Witch Week (12 page)

Charles slid jubilantly down the rope—so fast that he was reminded again that it hurts to be burned. He had to blow on his hands to cool them. After lunch was the time. He could sneak up to the dormitory then.

After lunch proved to be important for Nan too. At lunch, she managed to escape Karen Grigg and Delia Martin by sitting at a table full of much older girls who did not seem to know Nan was there. They towered over her, talking of their own things. The food was almost as bad as yesterday, but Nan felt no urge to describe it. She rather wished she was dead. Then it occurred to her that if any of 6B went and told a teacher she was a witch, she would be dead, quite soon after that. She realized at once that she did not wish she was dead. That made her feel better. No one had gone to a teacher yet, after all. “It’s only their usual silliness,” she told herself. “They’ll forget about it by Christmas. I’ll just have to keep out of their way till they do.”

Accordingly, after lunch, Nan sneaked upstairs to lurk in the passage outside the girls’ bathrooms again. But Karen Grigg had been keeping tabs on her. She and Theresa appeared in the passage in front of Nan. When Nan turned around to make off, she found Delia and the other girls coming along the passage from the other end.

“Let’s go in this bathroom,” Theresa suggested. “We want to ask you something, Nan.”

Nan could tell there was an ordeal coming. For a moment, she wondered whether to charge Theresa and Karen like a bull and burst past them. But they would only catch her tonight in the dormitory. Best get it over. “Okay,” she said, and sauntered into the bathroom as if she did not care.

Almost at the same moment, Charles hastened furtively into the boys’ dormitory. White and clean and cold, the beds stood like rows of deserted icebergs, each with its little white locker at its side. Charles hurried to Simon’s. It was locked. Simon was an inveterate locker of things. Even his watch had a little key to lock it on his wrist. But Charles did not let that bother him. He held out his hand imperiously in front of the locked door. “Comb,” he said. “Abracadabra.”

Simon’s comb came gliding out through the white wooden surface, like a fish swimming out of milk, and darted fishlike into Charles’s hand. It was beautiful. Better still, there were three of Simon’s curly golden hairs clinging to the teeth of the comb. Charles carefully pulled them off. He held the hairs in the finger and thumb of his left hand and carefully ran his right finger and thumb down the length of them. And down again. Over and over, he did it. “Simon Says,” he whispered to them. “Simon Says, Simon Says. Whatever Simon says is true.”

After about a minute, when he had done it often enough to give him the feeling that the spell was going to take, Charles carefully threaded the hairs back into the comb again. He did not intend to leave any evidence against himself. He had just finished, when Brian said, from behind him, “I want a bit of help from you, Charles.”

Charles jumped as if Brian had shot him. He bent over, in white horror, to hide the comb in his hand and, with terrible guilty haste, gave it a push toward the locker. It went in, to his surprise, not quite like a fish this time—more like a comb being pushed through a door—but at least it went. “What do you want?” Charles said ungraciously to Brian.

“Take me down to the matron in the sick bay,” Brian said.

It was a school rule that a person who felt ill had to find another person to take them to the matron. It had been made because, before that, the sick bay had been crowded with healthy people trying to get an afternoon off. The idea was that you could not deceive your friends. It did not work very well. Estelle Green, for instance, got Karen to take her to the matron at least twice a week. As far as Charles could see, Brian looked his usual pink and perky self, just like Estelle.

“You don’t look ill to me,” he said. He wanted to find Simon and see if the spell was working.

“How about this then?” said Brian. To Charles’s surprise, he suddenly turned pale. He stared vaguely at the wall, with one eye pointing inward slightly. “This is it,” Brian said. “Don’t I look rather as if I’d been hypnotized?”

“You look as if you’ve been hit on the head,” Charles said rudely. “Get Nirupam to take you.”

“He looked after me this morning,” said Brian. “I want as many witnesses as possible. I helped you last night. You help me now.”

“You didn’t help me last night,” said Charles.

“Yes, I did,” said Brian. “You came in and you went to sleep on the floor, just at the end of my bed. I got you in your bed. I even hooked your glasses on your bedrail for you.” And he looked at Charles, very meaningfully.

Charles stared back. Brian was so thin and small that it was hard to believe he could lift anyone into bed. But, whether it was true or not, Charles realized that Brian had gotten him over a barrel. He knew Charles had been up last night. He had caught him with Simon’s comb in his hands just now. Charles could not see why Brian wanted to go to the matron, but that was his own affair. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take you.”

Inside the bathroom, on the other side of the quadrangle, the girls crowded in around Nan. “Where’s Estelle?” asked Theresa.

“Outside, keeping watch,” said Karen. “That’s all she would do.”

“What’s this about?” Nan asked aggressively.

“We want you to do some proper witchcraft,” said Theresa. “Here, where we can see you. We’ve none of us seen any before. And we know you can. Come on. We won’t give you away.”

The other girls joined in. “Come on, Nan. We won’t tell.”

The bathroom was a very public one. There were six baths in it, in a row. As the girls all crowded forward, Nan backed away, down the space between two of the baths. This was evidently just what they had wanted. Delia said, “That’s it.” Heather said, “Fetch it out.” And Karen bent and pulled the groundsman’s old broom out from under the left-hand bath. Julia and Deborah seized it and propped it across the two baths in front of Nan, penning her in. Nan looked from it to them.

“We want you to get on it and fly about,” Theresa explained.

“Everyone knows that’s what witches do,” said Karen.

“We’re asking you very nicely,” said Theresa.

Typical Theresa double-think, Nan thought angrily. She was not asking her nicely. It was a smiling jeer. But if anyone asked Theresa afterward, she would say, with honest innocence, that she had been perfectly kind.

“We can prove you’re a witch anyway, if you won’t,” Theresa said kindly.

“Yes, everyone knows that witches don’t drown,” said Delia. “You can put them right under water and they stay alive.”

At this cue, Karen leaned over and put the plug in the nearest bath. Heather turned on the cold tap, just a little trickle, to show Nan they meant business.

“You know perfectly well,” Nan said, “that I’m not a witch, and I can’t fly on this broomstick. It’s just an excuse to be nasty!”

“Nasty?” said Theresa. “Who’s being nasty? We’re asking you quite politely to ride the broomstick.” Behind her, the tap trickled steadily into the bath.

“You can fetch all the shoes here again if you like,” Delia said. “We don’t mind which.”

“But you’ve got to do
something,
” said Karen. “Or how would you like a nice deep cold bath with all your clothes on?”

Nan was annoyed enough by that to put one leg over the broomstick in order to climb out and get at Karen. Seeing it, Theresa gave a delighted jump and a giggle. “Oh, she’s going to ride!”

The rest of them joined in. “She’s going to ride it! Ride it, Nan!”

Very red in the face, Nan stood astride the broom and explained, “I am not going to ride. I do not know how to ride. You know I can’t. I know I can’t. Look. Look at me. I am sitting on the broomstick.” Unwisely, she sat. It was extremely uncomfortable and she was forced to bounce upright again. This amused everyone highly. Angrier than ever, Nan shouted, “How
can
I ride a broomstick? I can’t even climb a rope!”

They knew that. They were falling about laughing, when Estelle burst in, screaming with excitement. “Come and look, come and look!
Look
at what Simon Silverson’s doing!”

This caused a stampede to the door, to look out of the windows in the corridor. Nan heard cries of “Good heavens! Just look at that!” This was followed by a further stampede as everyone raced off down to the quadrangle.

Nan was left astride an old broom propped on two baths.

“Thank goodness!” was the first thing she said. She had been precious near crying. “Stupid hussies!” she said next. “As if I could ride this thing. Look at it!” She jogged the broom. “Just an old broom!” Then she noticed the water still trickling into the bath behind her. She leaned sideways and back and turned off the tap.

That was the moment the old broom chose to rise sharply to the ceiling.

Nan shrieked. She was suddenly dangling head-down over a bath of cold water. The broom staggered a bit under her weight, but it went on climbing, swinging Nan right over the water. Nan bent her leg as hard as she could over its knobby stick, and managed to clench one hand in its sparse brushwood end. The broom reached the ceiling and leveled out. It did not leave room for Nan to climb on top of it, even if she had possessed the muscles. Blood thudded in her head from hanging upside down, but she did not dare let go.

“Stop it!” she squealed at the broom. “Please!”

It took no notice. It simply went on a solemn, lopsided, bumping flight all around the bathroom, with Nan dangling desperately underneath it and getting this-way-and-that glimpses of hard white baths frighteningly far below.

“I’m glad this didn’t happen while the others were here,” she gasped. “I must look a right idiot!” She began to laugh. She must look so silly. “Do go down,” she said to the broom. “Suppose someone else comes in here.”

The broom seemed struck by this. It gave a little start and slanted steeply down towards the floor. As soon as the floor was near enough, Nan clutched the handle in both hands and tried to unhook her leg. A mistake. The broom went steeply up again and hovered where it was just too high for Nan to dare to fall off. But her arms were getting tired and she had to do something. Wriggling and squirming, she managed to kick herself over, until she was more or less lying along the knobby handle, looking down at the row of baths. She hooked her feet on the brush and stayed there, panting.

Now what was she to do? This broom seemed determined to be ridden. There was a sad feeling about it. Once, long ago, it had been ridden, and it missed its witch.

“But that’s all very well,” Nan said to it. “I really daren’t ride you now. Don’t you understand? It’s illegal. Suppose I promise to ride you tonight. Would you let me down then?”

There was a hesitating sort of hover to the broom.

“I swear to,” said Nan. “Listen, I tell you what. You fly me down the passage to our dormitory. That will make a bit of a flight at least. Then you can hide yourself on top of the cupboard, right at the back. No one will see you there. And I’ll promise to take you out tonight. What do you say?”

Though the broom could not speak, it evidently meant Yes! It turned and swept through the bathroom doorway in a glad swoop that made Nan seasick. It sped down the passage. She had to shut her eyes in order not to see the walls whirling by. It made a hair-raising turn into the dormitory. And it stopped there with such a jerk that Nan nearly fell around underneath it again.

“I see I shall have to train you,” she gasped.

The broom gave an indignant buck and a bounce.

“I mean you’ll have to train me,” Nan said quickly. “Go down now. I have to get off you.”

The broom hovered, questioning.

“I promised,” Nan said.

At that, the broom came sweetly to the ground, and Nan was able to get off, very wobbly in the legs. As soon as she was off, the broom fell to the floor, lifeless. “You poor thing!” Nan said. “I see. You need a rider to move at all. All right. Let’s get you on top of the cupboard.”

In this way, she missed the first manifestation of the
Simon Says
spell. Charles missed it too. Neither of them discovered how Simon first found out that everything he said came true. Charles left Brian with a thermometer in his mouth, staring cross-eyed at the wall, and trudged back to the quadrangle to find an excited group around Simon. At first, Charles thought that the brightness flaring at Simon’s feet was simply the sun shining off a puddle. But it was not. It was a heap of gold coins. People were passing him pennies and stones and dead leaves.

To each thing as he took it, Simon said, “This is a gold coin. This is another gold coin.” When that got boring he said, “This is a
rare
gold coin. These are pieces of eight. This is a doubloon . . .”

Charles shoved his way to the front of the crowd and watched, utterly disgusted. Trust Simon to turn things to his own advantage! Gold chinked down on the heap. Simon must have been a millionaire by this time.

With a great clatter of running feet, the girls arrived. Theresa, with her knitting bag hanging on her arm, pushed her way to the front, beside Charles. She was so astonished at the size of the pile of gold that she crossed the invisible line and spoke to Simon.

“How are you
doing
it, Simon?”

Simon laughed. He was like a drunk person by this time. “I’ve got the Golden Touch!” he said. Of course this immediately became the truth. “Just like that king in the story. Look.” He reached for Theresa’s knitting. Theresa indignantly snatched the knitting away and gave Simon a push at the same time. The result was that Simon touched her hand.

The knitting fell on the ground. Theresa screamed, and stood holding her hand out, and then screamed again because her hand was too heavy to hold up. It dropped down against her skirt, a bright golden metal hand, on the end of an ordinary human arm.

Out of the shocked silence which followed, Nirupam said, “Be very careful what you say, Simon.”

“Why?” said Simon.

“Because everything you say becomes true,” Nirupam said.

Evidently, Simon had not quite seen the extent of his powers. “You mean,” he said, “I haven’t got the Golden Touch.” Instantly, he hadn’t. “Let’s test this,” he said. He bent down and picked up Theresa’s knitting. It was still knitting, in a slightly muddy bag.