Note: Here we are. End of the line. I hope you enjoy!
The Last Stand
Epilogue
Amelia watched Davina from the kitchen window. The older witch was sitting in a rocking chair and knitting something that she claimed was a jumper for Amelia, but Amelia was not quite sure how she was meant to put on a garment that had only one sleeve, but apparently three neck holes. Mind you, Amelia thought with a smile, when Davina misplaced her spectacles, she was often the victim of double-vision, and when she couldn't see the stitches on the needles, well there were bound to be deviations from the pattern. Amelia wondered if Davina had ever made something correctly, but then reflected that she wouldn't be Davina if she didn't have her little oddities. Admittedly, now that she was getting into her dotage, some of her oddities weren't so little – like singing the chickens that lived in the garden of the next cottage along to sleep every night. This in itself would not be so much of a problem, but she was insistent that falsetto strains of opera were beneficial to the chickens' social education and mental wellbeing.
Retired life had come easily to Amelia, even if she had been thrust into it rather before she had anticipated. Privately, she thought that perhaps she had continued in her post for too long, enjoying the comfort that the school brought too much to consider the possibility of bringing in new blood to take her place as head, although that thought again set her laughing. Of all the staff she had ever employed at Cackle's, Constance was the only one she had ever considered as a descendant. And even though she no longer had her magic to make life easier, she was not completely cut off from the witching world; the teachers regularly came to see her, and of course Della brought Carys to visit her 'Aunt' Davina often enough. Amelia had also popped into the school on occasion to see how her legacy was continuing. In the first week or so after her investiture as headmistress, Constance had kept in almost constant contact, not due to any inadequacies on her own part but down to a desire to keep the school running in the same way that Amelia had always wished it to be run. It was touching, the ex-headmistress thought, that her influence on the school could remain so strong even after she had left, and she wondered what the future would hold for the academy that she had loved and worked so hard for.
She smiled; there was no reason to worry. With Constance at the helm and teachers like Maud and Mildred to maintain the standards, she had no doubt that it would continue to provide both an educational establishment and a safe haven for many years to come.
XXX
When Maud had come into Mildred's room late one evening, nervously made the announcement that Constance had asked her to be deputy head and asked her old friend whether or not she should accept the offer, Mildred could not say that she was entirely surprised at the headmistress's decision. Whilst Maud was worried for Mildred's feelings, since she had been a teacher longer and was therefore more entitled to the post, Mildred had no such worries. It seemed to her that Maud was a natural teacher; she had seen the way her eyes lit up when she was instructing her charges. Even though she had never intended to pursue this particular career, Mildred knew that now she had discovered her talent, she would never look back, she would always wonder why she had ever thought of doing any job other than teaching.
Mildred knew that she was the opposite. She loved teaching, and she would never say otherwise. It had certainly been the only thing she had considered after leaving college. But at the same time, Mildred would always class herself as an artist first and foremost; if she could only choose one of art or teaching, art would win every time. In her lessons she was enjoying the process of creating bright new works just as much as her students, indeed she and Maud often joked that that she was only teaching by proxy.
It just went to show, Mildred thought, how Cackle's could continue to shape their lives even long after they had ceased to study there. Both she had Maud had found their true niches here, and so had Enid, even though she had found hers in rather different circumstances. As she looked around at the artwork that adorned the walls of her classroom, she wondered how many of her pupils would also find their direction within the magic and mystery of the venerated establishment.
XXX
Della gazed out of the window over their untidy garden as she lazily stirred the chocolate fudge that was slowly setting into icing consistency. It was ironic, she thought, that the annual celebration of Carys's birth was also a time of sadness, a time for remembering the death of her father. She had never let this more melancholy anniversary overshadow her daughter's special day before, but when Carys had caught her having her yearly heart to heart with the flowerpot that stood on the kitchen window that morning, she had enquired as to the occasion. Della had glossed over the majority of the details, explaining succinctly. She knew that her daughter, with all her sparkling magical potential, would find out the whole truth sooner or later, but it was too much to burden a just-turned-eight-year-old with. She looked again at the little plant in the pot; a small hellebore. Della had been determined to have a true helleborus as a fitting tribute to the sacrifice that Egbert had made for her and her daughter, although Gareth had expressed alarm at housing such a poisonous plant so close to a child's wandering fingers. That was where Constance had stepped into the breach – magic had a solution for everything it seemed – and Egbert's fauna memorial had remained ever since.
"Thanks," she said quietly, concluding the talk that had been interrupted that morning. She always said the same thing, every year, just as she always said the same thing when she visited Marlon's grave, but there was comfort in the tradition. Her heart considerably lightened, Della turned her attention to the cake that she was decorating ready for Carys's birthday tea. The past eight years seemed to have flown by; sometimes Della could scarcely believe that so much time had passed since she had first held her daughter as a newborn. Of course, there had been ups and downs in that time, but what family was not without its strife?
"Good evening," said a warm Welsh voice in her ear, Gareth's hand round her waist catching her unawares; she had been so enveloped in her thoughts she had not heard him come in. "Are we all ready for the grand unveiling?"
"As I'll ever be," said Della, twisting in his grasp having put the finishing touches on the cake and leaving it to set completely. She leaned in for a kiss, and just as their mouths had met, a yell from the living room brought them back to earth.
"It's on!" cried Carys. "It's on it's on it's on it's…ugh," she finished, disgusted, having run into the kitchen to meet the sight of her parents' embrace.
"We're coming, Carys," said Della, unlatching Gareth's hands from round her and following her girl into the living room, where the TV was showing an almost familiar castle. Carys was positively bouncing in excitement; a year ago Della had sold the rights to her children's books and they had been turned into a TV series.
It was with her tongue firmly in her cheek that Della watched the events unfolding on the screen, watching the characters of the witches she knew and love come to life. She wondered if Constance was watching, and what she would make of her portrayer. She looked sideways at her daughter, trying to gauge her thoughts. In a few short years, Carys would be off to Cackle's, and Della had warned her that it was not exactly the same as the way she had conveyed it in the books. She turned back to the screen, not really seeing but thinking, wondering if she had sold out her friends at the Academy in this way. She shook her head. They had supported her every step of the way, furnishing her with tales that she had not been privy to before, and in her own way, Della would always support them as well. She could never turn her back on the people that had been, and still were, such an exciting and amazing part of her life.
XXX
Enid always found it ironic that despite having passed all her exams with flying colours and being, even if she did say so herself, very adept at witchcraft, she should have found herself in a profession which was ultimately non-magical. She had slipped easily into the role of midwife as if it had been made for her, and from the moment she had first held Carys, she had known that there was nothing else she wanted to do in the world.
She would not deny that her magic had helped her throughout her training and her subsequent vocation; she could brew potions that were more effective than any epidural, and she knew she could always fall back on spells to assist her in an emergency. However, she preferred to use natural methods wherever possible. It just seemed right that way. People often asked her if being around babies and witnessing the horrors of birth every day had put her off having children of her own, and she would always reply that it never would. Others would ask if her calling was ever monotonous, and she would always reply that it never could be. No two mothers, no two birthing experiences were the same, and there was always the frisson of excitement and adrenaline that she felt whenever she was about to bring a new life into the world.
In the back of her mind, however, there was always a nervousness. Whilst Enid had never yet been party to a birth as strange, magical and dangerous as Carys's, she always held a certain trepidation in case of complications, in case any one of the women in her care should meet Della's fate. But this had not put her off, far from it. It merely made her work harder and harder to become better at what she did, to diminish the possibility of such an occurrence coming to light as much as possible.
In spite of her non-magical career, Enid would neither forget nor regret her time at Cackle's, nor would she forget the lifelong friends that she had made out of it. She may have moaned and made trouble at the time, but she thought that it was indeed true: her schooldays had been the best of her life.
XXX
It was the first day of the new school year and the latest intake of first-years were due to be arriving in a little under an hour. Constance looked at her reflection in the mirror, wondering just how the new arrivals would see her. As a formidable presence to be respected and awed, hopefully, but also as someone to whom they could look up and aspire, rather than a warning against what they could become… It would be ridiculous to say that Constance had not altered with age, but she would say that she had come through her years remarkably well, just the beginnings of a few lines here and there and of course, the persistent streak in her hair that had never recovered after her time in the Devil's domain. When she had first discovered it, both Mildred and Amelia having been too polite to mention it when they had first rescued her, she had wondered about trying to fix it in some way, but she had never done so. Not only was she loathe to resort to lotions and potions and magic (although Fenella and Grizelda, on learning of her cosmetic plight, had offered her their new range of haircare products at discounted price), she had found that it had also given her an air of mystique that was not wholly disagreeable. The girls who came into her care would often wonder aloud at the origin of that brilliant white stripe; the cynical ones would cite hairdressers' bleach whilst others thought wistfully of more romantic beginnings.
Constance did not mind, indeed she enjoyed it most of the time. It was one of those little things, little moments that reminded her students that this fearsome witch was a living, breathing being just like they were. She would always remember the whispers of amazement when the Halloween celebrations came and she wore her hair down. And, true to her word, she had kept the evening gown that Della had gifted her so many years before, not that she was expecting anyone to go prowling through her wardrobe.
Not much had changed at Cackle's during Constance's headship, indeed the only major alteration was the one that Constance herself would always have baulked at in her younger days – relations between Cackle's and Camelot were greatly improved. This was no doubt owing to Terrence Jones, who had taken on the wizards' school after Egbert's death. He had been determined to breathe new life into the school and bury old hatchets and rivalries, and his personal connection to Constance had meant that academic negotiations were made much easier. Terrence would always be grateful to Constance for saving his granddaughter, Carys, and Constance found his methods of teaching much more like her own, just as Amelia and Egbert had got on well for the same reason.
Constance sighed and pulled herself out of her recollections, making ready to meet her new girls. If there was one thing that her time teaching under Amelia had taught her, it was that one did not need to be feared to be loved. Amelia had been popular and respected, and she had rarely raised her voice. But, as she had confided to Mildred whilst the young teacher had still been a pupil, and as she had reiterated to Amelia on taking up her post, she only knew one tune, and it was hard to change one's direction when one had been dancing to it for so long. She would never be as good-natured as Amelia, or as gently down-to-Earth as Maud, but she knew that she would be respected, remembered and loved in her own way.
XXX
Twelve-year-old Carys Jones looked up at the gates of Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, a smile spreading over her face as she listened in to the conversations of the other girls who were due to start their magical education alongside her that day.
"I've heard that the headmistress is really scary," murmured one, her voice low in awe of the nameless, faceless woman whom she had never met. "In order to get in, you have to turn a rabbit into a banana split bowl, and if you can't do it, then you're on the next bus home."
"Is it rabbits into banana split bowls?" asked her friend worriedly. "I thought it was newts into corkscrews." There was a pause. "My sister says she appears out of nowhere though, just after you've said something really horrible about her." She paused again, trying to think of something to mitigate this foreboding statement. "The other teachers are nice though."
"I'm really quite worried about this whole 'appearing out of nowhere' thing. Do you think she can hear us now?" asked the first girl. Carys, unable to contain her giggles any longer, burst out into fits of laughter.
"What's so funny?" the girl asked. "Don't you think the headmistress is scary?"
"I think it's scary, having someone appear out of nowhere behind you," said another girl, casting a furtive glance around to check that the formidable witch had not materialised without her realising.
"Oh, I'm used to it," said Carys, as airily as she could through her laughter. The other girls looked perplexed, but then the gates in front of them opened, and the new first year received their first glimpse of the terrifying Miss Constance Hardbroom, headmistress of Cackle's. Quite possibly the tallest witch any of them had ever met, her back was ramrod straight, her long black gown neatly fitted around her thin frame and her dark hair, adorned by an impressive streak of white, pulled back into a tight plaited bun.
"Welcome girls," she said, her voice brisk but not completely unkind. "I trust you are ready for your initiation into our establishment."
She took a step back and allowed the girls to file in under the chanting and catcalls of the older students. As Carys passed under her gaze, she whispered, just loud enough for her companions to hear:
"Good morning Aunt Constance..."
Note2: And here I must leave you. It has been a fantastic ride, and I have loved writing this despite my (frequent) moments of doubt. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, favourited and put this on alert, especially the ever-amazing NCD whose reviews are a story in themselves! (Incidentally, I will be posting a list of all the songs she has so painstakingly reworded for me on my profile in due course.)
But as they say, au revior is not goodbye. Look out for my final fling in the Worst Witch world, coming soon to a computer screen near you: The Last Stand: The Deleted Scenes!
