Redundancy 2/8

“I don’t see what’s so difficult about this witchcraft business,” said Dave Bell at breakfast. He was still feeling pleased with himself for sorting out the problem with the transport fogs so easily. “A simple spell, so easy that even I can remember how to do it and a little bit of common sense. Problem solved!”

Jennifer Jane smiled. “You don’t know how lucky you were dad. I know a lot more spells than you do and it’s not as easy as it appears. Do you remember the time when I tried to make the crops grow quicker in a village I was trying to help?”

Dave looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded.

“Well in those days I’d never heard about boundary spells. Fortunately the witch in charge of the spell library told me about them, otherwise I would have got into even worse trouble than I did. As you know not only the crops, but also everything else inside the boundary grew bigger as well. Abigail got very cross and punished me by making me sit at the top of a tall tower for a week to look for any large animals and bring them back to their normal size. So you see spells aren’t always as simple as they may seem!”

“She didn’t tell you that there was only one of the giant rabbits left either, did she?” said Mary and the whole family burst out laughing.

“That’s strange,” said Dave suddenly, “there’s a lady coming along the garden from the woods, she looks rather like lieutenant Moonshine.

Jennifer Jane looked round. “You’re right, it is Lieutenant Moonshine, whatever can she want? I hope that nothing else has happened to the fairies who are flying at the Wish Warehouse!”

“Well whatever it is she doesn’t look very happy about it. I think I’ll just pop upstairs and get on with some work.”

Dave left the room and disappeared upstairs to his workroom, Mary shouted after him ‘that it was probably only a simple magical problem and he’d be able to solve it easily in a moment or two.’ He was just able to hear the hearty laughter following this remark, as he closed his work room door.

Ten minutes later, Jennifer Jane and her mum were looking glumly at each other, while Lieutenant Moonshine was gazing hopefully at Jennifer Jane.

“Whatever can you do with thousands of baby teeth?” they all said at the same time.

Mary went upstairs to have a word with her husband. Once he found out that the news Moonshine was bringing had nothing to do with the fairies having been taught to fly, he came back downstairs again, but he couldn’t think of anything to do with the teeth either.

Lieutenant Moonshine decided that she had to get back to the Wish Warehouse and left them to try and sort out the problem by themselves. Mary made a pot of tea to try and help the thinking process but nothing seemed to work.

“One thing’s for sure, I can’t see a market for that sort of thing in this world,” said Dave. “Anything made in bone could easily be reproduced in plastic at a fraction of the cost. What we need is a product that uses a lot of material and is very labour intensive so that it can be sold for a lot of money. Then every rich person would want to have one to show off to his neighbours. There’s only one snag, I can’t think what it should be!”

“The only thing I can suggest to get rid of such a large number of teeth, is to make them into beads and string them on thread to make lots of necklaces,” said Jennifer Jane at last. “But there aren’t too many people in the alternate world who wear necklaces, even if they could be made cheaply enough. They just aren’t practical for their sort of life style.”