This is the story I've been editing. I reached the end of the work in progress and I've had inspiration to continue the story.

Thank you for following me as I edited it. I hope you'll continue to follow as I now enter the writing stage.

The links to the previous episodes are all here.

On with the story.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27

Images from Wiki, Google (free to use) and Pixabay

---

---

“There was once a great city but it had fallen into bad habits. It had allowed itself to become filthy and pest-ridden. Plague and Pestilence discovered it and made the city their home. Many, many people would die because of those two creatures, because of the disease they have brought to this place. You have stopped them both,” Katherine said.

“I have stopped them?” the girl whispered, watching the fire take hold further and further from the warehouse where it started on Monument Street and spread to where she worked, in the Bakery at Pudding Lane.

Katherine nodded. “Aye, lass,” she said in the girl’s own dialect of her childhood. “You have stopped the plague from taking innocent lives. Look!” Katherine pointed across the tops of the blazing houses.

The wraith she had battled hung over the city. It didn’t seem sorrowful that its work had been stopped, it was wrathful and angry. It saw Katherine as she pointed and made to attack and then had a change of heart, perhaps remembering its defeat in the spirit world earlier.

It screeched at Katherine and the girl clamped her hands to her ears and closed her eyes tight.

“It cannot harm you, child,” Katherine said.

They watched the blaze across the city, the devastation to houses, buildings and structures and Katherine saw the girl crying. Tears slipped silently from her eyes and Katherine realised the girl had loved her home.

“The city will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the destruction, child. Do not weep.”

“But the people, I have surely killed so very many people,” she said, looking up at Katherine.

“No, you have not. Look,” Katherine said and pointed to boats of citizens making their escape across the river.
They watched people helping each other, carrying little ones and the few possessions they could gather before fleeing.

The air filled with smoke and tiny flames borne on the breeze and Katherine then worried that the little flames, tiny pieces of straw and embers would set light to buildings across the river and become such a conflagration that it would not be checked until it had laid waste to every building.

“No, look. Mother Nature herself is helping with that, it would seem,” Morgana said, pointing.

The fire blazed for three days and nights but the total loss of human life, including the Baker’s maid, was just six souls.

When the fires were under control and the three watchers were satisfied, only then did Katherine turn away.

“Come, let me take you where you will find your family, presently,” Katherine said.

“They are dying too?” the girl asked in a sorrowful tone.

Katherine looked at the girl and saw the answer. “No. Your family and your daughter at home, will live good, long lives and your bloodline shall be forever favoured for your sacrifice this night. It will be a long time in the world of man before you see them, but time passes differently for us spirits. It will not seem such a long time for you.”

Katherine took the girl by the hand and led her to the gates where she could see someone she recognised.

“No, please don’t fret,” she called to someone Katherine could not see. “I am here. I have such a story to tell you!”

The girl turned to Katherine and kissed her on both cheeks and then bowed her head for Katherine to kiss her. Katherine kissed her forehead, her eyes and her mouth and whispered, “Thank you, you have done well.”

Then the girl ran to the gateway and disappeared through it without looking back.

Though Katherine could not see beyond the veil, Morgana could and she smiled. Morgana nodded and waved to the woman waiting for the maid and she saw them embrace and wander off, chattering away like they had so very much news to catch up on.