said the Assistant Matron, “this means that the baby could be a witch as well.”
Mrs Briggs said, “Nonsense!” again. “There are no such things as witches.”
Mrs Briggs had never told Earwig about the note, nor that her name really was Earwig. She thought it was probably a bad joke. Earwig was not a real name. So Mrs Briggs had written “Erica Wigg” firmly on Earwig’s birth certificate and kept her mouth shut about the rest.
Meanwhile Earwig was making herself look as unlovable as she could. Custard was edging away from her and even Mrs Briggs was thinking what a pity it was that Earwig’s charming nature never seemed to show when it mattered. And the strange couple were looking as if they thought Earwig was quite hateful.
The woman turned to the nine-foot man and looked up at him from under her red hat. “Well?” she said. “What does the Mandrake think?”
“I think probably,” he answered in a deep, angry voice.
The woman turned to Mrs Briggs. “We’ll take this one,” she said, just as if Earwig was a melon or a joint of meat on the market.
Mrs Briggs was so surprised that she rocked back on her feet. Before she could recover, Earwig said, “No she won’t. I want to stay here.”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Mrs Briggs. “You know how much everyone here wants to see you living with a real family, just like other children.”
“I don’t want to,” said Earwig. “I want to stay with Custard.”
“Now, dear,” said Mrs Briggs. “These kind people live quite near, in Lime Avenue. I’m sure they’ll let you come back to see your friends whenever you want to, and when school starts again you’ll be able to see Custard every day.”
After that, there seemed nothing Earwig could do but go and help one of the trainee girls pack her things in a bag, while Mrs Briggs took the strange couple to her office to sign forms. Then she had to say goodbye to Custard and hurry after the woman in the red hat and the nine-foot man. The things on his head were horns, Earwig was sure. She was surprised nobody else noticed. But mostly she was angry and amazed that, for the first time in her life, somebody was making her do something she didn’t want to do. She could not understand it.
“I suppose I’d better think of it as a challenge,” she said to herself as they turned into Lime Avenue.
Chapter Two
Earwig was not at all surprised to find that the house in Lime Avenue was Number Thirteen. It fitted these people, even if it was only a perfectly ordinary bungalow. The nine-foot man opened the gate and went through a neat garden with diamond-shaped rose-beds in the exact centre of each lawn. The windows of the bungalow were all nice and low, Earwig noticed. They would be easy to climb out of if the challenge got too much for her and she decided to run away.
The man went through the front door first and walked away down the hall, saying, “I got you what you wanted. Now I don’t want to be disturbed any more.”
Earwig did not see where he went then, because the woman opened the nearest door on the right and slung Earwig’s bag inside it. “You’ll be sleeping in there,” she said. Earwig had just a glimpse of a small bare bedroom, before the woman shut the door and took her big red hat off. As she hung it carefully on a peg, she said, “Now let’s get a few things straight. My name is Bella Yaga and I am a witch. I’ve brought you here because I need another pair of hands. If you work hard and do what you’re told like a good girl, I shan’t do anything to hurt you. If––”
Earwig saw that this was going to be a very big challenge indeed, far bigger than any she had faced at St Morwald’s. That was all right. She liked a challenge. And somewhere at the back of her mind, Earwig had always hoped that perhaps one day she might find a person who could teach her some magic. “That’s all right,” she interrupted. If you want to make somebody do what you want, it is very important to start with them in the right way. Earwig knew all about that. “It’s all right,” she said. “I didn’t think you looked like a Foster Mother. So it’s settled then. You agree to teach me magic and I agree to stay here and be your assistant.”
She could tell Bella Yaga had expected to have to bully and threaten her. “Well, that’s settled then,” she said crossly. She looked quite put out. “You’d better come in here and start work.” She led Earwig through the door on the left.
Earwig looked round and tried not to sniff too loudly. She had never seen a place so dirty. Since she was used to the airy rooms and clean polished floors of St Morwald’s, it was quite a shock. Everything was covered with dust. There was a kind of sludge on the floor made of old dirt, green mould and the remains of spells – which mostly seemed to be little white bones and small, black, rotting things. The sludge rose to a hill in one corner, on which perched a rusty black cauldron with green flames flickering under it. The smell of burning was awful. More smelly things, like dusty bottles and old brown packets, some of them spilling, lay about on the long dirty table, or were chucked higgledy-piggledy on the shelves. All the bowls and jugs stacked on the floor were covered with grime or brown slime.
Earwig closed her nose against the smell, wondering if witchcraft really needed so many rotting things. She thought that, when she had learnt enough, she would be a new kind of witch. A clean one. Meanwhile, she looked round the room and was puzzled to see that it seemed to be at least the size of the whole bungalow.
Bella Yaga chuckled at the look on Earwig’s face. “Come along, girl,” she said. “You’re not here to stare. If you don’t like it, you can clean it later. For now, I want you at this table, powdering those rats’ bones for me.” When Earwig came over to the table, getting her ankles tangled with two dead snakes on the way, Bella Yaga said, “Now there’s one great rule in this house. You must learn it straight away. You must on no account ever disturb the Mandrake.”
“You mean the man with the horns?” Earwig said.
“He hasn’t got horns!” Bella Yaga said angrily. “At least, most of the time, he hasn’t. He gets those when he’s disturbed.”
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