by Paul Cornell
“Bye then,” said Judith.
She grabbed the universe. She grabbed the tidal wave Picton had set in motion. She threw all her energy into redirecting it, just by a single notch. The woes of Lychford exploded behind her and into her. And she was part of the explosion and was consumed by it.
* * *
Autumn staggered under the impact of something enormous. She saw Lizzie falling too. Everything on the floor of the forest lifted into the air around them. Was this it? Was this the end of the world? She looked to Lizzie and they made desperate eye contact. Lizzie reached out and grabbed her hand.
Autumn looked back to Picton. To her amazement, the being was staggering too. More than that, she was yelling in frustration, grappling with something in the air, tottering, trying desperately to hold on as her body vibrated faster and faster, flickering between her human shape and the stick figure that was underneath.
Picton screamed.
The stick figure exploded.
“What?” said Lizzie. “How?”
Autumn knew. “Judith.” She couldn’t feel anything from the soil ahead of them. Autumn started to climb desperately to her feet. “Judith!”
From somewhere ahead of them, there came the noise of what sounded like a single explosion. Autumn saw, through the trees, through her extra senses, an enormous presence bursting high into the air.
Water. It was water. It was the water, she realised, from the well in the woods, freed from the gravity that had been holding it back. It was like a fountain, reaching to the sky.
A moment later, the first drips of it hit the forest floor around them. Then the downpour began. Autumn felt it invigorating her, filling her with power as it drenched her. Lizzie, beside her, actually started to laugh. And yes, Autumn realised, this was something good, this was something that meant that the world wouldn’t end. This was something that was, instead, going to change that world.
But then she started to feel something else, under it, something that was speaking directly to her. Her joy receded, and the dread started to rise up once again.
* * *
Across Lychford, the rain thundered down on everyone, as they were flailing to deal with the consequences of the wishes they’d made, as they were struggling to help friends doing the same. Shaun Mawson had got halfway to his second emergency situation when the onslaught of water landed on him, like a bucket from the heavens. Carrie had been trying to convince the paramedics that she felt absolutely fine now, when suddenly they were all soaked. Luke had taken his friend outside, trying to work out what was wrong with him, when the water had fallen onto them. It buffeted his skin, got into his hair, got somehow even further into him.
He looked around, aware, suddenly, that everyone he could see, everyone slowly coming out of the buildings, people who’d been inside, too, they were all feeling the same way he did. He wasn’t sure how he was aware of that. People who he was now somehow identifying as the ones who’d made wishes, his friend included, were relaxing, as the weight of those wishes left them, as the consequences were suddenly washed away.
Around him, all of Lychford started to see the world differently. Around him, all of Lychford suddenly realised what they’d been missing all these years.
* * *
Autumn was realising something else. She watched, with senses that had become somehow different even from what she’d had before, as the landscape around her rotated, shifting away from the mound of soil under which Judith lay, and centring anew, centring on her.
In her mind, she walked with Judith alongside her, down an urgent path through the trees, hearing the voices of many who’d gone before her. “The wise woman has come to the well. As it has been, as it will be. The hedge witch will take on the burden, and come to the well from the town, and be the voice of the wilderness and the voice of the people.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
Judith put her hand on her shoulder. “It’s time.”
“I can’t. I want to save you. I can’t be this. You’re this. Please don’t—”
“You can do this. The world needs you to do it. So stop being such a bloody idiot.”
Autumn felt anger rise into her face. “You couldn’t just be nice about it, could you? Not even now. I know what sort of life you had, being the wise woman. I know why you were always like this. Can’t you understand that I don’t want to be like that?”
“Then don’t be. I won’t get a say in it, will I? Not after today.”
“You’re not going to give me anything, then? Not a moment of thanks, not a moment of love?”
Judith closed her eyes. “You’ll have to make do,” she said, very gently, “with what I’ve already given.”
Autumn knew she had a choice. She could step away. She could let the insight that was falling on her shoulders with the rain fall away. She went to Judith and put her hands on her shoulders. Judith opened her eyes. She was calm. Here was all the damage that had been done to her, that she had chosen to take on. Here was a life that had been sacrificed a long time before she had sacrificed it today.
“Yes,” said Autumn Blunstone, at last, knowing fully what she was accepting, and yet at the same time knowing and hoping that she would do it differently. “The wise woman has come to the well.”
Judith nodded. “Oh ah. You’ll be all right.” And then, with a flutter of leaves, Judith wasn’t there anymore.
* * *
Judith stepped off the path and left Autumn back where the young woman couldn’t see her. She looked over her shoulder. The soft young thing was shaking, sobbing. But she was already wiping away those tears. Judith looked around for Doreen. She’d been the part of all this that wasn’t a hallucination. Ah, there she were. She was standing beside the entrance to that path across and out of the trees, holding out her hand. Judith felt the chill from down that path and shivered.
“Too late to bring a coat,” said Doreen. “Here’s the truth now.”
“About bloody time,” said Judith. She didn’t hesitate. There was no point. She took Doreen’s hand. “Best get on, then.” Doreen led her to the path. They stepped into it, and walked back into the depth of the picture, out of the universe, away to summat else, summat old and central that didn’t like to make a fuss. Except when it had to. Except when it did.
They got to the corner. Judith hesitated. At the end, she were only human. She looked back to where Autumn was and saw her step away. The last person who could have seen her was gone. “Why’s it so cold down there?”
“Dun’t have to be,” shrugged Doreen. “You never did like the summer.”
Judith’s old mouth broke open in a smile. And it was a smile that was now, suddenly, a lot easier to make. She took a deep breath and didn’t look back again.
She walked around the corner and she was gone.
Epilogue
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE Lychford Festival, Lizzie presided over Judith’s funeral. She was amazed at the turnout. Where once Judith had been the sort of individual who’d have got three family members and a single bunch of flowers, now, with the whole town of Lychford aware, albeit sort of distantly, of the sacrifice she’d made, a large number were here to commemorate her life.
“They’ve woken up,” Autumn, all in black, smart as Lizzie had never seen her, whispered to her. “Well, in this one specific way.”
Indeed, the life of the town had changed profoundly, though everything remained, on the surface, as it had been. Lizzie and Autumn had been bombarded with questions, as everyone, from the coffee shop proprietors to the regulars down the pubs, had pieced together all that they’d been missing, and had been pleasingly willing to buy them drinks as a result. Everyone in town could now see at least something of the magic around them. They could feel the presence of what remained of the borders, of the well in the woods.
Autumn and Lizzie spent a lot of time warning people not to venture down all the woodland paths the locals hadn’t been able to see before but now could. Children especially were
being given stern talkings-to about where they were allowed to go. There had been, incredibly, a school assembly about it. Witches was packed with customers seeking advice, information, and protection.
The various town organisations had had emergency meetings, and, usually in one meeting per organisation, had taken their amazement and turned it into practicality. The History Society were asking if they could perhaps advertise their meetings near to this “land of fairy,” because perhaps the inhabitants there would be interested. Lizzie had strongly advised against. The W.I. had set up something like a Neighbourhood Watch scheme for the homes on the edge of town. The Festival had scrambled to repair all the ironic reversals Maitland Picton had planted in the heart of the organisation and had done a pretty good job of it. They’d had the help of a town that was pulling together and had heard about how their chair had been one of the first to believe and assist.
The town council had sent out a flier indicating that they really were sorry about the potholes, but they hoped that people had now been adequately reassured of that.
A woman called Sheila Coleshill had been one of many who’d sought Lizzie out. She’d said she hadn’t really meant what she’d said as a wish. Then she’d admitted that she had. Then she’d asked if she could possibly be forgiven. Lizzie had told her they all could. That many people in her situation had asked her exactly the same thing. That one old man of her acquaintance had a new lease on life, talking with local youth groups about the importance of Remembrance Sunday and finding exciting new ways to mark it. She’d asked if Sheila Coleshill herself was now talking to her neighbours. Sheila Coleshill had stared at her as if that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their conversation. After a few more words she’d left, and Lizzie hadn’t seen her again.
Lizzie had found the first meeting of her churchwardens after the rain to be quite awkward, as it had begun with them staring at her in open-mouthed amazement. What had been a lot easier than expected, however, was taking the body of Judith from where it lay in the woods for a proper burial in the churchyard. That had required a local funeral director who now knew exactly what had been going on (and was a bit worried about some of his back catalogue) and Shaun and Dr. Johnson, who’d been willing to falsify their respective paperwork so that Judith had, seemingly, died at home.
Lizzie kept thinking about the moment they had found her body. Judith had been stiff and cold, her mouth frozen open. Lizzie had seen many dead bodies. Her training had prepared her for this. But this had been different, this had been Judith. Lizzie had kept herself steady, had kept looking into Judith’s dead features. She knew that, because people are so used to seeing, without realising it, the tiny signs of life, the slight movements of breathing and pulse, it was easy, every moment, to think one suddenly saw those signs in the dead. It was profoundly odd for those signs not to be there. So one’s senses told one’s eyes the story that they were. Lizzie’s extra senses, though, had confirmed what her training had taught her. She kept expecting, nevertheless, the horror movie moment, for Judith’s eyes to suddenly open. The horror movie moment that would be followed immediately, of course, by relief and happiness. The horror movie moment that we all hold in our minds, forever, the edge between life and death. That was what her faith dealt in. That mystery. And here it was. As ever. And as enormous and startling, every time.
After they’d lifted her out of the grave, Lizzie had kissed Judith on the cheek, completely unprofessionally.
Autumn, who’d asked to come with them, had been standing back a few paces, watching, her face set in tension, as if fiercely trying not to cry. But when she’d seen that, she’d run forward quickly and kissed Judith too.
At the funeral, Lizzie delivered an address which was considerably more honest about what Judith had done, and what her life had been like, than she would have been able to be a few days before. She got a bit cosmic about where she believed Judith to be now, about how science, magic, and her own religion all said the same thing to her about a loving father taking Judith home.
Autumn had kept the same poker face until that moment. But then she started to sob, loudly and without reserve, and that set Lizzie off a bit, too, and she had to use all her professionalism to finish.
Finally, Shaun talked about his mother, haltingly, fighting back his own tears. He said he was sure Judith would have been proud to see so many people here. But that she would never have said so.
* * *
After it was over, and most of those who’d been at the funeral had departed for the wake at the Plough, Lizzie and Autumn returned to the grave. Judith was buried in the corner in the shade of the church tower, where the headstones of the previous wise women of the town were clustered. Her own inscription, at a suggestion from Autumn, affirmed that she’d sacrificed all for others.
Together, they let out a long breath. “Is this going to make our job easier, or harder?” asked Lizzie.
“I think a bit of both,” said Autumn. “It’s going to be a lot harder to look after this lot, but at least we’ll have their cooperation.”
“What’s it like, being the wise woman?”
“I don’t feel very wise.”
“Are you and Luke—?” Lizzie had seen the young man squeeze Autumn’s hand during the ceremony, but otherwise he’d kept his distance.
“Judith told me not to be like her.”
“Excellent.”
“Will you stop having a love life through me by proxy?”
“It’s the only fun I get. But, thinking I should get out more, I’ve decided I’m going to join the Festival committee.”
“And I’m going to join the W.I.”
Lizzie smiled. “So much for you being the outsider.”
“I’m going to do what Judith did, but a bit differently. She did so much. I never knew. I have so many new responsibilities.”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to do something about the borders. And about whatever’s going on with the fairies. Do you reckon we need help?”
“What?”
“If we’re a coven, we’re going to need a third person.”
“You used the C word!”
“I like words to mean things.”
Autumn looked off into the distance. “I’d started to think it was really just me, but Judith suffered so much by shouldering all this on her own . . . So, yeah. I think maybe someone might just . . . present themselves?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m the wise woman.”
“Oh,” said Lizzie, “I am going to get so pissed off if you keep on doing that.”
And they stood at the grave for a while longer, until they were sure they had both thought of Judith in every way they had to. There would be more visits, and more tears, to come. But they were busy right now. Busy with new life. And Judith would have understood that. Probably.
* * *
A few days later, Autumn went to the Lychford Festival with Luke. On a date. Lizzie had smiled at them until Autumn glared at her to stop and she very obviously went off to mingle. Autumn and Luke had several craft ales, and danced to some of the bands, and ate fish and chips from a van, and sat at a table in the autumn night, listening to a DJ from the cricket club playing every magic-themed song he could think of from Little Mix to Take That.
“Yes,” sighed Autumn, “I think actually it could be magic. When are they going to get past this?”
“It’ll take a while,” said Luke. “Everything’s changed.”
“That’ll be the next Take That song.”
“I understand so much more about you, now. About why certain things have happened.”
Autumn was worried by the look on his face. “Does that scare you?”
“Of course it does. But that’s not your fault. It’s just the way things are.”
Autumn wanted to take his hand. But she still couldn’t make herself reach out. “I think I’m right about how magic works. That it’s about story, about narrative connections between things not ass
ociated in conventional physics. Judith used that to get under Picton’s radar. She was the big reversal at the end, the cavalry coming over the hill. Or under the hill. And it took sacrifice, because this is all like money, too, everything she did had to be paid for. Money and story both loom over the world, getting into everything.”
“I hope story wins over money.”
“Absolutely.” That look on his face, Autumn had started to realise, wasn’t anything to worry about. It was wonder more than fear, wonder and expectation. As looks went, it was really not too bad at all.
“Did you notice I never came back to ask about that business card? Maybe I should have, in a story.”
“You gave me my space. You did better than men do in stories. And I promised to show you what was inside.”
“I think you did that for all of us.” He reached across the table and kissed her. Autumn dropped her fish and chip fork. She kissed him back. Then she grabbed both his hands, and stood up, and led him away from the table and away from the Festival.
Autumn believed in story. She believed, romantically, that, in the end, some shape to human affairs would overcome chance, and indeed money. That night, above her shop, with Luke in her arms, she moved her own story forward.
And, at least for now, she allowed herself a happy ending.
Or two.
* * *
That night, Lizzie woke in the early hours to a strange sound. It was a sound she’d never heard before in her life, one she couldn’t identify. She grabbed her robe and made her way slowly and carefully down the stairs, getting more scared with every step. There was a strange, flickering light coming from the kitchen, and the sound was modulating with it, a sort of whine, half organic, half like the wind through pipes.
Last time she’d been in this situation, the intruder had been the fairy prince Finn, annoyed and seeking help. But there hadn’t been that light and sound. “Finn?” she called, not managing more than a whisper.
An answer came back, a change in the sound, a sort of cry, but she thought it sounded familiar. Familiar enough, anyway, for her to gain courage and step quickly down the stairs and into the kitchen.
