02-12-2022, 11:36 AM
Without the need to hide her nakedness beneath her poncho to show her conviction of honesty, Peggy Powler climbed down
from her interim roost and examined the frightened fair-haired woman scanning the environs of their cloistered conference.
If asked later, the smaller person of this clandestine meeting would suggest that a younger Lillian Aldwych had been a pretty
refined girl before time, running a family and turning feral had eroded a lot of the handsomeness from her intelligent features.
Even in the torn and dirt-smudged dress that skirted the grass, Lillian carried a dignity that no duration of hard work or threats
to keep a secret could abrade and now, she'd held a similar tenet of Peggy's faith, be-it dented by past chicanery. "May... may
I ask whom I'm speaking with?" the grandmother of the Caldwell children requested and pushed some unruly strands of hair
from her face.
Peggy curtsied and in doing so, noted that Mrs Aldwych copied her greeting. "Forgive me, Ah'm Peggy Powler, the Last Witch
of Underhill..." she answered softly and took off her hat to offer a clear view of her own face. "...And yer'll be the woman of the
old fella Ah' met when Ah' first arrived here in Murdigon?" she supplemented convivially. Lillian absently nodded and breathing
heavily, went back to continuing her nervous vigil.
"Yes, sort of..." the ragged-woman agreed as she walked back to be closer to the leafy haven that had kept her safe for so long.
"...The echo-of-a-man you saw was Chester -my husband and though I now go by my maiden name, I assure you he is still in my
heart" she added and anxiously ironed the many wrinkles of her tattered attire with her hand.
Lillian wrestled with a sobbing-jag for a couple of seconds before continuing and watching this supposedly crazy woman -as Ma
Gurnard had reported, Peggy felt that rumour and uneducated gossip had painted this forlorn lady into something she certainly
wasn't.
"The horrendous story is complicated and Chester's love for me is the true reason for what you witnessed and my own damaged
sanity..." Lillian whispered. "... But his tragic situation means he is neither here on Murdigon nor in the bedeviled bailiwick of The
Wool-pit" she offered enigmatically and struggling to shore-up the mental dam that confined her ocean of tears, the little Witch
watched her body shudder in its internal war.
Closing the space between them, Peggy showed her puzzlement at the statement and noticed the woman's ability to discern the
Witch's confusion whilst not letting it distract from her surveillance and self-gathering. For a few seconds, Lillian stared out at the
same location and then deciding nobody had discovered their remote parley, went on with her address. "The beams are..." the
older straw-haired woman began and then searched herself for the correct descriptive word, but the wily sorceress had already
grabbed the gist of what she was wishing to say.
"Yer' mean they're buggered?" Peggy proposed with raised eyebrows and a look to show she was willing to hear another option
of her guess. Lillian performed something she hadn't done since this whole debacle had began an act we all take for granted.
The wild insane woman that was purported to piss in front of those who searched for her, who would scream like a banshee at
the midnight hour and lived like an animal on the outskirts of civility... smiled at the small shoeless woman in the grubby shawl.
"Yes indeed, that would be a fine descriptor" she replied and sighing deeply, decided to retain the unaccustomed grin.
...................................................
Over the next half-hour, Lillian Caldwell -nee Aldwych -an arcane surname that privately amused her listening companion,
related the wonderful -and yet disingenuous, scheme of a man called Ralph Godwin and the citizenry of Camden Bight.
This plan to stealthily relocate the entire population of the hamlet to a superior or 'a golden place' as Indigo Dunth would've
suggested, involved an immoral covertness from the former and simple rustic ignorance from the latter.
The repercussions of an empty useless community due to this mass-transfer would be off-set by replacing those who went to
the Wool-pit with people who resembled the original folk of the village, something Peggy had witnessed herself. Whether the
current Store-owner looked the same as the authentic Mr Goddard, she couldn't say. But if it were true, the little Witch would
willingly testify that Goddard-the-First must've been a stone-faced miserable bugger.
But there'd been a problem. The Beams of King Stephen -an appliance that Peggy really wanted to know more about, hadn't
functioned in the manner regularly boasted about by the well-dressed, florris-spending Ralph Godwin arriving in Camden Bight
on that cold wintery day over two years ago.
After softly seeding his guarded secret around the village and predominantly in The Horatio tavern, Godwin had finally asked for
a meeting with the influential people that ran the businesses in Camden Bight. At first, Godwin's proposal was balked at and he
was asked to take his asinine idea elsewhere. But this slippery eel knew how to read the room and pressed where necessary
and restrained his verve where division reared his head.
It took two weeks of exquisite subterfuge to convince the dominant luminaries of the hamlet to visit the clearing where Godwin
had set-up his so-called 'Beams of King Stephen' and Lillian admitted during her chronicle that seeing a person appear out of
thin-air was something that certainly effected her doubts to not vote for the scheme.
There were others from Godwin's realm who came through for a short time to assist in the prompting of the conversion. Strange
and wonderful objects were also displayed to show how their lives would be better in this surreal realm called The Wool-Pit and
the enticing was palpable with all that witnessed the exhibits.
As Peggy listened to the well-bred woman, she felt sad that those who had searched for her during this confusing and terrible
ordeal and accepted the assumption that Lillian had passed over into a different kingdom, that of the land of the mad.
She wasn't 'Away with the Fairies' -as Ma Gurnard had stated, the attentive Witch knew from Lillian's current behaviour that it
was a simple case of experiencing something beyond her understanding and reacting when it all went confusingly wrong.
And it was this 'wrong'-episode that Lillian Aldwych continued with next.
...................................................
The third family to go through were the Caldwells comprised of Martin Caldwell, his wife Nell, the two children called Mathew and
Eva respectively and Chester along with Lillian. The parents of the children stepped through holding Martin and Eva's hands and
with a smiling nod from Ralph Godwin, the grandfather and his elegant spouse shuffled towards the white line between the posts.
If Indigo Dunth attempted to describe what happened next, the characterization would be the same as Lillian's. The blue eyes of
the Beams -that constantly watched the activity in the clearing, went red with anger and flashed their rage just as Chester Caldwell
stepped over the channel of white dust.
Through gasps of nervous inhalation, Lillian depicted a scene where her blithe husband suddenly vanished, reappeared, became
multiple versions of himself and then finally shifted into a transparent ghost who wailed his anguish without sound. The Goddards
had gone through with no problem along with the Penroses who used to run the Ship Chandlery, but it seemed such destiny was
not for the couple who'd watched their descendants enter a world allegedly better than this one.
Lillian had screamed then -maybe like the banshee she was later accused of being and looked to Ralph Godwin for answers.
The humming from the Beams had stopped along with the flashing eyes and the man who had sold them this pathway to amrita
was yelling to no avail into a small box he held in his hand. Chaos reigned as the fretting family who were due to enter next, fled
back towards the village and still, Chester was silently calling for his wife to help him from weird magic that had consumed their
dreams and seemingly imprisoning Lillian's husband.
That was when she ran to him and wrapped her arms around the apparition that had done the same on their wedding night. The
affable grand-pop that helped to build his son's house and broke his leg trying show-off to his grand-kids when attempting to ride
Alf Slater's smelly mule. He was here and her grip wouldn't let him go.
Lillian had held him in her heart and hung on for dear life, but eventually the diaphanous man became nothing more than the
cold air of an awful evening and his wife was alone, except for the capricious cad who'd sold them a dud. What happened to
Godwin after that remained unknown as Lillian next turned to her life after Chester.
...................................................
Lillian offered Peggy her tear-filled eyes as she explained what she'd done next. Her deliberate exile into the woods and even
her possible self-banishment from coherence were easier sanctuaries to exist in than the reality that had stolen all she'd loved.
For months, she lived like an animal and drove herself to closer to lunacy by steering clear of human interaction. The stunted
trees became great listeners and more and more, Lillian withdrew from her world of common-sense judgment and practical
prudence.
Then one night as she was stealing potatoes from one of the garden allotments at the back of a Camden Bight cottage, she'd
overheard a conversation through an open window that reversed the winch she'd been allowing to lower her into the world of
the beast. Sidney Grimes was telling his uninterested wife that one of the visiting trawler-men had seen a ghost wandering
the grassy area away from the dock. Being a regular blow-in to Camden Bight, he'd recognised the aimlessly roaming spook
as Chester Caldwell.
Threatening his standing in The Horatio Inn, the fisherman had burst into the well-used watering-hole and told everyone of his
sighting and Grimes even recounted that the wide-eyed sea-angler had punched someone who'd accused him of being drunk.
Even in the mind-set of a trauma-laden bedlamite, this lick of gossip furnished air to a candle that was almost extinguished.
Somewhere inside of the emotionally-barren hermit, she found a purpose again and leaving Grimes' potatoes undisturbed,
Lillian spent the next year searching for her ethereal husband.
The enthralled enchanter frowned at this point of the story and the teller noticed the Witch's furrowed brow. "After Ah'd seen
yer' man, Ah' was told that a couple of fellas' searched for thee alongside yer' husband" Peggy said with a tone that implied
legitimate confoundment. Mentioning it was the Pa and Jessie Gurnard who'd spent the night looking for the frantic woman
didn't seem relevant to the query.
"They were with Chester?..." Lillian asked with mild alarm at such an outlandish statement, "...they walked beside a ghost
and never knew?!" she added and now showed her own features of doubt. The little Witch shrugged and reaching into her
satchel, pulled two meat pies from its magical innards and handed one to the tattered and torn woman.
"Maybe he isn't a ghost..." Peggy suggested as she watched the ravenous woman devour the pastry, "Maybe he just didn't
get back from The Wool-pit properly" she said without any sentiment one way or the other. This comment stopped Lillian
in her tracks and she stared intently at the agent of the opinion. "You mean he's trapped?" the bedraggled grandmother
asked and the wary sorceress recognised her words were generating a hope that she may not be able to deliver on.
Nibbling her own fare and keeping her eyes on Lillian's reddened gaze, Peggy said "A smart bugger would want te' take
another look at those Beams" and her fellow-diner smiled like someone who'd glimpsed the exit to a ghastly labyrinth.
from her interim roost and examined the frightened fair-haired woman scanning the environs of their cloistered conference.
If asked later, the smaller person of this clandestine meeting would suggest that a younger Lillian Aldwych had been a pretty
refined girl before time, running a family and turning feral had eroded a lot of the handsomeness from her intelligent features.
Even in the torn and dirt-smudged dress that skirted the grass, Lillian carried a dignity that no duration of hard work or threats
to keep a secret could abrade and now, she'd held a similar tenet of Peggy's faith, be-it dented by past chicanery. "May... may
I ask whom I'm speaking with?" the grandmother of the Caldwell children requested and pushed some unruly strands of hair
from her face.
Peggy curtsied and in doing so, noted that Mrs Aldwych copied her greeting. "Forgive me, Ah'm Peggy Powler, the Last Witch
of Underhill..." she answered softly and took off her hat to offer a clear view of her own face. "...And yer'll be the woman of the
old fella Ah' met when Ah' first arrived here in Murdigon?" she supplemented convivially. Lillian absently nodded and breathing
heavily, went back to continuing her nervous vigil.
"Yes, sort of..." the ragged-woman agreed as she walked back to be closer to the leafy haven that had kept her safe for so long.
"...The echo-of-a-man you saw was Chester -my husband and though I now go by my maiden name, I assure you he is still in my
heart" she added and anxiously ironed the many wrinkles of her tattered attire with her hand.
Lillian wrestled with a sobbing-jag for a couple of seconds before continuing and watching this supposedly crazy woman -as Ma
Gurnard had reported, Peggy felt that rumour and uneducated gossip had painted this forlorn lady into something she certainly
wasn't.
"The horrendous story is complicated and Chester's love for me is the true reason for what you witnessed and my own damaged
sanity..." Lillian whispered. "... But his tragic situation means he is neither here on Murdigon nor in the bedeviled bailiwick of The
Wool-pit" she offered enigmatically and struggling to shore-up the mental dam that confined her ocean of tears, the little Witch
watched her body shudder in its internal war.
Closing the space between them, Peggy showed her puzzlement at the statement and noticed the woman's ability to discern the
Witch's confusion whilst not letting it distract from her surveillance and self-gathering. For a few seconds, Lillian stared out at the
same location and then deciding nobody had discovered their remote parley, went on with her address. "The beams are..." the
older straw-haired woman began and then searched herself for the correct descriptive word, but the wily sorceress had already
grabbed the gist of what she was wishing to say.
"Yer' mean they're buggered?" Peggy proposed with raised eyebrows and a look to show she was willing to hear another option
of her guess. Lillian performed something she hadn't done since this whole debacle had began an act we all take for granted.
The wild insane woman that was purported to piss in front of those who searched for her, who would scream like a banshee at
the midnight hour and lived like an animal on the outskirts of civility... smiled at the small shoeless woman in the grubby shawl.
"Yes indeed, that would be a fine descriptor" she replied and sighing deeply, decided to retain the unaccustomed grin.
...................................................
Over the next half-hour, Lillian Caldwell -nee Aldwych -an arcane surname that privately amused her listening companion,
related the wonderful -and yet disingenuous, scheme of a man called Ralph Godwin and the citizenry of Camden Bight.
This plan to stealthily relocate the entire population of the hamlet to a superior or 'a golden place' as Indigo Dunth would've
suggested, involved an immoral covertness from the former and simple rustic ignorance from the latter.
The repercussions of an empty useless community due to this mass-transfer would be off-set by replacing those who went to
the Wool-pit with people who resembled the original folk of the village, something Peggy had witnessed herself. Whether the
current Store-owner looked the same as the authentic Mr Goddard, she couldn't say. But if it were true, the little Witch would
willingly testify that Goddard-the-First must've been a stone-faced miserable bugger.
But there'd been a problem. The Beams of King Stephen -an appliance that Peggy really wanted to know more about, hadn't
functioned in the manner regularly boasted about by the well-dressed, florris-spending Ralph Godwin arriving in Camden Bight
on that cold wintery day over two years ago.
After softly seeding his guarded secret around the village and predominantly in The Horatio tavern, Godwin had finally asked for
a meeting with the influential people that ran the businesses in Camden Bight. At first, Godwin's proposal was balked at and he
was asked to take his asinine idea elsewhere. But this slippery eel knew how to read the room and pressed where necessary
and restrained his verve where division reared his head.
It took two weeks of exquisite subterfuge to convince the dominant luminaries of the hamlet to visit the clearing where Godwin
had set-up his so-called 'Beams of King Stephen' and Lillian admitted during her chronicle that seeing a person appear out of
thin-air was something that certainly effected her doubts to not vote for the scheme.
There were others from Godwin's realm who came through for a short time to assist in the prompting of the conversion. Strange
and wonderful objects were also displayed to show how their lives would be better in this surreal realm called The Wool-Pit and
the enticing was palpable with all that witnessed the exhibits.
As Peggy listened to the well-bred woman, she felt sad that those who had searched for her during this confusing and terrible
ordeal and accepted the assumption that Lillian had passed over into a different kingdom, that of the land of the mad.
She wasn't 'Away with the Fairies' -as Ma Gurnard had stated, the attentive Witch knew from Lillian's current behaviour that it
was a simple case of experiencing something beyond her understanding and reacting when it all went confusingly wrong.
And it was this 'wrong'-episode that Lillian Aldwych continued with next.
...................................................
The third family to go through were the Caldwells comprised of Martin Caldwell, his wife Nell, the two children called Mathew and
Eva respectively and Chester along with Lillian. The parents of the children stepped through holding Martin and Eva's hands and
with a smiling nod from Ralph Godwin, the grandfather and his elegant spouse shuffled towards the white line between the posts.
If Indigo Dunth attempted to describe what happened next, the characterization would be the same as Lillian's. The blue eyes of
the Beams -that constantly watched the activity in the clearing, went red with anger and flashed their rage just as Chester Caldwell
stepped over the channel of white dust.
Through gasps of nervous inhalation, Lillian depicted a scene where her blithe husband suddenly vanished, reappeared, became
multiple versions of himself and then finally shifted into a transparent ghost who wailed his anguish without sound. The Goddards
had gone through with no problem along with the Penroses who used to run the Ship Chandlery, but it seemed such destiny was
not for the couple who'd watched their descendants enter a world allegedly better than this one.
Lillian had screamed then -maybe like the banshee she was later accused of being and looked to Ralph Godwin for answers.
The humming from the Beams had stopped along with the flashing eyes and the man who had sold them this pathway to amrita
was yelling to no avail into a small box he held in his hand. Chaos reigned as the fretting family who were due to enter next, fled
back towards the village and still, Chester was silently calling for his wife to help him from weird magic that had consumed their
dreams and seemingly imprisoning Lillian's husband.
That was when she ran to him and wrapped her arms around the apparition that had done the same on their wedding night. The
affable grand-pop that helped to build his son's house and broke his leg trying show-off to his grand-kids when attempting to ride
Alf Slater's smelly mule. He was here and her grip wouldn't let him go.
Lillian had held him in her heart and hung on for dear life, but eventually the diaphanous man became nothing more than the
cold air of an awful evening and his wife was alone, except for the capricious cad who'd sold them a dud. What happened to
Godwin after that remained unknown as Lillian next turned to her life after Chester.
...................................................
Lillian offered Peggy her tear-filled eyes as she explained what she'd done next. Her deliberate exile into the woods and even
her possible self-banishment from coherence were easier sanctuaries to exist in than the reality that had stolen all she'd loved.
For months, she lived like an animal and drove herself to closer to lunacy by steering clear of human interaction. The stunted
trees became great listeners and more and more, Lillian withdrew from her world of common-sense judgment and practical
prudence.
Then one night as she was stealing potatoes from one of the garden allotments at the back of a Camden Bight cottage, she'd
overheard a conversation through an open window that reversed the winch she'd been allowing to lower her into the world of
the beast. Sidney Grimes was telling his uninterested wife that one of the visiting trawler-men had seen a ghost wandering
the grassy area away from the dock. Being a regular blow-in to Camden Bight, he'd recognised the aimlessly roaming spook
as Chester Caldwell.
Threatening his standing in The Horatio Inn, the fisherman had burst into the well-used watering-hole and told everyone of his
sighting and Grimes even recounted that the wide-eyed sea-angler had punched someone who'd accused him of being drunk.
Even in the mind-set of a trauma-laden bedlamite, this lick of gossip furnished air to a candle that was almost extinguished.
Somewhere inside of the emotionally-barren hermit, she found a purpose again and leaving Grimes' potatoes undisturbed,
Lillian spent the next year searching for her ethereal husband.
The enthralled enchanter frowned at this point of the story and the teller noticed the Witch's furrowed brow. "After Ah'd seen
yer' man, Ah' was told that a couple of fellas' searched for thee alongside yer' husband" Peggy said with a tone that implied
legitimate confoundment. Mentioning it was the Pa and Jessie Gurnard who'd spent the night looking for the frantic woman
didn't seem relevant to the query.
"They were with Chester?..." Lillian asked with mild alarm at such an outlandish statement, "...they walked beside a ghost
and never knew?!" she added and now showed her own features of doubt. The little Witch shrugged and reaching into her
satchel, pulled two meat pies from its magical innards and handed one to the tattered and torn woman.
"Maybe he isn't a ghost..." Peggy suggested as she watched the ravenous woman devour the pastry, "Maybe he just didn't
get back from The Wool-pit properly" she said without any sentiment one way or the other. This comment stopped Lillian
in her tracks and she stared intently at the agent of the opinion. "You mean he's trapped?" the bedraggled grandmother
asked and the wary sorceress recognised her words were generating a hope that she may not be able to deliver on.
Nibbling her own fare and keeping her eyes on Lillian's reddened gaze, Peggy said "A smart bugger would want te' take
another look at those Beams" and her fellow-diner smiled like someone who'd glimpsed the exit to a ghastly labyrinth.
Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.