Chapter One

 

Gertie was a witch. At least, she was supposed to be. As her mother had told her at a very early age, she came from a long line of witches. A fairly crooked line maybe, but a long one all the same. Gertie’s mother was a witch, of course.

        ‘So is my mother,’ Ma Grimthorpe told her. ‘And her mother and grandmother were before her. So it goes, back through the ages. The Grimthorpes have always been witches.’

        So, what was wrong with Gertie?

        In truth, Gertie had been named Gertrude. She soon got it into her head however that she really didn’t like the rude bit, so she persuaded everyone to leave it out. This was one of her many whims.

        Unfortunately, poor Gertie had been something of a disappointment since birth. As her eager mother and grandmother had hovered over the new baby, the smiles had left their faces as quick as a flash of lightning.

        ‘She looks…normal…’ Granny Grimthorpe said in disbelief.

        ‘Where’s the Grimthorpe wart?’ asked Ma in shock.

        They all had one, right there in the middle of their rather long chins. (Or in some cases ONE of their rather large, long, chins). To not have a hair or two growing out of it could possibly be forgiven.

        ‘After all, look at Great Aunt Mildred. She hadn’t a hair in sight,’ Granny reminded Gertrude’s mother. ‘Not on her wart, that is. Actually, she hadn’t much on her head either, come to think of it. But that’s beside the point. Anyway, as I was saying, she proved to be one of the most powerful witches in the family.’

        ‘But NO wart?’ Ma added with a sigh.

        This had never been heard of before. Granny rubbed the end of her wrinkled finger over the baby’s smooth chin.

        ‘It’s true,’ she croaked, shaking her head in horror. ‘No wart. Not even a pimple. A blackhead would have done for a start. It could have got worse. But nothing.’

        ‘I don’t think her nose looks hooked either,’ replied Gertie’s mother, with tears in her eyes.

        ‘Give it time,’ consoled Granny, with a grimace. ‘It might grow crooked. It’s too early to tell yet.’

        ‘I hope so,’ replied the now not so proud mum, looking at the pretty little pink bundle in front of her. ‘I certainly hope so.’

        It didn’t.

        Ma and Granny Grimthorpe loved the baby dearly. After all, it wasn’t her fault she was normal. But still, they lived in hope that one day, soon, Gertie would show signs of being worthy to live in their exclusive village.

        The witches mixed with normal people, or mere mortals as they sometimes called them, but a happy witch is one surrounded by her own kind.

        Vile Vale was such a place. Only witches and warlocks lived here. Some ran small shops selling essentials such as food, black cloaks, broomsticks, cauldrons and the like. One enterprising soul had even opened up her own pub, The Cat and Broomstick. ‘To cater for social gatherings and to serve special witches brew,’ she proudly told the villagers.

        All in all, it was a village where everyone felt they belonged. The girls were all little witches. They acted like little witches. They looked like little witches. Apart from Gertie.

        Ma Grimthorpe watched the baby closely, day by day, longing to see the slightest sign of her looking like a special baby should. Gertie’s skin problem was awful, and was the first thing that visitors to see the new member of their coven commented on.

        ‘Oh, I am so sorry,’ Griselda Grott exclaimed. ‘She doesn’t look too good does she? What a healthy colour. Have you tried the usual cures?’

        ‘Yes, many times,’ Gertie’s mum replied sadly. ‘I make all her feeds up with carrot juice. I’ve rubbed her little body with the golden dust from our buttercups made into a paste with goat’s milk, too. Nothing seems to work.’

        Griselda shook her head in sympathy. ‘Never mind,’ she replied, trying to sound consoling. ‘She’ll grow out of it. It’s nothing a good dose of jaundice won’t cure.’

        Gertie didn’t get jaundice. Nor did she turn the becoming shade of yellow that all special babies should be. To the disgust of the village at large, she remained a terrible shade of the palest pink. Shocked stares met her wherever her mother took her out in her special pram. Stares that Gertie’s mum began to meet with anger.

        ‘Oh, let me see the new arrival!’ the villagers would say, then after the briefest of looks would turn to admire the pram, one of the best money could buy. It was a delightful shade of black, shaped like an oval version of a cauldron but with wheels where the four legs would have been. There was a hood made to look like a spider’s web that could be pulled up to protect the baby if it rained. The finishing touch was the realistic spider that dangled from it to keep baby happy, watching it swing to and fro.

        Everyone praised Ma Grimthorpe’s bad taste, but not the baby inside the magnificent pram.

        It was after one such meeting, a quick glance at the baby then open admiration of the pram, that Granny Grimthorpe hissed, ‘Are you sure she’s getting enough of the night air?’

        ‘Yes, of course,’ the troubled mother wailed. ‘Every night when it’s clear I sit moon-bathing with her!’

        They both shook their heads as they stared at poor Gertie, and wondered if there might be some more spells they hadn’t yet tried.

        It wasn’t only her skin either. Gertie’s teeth were a worry too. ‘And wouldn’t you just know it,’ Ma complained to Granny, ‘she smiles when anyone looks in her pram. We can’t even keep it a secret she hasn’t any teeth.’

        Many special babies were born with a full set of lovely sharp pointed teeth. Others got them after a few weeks. This baby took three months. Then only two popped through in the centre of her lower jaw. In horror, Gertie’s mother gazed at the two, white, milk teeth. Flat topped, straight little things. She believed she had never seen anything so horrible in anyone’s mouth before. It was more than she could take.

        As Gertie’s mother wailed and rocked herself, she groaned, ‘Oh, what have I done to deserve this? Why should I be cursed to have a baby that looks so normal? Haven’t I been bad all my life?’ she said to the room in general. She thought of tiny pointed fangs showing in a lovely, yellow, grimacing little face; then stared at the chuckling, happy, pink bundle beside her and cried loudly, ‘Oh I can’t bear the shame, I can’t!’

        As Gertie grew up, she was never loved any less because of her normality. In fact, maybe she was loved more, because Ma and Granny Grimthorpe were so sorry for her. Still, they watched day by day to see if she would begin to look special.

        As the first few years of Gertie’s life went by, it became obvious that the bright pale blue eyes and long blonde curly hair would remain. The Grimthorpes gave up hoping for a change of appearance.

        ‘All her power will be inside,’ said Granny with a nod one day, as she was clicking away knitting a new spider’s web shawl for winter. ‘Yes, that’s what it is. The Great Evil Powers have seen fit to make her LOOK normal, so it will be so much more of a surprise when she shows us how special she really is. You mark my words. You’ll see.’

        The idea passed around the village, and wagging tongues discussed the power that Gertie might soon begin to show them. They watched her picking flowers, befriending butterflies, and smiling at everyone. And they waited. Then they waited a bit longer. Then they got tired of waiting and found someone else to talk about.

 

Gertie was a happy and cheerful child. She sometimes wondered why the other witches stared at her in a funny way, especially Grothilde. Grothilde stared at everyone in a strange way though, because one eye looked you in the face while the other seemed to be fixated on something hovering above your head. Still, something told Gertie she was different. It wasn’t just the fact that all the other children and witches were yellow skinned, hook nosed and warty. It was something more. Something that went deeper.

        ‘Why am I so different, Mummy?’ she asked, but Ma hugged her and said she was destined to be special in her own way.

        ‘Granny Grimthorpe says so, and she has never been known to be wrong,’ she added. ‘Well, apart from the time she convinced Aunt Satana she could swim right across the river if she put her mind to it. Then, half way across Aunt Satana realised she couldn’t. Still,’ Ma continued with a faraway look in her eyes, ‘no one ever talks about that. Everyone is entitled to one mistake.’

        So, Gertie grew up knowing she was different, in a special way. She accepted everything she saw and did as being normal, because it was the only life she knew. She thought nothing of waving their visitors off as they flew over the rooftops on their broomsticks, and sitting out in the moonlight with her mother. They collected herbs and roots together while the dew was still fresh on them, or at exactly the stroke of midnight, or during a storm. Her mother promised one day soon she would explain to Gertie the best times to pick everything. She had already begun her simple education with reading and writing. She taught her how to read spells and curses, and how to write important words like toad, cat, cauldron (that was a hard one), wart, cloak and broomstick. She also began to teach her numbers.

        ‘After all,’ Ma explained, ‘if a spell requires three drops of bat spit, then that is EXACTLY what is needed. Not two, or four. Four can result in the most horrifying results.’

Gertie knew she was thinking of Grothilde, who had once made the near fatal mistake of looking away with her good eye while adding the final ingredient to a spell. Her other eye was too busy watching a bee buzzing overhead to notice the fourth drop. The explosion that followed had blown Grothilde clean out the window, which was fortunately open at the time, and into the holly bush outside. She had felt so silly about it, especially since someone was passing by as it happened.

        ‘Nice day in’t it?’ she had called. ‘Just need a bit of holly for my latest spell. Bit temperamental, that’s all.’

        The other witches would never have found out the truth if Grothilde’s sister, Mona, had not drunk a little too much witches brew in “The Cat and Broomstick” one night and told her good friend all about it. In complete secrecy, amidst guffaws of hysterical laughter. The good friend naturally went on to tell the rest of the village. It had now become a well known conversation starter, ‘Have you heard about Grothilde and the bat spit?’

        It never failed to cause an uproar at any gathering. The only one who didn’t find it funny was Grothilde. She said that on bad days, she could still feel the prickles.

        Gertie had heard the story told many times, and knew Ma placed great value on teaching her to be absolutely sure about her numbers. She could count her fingers and toes at a very young age.

        Gertie’s education about important things continued in this way for the first years of her life. Witches and warlocks in general didn’t attend school in any normal sense, as they could learn all the things that mattered in their own villages. No one from the normal world ever pressed the point by trying to make them attend schools, because they were wise enough to know that you never tell a witch what she must, or must not, do. Not if you want to go away with the same head and body you arrive with, that is.

        The nearest education committee to Vile Vale had long since decided that life was better this way.

        ‘Can you imagine the disruption there would be if those strange children got into our schools?’ they asked one another.

        ‘Our little dears would be frightened to death by them,’ they agreed.

        And so it was, the witches and the normal people lived happily apart, hoping to have as little dealings with each other as possible.

        Only the most special of the witches’ society ever went away to a school for witches and warlocks. The Academy was for the select few who showed great potential.

        The Grimthorpes didn’t have much hope for Gertie on that score.

 

Chapter Two

 

When Gertie reached seven years of age, her mother decided it was time to teach her a beginner’s spell.

        ‘I’m going to teach you how to give people warts,’ Ma said.

        She told Gertie that for some strange reason, mortals didn’t like warts. If a witch was annoyed at one therefore, all she had to do was hold a toad as close as possible to the offending person, and say a few magical words.

        ‘The wartier the toad, the better,’ added Ma.

        Gertie listened intently, eyes glinting. This was very important. Her first spell.

        When the little witch could easily repeat the spell, word for word, her mother patted her on the head and said, ‘Good girl. Now, you go and play in the weed garden.’

        Gertie knew exactly what she had to do. She crept quietly out of the garden gate, which was edged by two huge posts bearing gargoyles staring in both directions. Once through, and thankfully not called back, she headed for the village slime pond to look for the wartiest toad she could possibly find. Gertie made her choice with care, then spent the next half an hour chasing the toad around while getting herself thoroughly wet and muddy. She finally managed to grab the ugly toad as it had grown tired of hopping around, and gripped him to herself.

        ‘Right, toad,’ she explained. ‘I won’t be so different when I at least have some warts like Mummy and Gran, and I guess, almost everyone else in the world.’

        As yet, Gertie had not had any dealings with mere mortals of the wart-less variety.

        ‘I know it will please Mummy,’ Gertie continued, ‘so stay still and stop wriggling, you silly toad.’

            The toad stared at her, maybe unaccustomed to being spoken to. She stroked his head. He pulled away a bit at first, probably not used to being stroked either. He soon settled down and closed his eyes as if he liked it. Gertie had seen witches use toads before. It was usually a case of grab, rub them on someone, and then a toss back into the pond when it was all over with. Being particularly warty, she bet this one had been taken all over the place for such treatment, and kept quite busy. Gertie decided he liked her as he opened his eyes again and sat waiting for what would come next.

        Gertie sat down, concentrating with all her might. With her eyes closed she began to chant.

        ‘Wart of toad, see who I show,

        And on this person swiftly grow.’

        So saying, she gently (so not to hurt him) rubbed the toad over her own face and hands. She then did it again, just to be sure.

        Gertie waited a while and held her breath in anticipation. She carefully put the toad down so he could hop home, still with her eyes closed. She then touched her chin, and nose. They felt as smooth and silky as ever. Opening her eyes slowly, she examined her tiny pink hands, bit by bit. Not a sign of a wart. Not even a pimple. She sighed in disappointment and dropped her eyes to the ground. There sat the toad with a bewildered expression, looking like he felt a great weight had been lifted off him. He was as smooth and shiny as a green plum.

        ‘Oh no! You poor toad!’ cried Gertie, picking him up and nursing him. ‘What have I done to you? Now you are not like your friends either!’

        The toad stared up at her and said ‘croak’.

        ‘Don’t be upset,’ Gertie continued. ‘Would you like to be MY friend?’

        ‘Croak,’ replied the toad.

        ‘Oh Goody!’ Gertie squealed. ‘You can go everywhere with me in my pocket. I’ll buy you nice things to eat, and we’ll be best friends because we’re both so different.’

        ‘Croak,’ said the toad. He clearly knew when he was on to a good thing.

        ‘I’ll call you, Wart,’ added Gertie thoughtfully, ‘because you don’t have any.’

        It made sense to her at the time.

        Wart didn’t accompany Gertie everywhere in her pocket, of course.

        ‘No toad, warty or otherwise, can be happy living in someone’s pocket. They need water to swim in and oozy mud to get between their webbed toes,’ Ma told Gertie when she returned home. Luckily, Gertie didn’t even get into trouble for being so wet and muddy. Her mother seemed quite pleased she had tried to cast her first spell. When Ma learned of the outcome however, she sighed and gave an ‘I might have known’ sort of look. ‘At least you tried,’ she said. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to get it right.’

        Ma suggested the best place for Wart would be the little stagnant pond in their back garden, near to the dandelion border.

        Gertie was afraid Wart might go away if she left him there, but being a nice girl she decided he should be able to make up his own mind anyway.

            She soon stopped worrying. Wart looked delighted to have a pond of his own and to be without all those horrible warts. No one would be grabbing him for spell casting now. It must have been a great weight off his back, in every way. He appeared younger and more agile each time she saw him.

        Gertie came to visit him every day. ‘Wart, it’s me, Wart,’ she called, so that he came over to have his smooth back stroked. The two soon became firm friends. Secretly, Gertie began to feel quite pleased her first spell hadn’t worked as expected.

        It was only when none of her attempted spells worked as they should, that she would seriously begin to worry.

 

Gertie’s next attempt at spells came quite by chance.

        ‘We’ve been invited to Grothilde’s for tea,’ Ma Grimthorpe told her. Gertie loved to go to Grothilde’s, even though she was never quite sure if Grothilde was speaking to her, or to her mother who was standing behind her (and taller). Gertie tried to politely nod in all the right places, just in case. She didn’t want to offend Grothilde because she was quite nice really, despite her wayward eyes.

        The thing Gertie liked best about their visits were not so much the devil cakes (which were absolutely delicious), but Grothilde’s armchair.

        ‘Will the chair be there, will it?’ Gertie asked in excitement.

        ‘Yes, dear, you know it will,’ replied Ma patiently.

        To all who entered the room, it looked like any other armchair. It was upholstered in black, with a delicate scattering of skull patterns on it, and four wooden clawed feet. No, it wasn’t the appearance of the chair that made it out of the ordinary. It was what it did.

        When Grothilde had finished busying about and brought the tea and cakes she, as always, stood wherever she happened to be at the time and commanded in an authoritative voice ‘Chair.’

        Immediately, up the chair rose onto its four clawed feet and scurried across to her. Grothilde began to sit even before it arrived, so sure she was of its knack of getting there before her bottom touched down.

        Gertie loved it, and sometimes tried to make excuses for Grothilde to have to get up a few times so she could watch her sit all over again.

        Gertie knew that Grothilde became wise to this, and rather played up to it. That meant Grothilde had grown quite fond of her which made Gertie happy.

‘Shame about your sweet face,’ Grothilde would say, ‘but you’ll make a real witch one day’.

        Today, after performing her chair act three times for Gertie, Grothilde announced with a wink of her good eye, ‘It’s about time you learned another spell, Gertie, right, Ma?’

        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie, clapping her hands in glee.

        ‘Right, lass,’ continued Grothilde, focusing her eye on the girl. ‘About this chair.’

        ‘Yes?’ asked Gertie, when the older witch didn’t continue.

        ‘Well, I wouldn’t try to charm a chair yet, luv, but you could try something else. It’s only th’animation spells.’

        ‘Thanimation?’ Gertie asked, looking puzzled.

        ‘Animation, dear,’ her mother replied quietly. ‘A spell to make things move when they don’t really have a mind to.’

        ‘Like Gran when she takes her afternoon nap?’ asked Gertie, clearly hoping she was getting the hang of it.

        ‘Well, not exactly,’ her mother smiled, showing her pointed yellow teeth. ‘More like Grothilde’s chair and occasional table.’

        Grothilde had an occasional table in the true sense of the word. The rest of the time it was a small set of steps she used to reach the top shelf of her huge oaken book case.

        Whenever she needed something to put her cup of tea on however, she snapped her fingers and the steps came running and rearranged themselves next to her chair. What she did have to remember was never to snap her fingers when she was up on the steps. If they ever decided to rearrange themselves while she was up there she could easily lose her legs in a flash.

        ‘Or even like Mortella’s door knocker,’ Ma continued to explain.

        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie in glee.

        Grothilde knew the young witch loved Mortella’s door knocker too. It was shaped in the face of a fearsome demon, and when you knocked on the door with it, it bellowed ‘GO AWAY, I DON’T WANT ANY.’

        Mortella had been greatly troubled by travelling salesmen in the past, but this seemed to do the trick. The other witches knew well enough to rap on the wooden door with their knuckles or their broomstick handles, so not to be deafened. The door knocker was particularly for uninvited strangers.

        ‘So, I can make things walk, or talk?’ asked Gertie.

        ‘Easy, luv,’ grimaced Grothilde. ‘All you ‘ave to do is BELIEVE it will work. Use some words if you want to, to focus the power, then point at what you want to move. A bit of rhyming helps. I’ve never found out why. Maybe it’s because you have to concentrate to think of a rhyme.’ She paused and stared at Gertie.

‘Anyway, before you start, be SURE you want it to move, mind you. It’s not that easy to stop some of the beggars once they get going. I once asked a stool to move out of the way. The front door was open at the time because I was spring cleaning by letting a good breeze blow through. The stool moved all right. It set off, through the door, and down the path. Before I had chance to notice because I was too busy trying to see what was going on across the road, it was disappearing out of sight.’ She grinned.

        ‘The last I saw of it,’ she explained to anyone who wondered where her favourite stool had gone, ‘it was vanishing hurriedly past th’end of the street in the direction of the woods. It’s probably still walking,’ she added as an afterthought.

        ‘I’ve not used a stool in a spell since. I’ve heard others say they usually prove to be pretty stupid. They’re not really cut out for much more than sitting in a corner looking wooden.’

        Even though Gertie loved being at Grothilde’s, today she couldn’t wait to get home. Once there, she rushed to her room and looked around in anticipation. Frowning in concentration, she tried to spot something to experiment on. She had been advised to try something small.

        ‘Oh, what can I use?’ she asked, feeling frustrated. Nothing sprang to mind. Gertie sighed, sitting down heavily on her bed. There was a thump as something fell off. Leaning down, Gertie picked up her umbrella and placed it back on the bed. She had reached it out earlier to take to Grothilde’s, but the rain had stopped before they set out. Gertie stared absent-mindedly at the umbrella. It was a special one, shiny black with a wooden handle that ended in the shape of a bat’s head.

        ‘Oh!’ Gertie exclaimed, ‘I know, I’ll make you talk! You can chat happily to me when we go for walks in the rain. You can tell me jokes and make me laugh. Oh we’ll have such fun! You can be my friend.’

        The wooden head stared blankly at her.

 

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 31.12.2009

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