She had not always been the harsh, stern and formidable woman she now was. It was difficult to believe such a thing: one always felt she must have sprung to life already fully formed, like a warrior growing from a dragon's tooth in some old myth. The idea that she had once been that innocent and unblemished thing, a child, was nigh on incomprehensible.
And yet of course she had. She had been a tiny baby once, whose mother had died bearing her, and whose father had brusquely assigned her to the care of her only other living relative, an elderly great-aunt. How Great-aunt Mina had loved that tiny little girl! She had had no children of her own, and her husband was dead. She devoted herself to the motherless infant. How happy they were together, knowing nothing of what the future would bring! The child was perhaps a little spoilt, and could sometimes be petulant, but no doubt she would have grown out of that in time. Her days passed in pursuing the innocent pastimes of an old-fashioned childhood: looking at books, going for walks, playing with teddies and dolls.
Alas, Great-aunt Mina was growing increasingly old and infirm, and the girl's father – who had now married again – felt that the child was old enough for him to take an interest in. Her stepmother disliked her from the first, for she had no great love for children, and as for the father – well, he wanted only one thing for her, and that was that she should be a great witch, as so many of her family had been, that she should be the greatest of them all. He was, perhaps, living his own dreams through her: her powers were greater than his, and he felt that with appropriate training she could wield influence in the witching world such as he never had.
The teddies and dolls and children's books went away, never to be seen again; Great-aunt Mina went to live out her last years in the Old Witches Retirement Home; the child found herself thrust into a loveless household, relegated to a dark attic bedroom with only the bats and spiders for company. "Go to your room!" was an instruction she came to dread, and it was uttered all too frequently. By flickering candlelight ("No witch should be afraid of the dark!"), she sat and read the spell-books they gave her; the wind howled and the bats swooped down too close to her head in the way that always made her want to scream.
In time they sent her away to school, a strict old-fashioned witches' school with a good reputation. How she hated it there! Neither pupils nor teachers knew what to make of the thin, pale girl with the long plaited hair and the mean eyes. Her skills were advanced for age, and lessons bored her. She turned rebellious and bullying, tried to inflict a little of the pain she was experiencing on those around her. How she hated her fellow pupils, who all seemed so happy and innocent, who hadn't realised that the world was a cruel and merciless place and that all that mattered was power! Her behaviour grew more outrageous, and the teachers had no idea what to do with her. She saw how ineffectual they were, and scorned them. They expelled her in the end.
After that she learnt at home. She was out of control, her father reasoned; what she needed was discipline. Discipline she accordingly had; cruel and terrible discipline, that only became worse when she fought against it. A twisted part of her still craved his love and attention, and it was always his words that hurt her the most. He had been made bitter by a lifetime of disappointments and trivial successes, by having more ambition than power or skill, by losing the wife he had loved; she learnt from him a bitterness and cynicism hardly suited to one so young.
Such training had its effect. She became a powerful and skilful witch, as regimented and unfeeling as a machine, always punctual, always efficient. She shared her father's values entirely, but hated him just as much as she obeyed him. When she left that house to go to college, she knew she would never go back.
No one at the college knew her past; she cultivated her new identity, a harsh and unforgiving armour against the world. Great-aunt Mina would never have recognised the girl who sniped and snapped at her fellow students, and seemed to take delight in finding their weaknesses while having none of her own.
Magic was the only thing she still cared about, the thing she lived for. She thought she knew what a witch should be; she thought she fulfilled the criteria. She trained as a teacher so that she could impart such knowledge to others. She learnt to relish the cut and thrust of politics, to take down her rivals without mercy. She rose to a position of power and influence, and trained some of the greatest witches of the new generation, always trying to mould them in her own implacable image.
The results, however, were not always satisfactory. Not every witch had what it took. Her eyes now roamed her new class of hopefuls, silently writing most of them off.
Then she caught sight of a pale, slender girl sitting alone, a girl with a defiant look in her eye, long dark hair in plaits. It was, for a fleeting moment, like looking at her own younger self. She studied the seating plan, flicked through a file. A promising girl, apparently; positively precocious, but lacking discipline and focus. Well, that could soon be remedied. Perhaps this would be the protogee that would make her proud.
"You girl!" she barked, smiling internally as the girl flinched a little, then pulled herself together and met the formidable teacher's gaze. "See me after the lesson. I would like to be your personal tutor."
The girl nodded, obedient for now, and spoke in a clear confident voice: "Yes, Mistress Broomhead."