One day Princess Peasblossom decided to go visit her best friend Winnifred Witch. She walked through the forest to Winifred’s house, and found her other best friend, Diana Dragon sitting outside it, peering in through the window.
“What’s going on?” asked Princess Peasblossom.
“Shhhhhhh,” whispered Diana, very loudly (she was a dragon after all, and dragons can’t do anything quietly!). “Winnie is stirring something in her cauldron. I think she must be working on a spell!”
“Actually,” said Winnie, opening the window at that moment, “I’ve been baking. Would you like a cupcake?”
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She held out a tray of cupcakes to Diana and Peasblossom, they looked very tasty.
“Oooo, yes please!” !” said Princess Peasblossom, picking up a cupcake and taking a bite.
“Mmmmm it’s delici……”
Princess Peasblossom stopped talking in the middle of the sentence. She turned blue, then purple with yellow spots, then all her hair stood up on end in spikes, then...
Princess Peasblossom turned into…
A mouse!
“SQUEAK!!!” said Princess Peasblossom.
“Um,” said Winnie, “what was that Princess Peasmouse? I mean, Peasblossom.”
Princess Peasblossom was so scared to find herself unexpectedly a mouse, that she ran all the way back to the castle, a very long way for a mouse. She ran into the castle through a crack in the bottom of the massive front door.
“EEEK a MOUSE!” shouted the guard just inside the door, and he tried to hit her with the butt of his spear.
Princess Peasblossom got away from him and scampered on into the hallway. “EEEK a MOUSE!” screamed the maid, and tried to hit her with the broom she was holding.
Princess Peasblossom dodged that and got into the throne room. “EEEK a MOUSE!” screeched the king, and he held his robes up above his knees and stood on the throne!
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“Bother,” squeaked Princess Peasblossom, and she scuttled for her room as fast as her little mouse feet could take her. Once she got into her room, she found a crack in her magic wardrobe and got inside that. There must be something in there that could help!
Unfortunately, Princess Peasmouse was a very small mouse, and nearly everything in the magic wardrobe was hanging up, or on high up shelves. There didn’t seem to be anything she could reach.
She had nearly given up hope when she found a necklace that had fallen off a shelf, onto the floor of the wardrobe. It was made out of whiskers the castle cat had shed, woven together. Since it was the only thing there, she stuck her head in it.
Princess Peasblossom turned into…
A cat!
“Well,” she thought, “at least it’s a bit of an improvement.”
All that running had made her very hungry, so she pushed open the wardrobe door with her nose and went off in search of food.
She passed the king in the throne room, who got down off his throne to give her a quick pat. “Good cat,” he said, “you’ll get rid of that mouse, won’t you?”
Meanwhile, Winnie was wondering what had gone wrong with the cupcakes.
“I could swear they were just ordinary cupcakes!” she told Diana, “I really didn’t mean to turn anyone into mice! Perhaps I used the wrong recipe book?”
Diana suggested she check her ingredients. “Perhaps you added scorpion grass flour instead of wheat flour?” she wondered.
“Hmmm,” said Winnie, looking at the bottles and packets in her kitchen cupboards and on her shelves. “It seems unlikely, scorpion grass flour is green, like algae or seaweed…. Wait, wait, scorpions…”
She stuck her arm in the cupboard and pulled out two identical packets. “Ah, here’s the problem!” she cried. “I meant to add scorpion eye roots, they are very tasty, and good for you too, but the bottle is exactly the same as the one for scorpion eyes! I must have added those instead! Those turn people into mice.”
“Err,” said Diana. “Are we talking actual scorpion’s actual eyes here?”
Winnie laughed. “No,” she said. “Of course not, the cupcakes are vegetarian! Scorpion eyes is a special plant, it just looks like, well, scorpion eyes.”
“Ah,” said Diana, relieved. Then she remembered one of her best friends had turned into a mouse, and the relief left her. “But, what do we do now?” she asked. “How do we turn Peasmouse back into Peasblossom?”
Winnie grabbed a book off one of the shelves in her kitchen and thumbed through it.
“Reversal spell, reversal spell,” she muttered. “Right, got it. Ok, I have nearly all the ingredients here, we just need… Oh dear.”
“What?” asked Diana, worried.
“We need one of those magic plums, the ones the wizard guards.”
“Oh,” said Diana. “Bother.”
Winnie and Diana set out for the wizard’s tower to ask him for a plum. They walked for a while till they came to a tree that looked like a fairy, with shimmery leaves that sparkled in the sun.
“That’s pretty,” remarked Diana, “I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
“Hmmm,” said Winnie.
They walked some more and, in the distance, saw a pretty cottage covered in ivy.
“Hmmm,” said Winnie again.
“Err,” said Diana. “Isn’t that… your cottage? Are we back where we started?”
“Yes,” grumbled Winnie, “that silly wizard has set a path confusing spell over the way to his tower. I thought so when we saw the fairy tree, I’m sure now. One minute.”
Winnie pulled out her wand and said:
"Hubble Bubble,
That wizard is trouble!
Show us the path,
Or feel my wrath!"
Nothing seemed to change in the forest, but this time when they walked for a while, they came to the path that led to the wizard’s tower.
“Harumph,” ,” said the wizard, when they knocked on his door. “Well, I suppose since you’re here, you better come in.”
“Why thank you for your hospitality,” said Diana, smiling and showing all her teeth. The wizard took a step back.
“Err,” he said, slightly more politely. “What do you want?”
“We need a magic plum to help our friend, please,” explained Winnie.
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“What do you think I am?!” exclaimed the wizard. “Your personal farmer? I grow those plums for my own magic, not for any…” He trailed off, because Diana was still smiling at him, with all her very sharp, shiny, teeth showing.
“How many do you have?” asked Diana.
“Hundreds!” said the wizard, “I’ve been very good at growing them from the pip of the one you brought back to me from the island.”
“So…” said Diana, smiling even wider, and letting a little flame come out of her nostrils.
“Fine, fine,” admitted the wizard. “I don’t actually need all of them. And I only have them because you helped me. Of course, you can have one. Even two, if you want.”
“One will be plenty, thank you,” said Winnie, holding out her hand for the plum.
Winnie and Diana hurried back to the cottage with the plum, to prepare the plum potion.
“Oh bother,” said Winne when they were back in her kitchen. Her cauldron was missing.
“Where could your cauldron have gone?” asked Diana. “It’s really heavy, even I have trouble lifting it!”
“Hmmm,” said Winnie, and gingerly poked the air where the cauldron should be. “Ow,” she said, as her fingers met solid iron. She sighed. “Drat that wizard. It’s still there, he just turned it invisible in return for us getting him to admit he owed us, I think. Well, I don’t have time to turn it visible again now, we’ll just have to make the potion in an invisible cauldron.”
Diana read the recipe while Winnie mixed the ingredients in the invisible cauldron. It was rather funny to see all the ingredients hanging in the air bubbling away, but it worked, and when Winnie added the last ingredient, the magic plum, the potion turned bright pink with sparkles.
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“Perfect,” Winne said, with satisfaction. “Now, let’s go find Princess Peasmouse, I mean, Peasblossom.”
Princess Peascat was in the castle pantry, helping herself to cheese and cream. She had liked them as a human, but as a cat they tasted even better! All creamy and sweet and mmmmm. The castle cat was next to her amazed at how much cheese this new cat could eat!
Finally, Princess Peasblossom was full, and she sat down to have a nice bath, cat style, licking her paw and then rubbing it over her ear and face to remove some of the cream. Lick, lick rub, lick lick.
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Just then, the pantry door burst open knocking her over and into the cream she had spilt on the floor so she could drink it. It was Diana, as a dragon opening doors without bursting them open was very hard.
“No Princess Peasmice in here, Winne,” said Diana. “Just some cats covered in cream.”
“Hmmm,” said Winnie again, taking a close look at the dripping Princess Peascat. “I wonder… There is that magic wardrobe of hers, and a cat IS safer than a mouse…” she muttered to herself.
“It’s me!” Princess Peasblossom tried to say, but it came out as “Mrow!”
Luckily, witches speak cat, so Winnie smiled and said, “I thought so, here, drink this.” She held out a spoonful of the plum soup potion. Princess Peasblossom daintily licked it off the spoon.
Princess Peasblossom was back, her gown dripping wet with cream and covered in cheese.
“Phew,” she started to say, when…
Princess Peasblossom was a mouse again! And, oh no, the castle cat was right there, looking at her and thinking about pouncing!
Princess Peasmouse squeaked loudly and took a quick run and jumped into a nearby dish of taramasalata to try and hide.
“Oh no,” cried Winnie, “she must have had more of the cupcake than I realised!”
Diana yelled, “Give me the potion bottle, Winnie!”
Winnie did so, and Diana poured the whole of the potion into the taramasalata with the Princess, just before the cat pounced!
Princess Peasblossom was once again standing before them, her gown now covered in cream, cheese, and taramasalata, with a very, very confused castle cat in her arms.
She sighed, heavily. “No one would believe the day I’ve had,” she said, wearily, as the cat started to purr, and lick the mess off her dress.
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