Redundancy 7/8

Jennifer Jane hurried off before anybody burst into tears, it had appeared to be such a wonderful idea when she had first suggested it, but now she couldn’t see any answer. It was almost worse than it had been before she thought of it, all she seemed to have done was get everybody’s hopes up and now they were more miserable than they had been before.

At least she was able to speak to George when she arrived at his office in Lower Dene. Morwenna showed her straight in and stayed with them while she displayed the carvings.

“Well they’re certainly big enough this time, but I think they’re too crude to be worth any money,” said George. “I’ve been shown a lot of much better looking objects made in Walnut and Beech by wood turners. They’re nicely polished with beeswax and are quite cheap as well! Some of the sailors I’ve met make carvings like this in ivory and the gentry collect them quite happily and show them off in glass cabinets. But unless you can make them in a similar quality I don't think they’ll sell and in any case it won’t get rid of all the teeth you must have lying around!”

Jennifer Jane turned round and started to leave the room in despair. Nothing she tried seemed to be going to make this problem go away.

“Wait a moment young lady,” said Morwenna, catching her up before she’d managed to get back on her scooter. “Have you got a lot more of these teeth back at the Witches’ Home?”

“Oh yes, there’s a whole bag full, it must weigh two or three pounds at least.”

“I’ll just fetch George and follow you back there on my broom. There’s something I want to try out and it’ll be a lot easier if we’re all in the same place.”

“You’ll find us all in the cloud transport workshop on the mansion side of the Home!”

Jennifer Jane only had to wait a few moments before Morwenna and George joined her just by the drawbridge. Then she parked her scooter as usual in the guardroom. Morwenna was asked to leave the broom there as well, before she and George followed her through to the workshop on the other side of the building.

There was a buzz of surprise as Jennifer Jane walked in followed by Morwenna and George. A few moments later a worried looking Abigail arrived a bit out of breath.

“It’s quite alright,” said Morwenna, “I’m not here to make any trouble; I’m working with Sir George now. I think I may have a solution to the trouble you’re having getting rid of your surplus teeth!”

“That’ll be a relief to all sorts of people if you really have, but Jennifer Jane hasn’t managed to find an answer and she’s usually very good at sorting out our problems.”

“What you need is a better quality of raw material, more like ivory,” said Morwenna. “Now if I remember my spell book correctly we can’t make things larger without making everything in it large as well. But if we assemble lots of little items together to make one large item, then there should be no loss of quality. I suggest that we take a big handful of teeth and fuse it together magically, then carve it to see what happens. I’m prepared to bet the result is good enough to sell. Not only that, but it will take a lot of teeth to make one carving and that will help get rid of your surplus!”

“Good idea, well worth a try, I’ll just dash down to the library and see if I can find a suitable spell.”

“There’s no need,” said Morwenna, “I was thinking along these lines before Jennifer Jane turned up and I’ve already learned the twiddle.”

Robert put a bag in front of Morwenna, while Abigail and Jennifer Jane watched her fingers closely as she took a handful of teeth from it and performed the spell.

“A straightforward binding spell,” murmured Abigail, “I should have thought of that myself. The simple solutions are usually the best!”