WENDY, THE LITTLEST WITCH
Now everyone knows that witches come in all sizes and varieties, big, small, tall, short, skinny, fat, ugly, beautiful, but there was one witch who was the littlest one of all. Her name was Wendy, and she just kept waiting and waiting to grow, but she never did. Why, she was so tiny she could fit in a teacup!!
She couldn't figure out why she was so little and never grew. She talked to the bigger and taller witches, she talked to the ones who had been around longer, but they didn't know the answer either. They kept telling her to just be patient, that she would likely grow in time. Fine for them to say, they were a proper size and very scary looking besides.
But Wendy was so tired of waiting. When she went out on Halloween, no one was even scared of her. Now I ask you, what kind of Halloween is that for a witch? Even a very little witch wants somebody to scream and run away when she cackles. But you see, when Wendy cackled, or tried to, it just came out as a sort of giggle. Who would be scared of that? People just said "Oh, isn't she cute!"
And she never could attract bats and spiders like the other witches. Do you know how embarrassing it is for a witch to be out on Halloween night with birds and butterflies hovering around her? How humiliating!
Now, stirring the cauldron and brewing up potions was particularly horrible. I mean, what self-respecting witch wants their magic potions to turn out as chocolate cake and deep dish apple pie. Poor Wendy, she wasn't just the littlest witch, she was the absolute worst witch there ever was. Although I must admit, her concoctions were fantastically delicious.
Of course, there was also the problem that Wendy just hated black. You know that witches ALWAYS dress in black, so what was Wendy to do. She had to wear black when she really dreamed of wearing cotton candy pink and periwinkle blue and leaf green and sunny yellow. She couldn't even tell anyone about it because they would just laugh at her.
One day, just before Halloween, Wendy decided to concentrate with all her might on growing some warts on her nose. She spent all day thinking and thinking and wishing and wishing for some warts. She closed her eyes and held her breath and strained with all her might, well as much as such the littlest witch could, anyway. She was just determined to force a wart to grow right on the end of her nose. It didn't work at all. It just gave her a headache and a kind of itchy feeling in between her shoulder blades.
She finally gave up, wiped away her tears, and went to bed, so very sad at facing another terribly disappointing Halloween. Whatever would the littlest witch do?
When she woke up the next morning, Halloween morning, she felt very very strange. "Oh, maybe I did manage to grow a wart overnight after all," she thought excitedly. She ran to the nearest mirror and what did she see... not a wart at all, but wings. "Wings? WINGS?" Even the very littlest witch knew that witches don't have wings. She just couldn't do anything right, could she?
Just then, one of the other witches passed by and saw her beautiful shining wings. She said, "Oh, that's the answer to your problem, Wendy, the reason you are such a failure as a witch. You're not a witch at all! You're a fairy!"
Wendy was so shocked that she couldn't say a word, but then she realized that a fairy needs to be tiny so that she can fly.
And fairies don't like bats and spiders. They can wear any color they want to and never ever have to wear black. They can cook up the most marvelous tasting concoctions and nobody will ever call them a failure. And best of all, she was perfectly free to giggle all she wanted, and she never ever had to try to scare anybody again.
What a relief!! She wasn't a terrible witch at all, she was a perfectly good fairy!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE, FROM WENDY.
Copyright © 2008 by Judith Ann Neary. All rights reserved.
