Mr Majeika and the Lost Spell Book Read online

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE

  LOST SPELL BOOK

  Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005), the author and creator of Mr Majeika, was born and educated in Oxford. He went to a school called the Dragon School where exciting things often happened and there were some very odd teachers – you could even call it magical! He became a full-time writer in 1975 and was the author of many award-winning biographies. As well as the Mr Majeika titles, his children’s books also included Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits and More Shakespeare Without the Boring Bits. He wrote plays for radio and theatre and founded the children’s drama group The Mushy Pea Theatre Company. He played the tuba, double bass, bass saxophone and keyboard.

  Humphrey once said, “The nice thing about being a writer is that you can make magic happen without learning tricks. Words are the only tricks you need. I can write: ‘He floated up to the ceiling, and a baby rabbit came out of his pocket, grew wings, and flew away.’ And you will believe that it really happened! That’s magic, isn’t it?”

  Books by Humphrey Carpenter

  MR MAJEIKA

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE DINNER LADY

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE GHOST TRAIN

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE HAUNTED HOTEL

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE MUSIC TEACHER

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL BOOK WEEK

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL CARETAKER

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL INSPECTOR

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL PLAY

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE SCHOOL TRIP

  MR MAJEIKA ON THE INTERNET

  MR MAJEIKA VANISHES

  MR MAJEIKA AND THE LOST SPELL BOOK

  THE PUFFIN BOOK OF CLASSIC CHILDREN’S STORIES (Ed.)

  SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS

  MORE SHAKESPEARE WITHOUT THE BORING BITS

  HUMPHREY CARPENTER

  Mr Majeika and the

  Lost Spell Book

  Illustrated by Frank Rodgers

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2003

  10

  Text copyright © Humphrey Carpenter, 2003

  Illustrations copyright © Frank Rodgers, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194437-1

  Contents

  1. Mr Potter’s Rules

  2. Cousin Lulubelle

  3. The Governors Decide

  4. What a Week

  5. Who Stole the Map?

  6. Cosy Corner

  7. Off to the Wedding

  8. The Old Back Door

  1. Mr Potter’s Rules

  ‘Now, children,’ said Mr Potter, the head teacher of St Barty’s School, at morning Assembly, ‘tonight – as I’m sure all of you know – is Halloween.’

  Everyone felt very excited when he said that, because Halloween was one of the most special days of the year. Maybe even more exciting than Christmas, because you could dress up as witches and wizards, and have lots of fun.

  ‘This year,’ Mr Potter went on, ‘I am going to make some rules for Halloween.’ Jody and the twins, Thomas and Pete, who were all in Class Three together, looked gloomily at each other. Halloween wasn’t the sort of time that you wanted rules. It was all about having fun.

  ‘We need to protect the good name of the school,’ said Mr Potter. ‘I don’t want people to say that children from St Barty’s behave badly on Halloween. So here are the rules. You mustn’t frighten old ladies. You mustn’t wear masks that cover your whole face, because it’s very frightening for old ladies – and old men – to open the front door and see people in terrifying disguises. You must only wear little masks that cover your eyes. Don’t say “trick or treat” when people open the door, because I don’t want you to play tricks on anyone, even if they don’t give you sweets. And if they do give you treats, you must say thank you very politely. Please remember these rules. I shall get very cross if people don’t keep them. Now you can go to your classrooms.’

  ‘That spoils everything,’ said Thomas to Pete and Jody, as they were walking across the playground to Class Three.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Jody. ‘We can still have a lot of fun, even if we keep Mr Potter’s rules.’

  ‘I’m sure Hamish Bigmore wouldn’t agree with you, Jody,’ said Thomas. ‘And where is he? I didn’t see him in Assembly this morning. It’s not like him to be late for school, even though he is the worst-behaved boy in Class Three.’

  ‘I reckon we should forget all about Halloween,’ said Pete gloomily. ‘Something always goes wrong during it. Do you remember the year that all three of us dressed up as ghosts?’

  ‘Oh, that was fun,’ said Jody. ‘Your mum made us lovely ghost costumes out of old sheets, with holes cut for our eyes.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘but we couldn’t see out of them properly, and don’t you remember what happened?’

  ‘We went to Mr Potter’s house,’ said Pete, ‘and when we tried to find our way up the path to his front door, we got completely lost and fell into his pond.’

  ‘We were covered in slime,’ said Thomas. ‘Yuck!’

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Jody. ‘We could keep Mr Potter’s rules, and still have an exciting time. Guess what my idea is!’

  ‘Is it something to do with Mr Majeika?’ asked Pete. Mr Majeika was Class Three’s teacher. Before he came to St Barty’s, he had been a wizard, and he still did magic spells sometimes, though he wasn’t supposed to.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Jody. ‘Look, here he comes now. Mr Majeika, could you help us with Halloween?’

  ‘What’s Halloween?’ asked Mr Majeika. He still didn’t know lots of things about ordinary life on earth, because he’d been a wizard somewhere up in the sky, or wherever it was that wizards came from, for a very long time, and he’d only been a teacher for a little while.

  ‘Halloween happens once a year,’ said Thomas, ‘and it’s very exciting, because we all dress up as witches and wizards and ghosts and other scary things like that, and knock on people’s doors.’

  ‘And when they open them,’ said Pete, ‘we say, “Trick or treat?” ’

  ‘And if they say “Treat”,’ said Jody, ‘it means they’re going to give us sweets, or bars of chocolate, or some other nice thing.’

  ‘But if they say “Trick”, it means they’d rather
we play a trick on them, like dangling a rubber spider in their face,’ Thomas explained.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘In the land of the wizards, we have a night like that. It’s called Ordinary People Night, and we all dress up as ordinary people. We stop wearing our wizard and witch hats and cloaks, and put on trousers and shirts and dresses and things – the sort of clothes that you wear down here on earth. And we stop doing spells and magic, and do things like going to school, or to ordinary jobs.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very exciting, Mr Majeika,’ said Pete.

  ‘Oh, but it is,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘It’s a great change from spending our days and nights doing magic.’

  ‘We wanted to ask you to help us, Mr Majeika,’ said Jody. ‘You see, Mr Potter won’t let us wear exciting costumes and masks for Halloween tonight. So I was wondering if you could help us by doing a bit of magic.’

  ‘What sort of magic?’ asked Mr Majeika. ‘You know I’m not supposed to do any at all. That was what the Chief Wizard told me when he sent me down to earth to be a teacher. “Remember, Majeika,” he said to me, “not the slightest bit of magic! You mustn’t even open your spell book, or wave your magic wand, otherwise there will be dreadful trouble.” ’

  ‘Yes, but you have done magic, quite often, Mr Majeika, since you became a teacher,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Almost as soon as you arrived at St Barty’s,’ said Pete, ‘you started doing magic. Surely you remember the time when you turned Hamish Bigmore into a frog?’

  ‘And there have been lots of times since then,’ said Jody. ‘I don’t think that more than a week has gone by without you doing some sort of magic in Class Three.’

  Mr Majeika gave a shudder. ‘Please don’t remind me!’ he said. ‘If the Chief Wizard knew only half of all the magic I’ve done since I came here, I would be in dreadful trouble.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Thomas. But before Mr Majeika had time to answer, there was a horrible cackling noise from the passage outside Class Three.

  ‘Fee, fi, fo, fum,’ chanted a voice, ‘I will bite you on the bum! I’ll sink my teeth into anyone weaker, especially the neck of Mr Majeika!’ The door opened, and in burst Count Dracula.

  At least, for a moment they thought it really was Dracula. Then they realized it was just Hamish Bigmore, in a very expensive Dracula costume.

  ‘Are you going to wear that for Halloween tonight, Hamish?’ said Jody. ‘Because I don’t think Mr Potter will like it at all. He told us that we mustn’t wear anything that might frighten people.’

  ‘Silly old Piggy-face Potter,’ said Hamish. ‘Who cares what he thinks?’

  ‘Now, Hamish,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘you’re not to speak of Mr Potter like that.’

  ‘Mr Majeika is being very kind,’ said Pete. ‘He’s agreed to use a little magic to give us a more exciting Halloween.’

  ‘He hasn’t agreed to do it yet,’ said Jody.

  ‘But I’m sure he will if we ask him really nicely.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Majeika, ‘I’m sure a little magic can’t do any harm, especially on an evening when everyone is dressed up as witches and wizards and ghosts.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mr Majeika,’ said Thomas. ‘It will make all the difference to our Halloween.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Majeika,’ said Hamish Bigmore, with a nasty smile. ‘Thank you very much.’ And he went out of the classroom to take off his Dracula costume in the boys’ changing room.

  ‘That’s very odd,’ said Jody. ‘I’ve never heard Hamish saying thank you before, especially to Mr Majeika. I’m sure he’s up to something.’

  2. Cousin Lulubelle

  At half past six that evening, they all met outside the school gates, wearing their Halloween costumes. Jodie had come as a green-faced witch; her hat and cloak were green as well. ‘My mum made my costume,’ she said to Thomas and Pete, ‘and she found some green make-up for my face. It looks good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes, very good,’ said Pete, though actually he thought it was rather a dull costume. He and Thomas had come all in black, with pointed wizards’ hats that had silver stars and moons stuck on them.

  ‘I like your hats,’ said Jody, though actually she thought that they looked dull too.

  Everyone else had done their best with their costumes, but nobody’s was really exciting. One or two people had dressed up as skeletons or ghosts, but it all looked rather feeble. ‘I wonder what Hamish will do,’ said Thomas. ‘Do you think he will pay no attention to what Mr Potter said, and come in his Dracula costume?’

  Just at that moment, a big shiny car drew up at the school gates. The driver was a woman, and in the front passenger seat sat Hamish Bigmore. He wound down the window and called out, ‘Hi there, everyone!’

  ‘What’s he doing in that car?’ wondered Pete. ‘It’s not his mum and dad’s.’

  Hamish climbed out of the car. They could see he wasn’t wearing any sort of Halloween costume – he was just in his ordinary school clothes.

  ‘I want you all to meet my American cousin,’ he said to them. ‘Her name is Lulubelle Bigmore.’

  Lulubelle got out of the car. She was a peculiar shape for a woman, and she had lots and lots of very bright yellow hair. From a strap round her neck hung a very large camera, with an enormous lens.

  ‘Why, hi there, all you little kiddiewinks,’ she said in a drawling American accent. ‘I hope you don’t mind little Hamish’s Cousin Lulubelle coming to join in the fun.’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Thomas, a bit uncertainly.

  ‘Of course, we have Halloween back home, in old Virginia, where I come from,’ said Lulubelle, ‘but I reckon all you little British kiddiewinks do things a little differently.’

  Just then, Mr Majeika arrived. He had a strange-looking stick with him. It was all sparkly and covered with stars. ‘Is that your magic wand, Mr Majeika?’ asked Jody. ‘We’ve never seen you use one before.’

  Mr Majeika nodded. ‘That’s right, Jody,’ he said. ‘I very rarely take it out of its drawer – I don’t normally need it to do a spell. But I think tonight is going to be a special night, so I brought it along with me. Now,’ he continued, looking around at Class Three and their rather bedraggled costumes, ‘let’s see what we can do. Everyone must shut their eyes while I find the right spell for the job.’

  They all closed their eyes – all except Hamish Bigmore and Cousin Lulubelle. Mr Majeika took a deep breath and then said a lot of very strange words while he waved his left hand in the air, and (with his right hand) pointed his wand at each of them, one by one. For a moment, they all felt a bit peculiar, as if they were being turned upside down and shaken. Then everything seemed normal again, and they opened their eyes.

  What they saw was, at first, so frightening that they nearly screamed. Each of Class Three found themselves surrounded by real-life witches, wizards, skeletons and ghosts. It was only when everyone realized that they themselves were a witch, a wizard, a ghost or a skeleton as well that they stopped being frightened, and started to laugh and even cheer.

  ‘Hooray!’ shouted Thomas, who had turned into a very funny-looking wizard with a long nose and a big droopy moustache. ‘This is the best spell you’ve ever done, Mr Majeika.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Pete, who was a very tall, very thin wizard with knobbly knees, and a beard that came down to his feet.

  ‘Well done, Mr Majeika!’ said Jody, who was a short, fat witch – not as nasty to look at as Wilhelmina Worlock, the witch who was always causing trouble for Class Three, but still quite frightening. ‘What shall we all do now?’

  ‘Hey, folks,’ called out Lulubelle Bigmore, ‘you all look great, so smile at the camera, everyone!’ And she began to take lots and lots of photos of them.

  ‘Now, everyone,’ called out Mr Majeika, ‘there’s no time to waste – the spell will wear off in an hour from now. So off you go, as quickly as you can.’

  ‘Where should we go, Mr Majeika?’ asked Jody.

&nb
sp; ‘Oh, silly me,’ said Mr Majeika. ‘I quite forgot to give you your broomsticks.’

  Once again he waved his hand and his wand in the air – and suddenly they all had broomsticks. ‘Up into the sky with you,’ he said. ‘See who can fly the fastest!’

  The next hour was the most exciting time that Thomas, Pete, Jody and the rest of Class Three had ever known in their lives. At first they just zoomed around in the sky, learning how to ride on their broomsticks. Then, as they got more confident, they began to fly down to people’s houses, where they knocked on the doors and surprised all the people living there, before they zoomed up into the sky again. ‘We mustn’t go near Mr Potter’s house,’ warned Jody, and they took care to keep away from it.

  Meanwhile, on the ground, Lulubelle was driving her car – with Hamish in the passenger seat – and stopping to take photographs whenever she saw a witch, a wizard, a skeleton or a ghost. She also took lots of pictures of Mr Majeika.

  At last, Mr Majeika looked at his watch and called out, ‘Time’s up!’

  One by one, they flew back on their broomsticks to the school gates – though Thomas and Pete couldn’t resist having a sky-battle on their way back. Each of them tried to knock the other off his broomstick, until Mr Majeika called to them to stop and behave themselves.

  As soon as everyone was back, Mr Majeika lined them up, so that he could do a spell that would change them back into their ordinary selves.

  ‘Hang on there a minute, kiddiewinks,’ said Lulubelle Bigmore. ‘I want just one more lovely picture of you all and your clever, magical teacher.’

  ‘Do you think we could have copies of the photographs, please?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘You bet you can,’ said Hamish, with a nasty grin. ‘In fact, anyone can get copies of these pictures tomorrow morning just by going down to their newspaper shop. This isn’t really my cousin.’ And he pulled off Lulubelle’s blonde wig, so that they could see that ‘Lulubelle’ was really a man.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said, holding out his hand to Mr Majeika. ‘I’m