Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

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.