Hara and the Witch

Chapter 11: More Than a Sword

Blades. Almost a hundred in more shapes than Hara had ever imagined. Blades with straight blades, jagged, square and twisted, pronged knives and knives as thin as a pin, each with a handle as unique as the blade itself. Wood, gold, copper and resin, clear and colourful and blown glass, full of ripples and bubbles and made from mirrors and starlight. As many styles as there were, there were as many different grips, attachments, engravings, applications. One longsword looked to be made of flowers. One a tree, the leaves shifting in the breeze.

Each one was a work of art and Hara could hardly breathe as she gazed around, mouth open.

Marigold walked into the room calmly, looked around briefly before moving off to a candlelit table, followed by Plim, but Hara couldn't move.

Her feet were as if glued to the ground, her eyes unblinking, all memory of Mere, for the time being at least, wiped from her mind. A hand went to the satchel at her side and, hardly aware of herself, she drew out the sword she had carried with her ever since she left her village.

She remembered, as if she were reliving each second, how Charvay had placed it into her hands. They hadn't been close, not exactly, but Charvay had taken care of her - had cared for her. She knew Charvay hadn't expected to be bringing up a child and those first few years had been hard for both of them. And Hara had, at times, enjoyed watching her aunt struggle with a childish delight.

When she had announced she was leaving the village, Charvay hadn't seemed surprised. That's not to say she understood, because she surely didn't, but Hara was always going to leave, she had never pretended otherwise. Charvay... she did Hara the honour of believing her. So no, Charvay was not surprised when her niece told her she would be departing to become a quester. She nodded, walked to a tin of cherry and sunflower cookies on the shelf before the window and made Hara eat one while she retrieved the sword.

For as long as she could remember it had waited there: atop the large cabinet in the middle room, lying behind bunches and bunches of dried flowers, wrapped in thick, dusty black cloth. Hara had known about it since she was 7, although she had suspected something was hidden there for at least two years before that (alas being too tiny to reach so high, even atop a precarious stack of items) and she had always known it would be hers... although neither she nor Charvay ever spoke a word of it.

'Your mother left me this,' Charvay said, handing it carefully to Hara. 'I think...' Charvay shook her head, curls falling into her eyes and brushing against her fine, long features. She frowned and Hara watched the freckles lining her nose crinkle, exactly as her own did. 'She wanted me to follow her, one day, but I knew it would always be yours. It never could belong to anyone else.' She smiled at her niece, watching as Hara gazed at the blade in her hands, the hilt of knotted, dark green wood and the blade rippled, straight and thin and seamless. It felt to Hara like it had always been hers, like it was the parts of her heart that belonged to her mother made into a blade. For a long time she couldn't put it down, gazing avidly at the patterns in the grain, the almost-faces she could see one moment and not the next.

'I'll come back,' Hara promised, because she was not her mother.

'I know you will,' Charvay had said, wrapping her niece into a hug.

And then she baked, preparing so much food that Hara could have lived off it for a month, if only she and Plim hadn't decided to have an impromptu picnic.

'That's a beautiful blade,' a voice said and when Hara looked up she saw a dryad, luminous golden hair floating out behind her as she walked across the room. Her eyes were pure black, sparkling and full of warmth and humour.