Apologies for the delay - still no regular internet connection. Two longer chapters to make up for it...
Marek Pontis ran his cloth along the gun barrel one last time, before setting it to one side. His weapon was ready. Six rounds were loaded, and he had more in his belt pocket. One last check: his horse was loosely tethered to a tree, his backpack was well hidden under a mixture of brush and snow. He was ready to mount his attack on the palace.
The people of his village, Northwood, lived in fear of the Wicked Witch who had been exiled to the Northern Island. They had to pay tribute to the Witch, in the form of regular food and provisions, with only the word of the Queen promising their safety. Everyone knew how much that would be worth in the event of trouble. None of them were prepared to do anything; they just grumbled and muttered over their beer. Marek, with all the wisdom that fourteen annuals bring, had decided that something must be done.
Thus prepared, he set off. Obviously the front door was not the appropriate way to enter, but he felt obliged to scope it out nonetheless. No sign of motion or potential problems there. The Witch had left earlier that morning. Rapid investigation revealed a number of unused rooms, with windows not too far from ground level. Obviously, he could not be sure exactly where the Witch would frequent, but he doubted that she would ever be found near the servants' quarters and the kitchens.
Accordingly, he had chosen a room on the floor above the kitchen, with a convenient ledge on which he could work at opening the window. The walls themselves were smooth, but he was a good climber, with the fearlessness of youth, and soon he was on the ledge, peering inside. The room looked rather dusty.
Working carefully, he was soon inside the palace. Nervously, he pulled his gun from its holster, and started to explore inside. He took care to keep his traces to a minimum, and was busy formulating a plan when he heard the unmistakable sound of the large front doors opening. Trying to be stealthy as possible, he crept to the balcony that overlooked the main hall, fear twisting his belly. Each beat of his heart sounded as loud as a drum, and he found himself wishing that he had never come here. He remembered the stories he had heard about the Witch's evil, and calmed his nerves as best he could.
There she was! She closed the doors carefully, and then turned. He saw the Witch's face for the first time. It was pale, framed by long, black hair. She was limping, and her skirts were ripped and caked with blood. It looked as if a snow tiger had swiped at her right leg, according to his woodscraft. Still, she walked proudly, seemingly ignoring the pain. He wondered idly if she had encountered the maneater that had been plaguing the region for the last few months. Perhaps she was responsible for driving him to thirst for human blood. That focused his attention back on the matter in hand. She passed underneath the stairs, heading towards the servants' areas.
After hearing a door click shut, he crept silently down the steps. His legs felt like jelly, but he pressed on, moving towards the door. He gently put his ear to it, and listened. Hearing nothing, he readied his gun, and slowly pushed on the handle. It turned soundlessly, and he slipped into the next room. It was empty.
He listened at the next door, and heard running water. This was it; this was what he had come for. He was not sure that he had the strength necessary to kick the door in and keep going, so he tried to turn the handle quickly and quietly, stepping through with his gun pointing forward. He shot before looking, two bullets pumped into the far wall. She was standing off to the side, away from the muzzle of his gun, and he whirled towards her, his breathing heavy in his ears.
She turned to face him, and some fell magic, that he registered only as a wave of blue light, swept towards him, snapping at him, pushing him backwards. He stumbled over his own feet and fell to the floor, pulling the trigger again, and again. The shots was wild, and the noise reverberated around the room.
She walked towards him, her arm raised in some arcane gesture, and he slithered backwards, trying to pull his feet up. She paused and looked at him keenly. "You're just a boy." She flexed her hand, and the light snapped back, too fast, into her body. He felt a weight on his chest lift, and he scrabbled to his feet, aiming his gun at her unsteadily. She smiled, and that made it all worse. He pulled the trigger again, but the shot was off, going into the wall a good five feet away from the Witch.
She jumped slightly, and he took a step back, towards the door. "I'm here to kill you, so that you can't hurt Northwood any more."
"You're the Pontis boy, aren't you?" His tongue felt like lead, and he said nothing. She smiled crookedly. "I'm sure they are worried sick by your absence, Marek. I should be going home if I were you."
She knew his name. She knew his family. He took another step back, and tried to control the trembling in his arms, tried to control the position of the gun muzzle. She turned her back on him, and sat down at the table, facing away. He aimed, and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger again, hopelessly, and then dropped it on the floor and turned and ran, blindly, towards the front doors. He dragged them open and ran away as fast as he could.
He slumped to the ground when he arrived at his cache in the woods, trying to calm his breathing. She had not come after him, for which he was thankful. He wished now that he had kept hold of his gun. There should have been another bullet in it. And his dad would be furious at the loss.
Back in Northwood, he did not tell anyone of his little escapade; he was too scared that the villagers would worry that he was bringing an apocalypse on his head. However, he thought over the events very deeply, trying to create a new plan of attack. It was even more imperative now to get rid of the Witch.
That imperative was somewhat weakened later in the month when his dad, one of the local huntsmen, found the frozen dead body of a snow tiger that bore the same markings as the maneater had been reputed to wear. He pictured the scratches that the Witch had been carrying, and wondered.
Two weeks after that, he plucked up his courage once more, and ventured back to the palace, again in secret, again claiming the right to go on a small practice hunting trip. His dad had not yet realized that the gun was missing, and so Marek had not yet been grounded. The window he had broken previously had been repaired, but he searched a bit harder, and found a door that he could break into with his limited thieving skills.
He stepped across the threshold, and felt a momentary resistance in the air. He tensed, expecting a trap, but nothing happened after several seconds, and so he proceeded with due caution. He had managed to explore and identify several rooms before he heard the front doors opening. He made haste to hide in the kitchen, but ended up hiding under a table covered by a long tablecloth. Still, it afforded him some view of what was going on, by peeking underneath.
The Witch swept in, apparently unaware of his presence, and appeared to set about cooking, much to Marek's astonishment. It smelled like a boar stew, if he wasn't much mistaken. Then, she left the room. He stayed under the table for many long minutes, until impatience got the better of him. He emerged, and immediately saw that his gun had been put on the table he had been hiding under. Trembling, he picked it up and checked the chamber. There was one bullet in it, loaded, although the safety was on.
He tucked the gun in his belt, and left the room. The Witch was in the library, sitting at a table, writing. She did not appear to hear him open the door, and he waited in the doorway, searching for his courage.
Before he found it, she spoke, a rich voice, tinted with amusement. "Mr. Pontis, could you close the door, please. This room is a bit drafty. If you're going to try and shoot me, please get it over with, so that I can finish my day's business in good order."
He found his voice. "You killed the snow tiger." It was not quite a question.
"Hmmm."
"I, er, I'm not going to shoot you."
"I'm pleased to hear that, Mr. Pontis."
"Please don't do anything to my family, Miss. They don't have anything to do with my being here."
"Don't fret, Mr. Pontis, I know that they don't have anything to do with your various … adventures. Although if you feel obliged to enter the palace in the future, please try knocking."
He did not know how to answer that, and so said nothing. The Witch's pen started to scratch over her paper again. He stood uncomfortably, and then the Witch said, "Mr. Pontis, kindly stop looming in the doorway. Either find a book and read it, or leave."
Embarrassed, he shut the door and walked over to the shelves. The Witch said, "You might like the one just to your right, with the blue leather cover."
After that, he travelled to the palace whenever he could get away from Northwood for long enough, drawn by the promise of the books in the library, and by the mystery that was the Witch. After several visits, he plucked up the courage to eat some of the food that the Witch cooked, mindful of the stories of people being trapped after swallowing a mouthful of food. He was able to leave after that, though, and gradually his confidence grew, until he would even stay the night in a guest room, instead of camping half way to Northwood.
He did not pretend to understand the Witch's schedule. She was often absent when he arrived in the afternoon, but would arrive and spend some time preparing food, working in the library, and then eating food. Then, she would often spend more time writing, and finally spend a long moment staring into a bowl filled with water.
For a long time he would not ask questions, but when he managed to find the courage to so, he found out that she was writing letters to her sister, the Princess DG, doing research that her sister did not have the time or background to do. She explained to him the subject of a particular letter, and eventually he ended up having a rather detailed lecture every visit on the geography, or history, or political situation of various parts of the O.Z. It seemed that the world was an awful lot larger than Northwood. He had known this previously, but only in a rather vague way. Now, it took on a concrete extra dimension, and the desire to travel started to grow in him.
Eventually, he was confident enough to approach her on her nightly vigil over the water bowl. The surface of the water carried an image, distorted by the surface ripples, of a large bedroom, filled with plush furniture and with toys scattered about. A young girl with straight, black hair was seated near a bed, reading from a story book. The words could just about be heard.
"Who is it?"
"My…" The Witch looked over at him. "My little sister, Esmeralda. She's seven now." The Witch turned back to look at the scene, smiling fondly. "She's just learned how to turn the lights on and off using her magic, or at least she was doing that yesterday. She's picking it up much quicker than DG ever did."
Marek nodded, although even the idea of magic quite terrified him. "She's pretty."
"Yes, she is, isn't she." The smile was even broader.
"Actually, she looks a lot like you."
"Yes, well we are sisters."
"How do you see her from afar? Where is she anyway? Why don't you go and visit? Shouldn't you be living with your family?"
The Witch laughed, lightly. "So many questions. Well, Esmeralda and the rest of the family live in Central City most of the annual. As to how I see her in the water, well, she has a teddy bear that I gave her just over an annual and a half ago, and I gave it a little spark of magic, so that I would always be able to see around it. And, my family comes to visit, every annual or so. Surely you must have noticed when they pass near Northwood?"
Marek nodded. "Aye, we have to find a bunch more food, and the road is always a muddy mess when they come tramping through with all of their high-falutin servants."
He gasped and slapped a hand across his mouth. "Sorry, ma'am."
The sides of her mouth quirked up. "That's alright, Marek. They do pay your parents and the other villagers, though."
"Yeah. Don't you ever go to visit them? Surely it's better to see your sister than watch her in this little picture."
"Yes, it would be. Unfortunately, we're all very busy people."
"You're not that busy. I mean, you are, but you could do all the stuff you do somewhere else, couldn't you?"
"Well, I could, but don't you remember why you came here in the first place, Marek?"
"Yeah. I thought you were the Wicked Witch of the North come again."
"Well, lots of people think that, and so I stay here, out of the way, to avoid any problems."
"But you're not wicked," Marek protested.
"Well, I like to think I'm not!" She smiled. "Nevertheless, I did a lot of terrible things in the past. When my penance is paid, my mother, the Queen, will ask me to return."
He looked up at her. "But I asked around, real careful like, to avoid suspicion, and the story is that you were possessed by the real Wicked Witch. Nobody in Northwood believes it, but that's what the official word is."
"That's true. I was possessed. I was still responsible for a lot of problems, though. And really, it was all my own fault. So, I'm working off my punishment. And one day, I'll be clean again, and I can just start over, and ..."
There was a short silence, and then she continued, in a more subdued voice, "Well, no point in dreaming about the future when the present is right here. Esmeralda is in bed, and it is time for us to do the washing up."