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A Spoonful of Magic

  By Lynne Roberts

  Copyright 2014 ynne Roberts

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  ISBN 978-1-927241-02-8

  Contents

  Chapter 1. Blast Off

  Chapter 2. Short Circuit

  Chapter 3. In a Jam

  Chapter 4. Remote Control

  Chapter 5. Spaced Out

  Chapter 6. Stop and Go

  Chapter 7. Something Fishy

  Chapter 8. Canine Capers

  Chapter9. Paperchase

  Chapter 10. Double Trouble

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 1. Blast Off

  ‘Ryan, Andy! Thank goodness you’re back!’ shrieked Tracey, as her brother and his friend came in the front door.

  ‘Who’d have sisters!’ said Ryan with loathing, as Tracey jumped around in front of him excitedly. Andy gave him a sympathetic look as Ryan frowned at Tracey. ‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot. What is it? What’s happened now?’ he asked in resignation.

  ‘I found that spoon I was looking for, the one Aunt Agatha gave me for a birthday present. You won’t believe what it’s done! Come and see.’ Tracey tossed her hair out of her eyes and beckoned to the boys.

  Ryan and Andy stopped and looked at Tracey in astonishment.

  ‘What spoon?’ asked Andy blankly.

  ‘What did the spoon do?’ Ryan demanded. ‘Is it magic? I know we thought Aunt Agatha must be a witch because she’s so peculiar, but how could a spoon do anything?’ They followed Tracey to her room where she opened the door and gestured dramatically.

  ‘Look at that!’

  Ryan and Andy stepped inside the bedroom. It looked as if a tornado had struck. All the posters on the walls were torn down and hanging in strips. The bed was covered with a jumble of shoes, books and ornaments, while the sheets were lying in a heap on the floor. A jar of hair conditioner lay spilled across a pair of jeans which was wedged at the top of the window, and the dressing table lay drunkenly on its side surrounded by a scattering of crumpled tissues and battered exercise books.

  ‘Wow, that’s even messier than my room,’ said Andy.

  Ryan frowned. ‘Why did you mess your room up?’ he asked in bewilderment. ‘And what has the spoon got to do with it?’

  ‘I didn’t mess my room up, you stupid boy,’ snapped Tracey. ‘It was the spoon. I think it must be magic.’

  ‘How the heck did it happen?’

  Tracey looked shamefaced. ‘I’m not sure,’ she confessed. ‘I know Aunt Agatha gave you a pen (A Present from Aunt Agatha)which made things come true when you wrote with it, so I figured the spoon would be the same.’

  ‘You can’t write with a spoon,’ argued Andy, who had fished a comic out of Tracey’s underwear drawer and was sitting on the floor reading it.

  ‘I know that,’ howled Tracey. ‘I’m not a total moron. I tried to use it like a spoon. I stirred a cup of coffee with it and made a wish. Then I licked honey off it and made a wish. I even washed it and dried it and polished it and made a wish, but nothing happened.’

  ‘What were you wishing for?’ asked Ryan with interest. Tracey suddenly looked embarrassed.

  ‘Nothing much,’ she mumbled. ‘Anyway, that’s not important.’

  ‘You must have wished for your room to be in a mess,’ Ryan pointed out.

  ‘I didn’t,’ said Tracey through gritted teeth, holding onto her temper with an obvious effort. ‘Like I said, nothing happened. Then I got so mad that I banged the spoon on the wall and said that I wished something would happen. And it did. The room messed up like this.’

  ‘How long did it take,’ Andy asked her.

  Tracey shrugged. ‘It all happened in a split second. One minute I was sitting on the bed and the room was tidy and the next minute I was lying in a heap of stuff and it was totally messed up.’

  ‘That must be how it works then,’ exclaimed Ryan. ‘Hitting the spoon on something. Have you tried hitting it again and wishing things back the way they were?’

  ‘Oh what a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that?’ said Tracey sarcastically. ‘Of course I thought of that, I’m not entirely stupid, you know. The problem is that the spoon has gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘If I knew that I would have found it,’ Tracey ground out. ‘I guess it’s in the middle of all this mess somewhere. I thought you could help me find it.’

  ‘We’re not tidying your mess,’ said Ryan indignantly. ‘We’re going to play with my electronics set.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Andy hastily.

  ‘If we find the spoon I’ll let you have a wish each,’ offered Tracey. ‘So, are you going to help me or not?’ The boys thought about this. The chance of making a wish for whatever they wanted was too good to turn down.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ muttered Ryan. ‘I guess if we all help it won’t take too long.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tracey gratefully.

  The children worked in silence cleaning and tidying the room. Andy tossed shoes into a heap in the bottom of the cupboard, while Ryan picked up the torn posters and stuffed them into the bin. Andy picked up a small red covered book.

  ‘This looks like a diary,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll take that!’ Tracey spun around and snatched it from him and buried it deep in one of her drawers.

  ‘I wasn’t going to read it,’ said Andy in hurt tones.

  ‘I would have,’ said Ryan frankly. ‘She writes all sorts of stuff in there but she never lets me see it.’

  ‘That’s because it’s private,’ hissed Tracey. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. A girl has to have some privacy.’ Ryan rolled his eyes and made gagging noises. Andy laughed and hastily turned it into a cough as Tracey glared at him.

  The room was almost back to normal when Ryan gave a shout.

  ‘Here’s the spoon.’ He pulled it out of a faded blue sunhat and held it up triumphantly.

  ‘Let me see.’ Andy took the spoon and studied it. ‘It doesn’t look magic,’ he said critically. It looked like an ordinary everyday teaspoon. It was the sort of spoon you would expect to find in a kitchen or café or school lunchroom, or anywhere someone needed a spoon.

  ‘I’ll test it, shall I?’ Andy offered helpfully.

  ‘No,’ yelped Tracey who was trying to untangle her hairbrush from a pair of hockey socks.

  Andy ignored her. ‘I wish I was on a rocket ship,’ he said firmly, and tapped the spoon on the corner of the dressing table. There was a faint popping noise and he disappeared. At the same time, the rest of Tracey’s bedroom miraculously returned to normal. The ripped posters repaired themselves and hung themselves back on the walls and all the clothing was folded neatly in the drawers.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ gasped Tracey. ‘The spoon worked again.’

  ‘It sure did,’ said Ryan shakily. It had given him a nasty sinking feeling seeing Andy vanish. ‘It looks as if it’s undone your wish as well,’ he said in astonishment. ‘Look at the posters. We needn’t have tidied the room after all.’

  ‘If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found the spoon,’ said Tracey wryly.

  ‘What do we do about Andy?’ Ryan asked his sister.

  She looked at him helplessly. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘We can’t make another wish to bring him back because he must still be holding the spoon. I can’t se
e it anywhere here.’

  ‘Do you suppose he’s on a real rocket ship?’ Ryan croaked. ‘Up in space and everything? He hasn’t got a space suit on so maybe he won’t be able to breathe.’

  ‘I’m sure the spoon wouldn’t actually kill him,’ said Tracey doubtfully. ‘It’s almost certainly put him in the proper gear that he needs.’

  ‘He’s probably having a great time then,’ said Ryan, cheering up. ‘In fact, he’s probably zooming along in the sky seeing all the stars and stuff. I wonder if he’ll land on the moon?’ He rushed to the window and looked up at the sky. Apart from a few fluffy white clouds it was empty. A pale half moon peered over the trees in the distance while the sun was sinking lower.

  ‘You won’t be able to see him from here,’ scoffed Tracey. ‘Wherever he is, we can’t do anything about it. Perhaps he’ll meet another astronaut and get him or her to wish him back again.’

  ‘But he doesn’t know that it would work,’ protested Ryan. ‘In fact, we don’t really know that it would work.’

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and see then,’ said Tracey sourly. She was annoyed that she apparently had a magic spoon and yet her little brother’s friend was the one getting an adventure out of it.

  ‘I may as well go and watch television,’ Ryan grumbled. ‘Its not as if I’ve got anything else to do. After all, I’m not on a fantastic rocket ship. I’m not the one having an awesome adventure. I’m not the one exploring the planets. I’m not the one meeting weird space creatures…aah!’ he stepped back with a strangled yell as a strange green shape rose and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s only me, you idiot,’ said Tracey impatiently. ‘I thought I’d get the quilt out in case it turns cold in the night.’

  ‘I knew it was you,’ lied Ryan, as his heartbeat slowly returned to normal and Tracey folded the quilt neatly across the end of the bed. ‘What are we going to do about Andy, though? His family will worry if he doesn’t turn up at his place before bedtime.’

  ‘Why don’t you ring his Mum and say he’s staying here tonight,’ Tracey suggested. ‘That will give us a bit more time to see if he appears again.’

  ‘Well, you’re the one who’ll be freaked out if Andy suddenly materialises in your bedroom,’ muttered Ryan darkly.

  ‘No, I won’t,’ Tracey said calmly. ‘Because tonight we are going to swap rooms, so if anyone is freaked out it will be you.’