The Trouble with Secrets (3 page)

They found an empty workstation. Beneath a gleaming stone countertop were rows of drawers and cupboards, and along the wall were more shelves of colorful bottles and jars.

B stroked her finger along a row of shiny bottles. “So, are potions essentially recipes? Cup of sugar and teaspoon of salt, that kind of thing?”

“Yes and no,” Mr. Bishop said. “Recipes are the simplest kinds of potions. We’re going to start in with the potions that really require magic.”

“Sounds good,” B said, still exploring the shelves. “Mr. Bishop, what is this stuff? It’s not scorpion blood or salamander eyeballs or anything like that, is it?”

Her teacher laughed. “Once upon a time it was,” he said. “But not now. What you’re looking at is a collection of Slushy-Ice Flavored Syrups that one of my former students made last year. They give you a little energy boost, using magic instead of caffeine. She earned high honors for her mocha butterscotch.” He opened a small freezer door that B hadn’t noticed, scooped out a cupful of shaved ice, poured a shot of syrup over the top, and handed it to B.

“This is fantastic!” B said, chomping the ice. “It tickles.” She giggled and felt a surge of energy shoot from her head to her big toe.

“She works at Enchanted Chocolates Worldwide now,” Mr. Bishop said, “inventing all kinds of treats. But here’s the thing: The ingredients in a potion are only a small part of what makes the potion magical. The real power comes from the spell the witch casts as she’s brewing it. And powerful spells are made when the witch’s mind is strongly focused on what she’s doing, and how she wants it to work, and why.”

B nodded.

Mr. Bishop pulled up a stool, and gestured for B to do the same. “B, how do you focus your magic in your head? How do you know what your spell will do?”

“Well,” B said through a big bite of mocha-butterscotch ice, “I’m still trying to figure that out. I guess it’s whatever the last thing was I was thinking of before I spelled a word. If I thought of the water in a pan and spelled ‘boil,’ I’d better make sure I don’t start thinking about anything else, you know? It’s really important not to let my mind wander.”

“Exactly!” Mr. Bishop said. “Whether you make magic with rhymes or with spelled words, focus is the key.”

“Then why do we even need potions?” B said. “Wouldn’t spells alone be just as good? If we want someone to be happy we can just perform a spell to make them happy.”

Mr. Bishop started opening cupboards and taking out equipment. “Sometimes that works,” he said. “But what if you want to make the spell now, and use it later? Or give it to someone else to use at their
convenience? Or ship it to Milwaukee for someone there to use?”

“Ah,” B said as Mr. Bishop put a copper cauldron on the counter. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Potions are portable,
potable
magic,” Mr. Bishop said. “Know what ‘potable’ means?”

B frowned. She hated not knowing a word.

“It means drinkable,” Mr. Bishop said. “It has the same root as ‘potion.’ ”

“Potare,” B said, remembering his spell. “That’s Latin for ‘to drink,’ right?”

“Bingo. Though in reality, potions can also work through the skin, or by breathing in their vapors, though not always as well.” He gestured toward the cauldron. “Let’s get started. I want you to try to make a simple laughing potion. These drawers and cupboards are full of ingredients — the fridge, too. Help yourself to anything you see.”

B wasn’t sure where to start. “I can just pick anything?” B asked. “Isn’t there a book I can look at?”

Mr. Bishop shook his head. “Just trust your instincts.”

B tossed her slushy cup in the trash and rubbed her hands together. This could be fun. Looking through the drawers and cupboards, B found rubber bands, matchbox cars, playing cards, bits of fabric and string, rusty nails, twigs, old pennies, marbles, some colored hair bands, old stickers, clothespins, beads, and odds and ends she couldn’t even name.

“I thought the ingredients would be, um, spices and things,” B said. “Herbs. Oils. Stuff like that. This drawer is full of junk.” Row after row of drawers revealed the same assortment.

B opened the fridge. “There’s nothing here but Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles!”

“I was sure there was bread in the cupboard,” Mr. Bishop said, nosing around. “Nothing helps a potion like a cheese and pickle sandwich. Do you like mustard?” He found a bag of bread and set it on the counter.

B was baffled. “Am I supposed to put a sandwich into my potion?”

“Certainly not,” he said, pulling two slices of bread from the bag. “You
eat
the sandwich. Gets
your creative juices flowing.” He started spreading the mustard. “C’mon, B, think. A witch rarely has powdered diamonds and dried rosemary when she needs them. But everyone’s got a junk drawer. Part of witchcraft is learning how to make do with what you’ve got. So, find some ingredients that you think suggest laughter, and brew them up.”

It sounded mumbly-jumbled to B, but who was she to argue? She poked through the drawers and cupboards. She selected a joker card, a frog-shaped pencil eraser, a bubble wand, and a fake feather.

“Feather?” Mr. Bishop asked through a mouthful of sandwich.

“For tickling,” B said. “That always makes me laugh. Oh, wait, one more thing.” She reached into the jar with a fork and pulled out a pickle.

“Pickles are funny, don’t you think?” B said. “Just saying the word makes me smile.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Mr. Bishop said. “Usually pickles make me hungry.”

B tossed all her ingredients into the cauldron and stared at them. They sat on the shiny bottom of
the pan, doing absolutely nothing, looking like bits of clutter, not like the pieces to a magical puzzle.

“Well,” her teacher said, “at this point in the process I would usually instruct my students to think up a
rhyming
spell to bind the potion together and create the liquid. So, let’s see what you can do with word-spelling.”

As she munched on her sandwich, B wondered what word she should spell. She decided she’d try the obvious one. She tried to focus on the sound of laughter, but it was hard to ignore all her stray thoughts.

“L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R,” she spelled, but a bit of sandwich almost caught in her throat. She hoped it wouldn’t mess up her potion. Soon, a bubbling sound came from the cauldron. She peered in to see the ingredients melting away like ice cubes, forming a pool of amber-colored liquid. When it was done brewing, Mr. Bishop poured some into a cup, took a deep breath, and drank. A little puff of cloudy vapor rose from the mouth of his cup, then vanished.

“Hm,” he said.
“Hic!
I’m not
hic!
laughing.
Hic!
I seem to be
hic! —
uping.”

“Oops,” B said.

She waited, embarrassed, for the hiccuping to stop. At last it died down.

“Fortunately, I didn’t drink much.” Mr. Bishop wiped his mouth on his sleeve and he said:

“Recycle the magic, rekindle the spell.

Polish the pot and perform the charm well.”

B’s cauldron emptied as little whirring objects leaped out of the cauldron and hopped back into an open drawer. B could barely see what they were, except she knew they were unfamiliar. “Hey, those weren’t the things I put in,” she said. “What happened?”

“I drank some of it,” Mr. Bishop said, “which changed the individual components. Now, try it again. You had the right idea with your ingredients but I think you lacked a little focus.”

B tried again, this time with other ingredients: a tiny plastic rabbit, a ripe strawberry, a bit of paper folded into an origami swan, a quarter minted the year she was born, which, naturally, made it lucky.
She spelled “laughter” again and tried to concentrate. Mr. Bishop took a sip.

“Iiiiiiii’m not feeling funny,’
Mr. Bishop warbled in a lovely bass singing voice.
“Iiiiiii just feel like singing! Sing, sing, sing, sing, singing my cares awaaaaaaayyyy …”

All the other witches in the laboratory turned to watch. B desperately wanted to duck down below the counters and wait till the tiny smidge of potion Mr. Bishop drank wore off.

At last Mr. Bishop’s mouth clamped shut. He loosened his collar, blushing even brighter than B. “Whew!” he said. “That was a first.”

“You could teach music,” B said, “but maybe I should test my own potions. C-L-E-A-N,” she told the cauldron, then to her teacher she added, “It would save you the risk.”

“As your teacher, I need to test them to see if they work, or I won’t know how to help you fix them,” Mr. Bishop said. “But listen, B, this is important. Don’t make any potions at home and give them to anyone. Not until I’ve signed off on them, okay?”

“Sure,” B said. She couldn’t imagine a reason why she would. “My potions wouldn’t even polish the furniture.”

“Nonsense,” her teacher said. “You’re off to a great start. Your potions are doing
something
— just not the something you want, yet. Be patient. Some witches just plain can’t do potions at all, did you know that? Now, let’s have one more try with the laughter potion. Maybe change the word you spell a bit.”

B sighed and searched yet again for ingredients. She found an empty soda can, which reminded her of a hilarious moment in a movie. She found a bit of cord, which made her think of microphones and stand-up comedians. And she found a dog collar, which reminded her of George’s dog, Butterbrains, who was always “playing dead,” sticking his long shaggy legs up in the air. “L-A-U-G-H,” she spelled, half giggling as she said it.

Mr. Bishop took a taste, and immediately started chuckling. “You’ve got it! Ha-ha!”

“I think I get it,” B said. “Or I’m beginning to. It’s not enough just to think about laughter. I have to
really get myself in the right frame of mind. So in this case, I had to get myself laughing!”

“You’re on the right track. Hee-hee! Pour the rest into a bottle, and stopper it. A good laughing potion is always valuable.” B did as her teacher said. “This potion earns the Bishop Seal of Approval. Congratulations on an excellent first lesson. Now, let’s go back to school.”

As soon as Mr. Bishop deposited B back in the English classroom, she sprinted out of the school and down the street toward the park. Her watch told her she only had five minutes to reach George at the park.
Speedy feet sure would come in handy now,
B thought. But she knew better than to try it. She used her Crystal Ballphone — a recent gift from her parents in honor of her finding her magic — to make a quick call home, letting Mom know about her plans to go to the fair, and her first-ever potion at her first-ever magic lesson. Mom was proud, as B knew she would be.

All in all, she was only three minutes late when she found her friend alone on the swing set,
swinging so high it looked like he’d flip over the top. Behind him, flags and banners from the huge white grandstand tent of Merlin’s Spectacular Fair flapped in the breeze. George scuffed his feet in the dirt to slow down.

From behind them, calliope music blared. George and B turned just as a unicyclist burst out from the entryway. A juggler and a fire-eater stood on either side of the colorful arch, demonstrating their skills, and a hawker shouted a welcome at passersby.

George and B looked at each other. “What are we waiting for?” George asked. “Roller coaster, here we come!”

They bought their entrance tickets and hurried through the turnstile.

“Cotton candy!” George ran to a vendor and came back with a big blue blossom of spun sugar. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” B said. “I want a candy apple. Then I want to find Enchantress Le Fay!”

“Huh?” George seemed to be having trouble unsticking his bottom jaw from his top because of
the cotton candy. “Whynf … oomp …” He swallowed. “Why d’you want to see her?”

B hated that she couldn’t explain the real reason for her curiosity. She dodged the question with a question. “Aren’t you curious about her, and those, um, crazy potions of hers and stuff?”

“Nah. I want to see the trapeze artists. And hit the rides.”

B glanced at a big poster that showed the schedule of all the fair shows. “The trapeze show doesn’t start for half an hour. And the rides will be more fun when it gets darker. Don’t you want to see what Jason’s so excited about?”

George tossed his stick in the garbage. “Okay,” he said. “But then it’s go-cart time!”

“Deal.” They set off to look for Enchantress Le Fay.

“Step right up, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for a sight you won’t see every day!” A barrel-chested man with a red tuxedo and a black handlebar mustache stood outside a large booth surrounded by black and purple drapes, shouting in a megaphone. “From the far reaches of time,
from the dark forests of Olde England, comes a living descendant of Morgan Le Fay, the sorceress who bedazzled King Arthur’s court! Need a love potion? A cure for baldness? Searching for the elixir of life? Look no further! Enchantress Le Fay waits to help you!”

Several people passing by stopped, and soon a good crowd was gathered.

Then, the mustache man pulled a rope, which separated the two halves of a frayed and faded curtain, patched in parts. Plumes of gassy green vapor billowed forth, making B’s nose itch. When the mist cleared, the first thing she saw was …

“Jason Jameson!” George wrinkled his nose.

Sure enough, standing next to the enormous cauldron, with a huge smug smile on his freckly face, was their classmate from English.

Jason caught sight of George and B in the audience and made a big show of pinching his nose like they were skunks. He only stopped when Enchantress Le Fay made her grand entrance onto the little stage.

She was tall, with thick, frizzy black hair streaked with white at the temples. But she didn’t look old. Her skin was smooth, and plastered with makeup. She wore a tight black dress that buttoned in front with hundreds of tiny black buttons, but hung in torn strips around her knees, showing her tall, black pointy-toed boots. Around her neck were dozens of chains bearing heavy brass charms, or leather pouches of something or other. The tip of her witch’s hat bent downward in the back, but Enchantress Le Fay stood stiff and straight, her eyes closed, her chin thrust high in the air as though she were sniffing the wind like a hunting hound.

“Gather ’round, gather ’round, ladies and gents,” Jason called out in a failed imitation of the mustache man. “I, Jason the Magical Prodigy Apprentice, announce …” Enchantress Le Fay elbowed him, scowling. Jason gulped. “Er, the show’s about to begin.”

The crowd surged forward, sweeping B and George along with it.

They waited.

Enchantress Le Fay breathed.

And then she screeched. “I … SENSE … SUFFERING!”

Everyone jumped. She had a gravelly kind of voice, sort of like Dawn’s sounded the morning after a softball tournament, when she’d been cheering for twelve hours straight.

Now the so-called witch’s eyes were open wide — wild and frantic. She jerked her head this way and that, pointing randomly to different people in the audience.

“You!” she said at last, pointing to a heavyset man in the back of the audience. “Do you
still
grieve at the death of a parent?”

The big man’s jowls quivered. “H-how,” he sniffed, then burst into loud sobs. “How did you know about M-Mother?”

People in the audience gasped. Enchantress Le Fay took a small bow. She pulled a little bottle from the sleeve of her dress. “Apprentice,” she ordered Jason, “take this to our suffering friend. For
fifteen dollars, my sadness remedy will heal his broken heart.”

The man counted out the bills, downed the contents of the bottle, and left beaming and blowing kisses of gratitude to Enchantress Le Fay.

“For crying out loud,” George said to B. “What a phony! I saw that guy counting change in the ticket booth a few minutes ago.”

B stifled a laugh. Enchantress Le Fay shot an angry glance at George, then cleared her throat. “Apprentice,” she said, “fetch me my case!”

Jason disappeared behind the curtain, then returned dragging a large, dingy suitcase. He pulled a lever, and telescoping legs popped out from each corner. After some fumbling with the latch, he opened the case, revealing a traveling pharmacy full of vials of liquid, all in tiny corked green bottles.

Enchantress Le Fay gestured across the surface of the suitcase with a sweeping motion, trailing the loose fabric of her sleeves. “My friends,” she cried, “how much
need
I sense among you! Painful joints and lonely hearts! Aching teeth and boring jobs! Naughty children and bad grades! Oh,
oh,
the
suffering!” She pulled a red silk handkerchief from the bosom of her dress, and dabbed at her eyes. “Here in my stores you’ll find the fruits of a
lifetime
of study and toil! And I offer it all to you, starting at only five dollars a bottle. But that’s not all! At Friday’s Grand Spectacular Show, on the last day of the fair, I shall demonstrate cures and remedies so astonishing, they’ll curl the hair on your toes. Come one, come all! Bring your ailing aunts and uncles! But don’t wait until Friday. Step up now to relieve
your
suffering.”

Enchantress Le Fay gave Jason a sharp nod. He looked confused for a moment, then began calling, “Step right up! That’s it, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, form a line, don’t all try to be the first to sample Enchantress Le Fay’s magical cures!”

B shook her head in disbelief.
This
was what people thought of as a witch? This … this tacky show-off? She tried to picture her mother, who was both an excellent cook and potions mistress, dressing up in those phony rags and strutting around like Enchantress Le Fay. The idea was preposterous.

“What’s funny?” George said, nudging B.

“Oh, nothing,” B said. “Want to get in line and have a peek at the potions?”

George grunted. “No point. I can’t believe all these other people are lining up. There’s
no such thing
as witches!”

A little hush fell over the people lined up in front of the cauldron. It seemed as if everyone looked first at George, then at Enchantress Le Fay, to see what she would do.

She scanned the crowd, then thrust both hands out wide so that her long, spooky sleeves flapped like bat wings. “There are always those who doubt or deny my power,” she said in her screechy voice. “Young man, I was peering into the secrets of eternity before you wore your first diaper.”

George shrugged. “Maybe you should have worn glasses.”

All the eyes moved back to George. It was as if a tennis match had sprung up between B’s best friend and the wannabe witch.

Enchantress Le Fay pointed a long-nailed finger at George. B couldn’t help noticing that the
witch’s nails were painted green, with black bats on each nail.

“I am not in a mood to be vexed by unbelievers,” Enchantress Le Fay said. “You don’t believe witches exist?” She cackled with TV-witchy laughter. “I’ll prove it to you.”