Kayla and the Golden Slates

By Ashwini Shajan

It was an icy and twitchy morning in Witchwalk. As the first daylight crept in, Kayla, the red-haired witch woke up in her comfy den with an enormous yawn. She hadn’t slept all night as she and many other witches had been awfully busy. A fortnight ago, it was the first time a burglary took place in Witchwalk. Poor Mr. Addle, who was the Witchwalk

tutor, had been robbed of his golden slates that were souvenirs of his great-great grandmother. Since then, he ceased giving lessons to the witch & wizard kids and kept hunting for his precious slates all over the colony. This upset all the little witches and wizards as they adored going to school.

Kayla and her best friends – Maine, Dina and Rinkle, felt sorry for their young brothers and sisters. They decided to nab the thief and recover Mr. Addle’s slates. What puzzled them was that, Witchwalk was a colony located underground, beneath a prickly bush at the backyard of a human’s farm. The colony couldn’t be easily found due to an invisible spell set on it and even if it was, nobody would dare to trespass into it for fear of getting

bruised by the barbs of the bush.

“One thing’s sure, the robber is inside with us”, Kayla sighed and said to her friends, who were slouching beside her.

The four friends, with the help of some of the knight wizards, had taken turns to rummage around every den for the slates. Some things went wrong too. One day while they were searching Mama Jiggle, the old potion brewer’s den, they accidentally dropped her potion pots and they broke. Mama Jiggle was very upset but did not yell at the witches. She knew they were only trying to help Mr. Addle and save Witchwalk from another possible theft.

“There is no spell that can be used to find this peace-spoiler, isn’t it?”, Rinkle grunted angrily, and her large ears fumed. Suddenly Dina sat up and waved her wand excitedly in the air.

“Why, I know! Can’t we solve this using the Intuition Charm? We could use Mama Jiggle’s help!”

The witches eyeballed each other disapprovingly. The Intuition Charm was easier said than done; it was an extremely challenging spell to execute. The charm would require every witch and wizard to gather and puff out a massive amount of magical air from within their bodies. The charm would work by amassing intuitions of everyone and thus find the thief. The problem was that - the entire process would consume a lot of energy of the folk and diminish their magic by half. Adding to the toil, it was almost impossible to find the ingredients to the Intuition Charm’s potion as they were guarded by three

headed beasts. Still, the witches could not come up with any other alternative and so called upon a meeting.

It was a solemn crowd that gathered around the beacon that evening to hear what Kayla and the coven had to say. The usually screechy witch-wizard folk stayed silent in the beginning, but later, put up their hands, agreeing to participate. Mr. Addle was overwhelmed and teary-eyed.

“We are doing this for you as well as for Witchwalk, Mr. Addle!” shouted all the Witchwalk folk.

The next two hours were spent in organising. Groups were made and given the responsibility to find all constituents of the potion. After two days and two nights, Kayla and her friends saw exhausted and worn out witches, flying back into Witchwalk on their broomsticks. They had found everything that the potion needed. Everybody applauded the knight wizards who fought and protected the witches from the beasts that came to kill. It took no time for Mama Jiggle to brew the potion. Kayla, her friends and everybody else consumed the potion, held hands and began chanting the spell.

For the bees and butterflies, it was a magnificent panorama from above, to watch hundreds of pointy hats, and heavy billows of luminous air exhaled from mouths of every witch and wizard.

The air that went up formed a circle of dark, green smoke and then rammed itself into a small, wooden house growing in the brambles. Suddenly, the door pushed open and Faggart the conjurer, ran out of the house shouting breathlessly, coughing out smoke that filled in his lungs. Kayla and Maine wasted no time and dashed into the house. In seven minutes, they came darting out holding five shimmering slates. They wrapped them up in a piece of blue linen and carefully handed the slates to Mr. Addle who hugged them and heaved a sigh of relief.

It was a drained and angry group that surrounded Faggart. Everyone had lost half their magic due to his misdeeds.

“I wanted to use the slates for my tricks. Mr. Addle’s golden slates looked majestic and I could not help myself!”, Faggart cried and said. His appeals fell on deaf ears. The folk

of Witchwalk drove Faggart out of the colony. A thief was never welcomed to stay amidst themselves. Mr. Addle then flew onto a tall rock and said –

“Thank you Kayla and her friends, and all my mates at Witchwalk!”

The Witchwalk folk raised their broomsticks into the air and hollered out – “One for All, and All for One!

Moral

Every team should act for the benefit of each member and each member should act for the benefit of the whole team.

By Ashwini Shajan