Note: Tada! Here we are. Chapter eight, in which the plot is progressed a little...


Inferno

Eight

"Are you sure this is going to work?" asked Mildred of her headmistress. She and Miss Bat were standing in the courtyard in their cloaks and hats, broomsticks in hand, the other members of the school having unconsciously formed a semi-circle around them.

"Well, in our current circumstances Mildred, it would not be prudent to say that anything is certain, but I am quite confident that this is going to work, yes. For a start, Agatha is probably so self-assured that she will not be keeping a constant watch on the castle, believing, however misguidedly, that her Shield will prevent the rest of us leaving."

Mildred nodded uneasily. That went along with the idea of Agatha being confident of her own victory and not caring about the possibility of finding a Liaison, but still, surely she would have some kind of measure in place to prevent any misdeeds on her sister's part of the deal?

"In any case, if she counts the number of occupants of the school, she will find the correct number. Two additional people entered, and now two people are leaving. It just so happens that those who are leaving are not those who arrived." Miss Cackle gave a warm smile of reassurance, and moved aside to allow Mildred and Miss Bat room to mount their brooms. It had been unanimously decided, in the discussions that had taken place in the staffroom after breakfast, that Miss Bat should be the one to find Della, seeing as though the two were already known to each other. On establishing that, theoretically, one other person could leave the castle with her, Mildred had been nominated as a chaperone for the chanting teacher. Miss Cackle felt that it was her duty to remain with the school, and Miss Hardbroom had declined on the grounds of needing to stay to lift the shield. The Chief Wizard was understandably averse to the idea, and Mr Rowan-Webb had said that he ought to give his friend moral support. Thus, the task had fallen to Mildred, as the next position of authority within the school hierarchy.

She mounted her broom and hovered next to Miss Bat, who was stroking the handle of her own transport and crooning softly to it. Out of the corner of her eye, Mildred could see Miss Hardbroom shaking her head in despair.

"How's your banana, Mildred?" asked Miss Bat. Mildred hid a small smile. She hadn't called her broom that since the first year, but now, with Miss Bat for her sole company for an hour's journey down into the town to seek out Della Spinder, it seemed fitting to resurrect the nickname. She patted the parcel tape around the handle, replaced many times over the course of the years.

"Ready?" asked Miss Cackle. Mildred nodded. Miss Hardbroom raised her arms and cast the spell to lift the Alchemist's Shield. There was once more a blinding flash of light, which faded to the half-light of an overcast morning on the mountain. Mildred had to blink a few times to accustom herself to the new brightness, having become so used to the perpetual dark under the Shield. She rose quickly into the air, but just as she and her teacher were about to clear the towers, the darkness fell again with an almost palpable motion. Mildred pulled the broom to an emergency stop and looked down. Miss Hardbroom was doubled over, tightly gripping the fingers of her left hand with her right.

"Constance?" she heard the headmistress's concerned voice say as she rushed to her deputy's side. "What happened?"

"The weight on my hands... The pain overtook me for a moment there." She straightened again and prepared to cast once more.

"Constance, if you lift the Shield, could I help you in anyway? I know you value your independence but you can accept our assistance when you need to. Especially considering..."

Mildred knew what Miss Cackle was going to say even without her voicing the thoughts, and she suppressed a shudder. Watching Miss Hardbroom's fingers grow back was not an experience that she was going to forget in a hurry, and Mildred was sure that there was something behind Agatha's supposed gesture of goodwill. The constant pain that her form-mistress seemed to be going through was surely a side-effect, although whether it was the only one remained to be seen.

Miss Hardbroom gave a brief nod, almost as if it embarrassed her to take up Miss Cackle's offer, like she was admitting weakness. She cast the spell again, and this time Miss Cackle also raised her hands, so that Miss Hardbroom could transfer some of the weight across. The bright morning sky appeared once more, and within seconds Mildred and Miss Bat were away, across the boundary, beyond the towers and flying towards the town at the bottom of the mountain.

"What's Della like?" she called to Miss Bat above the roar of the wind.

"She's... well, I've always thought she was fairly ordinary," Miss Bat replied, turning her face into the wind and letting it blow the metaphorical cobwebs away. "She's a nice enough girl, and she loves her old books." She shook her head. "Why didn't I see that she was a witch, let alone one with such amazing powers?"

Miss Bat fell to muttering to herself, and Mildred did not attempt to ask anything else of her chanting teacher. The wind was now too strong to hear clearly above anyway, and its chill autumn bite was freezing her hands into place around her broom. Still uneasy about heights, Mildred did not usually make a point of looking down when she was in flight, but something in the corner of her eye caught her attention and forced her gaze earthwards. Ignoring the sudden spasm of fear that jerked through her stiff limbs on seeing the mountainside forest so far below, Mildred peered at the landscape beneath her for evidence of something out of the ordinary. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement as she found nothing untoward. Scolding herself for jumping at shadows, she turned to face due North and the direction of their destination once more. Again, she caught a glimpse from the corner of her eye, and this time she recognised it for what it was. At the very edge of her perception, she could see the flickering image of the endless icy wastelands of Hell surrounding the castle. It seemed almost as if they were perched on the edge of a precipice, needing only a gentle breeze to plunge them into the depths below. Mildred shuddered, not wanting to dwell on the intense insecurity of her beloved school's current position. She pushed the half-image to the back of her mind and focussed on following Miss Bat's trail, intent on their goal.

By the time they were out of sight of the castle, the sun was appearing, seeming to break feebly through the thick cloud barrier that had settled over the mountain on an almost permanent basis, and after a while Mildred could feel her numb fingers begin to ache as they warmed up. She flexed them slightly before gripping onto her broom handle even tighter than before – she did not want any accidents; not today, not on her important mission.

"We're nearly there!" Miss Bat called excitedly. Mildred risked a momentary glance downwards to see the tiled roofs of the town, the Georgian terraces in their neat rows looking like a model village from their height. They began a rapid descent so as not to be seen flying by the town's inhabitants – for the non-magicians it was a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning, and businessmen and women alike would surely have something to say about two strange ladies flying broomsticks above their heads in the middle of the rush hour, even if it was only to curse that they did not have such an efficient mode of transport.

Mildred and Miss Bat touched down in a quiet alley on the outskirts of the town. Miss Bat made to hurry away, excited both by the prospect of seeing her friend again and by the knowledge that this friend might well be the answer to Cackle's current crisis.

"Miss Bat!" Mildred called, and when her teacher turned back she indicated her hat and broomstick.

"Oh, yes, right. Of course."

Mildred quickly made a bundle of their hats, cloaks and brooms and cast a simple protection spell on it, hoping that would be enough to divert any attention from them. Anyone who came too close to their bundle would be hit with a sudden doubt as to whether or not they left the oven on at home and have to hurry away to verify the point, but Mildred could not be sure that it would continue to work for however long they were going to be away. Nevertheless, she felt it was probably wise not to run around the town with her broomstick in tow; the excuse of a fancy dress party was only viable in certain situations.

"This way!" said Miss Bat, skipping out of the alley and turning left into a market street. The traders were too absorbed in assembling their stalls to pay any attention to the teenage school girl and eccentric old woman, the latter brandishing a conducting baton like a sword in front of her and directing an imaginary symphony orchestra at arm's length.

"Where are we going?" asked Mildred, having to jog to keep up with her teacher's fast pace. They were headed away from the main shopping district of the town, passing through more and more residential areas.

"You'll see," she said. "You have to know where you're going in order to find it."

Somehow, this response did not fill Mildred with confidence. They rounded another corner into a street seemingly filled with houses, and Mildred was sure that they had taken a wrong turning until Miss Bat stopped abruptly in front of a particularly imposing building.

"Here we are!" she said brightly, gesturing to the house with her baton before opening the gate and dancing down the steps to the basement entrance. Mildred followed, and immediately saw that they were in the right place. A sign in black metal work above the door read Spinder's in elaborate cursive, and the nearest window pane was covered in spidery silver calligraphy. Spinder's Antiquarian and Occult Bookshop, it said. First editions, bookbinding and restoration, sheet music and poetry. Specialised works bought and sold. The rest of the glass was etched in beautiful patterns resembling spiders and cobwebs, so delicately done that Mildred surmised magic to be the artist. Miss Bat opened the door then, the tinkle of the old-fashioned bell as she entered bringing Mildred out of her reverie. She followed her teacher into the warm basement and looked around her in amazement. She had never seen so many books in such a small space, not even in the library at Cackle's. The shop had floor-to-ceiling bookcases around three of the walls, and each shelf was full, sometimes three deep. None of the works looked to have been written in the last century, and most bore titles more worthy of the 'dangerous spells' section back at the school than a harmless shop open to non-magicians. A couple of moth-eaten armchairs in fading red velvet were placed in one corner of the room, creating a little reading area, and a rickety wooden stepladder was leaning, folded, against the nearest shelf. At the far end of the room, a heavy mahogany desk played host to an antique cash register and an abandoned set of bookbinding tools. The shop seemed to be deserted.

"Hello?" Miss Bat called. "Della?"

"Just coming!" There was the noise of cardboard boxes being kicked out of the way, and the door to the rest of the house behind the desk slowly opened to reveal Miss Della Spinder, the woman who was to be Cackle's saviour...


Note2: To be continued as soon as I have written the next chapter!

*You know what I am going to say by now....*