School Spells
Page 8
“You mean … you saved the windmill?” cried Esme, flinging her muddy arms around me. “You did it! You actually did it!”
“We did it!” I laughed. “You and me and the bunnies. The twins too. Even Knox. Everyone helped in their own way.”
“All except Piers!” Esme scowled at him as he hopped past.
Piers stuck out his tongue and swallowed a fly.
“Eww! That’s even more disgusting than eating Brussels sprouts,” I giggled.
Piers kept bouncing (and eating flies) for the next two weeks.
Whenever he saw me and Esme at school he croaked insults at us under his breath, but he couldn’t prove we had anything to do with his strange behaviour or the way the rabbits had magically appeared in time to stop the car park being built.
By the time Piers’s toady ways finally wore off, Mr Seymour’s diggers had left Windmill Meadow for good. A sign on the gate said:
RARE RABBITS!
PROTECTED SITE.
Dr Greenwood wrote a letter to the council confirming scientific tests had discovered Nibbles and his friends were unique. No building or digging would be allowed in the meadow so long as the rare rabbits lived there.
Miss Marker called for an investigation, and it turned out the documents saying Esme’s great-grandfather sold the land to the Seymours had been faked too. All of Mr Seymour’s friends had to resign from the council. Lady Trim didn’t seem to mind too much.
“I want more time for gardening,” she said. “The bunnies have somewhere lovely outside the village to live and the allotments are safe at last.”
So it was a happy ending for everyone! Especially Esme and her family.
“This really is our home now and the bunnies can stay for ever too!” she told me when I came to the windmill for tea.
“Of course they can!” Mrs Lee looked up from her notebook and smiled. “And I’ve had an idea for a story at last,” she explained as we peered over her shoulder.
THE BUNNIES
OF WINDMILL
MEADOW
BY
PANDORA LEE.
“I haven’t seen Mum as happy as this for a long time!” Esme whispered.
“Come on!” I smiled as we tiptoed away. “Let’s go and see how the rabbits have settled into their new home.”
“Good idea. I want to check Nibbles isn’t eating everything in the pumpkin patch,” said Esme. “I’m saving the biggest pumpkin to make a lantern for Halloween.”
“Halloween?” I skidded to a stop. Halloween was always the scariest night of the year in the Magic Realm. Aunt Hemlock and the other witches went wild. “I didn’t even know Persons celebrated Halloween,” I said with a shiver.
“Of course we do. It’s the best fun ever,” said Esme. “We can go trick or treating together and dress up and…” Suddenly she snorted with excited laughter. “You can come as a witch!”
“If only I still had my pointy hat,” I giggled as she grabbed my hand and we ran on across the meadow together.
“It’s going to be so much fun. I know I can’t do real magic,” said Esme, “but maybe you could teach me to ride a broomstick!”
“Of course I will,” I agreed, with a wave of my fluffy pink wand.
“Promise?” asked Esme.
“Best friend promise!” I said.
Acknowledgements
So many of the magic folk at Scholastic have cast spells to help bring Bella to life. Thanks to you all! A special wand wave to my brilliant editor Genevieve Herr, eagle-eyed Pete Matthews, Samuel Perrett for design, Olivia Horrox, Jade Tolley and all the publicity, rights and sales teams. Also Claire Wilson and Rosie Price at RCW. And Sophie McKenzie for our monthly broomstick rides!
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2016
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2016
Text copyright © Lou Kuenzler, 2016
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