The little witch's new school

Mirabelle was seven years old. She had a pointy hat that was too big for her and a black cat called Liquorice. She had just moved to the village of Three Mills, and this morning was her first day at a new school. An ordinary school, with no cauldrons and no broomsticks, where nobody knew she was a witch.

"Remember, no magic," her grandmother had said, tying her scarf. The trouble was, when Mirabelle got scared, her magic slipped out on its own, a bit like hiccups. And at the school gate, she was very, very scared. Her hands shook, her tummy was in knots, and her fingertips were already tingling.

Mrs Aubert, the teacher, introduced her to the class. Twenty pairs of eyes turned toward her. Mirabelle tried to say hello, but she swallowed the wrong way and, poof, every piece of chalk on the board turned into a white butterfly. They swirled all the way up to the ceiling. Nobody moved. Mirabelle felt her cheeks burn. She wished she could vanish, and that was something she didn't know how to do yet.

Then a girl in the front row started to laugh, the way you laugh at the first snow of winter. "How did you do that?" she asked. Her name was Ines, and she was missing her two front teeth. Mirabelle shrugged. "I don't do it on purpose. It happens when I'm scared." Ines nodded, very serious. "When I'm scared, I get the hiccups. It's not as pretty."

Mrs Aubert opened the window, and the butterflies flew off toward the chestnut trees in the playground. She took a new piece of chalk from her drawer and only said, "Let's keep this one for writing, shall we?" The whole class laughed, and Mirabelle did too, a little. At break, Ines saved her a spot on the bench. At lunch, they swapped desserts. By the afternoon, Mirabelle's fingers had stopped tingling altogether.

That evening, she told Liquorice all about it while he lay curled up on her duvet. He purred so loudly the bed shook. Through the window, Mirabelle saw one last white butterfly drift by. It landed on the sill, flapped its wings twice, and turned back into a little stub of chalk. She tucked it into her pencil case for the next day, switched off her lamp, and fell asleep thinking about Ines's gap-toothed smile.