“You have been kind to me even, in your own sadness,” said the Prince, “and that is the most difficult thing of all. And so through the power vested in me, the spell of the wicked witch is broken and you are free!”
Oh, happy day.
Daddy’s banana nose disappeared and was replaced with his ownnose, which was not too handsome but certainly better than a slightly squeezed banana. Mommy’s milk-bottles were replaced with her own pink hands.
Best of all, Naomi and Joe stopped crying. They began to smile, then they began to laugh! Then the Prince of New Hampshire began to laugh.
Then Daddy and Mommy began to laugh. The Prince danced with Mommy and Naomi and carried Joe on his shoulders. He shook hands with Daddy and said he had admired Daddy’s books before he had been turned into a woodchuck.
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All five of them went back to the nice house by the lake, and Mommy made tea for everyone. They all sat at the table and drank their tea.
“We ought to do something about that witch,” Mommy said. “So she can’t do something wicked to someone else.”
“I think that is true,” said the Prince. “And it so happens that I know one spell myself. It will get rid of her.”
He whispered to Daddy. He whispered to Mommy. He whispered to Naomi and Joe, and they nodded and giggled and laughed.
That very afternoon they drove up to Witch Hazel’s haunted house on the Secret Road. Basta, the cat, looked at them with his big yellow eyes, hissed, and ran away.
They did not drive up in the Kings’ pretty red Cadillac, or in the Prince’s Mist Grey Mercedes 390SL. They drove up in an old, old car that wheezed and blew oil.
They were wearing old clothes with fleas jumping out of them.
They wanted to look poor to fool Witch Hazel.
They went up and the Prince knocked on the door.
Witch Hazel ripped the door open. She was wearing a tall black hat.
There was a wart on the end of her nose. She smelled of frog’s blood and owls’ hearts and ant’s eyeballs, because she had been whipping up horrible brew to make more black magic cookies.
“What do you want?” she rasped at them. She didn’t recognize them in their old clothes. “Get out. I’m busy!”
“We are a poor family on our way to California to pick oranges,” the Prince said.
“What has that to do with me?” The witch shrieked. “I ought to turn you into oranges for disturbing me! Now good day!”
She tried to close the door but the Prince put his foot in it. Naomi and Joe shoved it back open.
“We have something to sell you,” Daddy said. “It is the wickedest cookie in the world. If you eat it, it will make you the wickedest witch in the world, even wickeder than Witch Indira in India. We will sell it to you for one thousand dollars.”
“I don’t buy what I can steal!” Witch Hazel shrieked. She snatched the cookie and gobbled it down. “Now I will be the wickedest witch in the whole world!” And she cackled so loudly that the shutters fell off her house.
But the Prince wasn’t sorry. He was glad. And Mommy wasn’t sorry, because she had baked the cookie. And Daddy wasn’t sorry, because he had gone to New Hampshire to get the 300 year-old baked beans that went into the cookie.
Naomi and Joe? They just laughed and laughed, because they knew that it wasn’t a Wicked Cookie that Witch Hazel had just eaten.
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It was a Farting Cookie.
Witch Hazel felt something funny.
She felt it building in her tummy and her behind. It felt like a of gas. It felt like an explosion looking for a place to happen.
“What have you done to me!” she shrieked. “Who are you?'”
“I am the Prince of New Hampshire,” the Prince cried, raising his face so she could see it clearly for the first time.
“And we are the Kings,” Daddy said. “Shame on you for turning my wife’s hands into milk bottles! Double shame on you for turning my nose into a banana. Triple shame on you for making my Naomi and my Joe cry all day and all night. But we’ve fixed you now, Wicked Witch Hazel!”
“You won’t be casting anymore spells,” said Naomi. “Because you are going to the moon!”
“I’m not going to the moon!” Witch Hazel screeched so loudly that the chimney fell on the lawn. “I’m going to turn you all into cheap antiques that not even tourists will buy!”
“No you’re not,” said Joe, “because you ate the magic cookie. You ate the magic farting cookie.”
The wicked witch foamed and frothed. She tried to cast her spell. But it was too late: the Farting Cookie had done its work. She felt a big fart coming on. She squeezed her butt to keep it in until she could cast her spell, but it was too late.
WHONK! went the fart. It blew all the fur off her cat, Basta. It blew in the windows. And Witch Hazel went up in the air like a rocket.
“Get me down!” Witch Hazel screamed. Witch Hazel came down all right. She came down on her fanny. And when she came down, she let another fart.
DRRRRRRAPPP! went the fart. It was so windy it knocked down the witch’s home and the Bridgton Trading Post. You could see Dom Cardozl sitting on the toilet where he had been pooping. It was all that was left of the Trading Post except for one bureau that had been made in Grand Rapids
The witch went flying up into the sky. She flew up and up until she was as small as a speck of coal dust.
“Get me down,” Witch Hazel called, sounding very small and far away.
“You’ll come down all right,” Naomi said.
Down came Witch Hazel.
“Yeeeaaahhhh!” she screamed falling out of the sky.
Just before the could hit the ground and be crushed (as maybe she deserved), she cut another fart, the biggest one of all. The smell was 109
like two million egg salad sandwiches. And the sound was KA-HIONK!!!
Up she went again.
“Goodbye, Witch Hazel,” yelled Mommy waving. “Enjoy the moon.”
“Hope you stay a long time,” called Joe.
Up and up went Witch Hazel until she was out of sight. During the news that night the Kings and the Prince of New Hampshire heard Barbara Walters report that a UFW had been seen by a 747 airplane over Bridgton. Maine – an unidentified flying witch.
And that was the end of wicked Witch Hazel. She is on the moon now, and probably still farting.
And the Kings are the happiest family in Bridgton again. They often exchange visits with the Prince of New Hampshire, who is now King.
Daddy writes books and never uses the word banana. Mommy uses her hands more than ever. And Joe and Naomi King hardly ever cry.
As for Witch Hazel, she was never seen again, and considering those terrible farts she was letting when she left, that is probably a good thing!
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THE NIGHT OF THE TIGER
From Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1978
I first saw Mr. Legere when the circus swung through Steubenville, but I’d only been with the show for two weeks; he might have been making his irregular visits indefinitely. No one much wanted to talk about Mr.
Legere, not even that last night when it seemed that the world was coming to an end – the night that Mr. Indrasil disappeared.
But if I’m going to tell it to you from the beginning, I should start by saying that I’m Eddie Johnston, and I was born and raised in Sauk City.
Went to school there, had my first girl there, and worked in Mr. Lillie’s five-and-dime there for a while after I graduated from high school. That was a few years back…more than I like to count, sometimes. Not that Sauk City’s such a bad place; hot, lazy summer nights sitting on the front porch is all right for some folks, but it just seemed to itch me, like sitting in the same chair too long. So I quit the five-and-dime and joined Farnum & Williams’ All-American 3-Ring Circus and Side Show. I did it in a moment of giddiness when the calliope music kind of fogged my judgment, I guess.
So I became a roustabout, helping put up tents and take them down, spreading sawdust, cleaning cages, and sometimes selling cotton candy when the regular salesman had to go away and bark for Chips Bailey, who had malaria and sometimes had to go someplace far away, and holler. Mostly things that kids do for free passes – things I used to do when I was a kid.
But times change. They don’t seem to come around like they used to.