There was a hissing sound, then a gavel, then cries of Order! Order!
Witchling Two put a hand on Rupert’s arm. “We don’t have time for this,” she whispered.
“They’re talking about us,” Rupert mouthed back.
She shrugged and walked toward the archway, beckoning for Rupert to follow her. They walked into an archway and found themselves in a tunnel made entirely of dirt. The cold air made Rupert shiver. For a while, he kept up behind Witchling Two, but he soon found himself slowing down until finally he stopped.
His nostrils twitched, and he sniffed. He smelled the most beautiful smell that anyone in the world had ever smelled.
“What is that?” he said. “What is that wonderful—”
He looked to the left and spotted a bed of flowers. He walked over to them and leaned closer. They were the most delicate shades of red, violet, pink, and indigo, and Rupert reached out to touch one…
Footsteps came closer from around the corner. “What are you doing?” shouted Witchling Two.
Rupert sniffed. “Come smell these!” he said. “They are splendid!”
“I told you not to smell the flowers!”
Rupert inhaled. “Oh, how glorious!” he said. “How wonderful! How magnificent! How astonishing!”
Witchling Two hoisted him up into a piggyback and began to run down the hallway with him. “I told you not to smell the flowers. Never trust a pretty flower. They are terribly sneaky things… as sneaky as bunnies.”
Rupert twisted and turned, trying desperately to get out of her piggyback grip, but she held on to him tightly.
When she rounded the corner, she put him down. She dragged him down a torch-lit hallway, and with the flickering firelight, it was starting to look like a real witch’s lair. Finally, they stopped at a wooden door.
Witchling Two whisked him into a small room with many stacks of crumpled up papers, and Rupert finally began to realize that the smell was gone— and he had a thundering headache.
“What was that?” he groaned. He felt groggy, like he couldn’t tell whether he was sleeping or awake, or what was up and what was down.
“Flowers,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re our security traps. We witches can’t smell them, but they’re meant to catch human intruders. They put you under a spell, and the moment you touch the flowers, you’re caught in a net.”
Rupert put his hand to his temple. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
“I couldn’t very well leave my apprentice at the mercy of a flower bed, could I?”
Rupert licked his lips, looking around the room. “So this is the Filing Room?”
“Sure is!”
“You call this filing?” Rupert said, staring at the stack of crumpled up papers on the floor. He looked around the room. There wasn’t a filing cabinet in sight — just a whole bunch of papers on the ground and a small, wooden table by the door.
Witchling Two pulled a soggy piece of parchment out of a stack. She read it over with a hmm, then she crumpled it and tossed it over her shoulder before picking up a new piece of paper. Rupert walked over and began to read papers. They hardly made sense to him, and a lot of them had names of Gliverstoll townspeople and punishments on them.
“What are these?” Rupert asked, holding up a paper that read: Viola Frobbleman punished under article 31. Caught vandalizing the bell tower. Punishment: Toecorn. He shuddered at the thought of Toecorn.
“We keep everything all filed together, so we’ve got record on all the punishments we’ve ever given, the WHATs questions, witch evaluation reports, research notes, and witchling report cards all mixed together.
Rupert shook his head. At this rate, they’d never find what they were looking for. He dug through more papers, some soggy, some crusty, all smelling like sour eggs. There were more papers than Rupert thought — they were endless, circling the ground and piling up to his calves like a parchment swimming pool. There were far too many papers to possibly read in such a short span. But they had to try.
Witchling Two clicked her tongue. “We need to leave, Rupert,” she said. “We have bobcat minutes to get out of here.”
“One more minute,” Rupert said as he dug into another stack. It wasn’t right, and he tossed it aside. He grabbed one, two, three — but none of them were right.
Witchling Two bit her nails. “Rupert…”
“You’re going to have to do a spell,” Rupert said, looking up from the parchment he was reading.
“A spell?”
“We’ve got to find those test questions! This is your only chance. All we’ve got is no time and a lot of magic. Just think of it as more practice for your exam.”
Witchling Two took a deep breath. “I’ll try,” she said with a nod. She snapped her fingers. “I need the test papers. The test papers… the test papers,” she breathed.
Suddenly a cloud of wispy smoke erupted from the ground. The room grew thick and foggy and muggy and damp.
“What did you do?” cried Rupert. “We needed test papers, not wet vapors!”
Witchling Two let out a sob. “I’ll never pass!”
“Yes, you will,” Rupert said, waving his hands to clear away some of the fog. “I’m going to help you study, even if we can’t find current WHATs questions! Now, how much time do we have left before the Council meeting ends?”
“Catfish minutes — we really have to go!”
This trip was a failure, Rupert thought as he stood up, but this room is so messy it’s no wonder we couldn’t find anything. He grabbed Witchling Two’s hand and pulled her through the vapors, which were now erupting in spurts. “Come on — let’s get out of here!”
Witchling Two followed him but stopped dead just before the door. She walked to the wooden table in the corner.
“Come on!” Rupert said. “We have to get out of here!”
She gasped.
“Rupert!” She hovered over the table, and when she turned around, she held up a piece of parchment. “Your mom.”
Rupert’s heart leaped into his throat. “What?”
Witchling Two cleared her throat. “Joanne Campbell punished under article nineteen. Caught stealing forbidden potions from the Witches—”
“That’s my mom!”
“But that’s not everything!” she said, her face growing pale. “There’s more. It says, Punishment: Firstborn child.”
Witchling Four
“WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? AM I A PUNISHMENT?”
“No,” Witchling Two said. “I think it means… you belong to the witches. They’ve claimed you.”
“B-but I can’t belong to the witches. I’m not allowed to go near them! This doesn’t make any sense.”
Witchling Two scratched her head.
“Why was this file on the table?”
“Nebby and Storm — they knew you had become my apprentice. They must know that we didn’t stop seeing each other after that day in the Brewery, and they must have wanted to read up on your family history.”
He looked at the piece of paper again.
“What did she steal? What’s a forbidden potion?”
“Oh, it could be lots of things. Love potion, death potion, revival potion, fertility potion, intelligence potion, obedience potion. The witches keep all sorts of potions that are forbidden for humans. For moral reasons.”
He looked at Witchling Two quizzically, but she turned to her watch.
“Honeybee minutes!” she squealed.
She grabbed Rupert’s hand, and the two of them sped down the hallways. They ran past the flowers so fast that Rupert didn’t even have time to inhale. The entrance to the Dome Room was just ahead of them — and they leaped into the room like two gazelles.