“What I want you to do, Rupert,” she said, “is to take your flashlight, go out to the playground, and bring me a few toadstools.”
Now, I’d been out hunting toadstools in the past for Miss Switch. In the Pepperdine playground. At midnight. Alone. I have to admit I didn’t enjoy the experience.
“Did … did you have any special variety in mind, Miss Switch?” I asked nervously
“Why yes, I did, Rupert,” she replied briskly “It’s the toadstoolius enlargius instantium.”
“Gee whiz, Miss Switch, how am I supposed to know one when I see it?” I complained.
“It’s a common variety, Rupert. Just scoop up a bunch of toadstools, and I assure you there will be several among them. I’ll have everything else ready when you return. Don’t forget to take along a paper sack from the art cupboard.”
Anyway, there I was in the Pepperdine playground. At midnight. Alone. And I didn’t care any more for the experience than I had the first time. But the thing was that midnight seemed to be a very good time for toadstools. I harvested a bunch of them and when I got back, Miss Switch was busy adding the last of crumbled hairs of hog to the measuring cup. I handed her the paper sack. She emptied it at once onto her desk and began sorting through the toadstools with her long fingers.
“Ah,” she said, “just as I expected, several excellent specimens of toadstoolius enlargius instantium. But what have we here?” She picked up two toadstools and examined them closely. “Hmmm, these are rare finds, indeed. The Pepperdine playground never ceases to amaze me. Nothing I can use right now, but I am getting some strong vibrations indicating that I may be able to use these very toadstools soon.”
“What are they, Miss Switch?” I asked as she shoved them into a pocket.
“Not now, Rupert, not now. This spell requires concentration,” she said, crumbling one of the remaining toadstools into the measuring cup. Then she started mumbling to herself as she picked up the glass rod. “Pour into flask. Shake, don’t stir. Place over Bunsen burner. Don’t begin spell until five bubbles rise.”
As soon as this had all happened, she began swooping and swooshing around, waving her arms over the flask. Then she began to moan the words,
“Higglety pigglety, oh, what, slop
The shrinking game you have to stop.
Snakes and spiders, fleas and flies
Bring them back to their right size.
Ricketty, racketty, hullabalooly
Or face the wrath of yours truly.”
I have to be honest. This didn’t sound a lot better than the poetry Saturna was dispensing via computowitch.com. Still, a spell is a spell, and if it does what it’s supposed to, who am I to comment on it? All in all, Miss Switch put on quite a performance. I might even have been scared if I hadn’t seen her do something like it before.
When it all ended, the liquid in the flask had boiled down to practically nothing, just enough to fill the small bottle with the eyedropper.
“Is that enough?” I asked.
“It’s powerful stuff, Rupert,” Miss Switch replied. “A tiny drop is all that is needed for this particular unbewitchment. If only I knew exactly where I’m going to have to use it!”
Well, we had done all we could do. We cleaned up Room Twelve, and then Miss Switch flew me home.
The pets were waiting up for me. I really didn’t want to tell them the whole story of my trip to Pepperdine because I knew it would worry them. But I’ve always been honest with my pets, so I didn’t hold anything back. Besides, what if I returned as, say, a lizard, or a beetle, or didn’t return at all? They had to be prepared. At any rate, I have to say that nobody went to bed very happy that night.
15
The Shrinkage Solution
It was really nice out the next day, considering what might be about to happen on our field trip. The note from Mr. Dorking had instructed us to go directly to the bus that would be waiting for us at the Pepperdine front door. It was already there when I arrived, and Miss Blossom was standing at the front door, checking each of us off as we climbed aboard. I could tell that her sharp eyes were checking us out as well. And I knew just what she was looking for. Clues to Saturna’s medium. Or the medium itself.
“Nothing!” she hissed to me as I climbed past her onto the bus. “We’re flying blind again.”
I tried doing a little sleuthing myself, looking over the rest of the sixth grade as it filed by. I didn’t do any better than Miss Switch. No surprise.
When we arrived at the museum, Miss Blossom stood at the door again as we trooped out, handing us our tickets. There were actually two special exhibits going on at the time. One had to do with Egypt. One had to do with outer space. Our tickets would be punched at the Egypt exhibit, and then again when we entered outer space.
“And you had better guard them with your life, dears,” said Miss Blossom. “Otherwise you will be cooling your heels in the lobby.”
I don’t know if I thought I was going to be pick-pocketed or something, but I personally clutched my ticket all the way into the museum before I finally thrust it into a jacket pocket … the jacket pocket with the hole in it. It was not a brilliant move on my part, although it was a very small hole and probably wouldn’t have made any difference, anyway. As it turned out, it was a good thing I hadn’t given my pocket choice too much thought.
Now, I have to mention here that my jacket pockets are rarely empty. They almost always contain such items as candy wrappers, pencil stubs, a couple of paper clips, an interesting pebble or two, a few remains of some cheese crackers. And so on. But one thing I had never found in a pocket was a bunch of feathers. Wrapped around something warm. Something warm that moved. I quickly dropped down on one knee and pretended to tie my shoe.
“Fred?” I hissed. “Fred, what are you doing here?”
“I came with you,” Fred replied, sounding a little nervous.
“Well, I can see that!” I said. “But I don’t recall telling you that you could.”
“No, you just said you’d think about it,” chirped Fred. “You never said any more about it, so I just made a command decision. After what you told us last night, I wasn’t going to let you go without being around to watch over you.”
“But what you did was downright dangerous,” I said. “What if someone like Billy Swanson had bumped into my pocket? You’d have ended up birdburger, Fred. Well, you’re here, and I can’t do anything about it now. Did you remember to pack a lunch?”
“I didn’t need to,” Fred replied. “You’ve got enough cracker crumbs in here to sink a canoe.”
“Well, I appreciate your concern, Fred,” I said. “But you really shouldn’t have come.”
“Miss Blossom, Rupert’s talking to his shoelaces,” I heard Melvin Bothwick, class snoop, reporting.
“Are you all right, Rupert?” Miss Blossom asked at once.
“Just broke a shoelace,” I said, jumping up. “Sorry about the delay.”
Oh, my aching eyebrow! Now I had a stowaway I had to worry about, as if I didn’t have enough on my mind. But as we wandered the halls of the museum, waiting to enter the exhibit, nothing seemed to be happening. No shrinkage. No nothing. I looked over at Miss Blossom, threw out my hands, and shrugged. But I could see her eyes darting up and down and everywhere. The class trip wasn’t over yet.
Then it was time for our turn in the Egypt exhibit, so we got our tickets punched, got handed a pamphlet about what we were going to see, and trooped in. I stuck my ticket back in the same pocket because I wanted to give Fred a pat on the head. Then I just wandered around with the rest of the class looking at ancient cracked pots and pieces of pots and other such thrilling items. Nobody was too interested in ancient Egypt, but we had to stay there until our time for outer space. There was still nothing unusual happening by way of shrinkage. When I looked at my reflection in a window, I couldn’t see my head getting any smaller or anything like that.
Then Miss Blossom sidled up to me. “Rupert, tell me something,�
�� she said. “Don’t you usually come just about up to my chin?”
“I think so, Miss Blossom,” I replied.
“Well, where do you come up to now?” she asked.
“Your—your shoulder?” I stammered.
“Exactly!” she said. “It has started, and I still haven’t found the medium. You were fine outside the exhibit. I checked. So it couldn’t be the tickets I handed you. That crossed my mind.”
“Are you thinking the pamphlets we were all given?” I asked. “Isn’t that pretty far-fetched?”
“It is, Rupert,” replied Miss Blossom. “But it’s the only thing we have. I want you to come with me and distract each person while I administer a drop of the anti-bewitchment formula to his or her pamphlet. If I’m right about this, you’ll be back up to my chin before we get to the second sixth grader. You remember—toadstoolius enlargius instantium! Come along! We haven’t a moment to lose!”
Fortunately, the room was dark enough that what we had to do wasn’t too difficult. I’d point out a display window to someone. Miss Blossom would put a drop from her bottle on the pamphlet they were holding. That was it. Nothing to it. There was only one problem. When we finished the whole class, I had now shrunk to an inch below Miss Blossom’s shoulder!
Of course, the rest of the class was shrinking, too. Nobody knew it, though. It was dark for one thing, but the main reason was that everyone was shrinking so slowly and all at the same time, so naturally nobody felt any smaller than they ever had. Actually, even if we all had been wandering the halls of the museum and shrinking, nobody else would have noticed either. After all, there were dozens of groups of students of all ages there. Everyone would have thought we were the Pepperdine fifth grade. Or fourth grade. Or third grade. Or less, as we kept shrinking. To what?
“Miss Blossom, it isn’t working! Just … just how far can we shrink?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know, Rupert,” Miss Blossom said grimly. “But things are getting desperate. I must think of something!”
And it was then that I felt someone pecking at me through the hole in my pocket.
“Not now, Fred,” I said. “We’re in big trouble out here.”
“What’s that, Rupert?” Miss Blossom asked. “You weren’t speaking to your shoelaces again, were you?”
“No, Miss Blossom,” I said. “It’s Fred. He stowed away in my pocket. I didn’t even know it until we got here.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she said, “because he’s probably going to shrink away with the rest of you.”
“No probably about it!” Fred said. “Look, you’ve got to listen to me, Rupert. After you put that ticket in your pocket, it was quite a while before you took it out again. All that time, I didn’t feel a thing. Then you pulled out the ticket, and when you put it back in your pocket again, there was a hole in it, so I figured someone had punched it. And that’s exactly when I started getting smaller. Your pocket, which is a pretty tight fit, was suddenly getting roomier. Then it began to get a lot roomier. Your pocket might have been shrinking, but I was shrinking faster. I felt I’d be the size of a hummingbird in no time. I didn’t want to bother you, but then I heard the conversation between you and Miss Blossom, and I knew I had to act.”
“And right you were to do so, Fred!” exclaimed Miss Blossom, addressing my pocket. “The hole in the ticket! That must be it! The punching of the ticket activated the bewitchment spell! Quickly, Rupert, let me have your ticket!”
I retrieved it from my pocket and handed it to her. She put a drop of the anti-bewitchment formula on it and handed it back to me. It sure was instantium. I shot up to her chin height faster than I could blink!
“I say it once again, Rupert, you have pets of the highest intellect. I must thank you, Fred!” said Miss Switch.
“My pleasure, Miss Blossom!” chirped Fred. “And I might add I’m now feeling much more myself.”
“Come along, Rupert,” Miss Blossom said, “we must proceed at once.”
“What is it you want me to do this time, Miss Blossom?” I asked. “Do you want me to distract everyone while you pick their pockets?”
“Not at all, Rupert,” she replied. “I’ll just tell each of my students I need to check to make sure they have their tickets, and they are properly punched. What I want of you is to help round up anyone who might have wandered off.”
I stayed with Miss Blossom to see the first anti-bewitchments take place. Nobody questioned Miss Blossom’s asking to see their tickets. They just handed them right over. Then I had the best example of the hand being faster than the eye that I’d ever witnessed when she put the drop of anti-bewitchment formula on the tickets. It was amazing! Nobody even seemed to notice their change in size. Maybe it was because the room was so dark, or maybe they didn’t want to say anything because it would sound a bit loony Like me talking to my shoelaces. You had to be careful about things like that in the sixth grade.
There turned out to be only one problem. A person was missing. You might have guessed it would be Billy Swanson. So I had to go looking for him, although I had some mixed feelings about this. The class might be improved if Billy Swanson and Melvin Bothwick both shrunk away to zero. On the other hand, they’d been around from the beginning, and we’d probably miss them. I found Billy standing and staring at a display of ancient Egyptian paper. Paper! Billy couldn’t stay away from it. Anyway, I decided I’d make it easier on Miss Blossom, who was still busy with everyone else, and take her Billy’s ticket. Then I’d return it to him.
“Billy,” I said, “Miss Blossom needs to check all our tickets. So please hand yours over.”
“I can’t,” said Billy
“You’d better,” I said.
Billy pulled half a ticket from his pocket and handed it to me.
“Where’s the rest, Billy?” I asked.
Billy shuffled around a bit, and then with a sheepish look, handed me a couple of chewed-up bits of pink ticket. Billy couldn’t resist. He had made himself some spitballs! He really was a serious spitballaholic. But my big worry then was how Miss Blossom was going to do any anti-bewitchment on a half a ticket and a bunch of spitballs.
However, Miss Blossom never even flinched when she saw what I handed her. She just put on a couple of extra drops of the formula. I handed the whole lot back to Billy and watched him shoot up to his regular size. He was still so deep into the ancient Egyptian paper display, I don’t think he even noticed.
One thing I couldn’t understand was why Miss Blossom didn’t do any shrinking, considering that she was walking around with a punched ticket in her own pocket. I managed to slip her the question after Billy had been taken care of.
“Bewitchments do not affect other witches,” she explained. “Well, except in one or two very, very rare cases. This isn’t one of them.”
And a good thing, too, I thought. Of course, how was I to know that before everything was over with, I was going to learn just what one of those rare cases was!
At any rate, the entire sixth grade was back up to size by the time we headed for outer space. I was able to enjoy it thoroughly because I knew that whatever was going to happen that day had now happened. It was actually a very neat field trip. The only people who wouldn’t think so would be Mr. Dorking and Miss Tuna when they saw the unshrunk sixth grade arriving back at Pepperdine.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with Fred the rest of the day, but as soon as we got back to school, Miss Blossom sent me on a round trip home with him. I think she would have pinned a medal on him if she could have.
When I dropped Fred off in my room, I told the pets I was really mad at him. I also told them he was a hero and had probably saved my life. Fred was okay with that.
But Miss Blossom informed me that we had another midnight session at Pepperdine. I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t think Saturna was through with us. Not by a long shot!
16
Midnight Rendezvous
Miss Switch flew by for me shortly after midnight.
Bathsheba was with her, so she didn’t come in. She just waved to the pets as I grabbed my flashlight, climbed through the window, and boarded the broomstick. Then we took off.
“I swung by Pepperdine on my way here,” Miss Switch said. “No surprise to me that there was a dim light on in the computer room. I had no doubt who was in there, but I swooped down to have a closer look, anyway. Just then, the light went off, so I knew they were leaving. It’s so bright out, being only a day away from full moon, I couldn’t risk being seen, so I made a hasty departure.”
“Do you think they are through already because they began much earlier?” I asked.
“Not likely,” replied Miss Switch. “You must know by now, Rupert, that midnight is when we conduct most of our business.”
“Then that must mean Saturna sent a pretty short message,” I suggested.
“That would by my guess,” said Miss Switch.
As soon as we had all climbed through the window of Room Twelve, the three of us made our way down the dark hall to the computer room, which was dark as well. It was a good thing Miss Switch had seen the light there earlier as she flew by, as now we could be fairly confident that Mr. Dorking and Miss Tuna had come and gone. Miss Switch lost no time in bringing up computowitch.com, and we’d been right. Saturna’s message was very short, and certainly right to the point.
“Could you know who
Be in the stew?
It’s very late,
We must not wait.
You must be near
My plans to hear. Be at my lair,
I’ll meet you there
At full of moon
The witch’s noon.”
“Sounds pretty clear to me,” I said. “Saturna’s getting suspicious.”
“And who can blame her?” said Miss Switch. “Two bewitchments flopping like that. Looks bad on her record, too. And the thing is, the bewitchments themselves weren’t bad, especially considering that handsome dimwit was part of the act. Saturna may be realizing that there could be some outside influences at work. I’m not surprised she’s becoming suspicious.”
Miss Switch Online Page 9
