The Reverend admitted that this was indeed what he couldn’t quite mentally get to grips with.
“Reverend, we were not dealing in time as you are aware of it. From the second we were all in the privy and my athame had tapped against the wall, we were dealing solely with space. Time was frozen. Demons and Angels are immortal and do not play by the same physical rules as we must adhere to here on this mortal plane. We were operating in their ‘space’. To any outside observer, it was a mere blink of an eye between us all rushing into the privy and the remainder of us coming out again. If I may use an analogy. It’s a bit like Einstein conjectured about sitting on the edge of a black hole, but in reverse. Though I hasten to add, for some considerably anxious moments within the privy I did fear we were on the lips of a momentous abyss.”
The Reverend was about to say something at this point, but Ruby cut him short:
“You are about to ask: What of the villagers' experiences? The damage? The injuries?”
Ruby smiled knowingly. The Reverend was struggling to keep track of it all.
“They never happened. Simple as that. From the instant of the Demon’s banishment, all of his evil will towards this village was erased, from both time and space. Now, if his will had never been here, then neither had his physical presence. And if his physical being had never been here, then no damage could possibly have been done by it. That's quite simple and logical, surely?”
“Kind of like somebody pressed a big 'RESET' button somewhere, and the universe went back to its default setting,” Malcolm suggested. “Makes perfect sense to me...”
The look on the Reverend’s face indicated that Ruby’s explanation didn’t follow any kind of logic that HE was used to. “But it doesn’t make sense at ALL!” he protested. “How can something be done and then not done, be one thing and then another?”
“Magick!” whispered Ruby, smiling widely, opening her arms expansively, and twirling on the spot.
“Impossible!” retorted the indignant and confused Reverend.
“As impossible as turning water into wine? Or walking on water, perhaps?” Ruby asked, playfully.
“And I don’t remember you complaining too much yesterday evening about what was possible or impossible when the Angel Lahabiel made an appearance!”
“That was an entirely different matter altogether!” spluttered the Reverend, mentally trying to cling onto something he could trust.
“It would be wouldn’t it?” said Ruby in a voice that she normally reserved for announcing ‘checkmate’ in a particularly satisfying game of chess.
As Ruby and the Reverend continued their friendly squabbling, Tobias lay on the cabinet near the window half-listening, half-dozing, wondering just when they would all shut up so he could have his by now well-overdue lunch. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something. Outside, up above them, in a tree overhanging the small caravan, was a squat, unkempt, ragged raven. High in the spindly branches, he too had been listening intently to Ruby's tale.
“Er... Isn’t that Brocken, Devizes’ familiar?”
From his position on the shelf, Eddy began to screech in alarm:
“If it is, we need to exorcise him. He's still a spiritual link between Devizes, Nutter, Ahriman and our little village! They could find a way back and start this whole mess up again!”
At these words, the raven gave a coughing, croaking laugh, then, lazily and clumsily, he rose up out of the tree, flapping his untidy, dusty, blue-black wings slowly away in the direction of Pendle, the hill and the forest.
“Hmm I'm not sure if it was...” Ruby pondered. “'I don't think it was him, but he's long gone by now, anyway. It could just as easily have been some other old raven, and most likely that’s all it was. You must remember, chaps; we can't go round exorcising birds willy-nilly. We must all bear in mind that trusted, wise old saying: If it ain't Brocken, don't fix it!”
Eddy groaned. Tobias sighed a tired sigh, closed his eyes and shook his head
Ruby smiled, winked at them both and shuffled off into the kitchen to refill the kettle. As she did so she called from the kitchen.
“So... Reverend! When do we start planning something exciting for next year’s fête?”
Epilogue
Underneath The Spreading Chestnut Trees...
The two great gnarled chestnut trees stood side by side, overshadowing the topmost part of the field in which Epona the pony grazed heedlessly. They looked centuries old, but in fact they had been there for less than a day. Though there was scarcely any wind, they shifted and creaked and groaned, and the painful sounds they made were almost human.
Ruby stood before them, listening to their cries. The scraps of parchment she had found with the chestnuts had led her here. They were glyphs, part spell, part map, and it hadn't taken her very long to decipher their meaning.
This, then, was the fate of Liz Devizes and Alice Nutter: their living spirits imprisoned in the hearts of two twisted, half-dead chestnut trees. Blind, deaf, dumb; unable to move, but able to feel everything; attuned to the natural world to an extent way beyond that of any human being; to an extent that would be agonising, even to one who practiced the Craft.
Ruby shuddered. She would not have wished this even on her worst enemies.
Turning to leave, she saw two figures yomping across the field towards her. The larger of the two was waving and shouting.
“Rube! Ey up! Wait a sec!”
It was Malcolm Oldthwaite, with a pallid, sick-looking Bethany Devizes close at his heels.
Ruby sighed in anticipation of an uncomfortable scene.
“Bethany was summoned, like, all the way from Glasto,” Malcolm huffed, breathlessly, as they drew nearer.
“Oh God, Mother! Auntie Alice!”
Bethany stumbled forward and dropped to her knees
