Marjorie put the key on the glass tray. She took the wooden spoon and the feathers out of the dresser drawer and carried them downstairs.

Nick was still crunching his way through a bowl of Grape-Nuts. “Hey, Marge, I can see you! Couldn’t you find the key?”

“I left it upstairs.” Marjorie laid the feathers on the table.

Nick counted the colors on his fingers. “Blue, yellow, brown, green, purple, orange, red. That’s seven. We ought to be able to work the flying spell.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” Marjorie told him. “This magic is tricky. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Did you try the flashlight today?” Nick asked.

“I left it in the living room.” Marjorie went to get the flashlight. She pushed the switch. “Now it’s working.”

“Maybe we ought to take the Halloween candle along, just in case,” Nick said.

Marjorie nodded. “We have to go back to the cave and look in Stella’s book. There must be a way to get the spell off the key.” She started loading the dishwasher.

Nick ran upstairs. Marjorie went down to the laundry room. She found the clothesline and wound it around the wooden spoon.

As she came back up the stairs to the kitchen, Marjorie heard Nick laughing. She couldn’t see her brother, but there was an open book on the kitchen table. One of the pages turned over. Nick started to giggle.

“That must be the one about the ostrich,” Marjorie said. “Come on, Nick. Let’s go to the park. You can read riddles some other time.”

The sun flickered through the leaves as the two children climbed the old beech tree. Marjorie went first. When she came to the hole in the tree, she tied one end of the clothesline to a branch and unwound the rest of it from the spoon. “Nick, where are you?”

“Here,” Nick said. “Take the key, Marge.” He hung it around her neck. At once Marjorie could see him. “Now I can go down the rope without you kicking me in the head,” he told her.

Nick grabbed the clothesline and let himself down into the hole. Marjorie clicked on her flashlight and came after him.

At the bottom of the rope they stepped down into the hollow in the roots of the tree. Marjorie took the key off her neck and tied it to the wooden spoon. As soon as she let go, the key vanished, but Marjorie knew just where it was. She touched it with one finger and the key appeared.

Nick stared at her. “What’s going on, Marge? Now I see you. Now I don’t.”

Marjorie told him what she had done. “This way we can both see each other. That will make it easier to do magic.”

She looked for the door in the roots of the tree. It was wide open. “Nick,” Marjorie whispered, “I’m sure I closed it!”

Nick turned to grab the rope. “Stella must have come back. We’d better get out of here.”

At that moment a raspy voice came from the other side of the door. “I was wondering when you two would get here. Come on in.”

Marjorie’s heart seemed to stop beating. “We’d better do as she says, Nick. She might do something awful to us if we don’t.”

Marjorie stepped through the doorway. Nick let go of the rope and followed her into the witch’s cave.