Which Witch? by Ibbotson Eva

Author:Ibbotson, Eva [Ibbotson, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books
Published: 2008-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

Mabel’s marks were announced that night. She had scored four out of a possible ten – a low mark and one that would have been lower if Arriman had had his way. But as kind Mr Chatterjee pointed out, she had called up the Kraken from the Deep and it wasn’t her fault that the thing had turned out the way it had.

The low score pleased all the other witches, and Ethel Feedbag, whose turn came on the following day, was heard lurching and roistering round the camp fire until long after midnight, hiccupping over her parsnip wine and falling asleep with her head on her pig and her wellies dangerously close to the embers. Belladonna, of course, couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for Mabel, who had retired huffily into her sleeping bag with wet towels round her legs, but Terence didn’t pretend to be anything but pleased.

‘You’ll see, Belladonna, you’ll win; you’re bound to!’

He had brought Rover down earlier, and just by touching the slender, peaceful body of her familiar, Belladonna had been able to turn the passion flowers into bloodshot eyeballs and the golden pears into thumbscrews. She’d left the baby rabbits because, as she said to Terence, it was knowing that she could turn them into decayed appendixes that was important.

‘How is . . . you know . . . He?’ she asked now.

Terence said that Arriman was a little bit upset. He could have said more, but he knew that Belladonna was in love and that nothing hurts people more than to think that someone they love is not altogether perfect. In fact, Arriman had been creating like nobody’s business on account of the Kraken. Absolutely nothing could persuade the Kraken that Arriman was not his father and the magician had had to change his shoes three times between tea and supper because the thing insisted on sitting on his feet. Krakens make their own wetness from the inside and can breathe in air as well as in water so there was nothing to stop the dreaded Denizen of the Deep from trying to climb on to Arriman’s lap or shedding tears all over his trousers, and the Great Man was taking it very badly.

‘Oh, why didn’t the New Wizard Cometh!’ he raged at dinner. ‘I’d have been spared all this. Lester, take it away!’

‘It’s you he wants, sir,’ said the ogre reproachfully. But he scooped the Kraken up and put him in a soup tureen, for what with Sir Simon wailing in the wainscot, Mr Chatterjee sneezing in his bottle and the ghoul dribbling raw liver from his mouth, he did feel that perhaps his master had had enough.

The following morning they were up early to see what Witch Number Two was going to do.

Ethel had chosen to perform her trick in a grassy and very beautiful hollow in which, beside a bubbling brook, there grew an oak, an ash and a thorn.

These three trees have, since the beginning of time, been special trees. Even separately they are special but when they grow together .

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