The Weekend Witches and Other Stories by Lynne Roberts
end Witches and Other Stories
By Lynne Roberts
Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts
ISBN 978-1-927241-16-5
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Contents
The Weekend Witches
Flying High
Deep Water
Riding Lessons
The Last Broom
The Weekend Witches
Wanda the witch gave a shrill cackle of laughter as she skipped to the kitchen and picked up the broomstick.
‘My poor neglected beauty,’ she crooned. ‘Now it is Wednesday we can take to the skies again.’ The broomstick rubbed lovingly against Wanda’s long knobbly legs.
‘Come hither, Sabre,’ she commanded.
A black cat came purring from the garden and leapt to the back of the broomstick, where he sat with whiskers quivering. Wanda muttered an incantation and the broomstick rose majestically into the air.
‘Long live the Wednesday Witch,’ she screamed, as she swooped through the trees and over the rooftops.
‘That was wonderful,’ sighed Natalie sucking the end of one of her straight brown pigtails as the credits of Wanda the Wicked Wednesday Witch rolled across the screen. ‘I love movies about witches.’
‘Me too,’ agreed Alice, searching hopefully though her packet for one last piece of popcorn.
‘We could watch it again,’ suggested Vanessa.
‘No, you could not,’ said her mother firmly, as she came into the living room in time to hear this last remark. She marched over to the video and quickly rewound the tape. ‘You girls are spending far too much time indoors as it is. It’s not healthy. When I was your age I would have been playing outside in the sunshine.’
‘There wasn’t a hole in the ozone layer then,’ Vanessa pointed out virtuously.
Her mother frowned at her.
‘You can always wear a hat. Exercise is good for you. Look at Brendan. He’s out there on the driveway with Luke practicing basketball shots. They are not sitting around in the half dark.’
‘We don’t play basketball,’ spluttered Vanessa. ‘And we are certainly not going outside if Brendan is there.’
‘That is quite enough. Now I’d like you all to go and return this to the video shop and no, you may not get another one. You can borrow some books from the library instead. That will at least improve your minds.’
Vanessa scowled while Natalie and Alice gave her sympathetic looks.
‘It’s not fair,’ she muttered.
‘My mother is just the same,’ Natalie assured Vanessa as they walked down the street.
‘Mine is worse,’ Alice stated. ‘She won’t even let us watch videos in the daytime at all. Not even one.’
Vanessa refused to be comforted.
‘My family is totally terrible. I’d be better off without them. Mum and Dad are bad enough but as for Brendan, well words can’t describe how awful he is.’
Natalie and Alice were silent. They had met Vanessa’s elder brother and often suffered from his teasing comments.
‘I thought he was busy most days with basketball practice,’ Alice said at last.
‘Oh yes, some of the time. The rest of the time unfortunately he makes it his mission in life to pick on me.’
Vanessa kicked savagely at a perfectly innocent stone lying on the footpath. The stone hit the gutter with a satisfying clunk, but as Vanessa was only wearing sandals her toes suffered a bruising defeat.
‘I wish I was a witch like Wanda,’ Vanessa muttered. ‘Then I could put all sorts of ghastly spells on the people I don’t like.’
The other girls agreed that it would be great to be witches and discussed the video until they reached the library. There, a quick frown from Mrs Midler the librarian subdued them to silence. Alice headed straight towards the shelves at the back where she quickly chose one of her favourite books about horses.
‘Look, Bessie goes to Pony Camp,’ she told Natalie. ‘I’ve read Bessie Buys a Pony and Bessie Wins a Bridle and this is the next in the series. They are really good and there are still seven more to read.’
Natalie rolled her eyes at this and eventually chose what looked to be an exciting adventure story, if the picture on the cover was anything to go by. Vanessa wandered moodily though the reference section. Her mind was still on Wanda the Witch and she didn’t feel like choosing a book just because her mother had suggested it.
‘I should be able to do what I want to in the weekends,’ she grumpily informed a dusty pot plant. The plant naturally didn’t react to this at all, which didn’t improve Vanessa’s temper. She scuffed her feet through the carpet into the travel section. Two old ladies started to smile at her, but quickly looked away as she glared at them.
‘Are you coming?’ hissed Alice. ‘We’ve got our books. Natalie is waiting by the desk.’
‘Oh, all right,’ snapped Vanessa crossly, and pulled a book at random from the nearest shelf. Hurrying after Alice she dumped the book on the counter for Mrs Midler to stamp. The librarian raised an eyebrow.
‘Are you sure you want to borrow this?’ she asked Vanessa doubtfully. ‘It’s really an adult book.’
‘Yes. It’s exactly what I want,’ replied Vanessa, grandly and untruthfully.
Mrs Midler gave her a strange look but handed the book back to her.
The girls walked back along the street and stopped for Alice to tie up her shoelace, which had come undone and started to flap. Vanessa glanced at the title of her book for the first time and gasped in astonishment.
‘What is it?’ asked Natalie curiously.
‘It’s a book about magic. Look!’ exclaimed Vanessa.
‘Let me see,’ cried Alice, tossing back her fair hair and jumping to her feet.
The girls’ eyes opened wide in shock as they crowded around Vanessa.
‘Mysteries Unexplained; A collection of Magic Spells,’ she read slowly. ‘Oh wow! This is fantastic!’ She quickly opened the book and flipped through the pages.
‘Invisibility, How to Transform Living Creatures, Rendering Lead Unto Gold,’ Natalie read over her shoulder. ‘That’s amazing.’
‘You realise what this means?’ breathed Vanessa.
‘It means we can be witches,’ exclaimed Alice, then blushed as an old man leading a scruffy dog looked curiously at her as he walked past.
‘We’d better go somewhere private and discuss this,’ Vanessa announced, as the girls dodged around a young mother pushing a stroller. ‘It’s no use going back to my place. Mum would probably make us go for a ten kilometre run this time.’
‘We can go to my place,’ offered Alice. ‘Only my little sisters will be there and they’ll probably want to join in.’
‘No,’ said Vanessa decidedly. ‘We want this to be just the three of us. We really need somewhere suitably witchy to meet.’ She looked hopefully at Natalie who looked doubtful.
‘We’ve got a garden shed,’ she admitted.
‘That sounds perfect,’ replied Vanessa. ‘We’ll go there.’
‘But it’s not very witchy,’ Natalie protested. ‘It’s full of tools and stuff. My Dad used to use it quite a lot but he’s not such a fanatical gardener now and hardly goes there.’
‘Even better,’ said Vanessa, as with suppressed excitement the girls turned down Pukeko Stree
The garden shed was certainly gloomy enough for the hardiest witch. Alice squeaked in fright as large black spider scurried up its web across the grime-encrusted window.
‘It smells a bit,’ Natalie said apologetically, as the odour of potting mix and fertilizer assaulted their nostrils.
‘This is exactly the right sort of place for witches,’ said Vanessa firmly, and cleared a space to sit on an upturned bucket. Natalie pulled out two of the least dirty sacks, which she spread on the ground for herself and Alice. Alice shuddered but the sight of the spell book overcame her qualms and she sat down obediently at Vanessa’s feet.
‘Shut the door so no-one can hear us,’ Vanessa commanded.
Natalie began to shut the door then opened it again thankfully as Vanessa called, ‘Stop. It’s too dark to read. Leave it open.’ Scanning the contents page she said happily, ‘There are heaps of spells here.’
‘Can we try one?’ Alice asked eagerly.
Vanessa frowned. ‘I think we’d better decide on a name for our coven first.’
‘Wanda was one of the Wednesday Witches. We could be that too,’ Alice suggested.
‘It’s not Wednesday, it’s Saturday,’ said Natalie scornfully. ‘Anyway, we don’t want to be the same as her.’
‘The Saturday Witches doesn’t sound any good,’ Alice complained.
‘What about the Weekend Witches?’ Vanessa put in. ‘That way we could meet and work our magic on weekends and we’d have a whole week to get the ingredients ready. Some of these spells need some unusual stuff.’ She frowned as she turned the pages.
‘Weekend Witches. That’s