Not Just a Witch Read online

  ‘You can’t come by! Not here you can’t!’

  Ticker stopped dead. A talking bush. A bush with a leafy top, but two fat pink legs – legs which ended in large green Wellington boots. But if Ticker was terrified of a bush in wellies, he was even more frightened of the gangsters behind him. He pushed the bush violently to one side and set off across the bridge.

  The station was ahead now, and safety.

  Only what was that thing above him? A hot air balloon – and coming down very fast. Dangerously fast. It was going to land on top of him!

  Ticker crouched down on the planks, trying to cover his head with his hands. And then, just as it seemed certain that he would be squashed flat, the balloon veered to one side – and landed with a gigantic splash in the water!

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Ticker, forgetting to run. He was the sort of man who loved to see people in trouble.

  But even as he leant over and jeered, something was coming up behind him. A bush in boots, which now lifted one leg and kicked him very hard on the backside.

  ‘Whoosh! Phlup! Guggle!’ spluttered the chicken farmer as he landed in the deep and icy water.

  And then a voice, close by, in the river. A kind voice like a nice nannie’s. ‘Don’t worry,’ it said. ‘I’ll help you. I’ll hold you. Just keep calm because I’m swimming right up to you and I’m going to hold you very tight!’

  The journey back was not a happy one. Mr Gurgle still felt faint and was lying down in the straw they had put down for the okapi. Boris was full of gloom and guilt because of what had happened to the air balloon, and Frieda’s left foot was cold.

  ‘All right, that’s enough,’ snapped Heckie. She was soaking wet, but what she was worrying about was what was in Frieda’s Wellington boot which she was holding carefully on her lap. She had filled it to the brim with water, but even the best wellies leak a little, and if the poor dear fish that swam inside it should dry out and die before they reached Wellbridge, she would never forgive herself. ‘So Frieda’s foot is cold, so Rosalia’s lost her eyelashes, so you wanted an okapi. I’ve told you, I can’t go struggling about in the water with a kind of giraffe. They’re poor swimmers, giraffes – everyone says so.’

  ‘We understand that,’ said Madame Rosalia. ‘No one’s making a fuss because you turned Mr Ticker into a fish. What we don’t understand is why you didn’t leave him where he was.’

  ‘I told you why,’ said Heckie irritably. ‘Because the river’s polluted. No fish could last in it for more than a couple of days.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see that it matters. After what he did to those chickens . . .’

  Heckie opened her mouth and shut it again. She was absolutely sick of explaining to people that the second someone was a fish, he was not a wicked fish or a fish who had tortured chickens, he was simply a fish.

  Everything had gone well, really. She had phoned the RSPCA and they’d promised to send some men at once to see to the hens, and Ralph Ticker would never harm a living thing again. But it wasn’t much fun sharing adventures with these moaners and grumblers. If she’d had her old friend with her, how different it would all have been!

  ‘Oh, where are you, Dora?’ sighed Heckie, clutching her watery boot.

  Chapter Ten

  Dora was sitting on an upturned chamberpot in the back of a swaying furniture lorry. Round her were all the things she had brought from Kidchester: her bed, her kitchen table and chairs, her work bench and her tools.

  She had decided to move to the outskirts of Wellbridge, where a nice garden statue business had come up for sale, and she was doing it in secret. She hadn’t said a word to Heckie or to anyone she knew. After all, it might be that Heckie was going to be cross with her for ever. On the other hand, if they lived in the same city, even at opposite ends of it, they just could meet by accident and then . . .

  The lorry lurched round the corner and Dora clutched the metal jam pan which contained her hat. The hat wasn’t well at all – the overfeeding had caused the snakes to start shedding their skins. If she wore it now, people would think she had the most awful dandruff.

  ‘Should I put it on a diet?’ wondered poor Dora as the lorry ground up the hill past Wellbridge prison. But what sort of a diet was best for hats? It was Heckie who knew about animals. ‘Come to that, I ought to go on a diet myself.’

  It was true that Dora, who had never been thin, was now definitely overweight. People who are lonely often eat too much and Dora had really been stuffing herself. Muscles, of course, are important for stonework, but fat is another thing.

  Nothing had gone well for the stone witch in Kidchester. She’d managed to do some good all right: Dr Franklin, the one who’d done the awful experiments on dogs, really did look very nice by the fountain in the middle of the shopping centre, and she’d found a comfortable spot for a swindler who’d gone off with the life savings of a lot of poor people. He stood between two pillars in front of the Pensions Office, where the starlings were enjoying him. But Kidchester wasn’t pretty like Wellbridge . . .

  No, I’m lying, thought Dora. It’s because I miss Heckie that I’m moving. It’s because I miss my friend.

  They bumped over some old tram lines and from the wardrobe, pushed against one wall, there came a worried bleat.

  ‘Don’t chop down the wardrobe,’ begged the ghost. ‘Don’t chop—’

  ‘I’m not going to chop it down!’ said Dora, for the hundredth time. ‘It’s trees they chop down and you’re not in a tree!’

  They had passed the prison and the football ground. Not much further to go . . .

  Well, I’ve done it now, thought Dora. And even if I don’t meet Heckie, I can still do some good here. There must be lots of wicked people left in Wellbridge even after Heckie’s finished with the place. But oh, if only I met her. If only we became friends again!

  The lorry stopped at the lights. Just a few metres away, facing in the other direction, was a blue van with sealed windows. Inside it sat Heckie, holding the Wellington boot with the fish in it.

  Oh, if only Dora was here, she was thinking just at that moment. If only I had her to help me instead of these useless moaners.

  Then the lights changed. The vans moved forward – and neither of the witches knew how close to each other they had been.

  Chapter Eleven

  Daniel never quarrelled with Sumi. She was so gentle and so sensible that he wouldn’t have known how to begin. But after Ralph Ticker was changed, they came as close to quarrelling as they had ever done.

  ‘Well, I still don’t think it’s right,’ she said. ‘I think it’s dangerous changing people into animals and I don’t think Heckie should do it.’

  They were in her parents’ grocery shop, parcelling up black-eyed beans, and Daniel was so cross he let the beans spill from his shovel way past the correct weight.

  ‘I suppose you think it’s right to torture four thousand chickens and then plan to murder them in cold blood.’

  ‘No, I don’t. You know I don’t. But he could have been sent to prison and—’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ said Daniel angrily. ‘The RSPCA kept trying and all he got was a measly fine. And anyway, I don’t see that it’s so terrible being an unusual fish. Being an ordinary fish might be, but he isn’t. People have been coming from all over the country to find out what he is, and I should think it’s very exciting.’

  This was true. The fish that Heckie had left in a tank by the West Gate of the zoo labelled: ANOTHER PRESENT FROM A WELL WISHER had really brought the scientists running.

  Sumi didn’t say any more. She knew how Daniel felt about Heckie, and she knew why. If you had a mother who had written seven books about The Meaning of Meaning and had no time for you, you might well turn to a warm-hearted witch for the love you didn’t get at home.

  And quite soon they had something more to worry them than whether Ralph Ticker did, or did not, like being an unusual fish.

  Although she was so busy Doing Good, Heckie never forgot her pe
t shop. Since she knew so much about animals, all the rabbits and guinea pigs she sold were healthy, so she made quite a lot of money. At first she had kept this money in her mattress, but she was worried that the mice who lived there would nibble it and this would be bad for them.

  ‘Mice have very tender stomachs,’ she told the children. ‘Not everyone knows that, but it’s true.’

  So she went to the bank and signed a lot of papers and after that, every Friday afternoon, she paid in her takings.

  Heckie liked going to the bank. She enjoyed chatting with the other shopkeepers and the people in the queue. It made her feel ordinary and that is a thing that witches do not often feel.

  On the particular Friday when something unexpected happened at the bank, Heckie found herself standing beside a tall and very distinguished-looking man with a Roman nose, dark eyes set very close together, and a little beard like goats have. He wore a black coat with a fur collar and carried an ivory cane, and Heckie thought she had never seen anyone more handsome. She didn’t approve of the fur collar, but there was always the hope that the raccoon it was made of had died in his sleep, and no one is perfect. So she gave him a beaming smile, showing all her large and sticking out teeth, and when he got to the counter, she listened carefully as the clerk said: ‘Good morning, Mr Knacksap,’ and thought what an unusual name Knacksap was and how well it suited him.

  Mr Knacksap wasn’t putting money into the bank, he was taking it out, and as she waited, she squinted over his shoulder at his cheque-book and saw that his initial was L. Did that stand for Lucien or Lancelot or Lovelace? Such an elegant man was sure to have an unusual name.

  Mr Knacksap took his money and Heckie smiled at him again, but he didn’t smile back. Then it was her turn. She had just put her paying-in book down on the counter, when the door burst open and a masked man rushed into the bank, waving a sawn-off shotgun.

  ‘Everybody on the floor!’ he shouted to the people in the queue.

  Everybody got down at once, even Heckie who had become very excited. She had seen bank robbers on the telly, but never in real life. This one looked a bit thin and she thought he might have a hungry wife and children at home, or perhaps he was going to give the money to the poor like Robin Hood.

  ‘Anyone who moves, gets it,’ the robber went on, and strode to the counter. Outside, Heckie could see a van parked alongside the kerb, and a fierce-looking man inside. The getaway car! Really, it was just like the telly!

  Mr Knacksap, lying on the floor beside Heckie, did not seem to be excited at all. He looked quite green and his beautiful bowler hat had rolled away. Heckie wanted to comfort him, but she thought it was best to keep quiet till the robber had gone.

  ‘Come on, hand it over. The lot! And hurry!’ barked the robber.

  Heckie squinted up and saw a little fat cashier run up to the grille with wads of bank-notes, and start pushing them through. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he kept saying, ‘Don’t shoot!’ The other cashiers were huddled together at the back – all except one girl. A very young girl with long blonde hair who looked as though she had only just left school. She was edging her way carefully forward to where the alarm bell was. She had almost reached it . . .

  The next second there was a blast from the shotgun, a scream . . . and the blonde girl fell across her desk with blood streaming from her shoulder.

  Up to now, Heckie had just been interested. Of course it was wrong to rob banks, but after all if there was one thing banks had plenty of, it was money.

  But now she lost her temper. Her eyes narrowed, her knuckle throbbed, she kicked off her shoe. The robber, meanwhile, had turned away from the counter. He felt in his pocket and lobbed a metal canister on to the floor where the people were lying. It was a smoke bomb, and as the choking fumes spread through the room, he made for the door.

  At least he started off. But a hand had fastened round his ankle . . . a hand like a steel trap. He raised his gun, ready to shoot . . . but he didn’t seem to have arms any more . . . he didn’t seem to have . . . anything.

  No one else saw. As they groped and struggled to the exit, they thought that the robber had escaped. But Mr Knacksap, lying beside Heckie, had seen. He had seen the robber’s shape become dim . . . become wavery . . . shrink almost to nothing. And then reform in the shape of a small brown mouse which scampered over to the wall panelling – and was gone!

  Mr Knacksap’s Christian name was not Lancelot or Lucien, it was Lionel, and the raccoon on his collar had not died in its sleep because Mr Knacksap was a furrier. He owned a shop in Market Square where he sold fur coats and he had a workshop in the basement and a store-room where he kept the skins of dead animals ready to be made up into coats or sold to other furriers at a profit.

  The shop was called Knacksap and Knacksap, but the first Knacksap, who had been Mr Knacksap’s father, was now dead. The old man had been a good craftsman and had made very beautiful coats which ladies had paid good money for, because in those days people did not think it was cruel to kill an animal simply for its skin and there were not so many other ways of keeping warm. But his son, Lionel Knacksap, was not a good craftsman. His coats were badly made, and at the time he took over, people were beginning to ask annoying questions before they bought fur coats. They wanted to know how the animals had been killed – had they suffered at all, and were they rare; because if so they didn’t want to wear them.

  So Mr Knacksap found himself getting poorer and poorer, and as he was a man who had expensive tastes, he didn’t like this at all. In the basement he had kept two ladies who made coats for him. Now he sacked them and started doing business with very dubious people. These were men who came at night and talked to him in the shop with the shutters closed and they wanted him to get skins for them that were no longer allowed to be sold in England: the skins of Sumatran tigers or jaguars from the Amazon – beautiful animals that were almost extinct. They were willing to pay thousands of pounds for pelts like that because there were always vain or ridiculous people who would do anything to lie on a tiger skin or wear a coat like no other in the world. But it wasn’t easy to get hold of such skins. Mr Knacksap was finding it very hard to supply his customers and he had been getting into debt.

  And then he saw Heckie fasten her hands round the bank robber’s ankle and realized that he had been lying next to a very powerful witch. A witch who could change people into animals. But any animal? Mr Knacksap meant to find out.

  Chapter Twelve

  Heckie was worrying about the mouse. Suppose they set mouse-traps in the bank and it got caught?

  ‘Or killed,’ she said, looking desperate. ‘Imagine it! An animal I produced, lying dead! I had no time to think, you see, but that’s no excuse.’

  ‘I’m sure they don’t use traps,’ said Daniel. ‘I’ve never seen a mouse-trap in a bank.’

  ‘It’ll be perfectly happy behind the panelling, eating the crumbs from the cashier’s sandwiches,’ said Sumi.

  But it was hard to comfort Heckie. Dora had known how to do it; she’d just told Heckie to shut up and not be so daft, but the children couldn’t do that, and Heckie went on pacing up and down and saying that if anybody she’d changed into an animal got hurt, she’d never know another moment’s happiness again.

  ‘Why don’t we take the dragworm for a walk?’ said Joe, who was used to dealing with gorillas when they went over the top. ‘Then you can go to the bank and ask about mouse-traps.’

  Heckie thought this was a good idea – she wanted to enquire anyway about the girl who’d been shot in the shoulder. As for the dragworm, he only had to hear the word ‘walk’ and he was already inside the tartan shopping basket on wheels. It fitted him just like a house with a roof and he was never happier than when he was rattling and bumping through the streets of Wellbridge.

  When they had gone, Heckie went to change her batskin robe for something more suitable, but she never got to the bank, for just then the doorbell rang.

  Out in the hall, holding a bunch of flowers, sto
od the tall, distinguished man that Heckie had seen in the bank.

  ‘Forgive me for calling,’ he said. ‘My name is Knacksap. Lionel Knacksap. May I come in?’

  Mr Knacksap was wearing his dark coat with the raccoon collar and his bowler hat, and smelled strongly of a toilet water called Male.

  ‘Yes, please do.’ Heckie was quite overcome. ‘I was just going to . . . change.’

  ‘You look delightful as you are,’ said Mr Knacksap in an oily voice, and handed her the flowers which he had stolen from the garden of an old lady who was blind. ‘I came to congratulate you. I saw, you see. I saw what you did in the bank.’ And as Heckie frowned: ‘But don’t worry, Miss . . . er . . . Tenbury-Smith. Your secret is safe with me.’

  Heckie now offered him a cup of tea. This time she put in three tea-bags because she had never been alone before with such a handsome gentleman, but Mr Knacksap said that was just how he liked it.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, resting his cup genteelly on his knee. ‘Can you turn people into any kind of animal? Or only little things like mice?’

  ‘Oh, yes, pretty well any animal,’ said Heckie, looking modest. ‘But of course I have to think of what will happen to it afterwards.’

  Mr Knacksap’s eyes glittered with excitement. ‘Could you, for example, could you . . . say . . . turn someone into a tiger? A large tiger?’

  Heckie nodded. ‘I’d have to make sure they wanted a tiger in the zoo.’

  She then went on to tell the furrier of her plans for making Wellbridge a better place. ‘I have such wonderful helpers. Wizards and witches – and children. The children in particular! And a most wonderful familiar – a dragworm. He’s just out for a walk, but you must meet him. He’s a wickedness detector and he can sniff out even the tiniest bit of evil!’

  Mr Knacksap didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘I’m afraid I’m completely allergic to dragons . . . and . . . er, worms. What I mean is, I can’t bear to be in the same room. When I was small, I had asthma, you see; I couldn’t get my breath, and the doctors told me that if I went near anything like . . . the thing you have described, I would simply choke to death.’