The Only Thing Worse Than Witches

by Lauren Magaziner

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker sucked air through her crooked nose. “And are you lying to me—again?”

  Bruno looked around, as if he hoped that someone in the class would feed him the correct answer. “No?”

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker lunged forward and grabbed Bruno by the ear. Bruno winced in pain, muttering ow, ow, ow, ow! She pulled him to the front of the class and threw him into a wooden chair. Bruno trembled as Mrs. Frabbleknacker placed a box of toothpicks in front of him.

  “P-please don’t stab me with those,” Bruno said.

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker leaned forward and breathed into the ear she almost pulled off. “You won’t leave this classroom until you build a tower. Just one toothpick on top of the other. Longways. Use them all.”

  “But that’s impossible,” Bruno said. “Not without glue.”

  “I hope you said good-bye to your family this morning,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said, and then she burst into a deep, hearty laugh.

  When Mrs. Frabbleknacker finished laughing, she snapped back to the rest of the class. “Well? You’ve had ten minutes to learn the words. Now it’s time for a test.”

  The entire class gasped.

  “Allison!” Mrs. Frabbleknacker snapped. She walked up to Allison’s desk and breathed her banana breath in Allison’s nervous-looking face. “What is REPUGNANT?”

  “Um,” Allison stammered. “Is it a kind of dog?”

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker flipped Allison’s desk over and tossed her papers across the room. “NO!” she shouted. “IT’S YOU! YOU ARE REPUGNANT, YOU LOATHESOME CHILD! YOU ARE THE UGLIEST, SMELLIEST, ROTTEN-BEYOND-ROTTEN LITTLE GIRL IN THE WHOLE WORLD!”

  Allison ran from the classroom crying.

  “Next,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said. “Francis. Demonstrate TACITURN!”

  Francis was too afraid to move, blink, or even breathe. He sat there in silence.

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker frowned, clearly disappointed. “Correct. Now class, demonstrate TACITURN.”

  Every student imitated Francis—his straight posture, his nauseated expression, his still and silent demeanor, and even his tiny eye twitch. And without knowing what TACITURN was, the whole class became it.

  “Kaleigh—CLAMOR.”

  “Oh! My daddy had mussels and CLAMORS for dinner last night!”

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker smiled wickedly. “Did I not ask the class to be TACITURN? Did I ever say to stop being TACITURN?”

  “Wh-what’s TACITURN?”

  “SILENCE!” Mrs. Frabbleknacker shouted. “SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE! AND WHEN YOU SPEAK, ARE YOU SILENT?” Mrs. Frabbleknacker licked her lips, her long tongue fluttering in and out of her mouth like a snake. “ARE YOU TACITURN, KALEIGH?”

  “No, but you asked me a question.”

  “TACITURN! TACITURN, TACITURN! AND YOUR FATHER DID NOT HAVE CLAMORS FOR DINNER BECAUSE I AM CLAMORING NOW. DO YOU HEAR WHAT I AM DOING?”

  Kaleigh nodded taciturnly.

  The whole room buzzed with silence. Then, Rupert heard the sound of a hundred toothpicks falling against a table. Poor Bruno, he thought.

  “And now that I have you all silent,” Mrs. Frabbleknacker said, “I will demonstrate the last vocabulary word, ABSCOND.”

  Mrs. Frabbleknacker walked out of the classroom, slamming the door in her wake.

  Two hours later, Rupert and his classmates decided it was finally safe to move. Mrs. Frabbleknacker wasn’t coming back.

  New Lair, Where?

  WHEN RUPERT ARRIVED AT HIS HOUSE, WITCHLING Two was waiting for him on the porch.

  She waved to him, grinning. “Hi, Rupert!”

  He was almost too stunned for words. Finally he stammered out, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see my apprentice! What are you doing here?”

  “I live here.”

  “Well, there we have it,” she said with a nod.

  Rupert climbed the porch steps, but as he got closer, the smile slid off her freckly face. She wiggled her nose and sniffed loudly. “You smell funny,” she said.

  “Do I smell like bananas? Mrs. Frabbleknacker may have rubbed off on me.”

  “No, you smell more like pigeon liver,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “What are you doing here?” Rupert said. “You said I didn’t know anything about magic.”

  “It’s called perverse apology. Nebby and Storm use it on me all the time, so I thought I’d trick them for once.”

  Rupert scratched his head. “Perverse apology? I think you mean reverse psychology.”

  Witchling Two shrugged.

  “So what are you doing here? At my house? My mom doesn’t particularly like . . . people like you. You better leave before she gets home from work.”

  “I’ve already met Joanne. We just had a nice pot of tea.”

  At that moment, Rupert’s mother opened the front door. She was struggling to get her shoes on, and she was wiggling around trying to clip the straps. “Rupert, honey, you didn’t tell me you made such a lovely friend at school. We were just having tea.”

  Rupert looked at Witchling Two in fright, but she was just smiling. Did she tell his mother the truth? Rupert couldn’t imagine that Witchling Two would tell his mother that she was a witch and Rupert was her new apprentice—and his mother seemed far too calm to have heard that she was just drinking tea with a witch.

  “Rupert?” his mother said. “You seem distracted.”

  “Sorry. You’ve met my friend . . .” he tried to introduce her, but then he realized that he very well couldn’t introduce her as Witchling Two. “Uh, my friend. So now we’re going to work on homework. In my room.” Rupert grabbed the sleeve of Witchling Two’s powder blue shirt, and he pulled her into the house.

  “I’m headed to work!” his mother shouted behind him. “I’ll see you later, Rupert!”

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Campbell!” Witchling Two cried.

  Rupert pulled her past the kitchen and through the living room. He tried to drag her up the stairs, but she paused at the adjacent basement door.

  “Ooooh!” she squealed. “A dark and dangerous door! What’s in there?”

  “Just the basement,” he said. “Let’s not go down there.”

  Witchling Two opened the basement door, grabbed Rupert’s arm, and pulled him down the stairs with her. The basement wasn’t the most comfortable part of the house—it was a carpet-less, cement-floored, dimly lit, dust-ridden, musty-smelling, dingy old space. But despite his reluctance to go down there, Rupert supposed it was perfect for what he needed at the moment: a quiet area to think. He buried his face in his hands and thought, thought, thought about what to do next. Now that his mother met Witchling Two, it changed everything. His mom would expect to see his “new friend” around. But how could Rupert possibly have her over? She was a witch, and if his mother found out, she wouldn’t like that one bit.

  Rupert looked up to find Witchling Two pacing the perimeter of the room.

  “What are you doing?” Rupert said.

  “The dimensions are perfect. And it’s just the right temperature. And it has the ideal amount of light.”

  “For . . . for what?”

  “For my new lair, of course!”

  Rupert’s stomach dropped. “What?”

  “Well, I can’t go back to Pexale Close with you. The Witches Council booby-trapped it for humans.”

  “You can’t have a lair here!” Rupert said. “My mom hates witches! And she’ll know if a witch’s lair is in her own basement!”

  “Calm down, Rupert. She likes me.”

  “Not when she finds out you’re a witch! And what did you tell her by the way? How did you end up having tea with my mom?”

  Witchling Two smiled. “Ah, well, I was waiting for you outside the house, and your mom just invited me in. Who am I to say no to perfectly good tea and crumpets?”


  “And what did you say when she asked for your name?”

  “I didn’t say anything. I just changed the subject.”

  “Do you know what name you’ll want to use, eventually?”

  Witchling Two shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll keep you posted. But you have to promise to keep it a secret. I’ll be very upset if one of the other witchlings takes my name.”

  Witchling Two turned her back toward Rupert and put her arms straight in the air. Then she stretched from left to right. Then right to left. Then she jumped up in the air. Then she jumped up in the air and waved her arms. Then she crouched down on the ground. Then she hugged her knees. Then she put her cheek to the floor. Then the other one. Then she stood on her head until her face turned purple.

  “Are you all right?” Rupert said.

  “I have to do my exercises now. Shhh,” she said.

  Rupert sat on the worktable and observed Witchling Two’s routine with bemusement. “You’re looking rather purple.”

  “That’s my favorite color!”

  “So I’ve heard,” Rupert said, “but it might be healthier if you stayed peach.”

  Witchling Two flipped up to her feet. “Let’s do some magic!”

  Rupert’s eyes bulged, which was his way of saying NO WAY, JOSE. They could not—absolutely, positively, definitely, surely, certainly could NOT—use his basement as a lair. Because even though his mother worked three jobs, she was bound to notice a cauldron in the basement.

  Witchling Two cracked her knuckles, and Rupert cringed. He hated the sound, and it just so happens that witches have extra crackily knuckles that make the whole room shake. It was the loudest, most horrible sound Rupert had heard in all eleven years of his life.

  “AUGH!”

  And Witchling Two froze. “What is it?” she whispered. “Did you see . . . a bunny rabbit?”

  And then everything clicked for Rupert.

  “Oh yes!” Rupert lied. “I saw a bunny! There are tons of them in the basement. Millions, in fact. All the bunnies in the world live in basements. Maybe you don’t want your lair here after all—”

  Witchling Two jumped onto the table. “BUUUUNNNNNYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

  “NO NO!” Rupert said. “I WAS JUST KIDDING!”

  But then Witchling Two whimpered. And that whimper turned into a snivel. And that snivel turned into a weep. And that weep turned into a cry. And that cry turned into a wail. And that wail turned into a sob. And that sob turned into a blubber.

  And by that time, the basement began to flood.

  Hic!

  RUPERT JUMPED OFF THE TABLE, AND WITCHLING Two’s tear-water sloshed into the mesh of his sneakers. Her tears were already at Rupert’s ankles. He slopped and splattered and splashed toward the closet under the staircase. Rupert yanked on the door handle, and the door very reluctantly opened against the current of tear-water.

  Rupert dug around in the dark, dank closet and came out holding a bucket. He scooped some of Witchling Two’s tear-water into the bucket, ran upstairs, and dumped it in the sink. Then he ran back and did it again.

  “Please,” he said, after Witchling Two stopped howling so loudly, “don’t cry! I was only teasing. There are no bunnies. They don’t exist in Gliverstoll, and certainly not in my basement.”

  Witchling Two hiccupped, tears still flowing.

  “You’re flooding my basement . . . and your lair.”

  Witchling Two hiccupped again. Hic!

  Rupert couldn’t believe what he was about to say, but he knew that it might be the only way to get Witchling Two to stop flooding his house. “That’s right,” Rupert said. “If you stop crying, I’ll let you use my basement as a lair. Promise.”

  “But I hic! don’t know hic! if I can stop. Hic!”

  “You have to,” Rupert said. “Or else you’ll flood my entire house. And then my mom will find out. And then I won’t be allowed to be your apprentice anymore. And you might not pass your Bar Exam. And then you’ll never get a name.”

  Hic!

  “Be right back!” Rupert said as he ran upstairs to dump out another bucket of water.

  Rupert hopped up the stairs, accidentally sloshing water on the carpet of the first-floor hallway. He carefully speed-walked the rest of the way to the sink and dumped the water out again.

  He ran back to the basement, his sneakers making SQUISHY noises and leaking water everywhere. The tear-water was up to Rupert’s thighs now, and he tried not to think about what he would do if the water rose any higher.

  Witchling Two still cradled her knees and hiccupped on the worktable. She dipped her bare toe into the water, and then curled up again. “Ruhic!pert,” she sputtered. “My hic! cauldron.” Witchling Two reached into her pocket and pulled out a flat piece of plastic. “It’s my hic! porthic!able, inflatable cauldron! Hic!”

  Rupert tore the cauldron away from her and blew into the plastic mouthpiece. The more he blew, the bigger the cauldron became—until it became so big that Rupert could fit inside the middle. Rupert tried to pass it off to Witchling Two, but she shook her head and backed away from it.

  “No!” she said. “If I hic! touch it, it will hic! turn to iron!”

  Rupert looked at it in confusion. “Well, what do I do with it?”

  “Set it hic! in the water.” Witchling Two held her hands over the floating plastic cauldron and snapped her fingers. “Get this water hic! up, and drain it until the basement’s neat,” she said.

  The cauldron whizzed and whirred, and the tear-water in the basement began to churn. Then the whirling and twirling and swirling got faster and faster. Rupert jumped onto the table just in time—and then the cauldron sucked all the water into its middle like a vacuum.

  For a minute, Rupert and Witchling Two held onto each other, listening only to Witchling Two’s occasional hic!s. Then Rupert climbed off the table and peered into the cauldron. There was nothing inside. He examined the floor and the legs of the table, and they were both dry. Even his sneakers were dry.

  Witchling Two crawled off the table, too, beaming. “Did I . . . actually perform a spell correctly?” she said, suppressing a hiccup.

  “I think so—”

  POP!

  The cauldron exploded—smoke, light, dust, and all of the tear-water burst out. The water fell on their heads in fat droplets like a heavy rain. Then all of the sudden, the water turned into freezing ice pellets that plunked them in the head. Rupert pulled Witchling Two under the table to avoid getting hit.

  “THE CAULDRON WASN’T BIG ENOUGH!” shouted Rupert.

  “YES IT WAS!” shouted Witchling Two.

  “THEN IT WAS YOUR SPELL!”

  “MAYBE!”

  Rupert tried to recall what she had said—and realized with horror. “GET THIS WATER HIC! UP AND DRAIN UNTIL THE BASEMENT’S NEAT,” he recited.

  “WHAT?”

  “THAT’S WHAT YOU SAID!” Rupert told her.

  “WHAT’S WHAT I SAID?”

  “YOU SAID GET THIS WATER HIC! UP AND DRAIN UNTIL THE BASEMENT’S NEAT, BUT YOUR SPELL MESSED UP. IT’S GETTING THIS WATER PICKED UP AND RAINING UNTIL THE BASEMENT SLEETS!”

  Witchling Two put a hand to her mouth, then sank into her own icy tear-water in shame. “I’ll never pass my Bar Exam!” she bubbled into the water, and then she started to whimper. And that whimper turned into a snivel. And that snivel turned into a weep. And that weep turned into nothing because Rupert ran over and shook her by the shoulders.

  “No crying!” he said. “From now on, you can only cry when you’re happy . . . like humans.”

  Witchling Two nodded.

  Rupert handed her a bucket, retrieved a mop from the closet, and the two of them set off on a long afternoon of very arduous manual labor.

  There’s Such a Thing as Too Friendly

 
; RUPERT HAD TO ADMIT—HE REALLY LIKED BEING a witchling’s apprentice. Now that they were all hidden from the Witches Council and the basement was no longer flooded with tears, Rupert felt better about his new job and his new friend.

  For the past few days, they had spent each day after school preparing Rupert’s basement to be Witchling Two’s new lair. In the dead of night, Witchling Two had trudged back to her old lair and dragged her state-of-the-art copper cauldron and a few jars of unusual ingredients to Rupert’s house. Rupert had felt guilty that she had to do it alone, but her lair was still human booby-trapped.

  Besides, Witchling Two was really sneaky about getting her items out of her lair and into Rupert’s house. She did it while the Witches Council was in session, and then she hid in a tree until Rupert’s mother had left for work. After Rupert’s mother was gone, Rupert had no qualms about helping Witchling Two lug her stuff inside.

  He made Witchling Two set up her lair in the back corner of the room, so that his mother couldn’t immediately see it from the top of the steps. Plus, he didn’t think his mother had been in the basement for years. The thick cobwebs were proof of that. With her three jobs, she was just too busy to do anything except collapse when she got home from work.

  Rupert had put Witchling Two’s ingredients on bookshelves covered with old drapes full of mothballs, and he hid the cauldron underneath a tarpaulin. Then, they devised a sneaking system, so that Witchling Two could get in and out of her lair without being caught. This involved Rupert unlatching the basement window, which was just large enough for Witchling Two.

  The system was working great so far, and Rupert’s mom didn’t suspect a thing. Everything was working perfectly—except for Witchling Two’s magic. With all the hustle and bustle of getting her lair organized, unfortunately, they didn’t have any time to practice. She only had three weeks left until her Bar Exam, and she was just as terrible as ever.

  Witchling Two chattered constantly about the potions they would brew and the spells they would cast, but much to Rupert’s disappointment, he and Witchling Two still hadn’t actually practiced any magic. Witchling Two claimed they needed some more fresh ingredients for her potions, but Rupert had the sneaking suspicion that she was trying to avoid practicing the subjects she didn’t like.