When Desiderata Hollow was a girl, her grandmother had given her four important pieces of advice to guide her young footsteps on the unexpectedly twisting pathway of life.
They were:
Never trust a dog with orange eyebrows,
Always get the young man's name and address,
Never get between two mirrors,
And always wear completely clean underwear every day because you never knew when you were going to be knocked down and killed by a runaway horse and if people found you had unsatisfactory underwear on, you'd die of shame.
And then Desiderata grew up to become a witch. And one of the minor benefits of being a witch is that you know exactly when you're going to die and can wear what underwear you like.*
That had been eighty years earlier, when the idea of knowing exactly when you were going to die had seemed quite attractive because secretly, of course, you knew you were going to live forever.
That was then.
And this was now.
Forever didn't seem to last as long these days as once it did.
* Which explains a lot about witches.
Another log crumbled to ash in the fireplace. Desiderata hadn't bothered to order any fuel for the winter. Not much point, really.
And then, of course, there was this other thing . . .
She'd wrapped it up carefully into a long, slim package. Now she folded up the letter, addressed it, and pushed it under the string. Job done.
She looked up. Desiderata had been blind for thirty years, but this hadn't been a problem. She'd always been blessed, if that was the word, with second sight. So when the ordinary eyes gave out you just trained yourself to see into the present, which anyway was easier than the future. And since the eyeball of the occult didn't depend on light, you saved on candles. There was always a silver lining, if you knew where to look. In a manner of speaking.
There was a mirror on the wall in front of her.
The face in it was not her own, which was round and pink.
It was the face of a woman who was used to giving orders. Desiderata wasn't the sort to give orders. Quite the reverse, in fact.
The woman said, 'You are dying, Desiderata.'
'I am that, too.'
'You've grown old. Your sort always do. Your power is nearly gone.'
'That's a fact, Lilith,' said Desiderata mildly.
'So your protection is withdrawing from her.'
' 'Fraid so,' said Desiderata.
'So now it's just me and the evil swamp woman. And I will win.'
'That's how it seems, I'm afraid.'
'You should have found a successor.'
'Never had the time. I'm not the planning sort, you know.'
The face in the mirror got closer, as if the figure had moved a little nearer to its side of the mirror.