Bewitching by Alex Flinn Read Free Book Online Page B

third, a tenth child. Perhaps little Miranda tried to tell them what had truly happened, but her voice was too small, and too late.
    They showed up in a pack, with nooses. I knew there would be no trial, least of all a fair one. I only thanked Providence they had not brought torches.
    “Run!” I told Charlie. “Do not look back, and if anyone asks, tell them only that you escaped an evil witch who would have baked you into gingerbread. Do not mention your sister. They will not believe you. Or they will think you a wizard too.”
    This time, he listened. At least, I think he did, for he left. They came moments later.
    They hanged me. It hurt, but I did not die. The next morning, as the sun rose, I felt a crow, pecking, pecking at the rope around my neck.
    And that was how I came to leave England. The bird turned out to be my friend, Lucinda. She advised me to travel. I did, first to Scotland (where I met the witches who had inspired Shakespeare’s Macbeth ), later to Spain and Italy, Greece, and eventually France, where I lived many years. Lucinda showed me how I too might change to a bird to escape, a useful skill.
    I never saw Charlie again.
    That’s another thing about witches.
    We are often lonely.
    And so, to alleviate my loneliness and to honor the vow I made in the gingerbread house, I’ve made it my life’s work to help people. There are many who do so, using their own special talents for reading, baking, or envelope stuffing. I try to use my own talent for witchcraft. Unfortunately, as you might have noticed in this story of the gingerbread children, using my talent sometimes backfires. Actually, my failures kind of outnumber my successes. Over the years, I’ve been banished from more countries than most people ever see. For this reason, I have learned to choose my victims—er, people I help—carefully.
    It’s hard for me to make friends. People don’t, I am surprised to say, usually like me, and those who do tend to grow old and die. I haven’t had a real friend in many years.
    I can change my looks at will. I’ve used magic to stay young and pretty, the way other people use Botox, and I’ve found it easiest to stay in school as much as possible. I don’t need school, of course. I can make the necessities of life from thin air, and after all these years, the curriculum is a bit dull. (Can you imagine taking Algebra Two more than once?) This is particularly true of history, as I’ve lived it. It irks me how often the books get it wrong, and reading Shakespeare is dull when one has seen it performed in the great theaters of Europe (though, for reasons I will perhaps explain later, I was unable to see the great Sarah Bernhardt when she was in France). Even the people are, for the most part, boring. The school queen who thinks she’s one of a kind would be surprised to learn she is one of a million, and bullies have plagued every generation. But teenagers make good companions. Absorbed as they are in their own worries, they tend not to notice me much.
    And, occasionally, I find, if not a friend, a deserving (or not so deserving) soul who needs my magical assistance. Or correction.
    Like now. There is a girl named Emma. She lives in Miami, and I’ve had my eye on her for quite a while. She’s had some problems involving a member of her family, her stepsister. I’d like to help her out, but first, I have to decide if she’s worth the risk.
    Her story? Well, here it is.

1

    My mother, in her sweet way, always reminded me that Daddy wasn’t my real father. “Be on your best behavior, Emma,” she’d said since I was old enough to remember. “He could ditch us anytime.” Sooo comforting. I don’t know why she said those things. Maybe she was jealous. True, Daddy and I looked nothing alike. He was tall and slim, blond and hazel-eyed, while I was short and clumsy with frizzy hair the color of rats. Yet on days like this one, as we sat across from each other at Swenson’s Ice Cream, it seemed