Nick x
Christmas 2024
It was quiet in Normanton. The roads were quiet, the streets were quiet, even the wind was quiet. Everybody in every house was ready to fall asleep. Everybody in every house, apart from one.
Inside that house were three people. Two of them were being anything but quiet and didn’t want to fall asleep at all.
One of them was called Ivy, and she was jumping up and down like a bouncing bean.
“But I don’t want to go to bed!” she said.
The other was called Stan, and he was rolling on the floor like a hot sausage.
“We’re too excited for bed!” he said.
The third person in the house was their Auntie Leilah and she just watched with a sigh as her niece and nephew (her ‘niblings’, as she called them) jumped and rolled, making the snowman and paper chains on the wall wobble.
It was December and Christmas was just around the corner. It was this which had made Stan and Ivy so excited: this, and Auntie Leilah. She normally lived in Doncaster but was looking after them that night and when she had shown up to meet them after Stan had finished school, he had seen she was wearing her silver fleece jacket and that always meant something fun was going to happen.
Her jacket was light enough to wear indoors, heavy enough to wear outside, and to anyone else it looked like an ordinary fleece jacket, but Stan and Ivy knew better. They knew about its pockets.
They weren’t sure how she did it, but whenever Auntie Leilah put her hands in her jacket pockets, she was able to pull out something brilliant.
That evening as they’d walked past the big Christmas tree in the high street, Ivy and Stan had wondered what surprises Auntie Leilah had in store.
“Tell us, please!” Ivy had pleaded as they’d walked over the railway bridge.
“I’ll show you later,” Auntie Leilah had said.
“I want to see now!” Stan had said as they’d passed the library, but Auntie Leilah would not break.
Once they’d reached home, Auntie Leilah had put her hands into her jacket pockets with a flourish and pulled out lots of fun and exciting things: bananas for a late-night snack, paper chains that tasted of strawberries when you licked them, candles that somehow smelled like Christmas, and much, much more. Whenever it looked like things were slowing down, Auntie Leilah had found something in her pockets even more bizarre or exciting than the last thing, and whenever Stan or Ivy had asked a question, Auntie Leilah had pulled out a book and found the answer.
“Books,” she’d said wisely, “know everything,” and Stan and Ivy had had to agree.
They’d spent the evening making and reading and smelling and eating, but now it was bedtime and neither Ivy or Stan looked ready to sleep any time soon.
“How can we sleep when we’re so awake, Auntie Leilah?” asked Stan. “It’s impossible!”
“No it isn’t!” said Auntie Leilah. “Just close your eyes and count sheep!”
“Sheep aren’t very Christmassy, Auntie Leilah,” said Ivy.
“Count reindeer instead,” said Auntie Leilah. She paused and thought about it. “I’m pretty sure I can find some reindeer to count in here…” She rummaged around her pockets and with a smile pulled out a handful of toy reindeer.
“Wow!” said Ivy, holding one. “It looks so real!”
“What else is in your pockets, Auntie Leilah?” asked Stan. He tried to peep inside them, but Auntie Leilah quickly whipped her jacket away.
“It’s a secret,” she said.
“Your jacket’s full of secrets,” observed Stan. “You had all those glow-in-the-dark stickers and lemon bon-bons in there earlier.”
“And those books,” recalled Ivy, “and a scarf for the snowman we made.”
“And the cotton wool and glue for the snowman!” said Stan. “It’s like your pockets are magic, Auntie Leilah.”
“Magic! Ha! Imagine that!” laughed Auntie Leilah nervously: nervously because Stan and Ivy were closer to the truth than she wanted them to be.
You see, Auntie Leilah had a secret: a big secret. A secret which Ivy and Stan and nobody in the world was meant to know about. Auntie Leilah was full of magic. Auntie Leilah was secretly a witch!
Whenever people heard the word ‘witch’, they normally thought of someone with a pointy hat and broomstick and evil in their heart, but this wasn’t true of Auntie Leilah. There were as many different types of witches in the world as there were different types of people. There were silly witches and sensible witches. Tall witches and short witches. Witches with cats and witches with dogs. Witches with lots of hair and witches with no hair at all. People could be judgemental though, and so Auntie Leilah (who had no broomstick (too many splinters) or evil in her heart) kept it a secret. She’d even made her magic wand invisible so nobody could find it.
The trouble was, it meant sometimes she couldn’t find it either. Also, her wand had a mind of its own: it wasn’t alive, but it definitely had a sense of humour and it meant that strange things would often happen in her pockets. For example, she was pretty certain the bananas she’d given Ivy and Stan earlier for a late-night snack weren’t meant to be glittery but she’d brushed most of it off out the window and they’d enjoyed the snack even more because of the sparkle. She was also fairly certain one of the reindeer she’d pulled out of her pockets had winked at her.
Auntie Leilah had used her wand a lot that evening. She’d used it to create the smelly candles and the arts and craft supplies for their snowman, not to mention making the paper chains taste yummy. In fact, the other thing she hadn’t magicked up was the bag of lemon bon-bons.
Maybe she’d used her magic a bit too much though, as her niblings were now hyper and full of energy and wouldn’t calm down at all. Christmas was just too exciting, and Christmas plus a secret magic wand was even more so.
“Come on, you two!” said Auntie Leilah. “Bedtime!”
“No!” said Stan and Ivy together, and they ran around the room with their toy reindeer, making them leap on the furniture.
“Honestly,” sighed Auntie Leilah, “you two are cheeky monkeys!”
Ivy and Stan laughed at that and let themselves be taken to the bathroom to brush their teeth before they finally went to their beds, still buzzing but starting to yawn. They put their new reindeer toys on the pillows and stared at them.
“Auntie Leilah,” asked Stan. “What do reindeer get for Christmas?”
“They don’t get Christmas presents,” said Auntie Leilah.
“But that’s not fair!” said Ivy.
“Father Christmas gets Christmas presents for children,” explained Auntie Leilah. “Some pets get them, if their owners remember to ask, but normally only humans get gifts.”
“If I had a reindeer, I’d ask Father Christmas for a present for them,” said Stan sleepily.
“That sounds nice,” said Auntie Leilah. “I’m sure they’d like that. Now, close your eyes. Nighty-night, you two.”
Before she’d even switched off the light, her niblings were fast asleep.
It was early the next morning that Auntie Leilah realised something was wrong. She’d been right in the middle of a dream she couldn’t quite remember when she heard thumping. That was nothing new. It was probably just Stan and Ivy wide awake before breakfast. But then the thumping grew louder and she could hear shouting. A lot of shouting. It was like eavesdropping outside a zoo.
“Okay!” said Auntie Leilah in her sternest voice. “Calm down! The rest of Normanton is still fast asleep!”
But Stan and Ivy didn’t calm down. If anything, they grew noisier. Auntie Leilah wondered what was going on and got up to investigate, shrugging on her jacket as she did so in case they needed a distraction. It didn’t sound like her niblings were arguing, but it didn’t sound like they were playing either. It was strange. It was like they were out of control.
“Honestly, what are you up to…?” Auntie Leilah started but then she saw Stan and Ivy and she stopped dead in her tracks.
Ivy was on the sofa but she didn’t look like Ivy at all. Her face was furry, her ears were jutting from her head and her hands were bunched up like fists.
Auntie Leilah turned to look at Stan. He was exactly the same and he was pointing to his bottom! Auntie Leilah noticed that both of them had tears in the seat of their pyjamas, and out of these holes poked luxuriously furry, curly tails.
“Monkeys!” gasped Auntie Leilah. “You’ve both turned into monkeys!”
“Auntie Leilah!” chattered Ivy, her voice halfway between her usual one and a monkey’s cry. “I’ve got a tail! Look!”
“Have you got any bananas?” asked Stan, his voice a similar mix of human and simian. “I really fancy a banana!”
“What’s happened to you?!” asked Auntie Leilah, more to herself than anyone else.
“We’ve turned into monkeys!” giggled Ivy, swishing her tail. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“I suppose it is,” said Auntie Leilah. “When did it happen?”
“I don’t know,” said Stan. “When we fell asleep we were all normal. I didn’t feel strange or sick or anything but when I woke up I was a monkey and so was Ivy!” He rolled on the floor, dislodging puffs of cotton wool from the day before. “Isn’t this cool?!”
Auntie Leilah wasn’t sure it was and she didn’t need to ask what had turned them into monkeys. The answer was obvious: she had! She must have done something with her magic wand, she just didn’t know what. She knew she had called her niblings cheeky monkeys, but that wasn’t the same as casting a magic spell. Maybe she’d done it accidentally. Had her magic wand gone off in her pocket by mistake?
A sudden thought hit her. If her magic had done this to Stan and Ivy, had it also done it to anyone else? She opened a window and stuck her head through it to check.
The ground outside was cold and frosty, glistening in the morning light. She looked up and down, pulling her jacket tightly around her waist. At first everything looked okay.
“Maybe it’s just you two who changed,” she said optimistically, but then a pigeon flew over, landed on the windowsill with a flap, and spoke to her in fluent English.
“Hello,” said the pigeon. Auntie Leilah could have sworn there was lipstick on her beak.
“Hello,” said Auntie Leilah.
“Do you know the way to the library?” asked the pigeon, who was definitely wearing mascara. “I’m meant to be working there today but I seem to have turned into a bird and I’m lost.” The pigeon laughed. “It’s silly really. I normally go there five times a beak—I mean, week—but it all looks so different from a bird’s-eye view!”
Auntie Leilah gave the pigeon directions and watched her fly away.
“Oh dear,” she said. “It looks like it wasn’t just you two after all.”
“It must have been a magic spell that did all this,” said Stan wisely.
“I reckon a wicked witch did it!” said Ivy.
Not a wicked witch, thought Auntie Leilah glumly, just a very silly one.
“Come on,” she said to her niblings. “We should head into town and see how widespread this is.”
As it turned out, it was bigger than she could possibly have imagined.
They walked down the street and over the railway bridge; its rivets twinkled just as the pavement had done in the morning light. A thin layer of frost coated everything and stopped them running to investigate who else had been changed.
They didn’t have to go far to see.
When they reached the high street, Ivy pointed towards the Christmas tree. A girl was standing beneath it trying to kiss her boyfriend, but she had turned into a lizard and her tongue kept whipping out and licking his nose like an ice cream instead. He had also turned into a lizard, and he kept getting his tongue caught in her hair. They tried to kiss a few more times before giving up.
“Two monkeys, one pigeon and two lizards,” said Auntie Leilah aloud, trying to keep a list in mind of all the animal people they came across.
“Two monkeys, one pigeon, two lizards and one gorilla,” said Stan, pointing out an old man sitting outside a pub who was now most definitely a gorilla, rocking back and forth in a chair and scowling at everyone who walked by.
“I wonder if he knows when he turned into a gorilla,” pondered Auntie Leilah to herself. “If I knew that, maybe I could work out when the magic spell started.”
“So it was a magic spell!” said Ivy, looking left and right in case a witch was hiding nearby.
Oh Ivy, thought Auntie Leilah. I’m not hiding at all!
She felt like hiding though. She wanted to run away and hide under her duvet cover, but she knew she needed to face her responsibilities and sort everything out. She went to step forwards when she heard a loud cry from down below: “Hey! Stop! Awooga! Alert!”
She looked down and saw she’d nearly stepped on a poor snail slowly slurping across the icy pavement.
“Sorry,” said Auntie Leilah.
“Sorry Sir,” corrected the snail. “Honestly, I didn’t go to university for nothing: show some respect!”
“Sorry Sir,” said Auntie Leilah, feeling like she was back in uniform and being told off in class.
“That’s better,” said the snail. He looked up at Stan. “You should be at school!” and with that, he slid away.
“I think that was my headmaster, Mr Skelton,” said Stan. “I think he’s going to give me a detention!”
“It looks like everyone’s changed!” said Ivy. “Everyone apart from you, Auntie Leilah! Why is that?”
“It’s probably because I don’t normally live in Normanton but Doncaster instead,” said Auntie Leilah. “The magic must be localised!” She was lying. In truth, she suspected it was her magic wand that had saved her, creating some sort of forcefield around her.
Ivy was right though: everyone else had changed. The teachers were all snails, the teenagers were all lizards, the librarians were all pigeons, the publicans were all gorillas and the young children were all monkeys. It didn’t end there though. The traffic wardens were all seagulls, firefighters were aardvarks, shopkeepers were bees, street cleaners were vicuñas and electricians were flies. They even saw a couple of elephants washing windows with their large trunks. All of them were trying their best not to slip on the shiny ice and were busy going to work or school or meeting friends.
She looked lovingly at her niblings. Stan should have been going to school, but she thought that getting to the bottom of her magical mishap was more important and she needed all the help she could get.
“Okay!” she said, coming to a decision. “If you want to know something, what’s the best thing to do?”
“Ask someone clever,” answered Stan.
“If they didn’t know, what would they do?” asked Auntie Leilah.
“Ask someone clever-er,” said Ivy, “like that snail, Mr Skelton.”
“And,” continued Auntie Leilah, “if Mr Skelton didn’t know, what would he do?”
Stan and Ivy thought about this.
“I’d try to find the answer by looking on a computer,” said Stan, “but you and my teachers always say that not everything you see on the Internet is true.”
“I know what I’d do,” said Ivy. “I’d read it in a book. You told us that books know everything, Auntie Leilah.”
“They do,” said Auntie Leilah with a smile, “and we know that the library is open. Come on, let’s go and find that friendly pigeon.”
The library was back the way they had walked. The railway bridge was still shiny with ice and everywhere they went, there were more animals to see. There were even a dozen donkeys heading to a closeby park.
“We normally deliver the post,” explained one, “but it’s hard to with no fingers so we’ve been given the day off.”
“The park we’re off to is called Haw Hill Park,” explained another. “We thought it sounded like the sort of noise donkeys made, so it’s probably the sort of place donkeys should visit.”
“It probably is,” agreed Auntie Leilah, letting them pass.
It was cold and the icy ground remained sparkly. She could feel her wand when she put her hands in her jacket pockets. She wished she knew a spell to create a book with all the answers, but that’s not how magic worked. She could only create toys or materials she already knew about, and the books she pulled out of her pockets were transported from her bookshelves back home in Doncaster. She was sure she’d never read about a spell like this one before and she’d read all of her books at least twice.
If there was a book with the answer, she reasoned, the library was the best place to find it.
When they got there it was still cold but the heating was on inside. It radiated out from its open doors where someone had hung a sign reading: ‘All animals are welcome here, not just bookworms!’
Perched behind the desk as they entered was the pigeon they’d met that morning. She was reading a large book, carefully turning the pages over with her beak, and wore a lanyard that was nearly as long as her body, with a badge on it which told them her name was Beryl.
“Good to seed—I mean, see—you again!” said Beryl. “Can I help you at all? You helped me this morning, so I’d like to return the favour!”
“We want to know what magic spell is causing all this,” said Auntie Leilah, explaining that she wanted to change it back if she could.
“Oh no!” said Ivy and Stan together.
“I don’t want to change back!” said Stan. “I like being a monkey!” As if to prove it, he scrambled up a dusty bookcase.
“It’s fun,” agreed Ivy. “I love having a tail!” She wrapped it around her neck like a scarf.
“You say that now,” said Auntie Leilah to her niblings, “but what about Christmas Day? You wouldn’t like being a monkey then.”
“Why not?” said Ivy. “I could climb up the Christmas tree!”
“Wait!” gasped Stan, the penny dropping. “Don’t you remember, Ivy? Animals don’t get Christmas presents! I bet they don’t do anything for Christmas!”
“That’s right,” said Auntie Leilah. “No Christmas songs, no Christmas plays, no Christmas cards, no Christmas food, no Christmas films: no Christmas anything!”
Stan leapt down from the bookcase, distressed. “I want to turn back!” he cried. “I want to be human again!”
“Me too! Me too!” said Ivy.
“Follow me,” said Beryl. She ruffled her feathers and flew across the library to a shelf packed full of books with colourful spines. “These books cover spells, rumours, history, occurrences: all sorts! If something’s been written about this magic spell and how to reverse it, it’ll be here.”
“Thank you!” said Auntie Leilah.
“If you find anything, don’t leave me in the perch—I mean, lurch!” said Beryl and she left them to it.
Auntie Leilah leafed through a large volume of magical history and soon lost herself in stories of great witches from the past. She didn’t feel like a great witch; she felt like a pretty lousy one.
“This book here says witches can turn people into frogs!” said Ivy, holding her book aloft.
“Not all witches would do that,” said Auntie Leilah.
“Aren’t witches bright green like frogs?” said Stan, remembering a film he’d seen once. “I haven’t seen anyone bright green recently.”
“Not all witches are green,” said Auntie Leilah.
“You know lots and lots about witches!” said Ivy, and Auntie Leilah decided she’d said too much.
They read in silence for a while, then Stan found something interesting in his book.
“It says here,” he said, “that magic leaves a trace behind, like leaving wet footprints when you walk out of a paddling pool.” He closed the book. “I wonder what this magic left behind.”
That, thought Auntie Leilah, was a very good point! Whenever she used her wand at home to clean up the house, she created a huge whirlwind like a powerful vacuum cleaner that sucked up all the dust and dirt, but it always spluttered out a small pile of ash at the end when it was done which she had to clean up by hand. When she used her wand to make dinner, it chopped and mashed and cooked everything in a magical floating pot, but it always dropped bits of onion peel on the floor when the cooking was completed and the pot and ingredients had disappeared. The bigger the spell, the bigger the mess it made, and the mess always seemed to be related to the spell, like food waste for meals and dirt for cleaning.
She felt in her pockets to see what she could find. There was a pile of pencil shavings from where she’d conjured the books, tack from the materials to make the snowman, fur from the reindeer, but nothing that suggested a spell to turn everybody into animals.
“Is there anything in your book that could help us, Ivy?” asked Auntie Leilah.
“I think so,” said Ivy, showing her the page she was on. It was about the magic you got at different times of year: rainy day spells when it was baking hot in the summer, spooky spells at Hallowe’en, that sort of thing.
“Everybody turning into animals feels like a Christmassy spell to me,” explained Ivy. “Christmas is full of animals like little donkeys and robins and Father Christmas’s reindeer!”
That, thought Auntie Leilah, was another very good point!
Just then, Beryl flew over and asked how they were getting on.
“We’ve breadcrumbs, but no loaf,” said Auntie Leilah. “Many interesting titbits, but no solutions yet.”
“That’s a shame,” said Beryl, “and I’m afraid I’ve got to kick you out onto the streets. I’ve just heard from my manager that all the librarians are going to fly over Normanton to see if we can spot any coos—I mean, clues!”
They left the library and watched Beryl fly away after locking the library doors. It was still dazzling outside and Auntie Leilah had to shield her eyes from the glow of the ice.
“I’m hungry, Auntie Leilah!” said Ivy. “Can we get some food?”
“Of course,” said Auntie Leilah. “What would you like?”
“Bananas please!” said Ivy, hopping up and down on her tail.
“Bananas for me as well!” said Stan, doing a handstand.
“Bananas…” said Auntie Leilah. Something about the word ‘bananas’ rang a tiny little bell inside her head. Why was that?
They started walking and soon Stan noticed something different.
“It’s not slippery anymore,” he said. “The ice has melted!”
“Why is everything still shiny then?” asked Ivy.
Auntie Leilah looked around. Her niblings were right. The ice was gone and they weren’t sliding on the ground, but everything was glistening like it was still icy.
“I wonder why…” thought Auntie Leilah. Could this be another clue? She knelt down to look at the ground and the sparkles there, when suddenly something clicked inside her head and everything made sense!
“I’ve got it!” she declared excitedly. “I know what’s happened!” She turned to Ivy and Stan. “Do you remember your bananas last night? They were weird, weren’t they?”
“Yes,” said Ivy, giggling. “They were all glittery!”
“Exactly!” said Auntie Leilah. “They were glittery, just like all the buildings and floors! We thought everything outside was shining because of the ice, but we were wrong: it was because of the magic! I think the magic spell was so big and Christmassy, it covered everything in glitter!”
“So when we ate the glittery food, it cast a magic spell on us?” asked Stan.
“Yes!” nodded Auntie Leilah. “Do you remember that I brushed some of the glitter out of the window? It must have rained down all over Normanton and turned everybody else into animals, too!”
“You’ve worked it all out!” cheered Stan, impressed. “But how can we change it back?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Auntie Leilah, “but I’m going to need a lot of help.”
“We’ll help!” said Stan and Ivy together.
“Thank you,” said Auntie Leilah, and she gave them instructions. “Go to school and find Mr Skelton, then find Beryl and all the pigeon librarians you can, and ask them all to meet me in Haw Hill Park.”
“Do you know a witch who can help us with the magic spell?” asked Ivy.
“Yes, I do know a witch,” said Auntie Leilah. “I know her very well.” She took a deep breath. Soon it would be time to tell everyone the truth.
By the time Stan and Ivy had found Mr Skelton, Beryl and all the pigeons, Haw Hill Park was overflowing with animals.
“Auntie Leilah spoke to us,” explained one of the donkeys. “She asked us to round everybody up. Because we deliver the mail every day we know all the streets and houses where everyone in Normanton lives. We found them all and took them here.”
“You’ve done a great job,” said Mr Skelton approvingly.
Stan and Ivy looked for Auntie Leilah. It took them a while, squeezing past firefighter aardvarks and in-between vicuña street cleaners, but eventually they found her. She looked nervous.
“I hear bird—I mean, I hear word—that you have a plan,” said Beryl.
“I do,” said Auntie Leilah, “but first I have a confession to make. You see, the truth is… I’m secretly a witch!”
Beryl cocked her head to one side with curiosity, and Ivy and Stan gasped. Was she telling the truth? Was Auntie Leilah really a witch?
“Preposterous!” said Mr Skelton. “I don’t believe it!”
“I’ll prove it!” said Auntie Leilah. She took her magic wand out of her jacket pocket and muttered a magic spell. With a shimmer of energy, it stopped being invisible.
“And for my next trick…” continued Auntie Leilah. She tapped it onto the grass below and everybody watched in wonder as it turned red, orange, yellow and all the other colours of the rainbow. She reached into her pocket again and pulled out a tuning fork. She tapped it with her magic wand and it played a loud and clear note which the blades of colourful grass hummed back until Haw Hill Park was full of music.
“You see?” said Auntie Leilah.
“It’s still preposterous,” said Mr Skelton, “but I believe you now: you really are a witch!”
Stan and Ivy looked at each other. It all made sense: the magic pockets, the fact Auntie Leilah knew so much about witches, all the amazing things she’d shown them. They’d always joked she was magical, but it turned out she really was!
“What’s your plan?” asked Ivy.
“I’m going to go up into the sky and cast a whirlwind just like when I clean up at home,” said Auntie Leilah. “It’ll slurp up all the magic glitter like it’s eating spaghetti and that will change everyone back.” She turned to Mr Skelton. “I’ll need you to gather everybody into one place, please. You have authority and everybody will listen to you.”
“I’ll get on it right away!” said Mr Skelton. He slid off, barking orders.
“How are you going to get into the sky?” asked Stan. “Do you have a broomstick?”
“No,” said Auntie Leilah, “but I do have pigeons! Beryl, can you and your colleagues carry me up into the sky?”
“Well I feather—I mean, never!” said Beryl. “I never thought we could be so helpful! Of course we’ll carry you!”
“Perfect!” said Auntie Leilah.
She looked at her magic wand as she waited for Mr Skelton to do his job. She’d worked out what had happened the night before. Because she’s been so excited about Christmas and trying to impress her niblings with festive things, her wand had created a spell that was as silly and fun as it could imagine. It had probably turned Stan and Ivy into monkeys because they were so cheeky and liked bananas!
She looked around at all the animals. Her wand was correct: the spell was silly and fun, but it was time now to put everything back to normal.
“We’re ready!” cried Mr Skelton at last.
“So are we,” said Beryl.
Everyone wished them good luck, even the lifeguards from the leisure centre. They’d turned into octopuses and they waved their tentacles from the duck pond, which confused the ducks.
“You can do this, Auntie Leilah!” said Stan and Ivy.
“Here goes nothing…” said Auntie Leilah.
She held out her arms. The flock of librarians grabbed bits of her trousers and jacket in their beaks and with great effort and a lot of flapping, they lifted her up into the sky. Auntie Leilah ascended above the trees and telegraph poles until she came to rest just beneath the clouds. Carefully, she used her wand to cast the cleaning spell she used at home. The sky shuddered and rippled and from it burst forth a whirlwind. It loomed over Normanton and then took the world’s deepest breath.
Instantly, all the glitter on the ground below shot up into the sky. It whizzed through the air into the whirlwind where it disappeared into nothingness. There was glitter from the gutters, glitter from the tarmac, glitter from the bathrooms, glitter from everywhere glitter could be. It flowed like a beautiful river straight into the whirlwind until finally there was no glitter left.
“Burp!” belched the whirlwind and it vanished, depositing a large heap of ash which the street cleaner vicuñas below quickly cleaned away.
They’d only just finished when they started shimmering, like when you see air wobble on a hot day. They shimmered some more and—POP! They stopped being vicuñas and turned back into humans.
POP! So did all the monkeys, including Stan and Ivy.
POP! So did all the snail teachers, lifeguard octopuses and publican gorillas.
POP! The fly electricians, too.
POP! And, suddenly, so did all the pigeons.
“Uh-oh,” said Auntie Leilah. “I hadn’t thought about that…”
Instantly, the librarians and Auntie Leilah started tumbling out of the sky, hurtling towards the rainbow-coloured grass below as the final animals turned back into humans as well.
“Don’t get into a flap!” cried Beryl over the sound of her colleagues’ screams. “I’m sure we can think of something!”
But Auntie Leilah couldn’t think of anything. She couldn’t fly, that’s why she’d needed the pigeons! What was she going to do? The ground approached them rapidly, when something wonderful greeted her eyes. She may have not had a plan, but her niblings had.
As soon as they’d turned back into humans, they’d worked out what was going to happen to the pigeons and they’d run over to the firefighter aardvarks.
“Have you got one of those big sheets you use when people jump out of buildings?” Stan had asked.
“You mean a life net?” one of the firefighters had answered. “Of course we do!”
“Quickly!” Ivy had said. “We need to catch the librarians and Auntie Leilah when they fall!”
They’d found their largest life net and now everyone in Haw Hill Park was stretching it as far as they could.
“Thank you!” said Auntie Leilah as she and the librarians landed on it and gently bounced onto the rainbow grass like they were disembarking from a large trampoline.
“You did it, Auntie Leilah!” said Ivy. “You saved Normanton!”
Everybody cheered and danced and the grass started singing a celebratory song.
“Oh dear,” said Mr Skelton as he looked at his pocket watch. “I’d better get back to school!”
“We need to tidy up the libraries,” said Beryl. “Thank you again, for everything!”
They left and so did everybody else, back to their homes and jobs until Auntie Leilah and her niblings were the only ones in Haw Hill Park.
“Thank you for saving me,” said Auntie Leilah.
“Thank you for changing us all back!” said Stan. “But why did you never tell us you were a witch?”
“I thought you might think I was a wicked witch, like the ones you talked about earlier,” said Auntie Leilah.
Ivy just laughed. “We’d never think that! You’re too nice!”
Auntie Leilah smiled. She loved her niblings and they clearly loved her back, whether she was a witch or not.
“Can we go home?” asked Ivy. “I’m cold.”
“Of course we can,” said Auntie Leilah. “I can sort out the weather though…” She took out her wand and used it to part the clouds above. A ray of sunshine shone down and landed straight on Ivy, who felt nice and warm.
“You’re full of good ideas,” said Ivy.
“Speaking of ideas, what would you like to do tonight?” Auntie Leilah asked her niblings.
“I’m going to write my Christmas list,” said Stan. “I’m going to ask Father Christmas to get presents for all the animals as well as all the humans. I don’t think it matters who you are: Christmas should be for everybody who wants it, even if you are a cheeky monkey!”
“That,” said Auntie Leilah, “sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
And with that, they walked home.
The End
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