Mrs Endhouse was woken early by the sound of a hunting horn. She ignored it to start with - too sleepy to realise that it was the wrong time of year for that particular racket to shatter her peace. Then the incongruity of it began to filter through and she sat up sharply, listening hard to make sure she hadn't just imagined it. Another blast confirmed it for her. She stepped out of bed and went to the window. The fields behind her house looked hazy. Her eye sight was excellent. In the distance she could see a pack of hounds racing along a hedge row, pursued by a fox and half a dozen sheep. What a sight! She scanned the surrounding area for the horn-blower. The man was on foot, running as fast as his short legs would carry him, trying to catch up to the pack. He looked like one of the kennel men. Who let the dogs out, she wondered, laughing to herself. He'll be in trouble when the master of hounds finds out.

She looked back to the rag-tag pack-flock of animals tearing across the field and scratched her head. They gave the distinct impression of animals at play. And they were trying to evade the old fool who was chasing them. The man was slowing down. He looked ready for a seizure. Suddenly the animals changed direction and charged towards a couple of horses grazing in the centre of the field. The horses whinnied. When they reached the horses they stopped their head-long charge and milled about.

One of the sheep butted a hound. The hound grabbed the wool round its neck and pulled until the wool gave way suddenly and the dog shot backwards and plopped down on to its behind. The sheep watched the trajectory its fall, followed it, then gave it another head butt. The dog jumped up, lowered its forelegs to the ground, rump in the air and tail wagging furiously, it barked at the sheep. The fox was standing on the back of another sheep now, with the sheep bucking and wheeling, trying to shake it off. Suddenly that sheep jumped high into the air, giving a vigorous kick with its back legs and the fox was dislodged. The fox ran away then darted back and nipped the sheep's ankle - and got a kick on the chin for its trouble. The horses galloped round the group. They were definitely playing. All of them. Mrs Endhouse blinked.

Something had gone wrong. She had a horrible suspicion that it was magic. What else could cause such high jinks among these traditional enemies? She had an equally horrible suspicion that it was one of her spells or potions gone wrong. There was only one recent potion potent enough to bring about something so outlandish as this. That malodorous disinhibitor! But how? She narrowed her eyes and looked at another peculiar sight, closer to home. In her back garden, Tinker was sitting on top of the wood shed next to what looked like a vulture. The vulture had its wing round the cat's shoulder. A vulture! Right here in the middle of England! She flung the window open to call Tinker in to explain what was happening.

Tinker and the vulture were deep in conversation. He rubbed his head affectionately against the vulture's neck. She shouted. They looked up. Tinker yowled an answer at her and concluded with an intensely unpleasant rhythmic wailing noise. That was how he laughed. The vulture joined in with a hideous croak, repeated many times.

It seemed that Tinker had been assailed by strange longings for the past couple of days. His distress was like a beacon to his girlfriend, 'Patience', who had come to him as quickly as she could manage. He'd been missing her. He needed someone sensible to talk to since Mrs Endhouse had clearly taken leave of her senses. He hadn't got over his offence and outrage at Mrs Endhouse, an ancient Wicked Witch, from a long line of wicked witches, who had been served by Tinker, in a number of guises, over many millennia, taking it into her head to brew some sort of revolting 'love' potion in order to make two idiotic mortals happy. Making mortals happy just to be nice and kind to them! The very idea of it made him spit.

Of course, Mrs Endhouse knew about Patience. She hadn't been in vulture form the last time they'd met. But how appropriate. Patience knew how to wait - as vultures do. Part of her job was waiting around for people to die, so that she could harvest certain emanations that leave a body at the point of death. She was the familiar of an African witch that Mrs Endhouse met very rarely - just when the global community of witches had some particular reason to get together.

'You'd better bring your friend in before anyone sees her. We don't need to draw that kind of attention to ourselves.'

Once indoors, she grilled him about these strong feelings that were bothering him: when did they start and where did they start? Did he have any idea what could be causing them? Would he stop giggling and answer her questions? Because this was very important! It was like talking to a drunk. There was nothing for it but to go out and look for the answers in the fields where the weirdness was happening. She put on her hat and coat and left Tinker strict instructions to keep Patience out of sight.

It was a beautiful, shimmering, silver-pink morning. The opalescent haze was melting away from the little dips and dells. She could trace the line of the stream running across the back edge of the field behind her garden, by the slightly denser mist lying over its surface. Everything seemed perfect .... superficially. Mrs Endhouse sensed magic. And there was something... what? something not normal... alien about the magic. It was coming in gentle waves; eddying in slow pools - a barely discernible rising tide of it. But the rate of flow was increasing. She felt it like a gentle breeze, steadily strengthening. Magic would soon be sucked like a rotating wind into an area of low pressure. It wasn't a moment too soon to start the search. If she'd left it a few more hours, the strength of the in-flowing magic would have masked the location of the 'bomb' that started the process.

Frowning with worry, Mrs Endhouse made her way to the centre of the field where the creatures had been playing. (They had all galloped, trotted and gambolled off towards a nearby copse while Tinker and Patience had been sitting on the roof of the wood shed, laughing up at Mrs E.) She stood there for a minute with her eyes closed, trying to orientate herself in the direction the magic was strongest. Opening her eyes, she found herself looking directly towards the back of Miss Marsh's house. Then she noticed that all the vegetation growing along the line of the burn, from the point where a loop flowed past the bottom of Miss Marsh's garden, looked different. It was taller, swaying in the absence of any breeze, and there was a reddish, enamelled-looking sheen to the foliage. The colour was entirely wrong somehow. And the moment she recognised that colour, some pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

As she strode towards the gurgling burn, she knew what to expect - and found it in abundance. It was a jungle; the colours not of our world - or not outside the realms of Faerie, at least. There were thistles the size of hog weeds and docks as big as gunneras. Trees were behaving oddly. It's odd, of course, to think of trees behaving at all. There were birds singing in the branches, while twigs wove themselves into nests. Strange fruits were erupting from leaf buds. The birds were feasting and nesting and preparing for late broods of chicks, for which food appeared suddenly to be in over-supply. But Mrs Endhouse knew that this fruit would not nourish the young birds of the mundane world.

She had no doubt that her potion had found its way into the burn - though it was also obvious that Miss Marsh had at least tried it before dumping it. (Miss Marsh and Mr Green, who could hardly look at each other without blushing, before the potion, were now the best and most nimble dancing partners in the Scottish Country Dancing class, that they had signed up for after the potion.) She made her way towards the back of Mr Green's shop to find out whether there was another concentration of magical chaos there. Before she got that far, she reached a field from which the stink of muck spreading wafted - and recognised the almost metallic red glint of the grasses and weeds. So, it seemed he'd deposited his jar of relish on his neighbour's manure heap, judging, no doubt, that it would do no harm.

Mrs Endhouse groaned. She could have kicked herself! Some of the improvised ingredients in the potion - impossible to tell which ones without repeating the experiment - had changed it into a different sort of magic to the one she'd intended, and increased its potency exponentially. Faerie was washing in, across the fields. All normal, useful activities would soon cease and the place would be full of moon-struck fools, gazing with dreamy, vacant smiles, into the middle-distance, or writing incomprehensible poetry, or dancing until they dropped dead of exhaustion. People would be feasting on the addictive Faerie fruit and dying of starvation. She had to find a way to stop it, before the village was crippled by it. There were ways - two or three possibilities - but Faerie magic was tricky and she had to be quick.

Deep in thought as she trudged back over the fields, she almost tripped over the slumped body of the kennel man. He moaned as her foot struck his hip. It snapped her out of her reverie. She bent over to peer closely at the man. His eyes fluttered open and he flinched weakly. The look he saw in Mrs Endhouse's eye, was not remotely kind and solicitous. It was cold and calculating. They recognised each other.

'Well, well. Who have we here? Mr Duncan isn't it? I remember you. You were the old nincompoop who shouted threats and insults at me last winter when your hounds chased my Tinker all over my garden and then tried to follow him into the house. When I objected, you told me I was an ugly, interfering old hag and I had no business living here if I didn't like your hunt. Told me to shut up or bugger off, as I remember. Told me I could expect to find my cat hanging from a tree if you came across him again.'

Mr Duncan whimpered.

'So. How are you doing Mr Duncan? You're looking a little pale, if you don't mind me saying. What's the matter? Worn your poor old self out chasing after pesky beasts, have you?'

Mrs Endhouse laughed. It was a harsh, braying sort of laugh and spoke volumes about her opinion of Mr Duncan. Mr Duncan had already suffered a heart attack. He could feel his chest constricting again, his heart labouring - great, shuddering, irregular punches buffeted him from the inside. Death was close. He didn't want to die like this, with this terrible old woman gloating over him.

'Now look here Mr Duncan. I have a problem and you can help me with it. It's no good you trying to shake your head... I take it you are wasting the last of your strength trying to refuse me? Yes? Well, save your energy. You have no choice. I'm going to take it anyway. You can make it easier for both of us by just giving it up.'

The terrified man tried to shrink back. He tried to speak but his lungs didn't have the strength to supply his vocal cords with a sufficient blast of air to say 'NO!' - still, she could read his lips. Mrs Endhouse folded her arms and waited.

'Calm yourself. I'm not going to kill you. You're about to die and it's none of my doing. I'm just going to wait until you do and take the thing that you won't need no more as it leaves you.'

His eyes widened and he gritted his teeth as his heart threatened to burst.

'No, no. Now don't be alarmed. If you've got a soul, it's obviously rotten to the core so you won't be missing out on no paradise or nothing like that. I take it you follow that new middle-eastern religion that invaded this land some little while ago?'

His eyes narrowed slightly. It was hard enough to think straight with the pain of his heart attack and the terror of being at the mercy of this dreadful old harpy, without trying to make sense of her cryptic questions.

'You don't know what I mean? That religion... you know... the ugly pointy building in the High Street that clangs out its iron din every Sunday and most evenings. There's a scary looking vertical rack outside with a torture victim hanging off it. That one!'

He nodded his head just a fraction.

'Well, a moment's reflection will assure you that, if you're expecting to go to either the heaven or the hell of that religion, it'll be the hell. It would suit my convenience if you would stay here and help this village instead of going off to suffer the never ending torment and tribulation of your hell. Wouldn't you like that better? To help me save this village from something awful? I take it you do care about this village? You have family here?'

Looking perplexed as well as frightened now, he nodded, doubtfully.

'I'm telling you the truth. The thing that's coming is going to paralyse this village eventually, if we don't stop it. I believe I may have done something to cause it. But I mean to put it right. So, will you help me willingly?'

He just stared, growing weaker by the moment. Then he struggled to say something again. She didn't need to make out his words to understand that he wasn't convinced.

'Your eyes are growing dim Mr Duncan. Look around while you can still see. Look at the grass and trees. Look at this hedge. Do they look normal to you? The behaviour of the hounds and those other animals, that brought you out here to your doom - was that normal? You can see that something's wrong, can't you?'

He squinted at the hedge and noticed the alien colour. Then he looked down at the coppery, enamelled looking grass waving hypnotically in the unmoving air. A troop of ruby-red beetles marched through it. His frown deepened. They were beautiful, but jarringly wrong. They made him doubt his sanity somehow. Mrs Endhouse saw the disturbance in his face and followed his eyes to the line of marching jewels.

'That's just the beginning. Soon those truant hounds of yours will be chasing unicorn and goodness knows what else over this changed land, in the wild hunt!'

'What?' The word left his lips like a sigh.

'The magical realm of Faerie is going to submerge this village in a few days. It's started already and the flow is increasing fast. Many hundreds of years ago, humans won a great war against Faerie. We drove it out of our lands and established order and normality. Ever since that time, the defeated enemy has been trying to find a way back. Their realm is one of chaos. This village would just be the beginning. Consider your family. How do you think they might enjoy being ruled by the masters and mistresses of chaos? The magical folk have no understanding of justice, fairness or mercy, by the way - and they have good reason to hate us.'

'Cobblers.' he wheezed.

'Don't be daft man! You can see it. You're near enough to death now to be able to feel it. Take a moment - no longer than that mind you - to consider what your instincts tell you. You haven't got enough time for me to explain it all to you. You're finished. You're fading fast. Will you give me what I need to protect this village?'

After a pause in which he frowned down at the increasingly bizarre bugs swarming through the grass, he nodded reluctantly. She didn't wait another moment for him to consider or change his mind. It would be more potent if he didn't use up any more of it in his efforts to stay alive for another few minutes. (A perfectly pointless but also a perfectly natural instinct.) She gave him a reassuring look and placed one hand on his shoulder and another on his hip. He resisted weakly for a moment then allowed himself to be pushed gently on to his side. Mrs Endhouse stroked firmly downwards, from the top of his head to the base of his spine and caught some dark, nebulous, fuzzy 'matter', like a skein of thick London smog, that coiled and tangled into the size of a fist. She examined it critically for a moment, assessing its strength and purity, then picked one of the over-sized dock leaves to wrap it. Now she needed to get it home quickly and start work.

A soft breeze rippled through the king's pavilion, atop the hill of dreams. Inside, the king sat on his crystal throne, brooding on his losses. Time has no meaning in the realm of Faerie. He felt the shame of defeat as keenly as if the last battle had taken place only yesterday. To him, it was only yesterday.

He longed for revenge, but revenge would be barely adequate for the indignities he had been forced to endure. The short lives of men were flickering past at great speed in the other world - brief and unimportant - generations were passing in and out of existence as he considered his plans. His former might was reassembled and mankind would have forgotten everything they'd ever learned of Faerie and its king. Their short lives and shorter memories were their great weakness. No representative of mortal men now lived, who could remember the pact - but the pact was bound by magic that the king dared not violate.

Even as he sat pondering, he became aware of a shift in the magical realm's borders: the borders of twilight were expanding. Faerie was seeping through a rent in Earth's defences - seeping across the fields of the mundane world. His mind reached out to the breach and he felt another magic. A magic that unsettled him - and informed him that magic had not died out entirely, beyond his realm. He extended his mind further, searching for the pact. But it was not where they had left it. A cold smile curled his thin lips. The old pact was gone. Faerie was truly unbound.

Tinker and Patience had returned to normal and had kindly consented to do their job. Patience was away gathering any stray emanations of the recently dead - and also those of the long dead that had become hopelessly lost. Tinker had been data gathering in the nether regions. The news he brought back was disturbing. It reminded Mrs Endhouse of something she should never have forgotten: The Pact: an ancient contract made at the end of the war, to keep Faerie out of our world. It had clearly been sabotaged from the inside. It was hard to see how that damned potion could possibly be to blame. Tinker had been packed off again to find out specifics about the pact: how it might have been broken and how it could be repaired.

Mr Endhouse had walked the fields, tracing the borders of twilight and discovered some of the rips through which the tide was flowing. Wherever she discovered a leak or a weak spot in the fabric, she placed a silver coin. That would delay the forces of chaos for a while.

But it would only hold back the folk, not the atmosphere. Where the enchanted realm was pouring through, the air felt thicker, more viscous. Sounds were slowed - birdsong and insect noises, echoed lazily off the tightly packed molecules that make up the air. They sounded sinister and seemed to drip into her ears like cold oil and clog them up.

Patience had found a surprisingly ample supply of spirit 'matter'. The thing that most surprised Patience was, that in this country, such useful stuff should just be left floating about. Added to the immortal remains of Mr Duncan, it would be more than adequate to defend the village. Mrs Endhouse had almost completed her preparations for 'Setting the Guard', when Tinker returned with vital information. He had learned the original incantation and the runes that would hide and hold the token of the pact in place. He had not discovered what the token was however - and its location was so secret that not even the wisest or most powerful of his kind could guess it.

The king could hardly contain his excitement. He checked again and again, examining the tatters of the old spells, searching around the site of the old pact. There was the merest trace of a trail, but the token had gone. Silver was being used in desperation to hold back the inevitable invasion. An enemy. The silver could not ward all the new rents as they appeared. Short term patches in a rotten curtain. Soon it would fall and nothing could stop the assault.

The large silver vessel into which she was carefully adding the final ingredients of her warding preparation, gave a shudder. A susurrus of urgent whispers drifted up from the spirit matter that swirled within. She bent over the pot and turned her ear to listen closely. The immortal remains of these mortals sensed an alien intrusion and were clamouring to be set a-going on their mission - to keep safe the orderly world for their descendants, before the rule of chaos could return to threaten all that was familiar and important to them. The agitation of her potion informed her that it was strong and it was ready. It also told her that something was afoot, that required her immediate attention. Without further delay, she picked up the vessel and carried it outside and into the back garden. There she stood tuning in like a radio receiver, searching for the signals that had alarmed her ghostly-potion.

Mrs Endhouse felt the questing tendrils of the king's mind, probing for weakness along the old boundaries. She attuned her thought to his mind's signature. It was not difficult. His mind had a flavour of insanity. It was repellent to her, causing a sensation like a mild electric shock. Waving lines of sparking static were visible to her. She sensed his excitement when one of the tendrils snaked its way into the copse where the animals had disappeared earlier. Unhesitating, she followed it, across the field, through a gate in the hedge and through the wood beyond. There she found what might once have been a clearing, with a circle of moss covered mounds. The regularity of them suggested a long disused faery ring. There was a fresh hole in the centre of it, where something had been pulled out. There were spade marks where the soil had been loosened but it was still possible to see that the hole was roughly the shape of an urn.

For several minutes she just stood staring at the hole. It must, of course, have been the place where the pact was secreted - longer ago than even Mrs Endhouse could remember. Someone had found it and taken it. Whether they had come across it be design or by chance it was impossible to tell. In either case, the thing would have to be found and replaced. It seemed remarkable that such an artefact could have been so close to her all these years and she had remained completely unaware of it. It made her think. Obviously, it was not meant ever to be found. It must have been warded with all sorts of spells. She remembered the slippery magic that concealed itself from her when she passed Miss Marsh's house that Thursday, last month. Miss Marsh! She must have found it by accident. Probably out gathering mushrooms or herbs in the woods. Trying out magic spells from a book of witch craft purchased in Woolworths or W H Smiths. Silly woman! Perhaps the soil and the ancient spells had eroded from around the pot. Perhaps a digging badger had exposed it. And Miss Marsh had found it.

She knelt beside the hole and adjusted her eyes and her mind to search for traces of the old magic. Once her vision had adjusted to the appropriate range, she could see many tatters of pale, shining threads. The torn edges of a fabric, rotten with age, trailed waving in a breeze blowing from the twilight realm, in soft, lazy gusts through the hole, so weak that she could hardly feel it. But she could see it and follow the trail of mouldering fibres to the urn's new hiding place. In the meantime, the eager potion in the silver vessel could flow along the warp and weft of the old spells before they evaporated completely, and hold them together, reinforcing the areas of weakness where Faerie was flowing into the world. She reached up, drew a pin from her hat, tapped the side of the vessel, spoke the words of command and a river of spirit flowed out, dividing into a multitude of threads and followed the pattern of the weave, out through the wood and over the fields.

The old lady nodded, satisfied, and turned to leave. As she took her first step back towards the village, the newly repaired web jumped and rebounded violently, causing her to spin back round to examine the weave for damage. Some of the threads looked distinctly tasked, but struggled heroically to hold the line and meet the challenge. Too many assaults of that magnitude could cause havoc with the fabric of the barrier. The spirit was more than willing - it was eager - but some of it was quite old and might fail to hold. She cast about for a way to strengthen the repair.

A tonic of some sort would be helpful. Furrowing her brow, considering what might restore the more elderly elements, her mind settled on the potion she had concocted for Miss Marsh and Mr Green. It was now clear that it had not actually caused the breaches in the borders of twilight, but when Faerie had flowed through those breaches, it had gravitated towards the places where the potion was concentrated - where Miss Marsh and Mr Green had dumped the unpalatable substance. The enchanted realm was attracted to Mrs Endhouse's magic like a magnet. It was very powerful stuff. There was a spell (if she could just remember it), by which she could draw the occult essence of that potion away from the burn and the muck-spread field and add it to the spirit weave. It would then form a glamour against which Faerie would pile itself on the other side of the border, and hold it in thrall until the folk found a way to counter it and free themselves. That would probably take them a little while. Having magic, they didn't need to be very clever. Anything that required the powers of reason, took a long time for them to master.

Fortunately, Mrs Endhouse was very clever and her mind, in some respects like a steel trap, was, in other respects like a densely packed filing department. There were clean, tidy filing cabinets at the forefront of her mind and, at the back was a dusty old archive where everything she had ever learned was nevertheless stored in strict logical order. She closed her eyes to dig back through the knowledge accumulated over millennia and found the spell.

Using a thin branch, about the length of a walking stick, she drew several symbols within the bounds of the faerie ring, then she stood at the centre of the ring and raised her arms as though about to declaim something momentous to a large gathering. But her words would have been barely audible if anyone had been there to hear them. She breathed the words of the ancient language and the trees began to stir. The undergrowth and the leaf litter rustled and muttered. Soon she was at the still centre of a quickening gyre. Her hair and garments unruffled, detritus - and magic - howled around her and around the symbols she had drawn, like the vortices of jet engines. Long after the incantation was finished, her arms remained raised. Only after all the magic had arrived and the gyre was pulling in nothing but leaf litter and crisp packets, did she lower her arms and the rotating wind dropped with them.

The silver vessel was at her feet. She examined it closely for traces of her spirit potion. None was left - so eager had it been to protect the village. Using her hat pin again, she tapped the side of the vessel and invited the newly arrived magic to enter. It slopped in with a wet noise though it was insubstantial. Then she inserted a hand under the threads of the repair over the hole where the pact had been removed, and lifted them to insert the silver vessel. She whispered to the ghostly filaments and the recently arrived magic, encouraging them to combine. Instantly the shimmering fabric dipped into the vessel and the magical essence of the bold affection potion rose up to meet it, soaking in to the fibres and rushing along them at great speed.

Mrs Endhouse removed the silver pot and stood, hands on hips. She watched for several minutes as impact after impact caused the newly reinforced barrier to shudder and quake. But it was much stronger and more elastic now - able to withstand the assaults and rebound like rubber. That should hold them without a doubt, she thought and turned to the village once more.

His forces gathered, the pact removed, he was prepared to storm the remaining flimsy barrier. Rank upon rank of centaurs and satyrs awaited his command. Behind them, milled and jostled thousands of the magical folk, equally ready to riot or invade - disorderly and undisciplined, like a drunken carnival procession, waiting impatiently for the starting signal.

He raised his sword. An insane grin split his dark, handsome features. The rabble quietened, watching the king with bated breath. Enjoying the power, he prolonged the suspense and held the pose for minutes. Then, when he thought his people could stand it no more, he slashed the sword through the air. A centaur blew a horn and charged towards the shimmering arch traced by the king's sword, followed by almost the entire population of Faerie.

The king had marked out a wide zone of weakness across the border of twilight. The charge should have torn straight through into the fields of Earth. But suddenly, in mid-charge, the king saw the area within the arch shimmer as brightly as the arch itself. The king swerved to avoid a collision with the newly mended boundary and the centaurs, satyrs and the rabble that followed crashed and crumpled into an angry and confused heap. It took a deal of bickering and cursing before they were ready to try again. They gathered themselves for another charge and then another. The folk of Faerie are inexhaustible, but after some time their efforts ceased and they just stood staring at the border of twilight. Every so often they would shuffle a little closer, as if fascinated.

The king shrieked and raged until the sky darkened and lightning crackled. But the way remained closed and his folk seemed not to hear him.

That evening, Miss Marsh was surprised to receive a visit from Mrs Endhouse. The trail had, as expected, led straight to her back door. In Mrs Endhouse's tradition of wicked witchery, it would not be expected that she should explain herself or reason with ordinary mortals. Normally, she would simply have fixed Miss Marsh with a spell to immobilise her and make her forget everything and then removed the urn. However, Mrs Endhouse had mellowed considerably over recent centuries and, in any case, she liked Miss Marsh. Furthermore, Miss Marsh was clearly not hostile to witches - judging by her experimental dabblings over the past few weeks. So Mrs Endhouse increased Miss Marsh's surprise to the level of outright astonishment, by explaining the whole thing to her as clearly and simply as she was able. In order to remove all doubt from Miss Marsh's mind, she demonstrated actual magic - the sort that cannot be found in any book supplied by Woolworths or W H Smiths.

Miss Marsh duly surrendered the urn (an ugly old thing of some indeterminate metal alloy, that was beginning to decompose now the spells that protected it had decayed and broken) and actually persuaded Mrs Endhouse to take her on as a student. The old witch was flattered and although she might not admit it - was probably not even aware of it, in fact - she had been lonely too, so it took very little persuasion. Lessons started immediately, back in Mrs Endhouse's kitchen.

The first thing they did, was to reproduce the runes Tinker had specified. Miss Marsh watched and listened while Mrs Endhouse explained the runes and their significance while burning them into pebbles using some frighteningly powerful corrosive solution she had concocted for the purpose. Tinker was dubious about his mistress's new student to begin with, but even he was impressed with her keenness. When she repeated the incantation, word perfect, from beginning to end, after hearing it only twice (and this in a language she had never heard before), he became a convert and rubbed his head against Miss Marsh's legs to signal his approval. She bent down and rubbed his ears to show that the feeling was reciprocated. Patience just watched, amused.

An hour before midnight, all was ready. The sky was clear and the moon full. Conditions were ideal. The witch and her apprentice made their way to the copse, pushing a wheelbarrow with a heavy flag-stone, a roll of roofing lead, two spades and the ancient urn full of rune stones in it. When they reached the faerie ring, Mrs Endhouse could see straight away that her spirit 'poultice' had healed the rents in the fabric of the old spells very well. The repair should hold for a long time. The new fibres vibrated with energy and enthusiasm. Faerie had retreated once more. Now it just remained to reinstate the pact to secure the dominion of order for the next several millennia.

They made the hole deeper by about 30 inches. It was hard work. The soil was tightly packed and full of rocks and roots. The top foot or so of the hole, was widened to accommodate the flag-stone. Then the bottom of the hole was lined with the roll of lead and, finally, they placed the urn back where it belonged. Both ladies chanted the incantation. The air around them became agitated. Their hair and clothes were blown about by a localised wind - almost like as small tornado - as the chant reached a crescendo. Then, just as the last syllable of the incantation left their lips, a loud snap confirmed that the pact was locked once more and the air movement ceased. They bent the edges of the lead 'coffin' inwards to protect the urn, shovelled in some of the soil, set the flag-stone above it and then filled the rest of the hole to surface level. Over this they scattered moss, dead leaves and twigs. Job done!

Fiction by Tibley Bobley

Tibley Bobley

08.05.08 Front Page

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