Charming or What? (Witch-in-Training, Book 3) Page 3
“Not a word! Not a single word!” she warned her before zooming back to the lighthouse.
There was a Special Meeting after supper. Jessica apologized four hundred and forty four times until Pelagia said that was enough.
“You had no choice. It’s a very spiteful bag with a mean Spell on it. Do you remember you once asked me why I gave up being a sallee-rover?”
“Yes,” said Jessica, “but you didn’t say.”
“It was like this. Mean Jack, the skipper on my last ship, never paid his crew their fair wages. One night, I crept into his cabin and took the swag bag that he kept under his bunk.”
“Treasure?” asked Jessica.
“No treasure at all, me dear, just trouble, for it was that very bag with every nasty breeze, gale, squall, typhoon and hurricane that ever blew inside it. Mean Jack had tricked them into the bag so that he could get his treasure home safely without being delayed by storms. Unfortunately, just as you found out, the minute I undid the silver string, out they all flew, making such a hugger-mugger that the ocean boiled up and I was blown clean off the ship. For three days and three nights, I was hurled from one wild ocean to another until finally I managed to charm the winds back into the bag. That was when I was washed up here.”
“And that’s when you decided to give up being a pirate, I mean, a sallee-rover.”
“Yes indeedy,” Pelagia agreed. “From that day to this, I have been Charming.”
“I think I will be Charming from now on too,” murmured Jessica, shamefaced.
“I should say so,” said Miss Strega, nodding vigorously. “Otherwise we shall have to make little Jessica Talismans to keep you out of places you don’t belong!”
Chapter Seven
“You may find this useful when you’re out and about in the Tub this afternoon,” said Pelagia, coming into the kitchen and placing a brown bottle on the draining board. “Just one or two tablespoonfuls and I guarantee you won’t be seasick.”
Jessica, who was blowing dozens of soap bubbles as part of a project she was doing for her Easy Ways to Charm Your Home class, put down her bubble wand. She picked up the bottle, read the label – Distilled Salmagundi, the Sailor’s Friend – uncorked it and sniffed. “It smells really nasty,” she said, her eyes watering. “What on earth is in it?”
“Essence of flying fish, cabbage, turtle meat, mangoes, extra hot mustard, pigeons, pigs’ trotters, hard ship’s biscuit, gur cake, olive oil, and a most secret ingredient that I cannot tell you about.”
“How many spoonfuls do I take?”
“You don’t have to take it at all. You just pour it overboard at the start of your journey. It gives the sea such indigestion it has to lie down for a nap. It’ll be flat as a pancake all the time you are at sea.”
Jessica and Miss Strega exchanged a look. The look meant, is Pelagia serious?
“Moonrays and marrowbones, Pelagia,” Miss Strega exclaimed. “Why would Jessica be running about in the Tub on her own, anyway?”
Pelagia pushed all her bracelets up to her elbow and pulled the plug on Jessica’s soapy water. “Haven’t you told Miss Strega about your last task, Jessica?”
Jessica wriggled her nose. “I’m going to visit an Oracle.”
“But you can’t stand Oracles.” Miss Strega reminded her. “Remember what happened with the Mynah Bird Oracle? And why do you need the Tub?”
“Because the Oracle is on Outer Charm,” Jessica explained. “Do you remember that there were four rules?”
Miss Strega nodded. “But the fourth rule was missing.”
“Well, the problem is that someone borrowed it and didn’t give it back and Pelagia can’t remember it any more. So my last task is to find the Oracle on Outer Charm and ask it what the rule was. If I can work out the riddle, I get double pins.”
“You’re going on your own? In the Tub? Without a broomstick or a wand?” Miss Strega peered at Jessica over her glasses.
Jessica nodded three times.
“Then you had better take that salmagundi,” said Miss Strega, “and your lucky pebble and your hat. The sun on outer Charm is very strong. I’m going for a little zizz.” And off she went without even wishing Jessica Good Luck. Once Jessica had undone the Charm on the oars of the Tub and poured the salmagundi on the waves, she set off for Outer Charm. It would have been quite pleasant tootling about the islands if there hadn’t been so many butterflies in her tummy. An albatross wheeled around in the sky above her and shoals of silvery flying fish leapt in and out of the water. A dolphin, which had a Miss Strega look about it, even kept her company all the way to the harbour on Outer Charm.
Outer Charm had a fantastic beach with a huge rock pool. Little miniature lantern fish with glowing tails darted around in it. There were starfish, sea horses and scuttling crabs. Jessica was so engrossed she had almost forgotten the reason for her journey. Then a strange creature with bristling tentacles crawled out of the depths of the pool and clambered up on to a seaweedy rock beside her.
Jessica stared suspiciously at it. “Are you some sort of a water hedgehog?”
“I am the Giant Sea Anemone, the voice of the Oracle,” the creature replied, looking rather offended with its tentacles all a-quiver. “Why are you here?”
“I am Jessica Diamond, Witch-in-Training,” Jessica replied, “and I’ve come to ask you a question. What was Rule Number Four?”
The Giant Sea Anemone pursed its watery lips. “When the bats flit by the beacon and the patient gecko shows her tongue, then shall all but saved charms fade.”
Jessica knitted her brows. “Is that it? Have you finished?”
But the Giant Sea Anemone said nothing more and, after a few seconds, slid noiselessly back into the pool.
Jessica thoughtfully chewed on the end of a plait.
*
“So,” Jessica later explained to Pelagia, “I think this is what the Oracle means. ‘When the bots flit by the beacon.’ OK, the beacon means the lighthouse light and that’s only lit at night-time when it’s dark. That’s also when the bats come out. ‘And the patient gecko shows her tongue’. You know how the geckos wait patiently beneath the light to catch passing flies by flicking out their long tongues? So the Oracle means during the night. ‘Then shall all but saved charms fade’. Well, that means that Charms won’t last unless you save them. It’s just like saving your work on a computer. So the fourth rule must have been: Save all your Charms or they will be lost overnight.”
“So that’s why I have to keep resetting the housework Charms every day and the Safety-at-Sea incantations! Silly me.” Pelagia poured some tropical fruit punch into three tall glasses and passed them round. “That certainly deserves a drink and … double pins.”
“And you’ll never guess what,” Jessica added. “A dolphin followed me all the way to Outer Charm and back. It was looking after me, I think.”
“A dolphin? Fancy that!” Miss Strega remarked, picking a stray piece of seaweed out of her hair.
Pelagia’s bracelets tinkled. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, me dear, would you?” she asked.
“Me, why should I?” protested Miss Strega, stepping out of a puddle of sea water that was spreading round her feet.
Chapter Eight
It had been another perfect day in the Charm Archipelago. Jessica was sitting on a deck chair, watching the sun set and dribbling warm sand over her toes. Berkeley was singing from the top of the flag pole on the lighthouse and Felicity was playing pounce with the coconuts that dropped on to the sand. Miss Strega was cackling quietly as she read her book, Spelling Confidential – the true story behind the scenes at Coven Garden, while Pelagia was painting her toenails Pearly Plum. A flock of knock-kneed pink flamingos had swooped in to fish in the shallows. A perfect day.
“I want to go home,” said Jessica in a small voice.
“What’s that, Jess?” said Miss Strega, looking up from her book.
“What did you say?” asked Pelagia, replacing the brush in the bott
le of varnish.
“I want to be home, in my room, with my own things,” Jessica repeated. “It’s very lovely here and I have enjoyed myself but I miss my home and the park and working out the meaning of the labels in the hardware shop. I miss the cats. I miss flying my broomstick. I even miss the rain.”
“So,” said Miss Strega and Pelagia together, “that means it’s whenever.”
“Whenever?”
“That’s what I put on the notice, don’t you remember? That we’d be back whenever.”
“And I put it on your timetable – from now until whenever.”
Miss Strega closed her book and stood up. “We’d better go and pack. Come along, Felicity, leave that coconut alone.”
Jessica and Miss Strega mounted their broomsticks and hovered side by side on the top viewing platform of the lighthouse, ready for take-off.
“There’s just one thing we have to do before you leave,” Pelagia said. “Your pins, me dear,” and she handed Jessica a little goody bag tied at the neck with a purple and green ribbon. “You’ve won the coloured Hornbill that squawks to warn you of trouble ahead and the Lantern Fish that glows in the dark so you can read in bed or on a flight. And the Incredible Golden Date that you can nibble if you are hungry without it ever getting smaller.”
“Thank you!” said Jessica. “They’re brilliant.”
“And there’s lots more you can work out for yourself when you get home. But just before you go—” Pelagia delved into the pocket of her star-fish cloak and pulled out a little white lighthouse pin that was exactly like her lighthouse “—this is just a little going-away present from me.”
“I love it,” gasped Jessica, “but what does it do?”
“It’s a Safe Harbour Charm. When you wear it, it will always get you safely home,” Pelagia replied as she pinned the lighthouse on Jessica’s cape.
Then she wiped a tear from her eye, patted Felicity and Berkeley, kissed Miss Strega and gave Jessica a big hug. “Now, me dear, just blink, count to ten and off you go. Safe home.”
Jessica blinked and silently counted to ten.
When she opened her eyes, she and Miss Strega were flying low over Jessica’s front garden. All the cats in the neighbourhood – big fluffy marmalades, sleek Siamese, silver tabbies and black moggies – were standing on the garage roof to greet her. Her mother’s car was in the drive. She could smell baking. Someone had stuck a “Welcome Home Jessica” poster on her bedroom window. It was raining.
“Wow!” she exclaimed.
“Hu-eet, hu-eet,” agreed Berkeley, poking her head out of Jessica’s pocket.
“Well bowl me over with an apple pip!” exclaimed Miss Strega before she zoomed off to the High Street. “That pin’s just got us halfway round the globe in ten seconds. Is that Charming or what? I need a good stiff brew to get my breath back.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Jessica waved goodbye. Then she swooped down to the drive, hopped off her broom and dashed inside out of the wet.
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Also by the Author
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The Last Task
Copyright
First published by Collins in 2003
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Text copyright © Maeve Friel 2003
Illustrations by Nathan Reed 2003
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