At first, Xar was constantly in trouble.
Some of this wasn’t entirely Xar’s fault. His hand with the Witch-stain on it seemed to have a mind of its own and often did the absolute opposite of what he wanted, in a spectacular way. So, for instance, the class would be practicing shrinking spells, and Xar would try and copy what everyone else was doing and find himself growing instead of shrinking. On that occasion he grew even larger than Crusher, and the teacher assumed he did it on purpose to be cheeky and sent him to Perdita for insolence.
Xar was never quite sure how Perdita was going to react when he was sent to the Lair of the Bear.
Sometimes she was understanding, but other times she seemed very stern and bearlike, and punished him if he deserved it. Or it might be she was in the middle of some spell of her own, so she would be distracted and entirely uninterested in why Xar had been sent to her, and get Xar to hold the cooking pot steady while Hoola stirred it.
On the shrinking-but-accidentally-growing-instead occasion, she wasn’t in the Lair of the Bear. The study was deserted, so he searched it very thoroughly to see if he could find the Droods’ tears, which he was sure she must have hidden somewhere. But Hoola came in and interrupted him, so he had to wander around the learning place until he found Perdita, eventually, in one of the side clearings. She was in the middle of a conference with a whole load of philosopher giants on the unexpected consequences and logistical possibilities of TIME TRAVEL, which was one of the very few things that the Magic people had not worked out how to do yet.
So although terribly sympathetic, Perdita waved him away, recommending Xar work out a way to get smaller again himself. He had to spend two days as a giant, before he got back to the right size again.
It was all a little difficult to predict.
But as time went on, Xar worked out a way of tricking the hand with the Witch-stain by performing the exact opposite of whatever spell they were supposed to be doing. This didn’t work every time, but enough so that he was in trouble a little less often.
So even Xar ended up liking the learning place more than he expected. He was very popular and had crowds of friends.
And after a while, they were all so busy that they nearly forgot that there was a world outside the charmed chalk circle of Pook’s Hill. Three months passed. The bear came out of his sleeping cave. Their wounds from the fights with the wyverns and the Witches healed, and it all felt like they had arrived only yesterday.
Not that everything always went well.
Wish, of course, had a very powerful Magic indeed. More powerful, Perdita thought, than the Magic of most of the other Wizards in the whole of Pook’s Hill put together, and maybe even more than that. Time would tell.
But Wish had terrible trouble with the spellfighting.
In spellfighting you were supposed to turn yourself into different animals, and fight as those animals. Wish started off well, transforming into a snowcat, lion, drearer, and ghoulfeast in impressively rapid progression… but her default position was always a fluffbuttle.
She did not know why this happened. She just panicked, mid-fight…
Her Magic eye blinked, before she could stop it…
…and there she was, a fluffbuttle again.
A fluffbuttle was, as the name suggests, not a particularly scary creature. Slightly smaller than a bunny rabbit, the fluffbuttle had so many natural predators in the wildwoods that Perdita had had to set up a special fluffbuttle animal sanctuary, because she was genuinely worried that the fluffbuttles might be in danger of being hunted into extinction. The sanctuary was located just beside the infirmary, and Bodkin spent hours leaning dreamingly over the fence watching them, for it really was a great pleasure to see the little fluffbuttles scampering about, squeaking at each other.
Once Wish had transformed into fluffbuttle form during the spellfighting, she didn’t seem to be able to transform out of it. So, unless the opponent had accidentally transformed into a carrot—which was unlikely but not impossible because ghoulfeasts were as allergic to carrots as vampires were to garlic, so if spellfighters were trying to be clever, sometimes they did go for the vegetable option—Wish automatically forfeited the fight.
And Perdita and Hoola and Caliburn exchanged significant glances with each other. Bodkin knew what those glances meant. They meant, “Wish is no more ready to fight the Kingwitch in single combat than a fluffbuttle.”
But on the whole, everything was moving in a positive direction.
Xar was trying his hardest and he had improved greatly, in behavior and thoughtfulness. Wish was struggling with the spellfighting, but she was learning so many other useful skills and had never been so content in her life. Even Bodkin had settled into being a hob.
Until Madam Clairvoy came to the school.
She was a new teacher, and from the moment she arrived, things went downhill.
Madam Clairvoy taught starcraft, and she was every bit as mean as Madam Dreadlock, just horrible in a different way. Madam Clairvoy never shouted, but she was sarcastic and she provoked Xar’s pride. Xar wasn’t very good at starcraft, and it was one of the lessons in which Bodkin shone, so Madam Clairvoy spent a lot of time comparing Xar to Bodkin. “Even a hob can do this, Xar!” said Madam Clairvoy. “So why, then, cannot you?”
This caused trouble between Xar and Bodkin, and Xar then acted up in the lesson, showing off and getting into trouble, and he was sent to Perdita for being disruptive, and Madam Perdita was only halfway understanding.
“Madam Clairvoy is so mean!” stormed Xar.
“The world is full of people who are mean, Xar,” said Perdita. “You have to learn how to deal with them without losing your temper.”
The meaner Madam Clairvoy was, the worse Xar behaved, even in other lessons as well.
So Wish was increasingly worried about Xar, who was being sent to Madam Perdita so much of the time that she thought he might be expelled. And Xar was beginning to draw away from them. Now he wouldn’t be seen with Bodkin, because Bodkin was a hob, and hobs were a little embarrassing.
“Sometimes I feel like the spoon in the middle of the key and the fork,” Wish confessed to Caliburn one evening.
And even the spoon, the key, and the fork were quarreling again in a way they had stopped doing for a while. The fork would ambush the spoon and pin him down on every occasion it could, and the spoon started hiding from both of them. Tiffinstorm and Hinkypunk had a fight over something and weren’t speaking to each other.
And worse than that…
Oh much worse than that…
WITCHES were appearing, to the north, to the south, to the west, to the east, surrounding the school. The Witches didn’t dare get too close, for Pook’s Hill was protected by very powerful Magic. They were just roosting, high up in the treetops, like a gathering cloud of crows. They hadn’t attacked anyone yet.
But they made everyone feel nervous.
And then two much more alarming incidents happened that meant they were not going to be able to stay in Pook’s Hill forever.
10. Two Alarming Incidents
The first alarming incident concerned Squeezjoos.
They had never really gotten to the bottom of why Squeezjoos had gone a little crazy and attacked Queen Sychorax’s army all on his own. He seemed fine again once he got to Pook’s Hill, so they didn’t worry too much about it.
But then one day, Squeezjoos came to them all and said, in a slightly wobbly voice:
“I iss feelings a little bit funny…”
“Is it my imagination,” said Caliburn, “or is Squeezjoos looking a little more green than the rest of us?”
“And he’s behaving very oddly—he keeps gobbling up my spellsss!” said Tiffinstorm.
“I doesss not!” said Squeezjoos. “Is liess, all liess… Ooh, is that a pixy over there?”
Tiffinstorm jumped and drew her wand, a sharpened thorn, and whirled around in the air to face the imaginary pixy. And while she was distracted, Squeezjoos reached out,
bit one of the spells off her belt, and zipped off again.
“Don’t eat that! It’s a fire spell!” hissed Tiffinstorm. But it was too late. Squeezjoos had already swallowed the spell.
“I’ss hassn’t eaten anything,” said Squeezjoos, blinking with huge innocent bug eyes and shaking his little head so vigorously that smoke came out of his ears. But then—Oh! He went cross-eyed and, “hIC!” he accidentally hiccuped, and a great spout of flame came out of his mouth and set fire to one of the leaves of Tiffinstorm’s dress. She hastily put it out.
“Ooh!” said Squeezjoos, putting a little hairy hand over his mouth in surprise. “Peppery!”
“Squeezjoos, stay still for a second, we need to have a look at you,” said Xar.
“I isss fine! I iss fine! I iss fine!” chanted Squeezjoos, nipping out of the way, but Xar eventually caught him in his cupped hands. And when Xar opened his hands a smidgeon, they got a good look at Squeezjoos, and his fur was definitely tinged with a deep hint of emerald that was darker than it ought to be, and you could even see a slight lime tint to his little spotty eyeballs.
“I isss FINE, let me go!” said Squeezjoos crossly, letting out little tongues of flame every single time he opened his mouth, and then when Xar didn’t let him go immediately, his little eyeballs suddenly flashed a very bright, pure green and he leaned down and bit Xar.
“OW!” yelled Xar, dropping the little hairy fairy.
The green disappeared as quickly as it had flared, like sheet lightning, and Squeezjoos was mortified, for he hero-worshipped Xar. “I isss so sorry!” whimpered Squeezjoos with huge horrified eyes. “Forgives me, Masster… I don’t knowsss whatss came over me. It was an accident.”
He went cross-eyed. “Hic…!” said Squeezjoos in surprise, shooting out a flame and then putting his hand over his mouth again. “OOOh!… Spicy!” And then he shot this way and that, with a “Hic! Ooh! Scorchy…” and a “Hic! Ooh… Sweltry!” and “Hic! Ooh!… Zesty!” Until finally he collapsed on his back on Wish’s shoulder, moaning, “Squeezjoos feeling so sick…”
And then he threw up, so violently and fierily that they had to rush him to Perdita’s tree office to give him urgent medical attention, wrapping him up in one of Xar’s flameproof handkerchiefs to get him there.
You would never have thought that one little sprite could have eaten so many spells, but Squeezjoos threw up love spells, invisibility spells, stink spells, curse spells, every kind of spell you could think of. When he was throwing up the invisibility spells he disappeared for a moment, but they still knew where he was from the “Hic! Ooh!… Gassy!” noises. Eventually he got to the water spells, and that was good because they seemed to quench everything else, and by that time the little sprite was so exhausted he fell asleep, snoring loudly. Every now and then little mustard-colored snot balloons drifted out of his nose, up into the air, where they burst, spraying the remains of stink spells all over everybody.
Wish explained to Perdita that Squeezjoos had been stained with the Witchblood trying to save Xar long ago in the forest, and how they had put him on the Stone-That-Takes-Away-Magic, but that Xar may have taken him off a little too quickly.
Perdita gave the little sleeping sprite a thorough examination, and when she finished she looked very grave. Even looking at Squeezjoos through her rose-colored spectacles wasn’t really helping.
“Is he going to die?” whispered Xar.
“No, no,” said Perdita hastily, “he’s just sleeping. Look, he’s waking up!”
Squeezjoos sat up, shaking his head, and a few little mustard bubbles fell out of his ears, and a great big bubble of a stink spell burped out of his mouth.
“Yes…” said Perdita, “if the little hairy fairy put his hand on the Stone-That-Takes-Away-Magic, that will have gotten rid of most of the bad Magic, so he won’t die… but the Witchblood is giving him a craving for power which is why he is eating all these spells, and there is this remote possibility that he may—”
“Fly off to join the Witches at some point,” Caliburn finished the sentence for her.
“NO!” gasped Xar. “Squeezjoos would never leave me and fly away, would you, Squeezjoos?”
“I’s bets he wouldn’ts. You isss lovely, Master, best masster in the world. Who iss he, this Squeezjooossss? Who are we talking about?” asked Squeezjoos in an interested sort of way, hovering in front of Xar.
“What do you mean who is he? He is you! You’re Squeezjoos!” said Xar in alarm.
“I isss not!” sang Squeezjoos happily, kissing Xar on the nose. “I iss SOOJZEEKS!”
“I believe ‘Soojzeeks’ may be Witch-speak for ‘Squeezjoos’ spelled backward,” said Perdita, looking very worried indeed, “which is not a good sign, but I will start administering my most potent antidotes, and we shall just have to hope for the best. On the plus side, he does seem awfully fond of you all…”
The remains of one of the love spells were still fizzing around Squeezjoos’s little hairy fairy bloodstream, and so he was buzzing around trying to kiss everybody, squealing, “Soojzeeks lovesssss YOU… and YOU… and YOU… and YOU!”
“Oh dear,” sighed Perdita. “This explains why there have been so many Witch sightings near the school recently…”
“What?” said Wish sharply.
“They can’t get into this school,” said Perdita soothingly. “My Magic is invulnerable, but they may sense that you are here and that Squeezjoos is turning toward them.”
It was all very well to say “don’t worry,” but it was a horrible feeling to think that the Witches were gathering, hissing invisibly in the darkness, sharpening their talons, whether they could actually get in or not. And even worse to think that adorable little Squeezjoos might end up going over to the dark side.
So that was the FIRST incident that gave Wish and Xar an anxious feeling that they were no longer safe in the school and that they really should be leaving and getting on with the quest to find the Nuckalavee so they could get rid of the Witches forever and save Xar and Squeezjoos at the same time.
The next incident was, if anything, even more alarming.
One morning, Perdita was giving Xar, Wish, and Bodkin a “catch-up” lesson on trees, in her study, because they were a bit behind the other pupils in this subject.
Xar found these kinds of lessons boring. He much preferred the ones where they turned into birds or deer or different kinds of fish. Fidgeting wildly, his eye landed on a bottle marked “Interesting Transformation Potion, Treat With Extreme Caution,” poking out of one of Perdita’s many pockets. Perdita was distracted, excited about telling them how trees secretly talked to one another by sending each other chemical messages. Xar winked at Squeezjoos, who giggled and picked the pocket of Perdita, giving the bottle to Xar, who put it in his waistcoat. Only Bodkin saw him do it.
When they left the room, Xar showed Wish and Bodkin the bottle and said he was going to taste it.
“Xar, don’t be stupid,” said Wish.
“We should give that back to Madam Perdita,” said Bodkin.
“Oh, are you going to tell on me?” said Xar jeeringly.
“We’re not going to tell on you. We’re trying all the time not to get you expelled!” said Wish in exasperation. “Didn’t you learn anything from the whole Witch-stain disaster?”
“But this isn’t Witchblood. It’s just some old transformation potion. Aren’t you interested in what the Interesting Transformation Potion might be?” said Xar. “I dare you, Bodkin, to taste it with me… Go on, don’t be a stick-in-the-mud old hob for once!”
To do Xar justice, he said this quite affectionately—he just thought he was teasing Bodkin, but Bodkin was in a sensitive mood.
Underneath his brown fur, Bodkin was turning very red. “I am not a stick-in-the-mud old hob,” said Bodkin.
“Of course you’re not!” said Wish. “Don’t listen to him, Bodkin. You don’t have to prove anything.”
“Does anyone have a spoon they can lend me?” teased Xar, uncork
ing the bottle. The Enchanted Spoon buried himself very firmly in Wish’s waistcoat.
“No way!” said Wish.
“Okay, I’ll just swig it straight from the bottle, very cautiously of course,” said Xar. “And then Bodkin, you can have a taste afterward… or are you Warriors too scared?”
“I am not scared!” said Bodkin furiously, absolutely purple under the fur, if anyone could have seen it. “And I am NOT a stick-in-the-mud old hob!”
Wish closed her eyes and held her head in her hands as Xar tipped back his head and drank very incautiously indeed from the bottle, then handed it to Bodkin, who defiantly took a good swig himself. There was a loud BOOM! But when Wish opened her eyes again, expecting to find two Graxerturgleburkins in front of her, or worse, there was only one Bodkin and one Xar, looking entirely unchanged, if a tiny bit traumatized.
“Phew!” said Wish. “It hasn’t worked… You probably have to boil it up or something. But you were both still incredibly stupid to try it, and I’m getting fed up with you squabbling all the time. And have you forgotten that we’re all on a quest together? I thought I could rely on you, at least, Bodkin, to be a bit sensible, and—”
But she was interrupted by Bodkin.
“Oh, it’s worked all right,” said Bodkin.
“And it’s certainly interesting,” said Xar.
“This is a disaster!” said Bodkin, who looked like he was panicking somewhat. “This is a total, bronze-bottomed, fire-breathing, howling, hairy disaster!”
“What on earth do you mean?” said Wish. “Nothing’s happened… you look exactly the same.”
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