Chapter 6.
The girls slept in the next morning and were surprised that Aunt Hazel greeted them pleasantly as if nothing had happened.
‘I’m doing my washing today. Jessica, you can help me hang it out. Sophie, I’d like you to clean the bathroom. You left a dirty ring around the bath last night.’
Jessica meekly pegged out the socks and helped hold one end of the sheets against the wind while Aunt Hazel pegged them down. She hung up two pair of baggy underpants with long legs.
‘Those are my Witches Britches,’ Aunt Hazel told Jessica. ‘They are very warm and cozy.’
Jessica couldn’t wait to get together with Sophie and add it to the list. They had already underlined 4. Has to put face on each morning. Sophie had wanted to change it to ‘doesn’t have a face’ but Jessica told her to leave it.
‘Sophie I’ve got number nine for the list. She wears witches britches,’ she announced triumphantly.
Sophie smiled. ‘And I’ve got number ten. A magic spell, a real one. Look what I found in the bathroom cupboard.’ She held out a large jar to Jessica. It was labelled Vanishing Cream.
‘Wow! That’s amazing! You mean she left it in the bathroom where anyone could find it?’
‘Well no.’ Sophie blushed. ‘It was hidden at the back of the cupboard behind some other stuff but it’s definite proof that Aunt Hazel is a witch.’
Jessica nodded in agreement.
‘Shall we try it?’ suggested Sophie.
‘What, you mean make something vanish with it?’
‘I thought we could start on something like the cat and see if it worked.’
‘Perhaps we should try it on ourselves,’ said Jessica excitedly. ‘It would be excellent fun to be invisible. Then we could spy on Aunt Hazel and she wouldn’t see us.’
‘She might. She’s a witch, remember,’ Sophie reminded her. ‘Anyway I don’t fancy eating it. You can try it if you want to.’
Jessica declined this invitation and the girls decided to try the cat. After calling ‘puss, puss,’ unsuccessfully they ran down to the beach.
‘I saw a couple of men fishing down there yesterday,’ panted Sophie. ‘I’m sure they’d give us a small fish for the cat. Then we can entice it to our bedroom and feed it the Vanishing Cream.’
There was only one man fishing that day and he stood by the rocks, casting his line into the waves. Jessica and Sophie approached him with a smile and Sophie asked politely if he could spare a fish for the cat.
‘You can cut a bit off the one I’m using for bait, if you like,’ the elderly man told them with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I haven’t had much of a catch today. The weather’s a bit rough.’ He saw the girls look rather doubtfully at the hacked about fish, with scales and blood smeared all over the bucket. The fisherman took pity on them and said, ‘I’ll do it for you.’ Picking up a large knife, he quickly cut off a strip of fish and wrapped it in a piece of newspaper that he tore from a bundle in his tackle box.
‘There you go. Hope your pussy likes this. It’s fresh today.’ He beamed as the girls thanked him.
They carried the fish carefully back to the house and into their bedroom, calling ‘here pussy, here pussy.’ This time Malachi appeared from a patch of sunlight in the garden and condescended to come into the room. Sophie made sure the door and windows were shut and gave the fish to the cat, which ate it with enjoyment.
‘Get the Vanishing Cream,’ she said to Jessica, who handed it over from the dressing table. Sophie put her finger in the jar and took out a large dollop of the glistening white cream. She held it out to Malachi who sniffed at it, then disdainfully turned his back and began cleaning his whiskers.
‘Perhaps you have to rub it on,’ suggested Jessica.
‘Oh yes, why didn’t I think of that,’ sighed Sophie in relief, and she wiped her finger over the cat’s back. The next minute she gave a cry, as Malachi shot out a cross paw and swiped her hand with it, leaving a long bleeding scratch.
‘Ow, ow, that hurts.’
Malachi started growling so Jessica quickly opened the window. The cat shot out the window like a bullet from a gun and took off across the garden where he was soon lost to sight.
‘Bother. Now we won’t get to see him vanish,’ said Sophie regretfully, sucking at her hand.
‘Why don’t we try it on the enchanted person on the jug?’
‘We want him to come back to life, not to vanish,’ said Sophie, but she decided they would try it all the same. This time Jessica reached her finger in and wiped a large smear of Vanishing Cream across the back of the jug.
‘Don’t use too much,’ cautioned Sophie. ‘That jar is nearly empty so we won’t be able to do much more.’
The girls sat and watched the jug expectantly but to their disappointment nothing happened.
‘Perhaps it’s like the broomstick and you have to know the right magic words,’ offered Jessica.
‘Could be, I guess. Or the spell might have been too old to work properly. We’ll have to wait and see,’ said Sophie without much hope.
However the Vanishing Cream appeared to have worked after all, as Malachi was nowhere to be seen that night when Aunt Hazel called him for dinner.
‘Where is that cat? He never misses his dinner. He seems to have completely vanished.’
‘How long do you suppose it will last?’ asked Jessica, as they were getting ready for bed that night.
‘Who knows?’ Sophie shrugged. ‘We only used a little bit so it might not last very long. It proves it was really magic though.’
The next morning Aunt Hazel announced that she had a meeting to go to. The girls exchanged significant looks.
‘It’s at my friend Mabel’s house. You can come with me and play in her garden if you like,’ Aunt Hazel added.
The girls decided to go along with this for as Sophie pointed out, they could get more proof about the witches.
Aunt Hazel’s friend Mabel turned out to be one of the elderly ladies they had seen before. She gave the girls a large slice of chocolate cake each before sending them outside to the garden. The chocolate cake was very moist and rich and the garden was very interesting. Small winding paths went through archways and past small neatly clipped hedges, revealing the occasional large pot filled with silver leafed plants.
‘It could almost be a fairy garden,’ said Jessica, but Sophie scoffed at this.
‘There are no such things as fairies.’
‘Well, we didn’t think there was any such thing as witches until we met Aunt Hazel.’
They wandered under a large oak tree, crunching the dry fallen leaves under their feet. Jessica collected a handful of acorn cups that she intended to use for a fairy tea party some time when Sophie wasn’t around. Turning another corner, they came to a small pond. A trickle of water came from the arms of a stone statue of a small boy holding a bucket.
‘Do you think he might be enchanted?’ asked Jessica.
‘No, heaps of people have that statue. I’ve seen it in the garden shop when I went with Mum,’ said Sophie confidently.
‘Oh look, fish.’ A few goldfish swam lazily to the surface of the clear water.
‘Jessica, quick. There’s a frog.’ Jessica looked where Sophie was pointing and there on a flat stone beside the pond sat a small green frog. It didn’t appear to be at all frightened of the children and croaked at them mournfully. The girls gazed at it for a few minutes in silence.
‘Do you know,’ said Sophie thoughtfully, ‘I think that frog is enchanted.’
Jessica was thrilled. ‘Do you think it is really a prince that one of the witches turned into a frog?’
‘Well, maybe not a prince. There aren’t that many princes around these days. But it was almost certainly a handsome young man.’
‘How can we break the spell and find out?’ asked Jessica eagerly.
‘You’ll have to kiss it,’ Sophie informed her.