Nathan Reed - The Last Task

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Keep Reading

Storyteller’s Note

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Jessica had had a busy year training to be a witch with Miss Strega. It goes without saying that she was a modern witch; she did not have a greasy old cape and a hooked nose, she did not conjure up nasty smelling brews (except sometimes, for a laugh) and she always flew her broom the Right-Way-Up – with the twigs in front.

“The best thing about being a witch,” Jessica was thinking as she zipped over the rooftops, “is all the stuff you get. As well as my broom and my helmet and my flying licence, I have my lucky pebble, my wand, my long-eared owl’s feather for mingling brews …”

“Hu-eet,” whistled Berkeley indignantly, poking her head out of Jessica’s cape pocket.

“And you, especially, my wonderful mascot. I was just about to say that.”

She stroked the nightingale’s feathery neck and then, as Miss Strega’s chimney pots came into view, flicked the descend twig of her broom, swooped down and made a perfect landing on the roof of the hardware shop.

“The other best thing about being a witch,” she told Berkeley, “is knowing Miss Strega. Not that she doesn’t make me do some very hard things, like switching myself into a cat or vaulting over the moon. I wonder what I will have to do next.”

She was just about to clamber through the attic window when she heard voices in the shop below.

“That’s odd. Miss Strega’s customers don’t usually come until later.”

She glided over to the attic trapdoor which was directly above the shop counter, opened it just a smidgen and peered down.

Miss Strega had a visitor.

All that Jessica could see at first was the hem of the visitor’s cape and a pair of very high shoes, with heels as slender as needles.

“Oh!” gasped Jessica. She had once met someone who wore shoes like that.

She opened the trapdoor a little more.

Now she could see a tartan triangle of scarf draped over the shoulders of a smart glossy cape.

“Tartan? Could it be …?”

She opened the trapdoor a little more.

The visitor was wearing a floppy black velvet hat secured with a long wand-shaped hatpin with a silver thistle at the tip. Even though she could not see her face, there was no doubt who she was.

“Heckitty Darling!” Jessica shouted. “You’re back.”

She flung the trapdoor wide open and whooshed down into the shop.

Heckitty Darling – for it was indeed the glamorous Scottish actress witch who had presented Jessica with her flying licence – turned, theatrically threw her cape over her shoulder and held out her arms.

“Jessica sweetikins!” she boomed, as if she were on a stage in front of hundreds of people, and not in a tiny little shop on the High Street. “You’re looking divine!”

Then she lowered her voice and whispered confidentially. “I was just telling Miss Strega that there has been a break-in at our Coven Garden headquarters. The Witches World Wide guild is up in arms. Our greatest treasure is,” Heckitty’s voice wobbled, “gone!”

Felicity, Miss Strega’s ginger cat, who was snoozing in her usual place on a pile of Spell Books on the counter, opened one orange eye and gave Jessica a wink.

“Our greatest treasure stolen?” said Jessica, looking from Felicity to Heckitty to Miss Strega and back again. “But what is our greatest treasure?”

Miss Strega hopped off her stool and picked up a large ladle. “Why don’t I pour us all a nice stiff brew first and then Heckitty can begin at the beginning?”

“Have you ever heard,” Heckitty began, when they had all sat down with their cups of joobious juice, “of the Feet First Fund?”

Jessica shook her head.

“No? Well, it’s an organisation that finds and preserves shoes that have made history or that belonged to important people. It was set up by the Literary and Historical Association of the Witches World Wide guild. I am the Head Finder and Seeker.”

Jessica and Miss Strega exchanged a look. The look meant Heckitty Darling is off her rocker , but Heckitty didn’t notice. She carried on.

“You have heard of the old lady who lived in the shoe (she had so many children she didn’t know what to do)? Well, we have that shoe. It was our first acquisition. We have one of Cinderella’s glass slippers. We have Puss in Boots’ boots and Pinocchio’s clogs; we have the bootees that belonged to the Wicked Witch of the West …”

Miss Strega replaced her cup on her saucer very noisily. “Yes, yes, my dear Heckitty. We get the idea – but has this got anything to do with the burglary?”

Heckitty looked miffed. Like all actresses, she was a bit of a show-off and expected everyone to listen to her all the time. She sighed.

“Go on,” said Jessica. “I think the Feet First Fund sounds brilliant.”

Heckitty Darling smiled prettily and moved her stool closer to Jessica’s.

“The treasure, the absolute pearl of our collection, is a pair of shoes that had once belonged to that wonderful witch, the inventor of the Modern Witch’s Right-Way-Up broom, dear Dame Walpurga of the Blessed Warts.

I discovered them at the bottom of Walpurga’s well myself, you know, despite what Professor Cobbleroni says.”

“Who’s Professor Cobbleroni?” asked Jessica.

“Oh, she runs that ridiculous Fancy Footwear Foundation. Anyway, I had hardly put the Dame’s shoes on display when they disappeared! I turned my back and puff! – they were gone.”

“But who took them?” asked Jessica.

Heckitty Darling raised her shoulders and let them drop. “We’ve no idea. We had had a lot of witch school tours that day so at first I suspected a prank. I tried any number of anti-vanishing spells to make the shoes reappear, but nothing worked. Then we organised a witch hunt. Oodles of witches took part, but the Dame’s shoes were nowhere to be found.”

Heckitty Darling’s voice trembled again. “I’m afraid they may be gone for good.”