Which Witches

chapter 4

THE W I T C H OF T O DC A S T E R were preparing for a coven and they were very much excited.
Covens are to witches what the wolf Cubs or the Brownies are to people: a way of getting together and doing the things that Interest them. And this one wasn't to be just an ordinary coven with feasting and dancing and wickedness. Rumors were going around that a most important announcement would be made.

      " I wonder what it"ii be, said Mabel wrack. " Some new members, perhaps. We could do with them."

This was very true. Todcaster now had only seven witches. If Arriman had known what a state witchcraft had got to in the town of his birth he'd have been more miserable than he was, but unfortunately he didn't.

By day , Ms. Wrack kept a wet fish shop not far from Todcaster pier. She was a sea witch and never liked to be too far from the water.  Ms. Wrack 's mother, Mrs. Wrack, had been a mermaid: a proper one who lived on a rock and combed her hair and sang.
But sailors had never been lured to their doom by her , partly because she looked like the back of a bus and partly because modern ships are so high out of the water that they never saw her. So one day she had simply waddled out onto the bench at Todcaster Head with some sovereigns from a sunken galleon and persuaded a plastic surgeon who was on holiday there to operate on her tail and turn it into two legs.

     It was from her mother that Mabel wrack had her magic powers. From her father, Mr. Wrack, she had the shop.
      Today she closed the shutters early, put a couple of cods' heads into a proper bag, and set off for her seaside bungalow. She was just turning into her road when she saw a group of children paddling happily in the surf.

        " Tut! said Ms. Wrack, pursing her lips. She closed her eyes,waved her paper bag with the cods' heads, and said some poetry.  Almost at once a shoal of stinging jellyfish appeared in the water and the children ran screaming to their mothers.

  " That's better , " said Ms. Wrack. Like most witches, she hated happiness.
      When she got home she went straight into her bedroom to change. Covens are like parties ; what you wear is important. For this one, Ms. Wrack slipped into a purple robe embroidered all over in yellow cross-- stitch haddocks, and fastened her best brooch-- a single sea slug mounted in plastic -- onto the band which kept her frizzy hair in place. Then she went into the bathroom.
        " Come on, dear ," she said, bending over the bath.
    What lived in Ms. Wrack's bath was, of course , her familiar. Familiars are the animals that help witches with their magic and are exceedingly important. Ms. Wrack's familiar was an octopus: a large animal with pale tentacles, suckers which left rings of blood where they had been, and vile red eyes. It was a girl octopus and it's name was Doris.

      " Now don't keep me waiting, dear," said Ms. Wrack, she had fetched a polyethylene bucket from the bathroom cupboard and was trying to stuff Doris inside.
     ' Tonight Is going to be an important night."
  But Doris was in a playful mood. As soon as one tentacles was in , another was out, and it was a rather bedraggled Ms. Wrack who at last fixed on the Lid, loaded the bucket onto an old perambulator, and set off for the coven bus.