Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle (13 page)

“As I made a cup of tea
, Mrs Grizzle said, ‘By lunchtime, I’ll learn you how to read. And I’ll hear your times tables, till you know them off by heart.’

“‘Do I have to?’

“‘Once upon a time, there was a young witch who couldn’t be bothered learning her times tables by heart,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘She was supposed to maintain the spell that keeps the world spinning.’

“‘What happened?’

“‘She mucked up her multiplication. Instead of spinning, the world ran down, fell over, and went flat. It’s been flat ever since. The people on the bottom had to grow legs out of their heads and walk around upside-down, which is why Australians look funny. All because one witch couldn’t be bothered learning her times tables by heart.’

“‘What’s that?’ The head of a monster pukeko filled the kitchen window. ‘Click-clack!’ went its iron beak, ‘snick-snack!’ its scarlet teeth.

“‘Just my glass eye reporting.’ Mrs Grizzle pressed the top button of her dress, and the monster pukeko disappeared. Mrs Grizzle pressed the button again, and it reappeared. She pressed the next button down, and the hay paddock appeared in the window. There were the monster pooks cutting the hay, as I’d ordered them.

“‘It’s their picture,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘My glass eye transmits whatever it sees and shows it on the window. It works on mirrors too. What they’ll call screens in a hundred years’ time.’

“‘What’s its name?’

“‘Television – something I invented one wet weekend when I had nothing better to do.’

“‘You could make a fortune with it! Turn it on again?’

“‘Television can be dangerous, Brunnhilde,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Anyone who watches more than five minutes becomes a crashing bore.’

“‘But you watch it!’

“‘I’m different,’ said Mrs Grizzle.

“‘Wouldn’t it be a wonderful tool in schools?’

“‘Schools are boring enough as it is!’ Mrs Grizzle let me watch the monster pukekos on television for another minute, pressed the top button on her dress, and switched it off.

“‘I want to watch telly!’ I whined.

“‘What did I say?’

“‘There’s nothing to do here. Nothing ever happens.’

“‘You’ve watched too much television,’ cried Mrs Grizzle. ‘It’s turning your brains to porridge. Quick! Read this spell aloud.’ She stuck a book in my hands.

“‘“Put four handfuls of flour in a basin and warm in front of the fire.”‘

“‘Do it!’

“I measured the flour into the basin and set it in front of the fire.

“‘What does it say next?’

“‘“Take some fresh yeast.” But, I’m reading,’ I said, ‘and I never learned how!’

“‘Quick!’ cried Mrs Grizzle. ‘Where’s the yeast? Now, what does the spell say?’

“In no time, she had me making dough for bread. ‘Learning to read has saved you from becoming a crashing bore,’ she said. ‘Lucky we had that book of spells handy.’

“‘It’s my mother’s old recipe book.’

“‘You’re still a bit of a bore,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘What makes dough rise?’

“‘Yeast.’

“‘What makes yeast work?’

“‘Magic?’

“‘Exactly! Magic makes all recipes work. Recipe is just a boring word for spell.’ Mrs Grizzle put down her cup of tea and looked at me sideways. ‘What makes water come out of the tap?’

“‘It runs down the pipe from the creek up the hill.’

“Mrs Grizzle took me outside and pointed to where the pipe came out of the ground and climbed up inside the house to the tap. ‘Any bore can see the water runs downhill. But what makes it climb up the pipe to the tap?’

“‘Magic?’

“Mrs Grizzle nodded. ‘There’s more around than people think.’

“Back inside, I looked at the bread-making spell. ‘Take two teaspoonfuls of salt,’ I read aloud.

“‘Salt’s bad for your heart,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Put in gunpowder.’

“‘Won’t it blow up?’

“‘That just improves the texture. Now, mix in some milk, and knead the dough.’

“‘Need the doe?’

“‘I said K–N–E–A–D! Not N–E–E–D. And D–O–U–G– H, not D–O–E! Read the spell carefully.’

“I kneaded the dough till it was springy, wrapped it in a clean tea-towel, and put it into my bed to rise, as the spell said.

“‘That’s okay as long as your bed’s still warm. Otherwise you’re better putting it into the hot water cupboard,’ said Mrs Grizzle.

“‘You learned how to fly and how to spell this morning. ‘You measured and mixed the flour, the yeast, the gunpowder, and the milk, and learned some maths! Most important, you learned how to read!’

“‘What if I forget?’

“‘Learning to read’s like seeing an elephant riding a bicycle. You never forget it.’

“Mrs Grizzle got her glass eye off the gatepost, and we drove the monster pukekos to drink in the swamp. I counted them back through the gate into the paddock.

“‘There’s two missing.’

“‘How do you know?’ asked Mrs Grizzle.

“‘Because I counted four hundred and sixty-eight into the swamp and only four hundred and sixty-six came back. Four hundred and sixty-six from four hundred and sixty-eight leaves two.’

“‘You’ve just learned how to take away! Run back to the swamp and have a look for a couple of hollow reeds.’

“Sure enough, two hollow reeds stuck out of the water. I held my fingers over their ends, and two monster pooks came up red-faced and spluttering for air.

“‘Brunnhilde can read and do maths,’ Mrs Grizzle told them. ‘She can subtract and extract your teeth. She can divide you in half, turn you into vulgar fractions, and decimate you!’

“The monster pooks cowered. ‘Whack-a-pukeko!’ they mumbled and hurried back to work.

“‘They’re looking lizardy, all right,’ Mrs Grizzle said. ‘It’s a bad sign when monster pooks go reptilian. Come on, it’s time we went down to the jetty and met Bonny and your mother.’

“But there was no sign of the scow, just smoke drifting above the the Great Waharoa Swamp. And somewhere across that stagnant water, a horse neighed, a little girl screamed, and something flashed.”

“What’s happened to dear little Euphemia?” gasped Daisy

“Is Bonny all right?” asked Lizzie, who loved horses.

“Can we have a look at our treasure?” asked Jessie.

Aunt Effie held her nose, took a gulp of Old Puckeroo, rolled it around in her mouth, swallowed, smacked her lips, and went on.

“S
MOKE BILLOWED ACROSS
the Great Waharoa Swamp. ‘That flash we saw, it must mean the scow’s on fire!’ I yelled.

“‘I’m afraid so.’ Mrs Grizzle was always cool in a crisis. A boom shook the air, and the swamp wobbled.

“‘They’ve blown up!’

“‘Noise takes longer to travel than light. We saw the flash of the explosion before we heard the boom. We can still hear your mother’s screams. Therefore she must still be alive.’ Mrs Grizzle was always logical. ‘Why are you flapping your arms?’

“‘I’m trying to fly and save my mother, but my feet won’t leave the ground!’

“‘We’re standing on the jetty. Magic doesn’t work too well over water.’ Mrs Grizzle leapt into a punt filled with barrels and tied beside our jetty. There wasn’t time to throw them over the side, so we stood on the barrels and poled the punt across the swamp towards the burning scow.

“Bonny had the fire under control. Little Euphemia was running up and down the deck, screaming and getting in the intelligent horse’s way. I cuddled her as Bonny threw a bucket of water over the last flames.

“‘We learned French today,’ Euphemia told me.

“‘It wasn’t a real explosion, just a stink-bomb going off,’ Bonny said. ‘One of the primer boys put it in your mother’s school bag to show how much he loves her.’

“My mother sighed and looked proudly at her blackened school bag. She sat on my knee, ate a biscuit, and drank a glass of the milk I’d taken in case she was hungry. While Bonny knotted and spliced burnt ropes, and got us under way, my mother chattered about school and her new friends.

“‘Was the Inspector at school today?’

“‘He had to ride up to Matamata Primary School,’ said Euphemia. ‘The primer children were naughty.’

“‘Where’s your nice new skipping rope?’

“‘The School Inspector borrowed it to hang a couple of the Matamata primers – “…
pour encourager les autres
.” That’s French, and it means, “to encourage the others”.’

“‘He can’t hang children just because they’re naughty!’

“‘Peggy Carter said he was going to hang them and nail them on the blackboard
pour encourager les autres
.’ My dear little mother nodded bloodthirstily and drank her milk.

“‘He’s nice, the School Inspector. He remembers my name and pats me on the head. He said to say hello to my mother for him.’

“‘But I’m your daughter, Brunnhilde.’

“‘I’d never call a daughter of mine Brunnhilde!’ said my mother. ‘Besides, you’re far too big to be my daughter.’ She yawned. ‘I want another biscuit.’”

“‘You needn’t think
you’re going to go filling yourself up on biscuits,’ I told my little mother. ‘You won’t have any room left for your tea.’

“Euphemia tried to stamp her foot, but yawned again: she was just a little girl and she’d had a big day. I smiled at her, and Bonny smiled, too, as she steered the scow across the swamp. And just then, Mrs Grizzle swore, ‘Malediction!’

“I made Euphemia comfortable on a heap of old sails, her head on her fire-blackened schoolbag for a pillow. ‘Poor little thing!’ I said, and tiptoed to the bulwarks to see what had caused Mrs Grizzle’s intemperate language.

“A grinning fence of claws and red teeth as long as swords surrounded us: crocodiles standing on their tails out of the water and flapping their front feet like wings.

“I glanced at my little mother smiling in her sleep. So pretty, so helpless! There was a click as Mrs Grizzle clapped the telescope to her glass eye. ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ she said. ‘They’re pookackodiles!’ At the word, Bonny shivered till her shoes rattled.

“‘What’s a pookackodile?” I asked.

“‘It’s a mutation that happened when an irresponsible scientist played around with DNA.’ Mrs Grizzle looked grim.

“‘What’s DNA?’

“‘Some people think it means deoxyribonucleic acid, but it’s really short for Dinosaur. D, N, and A: DNA. Well, this irresponsible scientist used AI to cross a dinosaur crocodile with a monster pukeko.’

“‘What’s AI?’

“‘Artificial insemination. After cross-breeding them, he cloned their eggs, what’s called GM.’”

“‘What’s GM?’

“‘Don’t you know anything, Brunnhilde? GM stands for Genital Modification. The cloned eggs hatched out with toothed jaws and armoured wings – the first pookackodiles. Pookackodiles can swim through air and fly under water.’

“‘What about my little mother?’ I screamed as the circle of flapping pookackodiles closed on us. ‘What about some magic?’

“‘I told you magic doesn’t work over water. I should have recognised what my glass eye was trying to tell me on the screen this morning.’

“‘What?’

“‘It showed the monster pooks were growing long teeth like crocodiles’. I saw them, but only thought they’d cut the hay faster. It just goes to show no good can come of television.’

“‘Is there nothing we can do?’

“‘See their teeth? Scarlet as a pukeko’s, but long as a crocodile’s. Armour plate instead of feathers, and poisonous stings on the end of their scaly tails. We can do nothing….’

“‘But you said witches can do anything.’

“She fixed me with her green glass eye. ‘This is no time to be smart, Brunnhilde. Let us die bravely – fighting the pookackodiles with our bare teeth.’

“‘I don’t mind dying, but my little mother’s got her whole life ahead of her.’ I snatched up Euphemia and kissed her. She belched, and her breath smelled of hokey-pokey ice-cream. She must have been to Mrs Doleman’s shop and spent her threepence on the way home from school, the dear little thing.

“‘Courage, Brunnhilde!’ said Mrs Grizzle. I tucked Euphemia under my arm and drew my father’s sword. The pookackodiles flapped closer.”

“I don’t think I want to hear any more,” said Lizzie and stuck her fingers in her ears. Jessie put her hands over her eyes, and Casey and Jared hid their heads under the eiderdown.

“You can’t leave dear little Euphemia to be eaten!” shrieked Daisy.

Aunt Effie ignored them.

“‘I
F ONLY WE HAD SOME GUNPOWDER
,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Pookackodiles can’t resist it. It’s what you call their Achilles’ Heel.’

“I thought of the barrel of gunpowder under the kitchen table at home. My little mother slept trustingly in my arms. Golden ringlets clustered at her temples. She must have licked her ink pencil at school: I could see the blue stain on her adorable little pink tongue.

“The pookackodiles flapped their steel wings, wagged their poisonous stings, and gnashed their scarlet teeth. They stuck out their forked tongues, licked their lizardy lips, looked at my little mother, and dribbled copiously.

“Mrs Grizzle stuck her head inside the
Betty Boop
’s cannon. ‘Empty,’ she said.

“‘I know where there’s some gunpowder!’ The pookackodiles were so close, they heard me. Their dribble turned red as they lashed the water with their stings.

“Euphemia woke and held out her dear little hands to them. ‘Pretty birdies!’ she cried.

“‘Those barrels in the punt, Mrs Grizzle …’

“Mrs Grizzle jumped down into the punt. ‘Good thinking, Brunnhilde. They’re full of gunpowder!’

“‘Euphemia wants to play with the pretty birdies,’ my mother said.

“‘Those are pookackodiles,’ I told her, ‘genitally-modified dinosaurs. They’re going to eat us.’

“‘See the pretty birdies smile?’

“‘They are not smiling. They are scoffing their teeth against each other.’

“‘Why?’

“‘To sharpen them.’

“‘Why?’

“‘All the better to eat you with.’

“‘Naughty Brunnhilde!’ said my mother.

“Mrs Grizzle roped the barrels together and rolled them over the side of the punt as Bonny steered the
Betty Boop
in a circle inside the great circle of pookackodiles. I tied the two ends of the rope together, and Bonny sailed us back into the middle.

“The pookackodiles opened wide their enormous nostrils. Roaring in a feeding frenzy, they paddled up to the ring of floating barrels, seized them in their front feet, and tipped the gunpowder down their throats.

“‘Naughty Mrs Grizzle!’ my mother called. ‘Watch out, pretty birdies, she’s going to –’ But Mrs Grizzle clapped her hand over my mother’s mouth.

“‘Climb the mast, Brunnhilde. Ow!’ she shouted, as my mother bit with her dear, sharp, little teeth.

“I ran up the ratlines, swarmed up the topmast, and teetered on its very tip. I kept my balance by reciting all the spells Mrs Grizzle had taught me, and they worked – perhaps because I was so high above the water.

“The pookackodiles fought for the last barrel, shook their terrible claws, and opened wide their terrible jaws. I looked right down their brazen gullets and saw the gunpowder heaped inside their bellies.

“‘Gnash your teeth, Brunnhilde!’

“A huge pookackodile swung itself up on the bowsprit, clambered along the deck, and reached – dribbling – for my mother. As she held out her little arms to it, I gnashed my teeth till sparks showered. They burned holes in the sails, smouldered in Mrs Grizzle’s red hair, singed my mother’s school uniform, went down the open mouth of the pookackodile, and the gunpowder blew it to bits.

“Sparks flew all over the swamp, and pookackodiles exploded. Some flew under the water and imploded like depth-charged submarines. Some blew to bits as they swam through the air. Steel feathers stuck through the mast like arrows. Red teeth rattled on the deck.

“Bonny tied up the scow and swept the pookackodile teeth into a pile. ‘They’ll bring a good price,’ she said. ‘The school dental nurse makes them into false teeth and sells them to Japanese tourists. They say they are a great improvement on their own.’

“‘Naughty Brunnhilde for blowing up the pretty birdies!’ my mother cried. ‘Euphemia’s hungry!’

“‘Let me help Bonny stow the sails,’ I said, ‘and I’ll get you something.’

“‘Euphemia wants something now!’

“‘I’m being as fast as I can.’

“‘Waah!’ My little mother got herself into a paddy. She screamed, ran on the spot, and held her breath till her face went red. She howled and danced with rage as we furled the sails. I picked Euphemia up under one arm, stepped ashore, and carried her kicking all the way to the house. When she bit me, I bit her back.

“‘You may be my mother, but I’ll smack your bottom if you don’t behave yourself: trying to embarrass me in front of people!’

“‘You’re not allowed to smack little children,’ she screamed.

“‘You’re not my child. You’re my mother, so I can smack your bottom if I like.’

“She opened her mouth to scream again, and I popped in a piece of cake. Her eyes bulged, and she swallowed.

“‘Euphemia wants more cake,’ she said. ‘Pretty please.’

“Mrs Grizzle came in and said, ‘Those wicked pookackodiles scared the cows so they won’t let down their milk. They chased the chooks and put them off laying. They even pulled down the clothesline and threw the clean washing in the mud.’

“‘Sit down,’ I said, ‘and I’ll make you a nice cup of gunpowder tea.’

“Then Bonny poked her intelligent face around the door. ‘The decent old man who collects the cream has just been eaten by a crocodile,’ she said.”