sounds great,’ said Natalie with satisfaction. ‘What spell shall we try?’
‘Let’s start with something easy,’ suggested Alice. ‘Just to begin with while we’re still learning. What’s an easy one, Vanessa?’
Vanessa skimmed the pages as she searched the book.
‘Most of them look fairly complicated,’ she admitted. ‘Look at this, here’s one that looks simple. ‘How to Summon an Animal.’
‘What sort of animal?’ Alice asked cautiously.
‘Any sort, I suppose. A tiger would be good or even one of those elephants that take people for rides at the zoo.’
‘Couldn’t we start with something small?’ Natalie asked. ‘Then we could work our way up to bigger things once we got the hang of it.’
‘Why don’t we summon a cat?’ Alice asked timidly.
‘A cat isn’t very exciting,’ cried Vanessa scathingly.
‘Yes, but we’re only testing to see if the spell works,’ Natalie pointed out.
‘Oh, all right then.’
Secretly Vanessa was relieved that they hadn’t decided on a tiger but she felt it would be poor spirited to mention this.
‘Now you have to follow the instructions,’ she said importantly. ‘We have to walk in a circle widdershins three times and say these words...’
‘What’s widdershins?’ asked Alice.
‘Backwards of course,’ said Vanessa confidently, without having any idea what it meant. ‘Come on, let’s start.’
She began walking backwards and immediately bumped into Alice who complained bitterly.
‘Why didn’t you look where you were going?’
‘I can’t look. I have to read the book.’
‘Well give me some warning then.’
‘Okay. One, two, three, go. That do?’
‘Ow,’ bellowed Natalie, as Alice stood on her foot. ‘She didn’t mean start now, you idiot.’
‘There’s not much room to move in here,’ muttered Alice sulkily.
‘Right. We’ll all start together. Now don’t talk or the spell won’t work. One, two, three, go!’
The girls walked backwards, with muffled curses as Natalie banged her knee on the lawnmower and Alice stubbed her toe on an old paint in.
‘Say these words after me,’ instructed Vanessa.
‘Round and round the circle go
Toe by heel and heel by toe.
Ouch, mind that box sticking out. No, you don’t have to say that bit, Alice.
Widdershins pass one, two, three
Animal we summon thee.’
Vanessa stopped abruptly and dodged as Natalie stepped back.
‘I guess we have to put the name of the animal in there. We’ll have to start again.’
Alice and Natalie groaned but obediently walked backwards chanting after Vanessa. When it came to ‘animal,’ Vanessa said, ‘cat.’
The girls stopped and stared for a moment in silence.
‘It didn’t work,’ Alice said dejectedly. ‘There’s no cat here.’
‘Maybe it’s outside,’ said Natalie and stuck her head out the door calling, ‘Here puss, puss. Look, here’s a cat.’
‘That’s cheating,’ said Alice in outrage, as Natalie’s old tabby cat strolled into the shed and looked expectantly around for food.
‘The spell probably won’t work properly because we don’t have the right gear,’ said Vanessa.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We should be wearing witches outfits and have magic wands. That way the spells would be guaranteed to work.’
‘But we don’t have witches outfits,’ Alice objected.
‘We must try to get them,’ Vanessa said sternly. ‘I think we should spend the rest of the day getting what we need. We can meet back here tomorrow and try one of the better spells. I’ll take the book home and study it and find something really exciting we can try.’
Alice and Natalie agreed to this rather reluctantly.
‘I’d like to read the book too,’ Alice sniffed.
‘You can have a turn after me,’ Vanessa told her kindly. ‘We’ll have to take it in turns to get it from the library anyway. I can only borrow it for two weeks then you can be next. Now, let’s make a list of what we need.’
Natalie was sent inside to fetch paper and pen while Alice sat thankfully on the grass outside the shed and stroked the cat. Vanessa read the ingredients for an invisibility spell but found that it called for eye of newt. She didn’t know what a newt was and decided she probably wouldn’t be able to bring herself to put its eyes out, even if she was fortunate enough to find one.
Natalie arrived back not only with a notebook and pen but also with a handful of biscuits that she generously shared around.
‘What shall I put on the list?’ she mumbled through a mouthful of crumbs.
‘A cauldron,’ said Vanessa promptly.
‘Witches hats and cloaks,’ Alice added.
Natalie scribbled industriously. ‘Magic wands, we mustn’t forget those.’
‘Put down broomsticks as well.’
‘Black cats. All witches have black cats,’ Alice said longingly, tickling Natalie’s cat under its soft white chin.
‘Right. Let’s put all the suggestions into a tin and draw them out in turn. That way it will be fair.’
Natalie dutifully tore the paper into strips and placed them in a dusty plastic plant pot from the shelf.
‘You go first,’ she said to Vanessa.
Vanessa put her hand in the pot and pulled out the first strip of paper.
‘Witches cloaks,’ she read.
Natalie offered the pot to Alice who drew out magic wands.
‘I’ve got the cauldron,’ grinned Natalie. ‘Excellent. There’s bound to be something for a cauldron here somewhere if I look.’ She began moving aside cans and boxes, raising a considerable quantity of dust as she did so. Alice began to sneeze as Vanessa drew out the next slip of paper.
‘Black cats. Hmm, that’s not very practical,’ Vanessa murmured. ‘I think we should just have one cat and share it. We can use Misty.’
‘She’s not black, she’s grey and white striped,’ Alice pointed out.
‘The colour isn’t important,’ Vanessa said airily. ‘She’s probably black hearted inside where it counts.’
Natalie began to object to this on the grounds that Misty was a docile good-natured cat who had never shown signs of having a black heart in her life. But Vanessa fixed her with a quelling glare so she said nothing. Alice was disappointed that no more cats were in the offing but tenderly stroked the purring Misty and made no more objections. She reached into the pot again.
‘Witches hats. That’s going to be hard,’ she wailed.
‘Not if you put your mind to it,’ said Vanessa sternly. ‘They are the most important of all.’
‘But I won’t have much time. We’re going to visit cousins this afternoon,’ objected Alice.
‘You’ll have to do your best.’
‘I’ve got broomsticks,’ said Natalie. ‘I think there’s one of those here as well.’
Alice looked resentful at this good fortune.
‘We’ll all meet here again tomorrow morning,’ instructed Vanessa.
‘It can’t be the morning,’ said Natalie hastily. ‘My brother Stephen will be mowing the lawn then.’
‘Okay, after lunch then. We’ll meet here and have all the stuff ready. Then we can do a spell together. We should agree on a password.’
Natalie looked at her blankly.
‘What for?’
‘So you’ll know that it’s one of the Weekend Witches when we knock on the door, of course,’ explained Vanessa patiently.
‘But I’ll know it’s you. I’ll see you.’
‘Not from in here with the door shut, you won’t.’
Natalie was taken aback.
‘I’m not sitting in here with the door shut all day waiting for you. And anyway, I’ll recognise your voices. Only spies need passwords, not witches.’
r /> Vanessa was disappointed at such a poor-spirited approach.
‘We can write our names in blood and have a proper membership certificate,’ she compromised.
Alice looked rather faint at the mention of blood and was relieved when Natalie offered to draw up some certificates using red pen instead.
After lunch on Sunday, Vanessa knocked on the open door of Natalie’s garden shed.
‘Hey look at the cauldron I found,’ Natalie greeted her. ‘Isn’t it awesome?’
Vanessa took a look and had to agree. Natalie had cleared an area in the middle of the shed and folded clean sacks onto two buckets and a seed box for seats. In pride of place in the centre was a black enamel pan. With its heavy metal handle it did look remarkably like a witches cauldron.
‘That’s brilliant.’ Vanessa grinned.
‘Did you get cloaks?’
‘Yep. Here’s your one.’ Vanessa triumphantly handed Natalie a length of fabric that had recently been a backing on the spare room curtains. Vanessa had persuaded her mother to sew elastic in the top edge as well as two pieces of ribbon for ties. When Vanessa and Natalie put these on they felt truly witch-like.
Alice burst in full of apologies.
‘Sorry I’m late, but I had to help Mum. Wow! Witches cloaks! Is there one for me?’
‘Of course.’ Vanessa handed Alice a cloak. ‘Did you get hats?’ she asked expectantly, eyeing the crumpled bag that Alice was holding.
‘Um, no, I couldn’t find anything that would do and I didn’t have time to make anything,’ said Alice apologetically. ‘Hey, what a fantastic cauldron.’
‘Thanks,’ beamed Natalie. ‘I found an old straw broom for a broomstick as well. I’ve leaned it against the wall outside because it’s a bit too dusty to try and ride. There is only one but we can share it.’
‘Did you at least get wands then?’ demanded Vanessa.
‘Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully. ‘I hope they are okay. They are all I could find.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
Alice unwrapped the bag and handed the others a wand each, keeping one for herself. They were truly magnificent. A deep red handle led to a tapering top in the deepest of shiny black. Gold markings down the sides hinted at mysterious magic writing while a green and gold dragon curled around the handle of each wand.
‘Gosh,’ breathed Natalie. ‘These are brilliant.’
‘They are actually chopsticks,’ Alice confessed nervously, ‘but I thought they might do.’
‘They are magic wands from a far oriental land, marked with the runes of antiquity,’ said Vanessa impressively. She had stayed up late reading the spell book and committed some of its more important sounding phrases to memory.
Alice flushed with pleasure.
‘Now we can do some spells,’ she said happily. ‘What are we going to begin with?’ She looked expectantly at Vanessa.
‘Transmogrification,’ said Vanessa grandly.
There was an awed silence.
‘What’s that?’ asked Alice at last.
‘It means changing something to something else. I’ve read all about it and I want to turn Brendan into a toad.’
‘I thought he was a toad already,’ laughed Natalie.
Vanessa frowned. ‘Yes he is, but I want to turn him into a real toad. Not forever,’ she added hastily as she saw the doubtful expressions on Natalie and Alice’s faces. ‘Just for a few days. That will teach him to make fun of me. He heard me asking Mum to make the cloaks yesterday and he reckoned I would be a perfect witch. He said I didn’t even need an outfit.’
Natalie and Alice were suitably sympathetic but Alice had qualms.
‘Don’t you think being a toad would be a bit hard,’ she ventured.
‘Yes,’ Natalie chimed in. ‘We’d have to look after him when he had changed and I’d hate to touch a toad.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. I guess I’d thought he could sort of hop away into the garden.’ Natalie shuddered at this and Vanessa was silent for a few minutes, before saying in sudden inspiration,
‘A dog. We’ll turn him into a dog.’
‘Yes,’ cried Natalie. ‘Then we can make him fetch sticks for us and he’ll have to do what we want.’
‘A dog would be all right I guess,’ agreed Alice. ‘What do we have to do?’
‘I have some of the ingredients already,’ beamed Vanessa. ‘You have to have some part of the person you want to change. Like toe nail clippings.’
‘Urgh!’ Alice and Natalie recoiled as Vanessa busily emptied the contents of a small plastic container into the cauldron.
‘I didn’t actually get toe nail clippings,’ Vanessa said impatiently, as she saw Alice’s face. ‘I nicked some hairs from Brendan’s hairbrush. Then I cut a piece out of the lining of one of his jackets so that ought to do.’
‘What else do we need?’ asked Natalie in relief.
Vanessa consulted her book.
‘Let me see… here it is. One pannikan of clear spring water, two handfuls of crushed elder flowers and five drops of the Elixir of Life.’
‘Water is easy, I get it from the tap,’ said Natalie. ‘What’s a pannikan?’
‘A tin,’ said Vanessa confidently. ‘It doesn’t say what size.’
‘I’ll use the watering can then. It should be about right. What else was there?’
‘Elderflowers. That probably means old flowers that are going dead around the edges. Alice, you go and pick two handfuls of dead flowers.’
‘There won’t be any in our garden,’ Natalie told her.
‘Well, go down the street and find some then,’ Vanessa said. ‘Someone’s bound to have old flowers somewhere.’
Alice agreed to this reluctantly.
‘But what about the Elixir of Life? We don’t even know what that is.’
‘Yes we do,’ said Vanessa triumphantly and produced a bottle from her pocket. ‘It’s whiskey. My Dad said it was the Elixir of Life when I asked him what he was drinking at Christmas. So I poured some into an old tomato sauce bottle this morning. I have to put it in last so hurry up with the other ingredients.’
Natalie took the watering can and filled it up halfway from the tap. She poured it into the cauldron as Alice breathlessly arrived back at the shed and threw in two handfuls of tattered dandelions and some blowsy roses.
‘It smells quite nice,’ she remarked in surprise. She changed her mind about this as Vanessa added the whiskey. It had mixed with the remains of the tomato sauce to produce a most peculiar smelling red liquid.
‘Lovely. Looks like blood,’ gloated Vanessa. ‘Now we have to stir it anti-clockwise with our wands while we read the words.’
Alice and Natalie picked up their wands and stirred while Vanessa read out the words of the spell.
‘Leg of ant and wing of fly – yes I know we didn’t put those in, Natalie, but you don’t actually have to. They are just the words, so be quiet. I’ll have to start again.
Leg of ant and wing of fly
Transfer and transmogrify
Curses fall upon the head
Change Brendan to a dog instead
Now we have to say this all together; Babba Loo, Itchy Kee. Ready? One, two, three, go.’
‘Babba Loo, Itchy Kee,’ chanted the three girls. They stopped and looked expectantly at the cauldron.
‘When is it supposed to happen?’ Alice asked.
‘Well, it won’t happen here, of course,’ Vanessa answered briskly. It will happen wherever Brendan is. I’ll have to go home and find the dog he has changed into. You’d better both come with me in case he turns savage.’
‘I’ll have to tidy this stuff away first,’ Natalie said quickly. ’Otherwise someone might find it and use it to make spells against us.’
‘I’ll take the book with me just in case we need it,’ said Vanessa, but she and Alice helped to tip out the cauldron and drag it to the side of the shed. They stacked the folded cloaks neatly away with the wands on the shelf beside some seed
packets.
The girls walked to Vanessa’s house. Despite the spell book, which was certainly very impressive, Natalie and Alice had no real hope that the spell would have worked. They thought it was a great game though, and were happy to go along with Vanessa, who always had good ideas for things to do. Life was never dull with Vanessa for a friend.
Arriving at the house, Vanessa ran down the hall and burst into her brother’s room. It was empty. Not only was Brendan not there but his usual mess of books and clothes that strewed the floor had gone. The room was clean and tidy with Brendan’s possessions neatly put away in drawers or on shelves. Vanessa gasped. She ran back to the kitchen where Alice and Natalie were eating apples.
‘Mum, where’s Brendan?’’ Vanessa asked breathlessly.
‘Oh, he’s gone. You don’t have to worry about him,’ said her mother kindly, knowing how much Brendan had been teasing his sister lately.
‘Gone!’ spluttered Natalie. Alice was too surprised to speak.
‘What are you girls going to do…’ Vanessa’s mother stopped speaking as the girls rushed out the door. ‘Some sort of game, I expect,’ she smiled to herself as the door shut with a bang.
The girls flopped onto the garden seat in Vanessa’s back yard.
‘It worked! It really worked. He’s gone,’ said Vanessa.
‘It’s totally amazing. I didn’t think it would work at all,’ Natalie confessed. ‘Or at least not so well,’ she said quickly, as Vanessa turned indignant blue eyes in her direction.
‘Your Mum didn’t seem to care,’ Alice said wonderingly.
‘That must be the spell,’ Vanessa explained. ‘It probably makes other people think it is all okay when something happens.’
‘It was really powerful then,’ Natalie sighed. ‘But where’s the dog?’
‘What dog?’
‘We changed Brendan into a dog so there must be a dog around here somewhere.’
‘Oh help, I forgot.’ We’d better look around. He might have run away in fright when the spell took over him.‘ Vanessa leapt to her feet and started searching the bushes. ‘Here Brendan, here doggie,’ she called. Alice and Natalie joined in but there was no dog to be seen.
‘Maybe the dog is back at your place, Natalie,’ Alice suggested. ‘We could look there.’
‘I’ll get some rope in case we have to tie him up,’ Vanessa called over her shoulder, as she collected her skipping rope from the garage.
They trailed back to Natalie’s house, with Vanessa hopefully calling, ‘Here Brendan,’ from time to time. Several small boys riding skateboards looked at them curiously and a large Rottweiler barked thunderously from behind a wooden fence. The girls prudently crossed the road.
‘I hope he isn’t a dog like that,’ Alice whispered to Natalie. Natalie nodded in agreement.
‘I prefer cats, really.’
‘We can always play at skipping if we don’t find him,’ Alice suggested.
‘Brendan is bound to turn up soon,’ Vanessa told her firmly. ‘You should be looking in all these places. He might be under a bush anywhere.’
‘I’m not crawling under every bush in town looking for a dog,’ Natalie protested.
‘Well, help me call then,’ Vanessa told her.
Natalie and Alice reluctantly called, ‘Here Brendan,’ both feeling rather foolish as they did so.
‘I’ll die of embarrassment if we see anyone I know,’ Natalie muttered to Alice.
As they turned into Pukeko Street there was a bark and a small scruffy dog bounded up to them, its short stumpy tail wagging a greeting.
‘Look. He recognises us. It must be Brendan,’ cried Vanessa, bending down to stroke his head.
Natalie wasn’t so sure. ‘I think I’ve seen that dog somewhere before,’ she