Theresa started to cry. “That was my knitting, you beast!”
“So?” Simon said, laughing.
Theresa lifted up her golden hand with her ordinary one and hit him with it. It was stupid of her, because she risked breaking her arm, but it was certainly effective. It nearly knocked Simon out. He sat down heavily on his heap of gold. “Ow!” said Theresa. “And I hope that hurt!”
“It didn’t,” said Simon, and got up smiling and, of course, unhurt.
Theresa went for him again, double-handed.
Simon skipped aside. “You haven’t got one golden hand,” he said.
There was suddenly space where Theresa’s heavy golden hand had been. Her arm ended in a round pink wrist. Theresa stared at it. “How shall I knit?” she said.
“I mean,” Simon said carefully, “that you have two ordinary hands.”
Theresa looked at her two perfectly ordinary human hands and burst into strange, artificial-sounding laughter. “Somebody kill him for me!” she said.
“Quickly!”
Nobody offered to. Everybody was too shattered. Delia took Theresa’s arm and led her tenderly away. The bell rang for afternoon lessons as they went.
“This is marvelous fun!” Simon said. “From now on, I’m all in favor of witchcraft.”
Charles trudged off to lessons, wondering how he could cancel the spell.
8
SIMON ARRIVED LATE for lessons. He had been making sure his heap of gold was safe. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said to Mr. Crossley. And sorry he was. Tears came into his eyes, he was so sorry.
“That’s all right, Simon,” Mr. Crossley said kindly, and everyone else felt compelled to look at Simon with deep sympathy.
You can’t win with people like Simon, Charles thought bitterly. Anyone else would have been in bad trouble by now. And it was exasperating the way nobody so much as dreamed of accusing Simon of witchcraft. They kept looking at Nan Pilgrim instead.
Nan felt much the same about Theresa. Theresa arrived ten minutes after Simon, very white and sniffing rather. She was led in tenderly by Delia, and received almost as much sympathy as Simon. “Just gave her an aspirin and sent her away!” Nan heard Delia whisper indignantly to Karen. “I do think she ought to have been allowed to lie down, after all she’s been through!”
What about all I’ve been through? Nan thought. No, it was Theresa’s right to be in the right, as much as it was Simon’s.
Nan had been given the full story by Estelle. Estelle was always ready to talk in class, and she was particularly ready now that Karen seemed to have joined Theresa’s friends. She knitted away under her desk at her baby’s bonnet, and whispered and whispered. Nor was she the only one. Mr. Crossley kept calling for quiet, but the whispers and rustling hardly abated at all. Notes kept arriving on Nan’s desk. The first to arrive was from Dan Smith.
Make me the same as Simon and I’ll be your friend forever, it said.
Most of the other notes said the same. All were very respectful. But one note was different. This one said, Meet me around the back after lessons. I think you need help and I can advise you. It was not signed. Nan wondered about it. She had seen the writing before, but she did not know whose it was.
She supposed she did need help. She really was a witch now. No one but a witch could fly a broomstick. She knew she was in danger and she knew she should be terrified. But she was not. She felt happy and strong, with a happiness and strength that seemed to be welling up from deep inside her. She kept remembering the way she had started to laugh when the broomstick went flying round the bathroom with herself dangling underneath it, and the way she seemed to understand by instinct what the broom wanted. Hair-raising as it had been, she had enjoyed it thoroughly. It was like coming into her birthright.
“Of course, Simon always said you were a witch,” Estelle whispered.
That reduced Nan’s joy a little. There was another witch in 6B, she did not doubt that. And that witch had, for some mad reason, made everything Simon said come true. He must be one of Simon’s friends. And it was quite possible that Simon, while he was under the spell, had happened to say that Nan was a witch. So of course she would have become one.
Nan refused to believe it. She was a witch. She wanted to be one. She came from a long line of witches, stretching back beyond even Dulcinea Wilkes herself. She felt she had a right to be a witch.
All this while, Mr. Crossley was trying to give 6B a geography lesson. He had gotten to the point where he was precious near giving up and giving everyone detention instead. He had one last try. He could see that the unrest was centering on Simon, with a subcenter around Nan, so he tried to make use of it by asking Simon questions.
“Now the geography of Finland is very much affected by the last Ice Age. Simon, what happens in an Ice Age?”
Simon dragged his mind away from dreams of gold and glory. “Everything is very cold,” he said. A blast of cold air swept through the room, making everyone’s teeth chatter. “And goes on getting colder, I suppose,” Simon added unwisely. The air in the room swiftly became icy. 6B’s breath rolled out in steam. The windows misted over and froze, almost at once, into frosty patterns. Icicles began to grow under the radiators. Frost whitened the desks.
There was a chorus of shivers and groans, and Nirupam hissed, “Watch it!”
“I mean everything gets very hot,” Simon said hastily.
Before Mr. Crossley had time to wonder why he was shivering, the cold was replaced by tropical heat. The frost slid away down the windows. The icicles tinkled off the radiators. For an instant, the room seemed fine and warm, until the frozen water evaporated. This produced a thick, steamy fog. In the murk, people were gasping. Some faces turned red, others white, and sweat ran on foreheads, adding to the fog.
Mr. Crossley put a hand to his forehead, thinking he might be getting the flu. The room seemed so dim suddenly. “Some theories do say that an Ice Age starts with extreme heat,” he said uncertainly.
“But I say everything is normal for this time of year,” Simon said, desperately trying to adjust the temperature.
Instantly it was. The classroom reverted to its usual way of being not quite warm enough, though still a little damp. Mr. Crossley found he felt better. “Stop talking nonsense, Simon!” he said angrily.
Simon, with incredulity, realized that he might get into trouble. He tried to pass the whole thing off in his usual lordly way. “Well, sir, nobody really knows a thing about Ice Ages, do they?”
“We’ll see about that,” Mr. Crossley said grimly. And of course nobody did. When he came to ask Estelle to describe an Ice Age, Mr. Crossley found himself wondering just why he was asking about something which did not exist. No wonder Estelle looked so blank. He rounded back on Simon. “Is this a joke of some kind? What are you thinking of?”
“Me? I’m not thinking of anything!” Simon said defensively. With disastrous results.
Ah! This is more like it! Charles thought, watching the look of complete vacancy growing on Simon’s face.
Theresa saw Simon’s eyes glaze and his jaw drop and jumped to her feet with a scream. “Stop him!” she screamed. “Kill him! Do something to him before he says another word!”
“Sit down, Theresa,” said Mr. Crossley.
Theresa stayed standing up. “You wouldn’t believe what he’s done already!” she shouted. “And now look at him. If he says a word in that state—”
Mr. Crossley looked at Simon. The boy seemed to be pretending to be an idiot now. What was the matter with everyone? “Take that look off your face, Simon,” he said. “You’re not that much of a fool.”
Simon was now in a state of perfect blankness. And in that state, people have a way of picking up and echoing anything that is said to them. “Not that much of a fool,” he said slurrily. The vacancy of his face was joined by a look of deep cunning. Perhaps that was just as well, Charles thought. There was no doubt that Theresa had a point.
“Don’t speak to him!” Th
eresa shouted. “Don’t you understand? It’s every word he says! And—” She swung around and pointed at Nan. “It’s all her fault!”
Before lunch, Nan would have quailed in front of Theresa’s pointing finger and everyone’s eyes turned on her. But she had ridden a broomstick now, and things were different. She was able to look scornfully at Theresa. “What nonsense!” she said.
Mr. Crossley was forced to agree that Nan was right. “Don’t be ridiculous, Theresa,” he said. “I told you to sit down.” And he relieved his feelings by giving both Theresa and Simon an hour in detention.
“Detention!” Theresa exclaimed, and sat down with a bump. She was outraged.
Simon, however, uttered a cunning chuckle. “You think you’ve got me, don’t you?” he said.
“Yes, I do,” said Mr. Crossley. “Make it an hour and a half.”
Simon opened his mouth to say something else. But here Nirupam intervened. He leaned over and whispered to Simon, “You’re very clever. Clever people keep their mouths shut.”
Simon nodded slowly, with immense, stupid wisdom. And, to Charles’s disappointment, he seemed to take Nirupam’s advice.
“Get your journals out,” Mr. Crossley said wearily. There should be some peace now at least, he thought.
People opened their journals. They spread today’s page in front of them. They picked up pens. And, at that point, even those who had not realized already, saw that there was almost nothing they dared write down. It was most frustrating. Here they were, with real, interesting events going on for once, and plenty of things to say, and almost none of it was fit for Miss Cadwallader’s eyes. People chewed pens, shifted, scratched their heads, and stared at the ceiling. The most pitiable ones were those who were planning to ask Nan to endow them with the Golden Touch, or instant fame, or some other good thing. If they described any of the magic Nan was thought to have done, she would be arrested for witchcraft, and they would have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Nan Pilgrim is not really a witch, Dan Smith wrote, after much hard thinking. He had rather a stomachache after last night’s midnight feast and it made his mind go slow. I never thought she was really, it was just Mr. Crossley having a joke. There was a practical joke this morning, it must have been hard work pinching everyone’s shoes like that and then someone pinched my spikes and got me really mad. The caretakers dog peed—And there Dan stopped, remembering Miss Cadwallader would read this too. Got quite carried away there, he thought.
No comment again today, Nirupam wrote swiftly. Someone is riding for a fall. Not that I blame them for this afternoon, but the shoes were silly. He put down his pen and went to sleep. He had been up half the night eating buns from under the floorboards.
My bedsocks were ruined, Theresa complained in her angel-writing. My knitting was destroyed. Today has been awful. I do not want to tell tales and I know Simon Silverson is not in his right mind but someone should do something. Teddy Crossley is useless and unfair and Estelle Green always thinks she knows best but she can’t keep her knitting clean. The matron was unfair too. She sent me away with an aspirin and she let Brian Wentworth lie down and I was really ill. I shall never speak to Nan Pilgrim again.
Most people, though they could not attain Theresa’s eloquence, managed to write something in the end. But three people still sat staring at blank paper. These were Simon, Charles, and Nan.
Simon was very cunning. He was clever. He was thoroughly suspicious of the whole thing. They were trying to catch him out somehow. The safest and cleverest thing was not to commit anything to writing. He was sure of that. On the other hand, it would not do to let everyone know how clever he had gone. It would look peculiar. He ought to write just one thing. So, after more than half an hour of deep thought, he wrote: Doggies. It took him five minutes. Then he sat back, confident that he had fooled everyone.
Charles was stumped because he simply had no code for most of the things which had happened. He knew he had to write something, but the more he tried to think, the more difficult it seemed. At one point, he almost went to sleep like Nirupam. He pulled himself together. Think! Well, he could not write I got up for a start, because he had almost enjoyed today. Nor could he write I didn’t get up because that made no sense. But he had better mention the shoes, because everyone else would. And he could talk about Simon under the code of potatoes. Mr. Towers could get a mention too.
It was nearly time for the bell before Charles sorted all this out. Hastily he scrawled: Our shoes all went to play games. I thought about potatoes having hair hanging on a rope. I have games with a bad book. As Mr. Crossley told them to put away their journals, Charles thought of something else and dashed it down. I shall never be hot again.
Nan wrote nothing at all. She sat smiling at her empty page, feeling no need to describe anything. When the bell went, as a gesture, she wrote down the date: October 30. Then she shut her journal.
The instant Mr. Crossley left the room, Nan was surrounded. “You got my note?” People clamored at her. “Can you make it that whenever I touch a penny it turns to gold? Just pennies.”
“Can you make my hair go like Theresa’s?”
“Can you give me three wishes every time I say Buttons?”
“I want big muscles like Dan Smith.”
“Can you get us ice cream for supper?”
“I need good luck for the rest of my life.”
Nan looked over at where Simon sat, hunched up with cunning and darting shrewd, stupid looks at Nirupam, who was sitting watchfully over him. If it was Simon who was responsible, there was no knowing when he would say something to cancel her witchcraft. Nan refused to believe it was Simon, but it was silly to make rash promises, whatever had made her a witch.
“There isn’t time to work magic now,” she told the clamoring crowd. And when that brought a volley of appeals and groans, she shouted, “It takes hours, don’t you understand? You don’t only have to mutter spells and brew potions. You have got to go out and pick strange herbs, and say stranger incantations, at dawn and full moon, before you can even begin. And when you’ve done all that, it doesn’t necessarily work right away. Most of the time, you have to fly around and around the smoking herbs all night, chanting sounds of unutterable sweetness, before anything happens at all. Now do you see?” Utter silence greeted this piece of invention. Much encouraged, Nan added, “Besides, what have any of you done to deserve me going to all that trouble?”
“What indeed?” Mr. Wentworth asked, from behind her. “What exactly is going on here?”
Nan spun around. Mr. Wentworth was right in the middle of the room and had probably heard every word. Around her, everyone was slinking back to their seats. “That was my speech for the school concert, sir,” she said. “Do you think it’s any good?”
“It has possibilities,” said Mr. Wentworth. “But it will need a little more working up to be quite good enough. Math books out, please.”
Nan sank down into her seat, weak with relief. For one awful moment, she had thought Mr. Wentworth might have her arrested.
“I said math books out, Simon,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Why are you giving me that awful cunning look? Is it such a peculiar thing to ask?”
Simon considered this. Nirupam, and a number of other people, doubled their legs under their chairs, ready to spring up and gag Simon if necessary. Theresa once more jumped to her feet.
“Mr. Wentworth, if he says another word, I’m not staying!”
Unfortunately, this attracted Simon’s attention. “You,” he said to Theresa, “stink.”
“He seems to have spoken,” said Mr. Wentworth. “Get out and stand in the corridor, Theresa, with a black mark for bad behavior. Simon can have another, and the rest of us will have a lesson.”
Theresa, redder in the face than anyone had ever seen her, raced for the door. She could not, however, beat the truly awful smell which rolled off her and filled the room as she ran.
“Pooh!” said Dan Smith.
So
mebody kicked him, and everybody looked nervously at Mr. Wentworth to see if he could smell it too. But, as often happens to people who smoke a pipe, Mr. Wentworth had less than the average sense of smell. It was not for five minutes, during which he had written numerous things on the board and said many more, none of which 6B were in a fit state to attend to, that he said, “Estelle, put down that gray bag you’re knitting and open a window, will you? There’s rather a smell in here. Has someone let off a stink bomb?”
Nobody answered. Nirupam resourcefully passed Simon a note, saying, Say there is no smell in here.
Simon spelled it out. He considered it carefully, with his head on one side. He could see there was a trick in it somewhere. So he cunningly decided to say nothing.
Luckily, the open window, though it made the room almost as cold as Simon’s Ice Age, did slowly disperse the smell. But nothing could disperse it from Theresa, who stood in the passage giving out scents of sludge, kippers, and old dustbins until the end of afternoon school.
When the bell had rung and Mr. Wentworth swept from the room, everyone relaxed with a groan. No one had known what Simon was going to say next. Even Charles had found it a strain. He had to admit that the results of his spell had taken him thoroughly by surprise.
Meanwhile, Delia and Karen, with most of Theresa’s main friends, were determined to retrieve Theresa’s honor. They surrounded Simon. “Take that smell off her at once,” Delia said. “It’s not funny. You’ve been on her all afternoon, Simon Silverson!”
Simon considered them. Nirupam leaped up so quickly that he knocked over his desk, and tried to put his hand over Simon’s mouth. But he got there too late. “You girls,” said Simon, “all stink.”
The result was almost overpowering. So was the noise the girls made. The only girls who escaped were the lucky few, like Nan, who had already left the room. It was clear something had to be done. Most people were either smelling or choking. And Simon was slowly opening his mouth to say something else.
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