Disclaimer: I don't own Gakuen Alice.
Claimer: This fan fiction and all errors it might contain are mine.
This an entry to Hilaire'sGAFFC#2: The Casting of an Irrevocable Spell. The prompt is to portray Hotaru Imai as a most original sorceress/witch who has casts spells/creates potions/does whatever is said in the literary/mythological contexts.
Witch Hunt
Hotaru Imai is a witch living in the late 1600s, the time of the witch prosecutions. After being betrayed by a fellow witch, she is left with no choice but to leave her beloved home, and flee the ones who hunt her. She is companioned by Ruka Nogi--in a fight for survival.
Hotaru hastily checked behind her to see if anyone else was still pursuing her before hurrying through the mist to the Imai Manor.
Visiting the village was a bad idea, she thought as she pushed open the wooden door. She shoved it closed and bolted it, leaning against it, huffing.
"Witch hunters, Hotaru? I told you that fraternizing with the enemy was bound to backfire on you." a cold voice echoed through the hall.
Hotaru turned to stare coldly back at the source of the voice. Her brother. Subaru. "Yes."
"The mist barrier won't always keep out the unwanted," Subaru said stoically. With that, he strode past her, foot steps echoing, and disappeared into the parlor, closed the door loudly, angrily behind him.
Hotaru looked at the closed door, her face just as impassive as his. She hung up her coat, gathered her many annoying skirts and petticoats and stepped up the stairs.
She reached her tower room which overlooked the gray, barren yard behind the manor. It was a desolate sight but she only felt a little resentment towards it. Hotaru turned towards the shelves, and gazed silently at the potions and potions, jammed between it some spell books and potions guides.
And then deciding that she was not to be so unproductive, she strode to the corner of the room and dragged the cauldron to the middle of it, stooped down and lit a fire. A hate potion, or a love potion would be in demand, she mused, if she went to the village again.
"Borage and yew," she said to herself aloud from the potions book she had dragged from the shelves. "A scrap of elder bark. And water with mountain laurel soaked into it."
"You had better not be making a hate potion again," said a voice from her window. With a sharp glance toward the speaker, she ignored him as he hopped down from his perch on the windowsill.
"Ruka, when will you stop making holes in the mist barrier?" asked Hotaru stoically as she let a few leaves of celandine drop into the potion in making.
"When you let me into the manor by yourself," Ruka replied, smiling.
"You'd better leave before my brother comes up here," she warned her best friend.
He said nothing but watched her dump a few more ingredients into the liquid. She stirred the murky red potion and scooped some of it into a glass vial. "This should be enough for twenty pieces of gold."
"Money-lover," muttered Ruka.
Hotaru ignored him and filled up some more vials with the potion.
"You shouldn't sell it," Ruka said. "It'll cause more chaos."
"So stop me if you can," replied Hotaru.
Footsteps echoed and the two realized how loudly they were talking. They exchanged glances before Ruka disappeared out the window.
Hotaru breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the door open a little to catch a glimpse of her brother before he ascended to the attic towers. He threw a scathing look her way before she hastily closed her door again. Ruka had better visit her room again. Subaru seemed suspicious about the way holes kept appearing in his 'flawless mist barriers'. No human without magic in his or her blood wouldn't be able to penetrate the barriers, Subaru had told Hotaru when she was still a midget.
No human unless they had some close contact with one with magic in their blood.
And Hotaru hadn't realized that until Ruka, the village boy who befriended her, had started to visit her in the early hours in the morning, and then he'd gotten bolder and started visiting 'when he felt like it'.
***
Hotaru stared in disbelief as she watched the golden haired lad sit on her windowsill, the picture of ease.
"What are you doing here?!" she whisper-shouted.
"What else?" replied Ruka. "Visiting."
"How did you break the barrier?"
"Barrier?"
"Yes, the mist."
"I walked through it," Ruka said uneasily. "Is there something wrong?"
Hotaru turned away and complemented the issue. Did the barrier have holes? Or did Ruka have some strange power?
Subaru told her later that night that he had found holes in the barrier and repeated what he had said to her when she was still a child. And then warned her not to play with the barrier, all in the stoic voice of his.
She was a bit stung that he automatically accused her of the holes but realized why Ruka was able to get in now.
***
She watched Ruka disappear off beyond the hazy mist when she became aware of the urgent footsteps that belonged to her brother hurtle to her room.
The door burst open and Subaru, looking coldly anxious, half dragged, half pulled her from the room.
"What!" Hotaru demanded as she bumped her way up the stairs. Subaru didn't say anything but gritted his teeth and spared her a glance. She realized that they were in the attic tower.
"Witch hunters," he said tersely, gesturing toward the window. Hotaru peered out of it and gave a cry of alarm: a small mob, with an old woman—Hotaru assumed that it was a traitor witch, seeking a way out of a death penalty or prison—in the lead.
"Why?" asked Hotaru, attempting to keep her usual poker face as she turned to her brother for answers.
"You'd assume that the old hag in front is a traitor to our kind," replied Subaru shortly. Assumption confirmed. Subaru gave her a sideways look and then shoved a hundred pounds into her hand.
"What's this for?" asked Hotaru, but her mind had already focused on Subaru's unspoken plan.
"We're leaving. Splitting up," he muttered. "The witch will be able to lead the mob through the fog. They will give us a death penalty if we stay."
"I'm going to England?" Hotaru said quietly. "Then where are you going?"
"I'd rather not say," Subaru replied. "I am better known than you are—it would be best if we split up, and you not know where I am to go."
Hotaru bowed her head. "And my belongings?"
"Take what you can and leave immediately." He looked down slightly to catch her eye. "I hope that you still remember how to cloak your presence and transport yourself without a broom."
"I know," muttered Hotaru, and ran down the steep stairs to her room.
Apparently, Ruka was there, looking as if he had a good reason to be in her room while she was escaping. The sorceress stopped dead, and attempted to keep her temper in check.
"What…what are you doing here?"
"There's a mob outside and I didn't want to get caught."
"So you came back here, where you had an equal chance of getting caught by my brother."
"It was a better choice, Hotaru."
She ignored him, but snatched her cloak and an unused sheet. Feverishly, she threw clothes, money, books, whatever she could save onto the cloth, and finally bundled it up into a neat satchel.
"You're leaving."
He said that as an acknowledgement.
"Yes. To England. Or so it seems."
She tied the bundle to the end of her rarely used broom that leaned against the wall in the corner of her room. She lifted her head, chin pointing to him, making her look ridiculously prideful.
"Good bye."
And she dashed up the stairs to the attic, and then up higher to the top of the manor, where Subaru was staring down at the mob entering the manor.
He was apparently about to leave. Her brother's belongings seemed to be a lot less than hers, and he was still gazing down at the mob with disdain when Hotaru was finished surveying him with emotionless eyes.
"Hotaru."
"What," Hotaru asked flatly.
"Use your head. Even magic couldn't help morons."
In spite of the situation, Hotaru couldn't help the curling her lips. "Of course. I am not an imbecile."
He gave her a stern and annoyed look.
And then in a dark swirl of mystique, he vanished on the spot and was gone.
"You weren't thinking of leaving me here, were you?"
Ruka. Hotaru turned, and she sighed. "You're going to endanger yourself, Ruka. Go away."
"No."
The witch turned and stared exasperatedly at her friend. "What?"
"No. I'm not going to leave." He turned, smiling gently like he always did.
Hotaru's face turned hard, and she narrowed her eyes. "So what are you going to do?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
"Obvious?"
"For a witch like you, Hotaru, the answer is very obvious."
"You are not coming with me!" snapped Hotaru, flushing a pale red.
"So stop me if you can," retorted Ruka, using Hotaru's words against her. He let a bird land on his finger while she glared daggers at him.
Their fight was interrupted by an evil laughter. Their eyes darted towards the source of the mad cackle.
The traitor stood there, a lantern swinging from her bony hands. The mob stood behind her, afraid to advance, but too defiant to leave.
No choice left, Hotaru thought grimly. She grabbed Ruka's wrist—he glanced at her, startled; the bird flew off—and concentrated on leaving the place, hoping, with all her might, that her magic would be sufficient enough to transport both of them to England.
***
She first became conscious of where she was when the sound jabbed at her ears.
"Hotaru." A soft voice. Concerned.
Groggily, she sat up and glanced coldly around her. "Ruka. Where are we?"
"England. London, I think."
Her eyes widened. "I—we have to get away from here."
"Why?" Ruka asked, bemused, as she dragged him away from the alley in which she had found herself in.
"London's almost like the heart of the witch persecution of England," she hissed at him. She hauled him along trying not to be bothered by the looks the passerby gave them.
"How about Oxford," Ruka suggested. "Or Canterbury. We can go there."
"Too big, too big," she disagreed feverishly, pulling him along.
"Haversham?"
"Where is that?"
"North of Wolverton. D'you think you still have enough—er—magic left to transport us there?"
"Yes. And," she added, looking at her best friend sharply. "How do you know so much about England?"
"Born here," he muttered. He blushed, and Hotaru assumed that there were memories that he would want to avoid.
"Fine, let's go there." She was careful not to blush as she closed her grasp around Ruka's wrist again, and summoned all her strength to transport them to the place she did not know.
***
She came to again with Ruka's face peering down at her. "Hotaru."
She sat up, pushed him away. "Go away. Your face is too close."
"Shut up," he muttered. "And I found a place." He waved a hand towards a broken hut.
"It's tiny," she said coldly. "Did you pay for this?," she asked.
"I thought you'd say that," Ruka said, quietly, half to himself. "Yes. 40 pence."
She got to her feet and walked past him to the hut and peered inside. A spindly chair, an old dusty bed, and a table.
"I get the bed."
The days inched by and they formed an unspoken schedule. Ruka was to try and find money and food, while Hotaru grudgingly stayed in the shabby place and made potions. Perhaps to sell them in a far flung village in a countryside, where the villagers would not be concerned about witches.
It's boring, thought Hotaru with a surge of annoyance. She set down her potions book and kicked open the door, and strode out into the watery sunlight.
It was not a very active village, but it seemed that it was that day.
"A witch—a wizard, was burned," muttered one villager to another.
"In Russia, I heard. They're getting burned all the time," the latter replied.
"What was that sorcerer's name?" asked another villager.
"Imai. Subaru Imai, they said," the first villager replied in a hushed voice.
Hotaru turned away from the threesome, feeling a twinge of something undefined in her chest. So he had died.
"Your brother was…" Ruka said, later that night. "I heard…he was killed in Russia."
Hotaru simply stared at him. "I know."
"He was burned."
She said nothing, but silently turned extinguished the oil lantern and slipped into bed, feeling the ache in her chest.
The sorceress tried to hold them back, but she couldn't help the single tear that escaped her eye.
The next day began strangely, at least for her. As she opened the window for sunlight, the whispering began.
"What's that wretch's surname?"
"Imai. Hotaru Imai…"
"Reckon she's related to that one burned in Russia? The other day?"
"They look the same. No expression at all."
She quickly shut the window and waited for the day to pass.
It was darn when she was awoken in the middle of the dark night by noises outside the tiny room.
"Witch!"
Without hesitating, she jumped from the bed, pulled all of her things together.
"Ruka," she hissed, poked him, and finally pulled him from the chair.
He heard the mob as soon as she had yanked him from his perch. His eyes widened in horror. "Where are we going to go?"
"You're not going anywhere, witch!" shouted one of the villagers. He brandished his torch at her. "Unless you're coming with us to London!"
"To be burned!"
"Is the boy to be burned as well?"
"Guilty by association. He knows the witch!"
This is all my fault, thought Hotaru bitterly as she was dragged away.
***
"Witch Hotaru Imai, please step onto the platform," the executor said. He rattled off the other names of the prosecuted and asked each and every one of them to step onto the platform.
All of the accused were made to lie down on the wooden block. Hotaru cast her eyes down as the rest of the executors got in place with their heavy axes in hand. She was secretly thankful that Ruka was not sentenced to death, but instead sent to prison. At least he will live, she thought. But I won't.
She remembered the fleeting bitter smile that Ruka had given her as he was sent to prison. Memories flashed through her head, and an ache throbbed in her heart.
It all vanished in one swift move and there was no more.
End
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