Beswitched Read Free

us! We summon you!
    From the far north of the years to come!
    With hare’s whisker
,
    With hog’s bristle
,
    With two sprigs of milk thistle
,
    A stone from the stream’s rush
,
    A hair from the fox’s brush!”
    She knew it was not a real voice. She was in the middle of a dream.
    It was pitch-dark. Flora tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt as heavy as two metal shutters.
    Then, while her eyes were still tightly shut, she saw it all.
    She was in a dark room lit by two misty smears of candlelight. She did not know why she was there, except that she had somehow obeyed the mysterious summons.
    There were three figures draped in white—like ghosts in a cartoon. Did they want to scare her? Flora tried to concentrate harder on this dream, so that she could see them more clearly. If the white shapes had arms, they seemed to be waving them. There was an odd noise—like loud screams heard from very far away.
    Flora was not scared. She felt quite calm. She could see a large window, with long, blue-patterned curtains on either side. One of the spirits began to move towards her, and Flora felt herself being pulled away—not painfully, but very firmly. The dark room with the white figures suddenly vanished, like a candle being blown out.
    She was flying now, or perhaps falling. It was like being sucked back into a gigantic vacuum cleaner. She could see nothing but darkness. A great whirlpool of sounds was babbling inside her head—voices and engines, explosions, crowds cheering. She was flying faster than the wind.
    It did not last long. Flora felt herself gasping as she was suddenly thrown out of the dream and poured back into her sleeping body on the train.
    But something was wrong. Her arms and legs seemed to be wrapped in thick, soft layers of cloth. Her feet had landed in shoes that were hard and heavy.
    “Flora,” a woman’s voice said. “Wake up, dear. We’re nearly there.”

2
Changing Trains
    T his was not a dream. Flora was sure she was not dreaming now. She struggled to open her sleep-swollen eyes. Who had spoken to her as if they knew her? Where was she? Yes, she was on a train—but a different train. It swung and creaked and clattered, with a regular rhythm—ta-ta-ta-TUM, ta-ta-ta-TUM—that made her thoughts march in time to it like soldiers.
    The light was dim and yellow. It came from two funny little lamps in the wall. She was in a compartment with a sliding door. Outside the window were gray hills that were fading into darkness. On the wall underneath the luggagerack was a small framed picture of a sunny beach, and the words “PAIGNTON—England’s Summer Playground.”
    Flora looked down at her own arm, and her heart did a somersault of shock. Instead of her long-sleeved T-shirt, she appeared to be wearing a dark green jacket. Something was throttling her neck uncomfortably—a green tie with red stripes, like the tie her dad wore to his office. How did it get there? She had never worn a tie in her life. Had she been knocked out and kidnapped and forced into someone else’s clothes? No, don’t be silly.
    “Come along, come along!” said the strange voice. “Dear me, we are a sleepy owl today!”
    There was one other person in the compartment. It was a solid, shapeless woman, with neat rolls of brown hair under a brown felt hat, and glasses with heavy brown frames. Flora could not tell how old she was. At first glance, she looked older than Mum because her clothes were so old-fashioned. When you looked more closely, however, her beaming face was round and fresh. She was wearing a man’s tweed suit with a collar and tie, except that instead of trousers the suit had a long, stiff skirt. Her shoes were clumpy brown lace-ups. She was reading a magazine called
Time and Tide
. Flora’s heart was thumping hard. Something very strange and terrible was happening, and her brain was too stunned with shock to take it in.
    She croaked, “Where am I?”
    “You fell asleep, dear,” the woman said,