WHILE PEONY WAS WORRYING about Lionel Longbeard, the Hag was brooding. No invitation had arrived, and she was growing angrier by the day … a state she much enjoyed, as it gave her a reason to practise her darkest and most unpleasant spells. She had half-filled her cauldron with a distillation of deadly nightshade and essence of poisonous toadstool and, as each day passed and no invitation came rattling through her letterbox, she added something more disgusting to the contents.
“Wooooo…” she sang happily as she stirred the new ingredients in. “Woooo … woooo … woooo! Let the brew get ever stronger … let them suffer ever longer…”
The Hag did, however, have a practical problem: her snakeskin dress didn’t fit. She had been eating unusually well; a few weeks earlier a goatherd had driven his unfortunate flock into the caves beneath Scrabster’s Hump in order to save them from a terrible thunderstorm. What he was not saving them from was a hungry Hag: not a single goat made its way back to the grassy slopes. The goatherd, unwilling to search the caves, packed up his goatherd’s whistle and went off to be a plumber. The Hag had eaten three enormous meals a day and doubled in size as she read her books of dark magic. Now, as she tried the dress on, even the spiders sniggered.
“I’ll have to let it out,” she said. “What a bore!”
Not being much of a seamstress, the Hag decided to use magic. The results would not be as reliable as a good stout running stitch, but the christening party was the following day and she had no choice.
“Wooooo wooooo!” she chanted. “Wooooo wooooo!”
The dress obligingly grew … and grew. The Hag tutted crossly and tried again. This time the dress developed a surprising number of pockets, together with a Victorian bustle.
“Wooooo!” the Hag ordered. “WOOOOO!”
The bustle fell off, but the pockets remained. No amount of wand waving could remove them and at last the Hag, by now in a terrible temper, gave up.
“Stupid thing! I’ll have to wear it as it is,” she muttered. “It’s all that king’s fault. And that queen. If they’d sent me an invitation to their ridiculous christening party I’d have thought about ordering a new dress … but I’ll make them pay! Oh, how I’ll make them pay! I’ll steal their precious little baby, that’s what I’ll do – and I’ll not give the boy back until they’re weeping and wailing and begging on their knees.” An evil smile crept slowly over her face. “And I know just how I’m going to do it…”
She opened a drawer in the kitchen dresser. A small warty toad scrambled out and made a hopeful leap for freedom, but the Hag caught it and popped it in an empty milk jug. Digging deeper in the drawer she pulled out several balls of musty-smelling green string, and her smile grew even nastier. “Sleeping twine,” she muttered. “I’ll make bunches and bunches of sleeping twine … and the potion should be just about ready. Dip it in, dip it deep – that’ll send the fools to sleep!”
The Fairy Godmothers of Murk were also worrying about their dresses. “Everyone in red, do you think?” Fairy Geraldine suggested.
“Blue might be more suitable for a boy,” Fairy Josephine said. “Or is that too obvious?”
Fairy Jacqueline was looking in the wardrobe. “Ridiculously obvious. What about a nice bright orange? Very ladylike and most becoming.”
The other two fairies went to look. “That is pretty,” Fairy Geraldine agreed. “But I do love red.”
“Blue,” Fairy Josephine said. “Definitely blue!”
Fairy Jacqueline pulled out a bright orange dress with a flourish. “Well, I want to wear this. You two can do as you want.” And slamming the wardrobe door shut, she stalked off with her dress over her arm.
Fairy Geraldine shook her head. “Temper, temper!”
Fairy Josephine sighed. “If only the king or the queen would ask us to grant a couple of wishes. That would cheer her up no end, even if they were only little ones.”
“Maybe they will at the christening party.” Fairy Geraldine was always optimistic. “After all, they did invite us.”
Fairy Josephine looked doubtful. “Perhaps. Let’s hope for the best. So you’re going to wear red?”
“Of course.” Fairy Geraldine twirled a curl. “And I suppose you’re wearing blue?”
“Naturally,” Fairy Josephine said. “And I think we’ll look lovely. Just like a bunch of summer flowers!”
