Eva Ibbotson - Not Just a Witch

‘Whiskers are in this year,’ she would say, ‘and moles are out,’ which annoyed Heckie. If you wanted whiskers you wanted whiskers and if you wanted moles you wanted moles. What was in or out had nothing to do with it.

But if the witches and wizards were not quite what Heckie had hoped for, she felt cheered as soon as she looked at the sofa where the three children were sitting very straight with their knees together and their eyes bright as they took in what was going on.

Heckie had known at once that Sumi and Joe could be trusted, and when Daniel, during break at school, had told them who Heckie was, neither of them had been surprised.

‘I knew,’ said Joe. ‘The way that gorilla tried to hold her hand.’

Sumi too had guessed. As she said, if someone has red hair they’re not going to have a black moustache — Heckie had to have made up the man in the Boothroyds’ garden. But though Joe was excited at once about becoming a Wickedness Hunter and tracking down evil people for Heckie to change, Sumi was not so sure.

‘I don’t know… People have souls, don’t they?’ she’d said, winding her long hair round her fingers. ‘What happens to them when they’re turned into animals?’

‘Animals have souls too,’ said Daniel. ‘That bulldog puppy was bursting with soul.’

But Sumi was still troubled. ‘I think it could go wrong. I think it could all go horribly wrong.’

But in the end, she’d agreed to join the club, if only to make herself useful. And already she had been useful. The mugs of tea that the witches and wizards were drinking all had tea-bags in them, and the biscuits they were eating came from her parents’ shop.

And between the wizards and the children, sat the dragworm in his basket.

Heckie now made a speech. She welcomed everybody and said how pleased she was to see them, and then she told them the kind of person she was looking for.

‘What I’m after,’ she said, ‘isn’t someone who’s just lost his temper and battered his bank manager to death with a hammer. Battering your bank manager to death with a hammer is not good, of course, but anyone can lose their temper and some bank managers are very annoying. What we’re looking for is people who do evil day after day, knowing that they are doing it, and still going on.’

‘Like flushers,’ interrupted the cheese wizard, getting excited. ‘Flushers want changing.’

‘What’s a flusher?’ asked Joe — and Heckie explained that it was a person who flushed unwanted pets down the lavatory. ‘Goldfish, newts — even terrapins. What’s more, flushers often turn into dumpers,’ she said, her eyes flashing. ‘People who dump dogs on the motorway when they stop being dear little puppies. And dumpers we definitely want!’

She then became practical. ‘You must remember that as soon as a wicked person becomes an animal, he has to be protected and cared for. If I turn an armed robber into a wombat he is not a wicked wombat, he is a wombat and has to be taken quickly to the zoo. And I shall need help for that.’

She looked at Chomsky, the mechanical wizard, who nodded and said he had a van which would do.

Madame Rosalia, whose underclothes were showing as she floated in her chair, now said that Heckie was wasting her time. ‘Whatever you do there’s always more and more wickedness in the world. Look at the newspapers! Every day there’s some grandfather starving a child to death in an attic, or a hit and run motorist leaving a boy in the road. There’s always been evil in the world and there always will be.’

For a moment, Heckie looked tired and sad. Witches only live for three hundred years and she knew better than anyone how much there was to do. Then she brightened. ‘I think you forget,’ she said, ‘that I don’t just have all you dear people to help me. I have my familiar!’ She pointed to the drag-worm, still sitting peacefully in his basket. ‘With a familiar like that, how can I fail?’

There was a pause. Then from up in the air, there came a titter.

‘Come, come, Heckie, you don’t think that funny-looking thing is going to be any use?’

‘It would certainly be most unwise to expect anything from… er… that ,’ said the cheese wizard pompously.

‘Poor thing, he’d be better dug in for manure,’ said the garden witch.

It was exactly at this moment that there was a loud ring at the doorbell of the shop.

‘Drat!’ said Heckie. ‘I put up a notice saying SHOP CLOSED. Why don’t they go away?’

But whoever it was didn’t go away. There was another loud peal of the bell.

‘It’s someone with a white Rolls-Royce,’ said Joe, who had gone to the window. ‘An absolute whopper, and there’s a chauffeur driving it.’

Leaning out, the children could see the woman who was ringing the bell so impatiently. She was wearing a fur coat, white like her car, and her hair was piled up into a kind of tower and looked as though it had been sprayed with gold paint.

The bell rang for the third time.

‘Oh, blast the woman! I’d better go and see.’ Heckie opened the door and the dragworm decided to follow her. This was not so simple. His front end bounded out of the basket quickly enough, helped by the whirring of his little wings. But then he stopped and a frown appeared between his shaggy eyebrows. The worm part of him had twenty-four legs, a pair on each of his bulges, and it was not easy for him to decide which one to start walking with.

The wizards and witches tittered, and the children glared at them.

Then all at once, the legs on the third bulge from the end started to move, which set off all the others, and, suddenly looking very happy, the dragworm bounded and slithered down the stairs.

In the shop, Heckie tucked him up behind one of the food-bins so that no one could see him. Then she opened the door and the woman in the white fur coat swept in. She was carrying a birdcage with a cover which she took off. Inside was a large green and orange parrot.

‘Where’s Sam?’ said the parrot, his head on one side.

‘I want you to buy this bird,’ said the woman in a bossy voice.

‘I’m afraid I don’t buy birds from private people. One can never be sure that they are not diseased.’

‘This parrot is not diseased,’ said the woman huffily, and once again the parrot said: ‘Where’s Sam?’

‘Where is Sam?’ asked Heckie.

‘Sam was his owner. He’s gone away and because I am a kind and caring person, I offered to find a home for the parrot. I’ll take fifty pounds.’

Heckie was about to say no, but the parrot edged closer on his perch and she saw his eyes. ‘I’ll give you forty,’ she said.

To her surprise, the woman took it and left.

‘I’ll see you later,’ said Heckie to the parrot, and went back to the meeting.

‘Now,’ she said, when she was back in the sitting-room. ‘Is there anything else—’

She broke off. Daniel and Sumi had both leapt to their feet and run towards the door.

‘Oh, what has happened ?’ cried Daniel.

The dragworm had managed to get back upstairs but there was something terribly wrong with him. His breath came in rasping gasps, his wings were limp and the hair on his topknot had turned quite white! Worst of all was his wormy end. It had been smooth and pale with gentle pink splodges. Now all the splodges were horribly inflamed, raised up from the skin like boils, and the centre of every one was full of pus.

Up to now, Heckie’s familiar had never made a sound, but as they carried him back to his basket, his head fell back and from his poor, sick throat there came a tragic and despairing: ‘ Quack !’

Nobody laughed. Even the witches and wizards who had jeered knew that when people are in trouble they often go back to their childhood, crying or calling for their mothers. The dragworm had gone back to his early life — the life when he was a duck.