Witch's Business (19 page)

Frank could not answer.

“Frank,” said Jess. “I knew it! She can't really! She doesn't know how to. There's no need for us to worry.”

“Oh, isn't there?” said Biddy. “You just watch, Miss Pirie.” She put her arms out and looked to make sure they were watching. “Now,” she said. “What shall it be? Shall I be a nice brown cow? Or a mad bull?”

“Not a cow,” said Frank. “That's too near what you are.” He had not meant to be rude, but he saw Vernon's face and Martin's and Buster's twitching, as if they would laugh if they could.

“An elephant,” said Jess hurriedly. “Be a great huge elephant, Miss Iremonger.”

“Very well,” said Biddy. “Here goes.” She stretched her arms out straighter and began to mutter. The muttering became louder, and louder, until the echoes were filled with it, and Biddy's voice was roaring and trumpeting all round the huge space. She began to swell and grow gray. Her front teeth grew into tusks, and her plaits spread out and became ears. Her nose shot out into a trunk—and, the next second, there was an enormous, trampling elephant.

Its face was like Biddy's. The little reddened eyes were the same, all mean and sharp; and, perhaps because its features were now so big, its face seemed twenty times more unpleasant than Biddy's own. And it had still not finished changing. It grew larger yet. Rough black hair sprouted on its back and shoulders. Its tusks grew longer and ever more pointed, until they seemed as sharp as sickles, and its face became every second more ferocious. At length, it was a thing like a mammoth, which stood shifting its heavy feet outside the circle of children.

Jess saw the cat under the table with its hair on end and its back arched, staring at the elephant. Oh, dear! she thought. I hope it doesn't run away.

Biddy turned her trunk toward Frank and trumpeted, in a great huge voice that sounded as if she were holding her nose, “There! Are you satisfied now, Master Pirie?”

Frank's teeth were chattering. He had known Biddy was evil, but he had not realized how much. In this form, he felt you simply could not trust her, and she terrified him. “Splendid!” he shouted above the echoes. “Show everyone.”

The Biddy elephant nodded and went off on a trample round the ring of children, making as she went vicious sideways swings of her tusks that just missed their helpless backs. They rolled their eyes at her, and most of them went pale. Frank, though he had never felt less like admiring anything, pretended to be pleased.

“Isn't she lovely?” he shouted to Jess.

Jess shouted back through the noise of Biddy's trampling, “Yes, but that's too easy. I bet she can't do something small.”

“Oh, you bet, do you?” boomed the elephant. “How much?”

“Fifty pence!” shouted Frank.

“Fifty pence to be what?” boomed Biddy.

Jess pretended to think. “Something little,” she said. “Like a—like a
mouse
!”

“Done!
” bawled Biddy. The elephant immediately began to shrink and lose its shape. By the time it was the size of a horse it was a smooth gray thing on four legs, though it still had small tusks. When it was the size of a dog, it had lost its tusks and its legs seemed to be bending in underneath it somehow. Still it shrank and dwindled, until all either Frank or Jess could see was a writhing gray blob. Then they lost sight of the blob. There came a tiny scuttering, which made the cat prick up its ears.

A little gray mouse came running between Jenny and Jess and out into the middle of the circle. There it sat up on its haunches and squeaked in a small sharp voice, “Here we are again, my dears. How's that? Have I won my bet?”

Jess looked at the cat. Its eyes were huge, yellow and intense. It was crouching down. Its tail was slashing from side to side, and it was rocking on its back legs, ready to spring.

“Well?” squeaked the mouse, rather crossly. “Don't you believe me? Have I won my bet?”

“I believe you,” said Frank.

The cat stared, but still it did not pounce. Jess saw that they would have to make Biddy run about before the cat would move.

“Are you a real mouse?” she called out. “Can you run?”

The mouse at once put its forepaws to the ground and ran toward her in irregular swoops, just like Biddy usually walked. “Of course I'm a real mouse!” it snapped. The cat lashed its tail and stared, but still it did not spring. The mouse glared spitefully up at Jess, and Jess thought it the most unpleasant-looking creature she had ever seen. Its snout was long and vicious. All the ferocity of the elephant seemed to have got packed and concentrated into its one small face. She shuddered.

“Can you nibble, too?” asked Frank. He hoped Biddy would run over to him, but she simply cocked her head his way.

“Nibble?” she squeaked. “I have extremely sharp teeth, Master Pirie. Shall I chew your knee as a demonstration?”

“If you like,” Frank said bravely.

“No,” said Jess. “Chew Buster's.” Buster rolled his eyes at her indignantly, and Jess made a face to show him it could not be helped. Buster was now the one farthest away from the mouse, and they just had to make it run right across the circle somehow.

“Buster's knee?” said the mouse. “With pleasure.” It turned and darted, swooping and snaky, straight for Buster. Jess gasped. Frank watched the cat. The cat gathered up its back legs and—

They never saw it move. It went too fast. One moment it was under the table, the next it was a blur, and the next moment it was on the mouse. There was a Biddy squeak, a mouse squeak, and a sort of crunching.

As soon as they heard the crunch, there was a jolt. The next thing they knew, all fifteen children were shouting and crammed together into the tiny space inside Biddy's hut.

“Talk about
brains
!” Buster said admiringly.

“Get off my foot,” said Vernon to Stafford.

The hut was far too small to hold them all. It was creaking, giving at the joints. Before anyone was clear what had happened, one of the side walls gave way completely. It swung out from the roof and fell with a slap on the ground, like a big door opening. They were all dazzled by bright sunlight. The cat ran from among their legs with the mouse in its mouth, over the fallen wall, and out.

Jess, feeling terribly stiff, pushed Frankie aside and limped out after it. Everyone streamed after her into a red-and-gold wet morning. The cat, seeing them, ran up the nearest big willow tree. All they could do was to stand staring up at it, as it scrambled from branch to green-gold branch, with the mouse dangling like a bundle of old string from its mouth.

“I'm afraid it's gone,” said Jess.

“Good riddance!” said Martin.

No one bothered with the cat anymore, because the hut collapsed then. First the roof fell in. The black hens and the cockerel rushed out of their petrol drum and ran squawking and flapping away along the riverbank. Then the double door at the back of the hut toppled into the river. The two walls left fell on top of the roof, knocking down the petrol drums on the way. All that was left was a heap of rotten wood only fit for a bonfire. Someone, in fact, suggested setting fire to it, but Buster said it was too damp to burn.

“I suppose,” said Frankie, staring at it, “I suppose it was only held together by magic.”

“Pretty rotten magic, then,” said Frank.

“But you and Jess broke the spell,” Frankie said.

“Or the cat did,” said Jess.

Jenny limped up to Vernon. “Here you are,” she said. “I just had time to put it in my pocket before she looked.” She put her hand in her apron pocket and brought out the tooth. Vernon, grinning all over his face, took the tooth and put it in his own pocket.

“Thanks,” he said.

“It was you, Jenny Adams!” said Ray admiringly. “And you never let on one bit! Like a real good 'un.”

Jenny went very pink. Looking all pretty and pleased, she went over and took Frankie's hand.

“Isn't it a shame!” Jess said to Frank. “She's still limping. We never found the necklace after all.”

Vernon heard and came over to Jess. “Let's look now,” he said. “I bet anything it's here.” Jess saw him look round, toward the hut. Before she could agree, Vernon's eyes grew big and white all round like bull's eyes. He gave a scream of excitement and set off running for the heap of rusty bicycles beside the path. Jess tore after him. She was in time to see him snatch the nearest bicycle chain away and hold it up. As he held it up, it flashed all long and bright, like the green stripe in a rainbow.

“Jenny!
” yelled Vernon.

Jenny pattered up, as white as she had been pink before.

“This it?” said Vernon, and Jenny nodded. “Fair exchange,” said Vernon, and passed the necklace over. Jenny held it in both hands, and her hands wobbled.

“Try walking,” said Vernon. “Go on.”

Everyone stood round while Jenny took a few steps. At first, there seemed to be no difference, but, as Jess said afterward, that must have been because Jenny was so nervous that she could not walk straight. In six steps she was walking properly, with both feet firmly planted. They all cheered. Jenny jumped up and down, bright pink again.

“Put it round your neck,” said Stafford. “Not to lose it.”

So Jenny put the emerald necklace on, and everyone turned to Vernon, shouting to know how he had found it.

“Out of the corner of my eye,” said Vernon. “I saw it shine. When I looked straight on, it was a rusty chain again.” He was very excited. “There was more, wasn't there?” he said to Frankie.

Frankie nodded. “All sorts of things.”

“I bet she's got it all hidden here,” said Vernon. “In the rubbish.”

“Come on!” shouted Buster. “Let's look.”

They began an extraordinary treasure hunt. People ran in all directions through the fresh wet grass, shouting, and pouncing on anything that shone. Frank took the chain off another bicycle, and it was a string of things like glass that shone every color under the sun. He passed it to Frankie, because it was her heirloom. He took off another chain, and it was just a chain. The rule seemed to be that you looked at something else, saw a glitter to one side, and if you picked up the glittering thing, however unlikely, it was something precious.

Buster picked up an old hubcap, and it was a silver plate. Jess, unbelievingly, took hold of a rusty kettle and found it was a bowl to match the plate. Bedsprings became candlesticks, tin cans silver cups, and wire and the works of clocks became brooches and bracelets. The loveliest thing was a necklace of little pearls, which had seemed to be barbed wire. They put everything in a heap on the path, and Stafford stood over it to keep it safe.

People made mistakes, of course. Jenny put her hand on a spiderweb covered with dew, and it was still a cobweb. Jess picked up a tin can, and it was still a tin can.

“All that glitters is not gold,” she said, and threw it away. Then she saw Ray and Squeaky Voice bending over another tin can, and went to see what it was.

“Cor!” Ray was saying. “We can buy no end of stuff with this!”

Jess looked over their shoulders and found that the can was packed full of money. Before she could object, Buster came up behind her.

“Drop it!” he said. “That goes on the pile, too. It's theirs.”

Then everyone began searching cans for money. They found it in heaps. Buster was very strict. He ran about roaring threats and would not let the gang pocket so much as a halfpenny. Jess was very glad he did. What they heaped on the path seemed to them to be a small fortune.

“It must be yours,” she said to Frankie and Jenny. “It's the money Biddy took. Fancy anyone being so mean!”

“At least she didn't spend it,” said Frank.

They were kneeling in the path, trying to count the money, when they heard shouting from the river. Everyone looked round. There were two policemen, followed by a whole line of other people, running across the footbridge. The parents of fifteen children make an awful lot of people, Jess thought, sitting on her heels and watching them, even if some of the children are brothers and sisters. There was Mr. Taylor, and her own father, Mr. Wilkins, Mr. Adams, and a great big flat-nosed man who could only be Buster's father. And there was a whole string more, and some mothers. Jess felt rather tired at the sight of them, and a little like crying.