A Spell in the Country

by Heide Goody

  “That’s not a rat,” whispered Jenny.

  It was far too large: its body a good three feet long; a sinuous tail and powerful legs making it look even longer. Its snout was also too short, its ears too pointed and erect. It seemed trapped somewhere between a rat and a cat.

  “Mr Beetlebane?” said Jenny. The rat-cat Frankenstein stretched. Both fangs and large rodent incisors, Jenny noted. “What has she done to you?”

  “I think it wants to play,” trembled Jizzimus as Mr Beetlebane padded/crawled towards them.

  “It can think what it likes.” With two bottles under her arm and an imp clinging to her calf, Jenny backed out and shut the door behind her. A second later, something prodded the door before beginning to gnaw at it.

  “It’s unstoppable,” said Jizzimus.

  “We’re going,” said Jenny. As she turned towards her own shed, she saw torchlight bobbing along the grounds towards them. It was at head height.

  “Sabrina,” said Jenny. She turned around. “This way.”

  “Why?” said Jizzimus.

  “If she sees us with two bottles of potion, which Dee later mentions are missing, we’d be kind of rumbled.”

  “Circumstantial evidence,” said Jizzimus but followed her nonetheless.

  The next shed, Caroline’s, was in darkness. Jenny tried the door; it opened. They slipped inside. Jenny pressed herself into the shadows and watched the head-torch wearing Sabrina pass by.

  “Can I smell apples?” she said eventually.

  “I thought it was me,” said Jizzimus. “I’ve been sweatin’ cider all day.”

  In the gloom, Jenny could just make out a contraption of canisters, buckets and hosepipes. “Caroline’s built herself a distillery.”

  “An’ she’s got a man under these blankets,” observed Jizzimus.

  George Slingsby, barman and occasional lift-giver to witches, lay semi-naked on the floor underneath a coarse dustsheet. He looked at her but didn’t move.

  “Ah – what are you doing?” asked Jenny.

  “I’m hiding under these sheets,” said George. “Caroline doesn’t want anyone to see me.”

  Jenny shook her head. “That woman…”

  She could feel the glamour around him, like a web. Unpicking it wouldn’t be difficult. All it took was the curl of a finger, a pluck here and there… She crouched beside him and—.

  George’s eyes widened; he blinked hard.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  He blinked again. Jenny put her hand on his chest and felt the heartbeat in his warm chest. “Well, you’re not dead.”

  George found his voice. “How long have I—?”

  Jenny shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not the one who’s been doing Jedi mind tricks, am I?”

  “She told me she could never force me to do anything I didn’t secretly want to do.”

  Jenny was amused. “Really? So, you secretly want to lie on the floor of a shed without your shirt and wait for a witch to come along and ravish you?”

  “Well – I guess it depends on which witch it is.”

  Jenny blushed.

  “Woo hoo!” Jizzimus was inspecting Caroline’s still. “Looks like the gardener wants to get ’is ’ands on your shrubbery.”

  “I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” said George. He attempted to sit but Jenny still had her hand on his chest and didn’t feel particularly inclined to remove it.

  “You barely know me,” she said.

  “We don’t have to know someone to like them. Besides I’ve been watching you.” He grimaced in embarrassment. “Not in a creepy, pervert way. I mean I’ve seen you about. You’ve always got a troubled look about you.”

  “I think ’e’s confusin’ troubled wiv constipated.” Jizzimus twiddled a nozzle on the still.

  “Maybe I’ve got troubles,” said Jenny.

  “And I’d like to help you with them,” said George. “Or at least take your mind off them.”

  His hand was on her thigh. He was a good looking guy, Jenny reminded herself. A nice guy too. And, yes, she would like something to take her mind off her troubles…

  She leaned over George and kissed him.

  “S’okay, I won’t look,” said Jizzimus. The nozzle opened and a tiny trickle of spirits dribbled into his hands. “Sorry, did I say won’t look? What I meant was I won’t take pictures an’ post ’em on Instagram. Course I’ll look. Otherwise, ’ow will I be able to give you marks out of ten, an’ pointers for next time?”

  Dee had given Shazam a light sleeping draught. She and Caroline stayed until Shazam started snoring.

  “I think it was just shock,” said Caroline. “You know: finding a rat in her potion.”

  “I hope so,” said Dee. “If she’d had an adverse reaction to the potion, we’d probably have seen it by now.” She shut the clasp on her bag of general remedies. “I don’t know about you, sweetness, but I think I could use a cup of tea.”

  Exercise and concern had purged much of the alcohol and drunkenness from Caroline’s system. “A cup of tea sounds great,” she said. “Or maybe something a little stronger. However I, um, was in the middle of something in my shed. I need to attend to it.”

  They left the sleeping Shazam and walked down to the end of the annexe together. As they entered the restaurant, they found Sabrina: pot-holer’s torch on her forehead, a strange beast curled up on her lap.

  “Is that a badger?” asked Dee.

  “It’s a bloody ugly badger if it is,” said Caroline.

  “Ugly animals need love too.”

  “Ur, I found it outside your shed, Dee,” said Sabrina. “And it’s not a badger. I think it is a feline-rodent hybrid of some kind. A magical experiment?”

  Caroline recognised the patchy fur. “Oh, Christ! It’s Mr Beetlebum!”

  The cat-rat thing looked at her and tried to miaow but didn’t have the right vocal chords.

  Caroline and Dee looked at each other.

  “The rat in the potion!” said Dee.

  “She tried it on the cat first!” said Caroline.

  “And then herself!”

  As one, they ran back to Shazam’s room.

  The bedsheets were thrown back. A hulking creature, seven feet of bristling black fur, stood in the ruins of Shazam’s hazmat suit. Foot-long whiskers twitched as it sniffed the air; pink claw-like hands raking in agitation.

  “Ooh my, you’ve changed,” said Dee.

  “It’s not a particularly good look,” Caroline heard herself say.

  The Rat-Shazam thing squeaked at them. It sounded like a badly played trumpet.

  “Easy now, Cobwebs,” said Caroline. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “Your coat looks lovely,” added Dee. “Very shiny.”

  Rat-Shazam swung round, evidently distressed. Her fat rope of a tail slammed into the dressing table, cracking the mirror. She gave another bugle-blast of alarm and with two frantic head-butts forced the window open, leaping out into the night.

  “Crumbs!” said Dee.

  Caroline dashed to the window. Shards of glass crunched under her feet. Rat-Shazam was bounding along the side of the building, down the gardens, thankfully away from Eastville Hall.

  “We’ve got to get after her!”

  They tripped over each other as they barrelled into the corridor. Caroline, longer legged, raced ahead: down towards the restaurant and the outside door. She slid to a halt when she saw a cat in Sabrina’s arms; Mr Beetlebane returned to his miserable, moth-eaten original form.

  “It wore off?” said Caroline.

  Sabrina shook her head. “A simple disenchantment was all it took.”

  “Good.” Caroline grabbed and steered her towards the door. “Because you’re going to need it again.”

  Even though the shed was dark and the night warm, Jenny automatically pulled a spare dustsheet up and over to cover their nakedness. She kneeled over George. The pendant Kay had given her, its glow dimmed again, hung between them and cast just eno
ugh light to pick out the shape of his face, the glint of his eyes.

  She brought her mouth down to his.

  Jenny tried not to think about exactly how long it had been since she’d had sex. It had been two years, seven months and eight days since her third and final date with James Morgan. James, who liked to start a fitness app before sex. Unbelievably, the app had Intimacy as one of the listed activities for calorie burning. She felt decidedly out of practice: struggling to simultaneously co-ordinate her own lips, hands and hips. She closed her eyes and just tried to ‘go with it’; that just made her hyper-conscious of her every clumsy action.

  George gave a sharp intake of breath. At least she was doing something right.

  “Jenny.”

  “George.”

  “Your pendant…”

  “Huh?” She opened her eyes. The pebble was burning with a hundred watt glow.

  “It’s kind of blinding.”

  She pushed herself upright, accidentally elbowing him in the ribs and trapping her ankle under his knee. “This isn’t good!”

  “Just take it off,” he assured her.

  “No. I mean this isn’t good!”

  Jizzimus tore himself away from the still and scrambled onto the table to look out of the window. Outside, something cried like a tortured bugle.

  Caroline propelled Sabrina onto the lawn. “There! There!” she shouted, pointing.

  In the dark night, the giant Rat-Shazam slammed into a shed, smashing two walls as though they were nothing more than thin balsa wood.

  “What the flaming dickens is that?” cried Sabrina with more gusto than Caroline had ever heard from the world-weary woman.

  “Trouble for us if we don’t fix it. No!”

  The rat-witch tumbled sideways and crashed through the wall of Caroline’s own work shed.

  “What’s all this racket?” demanded Effie Fray, striding down from Eastville Hall.

  “It’s Shazam,” said Dee.

  There were shrieks from down the garden. Two pale and butt naked figures appeared from the wreckage of Caroline’s shed. Caroline recognised one instantly and the other seconds later.

  Sabrina raised an arm and took aim at Rat-Shazam. “Capattin po!”

  The were-rat fell, rolled, and rapidly transformed into something somewhat smaller and much less hairy.

  Dee and Effie ran forward to help Shazam. Caroline’s attention was held entirely by the fleeing backsides of the naked witch and gardener. They were so intent on getting away they didn’t look back.

  “Jenny Knott, you are a man-stealing cow, so you are.” The sight of the pair of them was too entertaining for Caroline to muster much venom.

  “Have I missed something?” said Kay. The teenager was pulling on her leather jacket as she approached. “What are you doing?”

  “Just regarding the moon.” Caroline nodded towards the rapidly fleeing naturists.

  “Ah,” said Kay. “I see it’s in conjunction with Uranus tonight.”

  “Good one, kid,” said Caroline. “Good one.”

  Chapter 4 – Fire and Water

  It was hardly surprising that Sabrina and Shazam were declared winners of the product design challenge.

  While Kay’s danger stones had a clear and practical use, her presentation was a thirty-second inaudible mumble into the oversized collar of her jumper. Caroline had the chutzpah to deliver a presentation, but since her shed had been completely destroyed and, as everyone knew, her project consisted of a bunch of dried herbs, some powerful apple hooch and one naked gardener, she was entirely without a tangible outcome. The naked gardener, once he was clothed again, removed said apple hooch to his stables and nothing more was said about it. Dee, similarly bereft of product, had stumbled through a confused explanation about her Potion of Seeing going missing and her inability to recreate it. Norma had refused to deliver a presentation, declaring she wasn’t “some common peddler, hawking her wares in the street.”

  Jenny had made it through her own presentation, although it hadn’t been pretty. She’d gone into a downward spiral when she realised she was saying “Er” and “Um” too often. She became so self-conscious about her lack of eloquence that she started to pepper her sentences with “Oh shit!” and the occasional “Bollocks!” as she stumbled through the slides. The poor presentation was compounded by the inadequacy of her product: an invisibility cloak which was a mere one inch square and could only make itself invisible, not its wearer. Its only conceivable market might be cloak-wearing insects who wished to appear naked on command. The world was unsurprisingly lacking in insect flashers.

  Sabrina’s presentation was, by contrast, polished and confident, and her magical lifting rings were genuinely innovative. Shazam did not deliver a presentation and Effie did not ask for one. In Effie’s word’s, Shazam’s transmogrification into a shambling rat-woman beast was “demonstration enough.”

  “Thank you, ladies,” she said after the last presentation. “A good job all round. You’ll find that public speaking gets easier with each attempt, so we might try to fit in another opportunity later on the course.”

  There were many heartfelt grumblings at this news.

  “I can see you’ve been working hard on your projects, with a somewhat varied degree of success. However I think we can all agree Sharon has genuinely broken new ground with her transformation potion, so she will take one of the prizes. The other will go to Sabrina for her lifting rings.”

  There was a small ripple of applause.

  “Oh thank you!” squealed Shazam. “A day in the spa! I do feel a bit out of sorts after that business with my potion. It sounds like just what me and Mr Beetlebane need.”

  “Ur, surely you’re not taking the cat?” said Sabrina. “I’d like to think that a spa has certain standards.”

  “Standards?” said Shazam.

  “Vis-à-vis pets and other vermin.”

  Shazam looked crestfallen. “What? I can’t go if Mr Beetlebane’s not allowed.”

  Caroline rolled her eyes. “Nice work, Sabrina.”

  “I’m sure we can work something out,” said Effie diplomatically. “I’ll accompany you up to the Hall and see what can be done, Sharon.” She smiled brightly. “Now, as we discussed this week, Sabrina’s family have access to the Pendle Library of Witchcraft in Cambridge, and I’m pleased to say that access has been extended to us for the duration of this course. And so, on Monday, we will be taking a little trip to Cambridge.”

  “That does sound fun,” said Shazam. “Spa days. Trips.”

  “It’s like a dream come true,” said Caroline dryly.

  “Furthermore,” continued Effie, “Mrs du Plessis has kindly offered us the use of the house’s mini-bus. Apparently, Monday is some sort of changeover day or they’re having new supplies delivered or somesuch, so I think it probably helps her if we’re all out of the way.”

  “Can any of us drive a mini-bus?” asked Norma.

  “Not a problem,” said Caroline. “Unless Mrs du Plessis is lending us George to chauffeur us around?”

  Both Jenny and Effie gave her reproachful looks.

  “But today is Sunday,” said Effie. “We can sort that out tomorrow. Perhaps today you deserve the rest of the day off. To indulge in innocent pursuits.”

  Effie hustled Shazam and Sabrina across the lawn. Dee latched eagerly onto Norma as she left. Jenny, Caroline and Kay were the only ones left in the dusty teaching hut.

  “So,” said Caroline. “I think it’s time we had the talk, don’t you?”

  Jenny tried to summon a facial expression that said she had no idea what Caroline was talking about, but she was distracted by Jizzimus settling on the arm of Effie’s chair.

  “This is gunna be good,” grinned the imp. “Sock it to ’er guv.”

  “Is this about George?” sighed Jenny.

  “I should think so.”

  “Well, I’m ready to hear an apology, Caroline.”

  “You’re ready to … what?” Caroline spu
ttered a little. “You hopped into my bed with the man that I’d undressed while I tended to Cobweb’s emergency. I’d say that’s a bit rude, wouldn’t you?”

  Jenny was agog. “Seriously? Have you no moral compass, woman? Did you trade it in for a sense of self-righteous entitlement?”

  “I don’t think I’m the one being self-righteous, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes.”

  Jenny clenched her fist. She could feel her cheeks starting to burn with anger and the tingle of witchfire beneath her skin. “Kay,” she said, as calmly as she could, “you don’t have to stay and listen to this.”

  “I’m fine,” grinned Kay, settling back into her chair.

  “What I saw,” Jenny said carefully, “was a man with an enchantment cast over him, left naked in a shed. A man who really didn’t know what he was doing there when I released him. You can’t treat people like that, Caroline It’s manipulative.”

  Caroline gave Jenny a long, smug look. “So, are you saying that you never used any kind of manipulation on a man to sleep with him?”

  “No.”

  “You never thought about what underwear you might put on? You never took extra care with your make up?”

  “That’s not—”

  “You never played the oh-so-innocent otherworldly witch who’s only trying to help?” Caroline affected a whiny falsetto.

  “I do not sound like that!”

  “To be fair, you do a bit,” said Kay.

  Jizzimus clicked his fingers and pointed at Kay. “What she said, guv.”

  “You’re meant to be on my side,” said Jenny.

  “No one’s on your side,” said Caroline. “You’re all alone in your little Kingdom of So Wrong It’s Embarrassing.”

  “You’re deluded,” said Jenny. “You’ve lost all perspective. Even if I did any of those things to … to woo a man, they are not the same as magical entrapment! Nothing like the same.”

  “It’s just a spectrum, Jenny; different degrees of the same thing. People have been manipulating their way into each other’s’ knickers for centuries; and people like you have been disapproving of it for just as long.”