The trouble with elves 10/10

Everyone crowded on to Abigail’s broom. “Hold on,” she said, “I’m going to use the instant travel spell. It’s safe enough when you’re as familiar with the Home as I am!”

She was quite right; the Witches’ Home appeared in front of them in a flash. Mary noticed the trees appearing to move around a bit as the broom landed. Some of them disappeared altogether, while others were growing in different places.

Abigail flew up to the drawbridge and spoke to the witch on duty in the guardhouse. “I’m a journey woman from your future and I believe you have a lost apprentice called Jennifer Jane staying with you. I’ve brought her mother to see her and the elf that’s kindly brought us to the correct time.”

“I’ll get someone to bring her to the Refectory, if you’d like to go there and wait please.”

Mary was too excited to want anything to drink, the elf said he didn’t like any of the food he was offered, while Abigail just produced a chocolate swiss roll from her pocket and sat down to eat it.

A moment later Jennifer Jane came into the room, rushed over to her mother and burst into tears. Mary gave her a big hug and started crying herself. Abigail and the elf looked at each other with big smiles on their faces.

“If everything’s alright now I’ll be getting along,” said Eroin’s dad.

“No it isn’t, said Abigail, “we’d all like to go back to our own time please. I suppose we’ll have to go outside again?”

“Yes of course, that’s what made me make the mistake in the first place. The little girl just asked to be sent back to her world, but she didn’t say when. You’ll have to take us all to Lurgin’s bridge again, then I’ll change time to the same day that she first met me.”

Jennifer Jane said goodbye to all her new friends and then flew alongside Abigail on their way to the bridge. Once again Mary noticed the scenery flickering as trees grew and died of old age, then when everything settled down, she noticed that the elf had gone as well.

“Well, hopefully that’s that,” said Abigail, “just one more trip back to the Home and we’ll know for sure if he’s got it right this time. That’s the trouble with elves, even if they’re trying to be nice, they’re so careless that you never know where you’re going to end up.”

Fortunately they found that they had been returned to a time about two hours after Abigail and Mary had left the Home to try and find Jennifer Jane.

“I did a bit of checking while we were in the past,” said Abigail, when they were all safely having yet another cup of tea, “I asked who was in charge of the Home and I’ve just had someone check the records. Would you believe we were taken back nearly two hundred years?”

Jennifer Jane was delighted to find that she remembered all the teaching she’d had over the last six months and was soon boasting that she was the only apprentice in the class to have a two hundred year old second year stripe.

One other thing she had learned however was never to get involved with elves again if she could possibly help it.