KENDAL, CUMBRIA, SPRING OF 1961.
“No lad, you completely misunderstand. I don’t live like this because I’m waiting for a husband or because I prefer women. I live like this because it makes me a better weapon,” she said.
She dressed quickly. First a low slung holster holding a small pistol and a slender knife. Over that, a long, floaty red skirt. Then a red shirt. Then, over the knee high socks she had not removed, a pair of scuffed, black boots. Finally, she adjusted the band of crimson velvet that held back her hair.
She did not look back as she walked briskly out of the door, but his eyes never left her.
LIVERPOOL, AUTUMN OF 1940
She first met the man when she was a child. He was the only one walking towards the danger rather than away from it. Like a longship through a frozen sea, he passed through the fleeing crowd. When he was alone in the square with the abomination, he calmly took a handful of salt from his pocket and rubbed it into his hands. Then he announced that he was with the Gods.
When he was finished he picked her up and carried her home.
“You did not run,” he said to her.
“We live here,” she had replied
In those days the bombs fell so thickly on Liverpool that the great adversary could do anything they wanted. Who would notice another monster in the Fascist bombing?
Her parents had died a day ago. She had sat alone and unnoticed in the ruble.
“The Gods are good, but they are drunk and insane, so we must endure,” he tried to tell her.
“But God has mercy. Surely we must believe that God has mercy?” she had asked as a child, and never stopped asking.
“Believe it if you wish. I see no mercy here.”
Looking around at the squalid terrace house where she now lived, and at the bombed out streets surrounding her, and the pinched faces of the people struggling grimly all around,it would have been easy to agree with him.
So she had decided to become God’s mercy. The embodiment of His mercy on Earth.
On the rare evening when the air raid sirens did not sound, they would climb a ladder and sit on the roof of his house. There, they would look out over the dockyards and the sea beyond.
“There are three wars being fought,” he once told her. “The first is on this earth, between soldiers, sailors and airmen. The second is being fought in our hearts and minds by the witches and shaman of Britain against the Fascist Occultists. The third is fought in the sky- between the Gods and the forces of Destruction.”
She liked to look at the sky, where she believed God lived.
The second time that she met the enemy was in the winter, 3 months after her parents had died. She was 7 years old.
A creature had been haunting the street for weeks, he explained as they walked down the road. It had tormented them in their beds, filling their sleep with nightmares and draining their energy. Then it had settled in the home of an old woman who lacked the strength of will to defend herself. Neighbours had told the local witch and the witch had called on him.
They knocked on the old ladies door. To the girl, the woman looked impossibly old and terribly tired. She invited them into her front room where they drank tea and ate biscuits, it was like visiting an elderly relative.
Eventually, he politely asked to be shown to the old woman’s bedroom. She led them there awkwardly, then returned to her front room.
“Stay behind me at all times,” he told the girl.
She had no intention of entering the room, it felt terribly cold.
Then he took from his bag a bell, a bag of salt, and a small silver hammer. He gently rang the bell seven times whilst carefully looking around him. Then he threw handfuls of salt into three corners of the room.
Next he went to the fourth corner, spoke a few words in a language that the girl couldn’t understand, and started striking at the air with his hammer.
The girl looked on in astonishment. After a moment she blinked, then she saw it. A shrunken, humanoid creature that covered its face with long, clawed hands. The silver hammer was striking its head.
The creature stopped cowering and looked her directly in the eyes. It pointed at her with one of its talons and screamed. Then it faded to nothing.
On their way out, the old lady gave her a tiny bar of chocolate. It was a rare treat.
Many of the nights that Winter were spent in the Anderson Shelter which he had built in the tiny backyard. They spent a lot of time in that small room (designed for a family so not too crowded), protected by corrugated iron, sand bags and earth. It was too dark to read, so he would tell her stories to distract her from the sounds of destruction all around.
Never anything serious, but light hearted legends of Robin Hood or King Arther and his sister Morgana.. She would often imagine herself as the mysterious Fey enchantress.
