A door opened high up in the gallery and a man dressed in black leather came out. His gas-mask hung by a strap round his neck and he carried a zinc-lined box which he lowered carefully on to the floor.
Sid would do anything for money. It didn’t matter to him what he killed. Only the week before he’d shot two dozen horses between the eyes so that they could be sent off to be eaten. He never asked questions either. How Mr Knacksap had got hold of three hundred leopards was none of his business. All the same, as he looked down on the moving, frosty sea of beasts, he felt shivers go up and down his spine.
I wish I hadn’t take it on, thought Sid.
Which was silly . . . He’d clear a thousand just for an hour’s work and nothing could go wrong. The windows were sealed up; the men who drove the lorries would drag the brutes back into the vans. They had masks too. There’d be no trouble.
Better get on with it. He fitted the rubber tight over his face. Now, with his black leather suit, he looked like someone from another planet. Then he bent down and began to prise open the box.
‘Stop! Stop!’ A wild-haired woman had burst through the door and was running between the leopards who, strangely, parted to let her pass. ‘Stop at once, Flitchbody! Those aren’t leopards, they’re people!’
‘And one of them is Cousin Alfred,’ yelled a second woman, small and dumpy, in a boiler suit.
Sid straightened up. He could knock off these two loonies along with the leopards, but killing people was more of a nuisance than killing animals. There were apt to be questions asked.
‘Get out of here!’ he shouted, his voice muffled by the mask. ‘Get out or you’re for it!’
Neither of the witches moved. Heckie couldn’t touch the assassin with her knuckle because there were no steps from the floor of the ballroom to the gallery. Dora couldn’t look at him out of her small round eyes because he wore a mask.
They were powerless.
Sid picked up the canister of gas. The women would just have to die too. Nat and Billy could throw them in the lake afterwards.
A large leopard, scenting danger, lifted its head and roared. And high in the rafters, a family of bats fluttered out and circled the room.
The witches had always understood each other without words. Heckie knew what Dora was going to do and it hurt her, but she knew it had to be done.
‘Ouch! Ow! Ooh!’
The shriek of pain came from Sid, hopping on one leg. Something as hard as a bullet had crashed down on his foot – a creepy, gargoyle thing with claws and wings made of stone. And now another one – a bat-shaped bullet hurtling down from the ceiling, missing him by inches. This wasn’t ordinary danger, this was something no one could endure!
Sid put down the canister and fled.
He didn’t get far. Almost at once he ran into someone who was very angry. Someone whose voice made both witches prick up their ears.
‘It’s Li-Li,’ cried Heckie. ‘It’s Li-Li telling off the horrible man who’s been trying to kill the leopards!’
‘It’s Lewis,’ cried Dora at the same time. ‘He’s come to save his Cousin Alfred!’
Mr Knacksap appeared on the gallery. He had snatched Sid’s gas-mask and was heaving with temper. No one could be trusted these days. He’d have to do the job himself.
‘Li-Li!’ shouted Heckie. ‘Thank goodness you’ve come!’
‘Lewis!’ cried Dora. ‘You’re just in time!’
The witches looked at each other.
‘What did you call him?’ asked Heckie.
‘Lewis. He’s my Lewis. The man I’m going to marry. What did you call him?’
‘Li-Li. He’s my Lionel. The man I’m going to marry.’
Then at last the scales dropped from the witches’ eyes and they understood that they had been tricked and double-crossed and cheated.
And in those moments, Knacksap fixed on Sid’s mask, lobbed the canister of gas high into the room – and ran.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Right? Is everybody ready?’ said Boris Chomsky. He climbed into the basket of the black air balloon, and Sumi and the garden witch moved over to make room for him.
‘Just checking the ammunition,’ said Mr Gurgle importantly, from the second balloon. His balloon was grey, but it only lacked a couple of hours till dawn so it wouldn’t show up too much. Joe sat beside him, and Madame Rosalia, whom no one would have recognized as Miss Witch 1965. She wore no make-up, her hair was tousled. For the past half hour she had crouched on the floor of Boris’s garage, muttering the spells she’d learnt at school and thought she had forgotten. Spells to raise the wind – and the right wind. A westerly, to take them as fast as they could go to Hankley Hall.
Daniel’s parents might not be able to show him much affection, but when their son was still not at home at one in the morning, the professors were frantic. They called the police, but they also went to Sumi’s house, and to Joe’s, to see if he was with his friends. And Sumi and Joe, running round to Heckie’s in case Daniel was with the witch, had met Mr Gurgle rallying the Wickedness Hunters.
‘Ammunition on board,’ called Mr Gurgle. ‘Ready for take-off!’
Boris put a tape of the Minister for Education saying schoolchildren needed more exams into the fuel adaptor – and the black balloon shot into the air.
Mr Gurgle inserted a cassette of the Minister for Trade saying that dumping nuclear waste was good for the fish – and the grey balloon shot upwards also.
Madame Rosalia had done her work well. The wind was keen and exactly where they wanted. Blowing them to the east and Hankley Hall!
Mr Knacksap was running, running . . . stumbling along gravel paths, blundering between trees. He’d thrown off the gas-mask and the branches stung his face.
Gas-proof witches! Who would have believed it? He’d been certain that the witches had died along with the leopards when he threw the canister – but just now he’d heard them calling to each other down by the lake.
Oh, Lord, don’t let them get me, prayed the furrier. Don’t let me become a louse. Don’t let me become a statue. And please, please don’t let me become the statue of a louse!
If he could just find somewhere to hide till the witches gave up and went home. Then he could haul the leopards away – Nat and Billy should be waiting at the bottom of the drive for a signal.
But where? Where could he be safe from the women he had cheated?
Panting, gasping, almost at the end of his tether, Mr Knacksap staggered on, past fountains, down a flight of steps, tripping over roots . . .
And then he saw in front of him a mass of high, dark hedges. Of course, the Hankley Maze! The first streaks of light had appeared in the east, but he’d be safe in there – no one would find him. If he was lost, so would the witches be if they tried to follow him. All he needed to do was wait till he heard them driving away, and then he’d get out all right. One just had to turn always to the left or to the right, it was perfectly easy.
Only what was that? Good heavens, WHAT WAS THAT? A thing high up in the sky. A blob . . . an Unidentified Flying Object. No, two of them. Two UFOs . . .
‘It’s the Martians!’ screamed Mr Knacksap, weaving frantically between the hedges.
‘There he is, down in the maze,’ said Joe. ‘We need to lose some height.’
Boris nodded and turned down the sound. In both balloons the taped gabble died to a whisper and the balloons dropped quietly to hang over the hedges of yew.
‘Ready with the ammunition?’
The garden witch nodded and heaved the first of the missiles on to the edge of the basket, where Sumi steadied it and let it go.
‘No! No! Don’t do it!’ yelled the furrier.
But the unspeakable THING was already hurtling towards him – gigantic, hideous, deformed . . . to fall not a foot away from him, spattering him with ghastly misshapen bits of itself. And now a second one – not a death-dealing cauliflower this time, but an artichoke whose spiky leaves drew blood as they gashed his cheek.
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‘Spare me! Spare me!’ implored Knacksap – and a stick of celery the size of a tree caught him a glancing blow on the shoulder.
The furrier was on his knees now, gabbling and praying. But there was a fresh horror to come! From the second of the UFOs came a new menace: a rain of deadly weapons, round ones like landmines, which splattered to the ground beside him, releasing an unbearable, poisonous stink!
‘No, not that one,’ begged Mr Gurgle, up in the balloon. ‘I’m teaching that one to skip.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ said Joe tersely. He heaved the round, red cheese on to the rim of the basket, took aim – and fired.
This time he scored a bull’s-eye. The furrier screamed once and rolled over. He was still lying on the ground, twitching, when the witches ran into the maze.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Have some soup,’ begged Dora Mayberry, putting the tray down beside Heckie’s bed. ‘Please, dear. Just try a spoonful.’
‘I couldn’t,’ said Heckie in a failing voice. ‘It would choke me.’
For two weeks now she had been lying in bed in her flat above the pet shop, refusing to eat and getting paler and weaker with every day that passed.
‘My heart is broken,’ Heckie had explained at the beginning.
‘Well, my heart is broken too,’ Dora had said – but of course it had always been agreed between them that Heckie was the sensitive one and felt things more.
Dora had moved in with Heckie because her own business was sold, and she cooked for Heckie and looked after the shop and baked the dragworm’s princesses, but nothing could make Heckie take any interest in life. Sumi came with nice things from her parents’ shop, and Joe, and of course Daniel as soon as he was well enough. Daniel had left hospital after a few days and his parents had been so relieved that they actually took time off to make a fuss of him. But even Daniel couldn’t stop Heckie lying back on her pillows and talking about death, although it was his bravery that had prevented a terrible disaster.
For the leopards had not been gassed. There was something that Mr Knacksap had forgotten if he ever knew it – and that was that Dora Mayberry had been the netball champion of the Academy.
This plump and humble witch had leapt high over a crouching leopard, caught the canister, and run – as she used to run down the pitch – to throw it safely into the lake.
The rest of that strange, exhausting night had been spent driving the leopards back to the prison, changing them back to people, and undoing the stone magic on the guards. Everyone had helped. Nat and Billy had fled, along with Sid, so it was Boris and Mr Gurgle who drove the circus vans, and the other Wickedness Hunters stood guard outside the prison till the job was done. Since the prisoners couldn’t remember how they had got into the exercise yard, and the guards couldn’t remember anything at all, nobody could punish anybody else, and soon the prisoners were back in their cells and quite glad to catch up on their sleep.
So everyone should now have been happy, but instead they were completely miserable – and this was because of Heckie.
When she first realized that it was Mr Knacksap who had half-killed Daniel and tried to murder three hundred people in cold blood, Heckie had felt nothing except anger and rage. But as the days passed she couldn’t help remembering the chocolates with hard centres, and the red roses, and the careful way the furrier had brushed the crumbs off his trousers as they picnicked above the gas works – and she felt so sad that really there seemed no point in staying alive.
And while Heckie faded away, the power of her magic grew weaker too and very strange things happened in the zoo. The warthog had to be taken out of her cage and sent to the veterinary hospital because an odd fleshy bulge, just like a human leg, had appeared on her back end, and the unusual fish began to gasp and come up for air. The others tried to keep news of these things from Heckie, but they were all very worried indeed.
‘I really think I ought to call the doctor,’ said Dora now, taking away the tray with Heckie’s untasted soup.’
‘There’s nothing he can do,’ said Heckie dramatically. ‘I’m better off dead.’
So poor Dora shuffled off and Heckie lay back on the pillow and thought about her ruined life and what she wanted put on her tombstone. She had decided on: HERE LIES HECATE TENBURY-SMITH WHO MEANT WELL BUT GOT EVERYTHING WRONG, when she heard a voice somewhere in the room.
‘Quite honestly,’ it said, ‘I think this has gone on long enough.’
Heckie opened her eyes. All her visitors had gone. Dora was in the kitchen. Then she looked down, and there was the dragworm sitting in his basket and looking peeved.
‘But you can’t speak!’ she said, amazed.
‘I never said I couldn’t,’ said the dragworm. ‘I didn’t because there’s too much conversation in the world already. Babble, babble all day long. But to see you going on like this just turns me right off. And all for a man who, to say the least, is thoroughly vulgar. Furthermore, I have no wish to turn back into a duck. Being a duck was the most boring thing that ever happened to me.’
‘But surely—’
The dragworm rose from the basket and slithered over to the bed. ‘There,’ he said, lifting his tail. ‘On the fifth bulge from the end. Feathers.’
‘Oh, dear!’
‘And more to come, I shouldn’t wonder. Everything’s going to pieces. I wouldn’t be surprised if that mouse you made in the bank hasn’t got himself a machine-gun by now. So I suggest you pull yourself together and forget that creep. The smell of his toilet water . . .’
Heckie had propped herself on one elbow. ‘You didn’t like it?’
‘Like it? You must be joking!’
‘Perhaps it was a little strong,’ Heckie agreed. ‘But I don’t really know what to do with my life any more. I feel such a failure.’
‘Well, for a start you can eat something. As for me, I could do with a change. What’s with this Paradise Cottage there was all that fuss about?’
Chapter Twenty-Four
There is nothing like country air for mending broken hearts, and it was not long before Heckie and Dora realized that marriage would not have suited them. However hard gentlemen try, they always seem to snore in bed, their underclothes need washing and they throw their socks on to the floor.
And Paradise Cottage was exactly the kind of home the witches had dreamt of. Mr Knacksap had cut the picture out of a house agent’s catalogue and when Heckie and Dora went up to the Lake District to enquire, they found that it was still for sale. So they bought it with the money from both their businesses and settled down to be proper country ladies.
Heckie did not often turn people into animals now; she liked to Do Good more quietly, healing the wounded sheep she sometimes met on her walks, or comforting a cow that was having trouble with its calf. Dora, too, preferred just to help with the stonework of the church, adding noses to chipped statues or building up the missing toes on tombstones. Country people are used to seeing strange creatures and they could take the dragworm out without having to zip him in to his basket, and he and the spirit in the wardrobe had become firm friends.
But though they were so happy in the country, the witches had been looking forward for weeks to Daniel’s first visit, and they had planned a special surprise. He arrived on a beautiful frosty afternoon at the little station beside the lake, but they were not there to meet him. Instead, they sent a friendly taxi driver who took Daniel up the steep winding lane and left him at the garden gate. The front door of the cottage was open, but when Daniel knocked there was at first no answer. He could see two bats hanging upside down on the umbrella stand – the bats that had fallen on Sid in the ballroom, which they had changed back and adopted – but no sign of the witches.
‘Is anybody there?’ he called.
There was the sound of rustling and whispering, and then Heckie’s voice.
‘This way, Daniel. We’re in here!’
Daniel pushed open the door of the dining-room. The table was set for a
party, with candles burning in silver holders, and a bright fire danced in the grate.
But it was the witches themselves who really caught Daniel’s attention.
Both of them wore their hats – the hats they had quarrelled about so stupidly a year ago. The snakes were bigger now – the Black Mamba had grown enough to tie in a double bow which hung enchantingly over Heckie’s eyes and nestled on Dora’s serious forehead. The Ribbon Snakes on the crown shimmered and flickered and the King Snakes, with their brilliant red bands, caught the fire from the lamp.
‘We wanted to surprise you,’ said Heckie, holding out her arms.
‘You look beautiful,’ said Daniel. ‘Absolutely beautiful!’ and went forward to hug them both.
But that was not the end of it. When Daniel took his place at the table, he found a small tank beside his plate – and inside it, a hat of his own!
‘We made it for you,’ said Heckie. ‘It’s more of a cap, really, like sportsmen wear.’
‘We do hope that you will like it,’ put in Dora. ‘The colours are suitable for gentlemen, we feel.’
There was a time when Daniel would have been worried about putting his hand into a tank of writhing snakes and placing them on his head – but that time was past. And when he went over to the mirror, he could not stop smiling, for really he had never worn anything that suited him so well. The witches had used young green pythons which brought out the colour of Daniel’s eyes, and in the place where fishermen sometimes stuck feathered flies, the bright head of a cobra flickered and swayed.
With everyone so smart, it couldn’t help being a lovely party. The food was delicious and the tea, of course, was perfect because of Daniel’s present – the machine that dropped exactly the right number of tea-bags into the pot. But when they had eaten, and Daniel had given them the messages from Joe and Sumi, who were coming to stay at Easter, the witches put down their cups and sighed.