"Oh, no, my pet. This is just the beginning."

Fairy Tales

Every story needs a knight. They have witches too, sometimes, but Drusilla has always liked the knights best of all. The witches never get to carry shining swords or ride horses. They only have broomsticks, and they don’t stay up in the sky without the stories to hold them there.

(Drusilla knows. She tried to fly, once, when she was a little girl. She ripped her petticoat and bloodied her knees, and Mama was ever so cross. Drusilla didn’t understand why pretending to be a witch was worse than having wicked witch pictures in her head. She was sure that the pictures were just as loud as the games in the garden, and the neighbours had good ears beneath their sensible white bonnets. At least she didn’t have green skin or boils on her nose. She’d checked in the mirror every morning, before the glass stopped speaking to her. She didn’t have to look after that, because vampires were always better than witches in the books. They had castles, even if Daddy told her that she’d never be able to turn into a bat.)

( The princesses don’t get to carry swords either, but the knights do all the chopping for them. )

The Summer of '69

It was 1969. The year of the moon landing, the Vietnam War and the ‘free love’ movement. The year of punk rock, hair gel and hippies that made Spike's mouth fizz.

( (Not necessarily in that order, though.) )