by Ashly Graham
‘Nonetheless, learning to ride a broomstick is hard, and requires a considerable amount of practice before it becomes second nature. Now it’s an art one only sees at demonstrations and competitions, where watching some of the tricks the experts do...flips, spins, drops, swoops, and sudden mid-air stops...even flying upside down...makes for terrific entertainment.
‘Weather conditions, of course, are the great unknown. It takes delicate handling and a good sense of balance to manoeuvre one’s way through a storm. Although there were such things as all-weather brooms, they were never satisfactory, and most witches kept several versions from which they would select the one that best suited the prevailing conditions. For local trips in turbulent weather, when stability and quick turning ability are required, one would favour a short handle with side-projecting anti-roll ailerons, and a thick brush; and for fast long-distance travel on windless summer nights, an elongated or adjustable telescopic shaft with a tight thin bundle.
‘When I was young I used to earn pocket money as an apprentice broomstick maker. For materials we only used seasoned hand-planed wood, and broom-corn, from certified sources. Consignments of finished products, once they had been approved by the studio Broom Master, were sent to a witch who had a diploma in broom-charging—it was a year’s course at the Witch Academy—for spelling with forward and reverse, and up and down gears.
‘Then the Safety Board had to check each broom’s performance, which involved a road test by one of its inspectors to confirm that it was soundly made, could make forty-five degree turns without ditching the passenger, and wouldn’t fly higher than a thousand feet from the ground. If it passed it was registered, stamped with a vehicle identification number, and sent to one of the Broomstick Commission’s official outlets.
‘So much for the old days. Modern conveyances are miracles of engineering, all on-board computers and flashing lights. They’re enclosed with luxurious interiors. The most sophisticated and expensive ones have vertical take-off, go from nought to a hundred in three seconds, and can hover for a week without overheating. At top speed they’ll fly you to the moon and back in less time than it takes to make a fried egg sandwich. No fuss, no muss.
‘Nowadays, instead of “broomstick” people talk brand names and model numbers. There’s a constant demand for still more improvements in road performance, and custom-fitted comfort; the Patent Office is overwhelmed with applications for gadgets and enhancements; and design consultants do a roaring trade charging by the hour. I don’t begin to understand the engineering specifications of what’s out there, but some of the options available are amazing, from flushing toilets to windproof barbecue decks at the rear. I’ve even seen a prototype that’s amphibious.
‘Many of the young witches have degrees in Air Conveyance Technology, meteorology, and navigational astrology, and can talk knowledgeably about aerodynamics and thrust ratios. But for each of them there’s a fool who gets sucked in by the barrage of advertising for “automatic weapons”, as the few remaining Luddites, who don’t travel if they can help it, call them. The few remaining purists love hearing about when these new thoroughbreds develop a problem, because repairs are complicated and expensive. And there’s nothing funnier than seeing a callow witch who has pranged her ride wobbling about on a loaner broom. Whereas with the old heirlooms there was never anything to be done except the occasional bristle renewal, and replacement of a broken shaft, these days it can take the mechanics, now that know-how has been replaced by computerized diagnostic systems, a week to troubleshoot and fix the simplest thing.
‘But the witches don’t give a hoot. Instead of installing something practical like a lightning conductor, gals fresh out of the Academy will start by adding a few vanity upgrades to their basic models: a Dynaflow spoiler, perhaps, a Bumfit gel seat, shock absorbers, some chrome, and a bug and bat shield. Then, before you know it, they want hands-free phone, stereo, Wi-Fi laptop, GPS, and radar. I see a lot of chop-shop “sows”, the witches’ equivalent of the wizards’ “hogs”: Ashen Airstream models, mostly, modified with ape-hanger handlebars, and Easy Rider extended forks that make them almost impossible to steer.
‘Some of the old witches aren’t immune to the siren song of a souped-up sow either, and you’d be surprised at the number of half-blind hags who go out for a burn dressed in a fringed jacket and leather trousers.
‘The hazards are manifold. There’ve been some nasty collisions and plenty of near misses...or is it near hits?...and the witches’ emergency channel on the CB radios fair crackles with warnings of accidents, slow-downs, and diversions in the flight roads. Operationally, the most problematical conveyances are the Darkspanglers, which are prone to rolling over in a high wind. They’re underpowered and temperamental, and after a month’s breakdown call-out charges from the AA—that’s Air Assistance—one might as well have sprung for something better.
‘For the impecunious, manufacturers’ rebates and hire-purchase deals are available on Moonshots and Skyscrapers; while in the middle range I must confess to liking the look of the six- and eight-cylinder machines by Airsweeper.
‘Then there are the hybrids: lithium-ion battery-run scootermobiles by SkySlide, and Silentnight; and green-powered Whispalites with lunar panels that, when it’s cloudy, switch to run on bat guano—I make a bit of money on the side selling that, enough to keep me in Old MacHeath—and can still get up to a hundred and fifty knots.
‘In the luxury market Sky Chariot is the premier marque: Sky Chariot’s heavily promoted latest model is a state-of-the-art machine that took a team of specialists a year to design, and although it costs a fortune—the sky is way below the limit for that dreamboat—there’s a waiting list a mile long. We’re talking shower and basin, and Airvac toilet; fridge freezer and microwave oven; wet bar; voice-activated telephone; high-definition plasma screen television, nine-speaker stereo, VCR and DVD; game centre; hair styler, chair-bed massage, and tanning machine; fully extendable electric moon roof, heated seats with five pre-set lumbar support memory settings, and vibro-massager; and...although witches and electricity, don’t go well together...five power points for other accessories and recharging.
‘What has made the Familiars’ Union very happy, for it is forever complaining about the travel conditions of its members, is that there’ll also be well-appointed private quarters for the familiar, instead of the wicker basket and dirty tartan blanket in a corner that they’re often given at home.
‘Once the Super Sky Chariot Mark IV is programmed for a trip, by punching in the coordinates of one’s destination, you don’t have to touch the controls, and the autopilot will land you on a dandelion on the other side of a world, if that’s what you selected on the Google Sky touch pad zoom screen, and wake you in your fully reclining seat with a cup of CAWFEE—that’s Captain Ahab’s Wizard Fresh-roast Double Espresso—in the gimballed holder at your side. You can even set the desired time of arrival, and the computer will take weather and wind conditions into account, and adjust speed accordingly, so that you can get your eight hours of sleep.
Included as standard on the Mark IV are fuel injection push-to-pass powertrain, turbo-thrusters, torque vectoring, cylinder-on-demand fuel economy, turbulence-sensitive suspension, and every conceivable navigational assistance feature of power-steering, air disc brakes, depth sounder, altitude adjuster, ultra-violet scopevision, collision avoidance system, weather detector, and storm and hail alert.
‘Weapons systems are also available as optional extras, including machine guns, air-to-air missiles, lasers, and cluster bombs; and on the defensive side, titanium shield, smoke-screen, decoy activator, chaff-spreader, taser, stun gun, ultrasonic deterrent, and wizard spray—it’s an aerosol that comes out of a vent at the rear and smells like frightened skunk—and, were all else to fail, an ejector seat. Even then the machine itself is not lost: it will hover and await a recovery vehicle.’
‘I suppose,’ said Jenny weakly, ‘one could get a bacon sandwich if one wanted it.’ B.J., i
t was clear, was vastly taken—from afar—with the whole air conveyance industry and experience.
‘Certainly, from the U-Pick menu in next year’s Sooperdooper 15VX-12. It’ll memorize one’s favourites dishes and snacks, and produce them to order via the voice-activated waiter.’
Jenny shook her head in wonder. ‘It’s exhausting just listening to it all. You could be a salesman for Sky Chariot in your spare time, if you had any.’
‘Funny that you should mention that, because...’ B.J. reddened and stopped. Looking up abruptly, he addressed a reddish ball on top of one of the hutches. ‘Time please, Caractacus,’ he called out. ‘Caractacus, awake!’
The ball turned into a piece of fur, and Jenny saw that it was a red squirrel. Scampering over the heads of the Ingredients and jumping onto the window counter, the squirrel looked in the direction of the westering sun. His tail stiffened and pointed to the right and down, and B.J. nodded.
‘Twenty past five; which means we must be gravitating. Ingredients! You know what you have to do: it’s Dame Hecate’s open house night, and Dr B.J. Wegner the Blaspheming Jew, your Horatio Nelson, expects that every Ingredient shall do his duty.’
And with those mysterious words he got up and led the way.
”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“
Hecate was out as she said she would be, and B.J. strode to the green curtain that partitioned off one side of the room, and ran it along the rail as if he were about to introduce a theatrical production. The miscellany of objects that were revealed made the living area look tidy by comparison, and it wasn’t difficult to believe that it had taken hundreds of years to assemble so much stuff.
‘Voilà,’ said B.J. ‘Hecate’s spell laboratory and pick-up area. “Confusion now hath made her masterpiece,” as somebody called Macduff is alleged by a certain person to have said. Where to start? At the end, I think. Come over here, Jenny.
‘On this table, look you,’ he said, pointing to stacks and piles of parcels, boxes, packages, and padded envelopes, ‘and on the floor against the wall are orders awaiting collection. There used to be more method to the arrangement, but these days each can take a while to locate. Sometimes one happens upon what one is looking for right away…sometimes one does not.
‘Each spell is individually wrapped and sealed, and has the witch’s name written in wax pencil on it. In order to ensure that witches don’t take the wrong spells, the spells are numbered, and the ticket has to be matched to that on the pick-up sheet before it can be released. The witches also need to produce two forms of identification, with photographs; though frankly those aren’t much help, because they change their hair colour and visit their plastic surgeons so often.
‘WICCA, the insurance company, requires that the witch sign, print, and date her name on a disclaimer form absolving us of liability. As I’ve said, performance problems almost always relate to the witch not having followed the instruction leaflet…I except the case of Winnie Ramsay’s lumbago syrup…so it’s policy not to give refunds. The top white copy goes to the witch, and of the two carbons the yellow one we send to WICCA, and the pink one stays here. As you can see from the roseate piles under the tables, we have a lot of filing to do.
‘Complicated spells have to be paid for in full at the time of ordering, because we can’t afford the possibility that the witch can’t afford it, or the client doesn’t pay her, or cancels the order. For anything under twenty-five pounds—it used to be fifty—payment is fifty per cent up front, with the remainder upon collection: cash only, no cheques, credit or hard-luck stories, no matter how hard the customer pleads.
‘Some witch-wheedling would be difficult for me to resist, if Hec hadn’t immunized me against being influenced by it: there’s a spell, you see—she won’t make it up, but it’s available under the counter elsewhere—for inducing a merchant to give one credit, or extra time to settle. Very, ah, Shakespearean. And if all the blarney were true about the dozens of starving children some of the witches say they have, including dried-up old crones who haven’t had more than a cat and spiders in the house for two hundred years, there’d be a real concern about overpopulation.
‘We used to deliver prescriptions, to trustworthy clients only who were on a preferred list, but since Volumnia took it upon herself to retire from active duty...it was a relief really, she was biting our customers if they didn’t tip her with offal...all the witches have to come in person. Sending their indentured familiars isn’t allowed, because the marks and scratchings of their signatures are undecipherable, and fraud would be inevitable. And overseas mailings had to be discontinued for lack of an apprentice reliable enough to calculate weights and the correct postage, and fill out the customs forms properly.
‘With the advent of the latest generation of long-distance conveyances, however, a foreign market for some of our products has come back of late. A witch who wants a bit of R and R, and would never have considered battling round the Horn on a superannuated broomstick, can now stretch out in her Sky Chariot transporter and arrive fully rested anywhere in the world, spell a client and collect her fee, do a little sightseeing and return the same day; or she can send a proxy to do it for her for free, like a deadheading off-duty airline flight attendant. In that respect we have benefited from the new technology, and for the first time in decades the International Guild of Witches has been able to justify its title.
‘We will now,’ said B.J. portentously, ‘proceed now to the nitty-gritty of spell preparation.’
‘Great,’ said Jenny. She felt herself coming over squeamish.
‘Naturally I can’t give any secrets away. It’s not that we don’t trust you, but it’s a Guild requirement that certain things remain confidential.’
‘Of course. That’s as it should be.’
Underneath shelves of jars, bottles, and canisters was a very long oak trestle-table with a kitchen scales on it, and a rack of weights ordered by size. Bunsen burners were connected to gas cylinders on the floor. There were alembics, carboys, beakers, flasks, crucibles, glass retorts, clear distillation tubes, rubber hoses, clamps, iron tripods and trivets, asbestos mats, wooden test-tube racks, thermometers, trays of pipettes and syringes, tongs, stirrers, and vials of differently coloured liquids.
There was also an apothecary’s balance, with tiny brass weights down to an eighth of an ounce, and Petri dishes of grains of rice and sand, and a postal scales for weighing letters; these, said B.J., were used for apportioning cat and mouse whiskers, and anything else that the measuring cups and the spoons in the drawers were too big for.
Jenny surveyed the collection with awe. ‘Hecate was right when she said I couldn’t cut it as an apprentice; I was never any good at chemistry, and forever mixing the wrong things together. Once they had to clear the room when I added sulphuric acid to sodium nitrate.’
B.J. smiled. ‘Those hundredweight sacks,’ he said, pointing to a row of them, from which different-coloured granules had spilled onto the floor from open necks where the cords hadn’t been pulled tight around the scoops that were stuck in them, and from tears in the hessian, ‘contain the dry ingredients, which have to be reduced to degrees of fineness with the grinders, pestles, and mortars; and precisely weighed, allowing for tare and tret.
‘Overhead is the pot rack of saucepans various, and the larger ladles and sieves and strainers and graters. Earthenware mixing bowls are on the sideboard.
‘There, next to the marble slab and wooden chopping boards, are the meat cleavers and carvers, and the blocks containing the lesser knives for flaying and slicing and dicing. These lovely items are the strangling noose, bludgeon, and other instruments of non-chemical dispatch. Everything that isn’t used immediately after killing is disposed of, as of course is anything that goes to waste because it has died of natural causes.
‘Here you will find no electric double convection oven, or forty-eight inch range-top stove with stir-fry griddle; no Aga or Raeburn products. Instead of an eight-fan l
ined extractor hood, we have one very temperamental Vent-Axia. As inured as I am to most of the smells of roasting, frying, singeing, seething, boiling, and baking—and formaldehyde—there’s something about simmering bats’ wool soup that nauseates me, and even after all these years I have to wear a mask.
‘But all in all, I’m a dab hand in the kitchen, and challenge any sashimi chef to get more slices than I can out of the usable part of a stoat.’
That did it, and Jenny had had enough. ‘B.J., I’m sorry, but I’m not going to able to take any more of this part. With all the magic at your disposal, I don’t know why you can’t make do with roots and herbs. There’s the adage about being cruel to be kind; but I don’t think that applies here, and I can’t help feeling sorry for the live Ingredients. They seem so…human.’
‘Roots and herbs and other inanimate constituents are very important, but we need a lot stronger stuff too. As I mentioned to you upstairs, these chaps are proud of their role. It’s considered an honour to be selected to be an Organic Ingredient, because for them to undergo a sea-change into something rich and strange—to quote a certain person’s dramatic character called Ariel—by becoming part of a spell, is an apotheosis for them, a mystical experience. It’s as if they are aware of that concept in chaos theory, of how the beat of one butterfly’s wings can cause a storm half a world away.’
‘Or a spell thrown from across the moor.’
‘What I mean is that, transformed into a spell, a pig knows that it can aspire to becoming more than a pork chop, or bacon.’
‘B.J., I think we’re going to have to agree to differ on the subject. Could we talk about something else? What I’d like to know before the open house is why, if Dame Hecate has all this spell potency at her command, does she allow Wanda Empiria to keep her under her thumb so?’