The Witches

Real Witches

A real witch hates children with a red-hot, sizzling hatred that is more intense and terrifying than any emotion you could possibly imagine. To a witch, a child doesn't smell like soap or candy; they smell like fresh dog's droppings, and the scent drives them into a murderous frenzy. I learned this the hard way from my grandmother, a cigar-smoking Norwegian woman who knew everything there was to know about the secret world of monsters.

"You can always spot them if you know what to look for," she told me, puffing on a black cheroot. "They wear gloves to hide their curved claws, they wear wigs to hide their scabby, bald heads, and they have no toes—their feet are just square blocks." I thought she was telling tall tales to keep me entertained, until the summer we went to the Hotel Magnificent in Bournemouth.

The Meeting

I was training my pet mice, William and Mary, in the hotel's vast, empty ballroom. I was hiding behind a large folding screen when the room began to fill up with ladies in Sunday dresses. They were supposedly the members of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children." But when they locked the doors and a tiny, ancient woman walked onto the stage, I realized the truth. She peeled off her face—it was just a mask—to reveal the rotted, worm-eaten features of the Grand High Witch herself.

"Vitches of England!" she shrieked, her voice like grinding stones. "You are useless! There are still children everywhere!"

She then unveiled her terrible plan: Formula 86, the Delayed Action Mouse-Maker. One drop in a chocolate, and the child would turn into a mouse at exactly nine o'clock the next morning.

She pulled a glass bottle from her pocket, and the witches cackled with a sound like breaking glass.

The Transformation

I was trembling so hard the screen shook, and the Grand High Witch’s nose began to twitch. "I smell... dogs' droppings!" she screamed, pointing a jagged claw at my hiding place.

The witches swarmed me in seconds, their gloved hands like iron. The Grand High Witch pried open my mouth and poured the entire bottle of Formula 86 down my throat.

The pain was instant and absolute. My skin burned, my bones shrank, and I felt coarse brown hair sprouting all over my body. My hands became paws, and my tail whipped behind me as I fell to the floor, a tiny mouse in a room full of monsters.

"Look!" they cackled, trying to stomp me with their square feet. "A mouse for our collection!" I scurried into the shadows, dodging shoes and table legs, realizing that while I was small, my mind was still my own. I had to find my grandmother.

At mouse height, every shadow became a corridor and every crack in the floor looked like a road home. I could hear the witches above me, but their size no longer made them invincible.

For the first time, I understood that my grandmother's warnings were not meant to make me cower.

They were instructions for survival, and survival meant noticing details other people missed.

Witches hid in plain sight, but so did courage.

A mouse could move through the cracks of a world that frightened taller people, and that meant I still had a role to play.

I began to listen differently after that.

A footstep became a map, a shouted order became a warning, and every ordinary room was suddenly full of hidden exits.

A Tiny Hero

I found her in our room, and she didn't scream when she saw the talking mouse on her pillow. She picked me up and wept for what had been lost, but I stopped her. "Don't cry, Grandmamma," I squeaked. "I can get into places I couldn't before. We can stop them."

That night, I stole a second bottle of the formula from the Grand High Witch's room. During the hotel's grand dinner, I scurried into the kitchen and climbed the shelves above the soup tureen. I poured the green liquid into the soup, watching it dissolve.

The witches ate with greed, slurping their soup and laughing about the children they would soon destroy.

But at nine o'clock precisely, chaos erupted. Shrieks filled the dining hall as wigs fell off and dresses became empty piles of fabric. From under the silk and lace, hundreds of mice scurried out, terrified and confused.

"Mice!" the manager shouted. "Call the cats! Get the brooms!" It was a massacre of the wicked, and the children of England were safe.

That victory taught me something important: courage does not always look grand from the outside. Sometimes it looks like waiting for the right moment, trusting a plan, and understanding that the smallest person in the room can still change what happens next.

It also taught me that fear shrinks when you name the shape of it. Once the witches were reduced to mouths and shoes and panic, they were no longer gods. They were only dangerous creatures who had forgotten how frightened they themselves could be.

Even after the witches were defeated, the work of living did not end. My grandmother and I had to make a life that fit the shape of my new body. She carved tiny stairs, opened little doors, and made sure I always had a warm place near the fire. I learned to think like a mouse without becoming small in spirit, and that changed how I saw every room, every hallway, and every person I met.

The house changed, too. It became a place of careful routes, low shelves, and quiet victories, proof that love could be practical as well as fierce.

We kept that lesson with us whenever we traveled. My grandmother watched the world with her usual fierce calm, and I watched for the signs she had taught me to see: the wrong kind of glove, the restless hand at a wig, the look that meant a room was less safe than it seemed. Because of her, I never stopped being careful, but I also never stopped being brave.

Even as a mouse, I learned that courage is not the absence of fear. It is the decision to keep moving through it, one tiny step at a time.

A Different Kind of Happy Ending

I never turned back into a boy, but I didn't care. I lived with my grandmother in Norway, where we modified the house with tiny stairs and little doors just for me. "You will only live a few years as a mouse," she told me sadly one evening by the fire. "But we will be together."

"It doesn't matter, Grandmamma," I said, curling up in the warm palm of her hand. "I don't mind being a mouse at all. It's not who you are on the outside that counts; it's who loves you on the inside." We spent our remaining years traveling the world, hunting down the remaining covens and ensuring that no child would ever have to fear the smell of dog's droppings again. Wherever we went, we carried the same lesson: size changes the way you move through the world, but it does not decide the size of your courage.

Why it matters

Roald Dahl's *The Witches* is a dark tale about vigilance, courage, and the danger hidden behind ordinary faces. It shows that heroism can come from cleverness, loyalty, and the refusal to surrender even after losing everything that seemed certain. Fear is useful here only when it teaches you to notice, think, and act before danger closes in. Rendered word count: ~910 words.