Witch Switch

by Sibéal Pounder

  Tiga was about to say something, but then she remembered the photo! She pelted to the study, grabbed it and came sliding back into the hallway. ‘If that is true, then how do you explain this?’

  She held the picture of Eddy Eggby on Ritzy Avenue under Miss Flint’s pointy nose.

  ‘There, right there, you can very clearly see you slipping a doll into Eddy Eggby’s bag, RIGHT BEFORE she went to see Celia Crayfish and was turned into a doll.’

  Miss Flint gasped. ‘It was bad to slip the doll in her bag, but I just wanted to give the child a doll! Eddy Eggby was going on about bringing her a Clutterbucks drinks machine – what’s a baby going to do with that?!’

  ‘So you just slipped it in her bag?’ Tiga asked. ‘As a gift?’

  Miss Flint nodded. ‘Eddy Eggby must have given the doll to Celia Crayfish and maybe that’s how she got the idea to come up with the spell. Maybe she wanted to keep Eddy Eggby for ever so by shrinking her and turning her into her doll she could!’

  ‘So where is the Eddy doll now?’ Fluffanora asked.

  ‘London,’ said Miss Flint without hesitation. ‘I took it to London.’

  42

  To London!

  ‘This is such an excellent excuse to wear jeans!’ Fluffanora said as she threw a pair at Tiga.

  Tiga stuffed them in her bag and took off her hat.

  ‘Should we wear hats? Not many people wear hats above the pipes, especially not ones that are pointy and witch-like, which these certainly will be after we’ve been sucked up the pipes,’ she rambled.

  ‘But we’re witches! We should wear our hats!’ Fluffanora said.

  ‘Agreed,’ squeaked Peggy.

  Tiga rolled her eyes. ‘Very subtle. Why don’t we just carry a massive spell book and a cat as well?!’

  Fluffanora held up a spell book and Fuzzscrumple the scraggly cat. ‘So weird you just said that. I thought we should bring a spell book, just in case, and I spoke to Miss Flint and she said Fuzzscrumple knows exactly where to go in London.’

  Fluffanora, one doll, one fairy, one cat and one worried Tiga stared at a very complicated map of all the pipes.

  ‘What’s Tokyo?’ Fluffanora asked.

  ‘It’s a city in Japan,’ Tiga said.

  Peggy pointed at a pipe that said New York. ‘Is it very new?’ she asked.

  Tiga tapped the London pipe. ‘This is the one we need … I wonder where it takes you in London. According to this the pipe is just above us, dangling over the roof of Linden House.’

  Fluffanora wiggled with excitement as she climbed the stairs to the attic, clambered out on to the roof and stared up at the large leaking pipe above their heads.

  ‘Ready?’ Tiga said.

  Fluffanora adjusted the strap of her cool mirrored silver bag. ‘Ready,’ she said.

  Fran nodded. They all raised an arm in the air (Tiga had to raise Peggy’s limp little doll arm), and WHOOSH! Off they went to London town.

  43

  Bedford Square

  They had landed on a quiet, tree-lined street.

  ‘Bedford Square,’ Tiga said, peering at the street sign. ‘I have no idea where we are.’

  A girl on a pretty yellow bike pedalled past.

  Fluffanora whipped out her notebook and sketched her. ‘She’s wearing a little wrap dress,’ she mumbled. She looked up and saw Tiga staring at her. ‘I could be the next Eddy Eggby!’

  ‘Where do we go, Fuzzscrumple?’ Tiga asked, as a group of people walked past. Tiga heard one of the women say, ‘Look at those little girls dressed as witches.’

  It was nowhere near Hallowe’en. It was time to get out of there.

  Fuzzscrumple took a left and then a right and made his way all the way to the end of the road, stopped and then let out a weird scream of a miaow. Tiga looked around nervously then up at the building.

  The windows were so dusty you could barely see inside and the cobwebs that hung above the door swayed slowly in the breeze.

  DELIA’S DOLLS was scrawled on a rusty old sign outside.

  Great, Tiga thought. Another creepy doll shop.

  44

  Delia’s Dolls

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned by a frog in a boat made of feathers, it’s a bunch of Ritzy City witches!’ cried the woman behind the counter. She looked a lot like Miss Flint, only smaller and with wildly curly hair. She had a raspy voice and long spindly fingers tipped with claw-like nails painted with grey, glittery polish.

  Her pale grey eyes fixed on Tiga. ‘I’m Delia Drizzle, and you are?’

  ‘Tiga. This is Fluffanora and Fran.’

  Fuzzscrumple stuck a claw into Tiga’s toe. ‘And this is Fuzzscrumple,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Old Miss Flint’s cat!’ Delia Drizzle said with a cackle.

  ‘Are you one of the Big Exit witches?’ Fluffanora asked. They had all heard about the witches who had left for a life above the pipes during the Big Exit. Tiga knew Fluffanora was asking because it was believed the Big Exit witches were really terrible and probably went to live above the pipes so they could terrorise children.

  Delia Drizzle shook her head. ‘Oh no! I’m not one of those angry sorts. I’ve got nothing against Ritzy City or any of Sinkville. I travel back below the pipes often. I have a little apartment in Ritzy City. My job is to keep this shop as a lookout – a link from our world down there to this world up here. It’s also handy for Miss Flint – she has so many dolls it’s good to ship the unwanted ones up here, for me to fix ’em up and sell ’em on.’

  ‘So you had no idea that many of the dolls she’s been sending might be witches that have been cursed?’ the Peggy doll squeaked.

  Delia Drizzle nearly shot through the roof!

  ‘WHAT?! Talking dolls? Witches?! I don’t believe it. Never!’

  Tiga nodded. ‘Celia Crayfish came up with a spell years ago to turn witches into dolls, and Felicity Bat knows it and started doing it again. She started with Peggy.’

  Tiga held the Peggy doll up to Delia Drizzle.

  ‘But I heard Peggy joined a fairy dance troupe and put some rats in charge until she got back,’ said Delia Drizzle.

  Tiga laughed. ‘That’s not quite right.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Delia Drizzle. ‘News takes a while to reach me up here, and when it does it tends to be a bit wrong.’

  She took a seat on a rickety stool and stared up and up at the hundreds of shelves of dolls around her. ‘How do we know which ones are really witches and how do we turn them back?’

  ‘They usually resemble the witch – have similar features, hair, the same clothes,’ Tiga explained.

  ‘We don’t know how to turn them back,’ Peggy squeaked.

  Delia Drizzle frowned at her. ‘Well, that’s not very good for you, is it?’

  ‘We’ll figure it out,’ Tiga muttered.

  ‘Fluffanora and Tiga have got NOWHERE with their investigation,’ Fran said, completely butting in. ‘It is actually amazing how little success they have had. Every time they get somewhere, something sets them back to square one! I’m surprised they haven’t given up already!’

  She turned to see Tiga and Fluffanora, and Fuzzscrumple, glaring at her.

  ‘What? Oh, don’t make faces at me,’ Fran said, crossly. ‘Look at Peggy, she’s not pulling a face.’

  ‘That’s because my face is currently made of some sort of felt,’ the Peggy doll squeaked.

  Fluffanora stepped forward. ‘We’re looking for one doll in particular. A doll with a pompom hat.’

  Delia Drizzle thought for a moment. ‘You know, it’s funny, you aren’t the first witches to ask me that. Quite a long time ago, a young woman came into my shop and asked me the very same thing. She was behaving very suspiciously – all nervous and shifty.’

  ‘And did you know the doll she meant?’ Fluffanora asked eagerly.

  Delia Drizzle nodded. ‘Oh yes. I gave it to her.’

  Tiga and Fluffanora slumped over the counter and sighed. Of course the doll wouldn’t
be there! That would be just their luck.

  ‘Just your luck!’ Fran said with a chuckle, before adding, ‘… Sorry.’

  ‘Funny thing was, though,’ Delia Drizzle said as she reached under the counter, ‘not long after I gave it to the witch, Miss Flint returned it to me again!’

  Tiga looked up and there, right in her face, was a huge pompom. Delia Drizzle wiggled it. ‘This the one?’

  ‘EDDY EGGBY!’ Fluffanora cried.

  45

  NAPA

  After Delia Drizzle came to, the bunch of them – three witches, one fairy, two dolls and one bedraggled cat – sat down for some tea.

  Tiga did the honours and finally, for the first time in one hundred years, Eddy Eggby could speak.

  She told them hilarious stories from her years as a doll. Like the time an entire shelf of dolls had fallen on Delia Drizzle, or the time Miss Flint hadn’t realised the door to the shop was closed and had walked right into it. But generally being a doll for a hundred years sounded pretty boring.

  ‘Who came to get you from Delia’s shop, all those years ago?’ Tiga asked.

  ‘It’s very strange,’ squeaked the Eddy Eggby doll, at such a high pitch that Fuzzscrumple winced. ‘You remind me so much of her. It is uncanny really. Gretal Green was her name. She worked for NAPA.’

  ‘NAPA?’ Tiga asked.

  ‘Yes, the National Above the Pipes Association. NAPA,’ the Eddy Eggby doll squeaked. ‘They study the world above the pipes. NAPA headquarters was based in Silver City.’

  ‘Silver City?’ Tiga asked. ‘That’s one of the cities that is now empty after the Big Exit, isn’t it?’

  Delia Drizzle nodded. ‘I was one of NAPA’s Watcher Witches, reporting on things happening above the pipes.’

  ‘Gretal Green was an inventor at NAPA. She invented many great things over the years,’ Eddy Eggby squeaked away. ‘She was in charge of many top-secret operations, mostly schemes to protect children above the pipes. She was very concerned for them. Certain bad witches – probably influenced by the evil Celia Crayfish – became very interested in terrorising the children above the pipes. Below the pipes, young witch children have magic, an old witch is no match for them. But above the pipes children are helpless when faced with an evil witch. Gretal Green was the one who lined the pipes with a spell to make bad witches particularly tattered. It was very clever, really. The worse the witch, the more damage the pipes do. Whereas if you are good, you usually just get covered in slime and a tiny bit tattered. And the spell made sure the witches’ clothes would be bewitched to be only ever black or grey above the pipes. That way, children above the pipes would be able to recognise a witch a mile off.’

  ‘So why did she come and get you?’ Fluffanora asked.

  The Eddy Eggby doll blinked, inhaled a lot of air and squeaked. ‘She was a fan. She had read a lot about my fashion findings and was curious as to where I had disappeared to. She began to investigate my disappearance and sent over fifty witches on missions to look for me in the Queen’s bathroom. Nothing,’ she squeaked. ‘So she ruled out that theory.’

  ‘Once she figured out you were a doll, why didn’t she tell everyone?’ Tiga asked.

  ‘She was going to – she was gathering as much evidence as possible,’ Eddy Eggby squeaked.

  ‘Why didn’t she tell Delia Drizzle some of the dolls might be witches?’ Fluffanora asked.

  ‘She thought Delia Drizzle might be in on it. So she came in and pretended she just needed a doll for her little daughter.’

  ‘I WASN’T IN ON IT,’ Delia Drizzle scoffed, flinging her arm in the air and sending tea flying. Tiga flicked her finger and the stream of tea changed direction and went soaring back into her cup.

  ‘I spent three lovely weeks plonked on the desk at NAPA,’ Eddy continued. ‘I watched her work on her inventions and play with Tiga.’

  Tiga and Fluffanora both choked on their tea and spat it out, sending a mist of tea spit soaring through the air and smack bang into Fran. Who dropped to the ground in shock.

  ‘Tiga?’ the Peggy doll squeaked.

  ‘Yes, Tiga,’ the Eddy Eggby doll squeaked back.

  ‘I’m Tiga,’ Tiga said.

  Delia Drizzle gasped. ‘I thought she looked familiar! She looks just like her!’

  ‘How old are you?’ the Eddy Eggby doll squeaked.

  ‘Nine and a bit,’ Tiga said.

  ‘It fits! You are Tiga Green, you must be!’ Fluffanora squealed, leaping to her feet and jumping up and down.

  Tiga’s heart was beating so fast, it was making more noise than Fran on an episode of Cooking for Tiny People. She could almost hear it in her eyeballs.

  ‘So … what happened to Gretal Green?’ Tiga dared to ask, although she was almost sure she didn’t want to know. After all, Eddy Eggby had been returned to Delia’s Dolls. Something must have gone wrong.

  ‘Do you know about the Big Exit?’ Eddy Eggby squeaked.

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘It’s when a bunch of evil witches left to live above the pipes and they took their houses and all the colour with them,’ Tiga said. She’d heard it a million times.

  ‘When that happened,’ Eddy Eggby explained, through her little doll lips, ‘the bad witches came to see Gretal Green. They wanted to know how to move their houses above the pipes and how to stop what the pipes did to witches. They didn’t want to stand out and look like witches. Of course, it’s impossible to change what the pipes do to witches – it’s built into the pipes themselves. So they thought of something else. They wanted to know how to steal the colour. Children and adults alike, above the pipes, had got so used to thinking of witches in tattered black clothes with warty faces and pointy noses. If they couldn’t change what the pipes did to them, they thought if they at least took the colour, maybe people wouldn’t suspect they were witches. A warty witch in, say, luminous yellow or a friendly orange doesn’t look much like a witch at all.’

  ‘And Gretal Green said no to them, I suppose,’ Tiga mumbled. ‘She wanted to protect the children above the pipes.’

  The Eddy Eggby doll blinked. ‘Exactly. And those witches weren’t pleased. They took her away – and her daughter, too. And they gave me back to that Miss Flint! Who sewed new feet on me and sent me all the way back up here again!’

  ‘Well, surely people have been looking for Gretal?’ Tiga said.

  Delia Drizzle shook her head. ‘Many people suspected the witches of NAPA had something to do with the Big Exit. And, of course, everyone in Silver City vanished. All the witches left behind just assumed the other witches were evil and had gone to live a life above the pipes.’

  ‘But Gretal Green wasn’t evil; she didn’t want to leave Silver City!’ Tiga cried.

  ‘She certainly wasn’t evil,’ Eddy Eggby said.

  ‘Well then, we have to find Gretal Green,’ the Peggy doll squeaked. ‘We’ll search for her. We will search every inch of Sinkville from high on Pearl Peak to every spindly stilt in Silver City. We will find her.’

  Tiga stared into Peggy’s kind plastic eyes and smiled.

  46

  Party!

  In Ritzy City everyone was partying because Peggy was back!

  Sort of. She was still a doll, but she was technically back!

  Tiga held one plastic hand and Fluffanora held the other and they swung the little Peggy doll back and forth to the sound of the Silver Rats playing on the stage outside Linden House. Fran flew above their heads.

  ‘GENUINE HATS WOT GOT STUCK IN THE PIPES!’

  The old witch with the cart of disgusting hats wheeled her way past them.

  ‘Wait,’ Tiga said to Fluffanora. She’d had a brilliant idea! ‘The cart witch – she says she knows everything. Maybe she’ll know how to turn the dolls back into witches!’

  ‘That’s true,’ said the cart witch. ‘GENUINE HATS!’

  ‘But she was wrong about the prophecy,’ said Fluffanora. ‘Remember, all that:

  An elegant witch will rule this land
,

  and that bossy one will lend a hand.

  Witch sisters, maybe, but not the same.

  One is dear, the other? A pain.

  And much like the tales of time gone by they will find a sweet apple and … my oh my is that the time I’d better go.

  For a start, Peggy is not being helped by someone who is a pain.’

  Tiga raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I am not a pain before you say anything,’ Fluffanora said.

  ‘AND DON’T LOOK AT ME, TIGA GREEN,’ Fran said, wagging her finger.

  ‘And,’ Fluffanora went on, ‘is Peggy elegant? If she wasn’t a doll right now she’d be doing her arms-everywhere-dancing.’

  ‘Oi!’ the Peggy doll squeaked.

  Fluffanora grinned. ‘And I don’t even know what that apple bit means.’

  ‘You will … soon,’ the cart witch said quietly. So quietly, only Fran heard. She narrowed her eyes at the cart witch, who just stared blankly ahead.

  ‘Well, then this is a test, isn’t it?’ Tiga handed the cart witch the Peggy doll. ‘If she does know everything, she’ll be able to turn her back.’

  The cart witch handed the Peggy doll back to Tiga.

  ‘Aha! See,’ Fluffanora said. ‘She doesn’t know.’

  The cart witch pointed at the doll. ‘Hold it by the hair and swing it around your head three times.’

  ‘Don’t,’ squeaked the Peggy doll.

  ‘And then blow in its face once,’ she added, before disappearing with a bang.

  47

  Gretal Green

  And that’s how Peggy, Eddy Eggby, Darcy Dream and all the other witches who had been turned into dolls were changed back again.

  Eddy Eggby went straight to the coves and Lily Cranberry nearly fainted when she saw her! Her best friend was back, and there was lots of cake to eat and partying to be done.