Earwig and the Witch Read online

  Earwig nodded. That made another challenge. She began to see that she would have to make the Mandrake do what she wanted, too, and that would not be easy to do without disturbing him.

  She went on exploring. The bungalow was much bigger inside than it had looked from the outside and there was a lot of it to explore. The door next to Earwig’s room led to the bathroom. It was ordinary, like the kitchen. Earwig soon found that she was the only person who bothered to wash in it, or clean her teeth. As soon as she was sure, she took the bathroom over and pinned her snapshots of Custard and Mrs. Briggs to the cupboard door.

  The door beyond the bathroom went into a huge room full of the kind of leather books the Mandrake read at supper. The door at the end of the hall, beside the kitchen door, opened into a dark place with a concrete floor that smelled—well, as if something had died in there. Earwig took a deep breath, held her nose, and tiptoed to the door at the other end. The place beyond there looked like a church, but there was a car—a little Citroën—parked in the middle between the pillars. There was no door to anywhere else from there. Earwig supposed it must be the garage. She backed out, rather annoyed.

  Apart from these rooms and Bella Yaga’s workroom, the kitchen was the only other room Earwig could find. When she went in there her first morning, she was surprised again at how ordinary it was. Thomas was sitting in the sun on the windowsill, with his front paws tucked under him, just like a normal cat. Bella Yaga was frying bacon and eggs at the stove.

  “Watch carefully,” Bella Yaga said to Earwig. “I shall expect you to cook breakfast in the future.”

  “Yes,” said Earwig. “Where do you sleep? I can’t find a door to your bedroom.”

  “Mind your own business,” said Bella Yaga.

  “What will you do to me if I don’t?” Earwig asked.

  She could tell that Bella Yaga had not expected that question. She looked rather taken aback and answered with the same threat she used on Thomas. “I shall give you worms.” Then she seemed to feel she had better scare Earwig properly. She added, “Great big blue and purple wriggly worms. So take care, my girl!”

  Earwig did not take care. She was quiet and dutiful in the workroom all day. Bella Yaga set her to chopping nettles, mashing poison berries, and slicing snakeskins into thin, thin strips. In the afternoons there were always things to count, grains of salt or newts’ eyes. Earwig was annoyed again. In the first two days she only managed to look at the book of spells four times, and the only spell that seemed remotely useful was one headed “To Sharpen the Eyes at Night.” While Earwig wondered how she might use that one, she kept a careful eye on what Bella Yaga did with the things Earwig had chopped and sliced for her. It looked interesting—and easy. Some of the things were boiled in the cauldron and then whipped into lotions with an old, rattly electric mixer. Others were carefully wrapped in small bundles inside a deadly nightshade leaf, which Bella Yaga then tied in special knots with the strips of snakeskin. Earwig would have liked to try doing that, too.

  “The only thing wrong with magic is that it smells so awful,” Earwig said to herself when she was in her own room at night. She sighed. Even the idea of doing a real spell herself did not quite make up for not living at St. Morwald’s. She missed Custard quite dreadfully. And she was not used to sleeping alone at night. At St. Morwald’s there had been dormitories with rows of beds. But the thing she missed most was not being able to go to the cook and ask for what she wanted for supper. “I used to be just like the Mandrake, I suppose.” Earwig sighed. “Only he has demons to get him what he wants, lucky thing!”

  The only thing that stopped her being really miserable was the cat, Thomas. Somehow he pushed her door open—though Earwig knew she had shut it tightly—and jumped on her bed, where he sat on her feet and purred. Earwig stroked him. His fur was soft and plushy and quite clean, in spite of having been behind the cauldron all day. His purring, rumbling through her toes, was so comforting that Earwig talked to him a lot. Several times she made a mistake and called him Custard. That cheered her up so much that she got out her drawing things and made a very unkind drawing of Bella Yaga. She put in Bella Yaga’s odd eyes and blue hair and purple lipstick, and she made her ribby face as ugly as possible. After that, she felt much better. In the morning, she pinned the picture up on the bathroom cupboard and felt better still.

  Thomas came and sat on Earwig the next night, too. Earwig stroked him. Then she started to make a drawing of the Mandrake, as huge and frowning and horrible as she could make it. She put dots of red inside his eyes and added the horns—only they looked more like a donkey’s ears. She would have liked to put in a demon or so, but she did not know what demons looked like, so she went back to making the Mandrake’s face look horrible. But she kept being distracted in her drawing by a strange light on the wall of her room. It almost looked as if the wall was blushing, or there was a fire deep inside it.

  “Whatever is that?” she said angrily, after she had made a mistake in the Mandrake’s mouth the third time.

  “It’s the Mandrake,” said Thomas. “His den’s on the other side of this wall.”

  Earwig dropped her felt-tip pen and stared at the cat. His round, light-green eyes looked calmly back. “You—er—you speak!” she said.

  “Of course,” said Thomas. “Though not often. I think you should stop that drawing. It’s beginning to disturb the Mandrake.”

  Earwig pushed her paper and pens hurriedly under the covers. “Do you know about spells?” she asked.

  “A fair amount. More than you do,” said Thomas. “I’ve seen you looking in her book. The one you really want is near the end. Want me to show you?”

  “Yes please!” said Earwig.

  “But just a moment,” Earwig added. “How can the Mandrake’s room be on the other side of this wall? That’s the bathroom.”

  Thomas was in the middle of standing up and stretching his legs, in pairs. He looked at her over his sleek black shoulder. “Yes, I know,” he said. “But it is, all the same.” He finished stretching and sharpened his claws on the bedspread. “Coming?” he said and sprang to the floor.

  Earwig pattered after him, out of her room and across the hall. The workroom door was locked. But Thomas stretched up and did some more claw-sharpening near the doorknob. The door quietly opened. Earwig fumbled the lights on and they crept inside.

  “Oh, yucky!” Earwig cried out at the feel of the slime under her bare feet.

  “Hush. You can lick them clean later.” Thomas jumped onto the table and pawed the greasy little book. “Open it at the end and keep turning back until I tell you to stop,” he said.

  Earwig did so. She turned from “To Make a Plague of Worms,” quickly, because Thomas began shuddering, to “A Thunderstorm to Spoil a Church Fete,” and then to “A Spell to Make a Bus Come on Time,” and “To Preserve the Body from All Magic,” and—

  “Hold it there,” said Thomas. “That’s ours. If we use that, she can’t do a thing to either of us.”

  Earwig looked. The spell took up two pages in small writing. “But Custard—I mean, Thomas—it’s got hundreds of things in it!”

  “All of them are in this room somewhere and we’ve got all night,” Thomas said. “Get going.” He sat in front of the book, tail curled around the front of his legs and twitching gently. “You’ll need powdered rats’ bones, newts’ eyes, and well-sliced toad for the first stage. While you’re doing those, you can start the henbane heating—you have to heat three hairs of a cat’s tail in with it and mind you take them gently.”

  For quite half the night, Earwig slithered to and fro in the slime, working far harder than she had ever worked for Bella Yaga during the day. Thomas sat bent over the book as if he were watching a mouse hole, calling out the next things the spell needed. “Belladonna now—that’s the fourth bottle along, the one that’s not as dusty as the others. Three drops in with the henbane.” About halfway through, he said, “Familiar needed. That’s all right. I’m here.”

&n
bsp; “What does that mean?” Earwig gasped. By this time she was pounding gunk with one hand and stirring a gooey green mixture with the other, as if her life depended on it. And perhaps it did, she thought. Bella Yaga was not going to forgive her for this if she found out.

  “A familiar is a cat or other animal who is a witch’s helper,” Thomas said. “The animal needs to be close to the spell to make it work. And,” he added smugly, “a black cat does that best of all.”

  “Then why do you always run away?” Earwig gasped, mixing and pounding. It was like trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time.

  “Because I don’t like the kind of spells she does,” said Thomas. “They make me feel as if someone is stroking me the wrong way. One drip of rose elixir into the green mix now.”

  Right near the end there was a nasty moment when Thomas read out, “Mix all together in a large bowl and say words.”

  “What words?” asked Earwig, bending over Thomas to look. There were no words written down in the book. After say words, the spell went on, Spread resulting ointment over every part of your body. “WHAT WORDS?” Earwig screamed. “It doesn’t say!”

  “Calm down!” said Thomas, who was looking a little twitchy himself. “They’ll be words of binding. I’ve heard her use about six different words. I think I can remember—”

  “You’d better remember, Custard—I mean, Thomas!” Earwig said. “After all this work I’ve done! Say them all. Every single one you’ve ever heard!”

  “All right,” Thomas said, flicking his tail irritably. “But only if you stop calling me Custard. And you’ll have to say them after me exactly as I say them. You’re the witch here, not me.”

  So Earwig stirred the mixture and listened carefully to all the strange words and noises Thomas made. She tried to say each one exactly the same way, which was not easy. Some of the sounds were very odd. But she thought the spell was working. The mixture had been sort of pink when she tipped all the different parts into the bowl, but as she stirred and spoke, it turned colorless and smelled faintly of roses. She was very surprised that when Thomas stopped speaking, he toppled suddenly over on his back and writhed about the table with all his paws waving. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously.

  “Nothing!” Thomas said, in a kind of curdled purr. “It’s just—it’s just—some of the sounds were me swearing because I couldn’t remember the words!”

  Earwig realized he was laughing, in the way cats laugh. “Well, I just hope it works,” she said. “What do I do now? Spread it all over me?”

  Thomas sprang onto all four paws again rather quickly. “Yes, but you do me first,” he said. “I’ve worked as hard as you did. And I’ve had enough of her giving me worms when she’s annoyed.”

  This seemed fair enough. Earwig took two big fingerfuls of the colorless paste and rubbed them carefully into Thomas until his black coat was plastered wetly to his skin all over. Thomas crouched in a hump, with his fur sticking up in spikes. “Yeurgh!” he said, shaking a front paw disgustedly. “I hope it soaks in or something.”

  It seemed to soak in. By the time Earwig was nearly through rubbing the mixture all over herself—very sparingly, because the paste got less and less horribly quickly—Thomas shook himself and was once more his sleek, plushy self. “That’s better!” he said. He stuck up a back leg and washed, while Earwig wiped her dirty feet with a rag and spread the last of the paste over her soles and between her toes.

  “Do you think it will work?” she said.

  “Flmph,” said Thomas. His mouth was full of fur. “It had better work. I’m not going through all that again!”

  “Neither am I!” said Earwig, when at last she yawned her way back to bed. It took ages to clear up and put all the things back so that Bella Yaga would not guess any of them had been used. After that she had to wash the slime off her feet and then clean the slimy footprints off the hall floor. Earwig nearly fell asleep on the floor while she was doing that.

  And, naturally, it only seemed five minutes after she had fallen asleep that Bella Yaga was banging on her door and shouting.

  “Get up, you lazy little beast! The Mandrake wants his bacon and eggs.” “Tell him to get a demon to do it,” Earwig growled.

  “What ?” screamed Bella Yaga.

  “I’m coming!” Earwig shouted back. “And I’m not your slave!”

  “That’s what you think!” Bella Yaga yelled.

  Not surprisingly, Earwig was in a very bad temper that day. She grumbled under her breath while she worked in the workroom, and she grumbled out loud when she had to trudge out to the weed-garden to fetch nettles and hellebore. “I’ve had enough of being treated like a slave!” she said. “And it’s raining!” She trudged back and threw the wet plants down on the table.

  “Don’t do that!” snapped Bella Yaga. “I told you to put the plants in the cauldron, you useless little beast!”

  “And I told you I’m not your slave!” Earwig snapped back. “I agreed to be your assistant and you agreed to teach me magic, and all you’ve done is work me half to death!”

  “I did not agree to teach you magic!” Bella Yaga shouted. “I got you from St. Morwald’s because I needed another pair of hands!”

  “Then you’re a cheat!” Earwig said. “You cheated Mrs. Briggs and you cheated me. You told Mrs. Briggs you were going to be my foster mother.”

  Bella Yaga glared at Earwig. She was in such a rage that her brown eye turned upward and her blue eye turned down. Earwig was quite frightened and wondered if she had gone too far. But all Bella Yaga did was to slap Earwig around the head so hard that her ears rang. “Foster mother indeed!” she said, laughing angrily. “Go and put more fuel under the cauldron. Now. Or I’ll give you worms.”

  Earwig went giddily over to the mound of sludge where the green flames were and piled sticks under the cauldron. When her head had cleared a little, she said, “Well? Are you going to teach me magic or not?”

  “Of course not,” said Bella Yaga. “You’re only my spare pair of hands.”

  Right! Earwig thought. That does it!

  She seethed with rage for the rest of the morning, but she took care to seethe quietly so that Bella Yaga would not see how angry she was. Lunch was the specially nice shepherd’s pie that the cook at St. Morwald’s used to make Earwig as a special treat. The Mandrake had made his demons fetch it because he liked it, too. Earwig could scarcely believe it when she recognized it. She stared at her plate and could hardly eat for anger and homesickness.

  After lunch, Bella Yaga gathered up all the spells from the last few days, put each one carefully in a plastic bag, and packed all the bags in a shopping basket. She unhooked her red hat from the hall and put it on her head. “I’m off to deliver these to my customers,” she said.

  In spite of being so angry, Earwig was interested enough to ask, “Do you go on a broomstick?”

  “Certainly not,” said Bella Yaga. “All my customers are very respectable. They belong to Friends of the Earth and the Mothers Union. They’d have fits if their neighbors saw me arrive on a broomstick! Now stop asking stupid questions and get the floor in here clean. I want to be able to eat my dinner off it when I come back.”

  Earwig watched Bella Yaga open the blank wall at the end of the hall just as if it was a front door and go out. As soon as the wall slammed shut, Earwig raced back to the workroom, calling for Thomas.

  “What is it?” Thomas asked grumpily, struggling out from one of the mixing bowls. “I was asleep. The only time I get any peace is when she goes out.”

  “Yes, I know,” Earwig said. “But just help me for five minutes. What’s a spell for giving someone another pair of hands?”

  Thomas’s foot stopped halfway to irritably scratching his chin. “What a good idea!” he said respectfully. “Let’s look in her book.”

  The only spell in the book that was anything like what Earwig had in mind was called “To Make Extra Growth on a Person’s Body.” “Do you think it might do?
” she asked Thomas.

  “Just about,” Thomas said, crouched over the page. “The real difficulty is how to get a hair of her head to put in the image. She won’t let you near her hair if she can help it.”

  “I’ll get one somehow,” Earwig said grimly. “She keeps saying she wants another pair of hands. She’s going to get them if it kills me!”

  Earwig worked feverishly for the next hour. The spell told her to make an image of the person out of all sorts of unpleasant things. Then you made the extra bits you wanted out of bats’ wings and beeswax and stuck those on, with Thomas standing by as familiar. The thing that made the spell work was a hair from the head of the person you were working on, wrapped around the image.

  Earwig enjoyed making a model of Bella Yaga. She ran to the bathroom from time to time to look at her picture, to make sure she was getting it ugly enough. But she had trouble with the spare pair of hands. They were so tiny. She had to roll them up and start again three times. Then when at last she got them right, she could not decide on the best place to put them.

  “Do you think on her elbows?” she asked Thomas.

  “On her knees?” Thomas suggested. “She—” He stopped and stood up in an arch with all his fur on end. “Hide it! Quick! She’s coming back!”

  Earwig could not hear anything, but she knew animals’ ears were far better than humans’. She did not argue. She stuck the two tiny hands on anywhere in order not to lose them. She scooped up the image—and a big screwdriver with it, because of another idea she had had—and ran with it all to her bedroom. She pushed the model and the screwdriver under her pillow and ran back to the workroom. There was just time to get a broom and start pushing it about before Bella Yaga came in.

  “Do you call that floor clean?” Bella Yaga said. “You don’t get any supper unless you do better than that, you lazy creature!”