Still, it wasn’t exactly an opinion she dared venture out loud.
‘Come on in, child,’ said the witch, leading Willow into a bright and airy room on the first floor of the tower. It was filled with rows of steel beds and sleeping patients who were quietly snoring.
Willow’s eye fell on the witch’s foot as she walked in front, her steps making that clink-clank-clink sound as she moved. Willow caught a glimpse of something that seemed to glint, like metal.
Pimpernell saw her looking and twitched her dress back over her foot. ‘This way,’ she said, and the witch made Willow sit on a low stool while she took down a large bottle of tonic from a heaving cabinet full of all sorts of dried herbs, potions and cures.
On a long wooden table nearby there was a pestle and mortar and several odd things in jars. Some of them gave Willow the creeps, like one that seemed to be full of eyeballs that were regarding her rather intently. Willow swallowed nervously. From the hairy green bag there was a faint ‘Oh no.’
The witch handed her a steaming goblet, which smelt a bit like feet. ‘This be one of me best blends – sorts out most problems pronto-like.’
Willow took a sip and shuddered rather violently – which was when things went wrong rather fast.
As soon as the tonic touched her tongue, the bottle and spoon vanished with a loud pop. The witch looked at her suspiciously, and suddenly more and more items in the tower began to disappear. The witch started to wail in fear as beds, mugs, carpets and plates all began to vanish.
‘Wot yeh doin’, child! Stop it!’ she cried, but Willow couldn’t. The table went. Then the cabinet. People started to wake up, falling to the floor and screaming as the beds beneath them disappeared. It was pandemonium in seconds.
The witch blinked at her, then seemed to nod. ‘’Tis a bad case yeh got here … Extreme measures will need ter be taken! But I’m gonna help. We’ll get this tempest outta yeh, one way or another, child! I’ll have ter get yeh outta here pronto, though. Ter the top with yeh – there’s nothin’ much up there so it won’ matter if yeh make it disappear.’
With that, Pimpernell picked Willow up as if she weighed nothing and whisked her up the stairs, making a clinkclankclinkclankclink sound as she ran. The witch shoved Willow and her hairy carpetbag into a room at the very top of the tower and quickly locked the door.
‘’Tis fer yer own good, child!’
‘Oh no! Oh NOOOOO, oh, me ’orrid aunt!’ cried Oswin, from where the bag had landed on the cold wooden floor.
‘Oh nooooooooooooo,’ was pretty much how Willow summed up their current predicament as well.
As the heavy attic door was bolted behind her, Willow was just working up to a full, panic-heavy scream of her own when a smoky, gravelly sort of voice interrupted.
‘Psst, girl.’
Willow turned round in surprise, but couldn’t make out where the voice was coming from. She squinted into the gloom.
‘Over here,’ said the voice.
Willow looked. But all she saw in the small room were dusty wooden floorboards, on top of which sat a small iron bed with peeling green paint, a chair, a small table stacked with old newspapers and, in the corner, an old green stove covered in cobwebs. Propped up next to this was a poker shrouded in dust.
There was no one there.
Her glance flicked upward, towards the rafters, where there were some rather large spiderwebs. She swallowed nervously. ‘Um?’ she whispered.
‘On yer left,’ said the voice.
The hairy carpetbag began to shake. ‘Oh nooooooooo, me greedy aunt! Wot new eel is this?’
Willow’s breath caught in her throat. What new eel indeed? Had she somehow been locked up inside a dangerous witch’s tower with a ghost?
‘Lass, yer other left, here,’ said the voice, sounding slightly exasperated.
To the slight relief of her knocking knees, she saw a gnarly finger waving at her from a small hole in the wall opposite. At least it wasn’t a ghost, though the lone finger wasn’t exactly comforting either.
Willow hesitated, then came forward slowly. Kneeling down on the attic floor and putting her hair behind one ear, she peered through the hole. She could just make out a sea-green eye and, when the figure turned, a heavily lined and weathered face framed by long, straggly grey hair. She felt her heart rate return almost to normal. It was just an old man. A wizard, she realised, if he was here.
‘Whatcha in for?’ he said, his blue-green eye wide.
‘Oh. Well, you see, my magic has gone a bit weird—’
The sea-green eye narrowed. ‘How weird?’
‘Um. Very? It’s sort of scrambled, I think. Usually, I find things that are lost, but lately … well, erm, it’s almost as if I’m making them vanish as well.’
The face turned and she saw the wizard head-on. He was even older than she’d first thought, with one eye made of glass, but his expression was curious, and his other eye was clear and full of life. ‘Well, are ya?’
‘Yes. I – I suppose I am,’ said Willow, who, even now, after everything that had happened, was finding it hard to admit that she had been the cause of the missing things. ‘But NOT on purpose.’
‘Ah, that’s the problem, see. If it were on purpose, ya wouldn’t be stuck up here,’ the wizard said with a humourless snort.
Willow couldn’t deny the logic of that. ‘Pimpernell said she’d help …’ This now seemed a bit doubtful. ‘When I met her in the woods, I thought she seemed, well …’
‘Helpful?’ supplied the old wizard with a hollow sort of laugh, as if he knew an unwelcome secret she did not.
‘Yes.’ Willow frowned as she recounted the tale to the wizard. ‘She made it seem like she could help me, but I think she started panicking when I made half of her tower disappear.’
To be fair, Willow thought, panicking did make a bit of sense …
‘The witch means well,’ acknowledged the wizard. ‘The problem is that she can take trying to help to extremes. Especially if she thinks you’re dangerous.’
Willow swallowed. Locking someone up did seem extreme, especially considering the only reason things started to disappear was because Pimpernell kept trying to force Willow to drink that dreadful-smelling tonic.
Suddenly she remembered what Granny Flossy had said, and what her brain had been trying to remember. ‘She’s one of the best healers around, but ’tis hard living on yer own. Especially when you don’ feel accepted by the people around you – a body needs company, and outsiders, to make ’em see wrong from right. It’s not good to only take yer own counsel, and Pimpernell has only been listening to herself fer years …’
Willow stared at the eye in the hole. ‘Do you think she’ll let me out?’
‘Oh. I dunno,’ said the old man, rubbing his chin in thought. ‘Hard to say for sure, but once she’s figured you’re a danger it’ll be hard to persuade her differently.’
‘Oh,’ said Willow, her heart sinking fast.
‘Me name’s Holloway, by the way.’
‘Willow.’
‘Who’s that with ya?’ Holloway asked. ‘Thought I heard someone else.’