The Witches Read online

  The audience became silent and sat down.

  ‘These mice are nothing to do vith me!’ she shouted. ‘These mice are pet mice! These mice are qvite obviously belonging to some rrreepellent little child in the hotel! A boy it vill be for a certainty because girls are not keeping pet mice!’

  ‘A boy!’ cried the witches. ‘A filthy smelly little boy! We'll swipe him! We'll swizzle him! We'll have his tripes for breakfast!’

  ‘Silence!’ shouted The Grand High Witch, raising her hands. ‘You know perrrfectly vell you must do nothing to drrraw attention to yourselves vhile you are living in the hotel! Let us by all means get rrrid of this evil-smelling little sqvirt, but vee must do it as qvietly as possible, for are vee not all of us the most rrree-spectable ladies of the Rrroyal Society for the Prrree-vention of Crrruelty to Children?’

  ‘What do you suggest then, O Brainy One?’ they cried out. ‘How shall we dispose of this small pile of filth?’

  They're talking about me, I thought. These females are actually talking about how to kill me. I began to sweat.

  ‘Whoever he is, he is not important,’ announced The Grand High Witch. ‘Leave him to me. I shall smell him out and turn him into a mackerel and have him dished up for supper.’

  ‘Bravo!’ cried the witches. ‘Cut off his head and chop off his tail and fry him in hot butter!’

  You can imagine that none of this was making me feel very comfortable. William and Mary were still running around on the platform, and I saw The Grand High Witch aim a swift running kick at William. She caught him right on the point of her toe and sent him flying. She did the same to Mary. Her aim was extraordinary. She would have made a great football player. Both mice crashed against the wall, and for a few moments they lay stunned. Then they got to their feet and scampered away.

  ‘Attention again!’ The Grand High Witch was shouting. ‘I vill now give to you the rrrecipe for concocting Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker! Get out pencils and paper.’

  Handbags were opened all over the room and notebooks were fished out.

  ‘Give us the recipe, O Brainy One!’ cried the audience impatiently. ‘Tell us the secret.’

  ‘First,’ said The Grand High Witch, ‘I had to find something that vould cause the children to become very small very qvickly.’

  ‘And what was that?’ cried the audience.

  ‘That part vos simple,’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘All you have to do if you are vishing to make a child very small is to look at him through the wrrrong end of a telescope.’

  ‘She's a wonder!’ cried the audience. ‘Who else would have thought of a thing like that?’

  ‘So you take the wrrrong end of a telescope,’ continued The Grand High Witch, ‘and you boil it until it gets soft.’

  ‘How long does that take?’ they asked her.

  ‘Tventy-vun hours of boiling,’ answered The Grand High Witch. ‘And vhile this is going on, you take exactly forty-five brrrown mice and you chop off their tails vith a carving-knife and you fry the tails in hair-oil until they are nice and crrrisp.’

  ‘What do we do with all those mice who have had their tails chopped off?’ asked the audience.

  ‘You simmer them in frog-juice for vun hour,’ came the answer. ‘But listen to me. So far I have only given you the easy part of the rrrecipe. The rrreally difficult problem is to put in something that vill have a genuine delayed action rrree-sult, something that can be eaten by children on a certain day but vhich vill not start vurrrking on them until nine o'clock the next morning vhen they arrive at school.’

  ‘What did you come up with, O Brainy One?’ they called out. ‘Tell us the great secret!’

  ‘The secret,’ announced The Grand High Witch triumphantly, ‘is an alarm-clock!’

  ‘An alarm-clock!’ they cried. ‘It's a stroke of genius!’

  ‘Of course it is,’ said The Grand High Witch.

  ‘You can set a tventy-four-hour alarm-clock today and at exactly nine o'clock tomorrow it vill go off.’

  ‘But we will need five million alarm-clocks!’ cried the audience. ‘We will need one for each child!’

  ‘Idiots!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘If you are vonting a steak, you do not cook the whole cow! It is the same vith alarm-clocks. Vun clock vill make enough for a thousand children. Here is vhat you do. You set your alarm-clock to go off at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Then you rrroast it in the oven until it is crrrisp and tender. Are you wrrriting this down?’

  ‘We are, Your Grandness, we are!’ they cried.

  ‘Next,’ said The Grand High Witch, ‘you take your boiled telescope and your frrried mouse-tails and your cooked mice and your rrroasted alarm-clock and all together you put them into the mixer. Then you mix them at full speed. This vill give you a nice thick paste. Vhile the mixer is still mixing you must add to it the yolk of vun grrruntle's egg.’

  ‘A gruntle's egg!’ cried the audience. ‘We shall do that!’

  Underneath all the clamour that was going on I heard one witch in the back row saying to her neighbour, ‘I'm getting a bit old to go bird's nesting. Those ruddy gruntles always nest very high up.’

  ‘So you mix in the egg,’ The Grand High Witch went on, ‘and vun after the other you also mix in the following items: the claw of a crrrabcrrruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a grrrobblesqvirt and the tongue of a catsprrringer. I trust you are not having any trrrouble finding those.’

  ‘None at all!’ they cried out. ‘We will spear the blabbersnitch and trap the crabcruncher and shoot the grobblesquirt and catch the catspringer in his burrow!’

  ‘Excellent!’ said The Grand High Witch. ‘Vhen you have mixed everything together in the mixer, you vill have a most marvellous-looking grrreen liqvid. Put vun drop, just vun titchy droplet, of this liqvid into a chocolate or a sveet, and at nine o'clock the next morning the child who ate it vill turn into a mouse in tventy-six seconds! But vun vurd of vorning. Never increase the dose. Never put more than vun drrrop into each sveet or chocolate. And never give more than vun sweet or chocolate to each child. An overdose of Delayed Action Mouse-Maker vill mess up the timing of the alarm-clock and cause the child to turn into a mouse too early. A large overdose might even have an instant effect, and you vouldn't vont that, vould you? You vouldn't vont the children turning into mice rrright there in your sveet-shops. That vould give the game away. So be very carrreful! Do not overdose!’

  Bruno Jenkins Disappears

  The Grand High Witch was starting to talk again. ‘I am now going to prrrove to you,’ she said, ‘that this rrrecipe is vurrrking to perrrfection. You understand, of course, that you can set the alarm-clock to go off at any time you like. It does not have to be nine o'clock. So yesterday I am personally prrree-paring a small qvantity of the magic formula in order to give to you a public demonstration. But I am making vun small change in the rrrecipe. Before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock, I am setting it to go off, not at nine o'clock the next morning, but at half-past thrrree the next afternoon. Vhich means half-past thrrree this afternoon. And that,’ she said, glancing at her wrist-watch, ‘is in prrree-cisely seven minutes’ time!’

  The audience of witches was listening intently, sensing that something dramatic was about to happen.

  ‘So vot am I doing yesterday vith this magic liqvid?’ asked The Grand High Witch. ‘I vill tell you vot I am doing. I am putting vun drrroplet of it into a very sqvishy chocolate bar and I am giving this bar to a rrree-pulsive smelly little boy who is hanging rrround the lobby of the hotel.’

  The Grand High Witch paused. The audience remained silent, waiting for her to go on.

  ‘I votched this rrree-pulsive little brrrute gobbling up the sqvishy bar of chocolate and vhen he had finished, I said to him, “Vos that good?” He said it vos great. So I said to him, “Vould you like some more?” And he said, “Yes.” So I said, “I vill give you six more chocolate bars like that if you vill meet me in the Ballroom of this hotel at tventy-five-past thrr