The Worst Witch (6 page)

sternly, ‘your pupils are the witches of the future. I shudder to think what that future will be like.’

He paused, and there was complete silence. Miss Hardbroom glared at Mildred.

‘However,’ continued the chief magician, ‘we shall forget this incident for the rest of the evening. Let us now begin the chanting.’

T dawn the celebrations ended, and the pupils flew wearily back to school, some riding double as their own broomsticks were broken. No one was speaking to Mildred (even Maud was being very cool towards her friend), and Form One was in disgrace. When they arrived at the Academy, everyone was sent straight to bed. It was the custom, after the all-night Hallowe’en celebrations, to sleep until noon the next day.

‘Mildred!’ said Miss Cackle, in a sharp voice, as Form One made their way miserably up the stairs. ‘Miss Hardbroom and I will see you in my office first thing tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Yes, Miss Cackle,’ replied Mildred, almost in tears, and she ran up the steps.

As Mildred opened her bedroom door, Ethel, who was behind her, leaned across and whispered, ‘
That
’ll teach you to go around changing people into pigs!’ and she pulled a face and ran away down the corridor.

Mildred closed the door and fell on to her bed, almost flattening the kitten, which leapt out of the way just in time.

‘Oh, Tabby,’ she said, burying her face in the kitten’s warm fur, ‘I’ve had such a dreadful time, and it wasn’t even my fault! I might have known Ethel wouldn’t lend me her broomstick out of kindness. Nobody will ever believe that it wasn’t me just being clumsy as usual.’

The kitten licked her ear sympathetically, and the bats returned through the narrow window and settled upside down on the picture-rail.

Two hours later, Mildred was lying in bed, still wide awake. She was imagining what the interview with Miss Cackle and her terrible form-mistress would be like. The kitten was curled up peacefully on her chest.

‘It’ll be
aw
ful,’ she thought, sadly looking towards the grey sky outside the window. ‘I wonder if they’ll expel me? Or perhaps I could tell them that it was Ethel – no, I would never do that. Suppose they decide to turn me into a frog? No, I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything like that; Miss Hardbroom said that was against the Witches’ Code. Oh, what
will
they do to me? Even Maud thinks it’s my fault, and I’ve never seen H.B. look more furious.’

She lay thinking about it until she was really frightened, and suddenly she leapt out of bed.

‘Come on, Tabby!’ she said, pulling a bag out of the wardrobe. ‘We’re running away.’

She stuffed a few clothes and books into the bag and put on her best robe so that no one would recognize the usual school uniform. Then she picked up her broomstick, put the kitten into the bag, and crept out along the silent corridor to the spiral staircase.

‘I shall miss the bats,’ she thought.

It was a cold, dull morning, and Mildred pulled her cape about her shoulders as she crossed the yard, glancing round in case anyone was watching. The school seemed very strange with no one about. Mildred had to fly over the gates, which were locked as usual, but it was difficult to balance with the bag slung on

the back of her broomstick, so she got off on the other side of the gates and started through the pine trees on foot.

‘I don’t know where we’re going, Tabby,’ she said, as they picked their way down the mountainside.

T was very gloomy in the forest, and Mildred felt slightly uneasy, surrounded by dark trees which grew so thickly together that no light fell between them. When she was almost at the bottom of the mountain, she sat down to rest, leaning her back against a tree, and the kitten climbed out of the bag to stretch itself on the grass.

It was very quiet except for a few birds singing, and a rather strange noise, a sort of low humming, almost like a lot of people talking at once. In fact, the more Mildred listened, the more it did sound like voices. She looked in the direction of the noise and thought she saw something moving along the trees.

‘Let’s go and have a look, Tabby,’ she whispered.

They left the bag and broomstick leaning against the tree, and crept through the tangled undergrowth. The noise grew louder.

‘Why, it
is
people talking,’ said Mildred. ‘Look, Tabby, over there, through the branches.’

Sitting in a clearing in the gloom were about twenty witches, all crowded together, muttering and talking in low voices. Mildred crept nearer and listened. She didn’t recognize any of them. A tall, grey-haired witch got to her feet.

‘Listen, everyone,’ said the grey-haired witch. ‘Will you all be quiet for a few moments? Thank you. Now, what I should like to know is, are we quite sure that they will all be sleeping, or at least in their rooms?’

She sat down, and another witch got up to reply. She was a small, plump witch with green horn-rimmed glasses. For a horrible moment Mildred thought it was Miss Cackle, but her voice was different when she spoke.

‘Of course we are sure,’ this witch replied. ‘The morning after Hallowe’en celebrations the entire school sleeps until midday. It is a rule, and the school is very strict about rules, so no one will be up until five minutes to twelve at the very earliest. If we fly over the wall into the back part of the yard, we will be as far away from the bedrooms as we can be, and no one will possibly hear us. Added to this, we shall all be invisible, so we shall be extremely well protected. Then all that remains to be done is to split up, sneak into each room and turn them all into frogs. They won’t be able to see us even if they
are
awake. Remember to take one of these boxes with you for the frogs.’ She pointed to a neat pile of small cardboard boxes. ‘We can’t have even one of them escaping. Once this is done, the entire school and everyone in it will be under our control.

‘Is the invisibility potion ready yet?’ she continued, turning to a young witch who was stirring a cauldron over a fire. It was the same potion that the two Ms had made during the laughter potion test.

‘Another few minutes,’ replied the young witch, dropping a handful of bats’ whiskers into the mixture. ‘It needs to simmer for a bit.’