by Natasha Lowe
“Taking off like that in the middle of the night. In the middle of our favorite show,” Mrs. Pendle added.
“You knew I was safe,” Poppy whispered. “I called you. And I wrote you a letter explaining.”
“Not an ounce of consideration for our feelings,” her mother continued. “Honestly, Poppy. Why would you do such a thing? I was out of my mind with worry. And having to lie to the school like I did and tell them you were sick.” Edith Pendle took a long, deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “We won’t talk about it anymore, though. Daddy and I love you, but you just need to know how much you scared us.”
“Did you even read my letter?” Poppy said, looking up at her mother.
“I did, and I forgive you, sweetheart.” Edith gave a quivery smile. “We all say things we don’t mean when we’re under stress, but everything’s going to be fine now. Come on, Roger,” she clucked. “Poppy’s exhausted, poor thing. Look at her sitting there, all pale and droopy.”
“What did Marie Claire mean when she said everyone needs to know about their beginnings?” Poppy asked in a small voice. “What marvelous story should you tell me about?” Her mother’s mouth narrowed into a tight line.
“I’ll be right back with your soup,” she replied. “That’s just what you need.”
Alone in her bedroom at last, Poppy realized that it wasn’t just the walls and ceiling her parents had redecorated. They had also put up some new window treatments especially for her return. Covering the pane of glass were thick iron bars that broke up the sunlight and made opening the window impossible.
When her mother tiptoed in with a bowl of lukewarm canned soup, Poppy pretended to be asleep. She had crawled under the covers in her clothes, not bothering to put on pajamas, wash her face, or brush her teeth. “I’ll leave this here in case you want it later,” Edith Pendle whispered, putting the bowl down and tugging new purple velvet curtains across the iron bars. “Now sleep tight, sweetheart. We’re so glad you’re back home. Get a good night’s rest because it’s school tomorrow.” And as her mother left the room, Poppy heard the click of a key turning shut. So even if she wanted to run away again, it would be impossible to escape from this fancy purple prison.
In the morning Poppy woke early. She was used to getting up at four to start the bread doughs and croissants, and even though she wasn’t at the bakery anymore, Poppy still got out of bed. She decided to go downstairs and make some orange currant scones. Her parents could take her away from Marie Claire’s, but they couldn’t stop her from baking. Except that Poppy had forgotten about the door. It wouldn’t open when she turned the handle, and only then did she remember that her mother had locked her in. It was seven o’clock before she heard her father fumbling about with the key, and as soon as Mr. Pendle opened the door, Poppy raced past him and down the stairs. He immediately dashed after her.
“Don’t worry,” Poppy called over her shoulder. “I’m only going to the kitchen. I thought I’d make scones for breakfast.” But to her horror she discovered that the oven had disappeared. There was a gaping hole in the middle of the counter where the stove had once been.
“Your mother didn’t think we needed it anymore,” Roger Pendle said sheepishly. “She thought it was a distraction for you.”
“A distraction.” Poppy stared at the hole. “It’s an oven.”
“That’s right,” Edith Pendle agreed, bustling into the kitchen. “But it kept you away from your studies, Poppy. All that baking when you should have been practicing your magic,” she said. “I thought it would be simpler for you not to have it around. You know, take away the temptation. We can easily put it back in later, after you graduate. And anyway,” she finished, “I hardly ever used it myself. The microwave is all we really need.”
“I used that oven though,” Poppy said in a small, tight voice. “I used it all the time. I liked that oven,” she whispered, starting to tremble with pent-up anger. “You took away the one thing in this house that made me happy.”
“Oh, now, don’t exaggerate,” Edith Pendle said, opening the freezer and taking out a box of toaster tarts. She ripped the top off and shook three of them into the microwave. “You’ve no idea how lucky you are, Poppy, honestly. This program I watched last night said that fewer and fewer girls are being born with the gift of magic. Only one in fifteen thousand, according to the latest research, and most of those have only a fraction of your powers.”
“I don’t want to be a witch,” Poppy shouted, shaking with emotion. She could smell the chemical sweetness of heating toaster tarts.
“Listen, Poppy, your father and I support you one hundred percent,” Edith Pendle said, speaking slowly to emphasize the seriousness of her words. “Truly, we do. Right now you have no idea what’s best for you, but one day you will. One day you’ll thank us for doing the right thing.”
“Like taking away the oven,” Poppy cried, “and making me come back here when I loved living with Marie Claire and cooking every day?”
Roger Pendle cleared his throat. “Well, that’s right,” he added, although he didn’t sound quite as convinced as his wife. He tweaked one of Poppy’s braids affectionately.
“Have a toaster tart,” Mrs. Pendle offered, holding out a steaming square of something that looked to be made out of cardboard. Poppy waved her mother’s hand away, and a stream of tiny bunched up silver fists flowed from her fingers into the air.
“Oh, that’s so clever,” Edith Pendle exclaimed. “You have such talent, sweetheart.” One of the miniature fists smacked the toaster tart she was holding onto the floor, and another one punched her right in the nose.
Poppy refused to go to school. “I’ve got a really bad headache,” she told her parents, which happened to be the truth. The horrible smell of toaster tarts wasn’t helping either, and Poppy thought she might be sick.
“You can’t do this.” Mrs. Pendle fretted, following her daughter upstairs to bed. Poppy buried herself under the covers and curled up into a tight ball. “You’ve already missed four days of lessons,” Edith Pendle pointed out.
“Mum, I don’t feel good,” Poppy whispered into her pillow. “Please let me sleep.”
“I cannot believe you are doing this to me,” her mother muttered. “This is so unfair, Poppy.”
“Oh, Edith, give her the day in bed,” Mr. Pendle whispered, shuffling into Poppy’s room behind them. “She doesn’t look well.”
“Fine.” Edith Pendle sighed, and then lowering her voice, she added, “Although I’ve just about had enough of this nonsense.” She drew the curtains shut and turned out the light. “Sleep it off, Poppy, because tomorrow, no more excuses.”
Chapter Fourteen
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The Stop It Now Spell
THE FOLLOWING MORNING MR. AND MRS. PENDLE insisted on driving Poppy to Ruthersfield. Of course they didn’t trust her to fly, Poppy realized, not that she had anywhere left to fly to. She couldn’t go back to Marie Claire’s.
“We’ll pick you up after school,” Edith Pendle announced in the car, as if this was just another regular day. “I told Auntie Viv that after we’ve done our homework, we’ll all go to dinner at that new MockTurdles Burger Palace.” She turned around and smiled at Poppy as Roger Pendle pulled to a stop in front of Ruthersfield. “Now, hurry on in, you don’t want to be late.” Leaning across the front seat, she straightened the collar of Poppy’s blouse. “We called Ms. Roach last night and she’s expecting you. She thinks you’ve been down with a nasty case of tonsillitis.” Edith Pendle’s lips tightened and her smile disappeared. “According to Ms. Roach, most Ruthersfield girls never miss school. She was extremely understanding, Poppy. You should be grateful.”
If Poppy had thought her first day at the academy had been bad, getting out in front of all these gawking girls was far, far worse. She had only b
een gone from school for five days, but clearly it was enough time for the girls to find something to gossip about. Poppy could hear them whispering her name behind their hands, and she hung her head as she slipped through the crowd, dragging her broomstick behind her. Ms. Roach was standing at the front door, greeting the girls as they trickled in. “Hope you’re feeling better, Poppy,” the headmistress said, giving her a practiced smile. It was as if the past wonderful week had never happened, as if by pretending she had been sick with tonsillitis, her time at Marie Claire’s could somehow be wiped out. It was the Edith and Roger approach, Poppy decided. It was the “let’s ignore the fact that our daughter just ran away and spent the happiest week of her life cooking in a bakery” approach. Not that it mattered anymore, Poppy thought as she slumped along the corridor. Nothing mattered now. She couldn’t even bake at home. There was no oven left to cook in!
A cloud as dark and black as brewing thunder settled over Poppy’s head. It hovered above her as she walked into her spells and charms honors class, and when she sat down, the cloud draped itself around her like a cloak.
“Aha,” Miss Weedle said, looking right at Poppy. “I can see that someone is not in the best of moods this morning.” Again Poppy didn’t speak. She had run out of words. There was nothing left to say. So she just stared at Miss Weedle. “Well, you should do extremely well with our new spell today, Poppy. It requires a good deal of forceful energy behind it,” Miss Weedle said, punching the air with her fist and writing “Stop It Now,” across the blackboard in large, bold letters. “This spell,” she explained in a serious voice, “is powerful, really powerful, and must only be used in special circumstances. You girls are not to fool about with it.”
“What sort of special circumstances?” Megan Roberts piped up.
“Like stopping something harmful from happening, something big. For example,” Miss Weedle told the class, “if you saw a car speeding out of control and about to hit a person, well, then you could cast the Stop It Now Spell. It would stop the car in its tracks and prevent an accident from occurring.”
“Wow.” Megan Roberts looked awestruck. So did the rest of the girls. Only Poppy seemed lost in her own thoughts.
“This spell has many uses,” Miss Weedle continued. “Five years ago Margaret Clark, one of our most famous alumnae and a well-respected scientist, used it to stop a meteorite from hitting the planet Earth. She received a Noblet Prize for her quick thinking.”
“So that’s what it does. It stops things?” Fanny Freeman confirmed, rapidly taking notes.
“Well, there are subtle variations to the Stop It Now Spell,” Miss Weedle said. “Stopping a fast-moving object is using the spell in its simplest form, but it can also turn the object in question to stone. Now that,” Miss Weedle cautioned in a grave voice, “that is much more complex. It requires a great deal of forceful energy to produce such an effect. Pent-up anger or bottled aggression work very well as a catalyst for this type of spell. So since you seem to be full of the grumps this morning, Poppy, why don’t you come up here and give it a try?” Poppy pushed back her chair and walked between the rows of desks. She stumbled over Megan’s book bag, managing to get one of the long leather straps caught around her shoe. As she bent down to untangle it, a smattering of giggles burst out. Megan whispered “clunterpoke” under her breath, but Poppy didn’t seem to hear. She just shuffled on to the front of the class and stood there, clutching her new magic wand.
A cage had been set up on the floor with a little white mouse in it. “Now, when I give the command,” Miss Weedle told Poppy, “I shall open this cage door and let the mouse free. Over there,” she instructed, pointing to the far corner of the room, “is a wedge of vintage cheddar. This particular breed of mouse has a highly developed sense of smell, so it will, I’m hoping, dash toward the cheese at high speed. Your job, Poppy, is to stop it. Point your wand at the mouse and harness those emotions you seem to be harboring this morning. Then simply say the word”—and here Miss Weedle breathed in deeply, before exhaling with a dramatic—“Consticrabihaltus.”
“Consticrabihaltus,” Poppy copied.
“More feeling, Poppy. You need raw emotion behind this spell to make it work. Now, are you ready?” Miss Weedle asked. Poppy nodded and blinked back tears. She honestly couldn’t believe she was back here at Ruthersfield again, away from the warmth and comfort of Marie Claire’s kitchen. Who would make the caramel cookies today, she wondered, and how could her parents do this to her?
“Ready, then? One, two, three,” Miss Weedle said, and with a flip of the latch, she opened the cage door. Immediately the tiny mouse started to scurry across the floor toward the cheddar. With a wave of her wand, Poppy yelled out furiously, “Consticrabihaltus.” The mouse froze about two feet from the cheese, its little pink tongue peeping through a set of sharp, pointy teeth.
“Magnificent,” Miss Weedle cried out. “Oh, I couldn’t have done that better myself. You can practice this for homework, girls. Don’t use a live creature though, please. Undoing a spell like this is rather complex. Just roll a ball across the floor and try to stop it. There’s a box of rubber balls by the door, so take one on your way out. Now open up those spell books to page forty-six.”
The rest of the morning dragged on endlessly. Poppy suffered through foreign history (they were studying different types of witchcraft in other countries), followed by music and the art of spell chanting.
“So where’ve you been?” Megan Roberts asked Poppy at lunch. “I’ll bet you weren’t really sick. I’ll bet you ran away.” She was spooning up custard, exchanging knowing glances with her friends.
“I did,” Poppy said, hunching forward under her cloak of misery.
“Well, you’ll have tons of extra work. Five days of school is a lot to miss. It’s been really hard lately, but I got As on the last three tests so I’m top of the class at the moment.” Megan shook back her hair. “You’ll probably have to do weekend makeup classes, I should imagine.”
“No, I won’t,” Poppy said, wanting to shock the smug expression off Megan’s face. She slammed down her ham sandwich and shouted, “I hate it here. I hate being a witch. I ran off and joined a bakery, if you must know.” There was a collective gasp from around the table, and Megan made the sign of a sickle moon.
“How can you say such a thing?” she questioned. “We’re the lucky ones. Everyone wants to be able to do magic.”
“Not me,” Poppy said simply, feeling her anger seep away. Tears clouded her eyes. “I just want to be able to bake.”
“You’re so odd,” Megan sneered, picking up her bowl of custard and moving over to another table. All the other girls followed and Poppy was left sitting alone.
When the bell rang at the end of the last lesson, Poppy found Charlie waiting for her outside the school gates. “Don’t worry,” Charlie reassured her at once. “Your parents didn’t see me. I managed to sneak by them. They’re parked out front.”
“What are you doing here?” Poppy worried. “I don’t want to get you into trouble, Charlie, and if my mum catches you talking to me . . .”
“Oh, I had to see you,” Charlie spoke in a rush. “After what happened, I just had to see you. I can’t believe how, how . . .”
“How much my parents want me to be a witch?” Poppy finished. “Oh, you’ve no idea, Charlie.”
“Poor Marie Claire feels awful,” Charlie said. “She was so upset after you’d gone. I stayed to help finish cleaning up, and she just kept sweeping the same patch of floor over and over again, muttering away about babies and fate. I don’t know what she was talking about, but she looked so sad.”
“I wish she could have kept me,” Poppy whispered in a quivery voice, tears dripping down her face. “She was so kind to me. Now I’ll probably never see her again.”
“Oh, no, you will. You have to,” Charlie said in anguish. “She’s desperate to see you. Maybe in a week or so when
things have calmed down a bit?”
“Things will never calm down with my parents,” Poppy said, wiping a hand across her eyes. “They took out the oven in our house so I can’t bake anymore.” As if on cue, Edith Pendle could be seen clipping up the wide front stairs, a determined look on her face. Charlie quickly pushed her way into the middle of a crowd of girls, and was swept out of sight.
“There you are, sweetheart,” Poppy’s mother said. “Daddy and I have been waiting for you out front.”
“I can fly home, you know,” Poppy murmured, uncomfortable with all the attention.
“Of course you can, Poppy. We just wanted to come and meet you. See how school went.” Edith Pendle linked her arm through her daughter’s. “So how was it today?” she questioned. “Are you behind in your subjects? Do you have a lot of homework?”
“A bit,” Poppy sighed, trying to pull her arm free. She could see Megan and some of the other girls snickering as they walked by. Poppy moved slowly, as if her sadness was weighing her down. She felt a wave of despair crash over her, washing away any last sense of hope and leaving her hollow inside.
Chapter Fifteen
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The Dark Side
BACK HOME, MRS. PENDLE PRODUCED A BOX of Twirlies for a snack—chemical-tasting sponge cake bars filled with fake cream—and poured out three large glasses of Super Savers cola.
“What time are we meeting Viv for dinner?” Mr. Pendle asked his wife. “Because there’s a show on television later about tracing your magical roots back to the Vikings. Might be fun.”
“I said I’d call her when Poppy’s finished her homework,” Mrs. Pendle said, biting off a chunk of Twirlie bar. “We’re not going anywhere till that’s done,” she added firmly. “Homework first, and it looks like there’s plenty of it tonight, right, Poppy?” Edith Pendle sat down at the table next to her daughter and frowned at the pile of books. “You’ve got a lot to do, sweetie.” Poppy was halfway through a paper on wand technique. She bit her lip in frustration, trying to ignore her mother. Mrs. Pendle reached out a hand and picked up Poppy’s creative magic journal. The girls were required to keep track of any new spell ideas and spontaneous magical moments that happened to them throughout the day.