Hara and the Witch

Chapter 18: Finding Chaos in Familiar Spaces

Mere gazed at Marigold open mouthed, eyes flickering from her face to broom to eyes to stance. Lowering her hand, her expression became a mix of bemusement and wry enjoyment.

'I have no quarrel with you, not unless you st-'

'No quarrel!' Marigold hissed, grip tightening around her broom. 'How can you even say that to me?'

'I... I'm sorry,' Mere stammered, but still she couldn't quite be rid of her smirk, 'but I don't remember every disgruntled person I've helped.' She gazed over Marigold's grip. 'Take it up with head office,' she suggested silkily, moving forward to push her way past.

'You don't... you don't remember me?' Marigold repeated and the hero drew closer still, elbowing her sharply, teeth glimmering as she smiled. Marigold remained still, eyes narrowing as she deftly twisted her broom until it lay against Mere's chest. 'Fine. Let me remind you what you did to me, then.'

She pressed against the broom and with only the slightest effort the woman went reeling back, gasping raggedly. 'You took my business.' She shouldered off her cloak. 'You destroyed my stock.' She drew closer to the woman, who had finally stopped smiling. 'You stole my reputation.' She knocked Mere down as she tried to dart around her, twisting a finger so that the broom flew at her, pinning her to the ground. 'You changed everything I knew and all you left me with was fear. Fear you bestowed like it was a gift, like I should have thanked you for it.' She crouched beside the fallen hero and looked at her intently.

Marigold wanted to hurt Mere. She wanted to make her understand, even for a second, what she had done. But more than that she wanted to never have met her.

'You should leave,' Marigold said, turning to go back inside, slinging her broom up and over her shoulder. An instant later a dull pain struck her across the back, burning her shoulders and down her spine.

'You should have left that village when I first told you,' Mere hissed, twisting Marigold's arm behind her back, Hara's blade pressing into the back of her neck. Her broom fell, smacking into the ground and Marigold nearly fell with it, her breath leaving her in a great gust.

And then she smiled.

Hara, Plim and Charvay didn't immediately follow Marigold outside, only because it took them a while to realise she was gone. A realisation that only came when a large thud and an angry cry issued from outside.

They each raced for the door, Hara leading the way with a pounding heart and a thousand fears, stumbling into a scene that none of them had anticipated or quite knew how to respond to.

Marigold, hand extended and trembling ever so faintly, stood over a slumped and flushed looking...

'Mere Waterview, what do you think you're doing here?' Charvay asked furiously, stamping her way to stand beside Marigold, who caught her broom as it floated into the air and looked sideways at Charvay with a clouded expression. Hara and Plim, watching, couldn't tell what the prevalent emotion was, exactly, but this I will share: it was fear. To be standing over your enemy and have your friends appear... Marigold did not know how Hara, Plim or Charvay would react and she was afraid of losing them.

Mere looked at Hara, eyes burning, but Hara had eyes only for her witch, who let out a slightly ragged sigh when she and Plim came to stand beside her, Plim landing atop her broom and Hara taking her hand, twining their fingers together like ivy.

'That's who you picked?' Mere hissed, getting to her feet and wiping blood off her face with her sleeve. A cut somewhere in her hairline oozed delicately. 'I was going to come find you, Hara. I was,' she breathed, her cropped, dark hair framing her furious, hurt face. 'I didn't think you would replace me so fast.'

Hara looked at the woman she had loved and could feel the cracks in her heart still, sitting there right beside the memory of how much she had cared.

'You can't replace something you never had,' she said simply. She wanted to run, to hide from Mere and never fear seeing her gain, but she stood firm. 'You chose your path. It didn't include me.'

'Yes it di-'

'No. It didn't. And you don't get to appear all these years later and judge me for living, Mere. Maybe you thought I would wait... but for how long? I'm allowed to live, too. You don't get to-'

'Hara, you know I only left so that I-'

'Be quiet!' Hara yelled, voice echoing in the quiet village. A droplet of blood fell from Mere's nose and hit the ground. Hara looked up at Marigold and saw she, too, was bleeding, a trickle of blood curving from the back of her head and down the side of her neck. 'You left because you got a better offer and you knew you broke my heart. I think... I really think I would have forgiven you, even now, because I thought it was you and me, Mere, I thought we would always find each other and your explanation would fix everything. But you hurt my friend. You were so cruel, Mere, so unspeakably cruel.' Hara shook her head, seeing in Mere's eyes that she didn't understand, that she couldn't see beyond her own beliefs. 'I won't ever forgive you for that.' Hara felt a tremor in the witch's body, matched by the trembling within her own body.

'A bird and a witch.' Mere laughed to herself, her anger a burning in her every movement, in the weight of her words. 'I thought you were better.'

'I am. That's why they're with me and not you.' Plim landed on Hara's head, muttering something like, 'I'm a dove,' and Hara felt her aunt's arm wrap around her. 'Leave. You have a minute before my good friend Plim, a trained attack dove, takes off.' Hara nodded her head brusquely, eyes burning.

'I wanted to warn you,' Mere spluttered, wiping away yet more blood so that her pale blue sleeves - they looked to be silk - were patterned quite uniquely. 'Not only of the types you're consorting with-' Hara reached for her sword, only to find it missing; in an instant she saw it hooked onto Marigold's skirt but didn't have time to wonder because Marigold was letting her go, fingers twisting out of their grasp and vanishing and Hara felt her heart drop- and then the blade, the familiar blade, pressing into her free hand, Marigold's fingers once again finding a home between her own '-but of your mother.'

'I know all about that.' She lifted the sword, a glimmer of blood poised on the tip.

'That she had a price out on you?'

Hara blinked. 'Not... that, specifically, no.'

'That she's hunting you down as we speak? That she came here, five years ago, and forced me to leave you? I'd never have left, Har. Nor without reason.' Mere stepped forward, but still Hara held the blade high and her hand did not shake. 'I love you... there was never anyone else. You...' she reached out a hand, streaked with blood, shuddering slightly, eyes hard. 'You must know that.'

When Mere got too close, Hara shifted the blade ever so slightly, pricking the hero's fingertip. A warning.

'No.'

'Yes!' Mere stepped back, flicking her short hair out of her face, looking deep into Hara's eyes. She saw something there, Hara, something so familiar and comforting and half forgotten, a place of safety she had tried to forgot... but there it was, just in front of her and waiting behind green, green eyes like a tendril of ivy. 'Hara. I wanted to take you with me, I couldn't stand to walk beside Trenton. But she made me.'

'...That's not true, Mere. You're lying.'

'I'm not!' the woman cried, beseeching, but Hara shook her head firmly. The others did not speak. For now it was not their battle.

'You are. Because you would have said no-'

'You can't say no to someone like her!' Mere yelled, sounding frantic, hopeless.

'Or you could have come back. But I know you, Mere.' And this time it was Hara who stepped closer, lowering her blade and reluctantly letting Marigold go, moving until she stood right before her former lover, closer than she had been in what felt like a lifetime. 'I knew you almost better than I knew myself.' She shook her head and tears streamed down her cheeks. 'And you left because you wanted to. But now you're leaving because I'm asking you to.'