Not Just a Witch

Chapter One

When people quarrel it is bad, but when witches quarrel it is terrible.

Heckie was an animal witch. This didn’t mean of course that she was a witch who was an animal; it meant that she did animal magic. Her full name was Hecate Tenbury-Smith and she had started when she was still a child, turning the boring noses of her mother’s friends into interesting whiskery snouts or covering the cold ears of traffic wardens with thick black fur. She was a kind girl and only wanted to be helpful, but when she gave the swimming bath attendant red spots and a fishy tail so that he could pretend to be a trout if he wanted to, her parents sent her away to a well-known school for witches.

It was a school for making good witches. The motto the girls wore on their blazers said WITCHES AGAINST WICKEDNESS and the headmistress was choosy about whom she took.

Heckie was very happy there. She made a lot of friends, but her best friend was a stone witch called Dora Mayberry. Dora wasn’t made of stone, but she could turn anything into stone. When Dora was still in her high chair, she had looked at a raspberry jelly out of her round little eyes and it turned into something you couldn’t cut up even with a carving knife. And when she started turning the toothpaste solid in its tube and filling the fridge with statues of pork chops, she too was sent away to school.

It takes thirty years to train a witch and during all that time, Heckie and Dora were friends. Heckie was tall and thin with frizzy hair, pop eyes and teeth which stuck out, giving her an eager look. Dora was squat and solid and had muscles like a footballer because it is heavy work dealing in stone. They shared their secrets and got each other out of scrapes, and at night in the dormitory they talked about how they were going to use their magic to make the world a better place.

By this time Heckie could change any person into whatever animal she pleased by touching him with her Knuckle of Power (though for the best results she liked to use her Toe of Transformation also) and Dora could turn anybody into stone by squinting at him out of her small round eyes. And then, when they had been friends for thirty years, Heckie and Dora quarrelled.

It happened at the Graduation Party where all the witches were to get their diplomas and get ready to go out into the world. The party, of course, was very special, and both Heckie and Dora went separately to the hat shop kept by a milliner witch and ordered hats.

Obviously a witch on the most important day of her life is not going to turn up in a straw hat trimmed with daisies or a bonnet threaded with sky-blue lace. Heckie thought for a long time and then she ordered a hat made of living snakes.

The snakes were mixed. The crown of the hat was made of Ribbon Snakes most delicately woven; edging the brim were King Snakes striped in red and black and a single Black Mamba, coiled in the shape of a bow, hung low over Heckie’s forehead.

Heckie tried it on and it looked lovely. The snakes hissed and spat and shimmered; the flickering tongues made the hat marvellously alive. Snake hats are not only beautiful, they are useful: when you take them off you just put them in a tank and feed them a few dead mice and a boiled egg or two and they last for years.

The day of the party came. Heckie put on her batskin robe, fixed a bunch of black whiskers on to her chin — and lowered the hat carefully on to her curls. Then she set off across the lawn to the tent where the refreshments were.

But what should happen then? Coming towards her was her friend Dora — and she was wearing exactly the same hat!

It wasn’t roughly the same. It was exactly the same. The same Ribbon Snakes heaving and hissing on the crown; the same King Snakes writhing round the brim; the same poisonous Mamba tied into a bow!

The two witches stopped dead and glared at each other and the other witches stood round to see what would happen.

‘How dare you copy my hat?’ cried Heckie. She was really dreadfully upset. How could Dora, who was her best friend, hurt her like this?

But Dora was just as upset. ‘How dare you copy my hat?’ she roared, sticking out her jaw.

‘I chose this hat first. I am an animal witch. It is my right to wear a hat of living snakes.’

‘Oh, really? I suppose you’ve heard of my great-great-great-grandmother who was a Gorgon and had serpents growing from her scalp? It is my right to wear living snakes.’

But showing off about your relatives never works. Heckie only became angrier. ‘The only thing you’ve got a right to wear on your head is a bucket,’ she shrieked.

This was how the quarrel started, but soon the witches were throwing all sorts of insults at each other. They brought up old grudges: the time Dora had turned Heckie’s hot-water bottle to cement so that Heckie woke up with her stomach completely squashed. The time Heckie borrowed three warts from Dora’s make-up box and got cocoa on them…

From shouting at each other, the witches went on to tug at each other’s hats. Dora tugged a Ribbon Snake out of Heckie’s brim and hung it on a laurel bush. Heckie pulled at the end of Dora’s Black Mamba and undid the bow. And all the time they screamed at each other as though they were spoilt little brats, not respectable middle-aged witches.

Ten minutes later both their hats were in ruins and a friendship which had lasted all their schooldays was over.

The witches had planned to go and live close together in the same town. They were each going to buy a business where they could earn their living like ordinary ladies, but all their spare time would be spent in Doing Good.

Now Heckie went by herself to the town of Wellbridge, but Dora went off to a different town.

It was without her best friend, therefore, that Heckie began to try and make the world a better place.