The Last Task

Jessica had had a busy year training to be a witch with Miss Strega. It goes without saying that she was a modern witch; she did not have a greasy old cape and a hooked nose, she did not conjure up nasty smelling brews (except sometimes, for a laugh) and she always flew her broom the Right-Way-Up – with the twigs in front.

“The best thing about being a witch,” Jessica was thinking as she zipped over the rooftops, “is all the stuff you get. As well as my broom and my helmet and my flying licence, I have my lucky pebble, my wand, my long-eared owl’s feather for mingling brews …”

“Hu-eet,” whistled Berkeley indignantly, poking her head out of Jessica’s cape pocket.

“And you, especially, my wonderful mascot. I was just about to say that.”

She stroked the nightingale’s feathery neck and then, as Miss Strega’s chimney pots came into view, flicked the descend twig of her broom, swooped down and made a perfect landing on the roof of the hardware shop.

“The other best thing about being a witch,” she told Berkeley, “is knowing Miss Strega. Not that she doesn’t make me do some very hard things, like switching myself into a cat or vaulting over the moon. I wonder what I will have to do next.”

She was just about to clamber through the attic window when she heard voices in the shop below.

“That’s odd. Miss Strega’s customers don’t usually come until later.”

She glided over to the attic trapdoor which was directly above the shop counter, opened it just a smidgen and peered down.

Miss Strega had a visitor.

All that Jessica could see at first was the hem of the visitor’s cape and a pair of very high shoes, with heels as slender as needles.

“Oh!” gasped Jessica. She had once met someone who wore shoes like that.

She opened the trapdoor a little more.

Now she could see a tartan triangle of scarf draped over the shoulders of a smart glossy cape.

“Tartan? Could it be …?”

She opened the trapdoor a little more.

The visitor was wearing a floppy black velvet hat secured with a long wand-shaped hatpin with a silver thistle at the tip. Even though she could not see her face, there was no doubt who she was.

“Heckitty Darling!” Jessica shouted. “You’re back.”

She flung the trapdoor wide open and whooshed down into the shop.

Heckitty Darling – for it was indeed the glamorous Scottish actress witch who had presented Jessica with her flying licence – turned, theatrically threw her cape over her shoulder and held out her arms.

“Jessica sweetikins!” she boomed, as if she were on a stage in front of hundreds of people, and not in a tiny little shop on the High Street. “You’re looking divine!”

Then she lowered her voice and whispered confidentially. “I was just telling Miss Strega that there has been a break-in at our Coven Garden headquarters. The Witches World Wide guild is up in arms. Our greatest treasure is,” Heckitty’s voice wobbled, “gone!”

Felicity, Miss Strega’s ginger cat, who was snoozing in her usual place on a pile of Spell Books on the counter, opened one orange eye and gave Jessica a wink.

“Our greatest treasure stolen?” said Jessica, looking from Felicity to Heckitty to Miss Strega and back again. “But what is our greatest treasure?”

Miss Strega hopped off her stool and picked up a large ladle. “Why don’t I pour us all a nice stiff brew first and then Heckitty can begin at the beginning?”

Chapter Two

“Have you ever heard,” Heckitty began, when they had all sat down with their cups of joobious juice, “of the Feet First Fund?”

Jessica shook her head.

“No? Well, it’s an organisation that finds and preserves shoes that have made history or that belonged to important people. It was set up by the Literary and Historical Association of the Witches World Wide guild. I am the Head Finder and Seeker.”

Jessica and Miss Strega exchanged a look. The look meant Heckitty Darling is off her rocker, but Heckitty didn’t notice. She carried on.

“You have heard of the old lady who lived in the shoe (she had so many children she didn’t know what to do)? Well, we have that shoe. It was our first acquisition. We have one of Cinderella’s glass slippers. We have Puss in Boots’ boots and Pinocchio’s clogs; we have the bootees that belonged to the Wicked Witch of the West …”

Miss Strega replaced her cup on her saucer very noisily. “Yes, yes, my dear Heckitty. We get the idea – but has this got anything to do with the burglary?”

Heckitty looked miffed. Like all actresses, she was a bit of a show-off and expected everyone to listen to her all the time. She sighed.

“Go on,” said Jessica. “I think the Feet First Fund sounds brilliant.”

Heckitty Darling smiled prettily and moved her stool closer to Jessica’s.

“The treasure, the absolute pearl of our collection, is a pair of shoes that had once belonged to that wonderful witch, the inventor of the Modern Witch’s Right-Way-Up broom, dear Dame Walpurga of the Blessed Warts.

I discovered them at the bottom of Walpurga’s well myself, you know, despite what Professor Cobbleroni says.”

“Who’s Professor Cobbleroni?” asked Jessica.

“Oh, she runs that ridiculous Fancy Footwear Foundation. Anyway, I had hardly put the Dame’s shoes on display when they disappeared! I turned my back and puff! – they were gone.”

“But who took them?” asked Jessica.

Heckitty Darling raised her shoulders and let them drop. “We’ve no idea. We had had a lot of witch school tours that day so at first I suspected a prank. I tried any number of anti-vanishing spells to make the shoes reappear, but nothing worked. Then we organised a witch hunt. Oodles of witches took part, but the Dame’s shoes were nowhere to be found.”

Heckitty Darling’s voice trembled again. “I’m afraid they may be gone for good.”

“Goodness gracious,” said Jessica.

“Fortunately,” said Heckitty, dabbing at her nose with a handkerchief, “I had the excellent idea of consulting an oracle.”

“I once had to consult an oracle myself,” said Jessica, proudly. “It was a talking sea anemone on one of the Charm Islands.”

Heckitty looked affronted. She obviously had not expected Jessica to know anything about oracles.

“A talking sea anemone? How preposterous! The oracle that I went to is a Greek witch. She’s easily the best fortune teller in the world – people flock to ask her questions. Unfortunately, she tends to answer in riddles; it can be simply impossible to understand a word she says.”

Behind her, Miss Strega’s cup rattled once again.

“So, the long and the short of it,” Heckitty continued, “is that last night when the curtain came down on the show in Coven Garden, (have you seen my reviews, darlings? Simply marvellous!) I flew to the oracle to ask where the shoes could be. This is what she said …”

Heckitty closed her eyes and began to speak in a very strange unearthly voice.

“To find the shoes, no witch is fitBut she who is not a witch as yetMust fly to where a giant stands.The answer lies beneath his hands.”

She opened her eyes and spoke in her normal voice.

“What do you make of that?”

“Weird,” said Jessica.

“Absolutely baffling,” agreed Miss Strega.

“Unless,” said Jessica, holding up a finger, “I have a hunch. Perhaps the oracle is saying that only a witch-in-training can find the shoes – she who is not a witch as yet.”

Heckitty clapped her hands together. “By the hooting of Minerva’s owl, Miss Strega, I think Jessica’s got it.”

“Bravo, my little lamb’s lettuce!” agreed Miss Strega.

Heckitty Darling opened her handbag and, with a flourish, thrust an envelope into Jessica’s hands.

“So, will you take on the Feet First Fund challenge? Will you track down Dame Walpurga’s missing shoes?”

Jessica’s jaw dropped.

“But, but,” she stammered. “Where should I … how do I … what’ll … when …”

“Jessica,” said Miss Strega sternly. “You’re gibbering. I think it’s a splendid idea. There’s nothing more exciting than a quest. Of course you must do it.”

Chapter Three

When Heckitty had left to tell the Feet First Fund how Jessica had agreed to help find the shoes, Jessica opened the envelope. It contained a colour photograph of Dame Walpurga’s shoes on display in the Shoe Salon at Goven Garden.

They were purple boots with pearly buttons up the side and a tassel at the top and might once have been quite pretty, but they were in a terrible condition. The heels were stumpy and lopsided, the toes were scuffed and scratched, and the tassels had seen better days.

Jessica shook her head. “I don’t believe it! These shoes may have been Walpurga’s but they’re wrecked. Whoever took them must be her Number One Fan, because nobody else would wear them.”

Miss Strega tapped her nose. “Possibly not, but look at the label.

“The Broomstick Battles?” said Jessica. “I did a project about that. Dame Walpurga led the modern witches (who flew with the twigs in front) against the cross old-fashioned witches (who flew with the twigs at the back). It was your grandmother Pluribella who led that bunch …”