Flying Lessons

Chapter One

Miss Strega’s shop was not like its smart neighbours. For one thing, it didn’t have a large plate glass window with eye-catching displays of toys or trainers or books or mobile phones. On wintry afternoons, when bright lights blazed in the other shops along the High Street, Miss Strega’s shrank back into the shadows. And if anybody ever popped in to buy some clothes pegs or jam pot covers – and hardly anybody ever did – old Miss Strega bustled out from behind the counter and more or less chased them back out on to the street.

“Just closing up,” she would say. “Come back tomorrow.”

Children, hurrying home from school, were never tempted to stop and peer in to the shop’s shabby, overcrowded window. If they had, they would have seen what a heap of junk it sold; hurricane lamps, mousetraps, bird scarers and flypapers dangled on hooks above a stack of black iron cooking pots and an untidy jumble of balls of twine. Ancient-looking fishing rods and rusty garden forks leant against the door as if they had just been dumped there for the binmen to take away.

So no one noticed when a small broom was propped outside the door on the thirty-first of October. It had a short handle and a bunch of spiky birch twigs tied together at one end. A notice scribbled on a piece of cardboard was tucked into the twigs:

Birch Besom £4.99 Flying Lessons extra

Jessica wouldn’t have seen it either, if a sudden gust of wind hadn’t snatched her party hat out of her hand. It was a tall, white, pointy hat, the sort that princesses wear, with a long floaty veil stuck on the top.

“Hey,” she shouted, “come back.” But the hat paid no attention. It galloped along the pavement, skirted around an old lady with a shopping trolley and somersaulted over a baby’s buggy. It sailed between the legs of a boy on roller blades, danced over the heads of the shoppers and finally came to land on the spiky twigs of the little broom.

“Flying Lessons extra,” Jessica read as she reached for her hat. “How curious.” She was just looking up at the peeling old shop sign that hung out from the wall, creaking and groaning in the wind, when a voice said: “Have you come for the broom, my dear?”

Jessica scrunched up her eyes and peered into the shop. She could see a large ginger cat snoozing on top of a pile of books which balanced precariously on the high wooden counter. And behind the counter, in front of a wall of drawers with shiny brass handles and little square labels, there was an old lady, waving at Jessica to come in. She was so small, like a little bird with twinkly eyes, that Jessica could only see her head and shoulders. She had one hand firmly cupped over her chin.

“Come in,” she said. “I’ve been expecting you. I would have closed earlier – Halloween is always such a busy night for me – but I knew you would appear before long.”

Jessica lifted the latch and walked in.

“Now, what can I get for you, my dear? Let me think,” said Miss Strega, smiling broadly. “Was it grate polish you were looking for? Or perhaps a new bath plug? Or maybe you need a frying pan?”

Jessica glanced behind Miss Strega at the wall of drawers with their spidery handwritten labels. For a moment in the bad light, the letters seemed to be all mixed up. “Gnats’ Spittle, Bats’ Legs,” she read, “Frogspawn.”

She squinted again and the words floated back into place. “Grate Polish, Bath Plugs, Frying Pans.”

“No,” she said, apologetically. “I don’t need anything at all. I just came to get my hat.”

“And the broom of course,” Miss Strega said. “I left it out especially for you.”

“But I … I … don’t have any money,” Jessica stammered.

Miss Strega shook her head vigorously from side to side. “I wouldn’t dream of charging you. After all, it is your broom. But you will have to take the lessons of course. They’re very important.”

Jessica frowned. “My broom?”

“Flying is not as easy as it looks, you know,” the old lady said, tapping her nose. “Even one lesson can make all the difference.”

“Oh dear,” thought Jessica, “this is very silly.” She backed towards the door. “Thank you very much,” she said, “but I don’t really need a broom.”

“Oh you do,” said Miss Strega, “we all do. And don’t forget, it’s been waiting for you all these years.”

“For me?”

“Of course. As soon as Jessica hits double figures, she’ll be here, I told it lots and lots of times. And here you are, right on cue, on your tenth birthday!” She clapped her hands and smiled delightedly.

“How did you know that today is my birthday?” Jessica spluttered. “And how did you know my name?”

Miss Strega tapped her nose and smiled even more. Her chin, Jessica could now see, was very, very long. “One of the cats reminded me,” she said mysteriously. With that, she came out from behind the counter and steered Jessica back on to the High Street.

“Now here you are,” she said, taking the broom and putting it into Jessica’s hands. “But do be sensible and come back for the lessons. Beginners often find themselves in sticky situations. One of my girls ended up on top of the Eiffel Tower. It was very, very embarrassing as you can imagine.”

Chapter Two

It was getting dark as Jessica walked home. A tiny Batman and a white-sheeted ghost hurried past clutching their bags of Halloween goodies. Large pumpkin lanterns with jagged mocking teeth grinned at her from windowsills. There seemed to be an amazing number of cats out and about. Big fluffy marmalades, sleek Siamese, silver tabbies and black moggies did figures-of-eight around her legs. They sniffed at her broom and mewed loudly. “Miaou, miaou, miaou,” they said. It sounded awfully like “Happy Birthday, Jessica.”

At home, Jessica hurried into the kitchen and rummaged about under the sink until she found a roll of large black bin liners. She fetched Sellotape and scissors and paints. Half an hour later, she was standing in front of the long mirror in the hall wearing her new witch’s cape and her pointy hat, now painted black with gold stars. She picked up the broom and put one leg either side of it.

“Thank you, Miss Strega,” she said to her reflection.

And then, although she was really a very sensible sort of a girl, she opened the front door, pointed the end of the broom at the sky and said, “Vroom, vroom.”

Nothing happened.

“I knew it wouldn’t work,” she said, stepping off and making a funny face at herself in the mirror. She straightened her hat, stood to attention and seized the broom by its birch bristles. Just for a second, the broom twitched. It bucked forward and then lifted her clean off the ground. Jessica sprang away from it, as if it had given her an electric shock. The broom fell to the ground, shivered for a moment and then lay still.

“HELP!” yelled Jessica, staring at the broom suspiciously. “What happened then? Oh well,” she giggled, “at least you didn’t carry me off to the top of the Eiffel Tower!”

The Halloween party was in full swing when Jessica arrived at the park. There were goblins handing out burgers and hot dogs. The Addams family were running the hot punch stall, as they did every year. A fat frog called Ribbit was setting up an apple-bobbing competition. There were ghosts and headless monsters and Draculas everywhere.

“Attention, attention,” announced DJ Frankenstein. “The firework display will start in five minutes.”

Jessica moved off with the rest of the crowd to watch. A gorilla was patrolling behind the rope barrier. “Please stand well clear,” he growled at the spectators, but everyone ignored him and pressed forward.

Moments later, the fireworks exploded, lighting up the night sky in a dazzling display. Every face was upturned, “oohing” and “aahing” as showers of purple and gold sparks fell back to the earth. Rockets with long tails arced across the sky. Catherine Wheels spun and a stream of silver stars tumbled out of the moon.

Jessica was waving her broom by the handle, spiky end up.

“Look here,” said one of the ghosts. “Can you put the broom down? You’re spoiling our view.”

Jessica sighed. She certainly wasn’t going to put her new broom down on the grass where people could trample on it and break it. But just to let the ghost know she was trying to help, she bunched the long twigs together in a bundle to make it look smaller.

The next thing she knew, she was propelled backwards at top speed through the crowds, with her feet barely touching the ground.

“Hey,” people shouted, “mind where you’re going.”

“No need to push!”

“Ouch, get off, that’s my foot.”

Just as Jessica thought she was going to go into orbit, she came to a complete halt and fell over.

“Oops,” she said to a luminous green skeleton who kindly helped her up. “Sorry. Terribly sorry.” And she scuttled off before she could get into any more trouble.

Hiding behind the goblins’ burger stall, she peered into the spikes of the broom. She turned it upside down and round and round. She pressed her fingers along the handle and tweaked the twigs. It certainly didn’t look as if it could fly. It was just a plain old-fashioned broomstick.

“But,” said a voice inside her head that sounded very much like Miss Strega, “flying is not as easy as it looks. Even one lesson can make all the difference.”

“That’s silly,” said Jessica, “brooms can’t fly. They can’t drag people around the place.”

At that moment, the ghost came around the corner with the gorilla. “There she is!” she shouted. “That little witch is a troublemaker.”

“Oh dear,” muttered Jessica, “I wish I was back home.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when the broom began to buck like a rodeo horse. It took off at a gallop, with Jessica hanging on to the handle. It soared up over the bandstand, over the duck pond and the tennis court.

“Stop!” she yelled, but the broom took no notice. It hurtled on, faster and faster, heading straight for the houses at the top of the hill.

“Help!” she yelled as it skimmed over tree tops and rushed past chimney pots with only inches to spare. “Help!”

At the corner of Jessica’s street, the broom stopped sharply. The twigs twitched to the right and left, like a dog listening for a signal. Jessica clung on grimly, hanging motionless above the orange glow of the streetlamp. She closed her eyes.

Then the broom started to move forward again. She could feel it dropping down gently and gliding up the street between the houses like a small plane approaching a runway.

Bump, bump, bump.

Jessica opened her eyes. She had landed on her bottom on the grass in her front garden.

“Bother,” she said, and looked at the broom lying beside her. “Flying Lessons are extra.”

Chapter Three