The Would-Be Witch

by Ruth Chew

  His mother laughed. “I’ve never seen one,” she said. She looked at Andy’s empty dish. “How about some more Jello?”

  After the dishes were in the dishwasher, Robin took the dustpan and a whisk broom to her room. She wanted to sweep up the shells from the birdseed. Andy joined her. He opened the closet door and peeked in.

  Salt was still perched on the clothes pole. He raised his head and looked at Andy. There was a nervous twitter from Pepper in the Easter basket.

  Robin looked at the birdseed shells on the closet floor. “Help me clean up this mess.”

  “You don’t need two people for that job,” Andy told her. “Just sweep the shells into a pile, and the dustpan will be there, ready for loading.”

  He was right. As soon as Robin needed it, the dustpan slid across to her. “I wish we could put some polish on this whisk broom,” Robin said.

  When all the shells were loaded onto the pan Andy opened the window. “Dump that stuff in the garden,” he said.

  The dustpan flew out of the window and scattered the birdseed shells between the rose bushes in the Gateses’ back yard. Then the dustpan flew back up to Robin’s window. It sailed into the house and landed neatly on the rag rug beside Robin’s bed.

  Robin closed the window.

  Andy looked at the dustpan. His mother had bought it long ago. It was made of hard rubber. Once it had been bright blue, but the color had faded with time. There was a small chip gone from one corner, yet the dustpan was still sturdy.

  Andy sat down on it. The dustpan wasn’t big enough for him to be comfortable. Still he thought he could stay on it if he held tight to the sides. “Fly, Dustpan!”

  The dustpan rocked under Andy, but it couldn’t get off the floor.

  “You’re too heavy for it, Andy,” Robin said. “Dustpan, don’t strain yourself.”

  At once the dustpan was still.

  Andy stood up. Robin started to close the closet door. The children heard a little twittering noise.

  “Wait a minute, Rob. I’d better check the nest. Maybe Pepper laid another egg.” Andy put Robin’s desk chair in the closet and climbed up on it. He reached up to lift Pepper off the nest.

  Salt flew at Andy and pecked his hand.

  “Ow!” Andy took his hand off Pepper and swung at Salt. Salt dodged and flew back onto the clothes pole.

  Robin pulled her brother off the chair and out of the closet. “Stop bothering the birds, Andy.” She put the chair back in front of her desk and went to close the closet door. Something shiny caught Robin’s eye.

  Two little silver feathers were lying on the floor of the closet. Robin picked them up. “Aren’t they beautiful, Andy?”

  Andy’s hand was still sore from the peck Salt had given him. He grabbed the feathers. “Beautiful yourself!” He stuck a silver feather behind Robin’s ear.

  Suddenly Andy couldn’t see Robin anywhere.

  “Rob,” Andy called. “Where are you?”

  A very small voice answered. “I’m right here. But what’s happened to you?” The voice sounded like Robin’s. It seemed to come from the floor. Andy looked down.

  A little person no bigger than the silver birds stood beside the dustpan. Andy got down on his hands and knees to get a better look. “Rob!”

  “Don’t get so close to me when you talk, Andy. I’m afraid you’ll blow me away,” Robin said. “How did you get so big?”

  Andy backed away from her. “I’m not big. You’re small. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the dustpan.”

  Robin went over to the dustpan. It looked like a small platform with a wall at the back and a ramp in front. The handle reminded Robin of the high tail of a jet airplane.

  Robin walked up the ramp and sat down near the back wall. “Dustpan,” she said, “please take me for a ride.”

  The blue dustpan rose slowly up into the air. It circled the room once and then flew back to the floor. Robin gave it a little pat. “Thank you,” she said. “That was fun.”

  Andy got up off his hands and knees. “You have all the luck,” he said. “Why can’t I be small?”

  “Watch where you walk, Andy,” Robin said. “I wouldn’t be so lucky if you stepped on me.”

  Robin wanted to see how she looked. She ran to the tall mirror on the closet door. In the mirror she caught sight of the silver feather Andy had stuck behind her ear. The feather had become small too. Robin pulled it out to look at it.

  She blinked her eyes. Suddenly everything in the room seemed to have shrunk.

  “Hey, Rob,” Andy said. “You’re back to your own size again.”

  “So is the feather,” Robin said. “Do you still have the other one?”

  Andy had forgotten all about the silver feathers. “No,” he said. “I must have dropped it.” He looked at his sister. “Do you think it was the feather that made you small?”

  Robin nodded. “They’re not just ordinary birds, you know.” She began to look around the room. At last she saw the other silver feather. One end of it was poking out from under her bed. Robin picked it up.

  “Hold still, Andy.” She tucked the feather behind her brother’s ear.

  Instantly Andy was even smaller than Robin had been. He looked up at her. “Wow!” he said. “You’re enormous!” He remembered the dustpan. “Now it’s my turn.” Andy ran toward it.

  Before he reached the dustpan, Robin bent over and grabbed him.

  Andy struggled. “Put me down, Rob. I want to go for a ride. And I’m not just going to fly around in your bedroom. I want to go somewhere interesting.”

  Robin held her brother firmly in her fist. “You listen to me, Andy Gates. I want to fly just as much as you do. But I want to do it right.”

  Robin pulled the feather out from behind Andy’s ear.

  Crash! Robin dropped Andy onto the floor. He was too big for her to hold.

  Andy stood up and rubbed the seat of his pants. “Take it easy, Rob.”

  Mrs. Gates opened the door of the room. “What was that awful bang?”

  “Robin grabbed me, and I fell,” Andy said.

  “You know I don’t allow horseplay in the house. Anyway it’s past your bedtime, Andy. Hurry and take your shower. Then Robin can have hers. I want you two out of the bathroom, so I can take a hot bath. This has been a busy day.” Mrs. Gates went downstairs.

  Andy made a face. “It’s all your fault, Rob.”

  “Go take your shower,” Robin said, “or Mother will make you go to bed early tomorrow night.”

  Andy left the room. Robin hid the two feathers in the bottom drawer of her desk. She peeped into the closet. Salt and Pepper were both asleep in the Easter basket. Robin could just see the top of Pepper’s silvery head. Quietly she closed the closet door.

  Robin opened her window and looked out. A lopsided moon was high in the sky. There were lights in the windows of the houses and apartment buildings. And Robin could see the glow from the tall streetlights. She looked down. The magnolia tree in the yard gleamed white in the moonlight. Robin shut the window.

  She undressed and put on her robe and slippers. When Andy had finished in the bathroom Robin went to take her shower and brush her teeth.

  Mrs. Gates came to kiss her goodnight after Robin had gone to bed. “Sleep well,” her mother said.

  But Robin couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed and thought of all the things that had happened during the day. She heard her father come upstairs and go to bed. At last the house was quiet.

  The clock in the hall downstairs struck eleven times. A board creaked outside Robin’s door. She sat up in bed.

  Andy tiptoed into the room. He was dressed and had on his outdoor jacket. “Rob,” he whispered, “don’t be such an old stick-in-the-mud. I want to go for a ride on the dustpan.”

  Robin got up and began to dress in the dark. “Andy,” she said, “would you get my jacket, please? It’s in the hall closet downstairs.”

  Andy went to get the jacket.

  Robin took the silver feathe
rs out of her desk drawer. She put them into the pocket of her jeans.

  When Andy came back with her jacket, Robin put it on. She opened the window and found the dustpan in the dark. Robin pulled the two feathers out of her pocket and handed one to Andy. Then she stepped on the dustpan.

  Andy tucked the feather behind his ear. At once he was tiny. He wanted to get on the dustpan, but Robin’s feet took up all the room. She tucked her feather behind her ear. Now she was small too. Andy joined her on the dustpan.

  The children sat with their backs to the wall of the dustpan. They could see out over the ramp. “Fly,” Andy said to the dustpan. It rose into the air.

  “Out of the window, please,” Robin said.

  The blue dustpan sailed out into the night. It was much blacker than it had been when Robin looked out of her window earlier in the evening. The moon had sunk behind the rooftops. And most of the windows were dark. The magnolia tree was lost in the shadows. But the tall lamps glowed above the empty streets.

  The dustpan hovered over the back yard. It seemed to be waiting for them to tell it where to go. A black cat squeezed through the picket fence and ran to the back of the yard. It climbed over the high board fence and jumped to the ground behind it.

  “Dustpan,” Andy said, “follow that cat!”

  The dustpan swooped over the fence. The cat trotted through the dry leaves and sticks in the vacant lot between the houses. The dustpan flew low and without a sound. It stayed about ten feet in the air above the cat.

  At one end of the block there was a garage and a short driveway to the street. The cat climbed to the roof of the garage, ran across it, and jumped to the driveway. The dustpan followed a few feet behind.

  When the cat reached the sidewalk, it raced to the corner and streaked down to East Fourth Street. The black cat slowed to a walk. It dodged under parked cars and slunk in the shadows of the trees. It seemed to Robin that the cat didn’t want anyone to see where it was going.

  The dustpan bobbed up and down as it followed the cat. Robin and Andy lay on their stomachs and looked over the end of the ramp. They held tight to the edge of the pan to keep from sliding off.

  An old brick house stood on East Fourth Street near the corner of Church Avenue. It didn’t look like an apartment building, but once at least six families had lived there. Now it was empty. The windows on the two upper floors were broken. Most of the glass was gone. Sheets of metal had been nailed over the basement and first-floor windows. The neighborhood children had painted fancy designs and scrawls on the metal plate that covered the front door.

  The black cat ran down the driveway between the old house and the one next to it. It climbed the high fence at the back of the house and jumped into the bare branches of a skinny tree.

  The dustpan skimmed along after the cat. It hovered in the air over the tree. Andy and Robin leaned over the edge and watched the cat.

  The cat clawed its way up the trunk of the tree until it reached an upper branch. Then it crawled along the branch until it was close to one of the back windows of the second floor of the house.

  The cat gave a leap and jumped through the empty window frame into the house. The dustpan flew down to the window and went in after the cat.

  The children were in a shadowy room. The only light came through the broken window. Andy thought this was an old kitchen. He could just make out where the sink had been ripped away. There were pipes still poking out of the wall.

  The cat trotted through an open doorway into the next room. From there it went to a hallway. There was a stair in the hall. The cat ran down to the floor below. The dustpan floated after it.

  It was much darker here. No light could come through the metal plates on the windows. Robin and Andy grabbed each other to be sure they were both still there. Robin’s heart began to pound.

  The cat’s feet made no sound, but they kicked up a cloud of dust. The children covered their mouths and noses to keep from choking.

  At last they saw a dim light. It came from another flight of stairs. The black cat ran down, and the dustpan followed it. The light grew brighter. It glowed red.

  Robin and Andy were in the basement of the old house. The low ceiling was crisscrossed with pipes and beams. The dustpan hovered near the top of a metal pole which held up one of the big wooden beams.

  The red glow came from a fire which burned under a huge iron pot in the middle of the concrete floor. Around the pot was a circle of black cats. Andy counted. There were eleven of them. When the cat the children had been following joined the others, there were twelve.

  The brew in the pot bubbled and hissed. Suddenly one of the cats jumped onto the rim of the pot.

  Andy and Robin saw the cat dip a paw into the brew. “Meow!” The cat closed its eyes and jumped into the iron pot. The children thought the brew would boil over. It rose to the top of the pot and foamed over the rim. Then the bubbling stopped. A very wet cat climbed out.

  “Something’s wrong,” the cat said.

  “You’re still a cat, Hester,” one of the other cats said.

  “So are you.” The first cat shook herself. “And so are we all unless we can find out what’s the matter.”

  A scraggly old cat with a tattered ear spoke up. “Can’t you count, Hester? There are only twelve of us here. We have to be thirteen or this stupid brew won’t work.”

  “Who is missing?” the first cat asked. She jumped off the rim of the iron pot and walked around the circle of cats. “It’s Annabel,” she said after she had looked at each set of whiskers. “The greedy thing has been living in the butcher shop. The butcher must have put a bell on her.”

  A scrawny little cat stepped forward. “I’m sorry I ever chose to be a witch,” she said. “If I’m stuck being a cat all the time it isn’t worth it. I’d rather go back to that job wrapping packages.”

  Andy was leaning so far over the edge of the dustpan that he slipped and fell. He landed on the furry back of one of the black cats.

  “Yeow!” She shook herself. Andy tumbled to the floor.

  He looked up into fierce yellow eyes. Andy knew just how a mouse must feel about cats. He started to run.

  “Pull out the feather!” Robin screamed.

  Andy reached up and yanked the silver feather from behind his ear.

  The cats drew back and stared at the boy. They all sat down in front of him. The yellow eyes seemed to flicker like little lights. Andy wasn’t sure what he could do if all twelve cats decided to jump at him. He moved back until he was against the pole. He was afraid to turn his back to the cats.

  The cats began to move forward. Inch by inch they were getting closer to Andy. All at once he made a dash and rushed straight into the crowd of cats. For a moment they were too surprised to do anything. Andy raced up the stairs.

  He ran down the dark hall and up to the very top of the house.

  The cats were right behind him now. Andy leaned out of a window. Something bumped against his hand.

  It was the dustpan.

  Andy grabbed the front of it. He put the feather behind his ear. At once he was so small that he was dangling in the air, holding onto the ramp of the dustpan.

  Robin pulled him up onto the platform. “Home, Dusty!” she said.

  “Dusty flew up the stairs and out of a second-floor window,” Robin told Andy. “Then he flew up to the top floor where you were. It was all his own idea.”

  Before she went to bed Robin made Andy give her the magic feather. She locked it up in her desk with the other one.

  In the morning she went down to the laundry room and filled her pockets with birdseed. She put the seed in the pan on her closet shelf. Pepper stayed on the nest. Salt kept flying to her with his beak full of seed.

  Andy came into the room and looked at the birds. He put Robin’s desk chair in the closet and climbed up on it. Salt made a flying dive at Andy’s head.

  Robin shook the chair. “Get down, Andy.” She pulled him off the chair and out of the closet. Then she put th
e chair back in front of her desk and closed the closet door.

  Mr. Gates made French toast for breakfast. Mrs. Gates was reading the Sunday paper at the kitchen table. Robin was just finishing her second piece of toast when she heard a yowl from the back yard.

  Mr. Gates looked out of the kitchen window. “It’s a cat fight!”

  Andy opened the back door. A black cat was chasing a white one across the fence. The white cat took a flying leap off the fence. It bounded across the yard and through the open door into the kitchen.

  “Pearl!” Robin said.

  The little cat ran to her and rubbed against her ankle. Robin picked her up. She could feel the cat’s heart thumping under the fluffy fur.

  Mrs. Gates reached over to pet the cat. Pearl looked up at her and purred.

  “Oh, I wish we could keep you,” Mrs. Gates told the cat. “But you belong to Zelda. Robin, you’d better take her back to the store right after breakfast.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Robin reminded her mother. “The store is closed.”

  “Maybe Zelda is there anyway,” Mrs. Gates said. “You’d better go and see. If we feed Pearl, she’ll keep coming back here.”

  How could Robin explain to her mother that Zelda was a witch? Robin was almost sure that the black cat that was chasing Pearl was Zelda. Zelda may even have been one of the witches in the old house last night. She had turned into a cat and couldn’t turn back.

  Robin had to go alone to return the cat. Mr. Gates insisted that Andy stay home and help him put up a shelf over his workbench.

  Some of the Church Avenue stores were open on Sunday. People were going in and out of the candy store on the corner. And the man in the dairy store was selling milk and eggs. But Zelda’s at Home was closed.

  Robin pressed her nose against the glass door and looked into the shop. Someone was sitting in the back reading a book. It was Zelda!