Which Witches

chapter 6

          The Shouter twins were still quarrelling when they got to the depot, but they stopped when they saw, standing on the pavement beside the bus, a small brown coffee table.

      " It's her again," said Nancy.
     " Silly old crone," said Nora.
     " I've a good mind to stub out my cigarette on her," said Nancy, who as usual had one dangling from her lips.
They glared at the squat, round table, which seemed to be swaying a little from side to side.
     " 'Tis a pity when they go simple like that," said Ethel Feedbag. She had loaded her pig onto the trailer and now came over and prodded the table legs with her Wellington boot.
       The coffee table was in fact a very old witch called Mother Bloodwort, who lived in a tumbledown shack near a disused quarry in the poorest part of town.
       When she was young, Mother Bloodwort had been a formidable witch of the old school, bringing people out in boils, putting the evil eye on butchers who sold her gristly chops, and casting spells on babies in perambulators so that their own mothers didn't know them.
      But now she was old. Her memory had gone, and like many old people she got fanciest. One of her fancies was to turn herself into a coffee table.
There was no point in her being a coffee table: Mother Bloodwort did not drink coffee, which was far too expensive, and since she lived alone there was no one who might have wanted to put a cup and saucer down on her. But she was a cranky old witch and every so often she remembered the spell that changed her from a white haired, whiskery old woman into a low, oak table with carved legs and a glass top, and then there was no stopping her. What she did not often remember was how to turn herself back again.

          "Oh come along," called Mabel wrack from inside the bus.  " Leave the silly old thing where she is.''
From her mermaid mother Mabel had inherited rather scaly legs that dried out easily and itched, so she wanted to get to windylow Heath where the air was damp and cool.
But just then something happened. Two sparrows who'd been squabbling in the gutter lifted their heads and began to sing like nightingales. A flock of golden butterflies appeared from nowhere, and drifting through the grimy bus station came the scent of primrose with morning dew on them.

         " Ugh! It's her! " Said Nancy Shouter.    " I am off." And she threw her chicken into the trailer and climbed into the bus.
      " Me too," said her twin. " I can't stand her. I don't know why they allow her in the coven. Really I don't."
    
       Belladonna came slowly around the corner. She was a very young witch with thick, golden hair in which a short - eared bat hung like a little wrinkled prune. There was usually something in Belladonna 's hair: a fledgling blackbird parked there by it's mother while she went to hunt for worms, a baby squirrel wanting somewhere safe to eat it's hazelnuts, or a butterfly who thought she was a lily or a rose. Belladonna's nose turned up at the end, making a ledge for tired ladybirds to rest on ; she had a high, clear forehead and eyes as blue as periwinkles. But as she came up to the bus she hesitated and looked troubled and sad, for she had learned to expect only unkindness from the other witches.
        Then she saw the coffee table and forgot her own troubles at once.
      " Oh , poor Mother Bloodwort! Have you forgotten the undoing spell again?"
The table began to rock and Belladonna put her arms around it.
" Try to think," she said. " I'm sure you can remember. Was it a rhyming spell?" The table rocked harder.
" It was? Well, I'm sure it 'ii come back in a minute."
She leaned her cheek against the glass top, sending healing thoughts into the old witch's tired brain. " It's coming back, I can feel it coming back......"
    There was a swishing noise, Belladonna tumbled backward, and there, standing before her , was an old woman in a long mouse - bitten cloak and felt bedroom slippers with the side cut out.
        " Thank you, my dear," croaked Mother Bloodwort.
" You're a kind girl even if you are --"
   But she couldn't bring herself to say the dreadful word -- no black witch can. So she hobbled to the bus and began to heave herself aboard, clutching to her chest a large , square tin showing a picture of King George VI's coronation on the Lid. The tin should have gone in the trailer -- there was a rule that all familiars traveled separately --but Mother Bloodwort never let it out of her sight. Inside it were hundreds of large white maggots which, when you blew on them, turned into a cloud of flies. One fly is no good for magic, but a cloud of flies--flies in your hair, your eyes, your nose --- that makes a very good familiar indeed.
  
     Belladonna was the last to get into the bus. She alone of all the witches had no familiar. For a white magic you do not need one. It was another thing that made her feel so very much alone.