Caution: Witch In Progress Read Free

Gertie continued. ‘Would you like to be MY
friend?’
        ‘Croak,’ replied the toad.
        ‘Oh Goody!’ Gertie squealed. ‘You can go everywhere with me in
my pocket. I’ll buy you nice things to eat, and we’ll be best friends because
we’re both so different.’
        ‘Croak,’ said the toad. He clearly knew when he was on to a good
thing.
        ‘I’ll call you, Wart,’ added Gertie thoughtfully, ‘because you
don’t have any.’
        It made sense to her at the time.
        Wart didn’t accompany Gertie everywhere in her pocket, of
course.
        ‘No toad, warty or otherwise, can be happy living in someone’s
pocket. They need water to swim in and oozy mud to get between their webbed
toes,’ Ma told Gertie when she returned home. Luckily, Gertie didn’t even get
into trouble for being so wet and muddy. Her mother seemed quite pleased she
had tried to cast her first spell. When Ma learned of the outcome however, she
sighed and gave an ‘I might have known’ sort of look. ‘At least you tried,’ she
said. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to get it right.’
        Ma suggested the best place for Wart would be the little
stagnant pond in their back garden, near to the dandelion border.
        Gertie was afraid Wart might go away if she left him there, but
being a nice girl she decided he should be able to make up his own mind anyway.
           She
soon stopped worrying. Wart looked delighted to have a pond of his own and to
be without all those horrible warts. No one would be grabbing him for spell
casting now. It must have been a great weight off his back, in every way. He appeared
younger and more agile each time she saw him.
        Gertie came to visit him every day. ‘Wart, it’s me, Wart,’ she
called, so that he came over to have his smooth back stroked. The two soon
became firm friends. Secretly, Gertie began to feel quite pleased her first
spell hadn’t worked as expected.
        It was only when none of her attempted spells worked as they
should, that she would seriously begin to worry.
     
        Gertie’s next attempt at spells came quite by chance.
        ‘We’ve been invited to Grothilde’s for tea,’ Ma Grimthorpe told
her. Gertie loved to go to Grothilde’s, even though she was never quite sure if
Grothilde was speaking to her, or to her mother who was standing behind her
(and taller). Gertie tried to politely nod in all the right places, just in
case. She didn’t want to offend Grothilde because she was quite nice really,
despite her wayward eyes.
        The thing Gertie liked best about their visits were not so much
the devil cakes (which were absolutely delicious), but Grothilde’s armchair.
        ‘Will the chair be there, will it?’ Gertie asked in excitement.
        ‘Yes, dear, you know it will,’ replied Ma patiently.
        To all who entered the room, it looked like any other armchair.
It was upholstered in black, with a delicate scattering of skull patterns on
it, and four wooden clawed feet. No, it wasn’t the appearance of the chair that
made it out of the ordinary. It was what it did.
        When Grothilde had finished busying about and brought the tea
and cakes she, as always, stood wherever she happened to be at the time and
commanded in an authoritative voice ‘Chair.’
        Immediately, up the chair rose onto its four clawed feet and
scurried across to her. Grothilde began to sit even before it arrived, so sure
she was of its knack of getting there before her bottom touched down.
        Gertie loved it, and sometimes tried to make excuses for Grothilde
to have to get up a few times so she could watch her sit all over again.
        Gertie knew that Grothilde became wise to this, and rather
played up to it. That meant Grothilde had grown quite fond of her which made
Gertie happy.
    ‘Shame about your sweet face,’ Grothilde would say, ‘but you’ll make
a real witch one day’.
        Today, after