Caution: Witch In Progress Read Free Page A

performing her chair act three times for Gertie,
Grothilde announced with a wink of her good eye, ‘It’s about time you learned
another spell, Gertie, right, Ma?’
        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie, clapping her hands in glee.
        ‘Right, lass,’ continued Grothilde, focusing her eye on the
girl. ‘About this chair.’
        ‘Yes?’ asked Gertie, when the older witch didn’t continue.
        ‘Well, I wouldn’t try to charm a chair yet, luv, but you could
try something else. It’s only th’animation spells.’
        ‘Thanimation?’ Gertie asked, looking puzzled.
        ‘Animation, dear,’ her mother replied quietly. ‘A spell to make
things move when they don’t really have a mind to.’
        ‘Like Gran when she takes her afternoon nap?’ asked Gertie,
clearly hoping she was getting the hang of it.
        ‘Well, not exactly,’ her mother smiled, showing her pointed
yellow teeth. ‘More like Grothilde’s chair and occasional table.’
        Grothilde had an occasional table in the true sense of the word.
The rest of the time it was a small set of steps she used to reach the top
shelf of her huge oaken book case.
        Whenever she needed something to put her cup of tea on however,
she snapped her fingers and the steps came running and rearranged themselves
next to her chair. What she did have to remember was never to snap her fingers
when she was up on the steps. If they ever decided to rearrange themselves
while she was up there she could easily lose her legs in a flash.
        ‘Or even like Mortella’s door knocker,’ Ma continued to explain.
        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie in glee.
        The young witch loved Mortella’s door knocker too. It was shaped
in the face of a fearsome demon, and when you knocked on the door with it, it
bellowed ‘GO AWAY, I DON’T WANT ANY.’
        Mortella had been greatly troubled by travelling salesmen in the
past, but this seemed to do the trick. The other witches knew well enough to
rap on the wooden door with their knuckles or their broomstick handles, so not
to be deafened. The door knocker was particularly for uninvited strangers.
        ‘So, I can make things walk, or talk?’ asked Gertie.
        ‘Easy, luv,’ grimaced Grothilde. ‘All you ‘ave to do is BELIEVE
it will work. Use some words if you want to, to focus the power, then point at
what you want to move. A bit of rhyming helps. I’ve never found out why. Maybe
it’s because you have to concentrate to think of a rhyme.’ She paused and
stared at Gertie.
        ‘Anyway, before you start, be SURE you want it to move, mind
you. It’s not that easy to stop some of the beggars once they get going. I once
asked a stool to move out of the way. The front door was open at the time
because I was spring cleaning by letting a good breeze blow through. The stool moved
all right. It set off, through the door, and down the path. Before I had chance
to notice because I was too busy trying to see what was going on across the
road, it was disappearing out of sight.’ She grinned.
        ‘The last I saw of it,’ she explained to anyone who wondered
where her favourite stool had gone, ‘it was vanishing hurriedly past th’end of
the street in the direction of the woods. It’s probably still walking,’ she
added as an afterthought.
        ‘I’ve not used a stool in a spell since. I’ve heard others say
they usually prove to be pretty stupid. They’re not really cut out for much
more than sitting in a corner looking wooden.’
        Even though Gertie loved being at Grothilde’s, today she
couldn’t wait to get home. Once there, she rushed to her room and looked around
in anticipation. Frowning in concentration, she tried to spot something to
experiment on. She had been advised to try something small.
        ‘Oh, what can I use?’ she asked, feeling frustrated. Nothing
sprang to mind. Gertie sighed, sitting down heavily on her bed. There was