The Witch Family (2 page)

Clarissa laughed gaily. She was not afraid of Old Witch. The wind was in her face and her hair whipped against her cheeks. "All right," she said. And, "Hey, wait a minute, Old Witch," she yelled bravely. "Amy says you can come down for Halloween. That's all!"

"Yes, yes! Just Halloween!" repeated Amy. Amy also felt quite brave, having heard herself spoken of as the one in charge. And besides, though there were no leaves at this time of year on the linden tree, she thought she might be invisible to the old witch.

Suddenly, from the dark clouds, a few drops of rain fell. Amy shivered. She thought she heard the rustling of Old Witch's black robes. She thought they brushed against her hair as Old Witch, enraged but truly invisible, steered her broomstick upward toward the glass hill, going where she had to go—up, up, and up the awful, bare, and faraway hill. Amy thought, too, that she heard the buzzing, foreboding sound of a bumblebee.

"Did you hear a bumblebee?" she asked Clarissa.

"No, I heard no bumblebee," said Clarissa.

The sun came out again, which proved that Old Witch had really gone. Wind and rain had stopped. Amy came back from the other side of the huge trunk of the linden tree where she had hidden herself in case Old Witch, out of revenge, should try to cast a spell on her. "Clarissa. Do you know what I am going to do?" she said. "I am going to write Old Witch a letter so she will understand not to come back at any time except Halloween. She might not have heard. You must always put things in writing; you know that, don't you?"

Amy loved to write letters. "I don't know why I like to write letters. I just do," she confided. Clarissa said she did not like to. She still owed her grandmother in Tangiers a letter from two Christmases ago. If she could only get it written! "Can't you write that thank-you letter?" That's what her mother said with a sigh several times a year.

Climbing down from the tree, Amy jumped into her yard. It was very sunny and warm now that Old Witch had gone. This was the sort of day that Malachi loved. Amy went over to say good-bye to him. But ah-h ... now, from his sunny corner, Malachi was gone!

Amy stood there, looking at the place where he used to live and musing. "I thought I heard a bumblebee," she thought. Supposing Old Witch should cast a spell on him?

"Do you think Old Witch would hurt Malachi, eat him, even? In some places people do eat bees," she said to Clarissa.

"Oh, no," said Clarissa. "She wants to be sure she can come down for Halloween, you know."

"Of course," said Amy.

They went in, took off their warm winter coats, and sat down again at Amy's little yellow table. Instead of drawing, this time Amy wrote the letter to Old Witch. When she did not know how to spell words, she made them up. She knew that made-up words would not matter to Old Witch, for witches are accustomed to doing everything backward and forward and backward again, and if there are too many or two few letters in a word, they do not care—unless they have to be in a spelling bee, of course.

"Now," said Amy, when she had finished. "Listen to this."

Clarissa tried to listen.

Amy read:

"Dear great-great-grandmother Old Witch,

You must be good. You must not be bad. You must go and live on the glass hill always. But if you will be good, you can come back on Halloween night. So, please be good!" (And then Amy signed the letter the way she signed all her letters.)

"I love you and you love me,
Amy.
P.S. Did you take Malachi, the bumblebee?
A."

When this letter was all tightly folded up, it was just a little wad of a note. Amy opened the middle window and put it on the sill. Right away, a red cardinal bird, handsome and sparkling in the winter sun, alighted on the sill. He took the little letter in his bill, and away he flew with it.

"Did you see that?" Amy asked excitedly. "Clarissa. Did you see that?"

"I did," said Clarissa.

"It would be as good as finding a letter in a bottle in the ocean to find a letter in a bird's bill. Don't you think so, Clarissa?" Amy said.

Clarissa nodded. Clarissa was apt not to think that things like notes in birds' bills were as remarkable as Amy did. She took events as they came, not questioning the usualness or the unusualness of them. But Amy was still wonderstruck. She leaned her arms on the windowsill and cupped her chin in her hands, and she watched the far distant red streak, the cardinal bird, as it flew over the houses across the street and then up, and up, and up, and away.

"Good-bye," called Amy from the window. "Don't lose it!" she said.

What a morning! Old Witch banished. Malachi gone. And a bird with a note in his bill. Exhausted, Amy lay down on the big bed. Clarissa put on the record, "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" She sat in Amy's little red rocker and listened, and rocked, and nodded.

One day, Old Witch was rocking in her wicker rocker on the creaky front porch of the witch house. She was not happy, and she was brooding. She did not like it up here on this bare, bleak glass hill. When she stepped off the porch, she slipped. Her feet went out from under her, for the glass was like ice. She looked like a very bad ice skater, and Old Tom laughed at the silly sight she made trying to regain her balance. No one else would have laughed, for Old Witch, banished or not, might angrily have cast a spell. However, Old Tom would not have minded being cast in a spell. Though he was a witch cat, Tom was as curious about everything, including awful spells, as an ordinary cat.

"Tluck, tluck, thick," muttered Old Witch. "How dismal it is up here! All this sunshine glinting on the glass. No brambles, no briers! No wilderness to put a foot in! No swamps!" Old Witch pulled her peaked hat down over her eyes and sulked. She pined for the company of another witch, even though all other witches were of less importance than she.

"Oh, to glory be! It's terrible," she said to Old Tom. "Where is the rhyme and reason," she asked, "of being good all the time, as
her
instructed when
her
banquished me (she said "banished" the way Amy did), all by myself and with none to clap?"

"Nobby," Old Tom reminded her in a rusty, rasping voice. (Nobby was the real name of this famous old witch.) "
I'm
here," he said.

"I was referring to witches, not cats, however talented," Old Witch replied.

"Once I was a witch," thought Old Tom, cleaning a paw. "I am a graduated witch." But Old Tom did not remind Old Witch of the fact that witches turn into cats when they go into retirement. And pretending to doze, Tom turned his eyes to the other end of the porch where something, a bumblebee in hiding, sometimes engaged his attention.

Old Witch thought no more about Old Tom. Cats sometimes watch a speck of dust, or even nothing, for hours. "How dull!" thought Old Witch. But dull as life was on this awful glass hill, Old Witch had to bear it. She had to be good, not good in the way witches enjoy being good—that is in casting wicked spells and eating up little rabbits whenever they have the chance—but good in the way that real regular people are good—that is in
not
casting spells and
not
eating up little rabbits every minute. Though she drooled terribly for a taste of rabbit, her favorite food—rabbits and their painted eggs—she was good. She ate her herb soup daily, and she made no attempt to escape from this place of "banquishment." Otherwise, Amy said, she would not be able to have a hurly-burly even on Halloween!

For this difficult goodness, Old Witch received a reward. As she sat unhappily rocking, she got a second letter. The same beautiful red cardinal bird who had brought her the first letter brought this one too, tightly folded up in a wad in his bill. It, too, was from Amy, the banisher, on Garden Lane.

"Quite a pen pal, she are," said Old Witch, half sarcastically, half fondly. She read the letter out loud with an audience of—she thought—just Tom. So far she had not suspected the presence of the bumblebee.

"Dear mean old wicked Old Witch,

When you wake up in the morning, sing an abracadabra (you know the one that goes, Abracadabra, ABC...), close your eyes, and then open them again, and you
might
have company.

I love you and you love me,
Amy.

P.S. You never answered about Malachi, the bumblebee. Did you take him? I don't mean
steal.
I mean
take,
by
mistake,
the day you flew away. He disappeared that day. Please shake out your shawl and see. Love, A."

"Oh, to glory be!" exclaimed Old Witch. "Company! Did you hear that, Nobby?" (She sometimes talked to herself.) Old Witch read the letter again. "What bumblebee named Malachi is she harping on, anyway? I haven't any of her old bumblebees." But to make certain, Old Witch shook out her black shawl, and there was no bumblebee in it. Old Witch hoped that Amy's promise of company did not mean a bumblebee, even though beeswax is excellent in magic and necromancy. "But when," she asked herself, "on this awful place, would there be need for beeswax in magic? No need," she answered herself. What she really wanted was some sort of witch for company, not some sort of bumblebee. "Malachi," she muttered. "A portentous name," she had to grant. Carefully she studied Amy's letter anew.

Old Tom again turned his eyes to the sunniest corner of the creaky front porch. He knew that there, in his new dwelling, Malachi had hidden himself. Being at this season a dusty, faded, tawny color, Malachi blended with the weather-beaten woodwork and was camouflaged. Nevertheless, Old Tom had known about Malachi's presence from the start, for cats' eyes detect much that the eyes of wicked old witches do not. Malachi was safe from Tom, however. Cats are fond of crickets, not of bumblebees whose fuzz and fur stick in their throats, and whose stings they must beware of besides. Tom liked the idea of there being something up here for him to watch, something Old Witch did not know about. "I know something you don't know," his sly eyes seemed to say.

Her curiosity aroused by Amy's letter, Old Witch looked in the index of her huge book of runes under Malachi and under bumblebee. She found nothing of value. However, she did come upon some clippings that she had garnered through the years from the Witch Gazette, stuck loosely in the book, like recipes in cookbooks. Among these clippings she found an ancient, crumbly, yellow-edged rune that might have a bearing on the special bumblebee in question. She read it aloud.

"Oh, Malachi,
Oh, Malachi,
Oh, Malachi,
You are a magic
bumblebee.
If in trouble
e'er I be,
Then mumble,
bumble,
here to me."

There were several versions of this incantation. Another version read,

"Malachi,
Oh, Malachi,
You are the
spelling bumble
bye
,
You are the
spelling bumble
bee
Of everything
From A to Z.
And if in trouble
e'er I be,
then mumble,
bumble,
here to me."

In this way, without knowing one thing about it, by reciting these runes aloud, Old Witch cast a magic spell on Malachi. Now, in his new dwelling, he basked in magic. To look at him, he appeared no different than he had when basking in his sunny corner in Amy's little backyard on Garden Lane. Yet now he had been touched by witch magic. And, he could spell.

"
THANKS
," he spelled right now, practicing.

He spoke so softly that Old Witch did not hear him. Little suspecting what she had done and having resolved to pay no heed to the matter of Malachi, which she judged to be a child's fancy, Old Witch went into her house, prepared her herb soup, and went to bed. She was impatient for morning to come. For a long time she lay awake wondering if the company to which Amy referred could mean her old rival, Famous Green Caterpillar Witch. Even she would be better than no one, she thought. At last she fell asleep.

When morning came, Old Witch followed Amy's instructions. She chanted her abracadabra song, which is a secret song, but which goes somewhat like this:

"Abracadabra
A B C
Flying through the air to me
Hotch
Cotch
In the Potch
Who is this that I do see?"

She sang rustily, for, except to get herbs, she had not had much occasion to use magic in her exile on this hill. Nevertheless, the abracadabra worked with prompt success. After all, this witch was still Head Witch of all witches whether she had been banished to the top of a glass hill or not. And when, according to instructions, she opened her eyes, what did she see?

A little witch girl of exactly the same size as Amy and Clarissa, and of the same age, too—almost seven—that is what she saw! She came with a little black witch cloak and a tall, peaked little black witch hat. Her thin, black-clad legs were flung casually over her small witch broomstick, and a wobbly little black kitten, miaowing menacingly, was clinging to the broom end of the broomstick.

"Oh, to glory be!" gasped Old Witch. This was the last thing that she had expected. A little witch girl had not entered her mind. But it had entered Amy's mind. Otherwise, how could there be a witch family? One witch does not make a family. But now, anyway, there are more—Old Witch, number one; Little Witch Girl, number two; Old Tom, number three; wobbly Little Tommy, number four. And also, don't forget Malachi, magic Malachi, the bumblebee, drowsing in his corner, all covered over with the magic of a rune like pollen from a flower. He—with his three red ruby eyes open as always—is number five of the witch family.