From acorn to sapling 13/13

Esmerelda was only too happy to oblige one of the important witches from the Home. Abigail flew Jennifer Jane’s scooter, while Esme followed on her broom. When they arrived at the dam Abigail explained her idea.

“If you’re right, then the dam will crumble only if you stand on top of it. If I fly the scooter and hold on to one hand, while Esme flies her broom alongside and holds on to the other, we can pull you out of trouble if anything goes wrong. You put your feet on the top and when the earth crumbles away, a lot of water will overflow. When it looks as if it’s getting too much for the old riverbed to handle, we’ll pull you up again until it stops. Then we’ll do it all over again until it’s safe enough to remove the dam completely.”

Jennifer Jane wasn’t really too happy to think about being dangled over the dam, but she trusted both the witches and had to agree that it might work far more quickly than the existing method.

She took a deep breath and a moment later put her feet down in the middle of the dam wall. As expected, the earth crumbled away and water poured down the face of the dam, plunging into the river below in a cloud of spray. Abigail kept a sharp eye on the water level in the river.

“Up,” she called suddenly, lifting the scooter to raise Jennifer Jane’s feet from the wall. Esmerelda heaved on the other hand and as her feet went up in the air the water stopped flowing and the dam repaired itself.

“Right that settles it,” said Abigail happily.

For the next hour, with a break after every lift, so that nobody’s arms ached too much, she and Esmerelda raised Jennifer Jane up and down until nearly all the water had gone.

Then Abigail asked Jennifer Jane to twiddle her fingers using the sequence of spells that she’d recently been taught. One by one the small dams broke up and the water released finally washed away the remains of the dam that had caused all the trouble. Within seconds the rain stopped and the sun came out.

“Everything back to normal at last,” said Abigail with a sigh of relief. “You notice it’s also stopped raining! Now I’m surer than ever that some one is out to damage your reputation, or try and get rid of you. The rain storm was a last attempt to keep the water level high enough to do some damage, in the hope that you’d make a mess of trying to sort it all out.”

“Now all we’ve got to do is try and think of a way to find out who that person might be.” She added as an afterthought. I don’t think that’s going to be too easy!”