newspaper down first,’ her mother told her.
That night Caitlin slept soundly but was woken by the pitiful cries of a hungry dragon as dawn was breaking. The bowl had been licked clean and there was a row of grubby pawprints on the newspaper.
‘Gosh you’ve grown,’ Caitlin told the dragon, as it clawed at her leg.
Dragons weren’t a very comfortable pet, she reflected as she opened another tin of cat food for it. Any attempts to cuddle the dragon had been met with suspicion and scratching and it was not showing any signs of wanting to learn any tricks or to obey any commands.
By the end of the holidays, the dragon was the size of a small cat and Holly and Caitlin were commiserating with each other on the results of the spell.
‘I think it must be wearing off a bit,’ Holly sniffed. Mr Perkins is getting stiffer and creaks a bit when he moves. He says it’s arthritis and wants a warm bath every night but that’s all so far. I can’t wait to get rid of him.’
‘The dragon’s not much fun either,’ agreed Caitlin. ‘All it does it eat and sleep and it bit Dad’s foot this morning. He’s not very impressed. I’m going to take it to school tomorrow and ask Ms Borage to take the spell off it.’
‘Good idea. I’m going to take Mr Perkins. He refuses to go anywhere unless it’s his idea, so it won’t be easy.’
The girls arrived at their classroom the next day, to find that others had used the same spell with similar results. Groups of girls held a variety of live objects, with teddy bears being the most common. A complacent Cherry had a soft white rabbit in her arms.
‘It’s one of my little sister’s bunny slippers,’ she said smugly.
Caitlin and Holly eyed her enviously.
‘I wish we’d thought of that,’ whispered Holly, trying to look unconcerned as a belligerent Mr Perkins bellowed in indignation from the shopping bag she had bundled him into. Caitlin nodded. She was holding the dragon in a cat travelling box and was intrigued to see her friend Emily with a dancing pencil.
‘It even writes poetry by itself,’ she told them. ‘It’s been cool fun.’
‘Now girls, said Ms Borage. ‘Let me see the results of your holiday assignment. I see that most of you managed to Animate an Inanimate Object.’
The class held up their live objects as Caitlin opened the lid of her cat box. That was a mistake. The dragon promptly leapt out with a snarl and advanced menacingly on the white rabbit, which froze in terror.
‘Help,’ shrieked Cherry. ‘It’s going to attack it.’
‘I’ll help,’ yelled Mr Perkins, clambering out of the shopping bag and grabbing a plastic ruler from Holly’s desk. The gnome waved the ruler threateningly at the dragon. The dragon roared and lashed its tail and Caitlin prudently stepped away from it, as the teddybears began to growl.
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Ms Borage. She waved her hand in the air and muttered a few words. There was a sudden flash of light and a thud as the concrete gnome fell to the floor. The rabbit instantly became a limp and lifeless slipper and Emily’s pencil collapsed in mid dance. All the teddybears stopped grumbling and sat in a heap with vacant glassy eyed stares. The dragon looked around with beady eyes then roared again.
Ms Borage gave a start of surprise and frowned. ‘What spells did you use, Caitlin?’ she asked.
‘Um, raising bread and making fire,’ Caitlin told her. ‘Oh, and I added Magic Mixture Number Three. Quite a lot in fact.’
Ms Borage nodded and fetched a small business-like wooden wand from her desk drawer. She waved it in the air and muttered again before tapping the dragon sharply. The dragon turned to stone immediately.
‘Put it away now,’ said Ms Borage briskly. ‘Well done girls.’
Caitlin prodded the dragon with the ruler, just to make sure, before putting it back into the cat box. ‘Wow, it’s heavy,’ she complained.
‘Next time have the sense to use something a little smaller,’ said Ms Borage unsympathetically. ‘Now take out your written work so I can collect it.’
‘Has it put your mother off magic?’ Caitlin whispered to Holly as they took their books out of their schoolbags.
‘Not even slightly,’ said Holly wryly. ‘She thinks it was a great adventure and insists on telling everyone about it. Fortunately they all think she’s crazy anyway so they don’t believe her. She was really weird this morning, though. She kept saying she had a surprise for me, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was.’
‘Maybe she is having another angel painted on the house,’ Caitlin suggested.
‘I hope not, one is bad enough,’ Holly shuddered.
‘Now pay attention, class,’ Ms Borage announced, as she collected the last exercise book. ‘You have done very well with your holiday assignments, very well indeed. I intend to teach you a more advanced spell that you are sure to find useful. It is a spell to make things fly into the air.’
‘Can we use it on people, Ms Borage?’ Cherry asked eagerly.
‘I don’t see why not.’ Ms Borage allowed herself a small wintry smile. ‘You will have to take care with it, though.’
There was an excited murmur from all the girls except for Holly. She clasped her head in her hands and moaned.
‘What is it?’ Caitlin asked her.
‘A flying spell,’ gasped Holly. ‘That’s all I need. Mum’s going to love this one!’
‘Look on the bright side. At least you won’t have wings,’ Caitlin pointed out.
Ms Borage gave her a severe look. ‘Not so much chattering please, Caitlin. And no, we don’t do growing wings until next term.’
Caitlin spluttered with helpless laughter at the expression on Holly’s face.
Ms Borage cleared her throat and the class fell silent. ‘Before we begin, I have a new pupil to introduce to you. She is an adult student who will be joining the class so I expect you to behave to her with due respect.’
There was a knock on the door as she spoke, and a voice said hesitantly,
‘Is this the beginner’s class?’
‘Come in,’ said Ms Borage briskly.
‘Oh no! I’d recognise that voice anywhere,’ moaned Holly. ‘It’s Mum!’
Caitlin giggled as Mrs Beggs beamed at her from the doorway.
‘Look on the bright side,’ she whispered to Holly. ‘Now your mother can learn to grow her own wings!’
Tall Tales
Well, not so much tales as tale. And not so much tall as above average. Well, would you believe, a bit shorter than that? Well, all right then, short in fact.
John was a peasant who lived in a small village. They called it a village but it was actually two cottages and a duck pond, but you could be sure that in hundreds of years it would be a village. That is, if the roof of the older cottage didn’t fall in first. And that was fairly likely as cottage roofs were notorious for falling in when not well thatched, and John’s father was not by nature an able man with his hands. In fact he was fairly useless at everything, which is why, when he failed to come home with the sheep one cold night, his wife merely shrugged her shoulders and gave John a double helping of porridge.
This upbringing made John a stocky chap who, as long as his bowl of porridge was forthcoming twice a day, stolidly did what he was told in minding the stock.
The stock consisted of six sheep, a ram for obvious reasons and a cow of uncertain age and very little brain, which made her excellent company for one as undemanding as John.
The other cottage was occupied by a wise woman and her cat. She also had some stock; a few hens, a beady-eyed rooster and three goats named Cyril, Cynthia and Rosemary. John’s family had never bothered to name their sheep owing to the difficulty in telling them apart.
Now the wise woman had frequent conversations with John’s mother, mainly at mid-morning when they both drank their tea. After this the wise woman would read their respective fortunes in the tea leaves left at the bottom of the cups. John’s mother’s fortune never varied much – it was of the ‘one day you will meet a dark, handsome
stranger and go on a long journey’ variety – but she enjoyed the security of it all the same. John’s father had not been dark or handsome but rather short with hair the colour of dirty string and copious freckles. John was a good likeness of his father.
The wise woman’s fortune was much more exciting. It invariably involved fame, much money being heaped on her by grateful clients and a group of eager young women anxious to learn her craft. These young women would live with her and do all the housework and other boring everyday chores necessary to life. There never seemed to be any reason for this happening, but it was a comfortable future to look forward to. Particularly as the wise woman’s bones were not getting any younger and were prone to making their presence felt on cold frosty mornings.
One fine day John was tending his sheep in the hills behind the cottage when he made an important discovery. Well, two discoveries to be exact. The first was that when he dropped stones of different sizes off the edge of the cliff they always landed at the same time. He decided this must be magic and promptly forgot it when he made the next discovery – that he had left his cheese sandwich behind. John had a cheese sandwich for lunch every day. He liked cheese sandwiches and this was the first time he had forgotten to bring one. So leaving his flock safely on the hillside he stolidly made his way back to the cottage. He arrived as his mother and the wise woman were halfway through their mid-morning cup of tea, so being a kind woman, his mother made John a cup too. John was delighted. This was a rare treat