The Witches Read online

  I gazed up at my grandmother, who sat there like some ancient queen on her throne. Her eyes were misty-grey and they seemed to be looking at something many miles away. The cigar was the only real thing about her at that moment, and the smoke it made billowed round her head in blue clouds.

  ‘But the little girl who became a chicken didn't disappear?’ I said.

  ‘No, not Birgit. She lived on for many years laying her brown eggs.’

  ‘You said all of them disappeared.’

  ‘I made a mistake,’ my grandmother said. ‘I am getting old. I can't remember everything.’

  ‘What happened to the fourth child?’ I asked.

  ‘The fourth was a boy called Harald,’ my grandmother said. ‘One morning his skin went all greyish-yellow. Then it became hard and crackly, like the shell of a nut. By evening, the boy had turned to stone.’

  ‘Stone?’ I said. ‘You mean real stone?’

  ‘Granite,’ she said. ‘I'll take you to see him if you like. They still keep him in the house. He stands in the hall, a little stone statue. Visitors lean their umbrellas up against him.’

  Although I was very young, I was not prepared to believe everything my grandmother told me. And yet she spoke with such conviction, with such utter seriousness, and with never a smile on her face or a twinkle in her eye, that I found myself beginning to wonder.

  ‘Go on, Grandmamma,’ I said. ‘You told me there were five altogether. What happened to the last one?’

  ‘Would you like a puff of my cigar?’ she said.

  ‘I'm only seven, Grandmamma.’

  ‘I don't care what age you are,’ she said. ‘You'll never catch a cold if you smoke cigars.’

  ‘What about number five, Grandmamma?’

  ‘Number five,’ she said, chewing the end of her cigar as though it were a delicious asparagus, ‘was rather an interesting case. A nine-year-old boy called Leif was summer-holidaying with his family on the fjord, and the whole family was picnicking and swimming off some rocks on one of those little islands. Young Leif dived into the water and his father, who was watching him, noticed that he stayed under for an unusually long time. When he came to the surface at last, he wasn't Leif any more.’

  ‘What was he, Grandmamma?’

  ‘He was a porpoise.’

  ‘He wasn't! He couldn't have been!’

  ‘He was a lovely young porpoise,’ she said. ‘And as friendly as could be.’

  ‘Grandmamma,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, my darling?’

  ‘Did he really and truly turn into a porpoise?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I knew his mother well. She told me all about it. She told me how Leif the Porpoise stayed with them all that afternoon giving his brothers and sisters rides on his back. They had a wonderful time. Then he waved a flipper at them and swam away, never to be seen again.’

  ‘But Grandmamma,’ I said, ‘how did they know that the porpoise was actually Leif?’

  ‘He talked to them,’ my grandmother said. ‘He laughed and joked with them all the time he was giving them rides.’

  ‘But wasn't there a most tremendous fuss when this happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ my grandmother said. ‘You must remember that here in Norway we are used to that sort of thing. There are witches everywhere. There's probably one living in our street this very moment. It's time you went to bed.’

  ‘A witch wouldn't come in through my window in the night, would she?’ I asked, quaking a little.

  ‘No,’ my grandmother said. ‘A witch will never do silly things like climbing up drainpipes or breaking into people's houses. You'll be quite safe in your bed. Come along. I'll tuck you in.’

  How to Recognize a Witch

  The next evening, after my grandmother had given me my bath, she took me once again into the living-room for another story.

  ‘Tonight,’ the old woman said, ‘I am going to tell you how to recognize a witch when you see one.’

  ‘Can you always be sure?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you can't. And that's the trouble. But you can make a pretty good guess.’

  She was dropping cigar ash all over her lap, and I hoped she wasn't going to catch on fire before she'd told me how to recognize a witch.

  ‘In the first place,’ she said, ‘a REAL WITCH is certain always to be wearing gloves when you meet her.’

  ‘Surely not always,’ I said. ‘What about in the summer when it's hot?’

  ‘Even in the summer,’ my grandmother said. ‘She has to. Do you want to know why?’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘Because she doesn't have finger-nails. Instead of finger-nails, she has thin curvy claws, like a cat, and she wears the gloves to hide them. Mind you, lots of very respectable women wear gloves, especially in winter, so this doesn't help you very much.’

  ‘Mamma used to wear gloves,’ I said.

  ‘Not in the house,’ my grandmother said. ‘Witches wear gloves even in the house. They only take them off when they go to bed.’

  ‘How do you know all this, Grandmamma?’

  ‘Don't interrupt,’ she said. ‘Just take it all in. The second thing to remember is that a REAL WITCH is always bald.’

  ‘Bald?’ I said.

  ‘Bald as a boiled egg,’ my grandmother said.

  I was shocked. There was something indecent about a bald woman. ‘Why are they bald, Grandmamma?’

  ‘Don't ask me why,’ she snapped. ‘But you can take it from me that not a single hair grows on a witch's head.’

  ‘How horrid!’

  ‘Disgusting,’ my grandmother said.

  ‘If she's bald, she'll be easy to spot,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all,’ my grandmother said. ‘A REAL WITCH always wears a wig to hide her baldness. She wears a first-class wig. And it is almost impossible to tell a really first-class wig from ordinary hair unless you give it a pull to see if it comes off.’

  ‘Then that's what I'll have to do,’ I said.

  ‘Don't be foolish,’ my grandmother said. ‘You can't go round pulling at the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens.’

  ‘So that doesn't help much either,’ I said.

  ‘None of these things is any good on its own,’ my grandmother said. ‘It's only when you put them all together that they begin to make a little sense. Mind you,’ my grandmother went on, ‘these wigs do cause a rather serious problem for witches.’

  ‘What problem, Grandmamma?’

  ‘They make the scalp itch most terribly,’ she said. ‘You see, when an actress wears a wig, or if you or I were to wear a wig, we would be putting it on over our own hair, but a witch has to put it straight on to her naked scalp. And the underneath of a wig is always very rough and scratchy. It sets up a frightful itch on the bald skin. It causes nasty sores on the head. Wig-rash, the witches call it. And it doesn't half itch.’

  ‘What other things must I look for to recognize a witch?’ I asked.

  ‘Look for the nose-holes,’ my grandmother said. ‘Witches have slightly larger nose-holes than ordinary people. The rim of each nose-hole is pink and curvy, like the rim of a certain kind of sea-shell.’

  ‘Why do they have such big nose-holes?’ I asked.

  ‘For smelling with,’ my grandmother said. ‘A REAL WITCH has the most amazing powers of smell. She can actually smell out a child who is standing on the other side of the street on a pitch-black night.’

  ‘She couldn't smell me,’ I said. ‘I've just had a bath.’

  ‘Oh yes she could,’ my grandmother said. ‘The cleaner you happen to be, the more smelly you are to a witch.’

  ‘That can't be true,’ I said.

  An absolutely clean child gives off the most ghastly stench to a witch,’ my grandmother said. ‘The dirtier you are, the less you smell.’

  ‘But that doesn't make sense, Grandmamma.’

  ‘Oh yes it does,’ my grandmother said. ‘I