A Very Hot Day

Oh dear me, what a scorcher of a day it was. All the birds and animals in the forest were sweltering in the summer heat.

The birds and butterflies that, normally, would have been flapping their wings and flying about were all far too hot to fly and, instead, were just sitting about in the branches of trees fanning themselves with their wings to keep cool.

And the little bunny rabbits who were usually running and jumping and hopping about excitedly were all too hot as well and were sleeping underground in their nice cool burrows, fanning themselves with their floppy ears and yawning.

Even the busy bees, normally so tireless and hardworking were feeling hot and exhausted in their black and yellow stripy jumpers and were snoozing in the shade of flowers rather than buzzing about collecting nectar from them.

And in the little woodland cottage where she lived, Winifred the Witch was feeling all hot and bothered as well.

“If only I could summon up a gentle Summer breeze”, she said, flicking through her book of weather spells, “That ought to cool me down”.

But then she spotted what she was looking for.

“Aha!”, she said, running her finger over the words in the book and reading aloud, “Spell for summoning up a cold wind”.

And, picking up her magic wand and waving it in the air, she proceeded to read out the magic spell from the book.

“Abrakazabraka-dabrakazee”, she said, “Come cold wind and blow to me!”.

But then, suddenly and much to Winnifred’s surprise, the door of her cottage flew open and in blew a howling winter gale.

It blew off her witch’s hat and all the books off of her bookshelves; it even blew away her poor cat, Chester who she saw desperately clinging to her flowery curtains and mioaw-ing for help.

“Oh no, this will never do”, she said, “I’ll have to stop the spell”.

But her book of weather spells had blown away out of the door.

“I’ll just have to find it”, she said, climbing onto her broom which, thankfully, had not blown away and then whizzing off out of the door as fast as a rocket.

Unfortunately, when Winifred found her book it was in the hands of a horrible, hairy, gigantic and very mean looking troll.

“A book of weather spells”, he was saying as he looked at the cover of the book in his enormous hairy hands; grinning wickedly, “Just imagine the things I could do with this. Command the thunder and lightning; summon up hurricanes and fire storms; turn the whole world to ice. Why I’d be the most powerful and feared Troll there has ever been”.

Hearing this, Winifred shuddered.

“I’ve got to get that book back”, she said, “Before that Troll does something terrible with it”.

And then, suddenly, from behind him the troll heard a woman’s voice call out,

“Books for sale! Magic books for sale!”.

And, turning round, the troll saw the old witch or, rather, the old witch disguised as a travelling book seller and, in her hands, she was carrying a pile of shiny, new, leather bound books.

“Go away!”, said the Troll, angrily, “I don’t want to buy any magic books. I already have one. A book of magic weather spells”.

“Oh?”, said the witch, sounding unimpressed, “Well, can your magic spell book tell you how to pull down the moon, hmm? Can it tell you how to summon up a six- headed, invisible, pink, one-eyed dragon or make a tall mountain stand on its head?”.

The Troll had to admit, his magic book couldn’t tell him how to do any of those things.

“Can your books really tell me how to pull the moon down?”, he asked, “And turn a mountain upside down?”.

“Why yes!”, said the Witch, “And much, much more besides. With the spells in these books, a clever Troll like you could rule the whole world!”.

Suddenly, the book that the troll was holding didn’t seem so impressive and he imagined himself as ruler of the world, sitting on an enormous throne with a crown upon his head and billions of subjects to do his bidding.

“Alright”, he said, finally, “I’ll take your books”.

But then the Troll remembered that he didn’t have any money to buy them with.

“Oh, that’s alright”, said the Witch when he told her, “Because you’re such a valued and important customer I’m willing to offer you our special Wicked Troll deal. All you have to do is give me your old spell book and I will give you these brand new ones in exchange”.

The Troll thought this was a marvellous idea and, without even a second thought, he handed over the book of weather spells and grabbed hold of the books that the witch was carrying.

However, when the Troll looked at the books he realized that they were not magic spell books at all.

“Why, these are books of Fairy Tales!”, he growled angrily at the witch.

“That’s right”, she replied with a chuckle, “Fairy Tales all about wicked but stupid Trolls who get tricked by clever Witch’s”.

Flying into a rage, the Troll picked up his enormous, spiky troll club and was about to hit the witch over the head with it but, before he could, she had already hopped onto her broomstick and was whizzing off across the summer sky, back home to her cottage.

And, when she got home, she used her book of weather spells to remove the howling winter gale from her house, much to the relief of her poor cat who was finally able to let go of the curtains.

But it was still very hot and she wondered if there was anything else she could do to keep cool.

Just then, however, Winifred had a most brilliant idea.

Emptying out her old witch’s cauldron, she took it outside and filled it up with water from the garden tap; then, putting on her witch’s bathing suit, she got inside.

“This old Cauldron makes an excellent paddling pool”, she said, laughing and splashing.

And she even let her cat and all the hot birds and animals swim in it as well and they all had the most wonderful summer day.