Secret Spells, page 2
Oops, he’s flat on his face again!
I’ll help him tomorrow.
7:11 p.m.
It would be a lot easier if I could risk Ash and Winnie practicing together. Sigh.
Skip Notes
* NOT ENOUGH.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28
7:22 p.m. Home
Today didn’t go as planned. First Mrs. Namdar wouldn’t let Ash out until he’d done his homework, and then Dad wouldn’t let me out until I’d done my chores, and they took so long the whole day disappeared. Home chores are MUCH worse than creature chores.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29
8:59 a.m. School
No classes today!
“It’s tradition,” Winnie explains, steering me away from the classrooms and in the direction of the forest. “We never have school on Forest Bounty Day.”
“What’s that?” I ask, but before she could answer me Fabi, Puck, and Amara have zoomed alongside on their brooms.
“Come on!” yells Puck. “Hitch a ride with me, Bea!”
9:32 a.m. The Secret Glade, the forest
So I did. All the way to the Secret Glade. (It’s so secret it’s never to be found on a map and is rumored only to appear on Forest Bounty Day!)
3:46 p.m. School
Back at school.
We’re very cold and grubby, but we’ve collected armfuls of winter-smelling foresty stuff for the Winter Solstice decorations. It was like the forest was gifting it to us—trees lowered their branches and dropped great garlands of leaves and bunches of berries into our hands, and no sooner had we taken what was offered than more appeared. It was magical.
5:55 p.m. Home
“You smell like the forest, Bea!” says Dad, coming through the door, shaking snow off his coat.
Probably because of all the tree-hugging I’d been doing (Mr. Muddy had told us that saying thank you to the forest with hugs was a very important part of the tradition).
“We’re decorating the school,” I say, giving Dad a non-witchy version of my day.
“I can’t wait to see it.” Dad grins and gestures to the calendar.
One day is circled in red:
Sports Day!
“I don’t think there’ll be time to see inside the school,” I say, thinking about all our work displays floating around the classrooms.
There’d better not be.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30
11:15 a.m. School
Our Winter Solstice masks are finished, and we’ve been helping Mr. Zicasso with the decorations. There are leaf-and-berry garlands everywhere and somehow[*] overnight the banisters on all the staircases have been transformed into gnarly oak branches that sprout leaves you can eat and caramel apples and sugared plums that grow back when you pick them.
I love my school!
12:01 p.m.
Very nasty equations in math today.
I mostly love my school.
Skip Notes
* MAGIC!!!
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1
9:55 a.m. School
Miss Lupo had something special for me in class today.
“I hear you’re taking care of the professor’s egg!”
There was no need for her to sound so surprised….
“Well, you should have this.” She handed me a shiny black-and-white egg-shaped pot. “It’s ointment,” she explained. “Just rub a little on her shell every night before bed—she’ll love it!”
8:00 p.m. Home
Ooooh, this ointment smells like strawberries. I might as well give it a try….
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2
7:11 a.m. Home
Woke up and peered under the bed to say good morning to Egg and she has SPOTS! Pink ones, all over.
Eeeeek!
8:35 a.m. School
Ran all the way to school so I could catch Professor Agu before homeroom. He told me to CALM DOWN. Apparently, the spots are “perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.” Phew!
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3
9:00 a.m. School
It’s our class’s turn for “Log Magic Mixing” later today. Not sure what that is, but everyone seems excited.
2:02 p.m.
Just made my first-ever Winter Solstice Witchy Wish!!! I’d never been in the Extraordinary kitchens before. They stretch all the way under the dining room, with gleaming copper pans and bunches of dried herbs hanging down from the ceiling and cauldrons bubbling all over the place.
Mr. Scary Cook was expecting us. He was standing over the biggest cauldron of them all, stirring something with a huge wooden spoon. Something that smelled like CHOCOLATE!
“Don’t just stand there like snoozy squiblets!” he boomed, gesturing for us to join him.
We stood and watched for a few minutes as he stirred the glossy, silky mixture. My mouth was watering.
“You all[*] know how it works,” he said. “Everyone takes a turn to stir and makes a Winter Solstice Witchy Wish. Use yours wisely.”
I knew at once exactly what I was going to ask for, and when it was my turn, I closed my eyes, stirred, and wished as hard as I could.
Winnie says the next time we see that chocolate, it will be at the bonfire party and it will have turned into a GINORMOUS Winter Solstice Chocolate Log.
CANNOT WAIT.
Skip Notes
* NOT ME!
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 4
4:32 p.m. Home
Oh. My. Broomstick.
It was so SILLY of me to practice levitating Stan with the curtains open, but we’d both been having too much fun playing keepy-uppy to be careful. We’d never gotten above twenty before, then…twenty-four…twenty-five…twenty-six…. Oooh, right up to the ceiling!
I don’t know how long Ash had been watching before he shouted, “BEA! Beeeeaaaa!”
I made a grab for the curtains, but not fast enough.
“BBBB-EEEE-AAAAAAA!!”
Reluctantly, I opened the curtains again. “Oh, hi, Ash,” I said in my most nothing-to-see-here voice.
“You were….” He trailed off and stared at me like I was a hippogriff or something.
“What?” I smiled sweetly.
“Stan…. You were making him go up and down….”
“Don’t be silly, Ash!” I put on my most innocent face. “Frogs go up and down all the time. It’s what they do.”
Stan (who’d plummeted to the floor a bit faster than he’d liked when I grabbed for the curtains) looked at me and rolled his goggly eyes.
“And what’s that thing?!”
“What thing?” I asked and then went bright red as I realized that I might have let Stan fall to the ground, but I was still holding my WAND.
Oops. I could either tell Ash the truth or lie to his face. It wasn’t a hard choice.
“Oh, this thing? It’s a chopstick, obviously.” I shrugged as if conducting airborne frogs with chopsticks was a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing on a Saturday morning.
“I’m coming over!” he yelled.
5:41 p.m.
That went VERY BADLY.
By the time I heard Ash clattering up the stairs, Stan and I were sitting on my bed, casually reading a book. “Um, hello,” I said as if I was surprised to see him.
“What are you doing?!”
“Reading.”
“It’s upside down, Bea!” He grabbed it. “Ambius Ambrose’s Animalium Magicum?”
Ughhhh, bad choice. I tried to grab it back, but he was already reading aloud from the chapter on How To Get A Dragon To Go To Sleep (& Other Basic Skills).
“Wh-whattt?” He goggled at the pages like an actual dragon might pop out.[*] “WHAT is going on?”
“NOTHING is going on,” I lied.
“There is something going on.”
“No, there isn’t.” I wrangled back the book and chucked it under the bed.
“Yes, there is.”
“No, there isn’t,” I said, crawling under the bed to check that I hadn’t hit Egg.
“Yes there—Bea…why is there an ENORMOUS EGG under your bed?”
Oh, no! Why did he have to look?! This was really stressful.
“Now you HAVE to tell me what’s going on,” he said.
“I can’t,” I wailed, emerging from under the bed, covered in dust.
He crossed his arms and glared at me. “Are we even friends?”
“Of course we are!” I felt all gulpy.
“We hardly hang out anymore and REAL FRIENDS tell each other things,” he said, getting up and heading for the door.
“I can’t!” I wailed again.
“You don’t trust me. You’ve made that pretty obvious.” He turned at the doorway and gave me the kind of disappointed look that made me want to crawl back under the bed and stay there.
A few seconds later, I heard the back door slam. Ash was gone.
That was an hour ago and I don’t know what to do and Dad’s calling me down for dinner.
9:02 p.m.
Still don’t know what to do…
I couldn’t, could I?
I shouldn’t….
What would a good witch do?
What would a good friend do??
10:43 p.m.
Can’t sleep. I need to discuss this with Stan and Egg….
Skip Notes
* VERY UNLIKELY.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5
10:41am Home
Okay, I’ve made a decision. I’m not sure it’s a good decision…but I HAVE to do it. I’m going over to see Ash.
12:42 p.m.
Dribbling dragons!
I DID IT. I TOLD ASH I WAS A WITCH. (Several times because his ears didn’t seem to be working properly.) He sat in stunned silence for what felt like forever, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish, until finally he said something that sounded like…
“Whoahhhaaaaaghwow!”
And then he said, “I don’t believe you.”
Excuse me! After all that?! I should probably have thanked my lucky stars and not said another word, but then he said, “Everyone knows witches aren’t real.”
Well, that was just RUDE, so I told him all over again, starting with my very first day at Extraordinary. And then I got out my wand and made Stan go up and down until he looked like he was going to be sick.
“Whoahhhaaaaaghwow!” Ash believed me now.
I offered him a calming fluffmallow that I happened to have in my pocket and waited until he could speak again.
“I suppose there were clues,” he said at last. “Even before yesterday.”
“What?” I thought I’d been so careful. “Oh! The bat beard?”
He nodded. “And the way you kept calling baking ‘potions‘ and the fact that you’re always talking to Stan.” He looked at my frog nervously. “Can he talk?”
“No, well, I don’t think so.”
I’d come across bigger surprises in Little Spellshire than a talking frog.
“He can communicate with me in his own froggy way,” I said and Stan grinned.[*]
“Can he do magic?”
“Not as far as I know.”
It was dawning on me that I was shockingly ignorant about my frog. I’d never seen Stan doing magic, but that wasn’t to say that in his own way he wasn’t casting spells all over the place.
“Here. He’s very comforting.” And before either of them could protest, I’d passed my frog to my friend.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Ash asked once he’d gotten used to having Stan on his head.
“I wanted to, but it’s not the kind of thing you can just come out with. Anyway, we’re not supposed to tell anyone…witch’s code and all that.”
“Well, I’m glad you did because now you can stop avoiding me.”
I was about to deny it, but maybe he had a point. If I had, it was only because I’d been so worried about him finding out!
“Is that what’s been bothering you?” I asked, remembering all the times he’d seemed down.
He shrugged. “And um…the last couple of weeks at school have been a bit…stressful….” He trailed off, looking embarrassed.
Oh!
“You’re worried about Sports Day, aren’t you?”
Of course that was it! He’d told me he was dreading it.
“Um….” He couldn’t deny it. “Never mind that.” Ash swiftly changed the subject. “Tell me EVERYTHING about witch—Wait, what do you mean witch’s code? You won’t get into trouble, will you?”
It didn’t seem like a good moment to point out that he might be in trouble, too, so I crossed my fingers and said, “Not if no one finds out.”
“Well, I won’t tell a soul.”
He’d better not!
“Is your dad a wizard?” Ash asked a minute later. “Men can’t be witches, can they?”
I snorted. “Anyone can be a witch. But no, Dad isn’t a witch.” I suddenly remembered how confusing I’d found all this and explained. “You don’t have to be born a witch to be one. I mean, some witches have witchy parents—everyone except me at Extraordinary seems to—but you don’t need to. I wasn’t even the slightest bit witchy until a few weeks ago.”
“What? You learn it?”
I nodded.
“Is it hard?”
The honest answer was EXCEEDINGLY, AMAZINGLY hard, but I didn’t want to scare Ash off because it would be nice if he learned and I had a witch-best-friend living next door. “Some parts are really tricky and some parts aren’t,” I said. “Like, flying’s not hard.”
“You can fly?!”
“Sure.” He looked so impressed it was impossible not to feel a tiny bit smug.
“Go on then!” Ash pointed at the open window.
“I can’t do that.” (Now he looked less impressed.) “That’s way beyond sixth grade! I need a broom.” Before he could go and find one, I added, “An enchanted broom.”
Ash thought for a moment and then said, “So, could I fly if I got on an enchanted broom?”
“Maybe.”
“Will you show me?”
I hesitated. “You might fall off.” He’d definitely fall off. Ash was not the most coordinated of humans.
“Can’t be worse than hurdles,” he said, so I promised I’d try to sneak an Extraordinary broom home next weekend.
That is if no one finds out I’ve told him and turns us into toads by then….
Skip Notes
* Frogs 100% grin.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 6
8:33 a.m. Home
The bad news is that I’ve overslept AGAIN.
The good news is I’m not a toad. I hope Ash isn’t a toad, either.
11:00 a.m. School
“You look worried, Bea,” says Winnie at break. “Even more worried than usual. Is everything okay?”
I want to tell her SO badly, but I can’t. Nobody can know that I’ve spilled the beans.
Ughhhhh! It’s dawning on me that I’ve swapped keeping one ENORMOUS secret for another.
I’m going to have to be even more careful to keep Ash and my other friends apart.
I HATE SECRETS.
12:01 p.m.
Still not a toad.
Mr. Muddy was very impressed by my Stan-keepy-uppy skills. He says when I get to fifty, I can have a gold star. I’d have been more excited about that if I hadn’t still been panicking about telling Ash.
8:05 p.m. Home
Just spotted Ash through the window. He’s definitely still a person.
Phew!
Winter Solstice News and Notices
Students are reminded to take every opportunity to practice their assigned events for Winter Solstice Sports Day.
Ms. Celery would like to remind every single witch that she expects to see them WIN!
Ms. Sparks would like to remind every single witch that she expects to see FAIR PLAY!
Further Notices
We are pleased to announce that a new member of staff will be joining us next semester to teach geography: Dr. Trudi Pellicano (world expert on caves, lairs, and unexplained snares).
Planning is underway for next semester’s Sixth Grade residential trip! More extraordinary news on that soon….
Quick-fire Q & A with Madam Binx!
Q: Favorite poem?
A: I have many favorites, but at this time of year the one that springs to mind is, of course, the Great Ode to the Winter Solstice by Mistress Frost.
Q: Favorite pet?
A: I don’t have a pet, but I am terribly fond of dear Esmerelda, my Venus flytrap.
Q: Favorite joke?
A: I don’t know any jokes, so here’s the first three lines of a limerick instead!
