Epilogue
So that’s how it was, and that’s how it went.
Bradley and George found a lovely little cottage near the center of town.
The village’s master hairdresser decided to retire, so Bradley took over the shop, and people came from miles around to have their hair cut by the former king.
As it turned out, peacefully abdicating the throne before you’d had the chance to really make a mess of the kingdom was an excellent way to ensure that The People remembered you as kind and noble, just and true, rather than as an incompetent twit who couldn’t govern his way out of a bag of hair clippings.
The locals immediately took a shine to George, who they all agreed was Just Regular Folk despite suffering from a severe and incurable case of Not from Around Here.
Most happily of all, because no one important ever came to the village, George’s clothing abided unstained, and everyone always noticed him and waved hello.
To keep himself occupied, he began advertising his services as a freelance monster hunter.
In the first few years that he lived in Brigandale, he relieved three households of boggarts, removed some squirrels from chimneys after the homeowners mistook them for boggarts, and also had several genuine adventures, the details of which are outside the scope of this story.
Back in the capital, King Janet did better as king than she might have done, and worse as king than she might have hoped.
Years went by. She grew less sure of things that she once would have sworn were the truth.
Sometimes, late at night, she would lie awake and think, I’m tired.
I’m lonely. I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m older than I thought I’d be, by now.
One day, she would walk into the woods and not look back. One day, but not quite yet. Some witches take longer than others to come into themselves. For some witches, it takes until the very end.
Gretsella, for her part, went back to living almost exactly as she had before all of this occurred, with two major exceptions.
First, and much to Bradley’s dismay, she immediately remodeled his old bedroom into a studio where she could make her little arts and crafts projects for selling at local fairs, like cursed amulets and three-league boots (her budget didn’t stretch to the griffin’s blood it took for the full seven leagues).
Second, her social calendar was slightly more crowded, owing to the addition of her regular Friday afternoon teas with Herman.
Sometimes he made sandwiches, and sometimes she brought cake.
Gretsella’s fellow witches were all completely scandalized.
All except Barb, who insisted on winking at Gretsella knowingly whenever she visited.
Gretsella invited her over fairly often.
Making someone your sworn enemy was one thing, but you couldn’t easily cast off an acquaintance who made such a moist and tender chocolate sponge.
“I’m not going to move to a suburb and have lots of horrible children like you, Barb,” said Gretsella, who still maintained the right to resent Barb for the right-hook debacle.
“Obviously not,” Barb said, very sweetly. “You already have a gentleman friend and a grown, gainfully employed, happily married son, both of whom love you very much and live nearby in a charming rural village. And you’re much too old to have any more children.”
“I curse you, Barb!” Gretsella said, for want of absolutely any other retort.
Then she went to plant some more hemlock and deadly nightshade in her garden, in an attempt to regain some of her witchly dignity.
After this was done, she retreated to her sitting room with a cool drink and the latest issue of Harridans’ Weekly.
She was reading an article about the cultivation of carnivorous tropical plants (easy enough to do with the application of some simple weather magic in one corner of the garden—the only thing you had to worry about was confusing the earthworms) when there was a knock at the door.
Gretsella went to answer it. There was no one there. Then, at the height of her knees, there was an unpleasant sound. It was exactly like the sound of a goose clearing its throat, a sound that no one, witch or common mortal, should ever be forced to endure. She looked down. Then she said, “Oh, no.”
The goose cleared its throat again. It probably would have consulted its notes if it had a pocket to keep notes in. Then it honked, “Hail, Gretsella, the Witch of Brigandale with the Reasonable Prices! Hail, Gretsella, the Only One Who Can Save the Democratic Nation-State!”
“Maybe later,” Gretsella said. “I have a magazine to finish.” Then she very firmly shut the door.