A Spell in the Country

by Heide Goody

  “I can make myself visible if I want to. Look.” Jizzimus closed his eyes, clenched up with a little grunt and then leapt up in a star jump. “See!”

  “Yes,” said Jenny slowly. “I could see you before though, couldn’t I?”

  “Sure, sure. But anyone else oo was ‘ere would now be rubbin’ their eyes and goin’ ‘Fuck me! What the shittin’ ’ell is that? An’, if you don’ mind me sayin’, what a fabulously hung beast ’e is. I’d like to see some of that on a pay-per-view porn channel.’”

  Jenny couldn’t help smiling. The more foul-mouthed he became, the more child-like he appeared. She picked him up. He made a show of resisting for a moment. “What am I to do with you?” she sighed.

  “Get me a jar of lube, a fluffer an’ a camera crew, boss.”

  A thought struck Jenny. “What makes you invisible?”

  Jizzimus shrugged. “Dunno.”

  “I mean…” She picked some crumbs of horn filings off the table. “Are these invisible, or is it just you?”

  Jizzimus pulled a dumb face. “Why?”

  “I might have an idea.”

  There was soup for lunch in the restaurant. Caroline regarded its brown, vegetable depths critically.

  Next in line, Shazam said helpfully: “It’s soup,”

  Caroline reluctantly ladled a dollop of it into her bowl. “I was merely wondering what kind,” she said.

  “Ooh, it’s got little cubes of ham in it,” said Shazam. “Very continental.”

  At that moment, Caroline spotted the thick, elbow length rubber gloves Shazam was wearing. “Is this a new look?” she asked.

  “Hmmm? Oh, no. I’ve been transforming my shed into a contaminant-free laboratory environment. I’m going to do some precision potion-making.”

  “Ah,” said Caroline, thinking about the unscientific plastic tubing and bucket arrangement she was planning in her own work shed.

  “But I do think they look elegant,” said Shazam. “Like Audrey Hepburn in that Breakfast at thingummies film.”

  Caroline wanted to point out that Audrey Hepburn would only have worn such gloves if she’d been tending to a pregnant cow. Instead, took her soup, crusty cob and spoon to the table where the others were sitting.

  “All I’m saying—” Jenny broke off some bread to dip in her soup “—is that it’s good to iron out some of the bugs before we get carried away with our plans. A bit of pre-emptive SWOT analysis.”

  “Ur, and you’re the business guru who will show us the error of our ways, are you?” said Sabrina.

  Jenny shrugged. “I did a few months of temp work for a friend, Kevin Carter-King. He runs this—”

  “That’s the company with all those lorries,” Shazam piped in. “Like Eddie Stobart or that Norbert Dangerous-angle.”

  “Oh, we saw one of those Carter-King trucks going by the other day,” said Dee.

  “Yes, we did,” said Caroline. “As we were leading a cow through a muddy field because our team mate had abandoned us and got the amulet without telling us, I believe.”

  Jenny coughed uncomfortably. “Anyway, those months gave me a bit of an insight into marketing and strategy, and I’m merely offering my services – a little mutual support – if we’re all willing to share.”

  “But you might steal our ideas,” said Norma.

  “My product idea is awesome,” said Kay and put a pebble on the table.

  Everyone peered at it. It was a red clay lozenge of a stone and appeared to glow very dimly.

  “That looks interesting,” said Jenny encouragingly. “What is it?”

  “A work in progress,” said Kay and swept it out of sight again.

  “Ur, maybe you ought to share your idea first,” suggested Sabrina.

  “Very well.” Jenny put an empty jam jar on the table.

  Everyone was less dumbfounded than nonplussed.

  “I think I preferred the glowing pebble,” said Norma.

  “Can you see it?” asked Jenny.

  Dee put her eye right up to the glass. “No, poppet.”

  “Exactly!” said Jenny.

  “Okay,” said Caroline. “Who had Jenny in the First Witch To Go Completely Cuckoo sweepstake?”

  “The reason you can’t see it is because it’s invisible. I’m going to make a cloak of invisibility.”

  “Ooh, that’ll be nice,” said Shazam.

  “Might be a wise fashion choice for some,” said Sabrina.

  “Can’t be done,” said Norma flatly.

  “That’s fighting talk,” said Kay. “What’s your big idea?”

  “I’m not saying, Miss Wun. And, for your information, in this country, young ladies speak to their elders with a bit more respect than that.”

  “I’m making a hair tonic for gloss and shine,” said Shazam. Her own hair was a Fifties-style bouffant homage to the philosophy of bigger is better. Caroline thought if it was any glossier or shinier, it would be blinding.

  “You use some of the stuff on your hair already?” she asked.

  “Not for me,” laughed Shazam. “I’m making it for pets.” She ran a rubber-gloved hand over the near-dead cat hanging around her neck. “Mr Beetlebane is looking a little threadbare these days. He could do with a sprucing up. My tonic will transform and revitalise.”

  “I’m going to cure PMT,” said Caroline with deliberately ridiculous pomposity.

  “We’ve all tried that, sweetness,” said Dee.

  Norma hmphed. “No one even had PMT until Cosmopolitan invented it. All in the mind.”

  “To be honest,” said Caroline, “I’m going to play it safe and just distil some soothing essential oils. Thought I might go out and track down some evening primrose.”

  “For stress relief you could also try borage,” suggested Dee.

  “Or cleavers,” said Sabrina.

  “Cleavers?” Caroline frowned. “Sounds dangerous.”

  “She means sticky-willy,” said Dee.

  “Oh, goose grass,” said Shazam, understanding.

  “And, of course,” said Sabrina, “the important thing to remember is that the season and time you harvest your herbs is as important as what you harvest.”

  “Is it?” said Caroline.

  Sabrina rolled her eyes. For such a languorous woman, rolling her eyes took a full two seconds. “Ur, would it help if I showed you how and where to pick herbs?”

  Caroline, who harboured a desire to punch Sabrina on the hooter simply for being a stuck-up little rich girl, bit down on her class envy. “That would be … really helpful.”

  “See?” smiled Jenny. “A bit of mutual support.”

  “Can I come too?” asked Kay.

  “And me,” said Dee.

  “Ur, I thought you were an expert herbalist, Dee.”

  “I never said I was an expert,” said Dee. “And any opportunity to learn…”

  “Anyway, what are you working on, Sabrina?” asked Jenny.

  Sabrina pointed to a pair of silver rings on the table. “Ur, I’m working on a way of imbuing objects with permanent PK potential.”

  “Pardon?” said Jenny.

  “Pick them up.”

  Jenny tried. She grabbed one and then the other and huffed as they refused to lift from the table surface. “What…? Are they stuck?” She gave up.

  Norma, intrigued, leaned in and also tried to lift one.

  “Ur, they’re not stuck to the table, I assure you,” said Sabrina.

  Shazam reached over and tried to lift the other. With a grunt, she managed to lever it a couple of inches off the table and slide her other hand under it.

  “It’s so heavy,” she said, impressed. “How does it work?”

  “Well, it’s about the application of direction-specific gravity to the— No!”

  Sabrina reached out as Shazam turned the ring over to inspect it. The ring flew up out of her hands and struck the ceiling with a firework crack. Mr Beetlebane yowled in surprise and leapt from Shazam’s neck. Little lumps of plaster fell o
nto the table. A triangular piece plopped into Caroline’s soup and sank.

  “Nustoti!”

  At Sabrina’s command, the ring Norma was tugging at suddenly came away with ease. Up above, something rattled in the damaged ceiling; the other ring fell down through the hole it had made. Sabrina caught it, examined it and placed it back on the table.

  “Veikti!”

  Norma’s hand and the ring she was holding slammed down.

  “A lifting weight of one hundred and fifty pounds,” said Sabrina. “Applied in a specific direction.”

  “And a delightful addition to any dinner table,” said Caroline, fishing in her bowl for the lost lump of plaster.

  After a lunch that tasted more than a little chalky, Caroline continued with her own preparations. She walked across the lawns with a half dozen lengths of plastic piping under one arm and a pair of large tubs under the other. She heard the distant sound of a large saw buzzing somewhere by the stable block and wondered if there might be more useful equipment over there, even though it was out of bounds. Having done the briefest of research, she hoped she was carrying the makings of a rudimentary still, through which she’d extract the essential oils of various plants.

  Caroline was reluctant to admit it but, although she was a fricking awesome witch, her personal awesomeness was based upon natural skill and spontaneous charms. While she could bend wills, charm souls and warp the world to her bidding, she knew next to nothing about the technical aspects of witchcraft. She was a lumbering musclebound Neanderthal surrounded by weaker but wilier, tool-using homo sapiens.

  And, speaking of musclebound Neanderthal’s and tools she’d like to use…

  George – sometime barman, sometime gardener, all time eye candy – was carrying a pair of freshly-sawn tree posts to the nearby borders, a pair of amber-tinted goggles around his neck.

  Caroline clicked her teeth softly; a hundred yards away George looked up, on a whim, and saw her. She gave him a wink and a wave. He smiled back, wiped his brow and, tree posts slung casually over his shoulder, ambled across.

  “Easier to herd than cows,” Caroline said to herself, continuing on to her work shed, safe in the knowledge that George was following.

  Svarta Norn, or The Black Witch by Gunnfríður Vilhjálmsdóttir was a fascinating read. Dee had been reading Norma’s book for hours, when she should have been planning, crafting and concocting. Eventually, seized by an exciting thought, she took the book over to Norma’s shed and knocked. Something mechanical whirred within.

  “Go away,” came Norma’s commanding voice. “Too busy.”

  “It’s me. Dee.”

  There was a massive, pained sigh. “Come in if you must.”

  Dee opened the door.

  Norma stood framed by the doorway, wearing a black and yellow striped, all in one body suit. Her face was covered by something that looked like a veil. She was also wearing a pair of deely-boppers on her head. Dee wanted to ask why, but was distracted by a loud droning she couldn’t place. It was punctuated by a staccato series of battering noises.

  “Come in quickly,” said Norma. “I need to close the door.”

  Dee stepped inside and saw that Norma had brought one of the garden beehives into her shed. Bees filled the air between the hive and the table. On the table was an old-fashioned typewriter. Bees poured through the air, aimed for a key on the typewriter and dropped heavily onto it, striking letters one by one. Dee prided herself on a love of all creatures, but chose to keep a wary distant from the cloud of bees.

  “Before you even ask, it works,” said Norma.

  “It does?” said Dee.

  Norma pushed her veil back over the deely-boppers and pointed at the paper slowly emerging from the typewriter. “Yes. Apiomancy. Fortune-telling through the flight of bees. I might need a new z key soon though: they’re quite keen on that one. You’ve come with questions about the book.”

  “I have,” said Dee.

  Norma ran her finger down a few lines. “You’re surprised about the cold touch of iron, the power of certain berries and other links between wicked witches and the fairy folk?”

  “I am.”

  “But you’re particularly interested in Vilhjálm’s Potion of Seeing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though Vilhjálmsdóttir makes it quite clear it cannot be made.”

  “Yes. If there was a potion which let you see spirit beings then you’d be able to see witches’ imps and detect the wicked witch in an instant.”

  Norma tapped another line. “And even though you know it’s impossible, you’re going to persevere.”

  “Am I? That’s nice.”

  Norma stood in the centre of the room, turned around three times, waggled her deely-boppers, stamped her left foot three times, then her right foot twice. As if in answer, the bees fired back several lines’ worth of text. Norma read them.

  “Caroline Black will prove essential in your plans,” she précised.

  “How?”

  Norma tutted loudly at something on the page. “That’s no way to set up a still!”

  Dee looked around. “What? Where?”

  “She’s like a man that one. Does all her thinking with her knickers.”

  “I think you’ve lost me, poppet,” said Dee.

  Norma did another peculiar dance and waited for the bees to reply. “You will succeed.”

  “With the potion?”

  Norma nodded curtly. “But you won’t be happy with the results.”

  “Why not?”

  Norma lowered her veil again. “If I told you everything, Miss Finch, then there’d be no surprises.”

  Caroline fixed one end of the plastic tube onto the top of her pressure cooker. The free end flailed around, threatening to topple the pot. George stepped in and held the cooker steady.

  “So, what are you going to be brewing up in this?”

  “Some evening primrose. Sticky-willy. Bits and bobs.”

  George hung the tubing over the rusted hook in the centre of the ceiling, giving the whole contraption greater stability. “I know this kind of thing isn’t very technical—”

  “It’s fairly technical,” pouted Caroline.

  “—but I haven’t got round to setting up one of my own yet.”

  Caroline gave him a look. “Fancy yourself as a warlock, do you?”

  He laughed. “No, Miss Black.”

  “I answer to Caroline or, occasionally, mistress.”

  He blushed. She liked that. “I meant,” he said, “stills can be used for purposes other than distilling oils.”

  “To be honest, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “We had a real bumper crop in the orchard last autumn.”

  “Ah, cider.” Caroline fought to get the further coils of tubing inside the tub that would act as the cooling pot.

  George made a doubtful noise. “That was the plan. Here.” He crouched beside her to help draw the tubing out the hole in the base of the tub. “Making cider should be simple.” He fiddled in the opening with his fingertips. “Chop up your apples, mash them down, let the natural yeasts ferment.”

  “But…?”

  “Ah-ha!” He grasped the tubing between thumbs and forefinger and tugged it through. “Yes, well, I currently have in the stable ten gallons of something that is technically cider but tastes like apple-scented drain cleaner.”

  Caroline bent the piping towards the collection jar. “And does your employer – pass me that epoxy resin glue stuff – does she approve of you brewing crap cider in her stable?”

  “Mrs du Plessis doesn’t lower herself to inspect sheds and stables. I keep it hidden behind the gas canisters just in case.”

  “Being a bit of a naughty boy, then?”

  “You missed a bit,” he said. Lacing his fingers over hers, he spread a blob of rubber cement around the pipe to seal the hole. “It’s a moot point. As I said, the cider is quite undrinkable. However, with a working still – which is exactly what this is shaping up
to be – all ten gallons of it could be transformed into a tasty apple-based spirit.”

  “Moonshine?”

  “I’m sure we can come up with a classy name for it.” He wiped his hands on his jeans as he stood. “But, of course, this is for distilling evening primrose and sticky-willy.”

  “That was the plan,” she said.

  “Was?”

  As Jenny locked up her work shed for the evening, she was greeted by the sight of someone in an outfit which implied interests in both beekeeping and bondage.

  “Shazam?”

  The larger woman lifted off her rubberised helmet. It came away with a wet pop to reveal a pink and sweaty face. “Ooh, I’m fair glowing.” She fanned herself with the helmet. A sweat-sodden thing around her neck miaowed in possible agreement.

  “Are we expecting a chemical attack?” asked Jenny.

  “She’s ’eard what happens to you after eatin’ too many vegetables,” said Jizzimus.

  “I’ve created a sealed environment in which to carry out my herbal product development. You can have a look if you like.”

  Jenny followed the squeaking rubber woman to the next shed and peered in the window. Plastic sheeting had been taped across the floor, angled ceiling and walls. It had all the precision of a neatly packaged birthday present, albeit one wrapped from the inside.

  “Nice,” said Jizzimus. “You could do your shed like that, boss.”

  “Hmmm,” said Jenny, interested.

  “Perfect li’l slaughter’ouse. String up the kid from that wotsit in the ceilin’ an’ you can get blood all over wivout ’avin’ to worry about the cleanin’ up.”

  “And you’re sure the hazmat suit is essential?” Jenny asked Shazam.

  “Sabrina said you can never be too careful.”

  “Did she, now? And are you going on the herb gathering walk later?”

  “Maybe,” said Shazam, with a damp, rubbery shrug.

  “But perhaps leave the diving suit in your room when you do.”

  They walked together up to their wing of Eastville Hall. With evening beginning to settle, lights in the larger, grander windows of the house permitted glimpses of elaborate plaster cornices, four-poster beds, velvet drapes and other finery that did not extend to the witches’ little annexe.