Not Just a Witch

Chapter Twenty-Four

There is nothing like country air for mending broken hearts, and it was not long before Heckie and Dora realized that marriage would not have suited them. However hard gentlemen try, they always seem to snore in bed, their underclothes need washing and they throw their socks on to the floor.

And Paradise Cottage was exactly the kind of home the witches had dreamt of. Mr Knacksap had cut the picture out of a house agent’s catalogue and when Heckie and Dora went up to the Lake District to enquire, they found that it was still for sale. So they bought it with the money from both their businesses and settled down to be proper country ladies.

Heckie did not often turn people into animals now; she liked to Do Good more quietly, healing the wounded sheep she sometimes met on her walks, or comforting a cow that was having trouble with its calf. Dora, too, preferred just to help with the stonework of the church, adding noses to chipped statues or building up the missing toes on tombstones. Country people are used to seeing strange creatures and they could take the dragworm out without having to zip him in to his basket, and he and the spirit in the wardrobe had become firm friends.

But though they were so happy in the country, the witches had been looking forward for weeks to Daniel’s first visit, and they had planned a special surprise. He arrived on a beautiful frosty afternoon at the little station beside the lake, but they were not there to meet him. Instead, they sent a friendly taxi driver who took Daniel up the steep winding lane and left him at the garden gate. The front door of the cottage was open, but when Daniel knocked there was at first no answer. He could see two bats hanging upside down on the umbrella stand — the bats that had fallen on Sid in the ballroom, which they had changed back and adopted — but no sign of the witches.

‘Is anybody there?’ he called.

There was the sound of rustling and whispering, and then Heckie’s voice.

‘This way, Daniel. We’re in here!’

Daniel pushed open the door of the dining-room. The table was set for a party, with candles burning in silver holders, and a bright fire danced in the grate.

But it was the witches themselves who really caught Daniel’s attention.

Both of them wore their hats — the hats they had quarrelled about so stupidly a year ago. The snakes were bigger now — the Black Mamba had grown enough to tie in a double bow which hung enchantingly over Heckie’s eyes and nestled on Dora’s serious forehead. The Ribbon Snakes on the crown shimmered and flickered and the King Snakes, with their brilliant red bands, caught the fire from the lamp.

‘We wanted to surprise you,’ said Heckie, holding out her arms.

‘You look beautiful,’ said Daniel. ‘Absolutely beautiful!’ and went forward to hug them both.

But that was not the end of it. When Daniel took his place at the table, he found a small tank beside his plate — and inside it, a hat of his own!

‘We made it for you,’ said Heckie. ‘It’s more of a cap, really, like sportsmen wear.’

‘We do hope that you will like it,’ put in Dora. ‘The colours are suitable for gentlemen, we feel.’

There was a time when Daniel would have been worried about putting his hand into a tank of writhing snakes and placing them on his head — but that time was past. And when he went over to the mirror, he could not stop smiling, for really he had never worn anything that suited him so well. The witches had used young green pythons which brought out the colour of Daniel’s eyes, and in the place where fishermen sometimes stuck feathered flies, the bright head of a cobra flickered and swayed.

With everyone so smart, it couldn’t help being a lovely party. The food was delicious and the tea, of course, was perfect because of Daniel’s present — the machine that dropped exactly the right number of tea-bags into the pot. But when they had eaten, and Daniel had given them the messages from Joe and Sumi, who were coming to stay at Easter, the witches put down their cups and sighed.

‘Tell us, dear,’ said Heckie. ‘How is… he?’

‘Yes, how is… he?’ asked Dora.

‘Well, I haven’t seen him myself because they don’t let children into the prison,’ said Daniel. ‘But Sumi’s mother goes sometimes. She says he doesn’t like the food, but the other prisoners don’t bully him or anything. And they’re teaching him to sew mailbags which must be useful, I suppose?’

For Mr Knacksap had not ended up as a statue or a louse. The witches had planned to do dreadful things to him, but when they found him in the maze, felled by cheese, they had looked at each other and left him where he was. They had both loved him truly and though they knew what an evil man he was, they could not bring themselves to use their magic powers against him.

So they had dropped a note in at the police station, and when the police reached him with their tracker dogs, they had taken him straight to the police station and charged him with attacking Daniel. And when they began to ask questions, they found a lot more things that he had done: bouncing cheques, cheating on his income tax, embezzling — and now he was Prisoner Number 301 in Wellbridge jail.

The rest of the evening passed in a flash and then it was bedtime.

‘Am I sleeping in the room with the wardrobe?’ Daniel asked hopefully.

‘Of course, dear,’ said Heckie.

When he had brushed his teeth and put on his pyjamas and placed the tank with his hat in it on a chair where he could see it first thing in the morning, Daniel opened the window and drank in the cool, fresh country air. He was much happier now in the tall, grey house in Wellbridge. His parents had not forgotten the shock of finding their son in hospital with his head in bandages. They nagged him less and tried to spend more time with him, and he knew that, in their own way, they loved him. But home for him would always be where Heckie was, and as he burrowed down between the sheets, he sighed with contentment because there were days and days of the holidays still to come.

He was just closing his eyes when he heard the wood spirit’s reedy little voice.

‘Don’t chop—’ it began.

And then the dragworm, firm and strict, like an uncle. ‘Now that’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word about chopping. Go to sleep.’

‘Will you tell me a story, then?’

‘Oh, all right.’

There was a rustle while the spirit settled itself among the coathangers.

‘Once upon a time,’ began the dragworm, ‘there was a fierce and mighty dragon.’

‘Like you?’ asked the wood spirit.

‘Like me,’ agreed the dragworm. ‘In the spring this dragon flew up to heaven and in the autumn he plunged down into the sea, but in the winter he lived in a crystal cave high on a bare and lonely rock…’

It was a beautiful story with everything in it that a story should have: knights in armour and princesses and noble deeds. But long before everyone lived happily ever after, Daniel was asleep.