The Broomstick Collection: Books 1–4. Nathan Reed
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When Jessica turned up the next afternoon for her second Flying Lesson, she found Miss Strega hovering on her broomstick in front of the wall of drawers. “Winking cats and frisky bats,” she said, “I can’t find the blinking helmets anywhere. Hop on your broom and give me a hand – remember Ig-Fo-Li …”
Jessica flew up beside Miss Strega and paused. She forwarded and reversed along the rows of drawers, examining the labels. “Sink Plungers, they’ll be Lungs of Skunk. Soup Ladles, oh, of course, Pup Saddles.” She stopped. “Miss Strega, what on earth are Stencil Hammers?” she asked.
“Well done, Jess. Stencil Hammers are Learners’ Helmets. I must admit the spelling leaves a lot to be desired but never mind, just choose one that fits and follow me up to the roof.”
Jessica opened the drawer. The helmets were hard on the outside and padded inside, but instead of being round like motorbike helmets, they tapered off into long pointy ends. Jessica found one that fitted and did up her chin-strap before joining Miss Strega on the roof.
The first part of the lesson was practising take-off and landing. Jessica felt as awkward as a swan trying to take off from a lake. She couldn’t stop huffing and puffing and her legs beat the air as if she was pedalling an invisible bicycle.
“Keep your back straight, knees together, legs tucked up,” Miss Strega repeated endlessly.
“I’ll never get the hang of it,” Jessica was thinking when suddenly, it all came right.
“Very stylish,” Miss Strega declared as Jessica swooped down and made a perfect landing. “You’re a born flier. Now, let’s take to the air and try something else. Your Zoom control is directly below the Lift twig. So,” she lined herself up beside Jessica, “once again, Ig-Fo-Li and ZOOM.”
They rose off the roof together like a pair of silent rockets and zoomed off towards the stars. But they had not gone very far when Miss Strega gasped. “Oh no, here comes trouble.”
Hurtling towards them was a gang of goblins, screaming and yelling and shrieking. They flew straight down between Miss Strega and Jessica, cutting them off from one another.
“Oh look, it’s a witch-in-training,” they jeered, crowding around Jessica. There were so many of them she couldn’t fly in any direction. If she steered right, they blocked her. If she veered left, they blocked her.
“Ascend,” Miss Strega shouted.
But the goblins flew up like a cloud of locusts and settled on her head and back and shoulders.
“Get off!” Jessica screamed at them, trying to push them off and keep control of the broom at the same time.
Miss Strega zoomed alongside her. “Fast forward, that will shake them off.”
Jessica hit her Fast-Forward twig and shot off, scattering all the goblins into the dark. Scattering almost all the goblins. When she looked over her shoulder, she could see that one of them had managed to cling on to the end of her broomstick and was scrambling back on board.
“Hit the Eject twig,” shouted Miss Strega, “it’s the sh—”
But Jessica, grappling with the goblin who was now clambering over her shoulders, accidentally hit the Diagonal Lift. The broomstick flew up and off at a sharp angle, spiralling out of control like a deflating balloon.
“Get off, you,” Jessica hissed as she struggled to regain control of the twigs. The goblin, knocked forward by the unexpected diagonal lift, was now lying across the twigs, causing the most tremendous problems. As he shifted position and tried to sit up, he clutched wildly at the controls. The broom lurched to the right, to the left. It ascended and descended. It fast-forwarded and reversed. Miss Strega, shouting directions alongside, was having great difficulty in predicting which way Jessica would move next.
“The Eject twig,” Miss Strega roared. “It’s the shortest one on the b—”
But Jessica was already plummeting out of the sky, with the goblin clinging to the Descend twig, laughing hysterically. Jessica looked down. They were out over the open sea. It looked very cold and black and wet. She lurched forward to grab the goblin’s scaly neck and hurl him off, but he was too fast for her. He jumped from the Descend control and tweaked a twig that Jessica had never used. The broom suddenly stopped. It began to rotate slowly on its own axis. It built up speed, gradually going faster and faster, until finally Jessica and her pesky joyrider were spinning crazily in the darkness.
“Wey-hey,” shrieked the goblin. “Wow.”
“You stupid, stupid pest,” Jessica screamed back. “Get off my broom.”
“Press the Eject twig.” Miss Strega’s voice boomed out in the darkness, though Jessica was spinning so fast she couldn’t see where she was. “It’s the shortest one on the bo—”
“Of course,” Jessica remembered, “the shortest one on the bottom row.” She leant forward, dizzily, and let her fingers slide over the bottom row of twigs until she was sure she was touching the shortest. She tweaked and the goblin shot off like a pebble released from a catapult.
“Phew,” thought Jessica, grabbing her Pause control. She hung motionless in the sky waiting for her head to stop spinning. After a few minutes, she heard the goblin enter the water with a satisfying splash.
“Moonrays and Marrowbones!” exclaimed Miss Strega who had suddenly materialized at her side. “What a lot of hurly-burly that was. Let’s go home straight away and make ourselves a stiff brew.”
At the start of Jessica’s third lesson, Miss Strega told her about witches’ mascots.
“In the olden days,” she explained, “almost every witch had a cat, usually a black one, though mine have always been ginger. Other witches had owls and some show-offs even had both. Nowadays, our guild, the W3 – that stands for Witches World Wide – are less fussy. They let us choose a mascot for ourselves, unless of course a mascot chooses its witch.”
“So, in theory, I could have any animal I like?”
“Jessica, you’re wobbling rather a lot,” Miss Strega scolded. “Don’t lean forward like that. Keep your back straight and your knees together. Tuck your legs up under you. That’s better. Now, what was I saying?”
“That I could have any mascot I like.”
“Within reason,” Miss Strega tapped her nose. “Obviously, having to balance an elephant on the back of a broomstick might be a bit of a nuisance. Not to mention clearing up its you-know-what … Careful, Jessica,” she warned, as Jessica, giggling, accidentally hit the Descend twig and dropped down into a bank of cloud.
When Miss Strega caught up with her, they flew along in silence for a while. Clouds were very clammy, wet, unpleasant places, Jessica was discovering, not at all as soft and warm and cuddly as they look from the ground. Visibility was bad too. As the clouds got thicker, she could hardly make out Miss Strega’s broom ahead of her.
“Let’s do a fast-forward climb out of this,” Miss Strega shouted back over her shoulder. “I don’t know about you, but my cloak is soaked right through. Once we are higher up, it will be quite dry. Ready, Jessica? Come alongside me. Pause. That’s the girl. Steady. Now, press the Fast Forward twig firmly between your right thumb and forefinger and keep your left forefinger on Lift. And