Witch Wars Page 2

  Peggy nodded. ‘And bear rhymes with hair.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Tiga.

  And then there was silence.

  And a bit more silence.

  Tiga shuffled awkwardly from foot to foot and Peggy whistled a bit.

  ‘Um …’ said Tiga, ‘how do you make a potion?’

  Peggy’s eyes widened. ‘You don’t know how to make a potion? Oh, frogfaces, this isn’t good. I mean, I thought I was in trouble because I’m terrible at potions and rubbish at spells. Can you do spells?’

  ‘No,’ Tiga said.

  ‘No!’ Peggy cried. ‘Oh, for the love of a frog in a hat, I don’t know what to say! You’re going to be in a lot of trouble tomorrow.’

  The wind, it seemed, suddenly picked up and Tiga’s flag, along with the eight others, began to whip about madly in the air.

  ‘What happens tomorrow?’ Tiga asked.

  ‘Oh no you don’t, Peggy Pigwiggle!’ Fran said, clapping her hands as she raced towards them. ‘Not too much friendly chatter – you’ll be enemies tomorrow. ENEMIES!’

  ‘What?’ Tiga said. She looked at Peggy, who had a gunky eyebrow raised.

  ‘We’re here for Witch Wars, Tiga,’ Peggy said. ‘Didn’t you know that? Why did you think your face was on a flag?’

  Tiga stared up at the flags and shrugged. ‘Mistake at the flag factory?’

  ‘No, no,’ Fran said with a smile. ‘Tomorrow you fight! And the witch who wins, wins everything.’

  ‘The winner of Witch Wars becomes Top Witch and gets to rule over Ritzy City and all that lies beyond,’ Peggy said, all chirpy and relaxed. ‘All you have to do is defeat every one of those witches on the flags up there, including me. But you will probably beat me, even without spells and potions, because I’m pretty dreadful at everything! You might not beat any of the others, though, if I’m being completely honest.’

  In that moment Tiga felt everything spin around her. It was mostly panic, but also the wind a little bit. And Fran, who had lost control of her wings, was spinning round her head.

  Tiga stared up at the faces on the flags. They all looked like normal girls, apart from one. She stepped closer to the rippling flag and peered into the dark soulless eyes of the terrifying witch printed on it. It was a face she decided she would be happy never to see again. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and pinched her arm as hard as she could.

  She’d had enough of Ritzy City. It was time to wake up.

  In the distance, high up on the mountain that towered over Ritzy City, two figures tore through the air.

  Well, one did.

  Felicity Bat was levitating.

  The other witch, Aggie Hoof, was about three metres below her, perched on a cushion on the back of another witch, who was crawling down the road at an un-human pace, her arms and legs moving madly in circles like the wheels of a car.

  ‘According to Toad it’s not cool to have pointy shoes this week, but it might be again next week. And so WE MUST THROW OUT ALL OUR POINTY SHOES RIGHT NOW!’ Aggie Hoof screamed.

  Felicity Bat sighed. ‘That magazine is stupid.’

  ‘Oh no, Fel-Fel, it’s fantastic. How else would I know if I was wearing the right thing? No one wants to be wrong when it comes to something as important as the shape of the very tip of your shoe.’

  Felicity Bat didn’t even bother to answer. She just rolled her eyes, lifted her finger and sent a spray of little beetles shooting into the air. They floated about, bashing into each other for a bit.

  ‘NOT THE BEETLES!’ Aggie Hoof squealed, covering her head with her Toad magazine.

  ‘Quiet,’ Felicity Bat snapped, raising her finger in the air again and zapping the beetles. At first they froze, and then little trickles of gunge started to ooze out of them.

  Aggie Hoof wiggled about. ‘Bleurgh! GUTS!’

  The guts swirled around in the sky, then moulded into an arrow, which pointed directly at Ritzy City.

  ‘PERFECT,’ Felicity Bat said, as the dead beetles dropped on to Aggie Hoof’s head.

  Aggie Hoof scowled.

  ‘Almost there,’ Felicity Bat said, speeding up.

  ‘We’re going to win Witch Wars! WE’RE GOING TO WIN WITCH WARS!’ yelled Aggie Hoof, who was very good at yelling but not so good at common sense. The fact that there could only be one winner in Witch Wars hadn’t really occurred to her.

  ‘Sure,’ Felicity Bat said with a twisted grin. ‘We’ll win. You and me …’

  ‘You were made to win this, Fel-Fel!’ Aggie Hoof said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Felicity Bat smirked. ‘If Granny Crayfish taught me anything, it’s that you’ve got to be bad to win Witch Wars.’

  ‘But wasn’t the last Top Witch really nice?’ Aggie Hoof asked.

  ‘Those days are over,’ Felicity Bat said with an actual witch cackle. ‘It’s about time someone brought some bad back to Ritzy City.’

  Tiga was still pinching her arm as Fran ushered her into Linden House with Peggy.

  ‘It’s not real. You’re in a shed, with a slug, and you’ve probably just hit your head. You’re in a shed; you’ve hit your head. Slugs …’ Tiga mumbled, her eyes squeezed shut.

  When she opened one of them, she didn’t see the shed or Miss Heks, just Fran looking confused.

  ‘You’re really weird,’ said Fran, staring at Tiga.

  Tiga stopped pinching her arm and looked around the vast hallway in which she was standing.

  Linden House reminded her of a hotel. A hotel that had eaten a really nice furniture shop.

  ‘It’s the grandest residence in all of Ritzy City,’ Fran said grandly.

  A marble staircase snaked up and up what seemed like about one hundred floors, but it was probably only about eight.

  ‘Wheeeeeeee!’ Peggy cried, racing through the door and into a room that was completely empty, but for a flowery, lopsided sofa.

  ‘Careful, Peggy!’ Fran cried as she zoomed after her.

  Peggy spun around the room, splattering hair gunk everywhere, and then plonked herself down on the sofa.

  Tiga giggled as Peggy bounced up and down, waving her arms in the air. But she soon stopped giggling when the sofa flipped round and disappeared through the floor.

  When it flipped back again, Peggy wasn’t sitting on it.

  ‘She’s a walking disaster, that one,’ Fran groaned, soaring over to the sofa. ‘Climb on, Tiga.’

  Tiga walked slowly towards the sofa, eyeing it suspiciously. She put one hand on it. Then another.

  ‘Oh, we don’t have all day!’ Fran shouted, pushing Tiga into the seat.

  Unlike the room from which they’d just spun, the room into which they now spun couldn’t have been more cluttered. There were stacks of chairs and books and at least five tables, and every inch of wall was covered in a painting of a beautiful map. Tiga walked slowly towards it.

  ‘Cool, huh?’ Peggy said.

  ‘Is this … ?’ Tiga began.

  Peggy nodded. ‘All of Ritzy City and beyond.’

  ‘What is it?’ Tiga whispered.

  Peggy grinned. ‘The land of Sinkville, of course.’

  Tiga’s eyes scanned the map, from Ritzy City to some docks, to hundreds of long spindly towers perched on a hilltop, all the way down to a tiny cluster of weird underwater buildings that were painted so close to the bottom of the wall she had to crouch down on the floor to see them.

  ‘That bit,’ Peggy said, slapping an area of the map close to Ritzy City with her gloopy hand, ‘is Brollywood, where they make all the TV shows and films and things. It’s where all the famous witches live.’

  ‘AND ME,’ said Fran. ‘I’m famous. I live there. And I work there too, on my excellent TV shows, including Witch Wars.

  ‘Witch Wars is a TV show?’ Tiga asked.

  Fran raised a hand in the air. ‘I’ll explain all that when we get back upstairs where we are meant to be, rather than down here where we are not.’

  ‘Not what?’ Peggy asked.

  ‘Meant to be,�
� Fran said.

  ‘Meant to be what?’ Peggy asked.

  Fran scrunched up her little face. ‘Meant to be here!’

  ‘We’re meant to be here?’ Peggy asked with a smile.

  ‘PEGGY!’ Fran shouted.

  Tiga noticed there seemed to be a lot more pipes painted in the sky in Brollywood than there were in Ritzy City.

  Fran followed her gaze. ‘Everyone carries umbrellas in Brollywood,’ she said. ‘It’s quite wet there what with all the pipes, and – oh! – I smell something, the stench of more competitors …’

  Tiga couldn’t smell anything. She looked at Peggy, whose nose was scrunched up and sniffing too, but she just shrugged.

  ‘Come on!’ Fran said, making a beeline for the sofa. Tiga glanced back at the map. She hadn’t had nearly enough time to see all of Sinkville, and there was a lot of Sinkville to see.

  ‘You can come back any time,’ Fran said with a smile, ‘apart from on Wednesdays. This room doesn’t exist on Wednesdays.’

  Back in the entrance hall, Tiga watched as Fran hovered in front of a crowd of witches. Her tiny eyes were fixed on a very tall and solid witch with long hair that hung from her hat all the way down to her knees.

  ‘Lizzie Beast,’ said Fran in an uncharacteristically evil tone. ‘How is your mother doing?’

  Lizzie Beast nodded. ‘Good, thanks, Fran. Filming today.’

  ‘Lizzie Beast’s mum is a camera operator in Brollywood,’ whispered Peggy. ‘She and Lizzie are both famously clumsy –’

  Tiga watched as Lizzie Beast swung her arm and accidentally smacked one of the other witches in the face.

  ‘Once when Lizzie Beast’s mum was filming a TV programme with a bunch of fairies about why glittery dust is very important, she sat on one of the fairies and squashed her. It kick-started the Fairy Riots.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tiga. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Almost nothing,’ said Peggy, shaking her head. ‘They flew around chanting, “WHAT DO WE WANT? NOT TO BE SQUASHED! AND WE’D ALSO QUITE LIKE A PONY!” Only one of the fairies was yelling the pony bit, which annoyed all the others and the riots soon turned into a tiny flying ball of fairies all pulling each other’s hair and shouting, “Stop saying the pony bit, Alison!” You’ll meet most of the fairies later. They help with Witch Wars. There are hardly any left in Sinkville these days.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Tiga. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Almost nothing,’ said Peggy, shaking her head. ‘When a spell was invented to make fairies big, most of them decided to do that, rather than be small and squashable. It’s probably for the best. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but fairies can be pretty annoying.’

  There was a tiny cough.

  ‘Apart from you, Fran,’ Peggy quickly added.

  ‘You might find fairies annoying,’ Fran said, wagging her finger, ‘but without us you wouldn’t have …’

  ‘… screechy voices?’ Peggy guessed.

  ‘Dust!’ Fran screeched, shooting a big dollop of the stuff at Lizzie Beast’s face.

  All the witches in the room blinked at Fran, and Tiga stared at all the witches. She had positioned herself halfway behind a stone statue of a jolly young witch sitting in a bin.

  On any other day she would’ve asked why on earth they had made a witch-in-a-bin statue, but on this day she didn’t want to ask anything. She felt a lot like she had on her first day at school, only surrounded by witches and an odd ranting fairy.

  Fran took a tiny pen out of her pocket and scribbled Lizzie Beast in the air, with a tick. The letters exploded, sending a silly amount of glittery dust shooting through the air like fireworks. After the dust had cleared, the letters, which now looked burnt and spindly, dropped to the ground.

  ‘Is that really necessary?’ a little witch squeaked.

  Fran raised her finger in the air, ready to shoot more glittery dust.

  ‘OK, OK,’ the little witch said, her hands in the air as she backed off.

  ‘Patty Pigeon,’ said Fran, glaring at her.

  The tiny witch with plaited pigtails sticking out the sides of her hat nodded. ‘I’m Patty from the Towers.’

  Fran smiled and wrote Patty Pigeon in the air with her pen. All the witches ducked as glittery dust burst from the letters.

  ‘NEXT!’ Fran shouted.

  There was no missing the next one. She was leaning against the wall dressed in the puffiest skirt Tiga had ever seen. It looked more like a trifle than a piece of clothing.

  ‘I have zero interest in being here,’ the witch said loudly, scanning the room for a reaction. Fran was bobbing up and down excitedly in front of her.

  ‘Oh, Fluffanora! It’s so great to see you here, and dressed in such style! How is Mrs Brew? Does she mention me all the time?’

  ‘Um … no, I don’t think so,’ Fluffanora said. She glanced over at Tiga. ‘Nice jeans.’

  Tiga wasn’t sure whether she was being kind or mean.

  Fran was whizzing about, back and forth, trying to catch Fluffanora’s eye. ‘We have met before, at your mother’s shop. I’m … well, I’m quite famous.’

  Peggy moved closer to Tiga, who had been slowly moving further and further behind the statue. ‘That’s Fluffanora Brew, the daughter of Mrs Brew, the fashion designer. There are always pictures of her in Toad magazine. They say she’s the best-dressed girl in Ritzy City.’

  ‘Fluffanora, your mother didn’t mention the diamond-encrusted skirt that she designed especially for me when I won the award for Best and Only Fairy Film of the Year, did she?’ asked Fran with a huge grin plastered on her face.

  Fluffanora shook her head.

  Fran’s grin shrank a bit. ‘Or the little shoes with the velvet bows and the parrot face … designed just for me … no?’

  Fluffanora craned her neck past Fran and pointed at Tiga behind the statue. ‘You know, we don’t have jeans in Ritzy City – you can only get them above the pipes. It’s cool to see them in real life.’

  Tiga felt all shy and did a sort of half wave from behind the statue. Then, for good measure, she stuck one leg out as if to display the jeans to the rest of the room.

  Two girls pushed past Fluffanora.

  ‘Ah, yes, the twins,’ said Fran. ‘Welcome, Milly and Molly.’

  Tiga caught the eye of one of them and smiled, but the girl just bared her teeth as the other cackled.

  ‘Right,’ said Fran, twirling in the air. ‘All nine of you are here so we can begin! Oh, it’s been nine long years since I’ve done this!’

  ‘Um, Fran,’ said Tiga, taking a brave, deep breath and stepping out from behind the statue.

  ‘What is it, Tiga?’

  Tiga looked around the room at all the witches staring back at her. ‘Um, it’s just you said nine witches, but there are only seven of us.’

  Fran glanced at her tiny watch. ‘LATE!’ she roared, just as the chandelier in the hall began to shake. At first it seemed to Tiga that Fran’s shouting had made it happen, but it was something far worse than the shrill squeak of a fairy. The lights dimmed, the witch statue slid further down into the bin and the pictures on the walls began to sway.

  The door burst open.

  It banged loudly off the wall, making everyone jump. Then it slammed shut again, which made everyone laugh.

  But they stopped laughing when it creaked open and they saw who was standing behind it.

  Well, not standing exactly. One was sitting on the back of another witch, and the other was levitating in the air.

  ‘Oh my FROGS, are those jeans?’ said Aggie Hoof as she dismounted the witch and dropped her Toad magazine on the floor. ‘Well, we all know who’s from above the pipes!’

  She cackled. Milly and Molly joined in. But Felicity Bat had been distracted by something else. That something else was Peggy.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Piggy Pigwiggle,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised you even showed up.’

  ‘Ha! Piggy’s here! Piggy’s here!’ Aggie Hoof chanted.

  P
eggy’s face crumpled. ‘It’s Peggy, actually.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s Piggy,’ said Felicity Bat.

  ‘Do you know these girls?’ Tiga asked.

  Peggy sighed. ‘I go to school with them up on Pearl Peak. It’s the best school in Sinkville and my gran saved for years to send me there. It costs a lot of sinkels. I come from the Docks, which is nothing like Pearl Peak.’

  ‘The Docks are for losers,’ said Aggie Hoof, butting in. ‘And Pearl Peak is not. It’s the oldest and most important part of Sinkville. The first witch to land below the pipes landed in Pearl Peak. The witch-shaped hole she made when she landed is still there. And we have Sinkville’s only roller coaster, and a castle and also some sky and stuff.’

  ‘Almost every winner of Witch Wars has come from Pearl Peak,’ said Felicity Bat proudly. ‘And that’s the way it will stay.’

  ‘I just find Pearl Peak so insanely boring,’ said Fluffanora from the chair in which she was now slumped. ‘Yes, there’s a castle, but it’s so cold and snowy and dark up there, and there are too many mean witches. Also the clothes are weird.’

  Aggie Hoof gasped. ‘YOU THINK THE CLOTHES ARE WEIRD? Who in all of Sinkville do you think you are?’

  ‘I’m Fluffanora Brew.’

  Aggie Hoof paused and then smiled in that sickly-sweet way only terrible people can smile. ‘Oh frogtrumpets! I didn’t recognise you in the flesh. You are fashion royalty … according to Toad, which means you definitely are. I love your outfit, it’s just wonderful to meet you!’ She skipped over and gave Fluffanora a huge hug. ‘Let’s be friends.’

  Fluffanora shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I pick my friends like I pick my hats. Very carefully. I never choose hideous ones.’

  Aggie Hoof scoffed and spluttered and spun on her heel to face Tiga. ‘What are you smiling at, Weirdo from Above the Pipes?’

  Tiga stopped smiling.

  ‘Who’s that lady she was sitting on?’ Tiga asked Peggy.

  ‘I love idiot witches from above the pipes,’ Felicity Bat said with a smirk.

  Aggie Hoof cackled.