Floods 4
Page 3
‘Betty, have you been playing with your shoes again?’
‘Umm, it was an accident, Mum,’ Betty shouted.
Mordonna came into the bedroom, grabbed the crocodile by the tail and said, ‘Look, that’s the third pair of shoes you’ve ruined in a the past month. You’re aired for a week.’
‘What’s aired?’ said Ffiona after Mordonna had taken the crocodile down into the garden. ‘I thought it’s what my mum did when she hung the blankets out in the sunshine. Your mother’s not going to hang you out on the clothesline, is she?’
‘No, that’s human aired. Witches’ aired is like being grounded,’ said Betty, ‘except your feet don’t touch the ground. Look.’
Ffiona got down on the floor and looked at Betty’s feet. They were hovering about two centimetres off the ground.
‘It means you can’t walk anywhere,’ Betty explained, ‘because no matter how much you move your legs you just stay in the same place. The only way to move around is to grab hold of things and pull yourself along.’
‘Couldn’t you fly around on your broomstick?’
‘What broomstick?’ said Betty.
‘Don’t all witches and wizards have broomsticks?’
‘Not nowadays,’ said Betty. ‘I think my granny might have had one, but we all use vacuum cleaners now.’
‘What, to fly on?’
‘No, to clean the carpet.’
‘I could pull you along,’ said Ffiona. ‘You’d just have to hold my hand.’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Betty. ‘My mum’s already thought of that one. If you hold my hand you’ll get a terrible electric shock.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I grabbed Satanella’s tail once and she grabbed Merlinmary’s ear and we blew all the lights in the street out,’ said Betty.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Ffiona.
‘Actually it was brilliant, but I got into real trouble,’ said Betty. ‘Mum made me eat porridge for a week.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Ffiona. ‘I like porridge.’
At last Betty understood how it was that Ffiona accepted all her strange relations so easily. If she liked porridge she was weirder than all of them.
Being aired for a week turned out to be quite a good thing. Ffiona came round early every day and she and Betty sat on the bed and read the encyclopedia. Progress was slow because almost every sentence had at least two words neither of them could understand, even though Ffiona was one of those strange children who read dictionaries for a hobby.
‘Some of these words aren’t even in my dictionary,’ she said. ‘I mean, what’s a starboardcullis? I know what a portcullis is, but I’ve never heard of a starboardcullis – and how can you tell if it’s ripe or not?’
‘I think we’ll just have to ignore the bits we don’t understand,’ said Betty. ‘We’ll leave them out.’
‘But the instructions are very precise,’ said Ffiona. ‘It says we need thirty-seven point eight grammettes of ripe starboardthingies or else the spell won’t work, and it says that if we don’t do this spell first then none of the other ones will work either.’
‘OK, well, when we find come to an ingredient that we haven’t heard of,’ said Betty, ‘we’ll try to guess what it might be and use the nearest thing.’
‘Isn’t that a bit dangerous?’ said Ffiona. ‘If my mum’s cooking something and she doesn’t have the right ingredients and uses something else, it always tastes dreadful. I mean, you could think you’re making me into a witch and I could end up as a pink rabbit.’
‘No way,’ said Betty. ‘The pink rabbit spell is completely different. I’m quite good at that one except I’m colour blind and my rabbits come out green. I think.’
‘I know what a starboardcullis is,’ said a voice from under the bed.
‘Morbid?’ said Betty.
She took her junior witch’s pointy stick and poked it under the bed.
‘Oww, get off,’ said Morbid.
Silent said nothing, because he never did, but he thought, Oww, get off.
The twins crawled out covered in fluff and knelt by the bed gazing up adoringly at Ffiona.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a sticking plaster, have you?’ said Morbid. ‘That crocodile under there bit my leg.’9
‘No I haven’t,’ Betty snapped. ‘What were you doing under my bed? You know the rule, none of us is allowed to go into anyone else’s room.’
‘We came in to see if there was anything Ffiona needed,’ said Morbid.
‘Well, there isn’t. Go away. Ffiona’s my friend. You go and find one of your own.’
‘But … but … but …’ said Silent and everyone’s jaws dropped.
It was the first time in his entire life that Silent had uttered a a single word. Until then the only way he had ever communicated was by a few grunts, which only Morbid could understand. No amount of magic had ever managed to change this, but now he was so infatuated with Ffiona it had given him the power of speech.
‘What did you say?’ said Betty and Morbid.
‘Umm … but, but, but,’ said Silent.
When they went downstairs and told Mordonna, she was so delighted that she gave Ffiona a huge hug and told her she was the cleverest girl in the world and that she could come and visit whenever she wanted. She even gave Betty her shoes back and un-aired her.
‘Mum,’ said Betty, ‘do you think one of Ffiona’s distant relatives might have been a wizard?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Mordonna. ‘I mean, look at all the magic we tried to get poor Silent to talk, and then along comes Ffiona and just one look was all it took for him to start speaking.’
Of course, every silver lining has a cloud and after that it was almost impossible to shut Silent up. He talked in his sleep and didn’t even stop even when Mordonna made him eat wet concrete. They tried the terrifying putting-a-spoonful-of-Belgian-porridge-in his-mouth routine, but even that failed. Finally, they stuck his head underwater. No one could hear him when they did that, but they could tell by the way the fish threw themselves out of the pond that he was still talking.
Being witches and wizards, the only other solutions the family could think of were complicated things that involved a lot of magic and singed hair. It was Ffiona who finally came up with the answer. Because Silent never left a gap small enough for Morbid to get a single word in, Morbid stopped speaking, so they did the obvious thing and simply swapped names.10
Given Betty’s poor success rate with her spells, Betty and Ffiona agreed that they wouldn’t try any witch-making magic for the rest of the holidays.
‘You should probably get a lot more practice at ordinary magic before we try anything as big as that,’ said Ffiona, who was worried that Betty might turn her into a table lamp or a ginger biscuit.
The two girls decided that as they were total and complete best friends, they couldn’t have any secrets from each other. This meant that Ffiona had to tell Betty about her ‘hankyblanky’, which was a disgusting strip of old grey rag she wrapped around her thumb and sucked every night in bed. She even told Betty that she sometimes picked her nose and ate it.
‘Everyone does that, don’t they?’ said Betty. ‘Though I suppose most people don’t feed it to their goldfish. Granny Scratchrot collects all the wax out of her ears and the crusty bits from her eyelids and moulds them into little grey mice. Then she picks her nose and makes it into two tiny eyes and when she sticks them on the mouse’s head, they come to life and run away down the tunnels that lead to her grave. So I don’t think eating the odd bogey matters.’
‘What’s your biggest secret?’ Ffiona asked.
‘I don’t think I’ve got one,’ said Betty, ‘except that I’m not very good at magic, but everyone knows that so it’s not really a secret.’
‘Haven’t you got a hankyblanky?’
‘I used to have a dead lizard when I was a baby,’ said Betty. ‘I used to go to sleep with his tail in my mouth, but when I got my first teeth I ate
it in my sleep one night.’
‘Is that a secret?’ Ffiona asked, thinking that if she had sucked a dead lizard’s tail she probably wouldn’t want anyone to know about it.
‘Oh no, we all had one when we were babies.’
‘I’ve got another secret,’ said Ffiona. ‘I’m scared of going to school on Monday.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Betty. ‘I’ll look after you.’
Monday morning, 8.25 am – first day of term
Betty kissed her parents goodbye, picked up her school bag and said good morning to the front gate as it opened for her. She turned left down Acacia Avenue on her way to school. As she did so, Ffiona, who had been waiting at her own front gate, came running after her.
‘M-m-morning, Betty,’ said Ffiona.
Ffiona only stuttered when she was nervous. Her new school uniform didn’t help. Most of the other kids had cool shoes, but Ffiona’s looked like her granny might have worn them. Most of the other kids had their hair just hanging down. Some even had it brushed and combed. Ffiona’s hair was in two plaits that were so tidy they looked like plastic, with bright red ribbons on each one. And Ffiona’s skirt was the only one in the whole school that came down over the top of her really tidy and totally wrinkle-free grey socks.11
‘Come on,’ Betty reassured her. ‘I told you there’s nothing to worry about.’
As they turned the corner into Juniper Street, four other girls crossed the road and came up behind them. They had learnt long ago to avoid Betty, but since they had never seen her with anyone else, they didn’t recognise her at first.
These four girls were Bridie McTort, the school’s number one bully, and her cronies. Bridie came from a long line of bullies dating back to the time of her great-grandmother, who liked pulling the wings off butterflies and eating them. As she got bigger, Great-grandmother McTort would pull the wings off bigger things and, by the time she was fifteen, she was chasing swans around the public parks. When she started trying to pull the wings off children, she was arrested and transported to a small remote island, where she pulled the wings off everything – including a small aeroplane, which was pretty stupid as that was the only way of getting off the island. Eventually she was sent back to where she had come from by parcel post. Bridie McTort has a lot of nightmares.
‘Oh, look at the little baby with her pretty hair ribbons,’ said Bridie, the lumpy one in the middle.12 ‘And look at her little blonde fr–’
She suddenly realised who the little blonde friend was and stopped talking, but it was too late. Betty stopped and turned to face them. The four bullies stepped backwards.
‘Stop!’ Betty commanded and their legs froze.
‘Well, well, look who’s come to greet us on our way to school,’ she continued. ‘Beautiful Bridie and her three lovely, lovely friends.’
‘We’re not scared of you,’ said Bridie. ‘We know it wasn’t you that gave us spots.’
‘Really?’ said Betty.
‘Yeah. It’s like, food and stuff that gives you spots, not people,’ said Bridie. ‘Not even if they’re, like, witches, which you’re not because there ain’t no such thing.’
‘Yeah, we’re, like, totally not scared of you,’ said the other three.
‘Well, that just goes to show, and there’s no nice way to say this, just how completely stupid you are,’ said Betty, ‘because you should be. Look.’
And she gave them each fifteen more big painful spots.
‘You’re a witch, you are,’ said Bridie.
‘I thought you said there’s no such thing?’
‘Yeah well, you’re, like, totally, I mean, yeah, whatever,’ said Bridie.
‘Now listen to me, you morons, and make sure you tell all your friends, if you have any. Just tell them that this is Ffiona and she is my friend and if she gets the slightest bit of bother from any of you, I will make you wish you had never been born,’ said Betty. ‘Understand?’
The four girls mumbled and looked at their feet.
‘I said, understand?’
More mumbling.
Betty clicked her fingers and five large magpies landed on a rooftop next to them. Betty pointed up at the birds and said, ‘Do you want my bird friends to come and pull your hair out?’
‘As if,’ said Bridie.
‘Yeah, like, whatever,’ said the other three.
Betty crooked her little finger and beckoned to the magpies, who all swooped down and began to attack the four bullies. They were under strict instructions not to do anything too dreadful like pecking the girls’ eyes out, just to pull their hair and steal their iPod headphones and burst their pimples. Betty held up her arms and the magpies flew over and landed on the fence next to her. She tickled the backs of their heads and gave each one a piece of cheese.
‘W-w-wow,’ said Ffiona, who had been trying to hide behind Betty and was clenching her hands together really tightly.
The girls ran away across the street and shouted, ‘We’ll totally get you.’
‘Don’t you ever learn?’ said Betty.
‘And we’ll, like, get your nerdy friend too, innit?’
Betty walked across to the four girls and stood in front of them.
‘Look, I’ve told you, if the tiniest, weeniest bad thing happens to Ffiona,’ Betty warned them, ‘you will regret it big time.’
Bridie turned her back on Betty and bent over.
‘Like, talk to the bum, because the ears ain’t listening,’ she said.
‘OK, I did warn you,’ said Betty. ‘And now here’s a bum that’s much bigger than yours.’
She held up her left hand and clicked her fingers. An enormous elephant appeared right behind the girls – an enormous elephant that had eaten two hundred kilos of cheap baked beans and hadn’t been to the toilet for seven days.
It went to the toilet then vanished.
There was a lot of losing balance and falling over mixed up with a lot of swearing as the four bullies tried to get back on their feet. By the time they managed to crawl away, every single square centimetre of their skin and clothes was covered in elephant poo.
Ffiona couldn’t believe her eyes. A big grin spread across her face. It was the sort of grin you get when something incredible happens that you think you might get you into huge trouble, but you still can’t stop being excited.
‘We know where you live,’ the biggest girl cried as the four bullies went home to change. ‘We’ll get you.’
‘In your dreams,’ laughed Betty.
Bridie wanted to say, ‘I’m telling my mum on you,’ but she knew hard girls don’t say that sort of thing – and besides, if she had told her mum she would have just got a clip round the ear.
You may well be wondering how Betty managed to do all this stuff to the bullies seeing as how most of her magic always went wrong, and so it had. All Betty had been planning was for a small black cloud to appear above the bullies’ heads and soak them to the skin, with possibly a bit of hail and the odd lightning flash. But Betty was one of those people who often end up better when they make a mistake than when they get things right. The elephant was fifty times better than a bit of rain.
When word got round school about what the elephant had done to the bullies, Betty became a hero. Even the teachers smiled to themselves. Everyone knew that Betty was a witch and that her family were very weird, so they had always kept their distance – especially after the rumours about what she might have done to Dickie Dent. But now everyone wanted to be her friend, if only to make sure the elephant didn’t pay them a visit. And because Ffiona was Betty’s best friend, she was accepted by everyone without all the usual toilet flushing, lunch stealing and hair pulling that usually happened to new girls who looked like Ffiona. Betty was totally cool and that made Ffiona cool too, even if she did look like she enjoyed embroidery and stamp collecting.13
Of course, everyone expected Bridie to try to get revenge on Betty because that’s what bullies do, but they also knew that Betty would always win.
If you look inside most bullies you will find a mean little coward. Some people will tell you it’s not their fault that some children are bullies. They might get bullied at home by their older brothers or their parents. Well, like Bridie says: ‘Talk to the bum because the ears ain’t listening.’ Just because bullies are miserable at home, it doesn’t mean they can bully other kids at school.
Bridie was bullied at home. She had three brothers who were horrible to her because their dad hit them, and a mother who spent all day at home huddled over a computer trying to steal people’s secret passwords and money.14 But it didn’t make it any better for all the kids whose lives Bridie made a misery. If she had had a tiny bit of brain in her head, she would have made friends with Betty and then Betty could have sorted her family out for her.
This is Bridie’s brain magnified 3 million times
But she didn’t have any brain. All she had was mean nasty thoughts and all she wanted was revenge. She stayed off school for three days and had to have sixteen baths and a lot of scrubbing before the smell of the elephant finally went. By then her skin and her temper were both red raw and all she wanted to do was kill Betty.
She may have been seriously dumb, but she knew that she would never be able to get the better of Betty. That nerdy new girl, Ffiona, would be a different story, though.
Bridie and her gang made their plans. They went to the hardware store and, while one of the girls fell on the floor pretending to have a fit, Bridie stole six padlocks and some chains.
‘No one, like, rags me off and, like, gets away with it,’ she said.
‘Yeah, like totally whatever, innit?’ said her three slaves, though two of them were starting to have second thoughts because, although they would never admit it, they were pretty scared of Betty. Also, after fifteen showers, some of them with a really hard scrubbing brush, they could still smell elephant poo.