Elisabeth Waters
It was all Peter’s fault. If he hadn’t given me How to Become a Witch in 12 Easy Lessons for my birthday, none of this would have happened. And he didn’t want to weed the vegetable garden yesterday.
Well, maybe some of it was my fault, too. I didn’t want to weed the garden either; it’s really not a fun way to spend a beautiful Saturday morning. And I am nearly two years older than Peter, and Dad is always saying that a big sister should set a good example for her little brother. And I was the one who looked up at a sky with only a couple of puffy little clouds high up in it and remarked, “Gee, if it were raining, we wouldn’t be able to weed the garden.”
Peter’s face lit up, the way it always does when he gets one of his bright ideas. His “bright” ideas always get us into trouble we could never have imagined when he came up with them, and if I’d had any sense at all I’d have run for the garden and started weeding.
“Jan, I’m pretty sure there’s a rain-making spell in that book I gave you.”
I guess I don’t have much sense, because I followed Peter up to my room and helped him look for the book. He was the one who found it, shoved under my bed with eight other books I’m supposedly reading, including my history textbook and two library books—one overdue, one miraculously not.
As advertised, the book was divided into 12 lessons, and it did say on the first page to do them in order. But Weather Magic was Lesson 7, and we didn’t have time to do lessons 1 through 6 and still make it start raining before Dad found us goofing off.
~o0o~
So we took the book and went outside to our favorite place down by the stream where we hide when we don’t want to do chores. Bruce, our collie, followed us, but he just lay down and went to sleep, so he wasn’t in our way. Peter held the book and told me what to say and I cast the spell. I think I did just what the book said to, and Peter says I did, too. And at least part of it must have been right, because it did rain. But, honest, the book said “rain,” not “tornado”!
I was standing there with my eyes scrunched closed, concentrating on making it rain, when Bruce started whimpering and scrabbled to his feet. I opened my eyes to see what was bothering him and saw all those dark grey clouds piling up. I yelped, Peter looked up from the book, and the wind hit the tops of the trees with a great rushing roar. We ran for the storm shelter under the barn as fast as we possibly could and made it just as the storm hit. I got pretty wet during the last few seconds before Dad, who had been watching anxiously for us, got the door closed behind me.
Peter was smart enough to hide the book under his shirt before Dad saw it, and Dad was so relieved we were safe that he didn’t ask too many questions about where we had been and what we’d been doing that we didn’t notice the storm coming sooner.
It was a pretty bad storm, but at least nobody got killed or badly hurt, and most of the crops are okay. But it went straight through the place where we cast the spell, and it only missed our house by about ten yards!
~o0o~
Today is a beautiful day, with not a single cloud in a brilliant blue sky. And as soon as I finish cleaning up the vegetable garden and weeding what’s left of it, I’m going to take that book, starting with Lesson 1, and read it very, very carefully.