The Witch Family (17 page)

"I have a paper that I may use in gravest trouble," said Amy.

"
YES,
" spelled Malachi.

"But I am not in gravest trouble. At least I don't think I am," she said.

"
A MATTER OF OPINION
," spelled Malachi.

"That is what I thought," said Amy, who really did not know what
OPINION
spelled. "And, Malachi, please don't use too hard words, please."

"NO," said Malachi.

"That's better," said Amy. "Good-bye. You are the best representatiff I ever had." Blowing him a kiss, she flung her legs over the broomstick.

"Go," said Amy, and "
GO,
" she spelled to make it more emphatic. "Please take me home."

The broomstick did go. Off it flew. But it did not fly her home. Amy's messenger, the red cardinal bird, happened to be flying by just then, and from habit the broomstick followed after him. So it was that the broomstick carried Amy to the witch school. At the little pink cloud, the broomstick left the bird, flew in the window of the witch school, where Amy, with pounding heart, dismounted. To give herself courage, she felt the hem of her cloak to be sure the paper was safe.

The other little witches had apparently just arrived. They were breathless still, and they were yawning and complaining that they were worn out from the best Halloween there ever had been. Old Witch had surpassed herself, they said. They were all so tired and sleepy that they did not recognize Amy as Amy. She had kept her witch mask on, of course, and this helped. The little witches thought Amy was Hannah. They clustered around her and began to compare notes as to who had had the greatest Halloween hurly-burly.

"What did you do, Hannah?" asked Tweet.

They all supposed that since Hannah lived with the real great old witch, the head witch of all witches, she had had the most exciting time of any of them. Luckily just then the witch teacher said, "Attention," so Amy did not have to reply.

First the teacher read the roll call. Amy remembered to say, "There," when the name of Hannah was called. She remembered that witches often say the opposite, for instance "there" for "here," and in this case "there" was the right answer.

But unfortunately, Amy was the first one called upon in witchiplication, and she got every answer wrong. This is not surprising, since no subject is harder for a real, ordinary girl. But her answers were a surprise to the witch teacher, because usually Little Witch Girl got the answers all right. Being in a holiday frame of mind, the teacher, though surprised, did not mark her down.

But when in arithmetic Amy, from habit, said, "One and one is two," instead of "One and one is nothing," she received terrible marks and had to learn nine hard runes by heart for punishment. Opening the little witch girl's notebook, she had a pleasant surprise. In the little witch girl's handwriting, which was very fine and resembled the delicate marks of sandpipers in the sand, but which Amy could read quite well, she found the following broomstick rune:

Down-ee, down-ee, down we go
Down the big glass hill we go.
In sun, in rain, in sleet, in snow
Down to Garden Lane we go.

This was an easy rune for Amy to learn, and she learned it in a second. At the first opportunity she was going to try it on the broomstick. The broomstick was still so full of the powerful magic that the little witch girl had patted onto it that instead of standing sedately in the corner with the other broomsticks, it kept hopping up and down.

"Can't you quiet that restless broomstick of yours?" the witch teacher asked Amy, still thinking that Amy was Hannah.

Here was Amy's chance. The broomstick was so restless that it would probably take her home now, especially when it heard the rune she had just learned.

"Take it out for a little airing around the schoolhouse," suggested the witch teacher. "It's too distracting. "

"Pet!" muttered the other little witches jealously.

Amy was overjoyed. But alas! Her joy was short-lived. As she left her desk, an awful thing happened. Her witch mask fell off, and before she could slap it back on, who should glimpse her real little girl's face but Itch and Twitch, the twins.

"That is not Hannah!" they screamed. "That is a spy! That is the banquisher of witches to glass hills. Catch her! Catch her!"

The little witches fell upon Amy. They tied her arms and legs with strong spiderweb silk, and they put her in the corner. The witch teacher came and stared at her and said, just like real Old Witch, "Oh, to glory be!"

In this way Amy became a captive of the little witches. There she was imprisoned in a silken spiderweb in a corner of the witch schoolroom. "The trouble be grave now," she said to herself. "I do not think it be of the gravest, though." Amy wondered if she should wait for it to become gravest. She held tightly to the corner of the hem of her cloak, and clutched the paper folded there in readiness lest grave became gravest all of a sudden.

It did. The little witches all got out their witchiplication books and sat in a semicircle around Amy. "We'll change her into a rabbit," they said, and they pored over the books to find the proper rune for changing real little girls into rabbits. "Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits," they muttered. "Changing girls into rabbits.... She shall be a present to Old Witch," they said, "as a reward for conducting the best Halloween ever, and as a consolation prize for losing the spelling bee."

"Ha!" said Olie. "I have it!"

All the little witches stood up. Olie read:

"Oh girl, tied up in the webs of a spider,
Old Witchie would like to have ye inside her.
We'll soon change ye into a rabbit
And send ye off—it is our habit—
To be a gift to our Old Witch
Than whom there is none better than which.
On thy bones Old Witch will gnaw
As soon as thy toes become a—paw!"

The witches then entered into frightening back-anallies. And, one, two, three, stomp! They came stomping along, faster and faster, one, two, three, stomp! One, two, three, stomp! And, "Tweak the nose, and tweak the chin," they sang, "Until they bend out instead of bend in."

This ceremony was a nightmare to Amy. This was gravest trouble, all right, she decided. She got the piece of paper out from the hem of her cloak, unfolded it, and quickly read:

"Malachi!
Oh, Malachi!
You are a magic bumblebee
You are the
spelling bumblebee.
And if in trouble
e'er I be
Then mumble
bumble
here to me!"

Malachi came!

He flew through the open window, looking tremendous. "
TAKE HEED! TAKE HEED
!" he buzzed as he darted through the stomping witches, giving each one a big, big bite, "
BEWARE
!" he said.

"Teacher," the little witch girls whimpered, falling back.

With this Amy broke the silken cords that bound her. She had known all along one thing that little witches do not know, and that is that although little witches cannot break the silken webs of spiders when they are bound with them, real little girls can. She had not broken them before because she had to have a friend at hand to help her to escape.

Malachi alighted in front of Amy, his wings fluttering. His buzzing boded ill. He seemed to be growing larger all the time. All the witches fell back to the wall, watching and listening. Without turning around to look at them (by tilting his head back he could see them anyway from his top center eye), Malachi spelled, "
GOOD WILL WIN!
"

"Malachi?" Amy said.

"
YES,
" he spelled.

"It was of the gravest, I think," she said.

"
MAYBE
!" he spelled.

"Now that you be here, everything be all right," said Amy. "Malachi?" she said.

"
YES,
" he replied in the spelling fashion. The little witches followed the conversation with rapt attention even though he was spelling forward and not backward.

"Be it not true that a bumblebee can carry objects of much greater weight than itself? My father told me that once."

"
TRUE
," said Malachi.

"So. A bumblebee be stronger than an elephant because an elephant cannot do that?"

"
TRUE,
" said Malachi, puffing out his plush-like back.

"Then," said Amy happily, "it will not be hard for you to fly me home, will it? This broomstick will not go where I say. And I must get it back to the little witch girl."

Malachi said, "
SO BE IT!
"

Then he swelled himself out tremendously. He looked as big as the sun. He almost blinded the witches' eyes. Then great Malachi, puffing himself out still more mightily, said, "
GET ON!
"

Clutching Little Witch Girl's broomstick tightly to her, Amy climbed up onto Malachi's soft, furry back.

Then Malachi fluttered his great beautiful gossamer wings, rose into the air, and away he flew out the window with Amy!

The little witch girls crowded together in astonishment at the window as they witnessed this extraordinary flight of a bumblebee. Then, recovering themselves, they hopped onto their broomsticks and, crying, "Yup-giddy, yup-giddy!" they gave chase. It was quite a spectacle to see them, like a flock of birds, flying in formation, with the twins on their twin-broomstick in the lead. But, outdistanced in no time, they had to give up the chase and fly away back to witch school, where they compared bites.

As Malachi and Amy flew past the secret opening into the glass hill that led to the mermaid lagoon, Amy thought she heard a far and distant wailing. "Wah, wah, wah!" she heard.

"Ah," murmured Amy. "Weeny baby witchie! Don't cry, Beebee," she called to it. "Sister will come for you soon."

Then a strange thing happened. Though it had been morning just now when they had left the witch school, the farther down they flew, the darker and darker it became. Soon it was night. They went so fast that Malachi looked like a golden meteor to the little witch girl who was waiting under the little fir tree. She had not stirred from this spot—the two minutes just coming to an end for her.

Malachi dipped down so that Amy could give the little witch girl her broomstick. "I ... I..." said Amy. She was all confused. She wanted to tell Little Witch Girl her adventures, but they were beginning to get as blurry in her mind as the form of Malachi, in the dark, was. Then Malachi flew Amy through the open window of her mother's big bedroom and deposited her at the little yellow table. And then Malachi and the real little witch girl, on her broomstick again, flew away and away and back to the glass hill, leaving Amy, pretend witch, asleep at the little yellow table, opposite Clarissa, little pretend Chinese girl.

Mama came up to put out the lights. The long two minutes were over. "Ts, ts, ts," Mama said, "they're sound asleep." She laid them on the big bed, not undressing them, for she did not want to wake them up. Saying, "Sweet my Amy," she took her battered witch mask and witch hat off, looked long into the radiant face, and kissed her on the rounded top of her little blond head. Those two minutes had been as any other two minutes to Mama. She did not know that the extra radiance that shone on Amy's face was from the two great rides she had had, one on a broomstick, the other on golden Malachi.

Little Witch Girl, having picked up Beebee in the mermaid lagoon, was getting into her little brass bed now, too. Thoughts of the Halloween happenings on Garden Lane were floating through her head, as they were floating through Amy's dreams also.

Malachi was back now in his camouflage place at the end of the porch. "
HALLOWEEN BE OVER
!" he thought. He spelled his thoughts as well as his talk.

The next day Amy and Clarissa were sitting at the little yellow table, drawing and coloring. Clarissa had already forgotten almost all about the extra little witch girl who had joined the Halloween doings on their street. After all, Clarissa, not having had the urge to get on a broomstick, had not become as mixed-up with the witches as Amy had. Naturally, if you are dressed up as a little Chinese girl, you are less tempted to ride on a broomstick than if you are dressed up as a witch.

However, Amy happily reminded Clarissa of events and filled in the gaps of the story for her.

"Draw me tied up in the spiderwebs," Amy instructed her.

"Was there a spider in with you?" asked Clarissa in her high little voice. She was trying to draw spider webs around Amy, the pretend witch, and there was room for a spider.

"Oh, I hope not," said Amy, shuddering. "But ... there might have been. Yes. There was probably an enormous black widow one. I think there was, Clarissa. Draw it!"

Amy pushed back her chair. She looked at the picture she was drawing. "There I am," she said fondly, "on Malachi." Then she looked wonderingly at her tall little peaked witch hat that was lying on her mother's big bed. She gave a happy sigh. What a Halloween it had been! How could she wait a whole year for the next one? But how glad she was that she was Amy and not a real little witch. And how glad she was that she lived on Garden Lane, the most beautiful street in the world, and not up on the awful bare and bleak glass hill. Poor little witch girl, to have to live up there!