Author's note: Thanks to all who have read so far, especially anyone who writes reviews. You should realize that the story is worked out except for small details that I change at the last minute. However I will try to make improvements for the next effort. A reminder that place names are mostly fictitious.
Night had fallen on the metropolis by the time they emerged back on the street. Mrs. Macready looked behind her at the wall of sandbags built up at the entrance of the tube station. She sniffed. What possible use could those be, she wondered. If someone were on the sidewalk when a bomb hit, what were the chances of there being sandbags close enough to offer protection? Over the station entrance a wooden sign had been hung up indicating that it was to be a bomb shelter in case of air raids. Invasion of wolves, she thought with a silent laugh. How was that for an obvious literary metaphor?
Following the bent old man at a safe distance was not difficult at all. He seemed not to be suspicious. There were enough pedestrians to provide cover but not so many as to risk losing their quarry.
"You were saying you went to school to become a witch?" Denis asked.
"Yes, Gladhearts Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, to be exact."
"An odd name."
"I don't know where it came from. It's very ancient. I always thought it was an attempt at irony."
"You mean you weren't happy there?"
"Not at first. I had mixed feelings about going. I was proud of my talent and happy doing magic. At the same time I wanted very much to be normal like other children. You see, my mother hated that I was a witch. She couldn't quite accept that I was one."
Mrs. Macready could remember when her family finally found out about her talent. When she was eleven she could perform the spells given her by the 'Gypsy' woman well enough that they were second nature to her. Her mother caught her levitating a mug of milk across the kitchen. She slapped her daughter. The mug fell and smashed. Mrs. Macready's face flushed red with embarrassment at being caught doing something forbidden but also with indignation that something she did almost without thinking would bring punishment down on her. It was a perfectly harmless and convenient way to perform household tasks. The two were locked in angry stares for what seemed a long time. Mrs. Macready couldn't understand why her mother was suddenly so furious. That made her more stubborn in return. Finally her mother broke the silence, turning away and muttering, "Clean up that mess."
"My mother was a woman of few words. She was sullen and angry about my witchcraft and she never explained why. I only heard the story from my grandmother. Apparently it was a bit of family history, passed down through the generations. One of our ancestors, a woman in the 16th century, was hung for witchcraft. It was something the family was deeply ashamed of. From time to time the calling would appear in a new generation but, of course, this was kept secret. It came to be thought of as some kind of family curse. My mother was appalled that a daughter of hers would revive it. I always felt that my mother favored my younger sister Juno and my brother Dan. Well, now she was provided an excuse for it."
"I gather you didn't desist from witchcraft, though."
"Goodness, no. I made a greater effort to keep my practice hidden. It taught me to be resourceful and independent." And distrustful, she thought.
Denis asked, "If your mother didn't want you to be a witch why did she send you to witch school?"
Mrs. Macready laughed. "It was a way to get me out of the way, out of the village, so that I wouldn't humiliate them by being caught doing witchcraft. She actually told the neighbors with a straight face that I was caught being truant and was sent to a reformatory school for girls. For incorrigibles like me, I suppose. They could distance themselves from me. They would leave me in the care of the sinister practitioners of black magic, my own kind, and I wouldn't contaminate the rest of the family.
"There was another reason too, now that I think of it." Mrs. Macready smiled. "I used to have a terrific crush on Gerald, my future husband, when I was thirteen and he was eighteen. I knew what I wanted in those days and I wasn't subtle about it." She laughed again, a laugh of genuine, slightly embarrassed, delight. "My mother saw me flirting with him one day. She nearly had a fit. She said she wouldn't have a daughter throwing herself at men like a trollop. So she sent me away. The idea was that if I was away from Gerald I wouldn't be tempted. And, of course, no one in the village would be scandalized by my behavior. That was another reason I found school so distasteful, at least at the beginning."
Mrs. Macready never thought that Gerald would still be available or even still residing in Granthorne by the time she graduated, after five years, but there he was, and he seemed to have changed so little. She had never had the courage to ask him whether he stayed in the village because of her. She knew he would tell her the truth. He was a habitual truth-teller. It was the gossip among the village girls at the time she left that Gerald had given a heart-shaped charm to Victoria Clark for her bracelet. She had certainly seen the bracelet on Victoria. In those days—those days that seemed so long past—people took such things seriously. Everyone knew everyone else in the village and it would have been easy to find out the truth, whether Victoria or another girl had left Gerald, or somehow disappointed him, but she never did. Her self-confidence petered out when it came to any comparison with the attractive girls that she knew. Even now it was not a subject she was keen to reminisce about. It was enough that Gerald was there. When she returned after graduation there was no time for timidity. She knew what she wanted. Everyone had a sense of urgency then as the young men were going off to the Great War. So they quickly became engaged.
"You husband isn't a witch, I mean a wizard, then? What sort of job does he do?"
"He sells hats."
Denis laughed. "I'm sorry. I find that odd."
"It certainly is. He hardly ever wears hats."
"No, I mean, there's you on the one hand, shooting at werewolves, and your husband is a hat salesman."
She wasn't paying attention to Denis's last remark. She was picturing Gerald as she liked to think of him: on the sidelines after a rugby game, hatless, hair disheveled in the scrums, shirt mud-bespattered, perhaps the top buttons undone and wisps of his reddish-brown chest hair sticking out. When she mentioned this image to her friend Patricia once, she was disgusted that Mrs. Macready liked chest hair. Well, there was no accounting for taste. Gerald hadn't played rugby in years now, even on the masters team, but the image was still vivid in her mind.
Mrs. Macready wondered why she allowed Denis to accompany her. She realized that the more memories Denis built up the greater effort it would require to erase them and the more likely it was that some fragments would remain. She grudgingly admitted that she enjoyed his company. It was also true, she argued to herself, that he had proven more than a little useful to this point.
"I suppose you've finished your education?" she asked coolly, as if it were only a conversation starter.
"Yes, I'm done. Or at least, I've had enough. My head seems crammed like a stuffed doll with rags. I can't imagine what use that knowledge could do me. Our education system seems designed to produce people like me, perfectly useless for anything practical."
"You've received your conscription letter, then?"
"Yes, this month, like millions of other poor fellows. To think, twenty years ago they could not imagine losing another generation of young men on the battlefield. Yet here we are, prepared to march into the fire."
"I keep telling my son, Ian, that he must take his future seriously. If he was accepted into an apprenticeship he would be granted a deferment. He doesn't show much interest in a formal education but he won't take up a trade either."
"How old is he?"
"Eighteen. Once the shooting starts, especially if there are heavy casualties, they'll drop the conscription age to eighteen in the bat of an eyelid. I don't suppose anyone thinks the war will be over in only two years." Denis nodded gloomily.
"The problem is," Mrs. Macready continued, "that Ian wouldn't find army life disagreeable. I'm sure his mates could talk him into enlisting within the first week of hostilities beginning. It would be a lark for him, a chance for some adventure." Maybe, she thought, a chance to get his mother out of his hair. She knew that he would make a good soldier. That only made her worry the more. They could ask him to crawl through a trench filled with icy water and he would have that sheepish grin and do it without hesitation, never mind catching pneumonia. Or parasites in the water. Did they have that in Britain, she wondered, or was it only in dirty water in those unhealthy tropical climates? She couldn't remember. If only Ian weren't so passive. He would end up with all the unpleasant duties, or even dangerous duties, that the other men would strive to avoid. He was too easy-going for his own good.
Gerald would be no help in discouraging their son. Whatever comforting words he said to her, she knew that Gerald and Ian would be allies in this. They were too much alike in some ways. Gerald would be tempted to enlist himself. She didn't know anyone for getting caught up in the first wave of enthusiasm as Gerald was.
Denis began his lament. "The whole experience will be inexpressibly wretched. There's basic training before we can even think of being shipped out. It'll be mud and waking up at dawn and cold showers. The sheer boredom of day after day of that will pound us into uncomplaining obedience. If only I could be lucky enough to fail the physical."
Denis had his speech interrupted by an unexpected whistle. The old man on the street ahead of them had turned to face them squarely. With a mischievous, mocking grin he pulled a wand out of the inside pocket of his shabby overcoat and with a practiced twirl he made his outlines grow hazy like heat shimmer in the distance. Then he shot straight up in the air like a firework.
"He was on to us the whole time," Denis exclaimed.
Denis and Mrs. Macready were beside the iron fence bordering a small park. The witch led them to a park bench. The bench's arms and legs were curls of cast iron. Flicking her wand she detached the bench from the concrete beneath. "Take a seat," she ordered.
"That wand is frightfully convenient for metalworking, don't you think?" Denis commented admiringly. He added, "It's rotten luck we can't use broomsticks, though."
"Broomsticks, fiddlesticks! Do you know how uncomfortable broomsticks are if you ride them for hours? They offer no lower back support at all."
"I suppose I've never really thought about it."
The park bench flew up into the air, surrounded by a similar cloaking spell to the one that the old man had used. Denis couldn't breathe with the rush of air. He grabbed hold of the armrest on his side with both hands and hung on with all his strength.
Denis scanned the indigo sky for any sign of their target, without much hope. The bench hovered and Denis recovered his breath. "I see him," Mrs. Macready muttered. Denis couldn't imagine how she managed this. He suspected that witches must have heightened sensory perception. The bench swooped forward like a bird of prey in pursuit. Mrs. Macready steered with her wand. Then Denis saw it too, a moving blur against the dark rooflines of the city.
Denis was better prepared for the acceleration this time. He squinted to keep his eyes open in the rush of cool air. It was like the rides his Uncle Jonathan had given him in his Bentley roadster when Denis was ten or so, out of the city and through the Surrey countryside. He wished for his goggles, and a wool scarf.
The flight was over almost as soon as Denis had adjusted to it. He had to admit to feeling a sense of disappointment. The old man came to the steep roof of a brick Victorian apartment building and alighted on the narrow widow's walk between the gable and the iron balustrade that encircled the roof. When he had gone in through a door Mrs. Macready motioned her wand to make the bench land on the roof. As it passed near the building the bench lost all speed and tumbled from the air, as if the engine had stalled on an airplane. Denis and Mrs. Macready were spilled from their seats. Denis shrieked. He saw the world tumbling around him as he had the sickening feeling of being a plaything to the force of gravity. Seconds later he felt his headlong plunge to the sidewalk arrested by an unseen force. He gently floated to the ground. Mrs. Macready, composed as ever, had brought their descent under control. The bench crashed on to a flower bed that skirted the building and obliterated some geraniums.
Although now on his feet, Denis was doubled over, gasping for breath.
"Anti-magic charms," noted Mrs. Macready. "The building is protected by powerful charms." Denis nodded, still trying to recover. She looked up the height of the building and saw the attic lights turn on.
"I suppose we can't get in, so I guess we have to call it a night," suggested Denis when he had calmed down.
After considering for some time, Mrs. Macready tried the double doors of the apartment lobby, knowing that they would be locked. But the doors opened. As Mrs. Macready and Denis entered the dimly lit lobby, the elevator doors opened and the thin old man stood before them, still in his shabby overcoat.
"I believe I am privileged to have an agent of the Bureau of Magical Enforcement as a guest. And I know of you. You are Mrs. Macready, unless I am mistaken."
Mrs. Macready nodded, trying not to show her surprise.
"I was apprised of your identity when I came into the building." He pointed out through the window to a metal tube mounted above the entrance doors. "It is a viewing scope of my own invention," he explained, looking at Denis. "It transmits images to a receiving screen in my home. By magical means, of course—no messy wires."
To Mrs. Macready he continued, "Call me sentimental but I felt you deserved some special treatment, instead of being turned away like any other Ministry agent. Let's not stand here. Come up to my rooms."
