Caution: Witch in Progress (previously published as 'Gertie Gets it Right eventually') by Lynne North (books under 200 pages txt) 📕

        The nearest education committee to Vile Vale had long since decided that life was better this way.

        ‘Can you imagine the disruption there would be if those strange children got into our schools?’ they asked one another.

        ‘Our little dears would be frightened to death by them,’ they agreed.

        And so it was, the witches and the normal people lived happily apart, hoping to have as little dealings with each other as possible.

        Only the most special of the witches’ society ever went away to a school for witches and warlocks. The Academy was for the select few who showed great potential.

        The Grimthorpes didn’t have much hope for Gertie on that score.

Chapter Two

When Gertie reached seven years of age, her mother decided it was time to teach her a beginner’s spell.

        ‘I’m going to teach you how to give people warts,’ Ma said.

        She told Gertie that for some strange reason, mortals didn’t like warts. If a witch was annoyed at one therefore, all she had to do was hold a toad as close as possible to the offending person, and say a few magical words.

        ‘The wartier the toad, the better,’ added Ma.

        Gertie listened intently, eyes glinting. This was very important. Her first spell.

        When the little witch could easily repeat the spell, word for word, her mother patted her on the head and said, ‘Good girl. Now, you go and play in the weed garden.’

        Gertie knew exactly what she had to do. She crept quietly out of the garden gate, which was edged by two huge posts bearing gargoyles staring in both directions. Once through, and thankfully not called back, she headed for the village slime pond to look for the wartiest toad she could possibly find. Gertie made her choice with care, then spent the next half an hour chasing the toad around while getting herself thoroughly wet and muddy. She finally managed to grab the ugly toad as it had grown tired of hopping around, and gripped him to herself.

        ‘Right, toad,’ she explained. ‘I won’t be so different when I at least have some warts like Mummy and Gran, and I guess, almost everyone else in the world.’

        As yet, Gertie had not had any dealings with mere mortals of the wart-less variety.

        ‘I know it will please Mummy,’ Gertie continued, ‘so stay still and stop wriggling, you silly toad.’

            The toad stared at her, maybe unaccustomed to being spoken to. She stroked his head. He pulled away a bit at first, probably not used to being stroked either. He soon settled down and closed his eyes as if he liked it. Gertie had seen witches use toads before. It was usually a case of grab, rub them on someone, and then a toss back into the pond when it was all over with. Being particularly warty, she bet this one had been taken all over the place for such treatment, and kept quite busy. Gertie decided he liked her as he opened his eyes again and sat waiting for what would come next.

        Gertie sat down, concentrating with all her might. With her eyes closed she began to chant.

        ‘Wart of toad, see who I show,

        And on this person swiftly grow.’

        So saying, she gently (so not to hurt him) rubbed the toad over her own face and hands. She then did it again, just to be sure.

        Gertie waited a while and held her breath in anticipation. She carefully put the toad down so he could hop home, still with her eyes closed. She then touched her chin, and nose. They felt as smooth and silky as ever. Opening her eyes slowly, she examined her tiny pink hands, bit by bit. Not a sign of a wart. Not even a pimple. She sighed in disappointment and dropped her eyes to the ground. There sat the toad with a bewildered expression, looking like he felt a great weight had been lifted off him. He was as smooth and shiny as a green plum.

        ‘Oh no! You poor toad!’ cried Gertie, picking him up and nursing him. ‘What have I done to you? Now you are not like your friends either!’

        The toad stared up at her and said ‘croak’.

        ‘Don’t be upset,’ Gertie continued. ‘Would you like to be MY friend?’

        ‘Croak,’ replied the toad.

        ‘Oh Goody!’ Gertie squealed. ‘You can go everywhere with me in my pocket. I’ll buy you nice things to eat, and we’ll be best friends because we’re both so different.’

        ‘Croak,’ said the toad. He clearly knew when he was on to a good thing.

        ‘I’ll call you, Wart,’ added Gertie thoughtfully, ‘because you don’t have any.’

        It made sense to her at the time.

        Wart didn’t accompany Gertie everywhere in her pocket, of course.

        ‘No toad, warty or otherwise, can be happy living in someone’s pocket. They need water to swim in and oozy mud to get between their webbed toes,’ Ma told Gertie when she returned home. Luckily, Gertie didn’t even get into trouble for being so wet and muddy. Her mother seemed quite pleased she had tried to cast her first spell. When Ma learned of the outcome however, she sighed and gave an ‘I might have known’ sort of look. ‘At least you tried,’ she said. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to get it right.’

        Ma suggested the best place for Wart would be the little stagnant pond in their back garden, near to the dandelion border.

        Gertie was afraid Wart might go away if she left him there, but being a nice girl she decided he should be able to make up his own mind anyway.

            She soon stopped worrying. Wart looked delighted to have a pond of his own and to be without all those horrible warts. No one would be grabbing him for spell casting now. It must have been a great weight off his back, in every way. He appeared younger and more agile each time she saw him.

        Gertie came to visit him every day. ‘Wart, it’s me, Wart,’ she called, so that he came over to have his smooth back stroked. The two soon became firm friends. Secretly, Gertie began to feel quite pleased her first spell hadn’t worked as expected.

        It was only when none of her attempted spells worked as they should, that she would seriously begin to worry.

Gertie’s next attempt at spells came quite by chance.

        ‘We’ve been invited to Grothilde’s for tea,’ Ma Grimthorpe told her. Gertie loved to go to Grothilde’s, even though she was never quite sure if Grothilde was speaking to her, or to her mother who was standing behind her (and taller). Gertie tried to politely nod in all the right places, just in case. She didn’t want to offend Grothilde because she was quite nice really, despite her wayward eyes.

        The thing Gertie liked best about their visits were not so much the devil cakes (which were absolutely delicious), but Grothilde’s armchair.

        ‘Will the chair be there, will it?’ Gertie asked in excitement.

        ‘Yes, dear, you know it will,’ replied Ma patiently.

        To all who entered the room, it looked like any other armchair. It was upholstered in black, with a delicate scattering of skull patterns on it, and four wooden clawed feet. No, it wasn’t the appearance of the chair that made it out of the ordinary. It was what it did.

        When Grothilde had finished busying about and brought the tea and cakes she, as always, stood wherever she happened to be at the time and commanded in an authoritative voice ‘Chair.’

        Immediately, up the chair rose onto its four clawed feet and scurried across to her. Grothilde began to sit even before it arrived, so sure she was of its knack of getting there before her bottom touched down.

        Gertie loved it, and sometimes tried to make excuses for Grothilde to have to get up a few times so she could watch her sit all over again.

        Gertie knew that Grothilde became wise to this, and rather played up to it. That meant Grothilde had grown quite fond of her which made Gertie happy.

‘Shame about your sweet face,’ Grothilde would say, ‘but you’ll make a real witch one day’.

        Today, after performing her chair act three times for Gertie, Grothilde announced with a wink of her good eye, ‘It’s about time you learned another spell, Gertie, right, Ma?’

        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie, clapping her hands in glee.

        ‘Right, lass,’ continued Grothilde, focusing her eye on the girl. ‘About this chair.’

        ‘Yes?’ asked Gertie, when the older witch didn’t continue.

        ‘Well, I wouldn’t try to charm a chair yet, luv, but you could try something else. It’s only th’animation spells.’

        ‘Thanimation?’ Gertie asked, looking puzzled.

        ‘Animation, dear,’ her mother replied quietly. ‘A spell to make things move when they don’t really have a mind to.’

        ‘Like Gran when she takes her afternoon nap?’ asked Gertie, clearly hoping she was getting the hang of it.

        ‘Well, not exactly,’ her mother smiled, showing her pointed yellow teeth. ‘More like Grothilde’s chair and occasional table.’

        Grothilde had an occasional table in the true sense of the word. The rest of the time it was a small set of steps she used to reach the top shelf of her huge oaken book case.

        Whenever she needed something to put her cup of tea on however, she snapped her fingers and the steps came running and rearranged themselves next to her chair. What she did have to remember was never to snap her fingers when she was up on the steps. If they ever decided to rearrange themselves while she was up there she could easily lose her legs in a flash.

        ‘Or even like Mortella’s door knocker,’ Ma continued to explain.

        ‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Gertie in glee.

        Grothilde knew the young witch loved Mortella’s door knocker too. It was shaped in the face of a fearsome demon, and when you knocked on the door with it, it bellowed ‘GO AWAY, I DON’T WANT ANY.’

        Mortella had been greatly troubled by travelling salesmen in the past, but this seemed to do the trick. The other witches knew well enough to rap on the wooden door with their knuckles or their broomstick handles, so not to be deafened. The door knocker was particularly for uninvited strangers.

        ‘So, I can make things walk, or talk?’ asked Gertie.

        ‘Easy, luv,’ grimaced Grothilde. ‘All you ‘ave to do is BELIEVE it will work. Use some words if you want to, to focus the power, then point at what you want to move. A bit of rhyming helps. I’ve never found out why. Maybe it’s because you have to concentrate to think of a rhyme.’ She paused and stared at Gertie.

‘Anyway, before you start, be SURE you want it to move, mind you. It’s not that easy to stop some of the beggars once they get going. I once asked a stool to move out of the way. The front door was open at the time because I was spring cleaning by letting a good breeze blow through. The stool moved all right. It set off, through the door, and down the path. Before I had chance to notice because I was too busy trying to see what was going on across the road, it was disappearing out of sight.’ She grinned.

        ‘The last I saw of it,’ she explained to anyone who wondered where her favourite stool had gone, ‘it was vanishing hurriedly past th’end of the street in the direction of the woods. It’s probably still walking,’ she added as