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.
'Plim, I'm more worried about the fact you don't want to tell me than anything else. What's going on?' She stretched out a hand and reluctantly Plim stepped onto it, her eyes still avoiding Hara's.
'It's nothing,' Plim whispered. Hara raised an eyebrow but didn't speak. She didn't need to tell Plim the obvious, even if waiting this out - whatever this was - was making her itch. 'I can't tell you,' Plim said next, sounding so unlike herself.
'Why not?'
'I'm scared. I don't want you to get hurt again.'
Hara smiled sadly, moving to sit in a patch of sunny grass. 'Uh-huh. Me, too. But... Plim, I don't want fear to stop me or... whatever's going to happen, you know I wouldn't ask you-'
'We're a team, aren't we, Hara?'
'We are. But Plim-'
'Then we do it together. I'm not saying it's a good idea or that I condone it or even that we'll win whatever this is, but we're in it together.' There was a long pause before Plim spoke next, but Hara let her have all the time she needed. It was the least she could give. 'There was no troll, Hara.'
Her eyes fell on the scattered flowers over the grass, Marigold standing in her doorway watching them. She couldn't find the words for a second, couldn't do anything other than flush a frightened shade of rhubarb.
'There was. You saw, Plim, you saw-' but Plim shook her head and Hara couldn't think of anything to do other than collect the discarded flowers. As she picked up roses, blossom, ivy and lilac, Plim continued, trying to explain something that seemed beyond comprehension.
'In the forest we were running and there was that sound, there was the sound of something coming, but when we stopped and you fell - were grabbed - there was no one there. I saw it get you, I could even see the indents where it was holding you, but I couldn't see anything. Not even a glimmer. It was like... it was like I was imagining the whole thing.'
'Flew all the way to me, by the look of her,' Marigold said, placing her hand on her hip and examining her garden, the flowers her guests had uncovered and the piles of grass wild geese were even now feasting on. 'By the time we got back there was just a trail.'
'Everything was just like it was before the... it. The birds, the animals - it was like nothing had ever happened,' Plim said. 'But you were gone and there was this horrible trail, the ground raked up from where you'd- you'd-'
'Held on,' Hara said. She was still finding dirt clinging to her, refusing to be cleaned from grazes on her palms or beneath her torn up nails.
'Which made you easy to find,' Marigold said, sounding complimentary.
'Why would anything leave a trail, though? Why would it let me do that?'
Marigold shrugged, bending to sniff a rose. She looked on with surprise as a bee flew onto the bloom, claiming it for its own. 'Multiple reasons. But I'd say-' the bee walked from the rose onto the witch's outstretched finger slowly, ponderously, before flying away '-it was because you were being warned.'
'Pretty big warning,' Hara muttered, thinking of the tender wound in her gut, still red and swollen when she'd carefully examined it that morning.
Marigold hmm'd. 'You could be dead. I'm surprised you're not,' she said bluntly. Hara couldn't help but bristle. 'I imagine you thought it was me,' she added tonelessly.
'I did,' Hara agreed; Plim made a horrified sound.
'I would have, too.' The witch shrugged, seeming not to mind much. 'I wouldn't ask you to trust me, but I do want you to believe-'
'I think you're clever, Marigold. I don't think you're cruel.'
The witch didn't seem to know what exactly to say to this, so she stared blankly at Hara for a full minute. 'I think my revenge quest is going to be shelved for a while. We've got more important things to deal with now,' she said in the end, swearing. 'I really wanted those spells back.'
'It spoke to me.'
'What?' Marigold and Plim said at the same time; Marigold eyed Plim skeptically, still put out about the whole you can talk thing.
'It said... told me not to struggle. Knew I would come back. They were in the room with me, I heard-'
'We're going to find them,' Plim said fiercely, her bright feathers puffing up to make her appear twice her actual size.
'Wait-' Hara looked from Plim to the witch, the witch to Plim '-wait.'
'She's coming,' Plim said.
'I'm coming,' Marigold said.
Hara blinked. 'Those flowers were for you, anyway.'
Marigold took the bunch and looked them over curiously. 'Where are they from? They're... lovely.'
Plim and Hara exchanged a look. They were a good team, but neither had intended to team up before they met. Yet here they were, inseparable. So what was to say Marigold's joining them wouldn't be for the best?
And besides, Hara could no longer think of a reason she shouldn't.
Not recognising her own flowers didn't count.