Witch Switch

Chapter One

The sky was black with witches on brooms, all flying in the same direction as Jessica. They turned left when she turned left. They turned right when she turned right. When she began to descend to the High Street, the broom riders started to descend too.

“Are they following me?” Jessica wondered. “Or are they just going shopping in Miss Strega’s?”

Miss Strega’s hardware shop, where Jessica was doing her witch training lessons, was the most popular witches’ shop in the whole world. It always had the most up-to-date Brewing ingredients, Spell Books, Charms and brooms, but it was still unusual to see so many customers arriving all at once.

Of course, Jessica was the only one who saw the witches and their brooms. Ordinary People never noticed Miss Strega’s customers flying hither and thither. They didn’t even see the old hardware shop, for it was a secret “In Between” place, protected by a “For Witches’ Eyes Only” Spell. Miss Strega didn’t want nosy parkers snooping around, making trouble for Witches World Wide.

As Jessica came nearer the shop, she saw that there was a long queue outside the door, so she flew on to the roof, climbed through the dormer window, Zoomed through the attic trapdoor and landed with a thump on the shop counter.

Miss Strega peered over her glasses.

“I expect you have a reason for coming in through the roof, Jessica?”

“I was avoiding the crowds, Miss Strega. There are hundreds of witches outside.”

Miss Strega clapped her hands. “Tickety-boo. I’m offering free potion this evening so I hoped lots of customers would turn up.”

“You’re having a free potion evening? What about my class?”

“Doing the Witch Switch? Yes, we will have a class later. But I thought it might be interesting to have some old friends drop in first” – she gave a little giggle – “for a change.”

“Doing the Witch Switch? What’s that?”

Miss Strega cupped her long chin in her hand as if she were considering Jessica’s question carefully. “It’s a bit like shape changing, I suppose, but more extreme.”

Jessica groaned. She had never been any good at changing the shapes of things, with or without a wand. Once she had sort-of-accidentally transformed Miss Strega into a wasp, but then Miss Strega had got her own back and turned Jessica into a large pumpkin. It was scary being a pumpkin, thinking that someone might come along and carve you up for a Halloween lantern or turn you into a pie.

“Is that a good idea, Miss Strega?” she asked. “I’m quite happy with the shape I am. And I’d rather not have people eating bits of me when I’m not myself. Remember Felicity?”

Felicity, Miss Strega’s cat, had once turned into a ginger cat-shaped biscuit. She had been snoozing on a Spell Book and a Transformation Spell had slipped into her dreams. Unfortunately, before she was changed back into a cat, both Miss Strega and Berkeley, Jessica’s nightingale mascot, had nibbled little bits of her. Poor Felicity still looked a bit ragged around the ears.

“Fiddlesticks!” Miss Strega snorted. “The Witch Switch is something all witches do: it’s as traditional as Brewing or Flying – it’s useful in emergencies, it’s handy if you’re on a spying mission and it can be good fun. Now, open the door, poppet.”

As soon as Jessica turned the Closed notice on the door to Open, witches and hags of every shape and size began to elbow their way in.

“Four packets of troll squeals,” one shouted. “Two pokes of rompedenti biscuits.”

“I want one of those dragons’ teeth that you can plant to grow your own hero.”

Jessica was just about to whizz off to the ingredient drawers when she felt a sharp tug on the back of her cape.

“I think you’ll find I’m first in line, young lady,” snarled a very pushy hag. “I would like a large tub of gnats’ spittle and a carton of dry goats’ poo.”

“No!” screeched another. “I was definitely in front of you.”

“No way,” howled another. “I got here first!”

Fortunately, at that very moment, Miss Strega began to pass around glasses of colourful potions.

“Drinks, anyone?” she asked sweetly. “Mint Royale? Or would you prefer White Gold?”

After that, no one seemed to care about their turn in the queue any more. Jessica suspected that Miss Strega had been up to her old tricks, adding a spell to her potions so that all the witches wanted to do was spend, spend, spend and cackle, cackle, cackle. Even Berkeley, who was awfully shy about singing in public, had fallen under a spell. She perched prettily on the handle of the Brewing cauldron and bewitched the customers with her lovely silvery songs.

Jessica, as the witch-in-training, was left to do all the hard work. She fetched ingredients, filled bottles with Walpurga’s magic well water, parcelled up new capes and helped load cauldrons full of shopping on to the backs of brooms.

More and more customers arrived. They stood around, yakking and drinking and cackling their heads off at Miss Strega’s old jokes.

The noise was so deafening that Jessica didn’t hear the door click.

She was on her knees behind the counter, searching for a Cover of Darkness blanket, when she realised that the shop had gone very, very quiet.

She stood up slowly and peered over the counter.

All the witches had disappeared. There was not a single hag trying on a cape or enjoying a natter with Miss Strega.

On the other hand, an awful lot of cats had appeared from nowhere. They padded across the floor and sprawled on the windowsills. Several were lying on the counter. One or two were even attempting to climb into the drawers. And where three witches had been sitting gossiping around the Brewing cauldron, there were three life-size garden gnomes that definitely had not been there before.

“Oh my goodness!” exclaimed an unfamiliar voice. “What a lot of cats.”

Jessica whirled around. There was an Ordinary Person standing in the doorway!

Chapter Two

Jessica rushed out from behind the counter. “I’m sorry,” she croaked, for her mouth had gone completely dry, “we are closed. Miss Strega has already left.”

At the same time she was thinking, blithering batwings, what if some witch flies in on her broomstick while this Ordinary Person is here?

“Tell me,” said the Ordinary Person, fixing Jessica with a steely stare, “exactly how many cats do you have?”

Jessica said nothing, but she began to shoo the cats towards the cat flap with the end of her broom.

Miss Strega, help! she prayed.

The problem was that the cats just wouldn’t leave. They mewed and howled, scratched and hissed. Some of them arched their backs and refused to budge. Others tried to trip Jessica up by doing figures of eight around her legs. Another big fat black one bolted from behind the counter and upset a teetering pile of cauldrons.

“Oops! That pot missed me by the pompom of my hood,” one of the garden gnomes whispered. “I feel quite faint.”

Jessica was flabbergasted. “So that’s it! You’ve all changed into cats and gnomes and left me all alone. It’s not fair!”

The Ordinary Person began to walk around. She looked at the jumble of cobwebby mole traps and hurricane lamps in the window. She pursed her lips at the black cauldrons and raised an eyebrow at the heap of broomsticks that the witches had left beside the door.

“They’re for brushing up fallen leaves,” Jessica muttered as she trailed after her.

The Ordinary Person wasn’t listening. She was staring at the three curious garden gnomes whose eyes seemed to follow her as she walked around the room.

“I’ve never noticed this shop before,” she remarked in a very frosty voice, “and that is odd because I work next door in the toy shop.”

“Really?” Jessica squeaked.

The Ordinary Person wrinkled her nose. She began to count all the cats: on the counter, stretched out on the shelves, asleep in the cauldrons and peeping out of drawers.

“It’s all a bit odd, isn’t it? Not to mention smelly.” Jessica’s face and ears turned scarlet.

Get out, she thought. Go away and leave us alone!

But now the Ordinary Person marched to the drawers at the back of the shop and scrunched her eyes up at their spidery handwritten labels.

“Well, since I’m here I’ll have a flea collar, just in case one of these flea-bitten old strays bumps into my little moggie.”

“Sorry, we don’t sell them.”

“Nonsense! There’s a drawer here marked Flea Collars. I’ll get one myself.”

The Ordinary Person went to pull open a drawer that Jessica knew contained a bloodcurdling collection of freaky hollers: WHOOOO! WAAAARGH!

There was no time to lose.

She stomped across the shop, whacking the floor with her broom: left, right, left, right.

“Don’t open that! It’s empty. We have no flea collars for sale. None at all. Goodbye.”

And she practically swept the Ordinary Person out on to the street and banged the door shut.

“Blithering batwings and warty warlocks!”

Behind her, all the stray cats began clambering out of drawers, hopping off the counter and carefully picking their way over the spilled pile of cauldrons.

Suddenly, before you could say moonbeams and marrowbones, the racket started again. Witches cackled. Glasses clinked. Berkeley trilled. And there were all the witches standing around, leaning on their brooms, trying on capes, leafing through Spell Books and sipping fresh glasses of Midnight Magic.

“Thank you, ladies, for such speedy Switching,” said Miss Strega.

“It’s years since an Ordinary Person barged in like that.”

Jessica rounded on her. “Why did you leave me all alone? We could have been found out!”

“Great honking goose feathers!” Miss Strega snorted. “Calm down, of course we couldn’t have been found out. Ordinary People don’t see witches. And, anyway, here in the shop we’re In Between.”

“Well, that Ordinary Person saw me. She managed to get In Between. She was definitely suspicious of all the cauldrons and broomsticks and cats. And she spotted the gnomes’ eyes following her. What if she had opened that drawer full of freaky hollers?”