Hilda - The Challenge (27 page)

"Now it is your turn to trust me, Hilda. You
close your eyes, I guide you and then I tell you to open your eyes
again."

She sighed and closed her eyes. "This'd
better be good. I don't like walking around with my eyes
closed."

William opened the door to the bedroom and
led her inside. "Okay. Look."

Hilda peeked through one eye, through both
eyes. She turned round, taking in her bedroom. Her survey ended as
she looked at William. "It's purple!!!" She jumped up and made a
serious attempt to take William's head off, pretending it to be a
hug. "How did you manage that? The house never wants something
other than white, black and red!"

"It was a trade, a purple bedroom for no more
arrows in the wall. That is why I put up the pole," William managed
to squeeze out, tapping her on the shoulder.

"This is so shiny!", Hilda tooted in his ear,
then planting a big kiss on his lips. "I'm not sure what you and
the house have been talking about or so, but this..." Her eyes were
almost more blue than their usual black.

"You know, I may not be the sharpest tool in
the shed of witchcraft, but I have certain abilities that come in
handy now and again," William smiled.

Hilda got her feet back on the ground and
looked at him as in a daze. "Now you're talking gibberish again. I
don't have a shed here, and certainly not one with tools. I have a
wand, you see, that's enough."

Now William laughed out loudly, shaking his
head about the fantastic convoluted interpretations of normal
expressions that he was used to.

"Hey, no laughing at the resident witch!"
Hilda slapped him on the arm, in a futile attempt to stay serious,
but her happiness over the purple room made it impossible for her
to keep a straight face.

"I hope you're happy now," said the house, as
William was not able to speak for a moment.

"Oh! I am! Isn't he sweet?" Hilda grinned,
wrapping an arm around William.

"I shall refrain from commenting on that. I
can only state that he drives a hard bargain."

"I don't care about that, as long as the room
stays like this. Also next time I paint you, do you hear me?"

The house did not respond. It had already
agreed to that; it was below its dignity to make that promise
again. "Someone is approaching the door," it said instead.

Hilda and William walked to the window,
seeing indeed someone come closer to the house. It was one of the
villagers, obviously.

"He looks not happy," William noticed.

"None of them are when they have to come
here. Usually means trouble." Hilda quickly made her way
downstairs, so she could open the door just before the visitor
could knock. That always made a great impression.

William, wondering whose trouble it might be,
followed her down but kept away from the door.

The man had walked all the way from the
village, as fast as he could. His face was red, he felt warm and
tired. But he had been appointed to go to the witch and tell her
the bad news. As he finally saw the house, white and black and red,
he was relieved to have made it. But also doubt crawled onto him.
What if she took the news in a not so friendly way... He was not
ready to leave this world and move on to the next one...

Thomas straightened his clothes, patted the
green streaks from his dark pants as well as he could. Then he
walked to the door, raised his hand and almost jumped back two feet
as the door opened before he had touched it.

"Hi." The witch stood in the door opening,
staring at him. "What's up?"

Thomas grabbed his cap from his head and,
crumpling it between his hands, he stammered: "Honourable witch, my
name is Thomas. I was sent here from the village, with a
message."

"And that is?" Hilda, still jubilant over the
new colour of her boudoir, was in a very good mood. "Just tell me,
I'm not going to eat you."

Thomas wasn't all that certain, so he stepped
back a bit more. "The sheriff of the village wants to inform you,
honourable witch, that one of our young witches has disappeared.
Her parents are very worried because nobody knows where she is. All
her belongings are still in the house of her parents, there was no
young man known that she would have eloped with, and we have tried
to find her."

Hilda's cheerful mood dropped to something
far below freezing. "A witch has gone missing?"

Thomas' cap was wrung out again. "Yes,
honourable witch. So we hope you will help us find her."

"Go back to the village. We will be in the
market square in an hour."

Thomas bowed and turned to head back.

"Hey. You look hot. Here is some water."
Hilda held out a flask towards the villager, who cringed as he came
close to the witch to accept the water.

"Thank you, honourable witch." Then he turned
as if Baba Yaga was chasing him.

"Crappedy crap," said Hilda as she closed the
door and looked at William. "Did you hear that?"

He nodded.

"We have to help them. The witches in the
village are not dangerous, usually do herbs and love spells and
that. Nothing big. But they are witches, and I feel bound by honour
to help."

"I am with you, Hilda. Anything we have to
prepare?" William did not waste time, and Hilda appreciated
that.

"No, not really. Just make sure we look good,
and wait for Thomas to get back and round up all the people who can
tell us something."

The getting to look good was easy. The
waiting was not.

They arrived on the market square. Thomas was
there, as was the sherrif of the village, whose name was
Alfred.

William flew behind Hilda, as she was the
experienced one. They had agreed that he would follow in silence,
and only talk to Hilda when she asked him something.

"And wiggle the link when you want to say
something, I'll feel it," she had reminded him.

"Honourable witch, honourable wizard," Alfred
said, bowing to them.

"Drop the titles for now," Hilda said, "let's
get to the point."

"Oh, certainly." Alfred pointed at two
people, a man and a woman. "These are Victor and Tessa, they are
the parents of the witch who has gone missing. The witch's name is
Fidelma, by the way."

Victor and Tessa told them when they had seen
Fidelma last. "It was two days ago, when she said she was going to
visit with some friends."

"The poets and all those, I guess," Hilda
nodded.

"Indeed. Sometimes she is staying the night
with one of her girlfriends, and then comes back home the next day,
so yesterday we were not alarmed yet. But when we asked around
yesterday evening, nobody knew where she had gone. Fidelma had left
for home the same evening, they all told us, but she never came
home."

Tessa started crying, her husband taking her
in his arms for comfort.

"Where did she stay? And I want to know what
path she would have taken home," Hilda said.

William was impressed with the way this
otherwise so silly and wicked witch was taking charge.

The villagers led them to a house in the more
silent streets of the village. That was where Fidelma had been
visiting. The occupants of the house, a mother and her daughter,
both said that Fidelma had left around dusk.

Hilda muttered a few things only she
understood and flipped out her wand. William waited, not having an
idea what she was going to do. Hilda tried to locate if there
remained even the faintest trace of magic that Fidelma the young
witch would have left behind. Wherever young and untrained witches
go, they leave a trail of their magic.

She found nothing. "Too long ago," she
muttered, "to crapping long ago. William, can your wand pick up
something of a magical trail here?" Hilda had little hope that he
could, but given the erratic way his magic bounced all over the
place, he might actually get lucky.

William, his wand in hand, tried to find
something. He relied on the wand entirely as he had no real idea
what to look for. His results were the same meagre ones that Hilda
had turned up: nothing.

They then followed the most obvious path to
Fidelma's original goal, the house of her parents. The witch and
the wizard in training kept their wands out, trying to find
something that might give them a clue. At the turn towards the
house, Hilda for a moment thought she noticed something, but it was
there and gone and after that she could not pick it up anymore.
That annoyed and disturbed her, but even those emotions were not
good in finding the trail back. William plain found nothing.

The last thing they could do was to inspect
Fidelma's room. In there they found plenty of magical traces, even
William noticed vibrations there that could only be attributed to
magical work. But those did not give them any pointers to what
Fidelma had been up to. Her room was neat and tidy ("impossible for
a proper witch", Hilda commented on that) and there was no sign of
a struggle or a hasty leaving.

William looked around the room and noticed
something. Something he had to ask Hilda about. Before he had to
try anything, she had already picked up his feeling and stood close
to him.

"I see no crystal ball," he whispered, "maybe
that is some help? She may have it with her."

Hilda's expression changed to something that
could be described as pride for a moment. "Very good, William, well
observed. But witches like this have no crystal." Then she turned
to the parents of the missing girl. "We are sorry that we cannot
locate her this way, it has been too long ago. But we will ask
around andlet you know if we find out something."

Tessa, Fidelma's mother, nodded, her eyes red
from crying. Victor just stared at the magical couple and nodded.
It was clear to everyone in the room that he was about to burst
also, he just fought it until he was alone with his wife.

The searchers, magical and ordinary, left the
house to give the worried parents some time alone and deal with
their grief over the loss of their daughter.

William and Hilda got on their brooms. The
witch told the sherrif that they would inform him about any news
also. Alfred thanked them and then the villagers saw the couple
lift off and fly away.

"We'll have to inform the witches that are
around," Hilda told William. "The real ones, not the fluffy
ones."

"The ones with crystal balls," William
understood.

"Very good," Hilda nodded. "They may be able
to help with this. But I have a strange feeling about the girl's
disappearing..."

William looked at the wicked witch and he was
worried that his notion was the very same as Hilda's.

Hilda looked at the wizard-to-be. "You think
the same thing." She had picked up his thought. Lamador.

It would not surprise them if the wizard who
had sent the challenge and who had taken Gerdundula from her home
was now making his point even more clear. Reaching out and taking a
flower-witch from the village that was so close to Hilda was a sign
of him looking down on her in the most disdainful manner.

"I hate him," Hilda said. "He is making the
challenge even worse this way, showing his superiority by taking
people away. I wonder who will be next."

"If you knew, what would you do?", William
asked her, thinking about it himself also.

"I wouldn't know, do you believe that? He'll
either send an army of Grizbles or come over himself. Either way
we're doomed. You and I together can take on several dozen
Grizbles, but what if he sends a thousand? I am sure he can do
that."

"But if you ask Babs for help? And this other
one, that you went to visit a few days ago? Cassandra?"

"Calandra you mean." Hilda frowned. "That
would not be decent. You fight your own battles."

"Decent? Is what Lamador does decent,
abducting people as he chooses?" William almost let his broom slip
as his anger about that remark flared up. "Whoops..."

"Be careful, you idiot!", Hilda snapped at
him.

"I may be an idiot, but you are a twit if you
cling to decency when your enemy is fighting a dirty war!"

"But I'll be a damned living twit, not a dead
idiot!", Hilda screamed at William, her eyes flaring red.

"Is that so?", William yelled back at her,
"what with the way Lamador is going about, you won't be alive much
longer, remember? Three moons? Is that long enough?"

"Don't yell at me!", Hilda screamed.

"Then stop screaming at me!", William
yelled.

The people that were working in the fields
below had dropped their tools and stared up at the loudly arguing
people that were floating overhead.

"Oh, you, go suck an elf!" Hilda was furious
now and made her broom jump forward at a scary speed.

"Oh no, you won't," William muttered and sped
up also. Alas, his brooming skills were majorly inferior to those
of the witch, who had almost been brought up on a broom. As he was
reaching a certain speed, there was a lack of experience and an
overdose of unreasonable fright. Logically he knew that falling
from this height at any speed would be lethal, but logic had
nothing up against his basic instincts.

At a more moderate speed he headed back to
the house. He was relieved that he could at least find that back,
because flying a broom, he knew now, was one thing. Finding your
way about from up above was a completely different ballgame. As he
landed the broom without too much problems, he was already looking
for Hilda's broom. To his uneasy surprise, it was not there. He
looked around the house, and inside, but the wicked witch was not
to be found.

"Dammit," he muttered. "Now what..." He
stared at the sky . No flying witches. He thought of lifting off
again to try and find her, but he was not certain if that was a
good idea.

Meanwhile, Hilda had sped off and made a dive
into the trees. She knew exactly what, how and where, and ended up
safely on the forest floor. Her anger was flaring up, she kicked
bits of fallen branches around and cursed William into anything
bad.