A week with Peter 15/17

The missing children had not spent a pleasant night. In the morning, Peter had thought of standing on the table, then letting Jennifer Jane climb up on his shoulders. Hopefully she'd be high enough to hold his accelerator to the light and get it charged up. However, the hole in the wall had proved to be too high.

“Lateral thinking, that’s what my dad says when he’s trying to get round a problem,” said Peter, “we can’t get out through the door because it’s too strong. We can’t get out through the roof, it’s too high. We might get out through the floor but even if we could lift these slabs, we’d still have to dig a tunnel and we’re bound to be discovered before we could get out. That only leaves the walls.”

The sliding hatch opened and breakfast was pushed through the slot. It was bread and water again.

“I’m just off to do some shopping, enjoy your food and don’t run away will you!”

They heard the witch laughing to herself as she mounted her horse and trotted off. They waited until the sounds had faded away and then started prodding hopefully at the walls of their prison.

It took an hour before Jennifer Jane finally found a soft patch in the brickwork down near the floor. She sharpened the end of her broom handle using her pocket-knife and Peter used it to pry away at the mortar and soft spots.

One hour later, they had removed one brick and could see the trees outside through the hole. After that the bricks came out fairly easily using the broom handle as a lever.
“I suppose we’d better start walking,” said Jennifer Jane, once they had made the hole big enough and crawled out. “As long as we keep our ears open for that horse we should be alright.”

As they walked along they could hear the sound of the waterfall slowly getting nearer, until at last they came right out of the trees and could see across to the other side of the river.

There was Abigail with another witch and Jennifer Jane’s mum, walking slowly along the opposite riverbank. They were searching the ground carefully and neither of the children could shout loudly enough over the noise of the waterfall to attract their attention.

Jennifer Jane quickly checked if her favourite spell would work, but they were still inside the dead spot.

“Of course that’s why they’re all walking. They’re looking for us all right but can’t fly.”

She suddenly had an idea to make them look over at her side of the river. “Quick fix your accelerator to the broom handle, there must be enough sunlight now to make it work. Then you can throw it over the river in front of them.”

Peter did as he was asked and threw the broom in javelin fashion, as hard as he could. The gadget worked beautifully. The broom soared over the river and landed with a crackle of breaking twigs among the trees just in front of Jennifer Jane’s mother. She looked round to see where on earth it had come from and saw the children jumping up and down on the opposite bank. She waved to them and called to Abigail. Abigail picked up the broom and then waved her arm in a circle to make the children go on down the river. Then the grown-ups turned and began hurrying back the way they’d come.

The two parties soon lost sight of each other as their paths twisted among the trees. Every now and again Jennifer Jane stopped for a moment to check if magic was working again and then gave up when she realised that she didn’t have her broom anyway. The sound of the waterfall had faded into the distance when Peter suddenly stopped.

“Listen,” he said. The sound of a galloping horse was coming closer and closer. “If she’s galloping she must have found we’ve escaped and knows where we are.”

They both ran off desperately hoping to reach Abigail before they were caught again but they couldn’t run faster than the horse.

The witch caught them before they’d gone a hundred yards. By that time they were absolutely breathless and almost glad to be caught, so that they didn’t have to run any more and could get their breath back. Jennifer Jane did a quick twiddle and this time produced a chocolate swiss roll. The witch noticed the twiddle and laughed.

“That won’t help you now. Feeble party tricks like those are no match for me. You’d need a real witch to have any chance now.”

“Well isn’t that lucky,” said Abigail as she landed her broom just behind the witch. “Am I sufficiently qualified?”