Hara and the Witch

Chapter 5: Can a Foe be Invisible?

Hara got her first job a week after venturing beyond her old life. She had a strangely silent dove at her side and her legs were covered in welts and burns from a pack of pixies that had attempted to capture her, pixies Plim had saved her from.

Her first employer was a crow and although the memory of her childhood gripped her like a vice, Hara took the job and Plim ensured the pay was better than she could have hoped for.

The two had been inseparable ever since, their quests taking them right across the country, further afield than Hara had ever believed existed. They had formed a truce between rival fruit companies, had incited the undermining of a vegetable growers association, removed mayors from power, granted mayors power, defeated a half dozen kings and dethroned one power hungry queen who went on to become a very impressive fruit selling mayor. They had been cheated, paid and cheated again. Sometimes they recalled adventures they had forgotten and sometimes all they wished was to forget, but throughout it all they'd been a team. Hara had come to rely on Plim, to believe in her and trust her with her full heart. The two were family, beyond all they had ever known.

'We've faced worse than this,' Plim had once said.

'We've faced worse than this,' Hara said now, lying on her back and imagining she could see the starlit sky, although she had a roof overhead and it was very cloudy.

'Not much worse,' Plim whispered in the dark. 'Even king Rudolphus didn't lock you up.'

'He'd have liked to try,' Hara fumed.

'He really would. I'm surprised he didn't propose.'

Hara gagged. The king had been... a prat, although his smile was quite nice. Until he started talking.

Marigold, who Hara had grudgingly admitted she had been wrong about and had not, it seemed, sent them into the forest for some sinister reason, had declared she was their host until Hara was well enough to travel and, despite all protestations (and an attempted midnight escape), Plim's agreement to the plan had kept them with the witch for the past week. She had offered them the use of her barn, a two storey building neither quester had noticed when they first met the witch; it was draughty and there were a few cranky owls nesting under the eaves, but Hara and Plim thought it was splendid. The outside was old boards, peeling paint, cloaked in ivy and climbing rose.

They saw very little of Marigold over those days; occasionally would she appear, asking to see how Hara's wounds were healing and to apply a cream that smelled absolutely toxic. Hara assumed it was also Marigold who left food outside the barn for them at intervals, although neither she nor Plim ever saw the witch deliver it. Other than that they were left alone, sleeping in the mid-afternoon sun and exploring the edges of the forest in the dawn light.

Marigold's cottage was isolated and except for a mail pigeon on their third day and some wild geese they saw no one else. It seemed a quiet life, but not in the way Hara's village had been quiet. There was a sense of peace that filled the air itself and at night Hara often found herself wondering how Marigold felt at their rupturing it.

~

'What happened to the troll?' Hara asked on their eighth day.

Plim let out a vague cheep and for a minute or two Hara didn't really notice, but as silence stretched out between them she felt an unfamiliar heaviness to it and, foxglove stem in hand she turned to face her friend, who sat atop Marigold's old wooden fence some feet away.

'Plim? The troll, or whatever it was?'

Again Plim didn't respond, turning her head to look at the sky until Hara, dropping the flowers she had been gathering, strode over and stood before her.