By Julie

The older witches were right. Luna had junk everywhere. It was scattered under her bed, propped up against a dresser full of robes in her closet, stuffed into gaps in the bookcase and grinning down from the top of her headboard. “You start in the closet,” Luna said, swinging aside the rickety door (painted with a moving picture of a clown juggling balls). “Anything babyish goes in that pile, any trash goes in that pile, and anything cool like in Eve’s room goes here. Ask me about stuff that’s not clear, okay? I’m starting with the bookshelf.”
“All right,” Luna said feebly, positioning herself outside Basil’s closet. “I’ll start with this corner, put stuff in appropriate piles, and ask you about anything unclear.”
The problem? Everything was unclear. Luna had no idea what was considered trash, babyish, or cool to a witch. “Basil?” she called, holding up what seemed to be a tattered diary. “Oh,” she called back. “A spellbinder. That’s cool. It writes down all the spells you’ve done as soon as it’s in your possession and it’s opened. See?
“O Great Spirits, let me tell
“And cast a yummy yummy spell
“Let me feed these hungry doves
“Bird food filled with filling love.”
Bird food materialized near the ceiling and was suspended there for a few seconds before falling back down. The doves scrambled and darted after each bit of food, catching most of them before they hit the floor. After Luna was finished watching this. Written on the book was
Dove Feeding Spell
Composed by Arrow IX
1399
“Cool, huh?” Luna asked. “But I’ve already got one.” She pointed to another book resting on white textured pedestal. The same spell was also scrawled on its pages. “You can have it, I have no use for two of them.
Luna set it down gently in a separate pile. “What about this?” she called, holding up three balls that were rapidly juggling themselves in her hands. “Babyish, duh,” Basil called. “I can juggle by myself now.” Luna set them down in her pile. “And this?” she asked, holding up a vial of ashes. “Oh, those are the ashes from the first magical fire I created. I kind of want to keep them, throw them in with the cool stuff.”
“I suppose this is…” Luna panted around an hour later. The closet was about half cleared, and Luna had been working constantly with no breaks. She pointed to a wooden pedestal with wooden vines snaking up the edges. “I don’t need it, you can have it to put the spellbinder on.” Basil replied, throwing a big bag of bird food into the cool stuff pile. “I found another box of books,” Luna called after dragging the pedestal out. “What should I do with them?”
“Are they spellbooks? Or baby books? Or regular novels?” Basil asked. “Spellbooks, I’m pretty sure. Here’s one called One Thousand Magnificent Cooking Spells composed by Hilda The Fiftieth.”
“Then they go in the box for books that belong to Midnight. He’ll like that one, it’s a brand-new-looking copy.”
“What about these sneakers?”
“Trash. Totally normal. Nothing magical about them.” Basil clarified. Luna didn’t want them, so she tossed them into the miniscule TRASH pile.
“It’s eleven-thirty girls. Any progress?” Dawn called.
“Uh, kind of. Can we have a snack?” Basil called, scanning the trashed room.
“What do you want?”
“Do we have any more bat wing?”
“Nope. All gone. And Mallory isn’t in the mood to fix you anything.”
“Oh, fine. Just bring up some soup, will you? Cream of Carrot is good, and we’ll still be pretty hungry for lunch,” Basil demanded. “Do you want this smoky paper maker? I always use Dawn’s because this one’s pretty banged up.”
“I’ll take it,” Luna said gratefully. A smoky paper maker! She’d be able to send her own letters!
“What should I do with the rocking horse?”
“Babyish. Totally. I thought that that thing was babyish when I was still a baby. Seriously, I don’t know why I haven’t already thrown that thing out.”
Luna thought that it looked like a cute and sweet little thing, so she dragged it down to her room before continuing to sort through the closet.
“Here’s your soup, girls,” Dawn called, setting a large bowl of thin orange soup on a table filled with witches’ comic books. “I’m so happy you’re finally cleaning this room out,” she said in a jolly way, “I hope you do Luna’s tomorrow.”
“Sure,” Basil cried as Dawn hurried back down the stairs. “If we finish this one before the world ends!”
Luna agreed.