Not Just a Witch

Chapter Nine

Warthogs are not beautiful, with their hairy grey bodies and messy snouts, but the new warthog which had arrived in Wellbridge Zoo was very popular. Lots of people came and watched it snort and snuffle and wallow in its trough, and the way it ignored the other warthog in the cage, barging into him as though he wasn’t there, made everybody laugh. Perhaps it was the mysterious way the animal had arrived, sent by an unknown person as a gift to the zoo, that made people so interested. It had turned up in the middle of the night with a label round its neck which said MY NAME IS WINNIE. But whatever the reason, it certainly pulled in the crowds.

The dragworm, meanwhile, settled down happily in Heckie’s shop. Everyone made a fuss of him, even the wizards and witches who had sneered, but he was not at all conceited. What he liked best was a quiet life, sleeping in his basket, going for careful walks with enough time to think about which of his legs was which — and having baths. Because of having been a duck, the dragworm loved to be in the water, and he was never happier than when he was sitting in Heckie’s bathtub with Sumi washing his hair and Daniel scrubbing his back.

Heckie was still hoping that he would learn to talk. Familiars often do and it is a great comfort to witches having someone to speak to when they are alone. But though he understood so much of what was said to him, the dragworm didn’t open his mouth except to smile or yawn… or eat.

The dragworm was very fond of eating and what he ate (because he was, after all, a dragon) were princesses. Not real ones, of course; they would have been too big and anyway there weren’t any in Wellbridge, but princesses made out of gingerbread which the children baked for him in Heckie’s oven.

And it was a batch of these princesses which led Heckie to a man called Ralph Ticker who must have been about the nastiest person in the world.

Heckie wasn’t after Ralph Ticker, she didn’t even know he existed; she was after a mugger who had broken the skull of an old lady in a back lane and snatched her handbag. Heckie had decided to turn him into an okapi which is a beautiful animal halfway between a zebra and a giraffe. Wellbridge Zoo didn’t have one, and she thought it would be nice if they did, so she spent the evenings tottering through the back alleyways of Wellbridge with a handbag full of money, waiting for the mugger to come, but so far he hadn’t.

It was half-term. This was usually a bad time for Daniel. Sumi’s aunts and uncles came to visit and she went on outings with her cousins, and Joe spent his time with his father in the zoo. Up to now, Daniel had dreaded the holidays which meant being alone in the tall, gloomy house while his parents went on going to the university.

But now it was Daniel who was the lucky one because he could spend all his time in Heckie’s shop. And it was Daniel who went to the market to buy half a dozen eggs, and Daniel who baked the princesses for the dragworm’s supper.

He was whistling as he took the baking tray out of the oven and put in the currants for the princesses’s eyes and the slithers of glacé cherries for their mouths. They had come out beautifully, with their crowns scarcely wonky at all, and as soon as they were cool enough, he scooped one out and put it on the dragworm’s plate.

The dragworm bounded out of his basket; he put his snout down on the plate. Then he lifted his head and gave Daniel a look. And what the look said was: ‘What exactly is this rubbish?’

Daniel was annoyed. ‘They’re absolutely fresh. I baked them myself. Now please eat up and don’t make a fuss.’

He held the princess up to the dragworm’s nose. The dragworm closed his eyes and shuddered. Then he turned his back on Daniel and climbed back into his basket.

It was at this moment that Heckie came back. She was not in a good temper because as she had been hovering in a dark lane, hoping for the mugger, a kind policeman had come and insisted on seeing her home.

‘The dragworm’s off his food. He won’t eat his princess.’ Daniel was upset. When your parents have told you for years and years that you’re no good, you don’t have much confidence, and Daniel was beginning to wonder if he’d done something wrong.

Heckie frowned. ‘It doesn’t look to me as if he’s sickening for anything. I hope he’s not going to turn faddy.’

She broke off a leg and held it under the drag-worm’s nose. Once again, the dragworm turned away and if he’d been able to speak, there’s no doubt that what he would have said was: ‘Yuk!’

Daniel now took Heckie into the kitchen and showed her exactly what he had used to bake the gingerbread: the flour, the sugar, the spices, the honey…

‘And one of these,’ he said, holding up the carton which had the words FRESH FARM EGGS stamped on the box. ‘But it wasn’t rotten. I smelled it carefully.’

There were five eggs left in the carton. Heckie picked up one and carried it to the window. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ And then: ‘No wonder the poor dear creature wouldn’t eat. For a wickedness detector an egg like this would be quite impossible to swallow.’

Daniel was puzzled. ‘But surely… an egg can’t be wicked, can it?’

Heckie was still holding the egg to the light and shaking her head to and fro. ‘Not wicked, perhaps. But unhappy… full of bad vibes.’

‘An egg!’

‘Why not? An egg is made up of the same things as a person. Everything in nature can suffer — plants… seaweed… Seaweed can be absolutely wretched, you must have seen that.’

So they gave the dragworm some dog biscuits, which he ate, and it was decided that Daniel would go to the market first thing in the morning and ask the stallholder where she got her eggs.

‘Because an unhappy egg means an unhappy chicken,’ said Heckie, ‘and an unhappy chicken we cannot and will not allow.’

The lady who had sold Daniel the fresh farm eggs was helpful. They came, she said, from the Tritlington Poultry Unit, about ten miles north of Wellbridge.

‘They weren’t bad, I hope?’ she said anxiously. ‘I’ve been promised they’re not more than two days old.’

Daniel said, no, they weren’t bad, not like that.

Two hours later, he got off the local train at Tritlington. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and the little station was almost empty. He asked the way to the poultry unit and was directed down a footpath which ran across two fields, and over the river, to some low, corrugated iron buildings.

‘But he won’t thank you for going there,’ the station-master told Daniel.

‘Who won’t?’ asked Daniel.

‘Mr Ticker. The owner. Keeps himself to himself, does Mr Ticker.’

As Daniel made his way down the path, he wondered if he had been wise to come alone. But both Sumi and Joe were helping out at home, and anyway what was the use of being a Wickedness Hunter if you didn’t do anything?

Mr Ticker’s poultry unit was surprisingly large. There were two buildings, each of which looked more like an aircraft hangar or a railway shed than a farm. A high fence surrounded the area and there were notices saying: KEEP OUT and TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Daniel’s heart was beating rather fast, but he told himself not to be silly. Mr Ticker was only a chicken farmer; what could he do to him?

Daniel reached the door of the first shed. There was nobody to be seen: the high door was bolted and barred and above it was another notice saying NO ENTRY.

He walked over to the second building. Here the door was open a crack. He slipped inside.

The light was poor and at first, mercifully, Daniel could scarcely see. Only the smell hit him instantly: a truly awful smell of sickness and rottenness and decay.

Then came the sounds: half-strangled cries, desperate squawks…

But now his eyes were becoming used to the gloom. He could make out rows and rows of wire cages piled from floor to ceiling on either side of narrow concrete corridors that seemed to stretch away for miles.

And he could see what was inside the cages. Not one chicken, but two, packed so close together that they could hardly turn their heads or move. Unspeakable things were happening in those cages. In one, a bird had caught its throat in the wire and choked; in another, a chicken driven mad by overcrowding was trying to peck out its neighbour’s eyes. There were cages in which one bird lay dead while the other was pressed against its corpse. And yet somehow, unbelievably, the wretched creatures went on laying eggs — large brown eggs which rolled on to the shelf below, ready to be driven to Wellbridge Market and make Ralph Ticker rich.

Daniel was turning back, knowing he’d be sick if he stayed any longer, when he heard voices at the far end of the shed.

‘There’s another seventeen birds died in the night, Mr Ticker.’

‘Well, mince ’em up, feed them to the rest and burn the feathers out at the back.’

‘I don’t like to, sir. People have been complaining about the smell. If they call the RSPCA…’

‘They won’t.’ And then: ‘Who’s that up there? Why, it’s a bloomin’ kid!’

Daniel tried to run for the entrance, but it was too late. Mr Ticker pulled down a switch and the building was flooded with light. There was wild clucking from the hens and then the chicken farmer, followed by his assistant, came running up the aisle. Then a hand banged down on Daniel’s shoulder and Mr Ticker’s red face, with its bulbous nose, was thrust into the boy’s.

‘What the devil are you doing in here?’

‘I was… just… looking.’ Mr Ticker was shaking him so hard that Daniel could scarcely get out the words.

‘Did you see the notice? Did you see where it says KEEP OUT?’ With each question he shook Daniel again. ‘You were snooping, weren’t you? You were spying. Well, let me tell you, if you say one word about this place to anyone, I’ll get you. I’ll get your mother too. I’ve got people everywhere. People who throw acid, people with guns… Got it?’

He pushed Daniel forward and the boy stumbled out and ran over the bridge of wooden planks, across the fields… ran, panting, for the safety of the station.

And Ralph Ticker looked after him with narrowed eyes.

‘It’s no good, sir,’ said the assistant when Daniel was out of sight. ‘Even if the kid keeps quiet, they’re beginning to talk in the village.’

Ticker said nothing. Twice before, the inspectors of the RSPCA, those snooping Do-Gooders, had closed down his chicken farms. Once in Cornwall, once in Yorkshire — and the second time he’d been fined two hundred pounds. But what was two hundred pounds — chicken feed, thought Ticker, grinning at his own joke. Each time he’d made a whopping profit before they got wise to him.

‘Time to move on, Bert,’ he said. ‘Scotland this time, I think. You know what to do.’

‘But, Mr Ticker, there’s four thousand chickens here. I can’t chop the heads off—’

‘Oh, I think you can, Bert. Yes, really I think you can.’

‘You’ve got to do something,’ said Daniel, trying not to cry into the ‘nice cup of tea’ which Heckie had brewed him. ‘You’ve got to turn him into a chicken himself and force him into one of those cages and—’ ‘Now, Daniel,’ said Heckie severely, ‘how many times have I told you that the second someone becomes a chicken he is not a wicked chicken, he is a chicken who needs only the best? And anyway, the zoo doesn’t want a chicken, what the zoo wants is an okapi. Now drink up and leave everything to me.’

The next day, without saying anything to the children, Heckie called the wizards and witches to a meeting. She had made a map of the Tritlington Poultry Unit from Daniel’s description and was feeling important, like Napoleon.

‘Now you all understand exactly what you have to do?’ she asked.

‘I’m to flush him out of the building,’ said the cheese wizard gloomily. He was not looking forward at all to changing Mr Ticker into an okapi. He had never seen an okapi and didn’t know if he would like it if he did, and he couldn’t remember a single spell for flushing anybody out of anything at all.

‘And I’m to lure him into the field with my beauty,’ said Madame Rosalia, fluttering her false eyelashes which were made of spider’s legs.

Heckie frowned. ‘I didn’t say anything about luring. What I said was, I want him in the field in front of the shed because I shall need space to work in. Boris will take you all down in the van and park it across the drive so that Ticker can’t escape in his car. And you, Frieda, must stop him crossing the bridge. If he makes a dash for the station, we’re done for.’

‘How?’ said the garden witch. ‘How do I stop him?’

‘How? Good heavens, woman, you’re a witch. Root him to the ground. Wrap his legs in ivy. Just stop him!’

Frieda scratched her head and Heckie reached irritably for the garden shears. Really, having to deal with witches of such poor quality was hard.

‘But what about you?’ asked Madame Rosalia. ‘How are you going to get there?’

Heckie simpered. ‘I shall descend from On High!’

‘Eh?’

‘I shall float down in one of Boris’s hot air balloons,’ said Heckie, waving a hand at the mechanical wizard and feeling more like Napoleon than ever. ‘And remember, not a word to the children till it’s all over. We wizards and witches may be bullet-proof, but not the children.’

Nobody liked the sound of this at all. It was so long since any of them had done any proper magic that they had no idea whether they were bullet-proof or not.

But the cheese wizard had other worries too. ‘Do they bite?’ he asked, as he shuffled with the others to the door.

‘Do what bite?’

‘Those okapi things. I just wondered.’

Ralph Ticker was standing by the great hole he’d bulldozed the day before on the waste ground behind the sheds. He was waiting for Bert to come and chop off the heads of the birds and bury them. Once the hole was covered, there’d be nothing to show those snoopy RSPCA people that there’d ever been hens in the place, and he’d be safely away over the border.

Only where was Bert? He was late. Ticker’s Porsche was parked in the drive, his case was packed — but he certainly wasn’t going to kill four thousand chickens by himself.

What Ralph Ticker didn’t know was that Bert had already done a bunk. He was sick of cutting the heads off chickens for peanuts and he was sick of Ticker. While his employer waited by the death pit, Bert was on the pier at Brighton, playing the fruitmachines.

The wizards and witches, meanwhile, were driving down to Tritlington. It was an uncomfortable journey. They had to sit crowded together on the bench seat in the front because the van had been got ready for the okapi, with padding on the walls and lots of straw. Boris, who had an unhappy nature like most Russians, was worried about Heckie’s hot air balloon. She had asked for a blue one to match the sky and he’d let her have it before he remembered that that was the one he’d been doing experiments on. Boris had always been sure one could invent a hot air balloon that flew on the hot air talked by politicians, but so far he hadn’t managed it — and now he couldn’t remember whether he’d put enough fuel back in the machine.

By the time they reached the poultry unit, everyone was feeling ill-tempered and car-sick. As for Mr Gurgle, he wasn’t just feeling sick, he was feeling extremely frightened. But he had said he would flush Mr Ticker out of the poultry shed, and flush he would. Trying desperately to remember some useful spells, Mr Gurgle crept towards the door.

‘Coo-ee!’ he called. ‘I see you!’

But he didn’t, at first, see anything. He was very short-sighted and the shed was almost dark. Groping his way forward, he felt for his spectacles and put them on — but this was a mistake. Now he could see.

Mr Gurgle was not fond of chickens and had thought he didn’t mind what happened to them, but he was wrong. As he reeled from cage to cage, his stomach heaved and sweat broke out on his forehead. Stumbling on, his foot hit a zinc bucket with a crack like a pistol shot — and a large black rat, carrying a chewed chicken leg, scurried across his path.

It was too much. Mr Gurgle gave a cry of terror and fainted clean away.

After this, things happened quickly, but not exactly the way Heckie had planned.

Ralph Ticker heard the pistol shot, rushed into the shed — and saw a dead man! A gang fighting it out in his buildings! White with fear, he ran to the entrance, meaning to make a dash for his car. But a van was slewed across the road and in it, a man with a long, cruel face. Ticker doubled back — and straight into the arms of a ghastly gangster’s moll!

‘Come into the field, you dear man,’ leered Madame Rosalia. She fluttered her eyelashes so hard that they came off, and the chicken farmer, seeing what he thought was a Black Widow Spider on his trousers, shrieked and bolted for the bridge.

‘You can’t come by! Not here you can’t!’

Ticker stopped dead. A talking bush. A bush with a leafy top, but two fat pink legs — legs which ended in large green Wellington boots. But if Ticker was terrified of a bush in wellies, he was even more frightened of the gangsters behind him. He pushed the bush violently to one side and set off across the bridge.

The station was ahead now, and safety.

Only what was that thing above him? A hot air balloon — and coming down very fast. Dangerously fast. It was going to land on top of him!

Ticker crouched down on the planks, trying to cover his head with his hands. And then, just as it seemed certain that he would be squashed flat, the balloon veered to one side — and landed with a gigantic splash in the water!

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Ticker, forgetting to run. He was the sort of man who loved to see people in trouble.

But even as he leant over and jeered, something was coming up behind him. A bush in boots, which now lifted one leg and kicked him very hard on the backside.

‘Whoosh! Phlup! Guggle!’ spluttered the chicken farmer as he landed in the deep and icy water.

And then a voice, close by, in the river. A kind voice like a nice nannie’s. ‘Don’t worry,’ it said. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll hold you. Just keep calm because I’m swimming right up to you and I’m going to hold you very tight!’

The journey back was not a happy one. Mr Gurgle still felt faint and was lying down in the straw they had put down for the okapi. Boris was full of gloom and guilt because of what had happened to the air balloon, and Frieda’s left foot was cold.

‘All right, that’s enough,’ snapped Heckie. She was soaking wet, but what she was worrying about was what was in Frieda’s Wellington boot which she was holding carefully on her lap. She had filled it to the brim with water, but even the best wellies leak a little, and if the poor dear fish that swam inside it should dry out and die before they reached Wellbridge, she would never forgive herself. ‘So Frieda’s foot is cold, so Rosalia’s lost her eyelashes, so you wanted an okapi. I’ve told you, I can’t go struggling about in the water with a kind of giraffe. They’re poor swimmers, giraffes — everyone says so.’

‘We understand that,’ said Madame Rosalia. ‘No one’s making a fuss because you turned Mr Ticker into a fish. What we don’t understand is why you didn’t leave him where he was.’

‘I told you why,’ said Heckie irritably. ‘Because the river’s polluted. No fish could last in it for more than a couple of days.’

‘Well, I can’t see that it matters. After what he did to those chickens…’

Heckie opened her mouth and shut it again. She was absolutely sick of explaining to people that the second someone was a fish, he was not a wicked fish or a fish who had tortured chickens, he was simply a fish.

Everything had gone well, really. She had phoned the RSPCA and they’d promised to send some men at once to see to the hens, and Ralph Ticker would never harm a living thing again. But it wasn’t much fun sharing adventures with these moaners and grumblers. If she’d had her old friend with her, how different it would all have been!

‘Oh, where are you, Dora?’ sighed Heckie, clutching her watery boot.