it. To her horror, the noise was coming from a wasp, a wasp with a familiar-looking face.
“I’m so sorry, Miss Strega. I didn’t mean to turn you into a wasp.”
“Yes, you did,” Miss Strega buzzed huffily.
“Please don’t sting me.”
“You know, Jessica, there are times when you have about as much sense as a pumpkin.”
The wasp hovered over Jessica’s head for a moment, then flitted across the room and dropped down on the counter. Her front legs waved rapidly.
Jessica felt herself blushing. Her cheeks blazed red. In fact, her whole body began to feel very odd. She began to inflate like a balloon. Her face and arms and legs grew rounder and rounder until she was a large round ball.
“You’ve turned me into a pumpkin!” she protested.
“Yes, I have,” agreed the wasp, “a pumpkin with a very lop-sided embarrassed smile – as well it might.”
“I really am very sorry,” Jessica apologized.
Miss Wasp Strega lowered her front legs. “Well, I apologize too if I was a bit waspish.” She buzzed over and sat on the floor beside Jessica Pumpkin.
“Now what shall we do?” said Jessica. “How long do these Spells last?”
“Who knows?” Miss Strega raised her waspy shoulders and let them drop. “Bad-tempered Spells are very difficult to predict. Our only hope is that a customer drops in who can un-Transform us. In the meantime, let’s hope Felicity or Berkeley don’t try to swat me or nibble bits of you.”
Chapter Five
It seemed like hours before anyone came to their rescue. Miss Strega hid in a little hollow at the top of Jessica’s head and soon fell asleep. Jessica watched people rushing past on the High Street. Nobody even glanced at the hardware shop. Bored, miserable and unable to move, Jessica waited and waited. Berkeley kept her spirits up by perching on her pumpkinny shoulder and loudly singing, “Don’t give up, hu-eet, hu-eet, hu-eet.”
At long last, the door latch clicked.
“Yoo-hoo. Anyone at home? I think I must have left my owl feather here on the night of the sale.”
Miss Strega buzzed excitedly and flew out of her hidey-hole. “Oh Jess, that sounds like our old friend, the witch doctor, Dr Krank.”
Unfortunately, Miss Strega did not sound like herself, at least not to Dr Krank who was none too pleased by this pesky buzzing, humming, whirring nuisance flitting around her head. She pinged the counter bell to let Miss Strega know she had a customer, picked up a Spell book and swatted at the wasp.
“Stop! That’s Miss Strega,” Jessica shouted at the top of her voice. But under the pumpkin Spell, she couldn’t be heard at all. After all, pumpkins can’t speak.
Dr Krank lashed out again with the rolled-up Spell book. “Miss Strega,” she yelled, “Come here at once. I’m under attack.”
“I am here!” Miss Strega yelled back as she zoomed higher out of Dr Krank’s reach. “I’m under a Spell.”
Dr Krank impatiently banged the counter with the side of her broomstick and rang the bell again, but much more loudly.
“Miss Strega!” she shouted, shooing away Felicity who was mewing loudly and doing figures-of-eight around her legs. “Where the dickens are you?” She stared around the shop with a baffled expression. “Now where can I have left that owl feather?” she muttered. Then she caught sight of Jessica.
Jessica gave her an embarrassed smile.
“What a very life like pumpkin,” Dr Krank remarked, smiling back. “It reminds me of someone I met recently.”
Miss Strega buzzed back down from the ceiling where she had taken refuge.
“Dr Krank,” she whirred, “that is Jessica, my witch-in-training. Don’t you see we’re under a Spell?”
“Not you again!” Dr Krank crossly swiped Miss Strega with her broomstick. This time she did not miss. Miss Strega fell to the floor in a daze.
It was Berkeley who saved the day. As Dr Krank remounted her broom to depart, Berkeley flew off Jessica’s shoulder, perched on the door latch and urgently began to sing.
Dr Krank dismounted. She listened intently to the song, looked at the dizzy wasp, then at the embarrassed smile of the pumpkin and tapped her nose.
“I see,”
she said, “you two are having some Spelling Trouble. Let’s see what I can do to undo the damage.” She set her medicine bag on the counter and took out a small round silver globe.
Miss Strega, who had struggled back on to her feet, flew up in the air buzzing frantically.
“Miss Strega,” Dr Krank sighed, “would you please stop whirring and humming. It’s terribly distracting. You’d better have your voices back.” She pulled her wand out of her bag and lightly struck the pumpkin and the wasp three times. Then she intoned:
“Gorgonzola, genie of glitches,
Restore the tongues of these two witches.”
“Thank you,” whispered Jessica hoarsely, looking more embarrassed than ever.
Miss Strega raised her front legs and rubbed her face where she felt her ears ought to be. “By the screeching of peacocks and the racket of rooks, I shall not be sorry to give up buzzing.”
Dr Krank chuckled. “The flitting is quite annoying too,” she said as she lifted Jessica and placed her on the counter. “Come and sit here atop Jessica and I’ll explain the Withershins Ball Manoeuvre.”
“Mmmm, the old Withershins trick.” Miss Strega pursed her lips. “Maybe that would work.”
“No maybe about it!” Dr Krank retorted. She placed the silver ball on her palm and held it out so that the whole shop was reflected in miniature on the surface.
Jessica could see herself, very orange and very round, in the mirror world, with Miss Wasp Strega and Berkeley sitting on top of her head. Behind her she could see the topsy-turvy shop with cauldrons and three-legged stools dangling from the ceiling hooks.
“Withershins,” Dr Krank explained to Jessica, “is an old word that means going contrariwise, like a clock’s hands going backwards.”
“Or a supersonic broomstick flying against the rotation of the earth?” Jessica suggested.
“Precisely. What a clever little thing you are.”
Miss Strega cleared her throat.
“So,” Dr Krank continued, “I will make the ball turn back to the time when you made your spells and, hey presto, you’ll be back to your usual selves. Expect to feel a little disenchanted as the Spell wears off,” she added. “You may be a bit headachy – but you’ll be fine in a couple of hours. I’ll drop back later to see how you both are.”
Dr Krank’s Withershins Ball began to twist and turn anticlockwise on her palm, so slowly that at first it didn’t seem to be moving at all.
Jessica could see herself, still propped on the counter. The ball began to spin faster.
Now Jessica was on the floor again. She felt the tickle of Miss Strega’s wings as she slept in Jessica’s hollow.
The ball spun even faster.
Jessica felt herself shrinking as her round orangeness wore off. She sprouted arms and legs again.
Somewhere, far away, she could hear Dr Krank chanting:
“Withershins, Withershins,
Thrice again and thrice again.”
Now, in the Withershins Ball, she was standing by the window looking at a furious buzzing wasp.
“Don’t sting me,” she was saying.
The revolutions of the ball became slower. Then, with one final orbit, it leapt into the air and disappeared.
Miss Strega and Jessica were alone in the shop, observing a gold coin slowly transform itself into a chocolate drop.
“Excellent Spelling, my little hunny-bunny,” Miss Strega announced as she popped the sweet in her mouth. “I think you are just about ready for your Spelling Test. But let’s call it a night now, shall we? I can’t think why but suddenly I’m feeling a little out of sorts.”
Chapter Six
Jessica’s Spelling Test was to take place in the library at Coven Garden, the headquarters of the W3. She had taken her Flying Test on the roof there but had never been inside the building. It was very posh.
She dismounted her broom on the steps in front of the tall arched doorway and nervously walked into the reception hall. It was a perfectly round room with a mosaic floor in the pattern of a huge spider’s web. The words Witches World Wide Wishing the World Well ran around the outer rim of the web. The walls were covered from top to bottom with large portraits of members of the W3. The largest of all, opposite the front door, was a painting of a witch mounted on her broomstick and wearing full ceremonial garb; a broadly striped purple and green sash, a heavy velvet cloak and a traditional pointy hat. She looked very scary, peering down at Jessica over her half-moon glasses.
Jessica shuddered. “That’s the awful Miss Shar Pintake of BR(EATH),” she reminded Berkeley, “the examiner at my Flying Test. Let’s hope she doesn’t take the Spelling Test as well.”
Jessica gloomily climbed the marble stairs and followed the signs for the library. It was a long high-ceilinged room, its bookcases crammed with Spell books, Charm manuals and Witch history. There were antique maps and globes of the Earth and the Heavens as well as a dreary collection of Early Irish cauldrons.
Jessica was squinting at a framed copy of the Deed of Surrender after the Bezom Wars when she heard the dreaded sound of someone sucking her teeth. As she turned around, Miss Shar Pintake announced, “Jessica Diamond, your Spelling Test starts now.”
The first written tests were simple. She had to do a few exercises in Renaming.
Candidates may use either Noquan or Sablit.
What would you expect to find behind drawers labelled:
a.Crockery (SOLD)
b.Low Watt Bulbs
c.Steel Trowels
d.Knitting Needles?
Well, that was no problem. Jessica filled in the boxes.
a. ………Crocks of Gold
b. ………Wallaby Toes
c. ………Troll Squeals
d. ………Kittens? Piddle
Then there was a question about the ingredients for the basic brew.
Which of the following should never be included in a General Purpose Medicinal Brew?
The Moan of the North Wind, a Baby’s Chuckle, a Sieveful of Stardust, Buttercup Dew
Easy peasy.
It was the final task in the practical tests that caused the problem.
“And now,” Shar Pintake’s nostrils flared as if she had just noticed a really bad smell, “I’d like you to do a Transformation Spell, by means of a chant. Wands are not allowed.” She clicked her fingers at the foaming mini-cauldron on her desk. A card rose slowly from its misty depths and flew across the room into Jessica’s hand.
It said:
Change something you love into something horrid.
Jessica groaned. She had hardly glanced at Transformation Spells since that disastrous experience with Miss Strega. She had certainly never bothered to learn the Love-to-Hate Spell, thinking it very unlikely that she would ever want to risk changing something she loved into something nasty. There was nothing for it but to make up a chant of her own.
She took a deep breath and plunged headlong into a rhyme, like someone splashing off on a cross-country run wishing it was already over.
“Three Chocolate Mice,
Three Chocolate Mice,
See how they melt,
See how they melt,
They all run into the tablecloth,
It soaks them up with the chicken broth,
The gravy stains and the coffee froth …”
Jessica stopped dead. How on earth was she going to end this nonsense? Shar Pintake would want something more horrid than a dirty tablecloth.
“Cloth … Broth … Froth … To the disgust of a hovering moth? To the delight of a black-eyed Goth?” she muttered under her breath.
Shar Pintake was staring at her over her half-moon glasses. “Speak up, girl!”
Jessica could have wept. “Why did I not do more homework?” she thought. “All those nights I’ve wasted vaulting over the moon when I should have been studying my Spelling.”
Miss Pintake sucked her teeth noisily and shuffled the papers on her desk.
She looked at her watch and r
aised it to her ear.
“I’m a failure,” thought Jessica sadly. “They will probably de-cloak me and make me return my Flying Licence. They might even take Berkeley away.”
“I’m afraid I shall have to hurry you along,” said Miss Pintake. “I’ve a very busy day …”
Jessica scratched her head – and that was when she had the idea. She started the rhyme again.
“Three Chocolate Mice,
Three Chocolate Mice,
See how they melt,
See how they melt,
They all run into the tablecloth,
It soaks them up with the chicken broth,
The gravy stains and the coffee froth …”
Then she flipped her cape over her shoulder and removed her helmet. With a dramatic flourish, she shook it several times over Shar Pintake’s desk and finished the Spell triumphantly.
“Just give them a splat
With a wave of your hat
And they’ll be THREE HEAD LICE.
THREE HEAD LICE!”
Shar Pintake noisily drew in her breath and hastily got to her feet. She had gone quite pale.
“Fine! Terrific! Marvellous!” she gabbled as she stamped PASSED on Jessica’s Spelling Certificate and shooed her out of the door. “You know your way from here. Off you go. Chop chop.”
The last thing Jessica saw as she closed the door was Shar Pintake peering suspiciously at her desk over her half-moon glasses.
“Too clever for her own good, that girl,” she was muttering, “everyone else does the Warthog Spell.”
Chapter Seven
Jessica was so excited. As a reward for passing her Spelling Test, Miss Strega was taking her to the theatre! Heckitty Darling, the famous actress witch, had sent two tickets for the opening night of her latest show, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
