Episode 8: Sascha Martin's Pitchy Witch Part Four

If you’ve followed Mary-Alice, then, of course, you must recall, that she accidentally jousted with a knight, and made him fall,

having previously visited a villa in the light, then a hut filled up with people, and their animals, at night.

Or perhaps that was a dark age, and it wasn’t night at all.

Now the broom has raised her up, and once again she has to fall.

It’s a cause of no surprise, and as before, so now again, she’s illumined on the where, but in the dark about the when.

Spinning hard above the isthmus, both its passengers adept at hanging on by now, the broom took off as usual, and swept above the ground.

The change was striking.

No more lake of muddy brown. No more little wooden castle, but a proper little town, with a single, skinny street and crooked houses piled up high, and across the gap were many lines of washing out to dry.

Could the town, perhaps, include a place to stop and have a bite?

Mary-Alice briefly hoped, but not a yellow arch in sight.

But down below, a crowd had gathered, fingers pointing in the air, and she would have loved to bask in this attention, to be fair.

But the broom was on a mission through the middle of the town, weaving stomach-heaving up and veering vomitously down, between the tenements that seemed to lean together overhead, snagging every bit of washing line as on and on it sped, till all the lines and all the washing flapped behind them as they flew, like a snapping, slapping garment snake alight with every hue.

Stolen clothes recalled to Mary A. the Gobbly Goo affair, and she whispered her apologies to all the people there.

Some were gaping in amazement, some were cowering in fright, some were calling out, ‘Befana!’ and she hissed at them with spite.

‘No, you’re wrong again! Incredible! Your ears are made of cloth!’ And she showered them with syllables of disrespect and wrath.

But the witnesses stood blinking in the cold dust and the soot.

When the little witch had passed them, then they followed her on foot.

But she was silent now, absorbed within her own impending doom, as a mega-building loomed ahead.

She had to turn the broom!

So, for a blink, she closed her eyes, and tried to see the cards she’d read, and the words of one instruction just exploded in her head: ‘Loop the loop!’ she yelled.

The broom performed exactly as designed, but she really wished it hadn’t, as her stomach fell behind, and now she levelled out, no safer than before, just feeling sick,

still on target for the building where she’d splatter in a tick.

‘Broom,’ she started … just to falter into silence, at the sight of the door of solid timber banded up with metal, tight, and instead, she braced for impact …

But the door flew open wide, so the broom and Mary-Alice and the washing flew inside.

In her path, a man stood paling, wearing worsted and concern, and his woolly, long and flowing garment tripped him on the turn.

Mary-Alice cast her eyes about for details.

Her research left her possibly persuaded that she may be in a church, with lots of crosses, columns, angels, but a striking lack of pews.

Where did people put their bottoms?

But there wasn’t time to muse.

She was tearing through the middle of the church.

Perhaps the nave?

Up ahead, around the altar, figures leapt as if to save the many bowls inlaid with treasure, and the goblets made of gold, and the candlesticks of silver, precious metals cast and rolled, a ton of glittering and shiny stuff, a veritable hoard.

It was clear to Mary-Alice they could easily afford some decent fashions, if they only had a modicum of taste.

As it was, they just looked frumpy, she reflected, as she raced in haste between them, and the washing swirled and swept the treasure up,

every shining candelabra, every gem-encrusted cup, and now the broom took cat and cargo and the sooty, screaming blonde, through a smashing stained glass window to the open air beyond.

But its flight was soon arrested by a washing line that caught upon a gargoyle, or an angel, or a saint, and pulled them taut.

The momentum swung them up and back, as physics said it should. Mary-Alice hoped they’d clear the roof, but didn’t think they would.

But the snag was broken suddenly and, freed of one despair, Mary-Alice rose with rising consternation through the air.

The building fell away below her, slipping madly out of sight, as they looped, with Mary-Alice upside down and hanging tight, raining ornaments and treasure on the people on the ground, who were chanting now, ‘Befana!’ And she cursed them for the sound.

Then she couldn’t see a thing, and thought the cat had blocked her eyes.

But of course, it was the darkness, then the light, and no surprise …

Mary-Alice groaned.

The cat released a sympathetic growl.

Then they plunged again, their voices twinned, as ever, in a howl.

Here we leave our flying hero, who’s a little Robin Hood.

Will the wealth she’s redistributed repay her any good?

In her sooty heart, she’s hoping to be somehow reconsigned to the glamour and refinement of the Landfill in her mind.

But she knows she’s just returning to that strange, appalling shore, and it never, ever wants to be the way it was before.

To be con-con-con-continued.