A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch (5 page)

Mildred closed her eyes again, hoping that perhaps it was only a nightmare, but when she sneaked another look, the apparition was still there, and now it began patting gently at Mildred with its gigantic paws.

Terrified, Mildred backed away and crashed into something hard, which seemed to be a huge iron railing towering above her. However, at this distance from the monster, she could see that it was none other than her own tabby cat, which for some reason had grown to the size of a mammoth.

Knowing the cat as well as she did, Mildred could see that, despite its size, it was frightened out of its wits. Her suspicions flew at once to Ethel having cast a spell on the cat to get even with Mildred for the insult to Ethel’s family.

‘Don’t be scared, Tab,’ she started to say, but much to her surprise, all that came out was a strange hoarse noise sounding rather like ‘Craark!’

Panic began to grip Mildred as it slowly dawned on her that not only Tabby, but also the bedstead, all the furniture and even the bats sleeping round the picture rail were many times larger than usual. This led her to the alarming conclusion that it was not
they
who were bigger, but
she
who was smaller – and a
lot
smaller.

She peered over the edge of the bedstead and saw a cliff of bedcover stretching endlessly to the stone floor. Tabby began purring which sounded, to the miniature Mildred, like a squadron of aeroplanes taking off.

‘Oh, do stop it, Tab. I can’t hear myself think!’ she tried to say, but once again the words seemed to stick in her throat and come out as a croak.

Mildred decided to get to the chest of drawers, on which stood a small mirror, so that she could see just how small she was. The end of the bedstead was only a few inches away from the drawers, but in her new tiny condition it appeared to be miles. However, to her great surprise, she suddenly felt the impulse to take a flying leap at the huge gap, and landed with the ease of an acrobat on top of the chest.

‘How strange,’ thought Mildred, ‘I had no idea that I could jump like that!’

She soon discovered why, and it was not a pleasant discovery. Looking back at her from the mirror, with eyes like saucers, was a small, olive-green frog. Mildred turned round, but there was no one behind her. She stretched out her hand and saw a green, damp limb reach out to touch the mirror-frog’s webbed foot.

Mildred began to cry, and as she lifted her hand to wipe away the tears she watched with horrified fascination as the reflection did the same.

‘This is no use at all,’ Mildred said to herself sternly. ‘Sitting here crying isn’t going to change anything. I must get help.’

She jumped back onto the bed and noticed something lying on the pillow. It was a giant-sized clump of weeds, Ethel’s way of telling Mildred who had cast the spell and why.

Mildred leapt to the floor and sat there for a moment, reflecting how nice it was to be able to jump such an amazing distance without getting hurt. It reminded her of the disastrous pole-vault on the school sports-day, when Enid had cast a spell on Mildred’s pole to help her, but had inadvertently overdone the magic and Mildred had sailed through Miss Hardbroom’s study window.

However, the ability to jump was the
only
pleasant aspect of Mildred’s new condition and a sudden, hot wave of panic seized her. She felt utterly trapped in her small, cramped frog’s body, her knees felt bent in the wrong place and her arms were too short, and it was quite terrifying trying to speak and only being capable of a hoarse croaking sound. There was a large gap beneath Mildred’s door, and she decided to set off and find someone to help her. Watched by her baffled cat, Mildred squeezed through the gap and hopped away down the corridor, convinced that
nothing
could be worse than just sitting helplessly in her room.

As it turned out, she would have done better to have stayed on her pillow, for there she might have been found by Maud or Enid who would possibly have put two and two together at the curious sight of a cat and frog nestling on the same bed. But outside her room, Mildred was just a common frog who had strayed into the School, where it would be unlikely to occur to anyone (except the wicked person who had done the deed) that it might be a second-year witch under an enchantment.

ith the worst possible timing, Mildred turned the corner just as Miss Hardbroom strode through the door leading from the yard.

‘Well, well,’ she said, bending down and picking up the little frog, ‘what have we here then?’ And without further ado, she crammed Mildred into her pocket and marched off.

It was not very pleasant in the pocket. Mildred felt around in the bumping, musty darkness and discovered a whistle, a notebook with a rubber band round it, and a voluminous handkerchief.

The next thing she knew, Miss Hardbroom had pulled her out of the pocket and plonked her unceremoniously into a high-sided glass jar. Through the glass she saw that she was on a shelf in the potion laboratory and the tall figure of her form-mistress was swirling out of the door.

Mildred felt absolutely dreadful. There appeared to be no way of escaping and even if she
did
escape, she had no idea what to do. She wondered if Ethel would relent and change her back, or whether she might be really wicked enough to leave her as a frog, for ever. She also wondered if Miss Hardbroom and the class would begin to wonder where she was, after a while.

They were wondering where she was at that very moment. Miss Hardbroom had, in fact, been on her way to Mildred’s room when she encountered the frog. After leaving the potion laboratory, she soon discovered that Mildred was not in her room and set off to look all over the school where, of course, she did not find the missing pupil. The class when questioned did not know where Mildred was either. It was a mystery.

‘Perhaps she’s run away?’ suggested Enid to Maud as the girls trooped in for dinner. ‘H.Β.
was
cross with her about the cat.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Maud. ‘She would have taken the cat with her if she’d done that.’

‘Well, I can’t think
where
she is then,’ shrugged Enid.

‘Nor can I,’ said Maud. ‘But if you ask
me
, Ethel’s got something to do with it. She’s got that
look
on. You know, that
I
know something
you
don’t sort of look.’

‘We’d better keep an eye on her then,’ said Enid.

Meanwhile, in the potion laboratory, Mildred was desperately trying to overbalance the jar by climbing up the side and leaning on it. However, she could only get up a little way before she tumbled backwards, as the jar had a heavy glass base which proved impossible to overbalance. After several tries she gave up and wept a pool of panicky, frustrated tears. All she could do now was to rely on Ethel being merciful (which was not one of Ethel’s main qualities). Also, Mildred realized that even if Ethel
was
feeling merciful enough to confess, it was quite possible that no one would realize that Mildred was actually the frog in the jar.