DomDaniel and Simon were standing on the wide doorstep of what had once been a typical Port townhouse: tall and narrow with a large front door. This particular house looked as though it were about to fall down. The windows had planks nailed across them and there were Darke symbols painted on the wall over which had been scrawled some very rude graffiti. It was, thought Simon, just the kind of place he would expect DomDaniel to visit.
“Toad, Heap,” snapped DomDaniel.
“But—” Simon began defensively, thinking that DomDaniel was insulting him.
“The toad. In the toad bag, noodlebrain.”
When DomDaniel spoke, his lips did not move in quite the right way. It was odd, Simon thought, like being with a bad ventriloquist. Simon suppressed the uncomfortable idea that that probably made him the ventriloquist’s dummy. He plunged his hand into the toad bag, scrabbled past the arm bones and at the bottom of the bag his fingers found a damp, squashy lump. The toad, covered in bone dust, sat on Simon’s hand, blinking in the shock of the cold night air.
DomDaniel chuckled. “Fat and ugly,” he said. “They’ll love it.”
Simon grimaced. Try as he might, he could not see the attraction of toads.
“I’ll give you a piece of advice, Heap,” DomDaniel said confidentially. “Give a witch a Darke Toad and she will do anything you ask. If a Coven has one of these on their door, they’ll get respect from every Coven in the land. No witch will dare to mess with them. Well, go on then, Heap. Place the toad.”
Simon looked confused. “Where?”
DomDaniel looked exasperated. “On the door, cabbage brain.”
Simon stared at the door. It was bristling with nails like a hedgehog and showed signs of having been attacked with a hammer. But among the forest of nails Simon spotted a small plinth just below a plain, flat doorknocker, and above the plinth someone had scrawled: TOADYWOADY. He reached up and carefully placed the toad on the plinth. To Simon’s surprise the toad did not stay there. It hopped off and landed neatly onto the doorknocker where it settled down onto what Simon now realized was a toad-shaped surface. A Darke ripple passed across the toad and it Transformed into a toad-shaped doorknocker.
“Good,” said DomDaniel. “If a Darke Toad knocks, the Coven has to answer. Well, go on, then.”
“What?”
“Knock, you fool.”
Simon raised his hand to the cold metal toad, but before he could do anything, there was a tremendous thudding of footsteps inside the house, and the door was thrown wide open. Simon leaped to one side just in time and out burst a disheveled young man with piercing blue eyes, dressed in black. He pushed DomDaniel aside in a fine football tackle and hurtled down the street as though in pursuit of the ball. DomDaniel swayed dangerously, and Simon heard the bones clink ominously against one another beneath the cloak.
Ter-link-clink-plink.
DomDaniel was just regaining his balance when another figure in black—female this time—came pounding out of the door yelling, “Madrigor! Madrigor! Wait. Please wait. Pleeeeeeese!”
She too elbowed DomDaniel aside in as fine a tackle as her quarry had done, and it caught DomDaniel on the rebound. With a loud clinkle-clank his bones folded up and descended into an orderly pile on the doorstep, on which his cloak settled like a cover over a birdcage. Simon watched as DomDaniel’s head dropped neatly down onto the top of the pile. The head stared angrily up at Simon as though it were all his fault. Simon could do no more than return the stare in amazement, while he tried to fight the desire to pick up the head and run with it and join in the football game that seemed to be in full swing farther down the street—accompanied now by shrieks and a few well-aimed punches from the female protagonist.
A moment later a white-faced woman swathed in black—teetering on shoes from the soles of which sprouted a forest of spikes twelve inches high—arrived at the door. The woman stared at Simon and gave a gruesome smile, showing a few stubby black teeth. She turned around and yelled into the house, “Veronica! Dorinda! Daphne! Look what we’ve got here!” Then she leered at Simon. “Hello young man, young man.”
Simon felt horribly uncomfortable. Three young witches arrived at the door. “Ooh, Witch Mother.” They giggled, staring at him. “Where did you get that?”
Simon felt himself turning pink.
“He’s blushing,” said one of the witches, who had a conical peak of hair balanced on the top of her head.
“So sweet,” added the small, chubby one.
The third witch said nothing and stared at Simon with disconcertingly big blue eyes.
The Witch Mother leaned forward to inspect Simon at close quarters. Hastily, he stepped back from the old-cat breath. The Witch Mother went to take another step forward but a sudden screech came from somewhere near her left boot—the sharp spikes of which DomDaniel had a distressingly close view.
“Pamela!” shrieked DomDaniel’s head. “Stop!”
The woman stared down at her feet and swore loudly.
“No need for that kind of language,” DomDaniel said primly.
The Witch Mother stared with incredulity at DomDaniel’s head, so neatly placed on its cloak. Her shoulders began to shake, and suddenly the thick white makeup that was plastered over her face split into a tracery of cracks and she burst into hoarse, barking laughs. “Dommie, is that you?” she spluttered.
“Yes, as it happens, it is me,” said DomDaniel. “I don’t see what is so funny, Pamela.”
“You never did have a sense of humor, did you?” the Witch Mother observed. “So, are you coming in or what?”
“At present, Pamela, I am somewhat immobile. However, my assistant here—when he stops gawping like a stuck fish—will assist me. Pick me up, will you, Heap?”
Simon stared at the fleshy head sitting atop its pile of bones. He suppressed a shudder. “Oh! Well, yes. Um …”
Unexpectedly, the Witch Mother came to Simon’s rescue. “Leave him,” she commanded and turned to the young witch with the big blue eyes. “Dorinda! Wheelbarrow!”
“Yes, Witch Mother,” said Dorinda, and she disappeared back into the house.
“No!” yelled DomDaniel’s head.
The Witch Mother looked down and favored DomDaniel with a black-toothed smile. “I suppose you’re a pile of bones under that fancy cloak of yours?”
DomDaniel scowled in answer.
The Witch Mother’s smile grew even wider and blacker. “I thought so. Well, we don’t want them dropped, do we? A wheelbarrow it must be.”
“Pamela, you are a cruel woman.”
“But a practical one, Dommie, dear.”
And so it was that DomDaniel was ignominiously wheeled over the threshold of the Port Witch Coven in a wheelbarrow—just as the Witch Mother, in a fit of fury with DomDaniel over one broken promise too many, had once foretold. Simon, however, was escorted in style, with a young witch on each arm.