The End

The first chapter will not make it into the book if I ever come to publish it, as Susan cannot know most of what transpires here. 

Beginning of Easter Holidays year 3 - Near the end
Persephone, the ghost from Susan's house, turned out to be an invaluable asset. As soon as she got accustomed to the fact that her best friend, Sandra - the mother of Tage, Heidi and Lis - was now a grown up lady with children of her own, she moved in at the Magician's cottage
When Susan met her in the Easter holidays she was amazed at her growth. Of course her outward form was the same as ever, but her mind, spirit or what ever you may call it had developed beyond that of a small, petulant girl. She had started visiting other houses, and after watching the twins' antics she found that she was great at teleporting. Being immaterial she had no problem with ending up inside tings. Only large mountains or wast masses of water made her dizzy and sent her back. She could also turn totally invisible at will, and if she took care not to touch anybody, she could stay unnoticed even in a room filed with people. She was sent spying on Torben now and then, and came back with disturbing reports of him and his Dutch friend's plannings.

One night Susan, Heidi, Tage and Lis were very late in getting home, They had explored the bed of Susan's rivulet, all the way from the Unicorn Farm to where it tumbled over the cliffs down to the beach below. It was only a trickle now, the winter's snow only a memory in the mild Easter winds, and in a month or so the stream would totally disappear, only to be revived during very violent summer thunderstorms and downpours.
Then they followed the rocky path along the cliff all the way to where it reached its highest point, marked by a small cairn. They then had to backtrack to get to he path leading to the Magician's Cottage.
Heidi and Tage even advocated continuing all the way to the bridge connecting their isle with the mainland, but Lis shot down the notion, stating that the only shop there open outside of the tourist season would surely be closed by the time they got there.

The children had expected a sounding off for being late for dinner, but nothing happened. Sandra served the dinner and Kai did the dishes afterwards as usual, but both of them seemed to be absent-minded Sandra put a load of broccoli on Heidi's plate, and when she complained, that she did indeed still not eat his vegetable, Sandra just scooped them back in the bowl without a word. Kai almost dropped at least four plates while cleaning them, and only his extraordinary nimbleness prevented any major catastrophes.

After dinner Sandra brewed a big pot of tea. When the doorbell rang, and Gilvi and Thora was shown to the garden, the children were sent off to bed.
Half an hour later Percy and Sandra sat around the garden table table with Gilvi, Thora, Taathi, Taavi, Jon and Martine. Lis and Tage were in their room, while Susan was bedded in Heidi's room. None of them slept.
All their tries at pleading, sneaking or listening in, had only resulted in Kai, the Magician-wizard and father of Tage, Heidi and Lis keeping guard in furious immobility on the landing outside their bedrooms.

The evening wore on. Luckily Percy was a ghost, and did not get tired from the questioning from all the professors and Sandra. One by one the professors fell silent, all questions asked. The night fell and the small band of humans and a ghost went inside.
"We're in dire peril," Sandra said as they gathered in the living room. "When, or dare I say if, Tristan is rolling out his plan, all of Denmark, Iceland, the Faeroe islands and possibly the rest of the Scandinavian countries will be under his inclement rule." In the beginning he will seem to be the benevolent dictator, but then, in steadily mounting degrees, people will begin to suffer. Not the magical community, but everybody else will be enslaved, persecuted, maybe killed in this crazy plan of his. And they wont' realize until it's too late, far too late."
"Are you sure?" Martine asked.
"Yes I'm sure." Sandra answered. "He'll write his propaganda flyers on highly suggestive paper, place billboards everywhere, likewise prepared. And his election will be certain.

Sandra reached up, into the coral lampshade. "Is this what I think it is?" she asked very quietly. Gilvi looked at the small black thing in her hand and nodded. Jon stretched out his hand, and Sandra dropped the microphone into it. He drew his wand, cast an intricate spell over it, and a smallish 3D Picture of Torben rose from it. "Him!" Sandra whispered, going pale.  She gestured with her wand and it wrote in the air: "Pretend you do not believe what I said about Tristan!"
"Oy Sandra," Martine said, "I do not think you're right. Tristan is not a bad sort of guy. A bit brash, maybe, but you're making him out to be the very devil"
Taavi said: "He's a wizard, just like us. He might be more harsh, more determined. But maybe it is just what we need."
"I see, you do not believe me, Sandra said with a sigh. "let's stop this futile discussion and find our beds. It is late."
As Sandra saw her guests out, she once again had her wand write in the air. "We will have to go underground. You may or may not wish to follow, but we're a family, we're harder to protect."

* * *

The End - Summer Year 3. (15. May 2019)
Susan was in hospital for a long time. When she finally left, she was weak as a kitten, and allowed only short walks. Each day she walked a bit further.  She was bored, she could not read much, visitors tired her out, and she had almost no appetite. School had to wait. Her teacher came once or twice a week and tried to teach her, but she could do no math at all,  and her spelling was as usual so excellent, that there was no idea in training. It ended with the teacher mostly keeping Susan up to date with happenings in the school and in the world at large. Her voice was a deep alto, soothing to Susan's poor brain and not loud enough to bring on more headaches.
Slowly Susan was able to walk for longer bits, but her appetite and genral wellbeing were far from good.

In the Autumn holidays the weather was so exceptionally good, that Mom and Dad had the idea of one last trip to the Summer house on the Island. "You know, aunt Dina and uncle Kurt have decided to sell the house." Mom said.
"I think you told me, yes," Susan answered. "what a pity. now it is finished and everything, I mean. It is such a wonderful place, free and wild."

One of the last days there, Susan and her dad went for a walk. They came to the end of a paved road, and a house in two mirrored sections lay enclosed by naked stone dikes. 
"That house over there," Susan said, "that's a new one, isn't it?"
"Yes," dad said. "It was built while you were in hospital. Don't you remember the old one, it was low, yellow, thatched I think. It had a funny name. It burned the night your friends disappeared. All the trees were damaged in the fire as well. They had to remove them too."
"No," Susan said, "I don't remember. I don't remember much after our journey down here in the beginning of the summer holidays. I remember eating pancakes the first morning. I remember being very happy inside. I still feel that way ... just a bit. But I don't remember much more."
"Don't worry Susan," Dad said, patting her back. "The doctor said that your memory might continue to improve for a very long time. Concussions are unpredictable."

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"Mom," Susan asked one morning in late Autumn. "After that accident of mine, did you ever call the summer school and tell what happened?"
"I was afraid you would ask. On the other hand it is a sign that your memory is returning. I tried. But I could not find the papers, they were probably left behind in the summerhouse, and aunt Dina has thrown them away in one of her cleaning fits. But wasn't it almost over?"
"I don't remember when it was supposed to end or when that would have been in relation to my accident. I just remember looking forward to going there again."
"I'll try some more searching," Mum promised, "it would be nicd if you could contact some of your friends from that course, as you can't go there any more. We do not have a place to stay down there any more, now Dina and Kurt sold their summerhouse."
"I'll look in my hideouts as well," Susan said. "Maybe this afternoon, when I've had a nap."

After Christmas Susan began feeling herself again. January was an unusually dreary month, rain, cloudy and murky. Susan began playing her guitar again, she even took an extracurricular  course in guitar music. The teacher was a guy who said he had been playing with the musicians from the Hootenanny Singers back in the 60es. Susan did not quite believe him.  
Last Summer's too busy days had taught her not to become involved with playing at shindigs, openings or anything of that sort. But soon she became involved in a group aiming to open a second hand shop. Playing and working hard for a good cause was something Susan could get involved in ... and she did.

In Spring the group found the right place. An old green grocer's off the main street of the city. It had been unoccupied for quite a while, and was in need of much work to be useable again.

Every morning Susan dragged herself from sleep, swallowed a cup of tea and bread with honey, biked to school, and from there down to the shop, where she painted, drilled, swept, polished, hung up lights, and so on. Many days she biked home, grabbed a banana and some tools, they were missing, and went back to the shop to work until darkness fell. Homework were made by night or not at all.

* * *

After almost a month of hard work, the shop was nearly finished. The Saturday before the opening, they worked hard to finish everything, and in the evening they had a meeting with people from similar shops all over Zealand. The meeting consisted of a pep-talk, practical instructions, showing of a new movie and a general discussion. It took place in Copenhagen. Susan slept through the most of the movie, and over the coffee during the break she realized that the cookies and coffee she was eating, was the first she had been eating since breakfast. No wonder she felt weak. Cookies was a sad excuse for dinner.

Friday they held a grand parade through the pedestrian streets of the town. The parade was duly announced to, and approved by the local police, but halfway through, they found their way barricaded by the girls' marching band. Of course they retreated, plastering themselves to the walls and stopped playing and singing.
The opening next day turned into somewhat of a schemozzle. Costumers came in great numbers, flooding the small shop, almost fighting over the clothes and bric-a-brac for sale.
Susan was not old enough to be behind the counter, legal age of 18 was a requirement to handle money, but she showed people around, filled the shelves and prevented shop lifting. This was a necessary job, as middle aged women circulated in organized groups, distracting the personnel and pilfering small, but expensive objects.
After the first day, the shop had netted about the sum, they had expected from the first month. It had been one of the subjects on the meeting in Copenhagen whether to register to pay some kind of tax, but as none of the existing shops were compelled to register, their shop had not registered either. This registration required sales for a rather large amount of money, and was a nightmare of paperwork, so nobody wanted to do it unless forced to it. But nonetheless their shop was forced to do so within 3 months.
Susan was in the shop almost every afternoon. She hung dresses on hangers, placed shoes in the window, nicely lined up, and almost every day after closing time she went to the post office with the day's income. She was not old enough to receive money and give back change to the customers, but nobody had second thoughts trusting her with lots of money in the half-empty streets. She sometimes pretended all the money was her own, that she was the heiress to a fortune, but those dreams never lasted long.

* * *

After a month the work in the shop and school had settled into a routine. Even carrying the huge amount of money to the post office every night had lost its thrill.
Susan began playing with Laurids and his crew again, but a bow-legged man playing violin and saw-blades had taken over her place in the band, and he was better, even if Susan hated to admit it. The summer spent at Unicorn Farm (even if she remembered it as a 4H summer course), her accident with following bed rest, and then work with and in the new shop had not left her much time for practise, and her play was rusty and not fluent. Lady Marion of course was a darling, as were Stellan and Jasper, the two brothers from abroad, but Susan felt ill at ease.
One evening after the shop had closed, Susan sat on a bench in the market square. Just sitting, not wanting to go home, eat dinner, do homework and go to bed. The early summer night was warm, the pearly sky beautiful, and she just sat there.

A bunch of people, she knew a little from school passed by and sat themselves down on the neighbouring benches. They talked a bit, agonizing over school, work and life in general.
The others rose to go somewhere, and Mike said: "Come with us, Susan., We're going to have a beer and play some pool at The Dipper."
"I'm not very good at pool," Susan protested, "and I don't like beer."
"You do not have to drink any, if you don't like it. They serve soft drinks as well, and we're not better at pool than you are, I'm sure," he insisted.

Susan rose from the bench and went with them to The Dipper. It was one of the more dingy places in town; an arched gateway led from the street through the house to a cobbled yard where rickety tables and flowers in old oil cans stood invitingly in the dusk. Quite a few customers sat by the tables, hugging glass mugs with amber contents. Susan followed in the wake of the others and was met by the overwhelming, but somehow comforting smell of stale smoke, beer and human bodies.
They placed their orders at a bar, Susan went for a chocolate milk, and earned no strange stares, which pleased her immensely. The bottles of liquor were neatly stacked in pigeon holes behind the counter, where you would expect a mirror.
They paid and continued up the stairs and tackled the pool table. To her own surprise, Susan was not bad at it. She had of course had some practise at the pool table in the attic, but this bunch used to play almost every night. As the evening wore on, and the others drank more beer, Susan became better and better in comparison, and actually had fun beating them at the game.
When she returned home, her parents had gone to bed and put a note on the door. "Please be quiet!" She tiptoed in, brushed her teeth and slept from her alarm clock next morning.

Mum came in and woke her up: "Where did you spend last night, young lady?" she asked sternly.
Susan answered truthfully that she had been playing pool with a bunch of her schoolmates.
"Did you drink?" Mum asked, sniffing suspiciously.
"Nope," Susan said. "You know, I don't like beer, and I'm not allowed to buy liquor, and even if I was, it's too expensive. I drank chocolate milk, lots of them actually, as all the others drank beer, and kept on losing. I only paid for two of them myself."
Mum smiled. "You're a smart girl, Susan. Keep it that way, but don't come home this late every evening."
"I won't," Susan promised. "It's not nice being this tired in the morning."

* * *

Susan was not listening. The teacher was so boring today. He kept talking of this Lustrum, the purification of the people and how this could provide them with a new start, or a sense of security. She was not sure which. The drone of this voice turned into a lullaby, and Susan dozed off. It had been a late night again yesterday. Hilde from the manor house turned collective outside of town had been at The Dipper.
There had been a happening, A couple of drunk Swedes had overturned the bar, smashing some bottles and generally creating havoc. Most of the bottles were not broken, and they had even been able to salvage the glasses that normally stood on the bar. But the owner had been quite draconian in his measures and had expelled everybody from the top room, even Susan and her friends, who had had nothing to do with the drunken Swedes, only playing pool and minding their own business.
As the night air was rater Boreal, Susan and several of the other young ones had followed Hilde to her manor house, where they had had eggnogs. Some of the happy go lucky ways of the collective had rubbed off to the youngsters and they had eaten all the eggs and used most of the sugar and spiced Rhum with no thoughts for the consequences.
Later one of the grown ups from the manor house came and told them off for not scrubbing the pans they had used. When Hilde had smoothed over the hurt feelings of everyone, Susan had begun the long, cold walk home.

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