Granny Magic, Page 5

  But things only started to seem seriously strange when Will stopped at Ben’s house to welcome him home from his holiday.

  ‘No cake?’ asked Will. The Knittington Bake-Off was coming up, and Ben’s dad loved baking. He usually went crazy for it.

  ‘No,’ said Ben. There was a package of pink wafers on the kitchen table. Ben picked it up and turned it over slowly, as if he’d never seen biscuits in a package before.

  ‘Remember last year?’ asked Will.

  Ben laughed. ‘That was epic!’ There’d been three practice cakes in a row.

  ‘What’s he making this year?’

  ‘He’s not entering,’ said Ben, still staring at the pink wafers. ‘Said he couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Will. He found himself staring at the pink wafers too. He wished he hadn’t asked.

  Will went home by the pavement instead of the back garden, and heard a rustle of paper as he opened the front door. Someone had pushed a bunch of flyers through the letter box. Will stepped back out on to the path and scooped the papers up from the hall floor. (His magic jumper was making him very helpful.) He might as well drop them in the recycling as long as he was here at the front. He had just lifted the lid to the recycling bin when he glanced down at the flyers in his hand.

  Fitchet & Ferret, said the flyer on top. Where 1% wool makes all the difference. Come to our Grand Opening!

  Will put the bin lid down. He slid the top flyer aside to see the next one.

  Are you looking for a special jumper? it said. One that makes you feel alive? Come to the grand opening of Fitchet & Ferret. We’ll make all your dreams come true.

  The third one just said, Fitchet & Ferret. You’ll never get enough.

  Suddenly, in spite of his magic jumper, Will shivered.

  That evening Holly came to babysit for them.

  ‘Right!’ she said as the front door closed behind Mum and Dad. She thumped her purple rucksack down on the kitchen table and pulled a pair of binoculars out of it. ‘Can we get out on to your roof?’ she asked.

  Will blinked.

  ‘Not easily,’ he said. ‘But Sophie and I both have our rooms on the top floor, and you can see quite a lot from up there.’

  ‘I want a view of the factory.’

  Sophie’s room looked down on the tiny front gardens, where there were bicycles and wheelie bins and ivy, and every house looked the same. But Will’s room looked out over the back gardens, where everything was different. From up here you could see trampolines and gazebos and sheds; a vegetable patch, a bee hive, and a chicken coop; a tent, a canoe and a cider press. You could see the striped flowers in Arthur and Rosie’s garden, Mr Wade’s miniature village with a train going round the edge, and Olive and Annie’s hedgehog hospital. Right now, the Pingles were shooting longbows, the Riders were photographing their fossil collection, and down at the end, the morris dancers were rehearsing.

  ‘Ah,’ said Holly, focusing. ‘Better view here. I live at Gran’s farm, just on the edge of town, and I can’t see anything but the abbey steeple from our roof. You can see the mills here, between the trees.’

  ‘There’s a good view from the roof of The Knittery too,’ said Will. ‘Hortense can see into some of the factory windows.’

  ‘I know,’ said Holly. ‘But she doesn’t look often enough.’

  ‘Can we play a game?’ asked Sophie.

  Holly put the glasses down. ‘How about you show me a game and I’ll show you one?’

  ‘Cronk says we should play Fluff-in-the-Faddle.’

  Will looked across the passage into Sophie’s room. The cat was sitting like a sphinx on Sophie’s bed, his yellow eyes closed, and his strong legs tucked under him. Cronk had no tail, because he was a sort of cat that doesn’t, but he was nearly always lying down, so it didn’t show.

  ‘It looks to me like Cronk’s asleep,’ said Will. ‘In fact, he’s pretty much always asleep, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘I’m sure Cronk knows what he’s talking about,’ said Holly. ‘You know, we used to play Fluff-in-the-Faddle with my gran too.’

  ‘Really?’ said Will. He’d thought their gran had invented it.

  The faddles were bags full of fluffy sheep’s wool that Gran had let them play with because it wasn’t a kind of wool that was good for spinning. Holly spread it on to the grass and the branches in the back garden, just like Gran used to do. Then Sophie and Will raced to see who could fill their bag first, and because Will was wearing his magic jumper, he let Sophie win.

  ‘Now,’ said Holly. ‘Want to try my skipping rope?’ She pulled a length of thin rope out of her bag.

  Will pulled a face at first, but then he looked more closely. ‘Did you knit a skipping rope?’

  ‘Sort of crocheted,’ she said. ‘Yes, and it’s a Holly Original. My own invention.’

  ‘Can you do that?’ asked Will. ‘I mean, just invent your own pattern?’

  ‘Do you mean am I capable or am I allowed? Yes, not really, though I didn’t actually ask.’

  ‘Let’s skip!’ said Sophie.

  They went out to the road in front of the terrace and Holly handed them each an end.

  ‘Really?’ said Will. He didn’t want to be seen playing with a skipping rope in front of the whole street.

  ‘I guarantee you, you are going to be the coolest kid in a half-mile radius in less than ten minutes,’ she said.

  She showed them how to turn the rope in big sweeping circles, and then she jumped into the middle. Wwsh-skat, wwsh-skat, went the rope. Bounce-jump, bounce-jump, went Holly, spinning in a circle as she skipped, looking all around the neighbourhood.

  ‘Keep it up.’ Wwsh-skat. ‘Shouldn’t be long now.’ Bounce-jump.

  ‘Hey! Can we play?’ It was Isabelle and Robyn.

  ‘Sure!’ said Holly. ‘Jump on in!’

  ‘Can we have a turn?’ It was Olive and Annie.

  ‘Geronimo!’ Holly jumped out of the way as Rafi and his brothers leapt through the rope. Sophie squealed with laughter.

  Suddenly it seemed like the funnest thing in the world. More and more children were running into the street. ‘Can we play?’ Holly made everyone queue, beaming with smugness and directing the crowd with a nod of her head while she swung the rope round. It was like a fun magnet, and the longer it went on, the funner it got. Rafi and his brothers started doing breakdance moves while they jumped, and instantly everyone was trying it. Ruby started doing cartwheels through the ropes and soon even Will was doing them.

  Eventually mums and dads came out of front doors, looking for the younger ones. Holly had to drop the skipping rope and wind it up before they would go away.

  ‘Does that have Magic Wool in it?’ asked Will when they got back inside.

  ‘Just a skrinsh,’ said Holly, holding up two fingers pinched close together. ‘I made it when I started at the big school and I was afraid no one would want to play with me.’

  ‘Did you steal the wool?’ asked Will.

  ‘No!’ said Holly in a voice like a screech owl. ‘I’d been helping my gran with a big charity knit, and she said I could have some wool from her cupboard as a reward – anything I wanted. I could feel that the sparkly wool was special, so I took some.’

  ‘Didn’t any of them notice?’

  ‘Oh they flipped when they clocked it! Especially your gran. That’s why I had to make another Harkening Jumper, and then another. They’re all afraid of inventing new patterns. It’s even worse now that Gertie’s gone. They won’t make anything she didn’t teach them. And she didn’t teach them half of what she knew.’

  ‘Stories!’ said Sophie.

  ‘As soon as you’ve brushed your teeth!’ said Holly, following Sophie up the stairs. ‘Something spooked your gran, I think,’ she said to Will over her shoulder. ‘Something made her scared to break the rules, or to tell anybody anything.’

  Will brushed his teeth then went into Sophie’s room and sat on the floor. ‘So then the dragon came up behind Princess Ho
lly,’ Sophie was saying. ‘It opened its hot, burning, flaming teeth, and it was about to eat her! Your turn.’

  ‘But the princess had Seven-League Boots on,’ said Holly. ‘And so she just took one step and she was seven leagues away!’

  ‘How far is seven leagues?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Thirty-five kilometres,’ said Holly. ‘So the dragon couldn’t catch her no matter how fast he was flying, because she’d just take a few steps in her magic boots and she’d be all the way in Helsinki! The End!’

  They left the light on in the hallway for Sophie and tiptoed back to Will’s window for a last look at the factory.

  ‘I can see him,’ said Holly. ‘He’s on the roof! Oh, ick! He’s got binoculars too. I think he’s looking at The Knittery!’ She handed Will the glasses and shivered. ‘Ugh, ugh, ugh! That’s so creepy!’

  Will took the glasses and pointed them down the hill. Sure enough, there was Jasper Fitchet standing on the roof of the old Woolman Mill, with binoculars hooked over his small sharp nose.

  ‘He is up to something seriously wonky!’ said Holly. ‘Whatever the grans say, we should be doing something about it.’

  Will thought so too. But he didn’t know what. And he didn’t know what it would take to get the grans on side.

  ‘Can I go to The Knittery?’ asked Will when he came down for breakfast the next morning. The kitchen table was covered with papers, and Mum had her glasses on. She was biting both her lips, so her mouth looked like a thin crack. ‘Are those Gran’s things?’ asked Will, seeing the flowery address book.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘I’m trying to finish up all of Gran’s paperwork.’

  ‘Can I help?’ asked Will.

  Mum smiled and pulled Will close, kissing the side of his head. ‘Actually, there is something you could do,’ she said. She pushed Gran’s laptop computer across the table. ‘See if you can get into Gran’s email. I can’t work out the password, but you’re so clever with these things.’ She went to check on Sophie.

  Will opened the computer and logged in as Gran. The password was just Will and Sophie’s names. Easy-peasy. It felt funny going into someone else’s computer, but if it was to help Mum and Dad, it must be OK.

  Hmm. Would it also be OK if it helped the grans? If it helped all of them? Maybe there would be something here that might explain what was going on . . .

  He looked at Gran’s search history first. There were links to websites about knitting and the Isle of Man. He looked through some of them. Then he opened a folder called ‘Photos’. They were mostly of Will and Sophie, but there was one of Gran herself. She was standing in a village of small white cottages, next to the craziest sheep Will had ever seen. It had four horns: two that curled down and two that stuck up. Now he thought about it, it looked an awful lot like his knitted pocket-sheep.

  He clicked back on to one of the Isle of Man websites. There were pictures of the same kind of sheep. Manx Loaghtan sheep, they were called. Manx meant ‘from the Isle of Man’, Will remembered. Cronk was a Manx cat.

  Gran’s email inbox had only a handful of messages. The parish newsletter; something from the Woodlands Trust; an alert about a sale at a craft shop. And then there was one from NO REPLY, that was called URGENT. He clicked.

  To all members of the Knitwork: A Rogue Knitter is at large in Great Britain. This Rogue is known to have offered magic knitwear for sale to athletes wishing to cheat in competitions, and to students seeking an unfair advantage in exams. He appears intent on innovation, in violation of all codes on the ethical use of Magic Wool. He is especially skilled in computerized knitting. If members spot anything suspicious, please contact the Knitwork by the usual means as soon as possible.

  Reminder: The Golding Dawn begins at 5:33 a.m. on 25th August. Fleece pick-up as scheduled. Mum’s the word when it comes to your herd.

  Will stared. He started reading the note over again but before he’d got halfway through, it vanished from the screen. It was like an invisible hand had deleted it.

  Will swallowed. With sweating hands he grabbed a notepad from the pile of papers and, scrawling as quickly as he could, wrote down everything he could remember of the message, especially the date and time of ‘The Golding Dawn’, whatever that was.

  He stopped writing. All at once, he remembered being out with Gran in a moonlit meadow in the middle of a summer’s night. It was so long ago that she was carrying him. She gave him fruit pastilles and they watched the dawn. It was some kind of game. She asked him to look hard at the sheep, to see if he could see any of them sparkling gold. He didn’t know where or when it had been. And sadly, he was pretty sure he hadn’t seen any sheep turning gold.

  ‘Did you get in?’ asked Mum, coming back into the kitchen.

  ‘Er – yes,’ said Will.

  ‘Brilliant!’ She came and stood behind Will’s chair. ‘Anything important?’ Will typed the password in and got the screen to open up again. But the email had definitely disappeared.

  ‘Just stuff about knitting,’ said Will. But knitting, he now knew, could be very important.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ said Mum, as Will got up from the chair. ‘That’s a big help.’

  It has to be him, Will thought, swallowing a bite of boiled egg without tasting it. Jasper Fitchet is the Rogue Knitter.

  Will was at The Knittery as soon as it opened, but he’d only taken one step into the shop before Jun-Yu called out, ‘Stop!’

  The floor looked like one of Sophie’s giant finger paintings, but instead of swirls of paint, it was made with swirls of coloured yarn. The Knittery had been ransacked. Will felt like he was seeing someone’s insides.

  ‘Oh, my giddy aunt!’ said Dorcas, who had come in behind him.

  ‘Crikey!’ said Matilda, who came in next. ‘This is a rum do, isn’t it?’

  ‘Flaming Nora!’ said Ivy. ‘It looks like someone set an animal loose in here!’

  ‘Sabotage!’ said Hortense. ‘That twoccer’s after our Magic Wool!’

  ‘Should we ring the Old Bill?’ asked Matilda.

  ‘If you mean the police, they’ve been and gone,’ said Jun-Yu. ‘They think I’m batty, of course. I told them it was ferrets.’

  ‘Well, let’s not just stand here,’ said Matilda, looking from the floor to the empty cubicles on the walls.

  ‘Many hands make light work,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Sound action sta-tions!’ called Hortense. ‘We shall beat to quar-ters!’

  ‘Last one done’s an old brown mule!’ said Ivy.

  They spent the next hour sorting the wool back into its colour-coded niches. Three skeins of sparkly pink yarn were missing, but it wasn’t Magic Wool. ‘It’s the stuff people use for making Anna and Elsa mittens,’ Ivy snorted. Four skeins of Soay sheep wool from Scotland were also gone, ‘which is closer to the mark, and hurts in the purse,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘But they didn’t find the real stash!’ said Hortense.

  ‘Well, of course they didn’t!’ said Jun-Yu.

  The last few bits of Magic Wool owned by the Gang of Grans were wrapped in lavender-scented tea towels, which were packed in a picnic hamper, which was locked in a cedar chest, which was shut in the loft.

  ‘Still, I’m all joppity-joppity, and that’s the truth,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘It’s worse than you think,’ said Will. He told them everything he could remember from the email.

  ‘Oh. My. Word,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Tea,’ said Jun-Yu. ‘Nice hot tea, all round.’ She went into the kitchen.

  ‘And you say it finished with a date in August?’ asked Ivy.

  ‘And the time of sunrise,’ said Will. ‘I think that’s what the Golding Dawn is. I think the fleece turns gold then. And I found all sorts of links to websites for the Isle of Man. We were going to go on holiday with Gran there this year.’

  ‘Were you, now?’ said Dorcas.

  ‘And you’d have been there on this date?’ asked Ivy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Will. ‘Next week
.’

  ‘We always thought it was Scotland,’ said Hortense.

  ‘She brought us back that cracking shortbread,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Not to mention the Drambuie!’ said Ivy.

  ‘But not last time, remember? Was it three years ago? When she got Cronk,’ said Matilda.

  ‘That’s right. She brought us kippers,’ said Ivy.

  ‘And cake. Bonnag, was it called?’ asked Matilda

  ‘Bonnag, yes, that was it,’ said Dorcas. ‘I meant to look up a recipe, but I forgot.’

  Hortense pulled out a phone, quickly tapping and swiping. ‘Look!’ she said, turning the screen around for the rest to see. ‘Bonnag is a cake from the Isle of Man!’

  ‘Well, pour me in a greased tin and bake me for an hour!’ said Ivy.

  Rattling teacups clattered in the silence as Jun-Yu came in with a tea tray. ‘What did I miss?’

  ‘Bonnag,’ said Ivy.

  ‘Well, I have scones,’ said Jun-Yu, looking annoyed.

  ‘It comes from the Isle of Man,’ said Dorcas.

  ‘Where Cronk came from,’ said Matilda.

  ‘Where Gertie was going on holiday with Will and Sophie next week,’ said Hortense.

  Jun-Yu put the tray down. ‘Oh, my,’ she said. ‘I see.’ Then she straightened up and put her hands on her hips. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘So, do we go?’

  ‘To the Isle of Man? Oh, happy day!’ said Ivy, pulling on her plaits as if to keep herself from floating away.

  ‘It was Gertie’s research,’ said Hortense. ‘We have to continue the work.’

  ‘And if we’re right, it might be our one chance to get Magic Wool for a whole year,’ said Matilda.

  ‘But we have no idea where or how to gather this fleece,’ said Jun-Yu, shaking her head. She took her hands off her hips and sat down. ‘The Knitwork can’t expect us to act when they have all the information and we have none. Surely they’ll have someone else on it.’