The Rally 1/11

Jennifer Jane was hard at work practising a new spell that she’d learned only in the last couple of days. She’d been most impressed by the finger paralysis spell that Georgina had used against her and had asked Abigail to teach it to her so that she could use it herself in the future.

It was very difficult indeed. The first movement involved the use of the right little finger; like most people except musicians, her little finger wasn’t particularly strong or flexible, so she was also using exercises that she’d been shown to try and improve matters.

She wanted peace and quiet while she practised, so she’d climbed the old may tree in the middle of dad’s garden, as she often did in these circumstances and settled down in her tree house.

After half an hour of exercises, she was resting her tired fingers for a moment, when she heard the scrabbling noise made by Moggy as he clawed his way up the branches towards her. Once he’d settled she had another go at the full spell.

“You’re not very good at that Arfour spell are you?” said Moggy rather surprisingly.

“I didn’t know you recognised any spells at all, let alone difficult ones like this!”

“I didn’t belong to a witch for ten years just for nothing you know. I can’t do any of them of course, you have to have paws like a human for that, but I do recognise quite a lot of the more common ones!”

“Abigail told me this was a most unusual spell; it’s certainly very difficult to do even if you try to do it slowly!”

“Well I wouldn’t know about that, but it was one of young Morwenna’s favourites. She was the daughter of the witch I used to live with before I came through to this world. She could do it so quickly that you could hardly see her fingers move.”

“How did you know it was started using the fourth finger of the right hand? I didn’t think cats could count!”

“We can’t do big numbers like you humans are supposed to be able to, but we’re not daft you know. Most cats who’ve belonged to witches learn to count. One, one more one, then lots of ones,” he said proudly, “see told you so! But to be honest I just recognised the shape you were trying to make.”

Jennifer Jane looked thoughtful for a moment. She knew she was often lucky in matters like this. Was it possible that Georgina’s real name was Morwenna and that George had killed her mother?

“I don’t suppose you know where your old owner lived do you?”

“No of course not! Lots of trees and grass and plenty of mice about when I felt especially hungry, but most places I’ve been to are like that. I just happened to follow her through a door the day you challenged her to a race. Then she closed the door before I could get back. It doesn’t really matter, your family feed me a lot better than she did, so I’m quite happy!”

Moggy curled up on the tree house platform, buried his nose under his tail and went to sleep. Jennifer Jane stayed there for quite a while, going over in her mind what Moggy had just told her.

If she could find out where the old witch she’d raced against had come from, maybe she could also find out whether or not George had killed her. Then if her luck held good as it often seemed to in cases like this, it could well be that Georgina’s real name was Morwenna.

She was sure Abigail would know what to do and decided to go to the Witches’ Home to ask her. Now that Eve knew about the alternate world, she could go through the woods and use her canoe again and while she was on the way she could try and remember the exact location of the door the old witch had used.

She got up as quietly as she could so that she wouldn’t disturb Moggy’s sleep, but although he didn’t appear to move; she noticed one eye watching her as she lowered the plank which served as a drawbridge. She crossed over to the branch where all the sticky out bits had been left for her to use as a ladder and climbed down to the ground.

One of these days she’d float off the platform and then drift down to the ground, but somehow she thought that even then Moggy might notice.