The Little Witch Wanda

A few months ago, as I was entering my room, I noticed that my sight got fixated on a book in the library. This had also happened some days before, so I wondered what my unconscious might want to say with this. In the old days, I used to disregard this nonsense, but now, when I get one of these persistent bubbles from the unconscious, I listen.

It was (is) a book from my childhood, one of my favourites. The Little Witch Wanda. I never forgot its illustrations, which I loved, but to be honest I didn’t remember the story that well. So I sat down, took the book from the shelf and read it. Spoiler alert, now comes a summary of the book, just in case…

It is the story of a little witch called Wanda, as you might have guessed, who lives with her mother in the Forest of Witches. Wanda likes playing and fooling around. She ignores her mother’s rules and after some mischievous action, her mother has seen enough of it and decides to punish Wanda. I don’t remember now what the mischievous action was, but I do remember that it wasn’t that bad. As a kid, I also remember thinking that this was a massive over-reaction on the part of the mother, who decides to teach her the lesson of her life. She sits her on the back of her broom and flies her to the world of humans, where poor Wanda is to stay until she has managed to help one of them. Of course, Wanda was devastated, as I would have been.  Brave as she was, Wanda looks for people to help, but they are all afraid of her. Hopeless, she seats down and cries. A boy then appears who takes pity on Wanda and offers her his “help”. Prince charming has to peel 5 buckets of potatoes, no less, and asks Wanda to peel them for him. I can only imagine that Wanda must have thought that helping the cheeky bastard was her ticket out of there, so she agrees and peels all five buckets of potatoes. Tired, she falls asleep. When she wakes up, she finds that her mother has picked her up to bring her back home to the Forest of Witches, for which she is, of course, as grateful as she is relieved.

I’m not entirely sure my parents were sending me a message with his book, but my unconscious probably was.