Springing the Witch

For the first time ever, Miss-Teeq regretted she wasn’t a ‘feline’ familiar. Trying to conduct a rescue mission on four stubby little polecat legs was proving to be more difficult than she’d anticipated. Getting chased by a bulldog when she was running with a Christmas tree fairy was bad enough; not chomping down and biting off the fairy’s arm with her pointy little polecat teeth was nearly impossible, especially when she kept tripping over the fairy’s hot-pink skirts. She couldn’t help sniggering, emitting a polecat ‘chuff’. Mab loathed pink.

Miss-Teeq managed to lose the bulldog and reached the edge of a park as the sun was rising. She laid the fairy down under a tree and scrabbled through a hole in the roots where she’d left a box with the counter-spell to turn the fairy back into her witch companion, Mab. Life was proving lonely without her, and she really needed someone to clear the cottage floor of insect legs and wings, not to mention other unpleasant things that crawled in during the winter months.

Miss-Teeq carefully lifted the lid from the box and sprinkled the contents over the fairy. Light exploded and, suddenly, there was Mab, back to her normal witchy self.

Mab sat up, bleary eyed, and squinted in the warm morning light. Mab frowned. “Miss-Teeq, why is it snowing?”

“Snowing, mistress?”

Mab’s frown deepened to a scowl. “What mischief is this? It’s bad enough that they dressed me in a pink dress. Now they’ve turned the snow pink too!”

“Erm,” said Miss-Teeq, “Pink, mistress?”

Mab blinked and rubbed her eyes. “Wait a minute, that’s cherry blossom! You left me as a fairy for four months?”

Miss-Teeq pursed her polecat lips and wrinkled her nose until the tips of her right whiskers touched her left cheek and the tips of her left ones tickled her right cheek. “Hmm,” she said, “Actually…” she whimpered, “It was more like sixteen months.”

“Sixteen!” roared Mab. 

“Well, it took a while to track down the counter-spell… Hepzibah, er jealous. Whizzbang you know. Then lockdown…” The glare from Mab silenced her.

“Nyx’s knickers!”