Witch Baby and Me On Stage Read online

  Aaaargh. Dad mustn’t find out that Daisy’s not here. I turn out the light and grab a pillow and stuff it along with an armful of teddies under Daisy’s quilt. I’m hoping it looks like the hummock a sleeping toddler might make. It doesn’t really, but I don’t have time to make it any more realistic. I leap across the room just as the bedroom door starts to open.

  ‘Dad. SHHHHHHHH,’ I hiss, standing in the doorway in front of him, rubbing my eyes as if I can barely stay awake. ‘Whatever you do, Dad, don’t wake Daisy. I’ve only just managed to get her off to sleep.’

  Dad nods and mouths OK. He gives me a hug and heads off into Jack’s bedroom to start emptying buckets.

  Phew. For a minute there, I was almost positive he’d say, What’s that thundering sound, Lily? Is that your heart? Why is it hammering in your chest? Why are your eyes like saucers? Heavens, Lily – are you all right? Here, let me turn on the light and have a better look. Oh. OHHH.

  And then – Where is Daisy? Why is there a pillow and ten teddies in the middle of her bed? What’s going on? Lily? LILY?

  So, yes. Phew and phew again. In Jack’s room next door I can hear Dad sploshing and splashing and walking back and forth to the bathroom with brimming buckets full of rainwater. Finally he heads back downstairs. I look at my watch. It’s half past nine. Where on earth is Daisy? Downstairs I can hear Mum talking to Dad and the distant murmur of the TV. These are the normal sounds of our night-time house; the sounds that send me off to sleep every night. Not tonight, though. Tonight I’m going to have to stay awake and wait for Daisy to reappear from wherever she’s gone. I’ve decided there’s absolutely no point in trying to find her; she could be anywhere. Even if I knew where she’d gone, I’d still be unable to find her. Witch Babies can turn themselves into anything they want, so it would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. All I can do is wait … and wait … and wait … until Daisy finally decides to come home.

  Daisy is nothing like as far away as Lily imagines. In fact, she is downstairs in the kitchen with her mum and dad, although not in a form that her mum and dad would recognize or celebrate. It is fortunate that Daisy’s parents aren’t aware that their youngest child has turned herself into a bluebottle. Bzzzzzz, hwuuarglp, goes Daisy. Her parents would be horrified if they could see what Daisy is doing to the remains of the apple and raspberry crumble. Eughhhhhh. Don’t ask. Bluebottles have the most revolting table manners. Once Daisy has eaten* her fill, she flies up to the ceiling and amuses herself for a while by walking upside down round the lampshade.

  Unsurprisingly, her mum and dad don’t notice a thing. They’re too busy talking. Listen:

  ‘If it keeps on pouring, I’ll have to get up in the middle of the night and empty those buckets all over again,’ Dad says.

  BZZZZzzzzzzztzzzzTTT, Daisy buzzes, annoyed because one of the amazing sucker feet that enable her to walk upside down across the ceiling has become entangled in sticky spider’s web.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll have to get up in the wee small hours anyway, to change our baby girl’s gruesome nappy.’

  ZZZZZZt-ZZzzzzt-ZTZT Ztzzz, Daisy squawks, thrashing around in an attempt to disentangle herself from the web. To her alarm, she is becoming more and more trapped, not less.

  ‘If only we could find some way to convince Daisy that nappies are horrible,’ Dad sighs.

  ZZZZZZrrghAAArgzzzzzz, Daisy yells, having discovered that there are many things that are even more horrible than nappies. One of these things is bearing down on her, its spider-jaws slavering and its hairy body swaying, every single one of its many eyeballs trained on her. In a panic, Daisy hauls and tugs at the spider’s web in a last-ditch attempt to unstick herself before this monster spider turns her into its dinner.

  Particles of dust drift down from the ceiling as the spider reaches out to grab Daisy in a lethal eight-legged hug. There’s a frantic BZZZT, a crunch, then silence. Daisy has changed herself into the one creature she knows can be relied upon to swallow spiders.*

  Fortunately, Daisy’s mum and dad don’t look up at this point, because there’s a baby bird gliding down from the kitchen ceiling; a baby bird that lands on the laundry basket, preens its feathers, does a quick poo, then drifts down to the floor, waddles across to the kitchen door and heads upstairs.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I whisper as Daisy finally toddles into our bedroom at twenty to midnight.

  ‘Not a been,’ Daisy mutters scornfully, falling face-down on her bed and adding, ‘Go seep, Lil-Lil.’

  ‘Daisy’ – I try to make my voice as stern as possible – ‘you can’t keep on sneaking out at night like this. You’re far too small to be out on your own. For heaven’s sake – Mum and Dad would go bananas if they knew what you’d been up to. Promise me you won’t do this again?’

  There’s a long silence. I’m hoping that this is because Daisy is considering what I’ve said, but I suspect she’s merely wondering what to turn me into next. A worm? A maggot? A germ?

  ‘Come on, Daze. It’s really late,’ I groan. ‘You should have been asleep hours ago.’

  More silence. I’m just beginning to think she has fallen asleep, the wee toad, when there’s a loud prrrat-a-tat-tat from her nappy. Uh-oh. Incoming poo. Time to go. The bog beckons. ‘RIGHT. Let’s go.’ I leap to my feet and pluck Daisy off her bed. I’m halfway to the bathroom with her in my arms when Daisy launches into her best ever impersonation of a shriek alarm.

  ‘NO WANTIT GO POTTY,’ she bawls. ‘NOOOOO. GO ’WAAYYYY. NO POO ’N LOO. NOT DUNNA POO. NO WANTIT NAPPY, NO WANTIT BUM BUM BUM BWAAAAAA …’

  CRIKEY.

  Lights go on all over the house as the MacRae family rush to the rescue of their youngest member. In seconds, we’re surrounded. Daisy’s roars of protest were loud enough to alert even Jack to her plight: he stands in the bathroom doorway, towel round his middle, hair full of shampoo suds and, for once, no earbuds jammed in his ears.

  ‘Jeez, Daze. You’re LOUD,’ he says. ‘For a minute there I thought you were the fire alarm.’

  ‘NO WANTIT FILEARM,’ Daisy shrieks. ‘NO WANTIT—’

  ‘Daisy’ – Mum hauls her out of my arms – ‘Lily is only trying to help—’

  ‘NO WANTIT HELP,’ Daisy wails. ‘NO WANTIT BAFFROOM. NOT DUNNA POO. NO WANTIT NAPPY. NO WAAAAAAA …’

  Mum and Dad communicate by waggling their eyebrows at each other as Daisy goes into a total toddler meltdown. When she pauses to draw breath, Mum sighs. ‘Oh, darling. My poor Daisy. Poor little bunny.’*

  For once, Daisy doesn’t argue that she’s notta bunny. She gives a couple of shuddering, hiccuppy sobs and collapses against Mum’s shoulder. In goes her thumb, her eyes roll shut, and in seconds she is fast asleep.

  The sudden silence is deafening. How did she do that? One second she’s a baby shriek alarm, the next, she’s out cold … Dad goes into my bedroom and pulls back the quilt, then Mum tucks her in. There. It’s that simple.

  ‘I think we need to forget all about toilet-training for a while,’ Dad says. ‘Poor wee Daisy’s finding it all a bit much.’

  ‘I agree,’ Mum says, standing up and stretching. ‘Actually, I’m finding it all a bit much. I hate having to keep on nagging her, the poor wee sausage. She must think that we spend every waking moment worrying about the contents of her nappy.’

  At this, Jack rolls his eyes and jams his earbuds back into his ears. I imagine that, like me, he tries not to worry about the contents of Daisy’s nappy. Urrrrghhhh. I’m so glad I can’t remember being small. Some things, like nappies, are best forgotten …

  We’re all standing round the sleeping Daisy, yawning our heads off, when WayWoof suddenly joins in with a forty-fang yawn, followed by a stretch, and then she rolls over and goes back to sleep. I may be the only member of our family* who can see her do this, but two seconds later we can all smell her. Eughhhhh. WayWoof – that is disGUSting. Mum’s nose wrinkles, Dad coughs and Jack backs out of the bedroom, fanning his hand in front of his fa
ce.

  Unsurprisingly, Mum and Dad assume the smell belongs to something Daisy has just laid in her nappy.

  ‘Yeeeurgh, Daisy,’ Dad whispers, shaking his head.

  ‘Don’t wake her,’ Mum whispers back. ‘I’ll change her in the morning. Phwoarrrrr.’

  I keep quiet. So does WayWoof. There are some things that Mum and Dad simply don’t need to know about.

  * I use the word ‘eaten’ in the loosest sense. ‘Eat’ implies putting something into your mouth and giving it a good chew before swallowing it. Bluebottles don’t really eat, they … No. Eughhhhhhh. I can’t tell you. It’s simply too horrible for words. Ask your mother to explain.

  * Songs learned at nursery school can come in very useful, especially if you happen to be a Witch Baby. They can, on occasion, save your life. Daisy has cause to thank Miss McPhee for teaching her the words to ‘There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly’ – especially the bit when ‘the old woman swallowed a bird to catch the spider that wriggled and squiggled and tickled inside her’.

  * Bunny? Bunny? My little sister? I cannot believe what I’m hearing. I’ve never met anyone less like a bunny than Daisy. She’s a baby witch, for heaven’s sake. Poor little troll, yes. Poor little Komodo dragon, yes. Poor little bunny? No way.

  * Apart from Daisy.

  Thirteen:

  A technical hitch

  In her puddle-bed in the attic bathroom of Arkon House, the Toad is horribly wide awake. The soothing patter of rain on the roof failed to send her to sleep, as did the mug of cocoa before bedtime. Now it’s half past three in the morning and the poor wakeful Toad suspects she won’t get a wink of sleep. Her golden eyeballs feel like they’ve been rolled in sand, her legs like they’ve been filled with lead, but her brain is still buzzing around inside her head like a wasp trapped in a jam jar.

  The same image is playing in her memory over and over and over again:

  The Nose is sipping coffee from the wrong cup. She is raising the Chin’s cup to her lips, and before the Toad can stop her, she takes one sip, smacks her lips, takes another sip, then another … then she swallows the whole lot in one greedy gulp. The Nose has just drunk the love potion intended for the Chin. This is a disaster.

  The Toad blinks, trying to clear this unwelcome vision from her sight, but the vision refuses to go. The vision rewinds itself back to the beginning and doggedly starts again.

  There is the Nose, reaching out to ladle five spoonfuls of sugar into her cup. There is the Nose tipping a thick dollop of cream into her cup. There is the Nose grating a lump of chocolate into her cup. There is the Nose giving her cup a good stir. And there is the Toad, transfixed with horror as she suddenly realizes that the Nose has the wrong cup. The wrong cup? The cup meant for the Chin. The cup with the incredibly potent love potion smeared all round its interior. Aaaaaaaargh, the Toad thinks, but it’s too late. Briefly she considers jumping onto the table and snatching the cup out of the Nose’s hands, but it’s too late for heroics. The Nose is taking a sip from the cup. The Nose smacks her lips and takes another sip … and another …

  One sip was all it took. After all, as the Toad knew better than anyone, it was an incredibly powerful love potion which had taken hours to make. Sadly there’s none left. One sip, followed by another, followed by a huge gulp, and that was the end of the potion. For the fortieth time that night the Toad puts her head in her hands and gives a deep groan.

  ‘My plan …’ she whimpers. ‘It’s ruined. Now the Chin will never fall in love with Mr Harukashi. Now there’ll never be a wedding. Now I’ll never, NEVER get to be a bridesmaid …’

  From along the corridor comes the sound of a cracked and terrible voice attempting to sing a song.

  ‘Aiii lurrrrve a lah-dee,’ it wails. ‘Ahhh bawneeee heeee-lunn lah-dee.’

  The voice is ghastly; it sounds as if its owner’s tonsils are made from a rusting sheet of corrugated iron across which someone is dragging a garden rake. The voice belongs to the Nose; every piercing Squeak and shriek, each honk and YELP comes tumbling from her mouth while she serenades her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table.

  ‘The towWWW-urrr of LURRRVE,’ the voice continues. ‘Ai-ai-ai-ai’m sohhh in LURRRVE with EWWWWWE.’

  The Toad leans her head against the cool porcelain of the bath and groans some more. What a disaster. Since the moment when the love potion disappeared down the Nose’s throat, the Toad felt as if she’d stumbled into a bad dream. Someone else’s bad dream.

  Within seconds of swallowing the potion, the Nose changed. One moment she’d been a nasty, sneery, poisonous old baggage; the next, she’d been transformed into a giggly, bubbly, gushy old madwoman who hugged and kissed everything within reach. Usually as silent and brooding as an approaching thunderstorm, the Nose started babbling and shrieking with laughter, clapping her hands and hooting as if she’d just heard the world’s funniest joke. The Toad and the Chin sat in stunned silence as their sister rocked and jiggled and wheezed and slapped the tabletop, generally behaving as if her pants were full of ants and her brain had been replaced by a whoopee cushion. Tears of mirth rolled down her face as she staggered across to hug the fridge; gales of laughter erupted from her as she dropped a kiss on the dishwasher. When she galloped out of the kitchen trailing a flurry of air-kisses, the Chin turned to the Toad and said, ‘How much did she have to drink with her supper?’

  The Toad blushed. She couldn’t possibly tell the truth, but lying didn’t come naturally.

  ‘Er … um, ah … yerrrsss … no … why d’you ask?’

  ‘WHY DO I ASK?’ the Chin bawled. ‘Because she’s acting as if she’s DRUNK! She’s falling about, hugging the furniture and – listen. Is that her singing?’

  From upstairs came the Nose’s terrible voice raised in song:

  ‘When aiiiii forrrrl in LURRRRVE …’

  The Chin shuddered. ‘Ssso undignified,’ she muttered. ‘She’s making a complete fool of herself. So embarrassing. I can’t bear to listen. She’s not acting like herself at all. The Sisters of HiSS never behave like that.’

  Hysterical giggles drifted down to the kitchen as the love potion continued to dissolve four hundred years of nastiness. The Chin squinched up her face as if she’d bitten into a lemon. Draining her coffee cup (The wrong cup, thought the Toad miserably), she stalked across the kitchen to the bread bin and opened the lid.

  ‘You can’t still be hungry?’ squawked the Toad. The three Sisters had just worked their way through a three-course dinner, ending with a chocolate raspberry meringue cake of such deliciousness that both the Nose and the Chin had devoured three helpings. Each. Hence the Toad’s shock at seeing her Sister raiding the bread-bin. Her confusion deepened as the Chin took out a loaf of bread, cut herself a slice, removed the crusts and tore the slice in two before stuffing one half in each ear.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ the Toad demanded.

  ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU,’ the Chin roared in reply. ‘WHICH MEANS I WON’T BE ABLE TO HEAR THE NOSE EITHER.’ And with this, she stamped out of the kitchen; moments later, her bedroom door slammed shut.

  Whoops and yells of delight continued to echo down the corridors of Arkon House as the Toad loaded the dishwasher, wiped the table, took out the rubbish, swept the floor and blew out the candles. Wearily she clambered upstairs and into her bedroom, closing the door behind her. The sound of tinkling laughter coming from the Nose’s room was followed by a muffled thumping sound as the infuriated Chin banged on the wall separating her from her giggly Sister.

  ‘Shut up!’ she shrieked. ‘SHUT UP! SHUDDUP! I can still hear you even with half a loaf stuffed in my ears.’

  ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh, I DOOOO LURRRRRVE yooooo,’ the Nose sang.

  In desperation, the Toad climbed into her bath, tore the bath sponge in two, stuffed one piece in each ear and sank beneath the water. Ahhhhhhh. There. Peace at last. Sometimes being an amphibian had its advantages.

  Outside the window, rain continued falling, pouring down
the roof, rolling along gutters and gushing down drainpipes. Across the morth-west of Scotland, rivers rose, low-lying fields flooded and huge puddles turned into proper lakes.* By the time a grey and drizzly dawn arrived, the weather had become front-page news.

  * Known locally as lochs. As in: Och, yon puddle’s turned into a right loch.

  Fourteen:

  A near miss

  If Monday was wet, yesterday was a complete washout, but at least when we finally arrived at school we were able to splash our way across the playground. However, today the water was so deep there that we had to use the back door to get into school. Despite all the rain, the whole school is buzzing with excitement. Our school concert is the day after tomorrow, or as I said to Daisy, only two more sleeps to go.

  ‘Two seeps?’ she said, holding out four fingers.

  ‘Two,’ I replied, curling two of her fingers back into her palm and patting the remaining two.

  ‘Ony two?’ she whispered, obviously hardly able to believe that the concert is so close. ‘Two seeps and Daisy’s a munk.’

  For some reason she won’t say ‘monkey’, preferring to call herself a ‘cheekmunk’. Fortunately I can understand what she means, even if nobody else can.

  ‘Ooooh,’ she breathed. ‘Go packtiss song now.’ And off she toddled, leaving me to hang up her coat and hat and scarf and put her wellies in the row of wet shoes by the radiator.

  Today is the dress rehearsal. Mrs McDonald and Miss McPhee are getting the nursery children ready while we older ones put out the scenery and arrange chairs in the hall. To my relief, the ceiling has stopped dripping, which is rather odd because, if anything, the rain has become heavier. However, there is a rather ominous dark stain on the ceiling; yesterday, when I first noticed it, it looked like a rabbit, but today it’s more like a vast octopus.