The world Joan Aiken creates is an enchanted place where all the tiresome rules of reality are broken and anything is gloriously possible. Weather can be ordered from the local witch; spells are taught in school; apple trees answer the phone; a snake swallows the night; and the cardboard cut-out on the back of a breakfast-cereal packet turns into a magic garden. To children like Mark and Harriet Armitage, true believers in the fantastic, all kinds of wonderful adventures happen. Spiteful neighbors change them into fish; three bloodthirsty ladies call the Furies pester them; Mark is bewitched by a laurel tree; and Harriet inherits a real hair loom on her thirteenth birthday. Contains the short stories : - A Small Pinch of Weather - Broomsticks and Sardines - The Boy Who Read Aloud - The Land of Trees and Heroes - The Cost of Night - The Stolen Quince Tree - Smoke from Cromwell's Time - The Apple of Trouble - The Lilac in the Lake - Harriet's Hairloom - A Leg Full of Rubies - The Serial Garden