The Extremely Inconvenient Curse

The sandwich situation was solved by Phineas, who produced from his various pockets two slightly squashed cheese rolls, a bag of crisps, and a cereal bar, all of which they tied to a long piece of string and Rosa hauled up to her window. She ate with impressive speed and then leaned back out and told them everything.

The old woman's name was Morrigan and she lived in a cottage at the edge of the forest two villages over. Rosa, who had a habit of wandering into places she had not been invited, had wandered into Morrigan's garden and helped herself to some of the herbs growing there because they smelled nice and she had wanted to make a wreath.

"A wreath," Cora repeated.

"A decorative wreath," Rosa said. "For my room. I did not know they were magical herbs. They looked like normal herbs."

"What kind of normal person has a garden full of magical herbs?" Phineas asked.

"A witch, apparently," Rosa said. "Which I also did not know at the time."

Morrigan had come out of her cottage, seen Rosa with her arms full of stolen herbs, and expressed her displeasure in the form of a curse. The curse had caused a tower to appear around Rosa on the spot and then transport itself, with Rosa inside, to the nearest populated area, which happened to be the football pitch.

"Why the nearest populated area?" Zeb asked.

"She said it was so that people would see me and know what happened to herb thieves," Rosa said. She sounded more indignant than embarrassed. "Which I think is a bit much for some herbs. I would have put them back if she had just asked."

"You cannot put herbs back once you have picked them," Cora said.

"That is not the point," Rosa said.

"Is there a way to break the curse?" Zeb asked, because he was thinking about the football pitch and the penalty spot.

"Morrigan said the curse would last until someone climbed the tower and retrieved the thing she had taken," Rosa said. "She seemed to think this was impossible given that there is no door."

All three of them looked up at Rosa's hair, hanging down the side of the tower like a very long thick rope.

Rosa noticed them looking. "Absolutely not," she said.

"It goes almost all the way to the ground," Cora observed.

"It is attached to my head," Rosa said. "It will hurt."

"We would be very gentle," Phineas said.

"The answer is no."

"The herbs are still up there with you?" Zeb asked.

A pause. "Yes," Rosa admitted.

"So someone needs to get up there, get the herbs, and presumably return them to Morrigan," Cora said, in the tone of someone working through a logic problem. "And the only way up is your hair."

"There must be another way," Rosa said, but she did not sound very certain.

"How long is it?" Phineas asked.

"My hair?"

"Yes."

Rosa was quiet for a moment. "Twenty three feet," she said, in a smaller voice. "I measured it once."

"And the tower is about thirty feet," Cora said, doing the maths quickly. "So if you leaned out of the window as far as safely possible the gap at the bottom would be about..."

"Seven feet," Zeb said. "Easy jump from a run-up."

"Easy jump," Rosa echoed flatly from above. "From a run-up. Onto hair."

"We have a very good jumper," Phineas said, and looked at Zeb.

Zeb straightened up. He was indeed a very good jumper. It was one of his better qualities.

"Fine," Rosa said, in the voice of someone making a great sacrifice. "But if this hurts I am going to be very cross about it."