Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

‘Well, that seems to be it,’ said Mr Knacksap when they had walked up and down the corridors and the winding iron stairs without anybody challenging them. ‘Now you just go home and make sure you’re on that train, otherwise you won’t be ready for your Lewis when he comes.’

Dora had hoped he might ask her to stay till he had found his Cousin Alfred. She was curious to see what a little boy with ringlets, who’d let Lewis have a lick of his lollipop, looked like after his time in prison. But the furrier took her firmly to the gate. He didn’t even say thank you, or hail a taxi, or give her a kiss.

But Dora was a humble witch. She turned up her collar and trudged out into the night.

‘Oh, Li-Li, not that one! Please! He looks so young.’

An hour had passed and Heckie sat in a small

cloakroom off the prison yard, facing her first prisoner. She had kicked off her shoe and her Toe of Transformation felt icy on the bare tiles.

‘Surely he can’t have done anything terrible?’ Heckie went on.

The furrier leant forward. ‘He strangled a little girl in cold blood,’ he hissed — and the prisoner looked up, puzzled. They couldn’t be talking about him, surely? He was doing three years for house-breaking.

But Heckie had believed Mr Knacksap. She leant forward and touched the young man with her knuckle — and then even the horrible Mr Knacksap gasped in wonder.

There are no words that can describe the beauty of a snow leopard. Their coats are a misty grey with black rosettes that are clouded by the depth of the rich fur. Their golden eyes stare out of a face that belongs on shields or banners, it is so grave and mythical — and when they move, their long, thick tails curve and coil and circle in a never-ending dance.

Mr Knacksap had retreated behind a chair, his hand in the pocket of his coat where he kept a gun, but Heckie knew her job. She had made the leopard as sleepy as the prisoner had been. The great cat yawned slowly and delicately. Then it loped off, out of the door, through the wire tunnel, and up the ramp to the first lorry which had SIMPSON’S CIRCUS painted on its side.

Everything was going the way Mr Knacksap had planned. The prisoners had been woken and told they were going to be moved to a new jail with better food and more space, and they shuffled out of their cells, half-asleep, giving no trouble. Nat, who brought them to Heckie, didn’t need the sub-machine gun he’d insisted on carrying.

And how Heckie worked! She turned one prisoner and then two and three and four… Sometimes she stopped when a particularly innocent-looking prisoner was brought to her, but always Mr Knacksap would bend over her and hiss some frightful lie into her ear and she would go on with her job.

When she had changed over fifty prisoners, she swayed and her head fell forward. Mr Knacksap had no idea what he was asking her to do. Turning one person into an animal can leave a witch completely exhausted. Turning three hundred… well, witches have died from over-straining themselves like that. But the furrier knew exactly how to get round her.

‘Dearest Hecate,’ he said with his gooey smile, ‘if you knew how happy you are making me!’

That did it, of course. Heckie lifted her head, blew on her throbbing knuckle and got to work again. And by one in the morning, her task was done.

But if Heckie had hoped that Mr Knacksap would thank her or give her a kiss or order a taxi, she, like Dora, had hoped in vain. As the door of the lorry slammed on the last of the leopards, Heckie let herself out of a side door and half limped, half staggered, home.

But though she fell straight into bed, Heckie couldn’t sleep. Her Toe of Transformation ached and stabbed every time she moved, and when her knuckle caught on the sheet, she flinched with pain.

After an hour, she got up and fetched the dragworm and packed him carefully in his tartan shopping basket. What she had decided to do probably wouldn’t work out, but it was her only chance, for familiars never thrive except with witches, and powerful ones at that. It wasn’t as though she was asking anything for herself. Heckie knew that Dora wanted nothing more to do with her — but could anybody turn away something so appealing and unusual as the dragworm?

Dora, too, was overtired and couldn’t sleep, and after a while she gave up trying and put on her boiler suit and went downstairs.

The wardrobe was lying flat in the van that Dora had hired to take her furniture to be stored. Everything else had already gone to the warehouse to wait till Dora knew what she would need in Paradise Cottage. Only the wardrobe was left and as Dora approached, the wood spirit floated out and gave her a shy and wavery smile.

Dora had not wanted a ghost at all, and when the spirit first started floating about among her coathangers, she had been quite annoyed. But gradually she had become fond of it. It still didn’t say much except ‘Don’t chop down the wardrobe,’ but in its own way the thing was affectionate. Dora would have liked to take the wardrobe with her to Paradise Cottage, but Lewis did not care for ghosts. The first time he had come to tea and the spirit had called down from the bedroom, Lewis had leapt from the sofa and dropped his cup cake on the floor.

Dora had found some people to buy the stonemason’s business, but suppose they got annoyed with the poor spirit? Suppose in a fit of anger they did chop down the wardrobe. Dora would never forgive herself.

Could her friend really refuse to take in this doleful ghost? It wasn’t as though Dora was asking anything for herself. She knew Heckie never wanted to see her again. But could Heckie, who had never turned away a stray in her life, refuse to give a home to this poor sad thing?

And Dora climbed into the cab and drove up the hill towards the town.

The cheese wizard went to bed early. Serving in his shop by day and doing magic on his cheeses at night made Mr Gurgle very tired. But on the night of Heckie’s farewell party, he was woken in the small hours by an odd tapping noise. Tap, tap, tap, it went, and then stopped again, and just as he was dropping off, it began once more.

‘Oh, bother!’ said Mr Gurgle, and got out of bed and put on his slippers. The tapping seemed to be coming from right below him, from the cellar. Could his prize cheese be learning to tap dance? Sometimes people who couldn’t walk very well got on better when they tried to move to music.

But when he got down to the cellar, the Stilton lay quietly on its shelf, looking as fast asleep as only a cheese can do.

The wizard scratched his head. Had he imagined the tapping? No, there it was again. Sounding louder, sounding really frantic. But it wasn’t in his cellar, it was in the cellar next door. Which was very strange… Because the shop next door belonged to the furrier, Mr Knacksap, who had gone away to get ready for his wedding to Heckie. Mr Knacksap’s shop should have been empty.

Another burst of tapping… Mr Gurgle went up to the dividing wall and tapped in turn, and the tapping became louder. Something or someone was trapped in there. The wizard slipped on his coat and went outside. The front of the furrier’s shop was locked — the back too. But there was a grating across the top of the cellar steps, out in the back yard. He fetched a stepladder and climbed over the wall, wobbling a little, for he was holding a torch in one hand.

The grating was ancient and rusty, but though Mr Gurgle was weedy, he was also obstinate. He tugged and he tugged and at last it came away and he could make his way carefully down the cellar steps.

At the bottom, curled in a heap, lay a boy. Blood had hardened on his forehead and his face; there was more blood on his hands where he had pounded the rough stone wall.