then, she said crossly. She looked quite put out. Youd better come in here and start work. She led Earwig through the door on the left.
Earwig looked around and tried not to sniff too loudly. She had never seen a place so dirty. Since she was used to the airy rooms and clean polished floors of St. Morwalds, it was quite a shock.
Everything was covered with dust. There was a kind of sludge on the floor made of old dirt, green mold, and the remains of spellswhich mostly seemed to be little white bones and small black
rotting things. The sludge rose to a hill in one corner, on which perched a rusty black cauldron with green flames flickering under it. The smell of burning was awful. More smelly things like dusty
bottles and old brown packets lay about, some of them spilling, on the long dirty table, or were
chucked higgledy-piggledy on the shelves. All the bowls and jugs stacked on the floor were covered with grime or brown slime.
Earwig closed her nose against the smell, wondering if witchcraft really needed so many rotting things. She thought that, when she had learned enough, she would be a new kind of witch, a clean one.
Meanwhile, she looked around the room and was puzzled to see that it seemed to be at least the size of the whole bungalow.
Bella Yaga chuckled at the look on Earwigs face. Come along, girl, she said. Youre not here
to stare. If you dont like it, you can clean it later. For now, I want you at this table, powdering those rats bones for me. When Earwig came over to the table, getting her ankles tangled with two dead snakes on the way, Bella Yaga said, Now, theres one great rule in this house. You must learn it straightaway. You must on no account ever disturb the Mandrake.
You mean the man with the horns? Earwig said.
He hasnt got horns! Bella Yaga said angrily. At least, most of the time he hasnt. He gets those when hes disturbed.
What else happens when hes disturbed? Earwig asked.
She thought Bella Yaga shuddered at the idea. Awful things, she said. If youre lucky, you wont find out. Now get to work.
Soon Earwig was pounding away with a heavy pestle in a little stone bowl. At first the small white bones in the bowl went crunch, crunch . After an hour, they were white powder and went spluff, spluff , but Bella Yaga said the powder had to be finer than the finest flour and she made Earwig go on pounding. By this time, Earwigs arms ached and she was bored. Bella Yaga would not tell her why
she was having to make the powder. She would not answer any of Earwigs questions at all.
Earwig saw quite clearly that Bella Yaga was not going to teach her magic. She just wanted Earwig to do the hard work. Earwig knew she would have to do something about that, as soon as she knew
enough about Bella Yaga and her bungalow and all her ways. So Earwig went on pounding at the
powder and kept her eyes and ears open.
The only other living creature in the workroom was a black cat, who spent his time lurking
miserably in the warmth behind the rusty cauldron. Every so often Bella Yaga would run her finger down a page of the greasy little book on the table beside her and mutter, Calls for a familiar here.
Then she would march over to the cauldron shouting, Come on, Thomas! Time to do your stuff!
Thomas always tried to escape. Once Bella