The Witch Family (4 page)

Old Witch grabbed off her high peaked hat. She had not thought to shake this out. But of course there was no bee in it, and she went into the witch house to prepare some lunch.

Tired of drawing, the little witch girl put aside her picture and picked up Old Witch's "Big Booke of Runes," which she had left on the porch yesterday. Thumbing through it, what should fall out of it and into the little witch girl's lap but the rune concerning Malachi!

Little Witch Girl was an excellent reader, and she read this rune aloud, slowly and softly and with expression.

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

She read the other verses too. Thus she added to the magic of Malachi, the bumblebee. A smile spread over the face of the little witch girl. "Old Witch must not have this," she thought. She tucked the important rune in the hem of her cloak for safekeeping. Then she tiptoed over to the sunny end of the porch.

"There ye be!" she said lovingly.

There was no response. Malachi looked like a dried-up, fuzzy piece of winter wheat. The little witch girl reached her forefinger toward him quite cautiously. He raised his furry black head, looked at her with his three red bumblebee eyes, and spelled aloud, "
BE NOT AFRAID, I BE HERE.
"

"Will you make Old Witch be good?" asked the little witch.

The bumblebee spelled, with emphasis, "
YES. I BE THE REPRESENTATIFF OF AMY.
"

"Amy? Who be that?" asked Little Witch Girl, talking the way the bee did.

"
SHE BE THE BANQUISHER,
" said Malachi.

There the conversation ended. With these long words Malachi had outspelled himself. Being a spelling bee, Malachi ordinarily spoke in sentences of just one word. Instead of saying a word, he spelled it. This took longer, but it was more accurate. And he was an accurate bee. When he spelled "
BEE,
" you knew it was bee and not be.

Although Malachi was a spelling bee, he could not cast spells. He, himself, was under a spell, and that was the important thing. The magic spell that he was under enabled him not to cast spells, but to spell. "Very important, this is, too," said Amy to Clarissa, still at the little yellow table, drawing.

"
YES
," said Clarissa, who knew how to spell, too.

"Well, Amy," said Clarissa. "That little witch girl that lives on the glass hill, doesn't she go to school? Now that she lives with Old Witch, doesn't she have to go to school?"

Clarissa was seated at one side of the little yellow table, drawing a witch picture. Amy, on the other side of the table, was drawing a witch picture, too. They were both drawing very large pictures, and they did not notice or mind these two large pictures getting in each other's way. They were such good friends, they almost never got cross with each other about anything.

"What?" asked Amy, with her hand cupped behind her ear.

Both Amy and Clarissa had colds, and whenever they had colds, they became a little deaf. "What'd you say?" shouted Amy more loudly.

"School!" shouted back Clarissa. "Didn't she ever have to go to school?"

"Of course she went to school," said Amy. "Of course she did. You didn't think she just rode her broomstick all day, did you? Growing up to be a nope, did you?" ("Nope" was Amy's word for "dope.") "Of course she went to school, to witch school."

With her head turned almost upside down to see, Clarissa studied Amy's picture. There were a witch schoolroom, a witch schoolteacher, and some little witch schoolgirls in the picture. There were cobwebs, and cauldrons, and crystal gazing balls for all.

"Which is our little witchie?" asked Clarissa.

"She's late," said Amy. "She's going to come flying through the window when she comes. Then there will be seven little witches."

"I see," said Clarissa, and they both went on with their drawings.

Today was the little witch girl's first day of school. And she really was late. It is too bad to be late on the first day, but it was really the fault of Old Witch. Last night, as Old Witch and Little Witch sat rocking before the fire, Old Witch, delighted to have such an appreciative audience, had told the little witch story after story of old days when she was a real, right, regular, wicked old witch, before her exile to the glass hill. The stories all ended with, "and then
she
banquished me!"

"Tell more, tell more," Little Witch Girl had begged after each story. "Begin. One night, I..."

And so Old Witch had told one more and then one more. So, Little Witch Girl had gone to bed very late. And in the morning, naturally, she did not want to get up. "O-o-oh," she groaned. "Do I have to go to school today? Couldn't I begin tomorrow instead?"

"No," said Old Witch with finality. "You see that red bird coming? Well, you follow that red bird. He goes your way. Good-bye, my dearie. Get good marks." And she shoved sleepy Little Witch Girl onto her broomstick and out the door.

"Wait! Wait! Wait for me!" the little witch girl called to the cardinal bird. He was already almost out of sight. Trying to catch up with him, Little Witch Girl missed the right turnoff to the witch school, which is located on a pink cloud. Spurring her broomstick on, the next thing she knew she was far from the glass hill and from witch school. She was on some strange street in some strange city, and she was flying low past the window of a high brick house. Here, she became entangled in the branches of a ginkgo tree. Poised there for a moment, she found herself outside the window of a room where two girls (they were Amy and Clarissa) were drawing pictures, and shouting at each other with their hands behind their ears.

"What pretty witches! What a pretty room!" thought the little witch girl. She had never seen real ordinary girls before, and of course, she did not connect these two girls with the girls who banquish, the girls in the stories that Old Witch had told her last night. She noticed that these two girls did not wear witch hats or any hats. "What sort of a witch school is this where the girls do not wear hats?" she wondered. "Beform school?" she asked herself. ("Beform school" was her way of saying "reform school," as it happened also to be Amy's way.)

"Oh, dear," she thought. "I might have to go to 'beform school' if I don't get to my regular school soon. Or I might have to stand in the corner with my hat off."

Luckily for her, since she did not know the way back, the red cardinal bird came flying along right now, heading for home. Disentangling herself from the ginkgo tree, the little witch girl scratched against the windowpane of Amy's house. Amy ran to the window. Then she solemnly said to Clarissa, "Clarissa."

"What?"

"I think I just saw the little witch girl."

"What?" asked Clarissa.

"I said," said Amy, speaking slowly, distinctly, and a little more loudly, "that I just saw the little witch girl, ours, not the other ones, flying past our window."

"Oh-h," said Clarissa. "Can't be. You said she was in school. Where we would be if we didn't have colds—thank goodness, we do."

"Well," said Amy. "I said she was going to fly in late. And that is what she is doing this minute, flying in late. How long do you think it takes to fly from here to witch school on a broomstick? Just that long, that's all."

In her picture Amy quickly drew the little witch girl flying in the schoolroom window, the new little witch girl flying into a new school, alone, and late.

The other witch girls were chanting arithmetic runes. In the middle of one and one, they all stopped and stared. Because Little Witch Girl was new, they were all resolved not to like her. "Imagine coming in late the first day!" they twittered. They all, including the witch teacher, watched Little Witch Girl with cold and critical stares. The names of the six other little witch girls were Tweet, Izzy, Olie, Itch and Twitch, who were twins, and Notesy.

"Fly your broomstick to the broomstick rack," said the witch teacher.

Little Witch Girl did this. "Now," said the teacher, "take your copy stool and sit down, the one behind Olie," she said. "Olie, stand, so that the new witch girl will know where to sit."

Tweet stood up instead of Olie, and Little Witch Girl put her stool behind hers instead of Olie's. The class twittered at the success of this first joke on the new witch.

"What is your name?" asked the teacher. "Spell it."

"Small h, a, double n, a, capital H," answered the little witch girl, getting it right, for witches spell backwards.

"Where do you live?" asked the teacher.

"With Head Witch Nobby on the glass hill," answered the little witch.

All the witches gasped. In the witch house of exile! They decided to dislike Little Witch Girl more than ever, for they knew she must be stuck-up, living with a witch of such importance.

"Why are you late?" asked the witch teacher.

"I went to the wrong school by mistake," answered Little Witch Girl. She still thought that Amy and Clarissa had been in a school. She had decided not
to mention keeping late hours last night with Old Witch. The less she mentioned the name of Old Witch, Head Witch of all the witches, the better, she decided, because whenever she did do so, one or another of the witches said, "She brags." Little Witch Girl was indignant. After all, she had not asked to live with Old Witch. Somehow or another, by abracadabra, she had simply arrived in the witch house.

"Wrong school!" imitated the others with titters. And although the little witch girl had been in this school for only a few minutes, the other little witch girls were already saying that she would probably have to stay back in school this year, she was such a "nope." Despite being witches, they said "dope" the way Amy did—"nope." As the lessons went on, however, they were forced to change their tune, for Little Witch Girl proved to be very bright.

"First lesson," said the witch teacher, clapping her hands. "Arithmetic," she said. "Do the one and one," she told Little Witch Girl.

Little Witch Girl said,

"One and one is nothing.
Two and one is one.
Three and one is two..."

"Right," said the teacher. "She knows it all."

Witches subtract, you see, when we add. And they add when we subtract. They say, "Two take away one is three!" Little Witch Girl got all her numbers right. The other little witch girls did not like this, and held a consultation with heads together. They made a plan. Soon they had a chance to put it into effect.

"Second lesson," said the witch teacher. "Exercise!" she said.

The little witches hopped off their copy stools. The exercise was to stomp ten times around the room, exhale and inhale twenty times, stomp ten times around the room again, this time in the other direction, and then stomp back to their copy stools. Stomping was a favorite game of the little witches. One witch was always chosen to stand in the middle of the room and direct the game, and each one wanted to be the stomp director. "Choose me! Choose me!" they all screamed now. But Teacher chose the new little witch girl.

"She'll see what the stomp game is like," said the others, and commenced the stomping. Instead of stomping around the room, they stomped around Little Witch Girl, coming closer and closer to her with each round, stomping right up to her and making a little tish sound at her with their tongues, because she was new, and then stomping away again. This game was refreshing to the little witch girls, but it was very unpleasant to Little Witch Girl herself. However, all through the stomping, Little Witch Girl held tight to the hem of her cloak where a certain important rune was folded up in a wad. She knew the rune by heart, but she liked, nevertheless, to feel it for added courage. So she stood staunch and firm and did not flinch.

"Spelling, next lesson," said the teacher, who had enjoyed the stomping show and had not interfered. To herself she had to admit that, so far, the new pupil had shown herself to be not only bright but brave.

The little witch girls made ready to spell.

"Spell hurly-burly," said the teacher to the little witch girl.