Chapter 33- Epilogue
Lizzie and Thomas York go on to take in children and teenagers orphaned by the Great War, ended nearly ten years prior. Their quiet cottage becomes a haven for young people seeking to learn different skills and crafts and there are always small children clambering onto Thomas' lap, infants in his arms. A few of their children aspire to be witches and Lizzie is thrilled that the line of witches will not end with her.
When the Second World War begins, Thomas is in his seventies, Lizzie her sixties, and many of their children are called to war. A few answer the summons and she cries for them late into the nights in Thomas' arms. Others go to work the great industries for the war effort and even more of them go underground, their tiny village and others like it places where the War Department is least likely to look for conscientious objectors and draft dodgers. Still, a few young men are picked up every week and added to the service. Lizzie grieves for the loss of innocence in each of her many children.
Thomas dies shortly after the war. He is in bed with Lizzie by his side, the children he has called his own moving between the crowded and quiet living room and the sanctuary of the bedroom, their own children coming in periodically to check on Grandfather Thomas. Lizzie holds his hand as he falls silent, his breath rattling.
He opens his eyes and meets hers, "Lizzie? Where's Noah?"
She tries to keep from crying as she whispers, "With Enola. She's kept him safe."
"Oh, thank goodness. I thought Lucille had him for a moment. Do you think he's missed me?"
"Likely. But she probably tells him stories so the waiting isn't so bad."
He smiles, "Good. I like that. I'll miss you, Lizzie. I'll tell him all about you so he knows who you are when you join us."
She kisses his forehead, "I'll miss you, too. But I'll be alright. Please, if you need to go, do."
"One final embrace?"
She nods and bends low to hug him. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her in to kiss her lips. She stays close, her ear beside his mouth, as he rests back on the pillow and sighs.
"Goodbye, Lizzie York. I love you." He closes his eyes and stops breathing. She feels for a pulse. It is faint and fades while her fingers try to reach it until she can no longer find it.
She takes his hand and squeezes, "Goodbye, Thomas York. I love you, too." She waits a few moments, letting everything settle and feel final, before she slips his wedding ring from his finger. They agreed on this well in advance- he will not be buried with it so she can carry something of him with her through the end of her life. She stands and walks to the living room. All eyes are on her as she opens the door, "He's gone."
She leaves the door open and returns to her spot beside the bed, slipping his ring on a long gold chain and draping it around her neck as the children and grandchildren come in.
His memorial is well attended. Many of the young men wear their dress uniforms. Rebecca, now nearly a century old and almost blind, lays rosemary in his coffin and pins a sprig on Lizzie as well. Her voice is strong as she speaks words over his coffin. They bury him in the churchyard on the other side of the excedra for his wives and son. Everyone tells stories in the church after he is in the ground. Rebecca keeps an eye on Lizzie.
After it is over, after all the mourners have shaken Lizzie's hand or hugged her, she walks out to the graveyard and places all the flowers on his grave, over the excedra, over the graves of his wives and his son. She takes a few over to Lucille's plot and bedecks the stone in nature's beauty. Lizzie returns to sit at Thomas' feet a few moments before walking home.
Nathaniel is waiting at her door, "How are you holding up, Liz?"
She pulls out her notebook, "Fair enough. I thought I'd lost him once years ago- in 1902. God, has it really been so long? Come in for coffee or tea. It's chilly tonight."
"Of course." The door clicks closed behind her and he follows her as she gets water over the fire, "You did it, Liz. You found someone to love. You gave him all your heart. You saw him through all life's ups and downs. And you saw him off to the next one. What's even more remarkable is who you did it for. Liz, you're a saint. Were you Catholic and not a witch, I'd nominate you to the Vatican myself."
"It wasn't hard to love him, Nate. We had our challenges, but I never asked myself if it was worth it or not. It always was."
"He came a long way with you. I'm incredibly happy to have called him my friend. My brother. And very proud of you both."
"Thank you."
"Do you want me to stay a while?"
"Only if you want to. I plan on sleeping for a few days."
"Fair enough. How's this. I'll stay around to cook and do the housework so you can just rest. I miss my brother, too. Thomas was a wonderful person But you loved him differently, so now it's my turn to take care of you."
She nods and retreats to her workroom. There are things she has not yet done, things Rebecca taught her were for settling souls and easing the hearts of the living. She stokes the fires beneath her cauldron and opens the tap from the hot water lines from Thomas radiators. The steam engine still powers the little house and likely always will, at least until Lizzie leaves the world. She draws off just enough water for her work and sets a steel basin, a shallow circular boat, on the surface of the water. Into it, she drops springs and handfuls of fragrant dried herbs and sprinkles a small amount of the valuable frankincense she has been saving for years. With a long match, she takes from the fire below and lights the contents of the basin. She whispers things over the smoke, prayers and incantations for rest and for healing. And then she takes two very old tea tins from the shelf. She draws a pinch of each from the containers and throws them in the fire, careful to let the smoke filter up to the ceiling.
"Leave him be, Lucille. He has found peace. Find your own."
There is a shimmer in the corner of the room and something dark inches out of the shadows, "He is dead?"
"Yes."
"You are not supposed to be able to speak."
"Carefully."
"You are a witch."
"Yes."
The dark, skeletal figure in midnight lace steps forward, "Send me home."
"Allerdale or afterlife?"
"End me. He is dead. He is at rest and gone from this plane. He has no unfinished business. And I am alone."
Lizzie studies her and then pulls herbs from the clusters on her ceiling, speaking snatches of Gaelic and whispering incantations. She powders them and adds them to the water of Kildare in a clay cup. And then she places the cup in the fire in the basin and waits. She puts a pinch of the deadly tea in the water and removes the cup once it is hot. She passes it to Lucille.
"Drink."
"I know that smell."
"You do. And you are already dead."
"What will this do to me?"
"Afterlife or end. You choose."
The skeletal woman takes the cup and drinks it in one long draught. She stares at her hands and sighs. The cup clatters to the floor as she vanishes. It has split, two clean halves. She picks them up and sets them in the herbs burning in the basin, then steps out to the other room.
"You alright, Liz? I thought I heard someone else."
"You did. Witch things. But it is settled. Thomas is at peace. He will stay rested, waiting, with his son. And I will join him when my years come to a close. His sister won't be bothering him. She's made her choice." She shows him the notebook.
"Ah. And what might that be?"
"If I read the signs right, she's broken from him and ended herself. I don't know, though. A clay mug is such an imprecise divination method. Either way, my love's life is over. But there are so many things to be curious about. Perhaps I'll travel. Find where Ezra and Victoria were buried. See the battlefields of these past two wars to lay flowers on the places where my friends and children fell. Visit the great cities. Maybe I will even seek out Edith in her bright world of opportunity across the ocean. I don't know. But he would not want me to come to a stand-still because he has gone."
"If you go, can I come with you?"
"Of course. We'll always come back home when we need to find roots. Visit the children. I hope one of them wants to keep Thomas' house. I don't want it to rot when I am gone."
"I think Cosette has said a few times that she loves this place. And she's got an aptitude for the work you do. Seems right decent at it. You'd know better, of course, but I think she'd be an excellent village witch."
"She would." Lizzie sets aside her notebook, "I'm tired. Please, be at home." She retreats to their bed, so empty since his death. But she cannot close her eyes without him there. Putting him in the earth made it seem so much more real than the days before. So she goes to the closet, pulls out one of his old shirts, pinpricked with little burn marks from the firebox, and places it over her pillow. She closes her eyes and can almost hear his heartbeat.
She hums a little to herself. The tune she played for him on her piano. Its tempo falls with his heartbeat- she'd tweaked it a little after she had fallen asleep at his chest enough that the rhythm was second nature to her. She never told him, but he seemed to know that it had changed for him. She falls asleep to it and hears it in her dreams, but it is not she who plays it Thomas steps from the shadows and they dance in the vast open hall to her music, to his heartbeat.
As the dream fades, he kisses her, "Be brave, Lizzie. I am watching over you. We all are. Go. Live. I will see you in a few decades." There are others waving from the shadows, Victoria, Helga, Ezra, her children taken by war, and a woman with an infant standing beside her father. Other faces she cannot make out. The dream fades, Thomas the last to vanish.
She wakes in the morning to the sound of breakfast sizzling on the stove and the birds singing outside. Sunlight streams into her windows. She stands, stretches, and greets Nathaniel at the breakfast table with strong coffee before she goes to her workroom to check on the herbs. They have burned out, the clay fractured again. She pulls the basin from the cauldron and counts the pieces. A cluster of three. A small fragment in the middle. And two pieces from the other half, fallen to opposite sides. She sets the basin on her bench. Three wives. A little one. And a brother and sister fallen in opposite directions. She returns to breakfast.
"Morning, Lizzie. Coffee?"
She nods.
"Good, good. No doubt you can see I've started breakfast. Be done in a bit. How are you feeling?"
She looks out the window at the bright new day and smiles, "Like having an adventure."
Nathaniel laughs, "I like the sound of that. After we eat, though. Can't go adventuring on an empty stomach."
She sits at the table and they sip coffee while she sketches a crude map on butcher paper. They dream of where they might go, places they might see, and how they might get there. Lizzie and Thomas' children are spread throughout the world and they note who lives where and who has died where. Once they have eaten, they move from dreams to plans. Lizzie dresses. She puts the chain around her neck on which hangs Thomas' wedding ring.
Back at the table, Nathaniel looks up from the map when she returns, "So. How do we decide where to start?"
She removes the necklace, pulling the ring off it. She spins it on the map.
"Ah. We let Thomas decide."
She smiles as the ring clatters down over France. She lifts it and looks at the names on the map.
"I know that area. We fought there- Somme. It's where we lost Ez."
She nods, "Let's visit him."
"OK. I have the papers that say where he is. Your dad left them to me. He was our next of kin."
She takes his hand and nods, understanding this will be difficult. He squeezes it and she does back.
"Thanks, Liz."
She puts the ring back on the chain, clasping it back around her neck, "And we'll take Thomas with us, just like this."
"Well, if he's going to be our travel guide, I suppose we'd be remiss to leave him behind, wouldn't we?"
She laughs and nods. Within the week, they are travelling to France, Thomas' ring around her neck. She writes letters to him, an entire journal of words for Thomas that she keeps with her at all times. To Lizzie York, she is carrying him with her, ever her companion, as she and Nathaniel see the world.
Years later, after she has buried Nathaniel behind the excedra next to Thomas, after there are no more of her elders left living, and she is nearing 90, she goes to her own rest, her journal at her chest, his first declaration of love pasted in the front page, their wedding rings and home passed to Cosette, their daughter, the next village witch.
She buries her mother beside Thomas at the back of the excedra with rosemary in her coffin, a spring pinned to each of her many siblings' clothes.
Late that night, in the shadows of the cottage, she sees her parents' figures dancing, a little baby held between them. If she listens closely, she can hear the child laughing as they kiss. She smiles and returns to reading her book in bed, letting them stay until they fade. They won't be back, not unless they need to tell her something. They are happy and at peace.