Sandy clapped. “Rupert, you’re brilliant! Thank goodness I asked for a smart apprentice!”
Splintering sounds came from the door, and Rupert saw a tiny rabbit nail break through. Help us! the rabbits cried. Help us!
“STAY BACK!” Rupert shouted. Then he turned to Sandy. “Test it on me. That way if things go wrong, you won’t have messed up on an entire town.”
Sandy gulped. “Um… see a toy!” she snapped her fingers.
Rupert felt a tingling sensation all throughout his body. His fur fell off his body, landing at his bald bunny feet like a new carpet. Then his arms and legs expanded, stretching out like taffy until they hung slack at his sides. With a whoosh, clothes materialized over his loose limbs. His eyes rolled back into his head and came back white and brown, rather than like black coals. Hair sprouted out of his head. And with a final POP, his ears shrunk and his nose wiggled back to its normal size.
Rupert stumbled to a mirror — he was himself again!
“See a toy?” he said to Sandy.
“Be a boy! It was all I could think of!”
The wood on the door splintered again, this time big enough for a bunny to hop through. A black bunny with milky eyes soared through the hole in the door and hopped toward Sandy. Help us! the bunny said. A group of bunnies followed in the black bunny’s wake. Rupert supposed there were fifty of them in total.
Sandy shivered and backed into a shelf. “Stay away,” she said. “I’ll help you if you stay away.”
The bunnies hopped closer, and Rupert swung his legs onto the table to avoid them.
“Hurry!” he said. “I can’t help you if you get turned into a rabbit!”
Sandy closed her eyes and snapped her fingers. “Attack in two steeples! Attack in two steeples! ATTACK IN TWO STEEPLES! AUGHHHHHHH!” she shouted as the bunnies jumped toward her.
Sandy whimpered and wailed — but in mid-leap, the fifty bunnies shed their hair, sprouted arms and legs, and lost their ears. Fifty people stood in Sandy’s small lair, packed so tightly that no one could move an elbow.
Sandy snapped. “Wet snout!”
The door sprung open, and everyone scrambled for the exit. Except for Rupert.
He turned to the panting witch with a grin. “Get out,” he said. “Nice touch!”
Sandy ran over and hugged him. And it was the best hug ever.
What To Do About the Witches
“BUT WAIT,” RUPERT SAID, BREAKING AWAY FROM Sandy’s hug. “Where are the witches? Are they still coming to find me?”
Sandy burst out in giggles. “That’s the best part!” she said. She ran outside, and Rupert followed her. They walked around town for what seemed like forever, but as soon as Sandy led him past the fish-and-chips restaurant, Rupert knew exactly where they were headed — to the witches’ lair. They walked up to the boulder that marked the entrance, and Sandy put her hand on the rock, which grumbled and rolled to the side to reveal the passageway into the heart of the lair. And there, in the entrance to the lair, fourteen bunnies huddled together.
Sandy cringed at the sight of the bunnies, but she quickly snapped her fingers and conjured a cage that surrounded all the bunnies. Then she held her hands out in a ta-da pose.
“What’s that for?” Rupert said.
“The Witches Council!” Sandy laughed. “And four witchlings.”
Rupert’s mouth fell agape. “But how?”
“Attack in two steeples,” Sandy said. “Turn back into people. But the witches were never people — they were always witches. It was a tiny loophole that I thought might work.”
Rupert stared at the bunnies. A gray one bared its teeth, while the rest looked humbled and frightened.
“Turn us back!” the gray one squealed. “By order of the Fairfoul Witch, I command you!”
“The Fairfoul Witch, huh?” said Rupert. He picked up a nearby stick and poked the Fairfoul Witch gently in the side. She hissed and tried to bite the stick, but Rupert poked her again.
Sandy stroked her chin with her thumb and pointer. “Weelllllll,” she said. “Look at this. I’m the only one who has the power to change the bunnies back into witches.”
“Oh please, please!” squeaked a few spotted bunnies.
Rupert scanned the bunnies and found the brown bunny that he recognized as Nebby — she was hanging back behind the group with a tawny-looking bunny, which Rupert assumed was Storm. Both their whiskers twitched, but they did not say a peep.
“Hmmm…” Sandy said. “I should turn them all back into witches. They are my family after all, and we witches do do a lot of secret things that keep Gliverstoll working.” Sandy paced around. “But will I?”
Sandy winked at Rupert, who took his cue. “I don’t know,” he said. “I sure would hate to have to lick their feet or eat my way out of a pool full of Jell-O.”
The Fairfoul Bunny snarled a deep throaty snarl, but the other bunny witches began to plead. “Oh please!” they said. “Please, Witchling Two, turn us back! We will leave the boy alone! Just turn us back!”
“I demand to be materialized back into my original form!” the Fairfoul Bunny said. “If you don’t obey right now, I can assure you that you’ll never be part of the Witches Council!”
Sandy folded her arms. “Then I can assure you that you’ll all be bunnies forever.”
“Please!” the rest of the witch-bunnies cried. “Turn us back!”
“Only if you promise to leave Rupert and his family alone,” Sandy said.
“We promise! We promise!”
“I need written proof.” Sandy whipped up a scroll and an inkpad with a snap, and each bunny pressed her paw into the inkpad and then marked the scroll.
The Fairfoul Bunny trudged over to the inkpad. “He broke the rules. You broke the rules. I will not agree to keeping him safe! He knows too much! He must perish — I shall make him eat the sludge from a fish tank — or I shall make him suck eggs up his nose with a straw—”
“No!” Sandy said. “I won’t change any of you back until you all agree to leave him alone.”
“But he is a human! We hate humans! We punish humans!” the Fairfoul Bunny howled.
“You may hate humans, but I don’t,” Sandy said. “And human or not, Rupert is my best friend, and I can’t have you hurting him.”
The Fairfoul Bunny dipped her paw into the inkpad. She glared at Sandy with her red eyes, and then she stamped the scroll, just below the signatures of the other bunny witches. “I will find some way around this,” the Fairfoul Bunny said. “You mark my words — I will make this boy’s life miserable!”
Rupert stared down at the Fairfoul Bunny. “You’ve made my whole year miserable,” he said, “but from this point on, you’re going to be miserable, not me. Isn’t this what you call fair and foul?”
The Fairfoul Bunny spat. “How dare you speak to me like that! I will make you suffer in ways you can’t even imagine. I can make your mother suffer.”
Rupert trembled with anger. “What happened between you and my mother?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I know my mom stole some forbidden potions from the witches, and you claimed me as punishment—”
“Told you!” squeaked a tiny ginger rabbit. “Told you Witchling Two brought him to see the files!”
“What did my mom steal?”
“A fertility potion,” the Fairfoul Bunny snarled. “She wanted a baby.”
Rupert sat down on the grass. “You — you mean—”