Cargill Ghostly Getaway

1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-78895-464-8
Verlag: Little Tiger Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 224 Seiten

Reihe: Diary of an Accidental Witch

Monday 17th January It's finally time for the school trip! And we're off to the SPOOKIEST castle I have EVER seen! Bea Black is in her second term at witch school and she can't wait for the Year Seven residential trip to the haunted Cadabra Castle. The students are excited to fly around the famous GO pitch, explore the ancient turrets and have a magical time ... if they can just stop arguing! Except Ms Sparks has other plans - this isn't a holiday, it's a team-building exercise for a class who desperately need to learn to work together. But with rumours of a ghost terrorizing the castle, Bea has a lot more to contend with than scavenger hunts and hikes! Not least being paired up with Blair Smith-Smythe, her ULTIMATE frenemy! Will the class learn anything from their time at Cadabra? And more importantly, will Bea and Blair manage to avoid hexing each other for long enough to solve the spooky mystery? A perfect potion of magic and mischief, DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL WITCH is THE WORST WITCH meets TOM GATES. PRAISE FOR DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL WITCH: 'Great fun!' - iPaper 'Full of magical mayhem!' - BookTrust 'A magical adventure that will touch your heart and tickle your funny bone.' - Maz Evans, author of WHO LET THE GODS OUT 'A brilliant, hilarious story!' - Emma Carroll, author of THE WEEK AT WORLD'S END

Honor and Perdita Cargill are a daughter/mother writing partnership and the authors of WAITING FOR CALLBACK and DIARY OF AN ACCIDENTAL WITCH. Originally from the Scottish Highlands, Perdita spent many years as a barrister before turning to writing fiction. Honor, having recently graduated from Oxford, is working on fiction and non-fiction writing projects while studying for a Masters at The Courtauld Institute. They both live in London.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cargill, Honor and Perdita

Weitere Mitwirkende

Saunders, Katie

Leseproben

“Let’s start today with a fun little challenge,” says Miss Lupo, disappearing inside a big cupboard in the corner of the room labelled Very Peculiar Teaching Aids for the Modern Witch. “Found it!” She emerges with a ta-da and drops a very realistic-looking model of a hand on the table in the middle of the room. “EEEEEEEEEUGH!” say Amara and Winnie and me. “YUCK!” say Raven and Li and Izzi. “What are we meant to do with that?” asks Puck. Fabi is peering at it very closely. “There’s a cut on its finger.” “Is that real blood, miss?” Hunter asks. “Don’t be ridiculous,” says Miss Lupo briskly. “It’s teaching blood and what you’re going to do with Hand –” she looked at the thing fondly – “is heal it.” “But we don’t know how to do that,” Izzi protests. “Then put your heads together and figure it out. I’m sure you’ll get there in the end if you work together nicely.” (Miss Lupo doesn’t sound sure.) “There’s a box of fresh spiderwebs on the shelf. I’ll be back in twenty minutes to see how it’s going. Good luck.” And then she just leaves! I don’t think we did very well on the “fun little challenge”… We all stared at Hand for a few minutes and then Blair decided to take charge. “I know how to do it. Everyone needs to stand back.” She cleared her throat. “Webs of spiders, shells of snails, blood of bats and legs of logs—” “Er,” Winnie cut in, “it would be legs of frogs. Obviously. Except that we’re only meant to be using webs.” “You can’t PROVE logs don’t have legs.” Blair wasn’t backing down. “But it’s cruel to use bats’ blood.” Polly was nearly in tears. “It’s worse to use frogs’ legs!” I said, covering Stan’s little ears. And just like that, the class was in uproar! Hunter was arguing with Li, and Raven was arguing with Fabi, and Blair was still arguing with Winnie. A large family of snails was trying to evacuate the classroom as quickly as possible,* Puck was hanging upside down from the ceiling, pretending to be a sloth, and Izzi had knocked over a cauldron full of something green and slimy. It was CHAOS!!! “WAIT!” I shouted so loudly that everyone stopped arguing and turned to stare at me. “Where’s Hand??” “It’s on the—” Blair stopped. Hand was definitely NOT on the table any more. “Aiieeeeeee!” squealed Polly, pointing with a shaky finger at Hand, which was waving from a high shelf. Izzi screamed and jumped on a desk. “It’s alive!” “It’s not alive.” Hunter rolled his eyes. “It’s just a stupid model.” At that, Hand leaped down and landed with a SLAAAAPPPPPP on Hunter’s desk. “AHHHHHHH – it is alive!!!” he screamed. Broomsticks! Hand was clearly very annoyed now. It was hopping all over the room – pulling books off shelves, hurling sheets of homework out of the window, tugging plaits and ponytails and spraying ‘blood’ EVERYWHERE! “Oh dear,” said a horribly familiar voice from the doorway. As one, we turned, looked at Ms Sparks and PANICKED. “Would anyone like to explain? No? Nobody? Well, I suppose you’ve all had a hand in this particular disaster, haha!” None of us were laughing – especially not Miss Lupo who flew in through the open window, took one look at the mess in her classroom and said in the sort of voice that would freeze a sunbeam, “I. Am. Disappointed.” “But not, I fear, surprised,” said Ms Sparks. She shared a long look with Miss Lupo and then nodded firmly, “Yes. That’s decided then.” And without telling us what had decided what, she said she had something very important to do and left. It’s a shame Miss Lupo didn’t go with her. She was VERY cross. “It doesn’t look like you’ve done much healing, Year Seven,” she said through gritted teeth. “Clearly, some of you weren’t listening when I told you to work nicely together.” She swished her wand and in a second, Hand lay still and perfectly healed in the middle of the table. “Count yourselves lucky that this mayhem happened at school and not in the WILD. Anything could have happened!” Spent the rest of the class doing non-magical tidying up and having Quiet-Time-to-Think-About-Our-Behaviour. Broomsticks. Madam Binx has set us a list of healing spells to learn off by heart, including this one:   Ms Sparks wants to see us after lunch. This is turning out to be a very STRESSFUL day. “Find somewhere to sit.” Ms Sparks ushered us into her office. “Yes, yes, the carpet is fine… Lickety-spit, I don’t have all day.” She twirled her wand and I found myself suddenly cross-legged on the floor in between Amara and Blair. “Such luck that I dropped into your lesson this morning.” (We didn’t think it was lucky!) “You see, it helped me make up my mind about something. About time too – with only TEN days to go.” Wait … oh! We all started nudging each other. “What I always say is that it’s very important that—” “The trip must be right for the witches and the witches must be right for the trip?” Winnie was too excited to remember not to interrupt. “Exactly so! And that’s why I’m happy to tell you that we’re off to Cadabra Castle!” Everyone immediately started chattering among themselves. Ms Sparks put up her hand for silence. “Trips to Cadabra are very rare, but I have no doubt you will all benefit from the particular lessons you will learn there.” “Lessons?” Izzi sounded shocked. “There are going to be LESSONS?” Ms Sparks laughed. “Oh yes, indeed there are! Did you think this was going to be a holiday?” (Honestly? YES!) “Not quite like the classes you’re used to, but lots of learning and—” “You’re sitting on my cloak,” hissed Blair, tugging at it until I practically tumbled into Amara’s lap. “Bonding!” finished Ms Sparks, raising an eyebrow and looking in our direction. “You are a lovely and very enthusiastic year group, but from what I’ve seen, and from what your teachers tell me, it’s high time you all improved your teamwork skills and there’s nowhere better than Cadabra for that!” Her voice became more serious. “Faced with the special challenges of the castle and the wilderness that surrounds it, you may well find you need to rely on one another a little more than usual and certainly listen to one another more than you did in Miss Lupo’s class this morning! Now I need each of you to ask your responsible grown-up to sign a permission slip.” A single twitch of her wand and a letter dropped into each of our suddenly outstretched hands. “Pop it into the cauldron by Mrs Slater’s desk and it will reach me. Not that I expect anyone to tick the ‘NO’ box! After all, I’ll probably bring you all back in one piece.” Winnie says that in the olden days it was the home of the very first WITCH SCHOOL ever! Dr Pellicano says that the castle is hidden in a DEEP AND DARK WILDERNESS and that we’d better start paying attention in Geography if we don’t want to get lost and stuck there for a HUNDRED years. Blair says...