Earwig was not at all surprised to find that the house in Lime Avenue was Number Thirteen. It fitted these people, even if it was only a perfectly ordinary bungalow. The nine-foot man opened the gate and went through a neat garden with diamond-shaped rose beds in the exact center of each lawn. The windows of the bungalow were all nice and low, Earwig noticed. They would be easy to climb out of if the challenge got too much for her and she decided to run away.

The man went through the front door first and walked away down the hall, saying, “I got you what you wanted. Now I don’t want to be disturbed anymore.”

Earwig did not see where he went then, because the woman opened the nearest door on the right and slung Earwig’s bag inside it. “You’ll be sleeping in there,” she said. Earwig had just a glimpse of a small bare bedroom before the woman shut the door and took her big red hat off. As she hung it carefully on a peg, she said, “Now let’s get a few things straight. My name is Bella Yaga and I am a witch. I’ve brought you here because I need another pair of hands. If you work hard and do what you’re told like a good girl, I shan’t do anything to hurt you. If—”

Earwig saw that this was going to be a very big challenge indeed, far bigger than any she had faced at St. Morwald’s. That was all right. She liked a challenge. And somewhere at the back of her mind, Earwig had always hoped that perhaps one day she might find a person who could teach her some magic. “That’s all right,” she interrupted. If you want to make somebody do what you want, it is very important to start with them in the right way. Earwig knew all about that. “It’s all right,” she said. “I didn’t think you looked like a foster mother. So it’s settled, then. You agree to teach me magic and I agree to stay here and be your assistant.”

She could tell Bella Yaga had expected to have to bully and threaten her. “Well, that’s settled, then,” she said crossly. She looked quite put out. “You’d better come in here and start work.” She led Earwig through the door on the left.

Earwig looked around and tried not to sniff too loudly. She had never seen a place so dirty. Since she was used to the airy rooms and clean polished floors of St. Morwald’s, it was quite a shock. Everything was covered with dust. There was a kind of sludge on the floor made of old dirt, green mold, and the remains of spells—which mostly seemed to be little white bones and small black rotting things. The sludge rose to a hill in one corner, on which perched a rusty black cauldron with green flames flickering under it. The smell of burning was awful. More smelly things like dusty bottles and old brown packets lay about, some of them spilling, on the long dirty table, or were chucked higgledy-piggledy on the shelves. All the bowls and jugs stacked on the floor were covered with grime or brown slime.

Earwig closed her nose against the smell, wondering if witchcraft really needed so many rotting things. She thought that, when she had learned enough, she would be a new kind of witch, a clean one. Meanwhile, she looked around the room and was puzzled to see that it seemed to be at least the size of the whole bungalow.

Bella Yaga chuckled at the look on Earwig’s face. “Come along, girl,” she said. “You’re not here to stare. If you don’t like it, you can clean it later. For now, I want you at this table, powdering those rats’ bones for me.” When Earwig came over to the table, getting her ankles tangled with two dead snakes on the way, Bella Yaga said, “Now, there’s one great rule in this house. You must learn it straightaway. You must on no account ever disturb the Mandrake.”

“You mean the man with the horns?” Earwig said.

“He hasn’t got horns!” Bella Yaga said angrily. “At least, most of the time he hasn’t. He gets those when he’s disturbed.”

“What else happens when he’s disturbed?” Earwig asked.

She thought Bella Yaga shuddered at the idea. “Awful things,” she said. “If you’re lucky, you won’t find out. Now get to work.”

Soon Earwig was pounding away with a heavy pestle in a little stone bowl. At first the small white bones in the bowl went crunch, crunch. After an hour, they were white powder and went spluff, spluff, but Bella Yaga said the powder had to be finer than the finest flour and she made Earwig go on pounding. By this time, Earwig’s arms ached and she was bored. Bella Yaga would not tell her why she was having to make the powder. She would not answer any of Earwig’s questions at all.

Earwig saw quite clearly that Bella Yaga was not going to teach her magic. She just wanted Earwig to do the hard work. Earwig knew she would have to do something about that, as soon as she knew enough about Bella Yaga and her bungalow and all her ways. So Earwig went on pounding at the powder and kept her eyes and ears open.

The only other living creature in the workroom was a black cat, who spent his time lurking miserably in the warmth behind the rusty cauldron. Every so often Bella Yaga would run her finger down a page of the greasy little book on the table beside her and mutter, “Calls for a familiar here.” Then she would march over to the cauldron shouting, “Come on, Thomas! Time to do your stuff!”

Thomas always tried to escape. Once Bella Yaga caught him with only a short scuffle, but most times he fled around the walls of the room with Bella Yaga pounding after him, bawling, “Do what you’re told, Thomas, or I shall give you worms!” When she caught Thomas, she marched back to the table carrying him by the scruff of his neck and dumped him beside the greasy book. Thomas crouched there in an angry ruffled heap until Bella Yaga had finished that part of her spell. Then he fled back behind the cauldron again.

Earwig could see that the greasy book had all Bella Yaga’s spells in it. From where Earwig stood, it reminded her of the book of recipes the cook at St. Morwald’s kept, except that this book was a lot dirtier. The third time Bella Yaga went pounding around the room after Thomas, Earwig kept hammering away at the powder with one hand and pulled the little book nearer with the other hand. Still banging away one-handed, she turned the pages.

“A Spell to Win First Prize in a Dog Show” was the one Bella Yaga was working on at the moment. The next page was “To Make Next-Door Dahlias Die,” and the page after that was “Love Potion for the Boy Next Door.” That was where Bella Yaga came striding back to the table carrying the curled-up, dangling Thomas. Earwig hurriedly pushed the book back to the other side of the table and went back to thumping at the powder with both hands.

By suppertime, Earwig had seen about a quarter of the spells in the book, but not one of them seemed of any use to her. She thought for quite a while about a spell called “To Make a Skateboard Do Tricks,” but although that sounded fun, there seemed nothing in it that would stop Bella Yaga doing something awful to her if she tried it. And that was what she really needed, she thought, as she followed Bella Yaga down the hall to the kitchen. She needed to be safe from Bella Yaga before she could make her do anything.

To Earwig’s surprise, the kitchen was an ordinary kitchen, quite warm and cozy, with the table laid for three and supper steaming on it. There was a large fish on a plate under the table, which Thomas hurried to eat. Earwig looked at the Mandrake. He was looming in a chair at the end of the table, reading a large leather book. He looked like an ordinary man in a bad temper. Even so, he did not look like a man who would have gotten supper ready.

“And what have the demons brought us today?” Bella Yaga asked in the bright, wheedling voice she always seemed to use to the Mandrake. “Pie and chips from Stoke-on-Trent station buffet,” the Mandrake growled, without looking up.

“I hate station pie,” said Bella Yaga.

The Mandrake looked up. His eyes were like dark pits. A spark of red fire glowed, deep down in each pit. “It’s my favorite food,” he said. The sparks in his eyes flickered and grew.

Earwig quite understood then why she was not to disturb the Mandrake. She was glad that he did not seem to notice she was there.