Yes, this one should work. The unaltered spices will counteract the altered spices they used.” She pulled a bottle out of her pocket. It was clear and plain, not like her other spice bottles, but it had green flakes in it. I recognized them as leaves from the tree but I didn’t know when she’d had a chance to crumble them up and put them in a bottle. She sprinkled a healthy dose on top of all the pies. “A little extra boost,” she explained.
“They’re not all going to eat willingly. We’re going to have to coax them,” Lena said.
Lena did some more digging in her purse and emerged with three forks and a knife. We each took a pie. I watched Aunt Erma approach a young man who was knitting and offer him a bite of pie. He shook his head vehemently, his sandy brown hair flopping across his face. Without missing a beat, Aunt Erma shoved a bite into his mouth. His eyes widened so much I thought they might pop out of his head. He chewed and swallowed, all the while making “Mmmm” noises. Then his face changed. His brow furrowed, and he looked around.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lena said. “You’re just having a strange dream. Go home.”
The man shrugged and shuffled off.
“All right, everyone, understand the plan?” Aunt Erma asked.
Lena and I nodded. Then we all set off, shoving small bites of pie into people’s mouths as we went. Some of the people I encountered eagerly opened their mouths when offered pie – they were probably hungry after all this knitting – while others proved to be a bit more challenging. I dodged a man who tried to jab me with a knitting needle. I snuck behind him and reached around to shove a forkful of pie into his mouth.
“Aren’t they all going to talk and figure out they had the same strange dream?” I asked Lena as I airplaned a bite into a young girl’s mouth. Lena did the same with the girl’s mother. The girl dropped the yarn ball she had been winding up and followed her mother out the door.
“Most of them will have forgotten about this completely by tomorrow. Only a few will have a distant memory of this strange dream,” she said. “It won’t be enough for them to put it together that it actually happened.”
“Some of them might be a little sore tomorrow from all the work,” Aunt Erma said as she ran past, chasing a man with gray hair and thick glasses. The man threw a ball of yarn at Aunt Erma, and she tackled him and shoved the bite of pie into his mouth before he could stop her.
I was bitten at least six times, but we finally cleared the church of all frantic knitters. I leaned against the wall and began planning which pajamas I was going to put on as soon as I got home – the footy pajamas with the turtle print – and what I was going to eat – pizza with three sides of pie.
“We have to get all this out of here.” Aunt Erma motioned to the giant knitted circle that had yet to take shape as the largest mitten in the world.
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t want to let anything keep me from that pizza any longer than necessary.
“It’s a lot harder to convince people it was a dream when they can come to the church and find two tons of yarn and a knitted circle as large as a parachute.
After we’d cleared everything, dispersing some of it to different shops and shoving the rest of it into the back of Lena’s car, we headed back to Hocus Hills.
“What are those?” I asked as we pulled into town, pointing at a light pole plastered with sheets of paper.
“I’m not sure.” Lena slowed the car down. Aunt Erma finished reading first and gasped.
In big bold letters, the signs said, “Tired of hiding? It’s time to work for the Improvement for Magical People. If you’re ready to step out of the shadows, stay tuned for more information from the IMPs.” The flyers were everywhere.
“It was all a circus. They just wanted to get you out of town, so you couldn’t stop them from doing this,” Lena practically yelled.
Aunt Erma let her head fall to the back of the seat. “I don’t know why we didn’t see that before.” She sighed.
A crew led by Violet was already pulling posters down.
“We were so focused on what you guys were doing that we didn’t even see this happen until it was too late,” she said. “They worked fast. It was done in a matter of seconds.”
Aunt Erma’s brow furrowed. “Their magic is getting stronger.”
“I know. The regular spells aren’t working to clean it up, so we’re doing it the non-magic way,” Violet said.
I grabbed a bag and went to work, quickly pulling signs off the light poles and the sides of buildings.
“Hey.” Holly appeared by my side. “I hear you saved the world from crazed knitters.”
“Yup, I’m a regular superhero,” I said. “What’s their deal anyway?” I held up the signs I’d just yanked off the front of the florist shop.
“There are some people who think that non-magical people should be hiding from us since we’re supposedly the more powerful ones,” she said. “Personally, I think they should just chill. Our life here is pretty great, and it could be really dangerous for magic to get out in the world.”
“How long have they been around?”
“I don’t know. A long time, but they haven’t really been active for the last several years. Everyone thought they disbanded and gave up. No one realized Alice was part of this bigger movement until the posters were plastered everywhere,” she said.
“How do we stop them?”
“We keep them from getting too much magic.”
It sounded so easy and so impossible at the same time. They had some of Aunt Erma’s spices, but they didn’t know about the tree. I saw a small group of people by the gazebo looking at one of the fliers and talking animatedly. I inched closer, pretending to be focused on my job of cleaning up.
“I was trying to do a spell to fix my roof last year, and the Magic Enforcers stopped me because the magic was too big.” The sarcasm was clear in his voice.
“It’s Violet. She’s out there squashing magic. Maybe if she’d let people practice more, we wouldn’t have people attacking our town and our neighbors. We’d be equipped to fight them off,” a woman said.
“The IMPs might bring a breath of fresh air. We’ve been stuck living like this for so long, we don’t even consider new ideas anymore,” another woman chimed in.
I quickly scooted away, stuffing another handful of fliers into my almost full bag. I had to go tell Aunt Erma what I’d heard.
I found her heading back toward the pie shop. A crowd had gathered outside, and people began to stir when they saw Aunt Erma approaching. I grabbed her and quickly told her what I’d overheard.
“How are we going to deal with this?” I asked.
“I’ll tell Violet.” Her forehead wrinkled. “This is exactly what they want.”
“The
