A Spoonful of Magic

by Lynne Roberts

  Chapter 11.

  ‘That’s my doughnut,’ spluttered Ryan indignantly as he finally swallowed the last of his sandwich.

  ‘Ryan!’ said his mother firmly. ‘Helena is our guest. Let her eat her lunch in peace.’

  Helena smirked and ate the doughnut with great relish, deliberately making it last as long as she could. Ryan despondently choked down another piece of bread and peanut butter and tried to affect deafness when Aunt Marion tried to question him again.

  Finally the meal was finished and Mrs Hughes told her children to clear the table and wash the dishes while she and Marion went into the living room for a chat.

  ‘Then you can play a nice game with Helena,’ she smiled.

  Ryan groaned and Tracey said quickly, ‘I can’t. I’ve got homework to do.’ Ryan wished he’d thought of that first but as he stood there trying to think of an excuse, Helena said, ‘What’s that sticking out of your pocket?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ryan, pushing the paper dolls deeper into the pocket of his jeans.

  ‘Yes it is. I want to see.’

  There was a brief struggle as Ryan tried to stop Helena wrenching the paper dolls out of his pocket. He finally gave in, as he was worried that she would tear one of them.

  ‘Oh looks. Paper dolls. I didn’t think boys played with dolls,’ prattled Helena.

  Ryan felt himself blushing a deep red. ‘I don’t,’ he stammered.

  ‘I want to play with them.’

  ‘You can’t, they’re not mine. They belong to a friend of mine. I mean his sister,’ mumbled Ryan wretchedly.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ interrupted his mother. ‘Of course Helena can play with them. I know Joanne wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘But Mum…’

  ‘Give them to Helena,’ said his mother with a smile. This was the sort of smile that meant that Ryan was going to be in a lot of trouble later if he didn’t do as he was told. With a sigh he handed the dolls over.

  ‘Do be careful with them,’ he said anxiously.

  ‘They don’t have any clothes on. Only underwear,’ said Helena critically. ‘I’m going to make them some new outfits.’

  She proceed to cut strange shapes out of a magazine which Tracey later found was the latest Teen Scene that she hadn’t even read yet. Helena then folded these creations around the dolls for her mother to admire then went on to make the dolls stand and sit and race each other around the living room chairs.

  ‘I’m having an Olympic Games,’ she explained, as she threw the dolls over a chair rung, pretending it was the high jump.

  ‘I hope they don’t know what’s happening to them,’ thought Ryan dismally. ‘Otherwise they are going to kill me when they get back to normal.’

  Ryan had to wait until they were washing the dishes before he could get Tracey alone to explain what had happened.

  ‘Silly little girls,’ was Tracey’s comment.

  ‘I can’t think what they would have wished for, to turn out like that.’

  ‘They probably wished they were thinner. It’s the sort of thing the spoon would do to them.’

  ‘It’s certainly got a mean streak,’ agreed Ryan. ‘Look, can you distract Mum while I go and talk to Yecart. I have to explain it to her and make sure she doesn’t wish for something disastrous herself.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Tracey cheerfully. She picked up a dinner plate and calmly dropped it onto the floor where it broke with a satisfying crash. ‘Mum, Ryan’s broken a plate,’ she called. Can you come and clean it up? I’m in bare feet. I don’t want to cut myself. Go on, hurry up,’ she hissed to Ryan.

  ‘I didn’t mean that sort of distraction,’ gasped Ryan, appalled by what Tracey had done. He gave her a doubtful look and ran out the door as he heard his mother rushing out from the dining room with a cry of dismay.

  Ryan ran to the hallway and unhooked the mirror. He carried it up to his bedroom and tapped it to get Yecart’s attention. She looked up and smiled but became serious as Ryan explained what had happened.

  ‘You’ll have to make a wish,’ Ryan finished. ‘And it has to be a good one that won’t hurt anything or be able to be mucked up by the spoon. Maybe you’d better write all this down so you don’t forget any of it. You’d better make it so it has a delayed effect. We can’t have the girls changing back until Helena is gone.’

  Yecart nodded in understanding, and scribbled frantically on a piece of paper. Ryan held the spoon up and there was a ‘pop’ as the spoon disappeared from his hand. He saw Yecart holding the spoon in delight. She reached over and picked up her kitten then grasped the paper she had been writing on and added a few more words. Ryan tried to read it but it was all in mirror writing and the only words he could read were:HSIW I

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all under control, said Yecart, as she smiled a satisfied smile at Ryan.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said gratefully. ‘I hope it works.’

  He returned to the kitchen to endure a lecture on carelessness from his mother.

  ‘Really, Ryan. You should have been more careful,’ Mrs Hughes scolded. ‘You ought to be cleaning this broken plate up by yourself.’

  ‘Er, sorry Mum,’ muttered Ryan.

  Fortunately Aunt Marion and Helena left shortly after that or as Tracey whispered to Ryan ‘I would have strangled the little beast.’

  The phone rang as they were waving goodbye to the BMW. An excited Andy told Ryan, ‘The girls are back, and boy are they furious. They said they’ve been made to run around your living room by some sort of mad giantess. And they were not impressed to find little bits of paper stuck all over them, either. Mindy’s gone home howling and Alicia has a sort of stunned look. I think she thinks it’s a dream or else we’ve been slipping her mind altering drugs or something.’

  Ryan laughed. ‘Serves Joanne right for trying to cheat me with the spoon,’ he said hard-heartedly.

  ‘What else happened? Did Yecart wish for something else?’ Andy wanted to know.

  ‘Nothing, I don’t think. Oh no. Oh please, not that.’ Ryan put the phone down with a crash as he saw Yecart standing in front of him holding her kitten.

  ‘You’ve made yourself real again,’ he groaned. ‘I still remember all the problems we had with you last time. What did you wish for?’ he croaked.

  ‘To be your sister of course,’ said Yecart calmly. ‘And I wished that the spoon wouldn’t be magic any longer so we can never change things. I wrote everything I wanted down on the paper then I wished that everything I had written would come true.’

  Ryan yelped and ran into the kitchen to see what had happened to Tracey, while Yecart strolled in behind him.

  ‘What have you got there Tammy?’ asked Mrs Hughes. ‘I told you to go and do your flute practise ten minutes ago. Where did the kitten come from?’

  ‘I found it outside, Mum,’ said Yecart with a wink at Ryan. ‘Can I keep it?’

  ‘Oh please say yes, it’s so cute,’ enthused Tracey, raising her eyebrows at Ryan and giving a thumbs up sign to Yecart.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Mrs Hughes. ‘Give it some milk for now, Tammy, and we’d better check the newspaper to see if anyone has lost it. If it turns out to be a stray then I suppose you can keep it. But right now I want you girls to go and do your flute practise. You can practise the duet you will be playing at the school concert.’

  Ryan felt light headed and peculiar. His mother seemed to think Yecart was Tracey’s twin sister, Tammy. He wandered into the dining room where the first thing that caught his eye was the display of photos on the dresser. Normally there were three. One each of Tracey and Ryan and one with their parents. Now there were four. The new one was of Yecart and she was in the family group as well.

  ‘I wonder what else has happened,’ Ryan thought. He tore down the hallway to Tracey’s room and threw open the door. There was the usual neat tidy room but with two beds and two sets of drawers. Two hockey sticks were propped up in the corner and two pairs of slippers lay by the cupboard. A pile of exercise books
was scattered on the floor, some labelled Tracey and some Tammy.

  As Ryan shook his head in disbelief, he caught sight of a corner of Tracey’s diary sticking out from under the pillow on one of the beds. Ryan looked around guiltily then quickly pulled out the diary and flicked through the pages. He stopped abruptly at one page and read it, then groaned in disbelief and read it again.

  ‘Oh no!’ he exclaimed. ‘This explains everything.’ Tracey had written in her diary, in her large sprawling handwriting; Today I found my magic spoon and I wished I had a twin sister but nothing happened.

  Ryan gave a wry grin. ‘I think it’s happened now,’ he said.

  ‘Get out of our room,’ came Tracey’s voice.

  ‘Yeah. Hurry up Ryan, or we’ll scrag you,’ agreed Tammy.

  Ryan yelped and scooted out the door as the girls marched determinedly towards him.

  ‘Who’d have sisters!’ he said with loathing.