Wolf Boy plunged his hand back into the pouch and brought out another bowl identical to the first. “Pretty, aren’t they?” he said, balancing a bowl in each hand.

“Yes. And there’s one more,” said Jenna.

Aunt Zelda closed her eyes and began to mutter something under her breath.

Wolf Boy shook his head. “No more,” he said. “That’s it.”

“No more?” asked Jenna.

“No. Sorry. Here, take a look.” Wolf Boy passed the bag across to Jenna. She put her hand inside and felt nothing more than cold, dusty leather. Hoping that maybe the bowl was hiding in some obscure Magykal way, Jenna handed the pouch across to Septimus, who felt inside. He shook his head.

“Sorry, Jen. No bowl.”

“Aunt Zelda,” Jenna said gently. “You know there should be three bowls in the bag? Do you know where the other one is?”

Aunt Zelda sighed. “The Marsh Python ate it,” she said.

9

TRIPLETS

Night was closing in. Wolf Boy got up from the gloomy group by the fire and lit the lanterns in the deep-set windowsills, while Aunt Zelda began to explain.

“It was a lovely sunny day and I’d left the door open. I was organizing the potion cupboard and I thought I would give the bowls a clean, so I put them on the desk over there”—she waved at an odd-looking desk that had feet like a duck—“and I went to get the GoldBright from the top shelf at the back behind the stairs. Well, I couldn’t find it, so then I had to sort through everything. I suppose I took a while looking for it. You see, it was hidden behind the Frog Fusions, which was next to the Marvel Mixture, which I am sure it never used to be, but the Marvel Mixture always shines so much that you can’t see anything unless you almost close your eyes and of course Frog Fusions is a really big bottle as we have so many frogs here and it seems a shame to waste them but the trouble is you can’t see anything through that murky green stuff, but I found it at last wedged behind the bottle in a little crevice thingy and when I went back to the desk I tripped right over it.”

“Over what?” asked Septimus, who had got lost on the Frog Fusions.

“The Marsh Python. Great ugly green thing, thick as a sewer pipe, snaking in through the door all the way to the desk, with its horrible flat head staring around and its long green tongue flicking in and out.” Aunt Zelda shuddered. “The wretched thing stretched all down the path to the Mott; in fact most of it was still in the Mott. I think it had been after Bert, because later I found her under my bed with her feathers in a terrible state.”

“What did you do?” asked Septimus.

“I gave her some milk and Balm Brew. It always calms her down.”

“You gave the python some milk?”

“What?”

“Zelda means she gave Bert some milk and Balm Brew,” said Wolf Boy. He turned to Aunt Zelda. “So what did you do with the python?”

“I swept it out with the BeGone broom,” said Aunt Zelda, shuddering at the memory. “Later I found that a bowl was missing and I realized what had happened. That disgusting snake had swallowed it. So I put the two bowls away with a Return Spell. It’s only a matter of time—the bowl will come back one day; things that belong together always do.”

“It will be too late by then,” said Jenna flatly.

Aunt Zelda looked desolate. “Jenna dear, I am so, so sorry. I know I should have told you, but I hoped the Dragon Boat would recover her strength in her own way and we would never need to use the Triple again.”

“Now I understand why you wouldn’t do the Revive,” said Jenna. “It wasn’t about it being better for the Dragon Boat to heal herself at all. It was because you’d lost a bowl. I wish you’d told me the truth.” Jenna was trying not to feel angry, but she could not believe that Aunt Zelda had kept something so important from her. She remembered what Sarah said about witches: they tell you what they want you to know—not what you want to know.

Jenna had been stroking Bert, who lay sleeping on the cushion beside her. But being stroked by someone who was upset made Bert feel edgy. Suddenly the duck gave Jenna’s hand a sharp peck. Jenna, to her utter embarrassment, burst into tears.

“Hey, Jen,” said Septimus, “it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” Jenna sniffed.

“We can fix it, I know we can,” Septimus insisted.

“But how?” Jenna asked, blowing her nose on her red silk handkerchief.

Septimus picked up one of the bowls and turned it over in his hands. “When he’s got the Fyre going, I bet Marcellus could make another one.”