The statue 13/15

The ‘Greatest Grande Dame who ever lived,’ sat with her head in her hands, trying hard to think of a spell, or indeed any other way of clearing the blocked Ley line. The librarian seemed to be frightened out of her wits just at being in the same room with her and was hardly any help at all. She thought back through each of her adventures and was finding it very difficult to remember any occasion when the circumstances were at all similar.

The last time magic had been interrupted, was when the solution to the problem had been found mechanically with the help of Fundin. If her understanding of the cause of the current problem was correct, then thousands of tons of earth and rocks would have to be shifted. It would take even the dwarves years and years to get all the rubble in the hole out of the way. Even then there was no guarantee that moving it would prove to be the answer.

After a while she gave up and went to have a word with Matilda, who seemed to be the only witch in the whole Home who wasn’t terrified every time she was spoken to. As she’d already guessed, there was no help to be found even in that direction. Matilda knew the spells taught to the students and was very good at performing them, but had no ideas at all beyond that. Surely there must be a spell capable of moving all the earth and rocks in the hole back up onto the surface.

Then the answer came to her! Of course, the cliff that the witches had built, when they had been helping stop the motorway coming through the woods at home! That must have been even larger than the present amount of material to be moved. Even though it had taken seven witches to make it happen, she was sure that as the magic would be used directly on a Ley line, it would be enough to make it possible.

Jennifer Jane got up excitedly, went to the spell catalogue and searched for the correct spell. She knew that it couldn’t have been discovered any later than the date when Abigail had used it, so she went straight to the section dated three hundred years ago and started to work forwards through the catalogue.

She found the spell quickly, it appeared to have only been used once and that had been for her benefit as well. She giggled quietly to herself; perhaps this was going to become known as the Jennifer Jane earth-moving spell.

She copied the fingering down on a notepad and began practising. Since magic wasn’t working in this area anyway, there was no need to go down into one of the shielded rooms in the basement. It was a tricky twiddle to master, but her fingers were young and very flexible from all the recent practice she’d had in her classes at the witches’ school.

As she was twiddling away, she remembered her teacher at the Ley line course saying that standing on a line increased the power of the spell. ‘You might try to raise a hill and end up with a mountain if you’re not careful.’ This memory tempted her to try and solve the problem on her own, so she went outside, saddled up Major and rode off towards the castle ruins.

She carefully picked a spot right on the strongest part of the Ley line that she could find and had a final look at her piece of paper. She twiddled her fingers and was rather disappointed when very little happened. The earth in the pit shuddered a little, then sank back again. Then she realised that the spell was probably being spread over all the ground lying downhill from the required spot.

Fortunately she could remember the boundary spell that she’d had to use several times in the past. So she walked carefully round the crater containing the ruins, marking the limits as she went. This time there was a definite improvement when she repeated the earth-moving spell. Every thing came up nearly to ground level, but unfortunately sank back again when she stopped twiddling her fingers.

Oh well, it had taken Abigail and six other witches to raise the cliff in the woods in her world and these days she knew that they had actually been near a crossing point for a Ley line, although none of them knew it at the time. It looked as if she was going to have to ask for some help.

Fortunately Matilda and five of the younger witches volunteered to assist the ‘Grande Dame’. That made the numbers involved up to seven just in case they were all needed. An hour later after some intensive practice, they all set off, hoping to return the power of magic to the Witches’ Home.

Unfortunately none of them really appreciated how far it was to their destination, however once they arrived at Freda’s cave, she offered to fly them three at a time up to the castle, so they all arrived at much the same time as Jennifer Jane, who was riding Major as usual.