DAY 8:
Pieder's eighteenth birthday was less than a week away. He was ruminating on whether he could convince the Witch to attend the small celebration at his parents' cottage when an unusual sound reached his ears. He was on an offshoot of the main road through this part of the East Woods, heading back to the Witch's home after his monthly weekend stay at his parents' home. Footsteps (for the was the sound he had heard) were rare on this path. Pieder was the only person who frequented this small side trail, though wild creatures used it as well which kept it passable.
Pieder had spent hours with the Witch learning person combat, but the best approach to dealing with robbers and other unsavory types was avoidance. Pieder crept off the path as quietly as he was able and hid behind a broad tree trunk. He used a spell, one of many he had learned in his apprenticeship to the Witch, which created dozens on magically conjured insects as eyes and ears, fogging the air with what appeared to be perfectly natural gnats, flies, and moths. Using his temporarily expanded senses, Pieder saw a human leading a bizarre creature that was as much magic as it was flesh. Though Pieder had never seen one before in the remote fastness of the Wood, he had seen pictures in the many books owned by the Witch and had been told of their use, creation, and care by his mistress.
It was called a Glub and was favored by lone travelers throughout Iskandar. Glubs could navigate on their own from properly ensorcelled maps, could serve as shelter during the night, could travel long distances with no nourishment besides water and sunlight, could carry quite a bit and pull a lot more, could be ridden on roads and led through narrow paths, were ferocious in defending their owner without being overly zealous as guards. They looked rather like oversized beetles with the wings removed and clear wing covers. Instead of wings, they had a reclined seat where the rider could sit and observe the world, possibly while sleeping or reading. The wing covers could be lifted, which narrowed the whole body and allowed for travel through dense forest. The wing covers could also be flattened, which permitted the whole Glub to float rather like a raft. It would not last in rapids or the open ocean, but for crossing a ford made otherwise impassable by recent heavy rain it was perfect.
DAY 9:
Pieder examined the traveler more closely, still hiding as best he was able. Pieder's gnats hummed in the cool fall air. Pieder's flies settled gently on the traveler's clothing to gather information through taste and smell.
Pieder learned little beyond what he could infer by sight. The traveler was a woman, perhaps ensorcelled to appear to be a man to make her feel safer while on the road. She was not a frequent messenger to the Woods, as she seemed uncomfortable in this new place away from everything she was used to. She appeared exhausted and harried, as if perhaps persued or afraid of pursuit. Jumpy, perhaps. As if expecting every tree and branch to come alive and attack her. Pieder could not imagine someone so afraid of a forest that they would behave thusly without cause beyond fear of the unknown. While this was a faulty assumption on his part as a general rule, it applied in this specific case. She was in fact terrified of pursuit. She was traveling very light and Pieder was almost certain that whatever her errand was, it involved transmitting information and not goods.
She froze when she got within several feet of Pieder's hiding spot and flicked her fingers in a quick series of gestures, casting a spell to alert the Glub to danger. "Come out," she called in what was almost a squeak. She spoke in Iskandarian, the trading tongue used across Iskandar though native to no kingdom. "I won't hurt you."
Pieder almost snickered. As if this terrified woman would pose any danger to a trained and prepared individual such as himself. Of course, he was not taking into account the interesting occurrence of sudden strength and ferocity in the truly afraid. He had never had occasion to encounter a completely desperate person, at least not in a violent context. Some of the people who sought the Witch's help were desperate in deed, but never violent. The Witch had too much blah (weight? importance?) for common woodsfolk to threaten her with a physical or magical attack.
He thought for a minute or two about whether it would be wise to come out of hiding from this stranger. She called out again, still frozen in place and clearly certain someone was nearby. Perhaps she had a spell of protection and alertness that had been cast by a wizard or witch at the beginning of her journey. Ultimately, he decided to come forward.
"Hello," he said in his best Iskandarian as he emerged from his hiding place. Since Iskandarian was the language of the learned and the tongue in which most of the Witch's texts were written, he was very good at it. His native BlahishLanguage was in some respects less polished, since he used it almost exculsively at home and there were very few texts other than his childhood book of fairy stories written in it for him to practice reading with.
The woman jumped. "Hello," she said quickly, trying to convince herself and Pieder that she had not been surprised by his voice and appearance.
"Where are you headed?" Pieder asked. "Perhaps I can direct you there."
"That would be exceedingly helpful!" said the traveler. "I'm looking for someone called (Witch's real name). But no one I've encountered has any idea where to find her. I was told by my employer that I should hand it to the Witch of the Wood and that she would see it got to its destination."
"The Witch of the Wood?" Pieder asked, startled.
"Yes. This is the fourth offshoot of the East Woods road that I've tried. I'm worried this job will take weeks! I don't suppose you know where to find her?"
"I do," Pieder said. "I'm her apprentice."
"She exists? You've actually seen her?" the traveler asked excitedly. "So far everyone I've asked has warned me that she is probably just be an old wive's tale."
DAY 10:
"My mistress calls herself the Witch of the Wood. Do you want me to lead you to her home?" Pieder asked.
"No," the traveler said, glancing behind herself anxiously. "No, I'd rather you didn't. I fear I'm being followed, and the sooner I get rid of this package the sooner I'll be left alone. Will you take it to her?"
"I," Pieder began with refusal on his tongue. Then he looked again at the traveler and a sudden feeling of pity filled him. "Yes, I will," he said. Then, "How big is it?" he thought to ask, concerned he would not be able to carry it without revealing some level of magical ability to this stranger. The Witch had drilled into him a caution of revealing the extent of his knowledge and abilities to strangers and even his parents. She reminded him that most people had some level of distrust for magic and things created through magical means. That could quickly become a distrust of Pieder if he revealed the true depth of his magical abilities to those with superstitions and prejudices.
"Here," the traveler said, shoving an object the size of Pieder's fist wrapped in brown paper at him. "Take it, please. I can't stand to be followed any more. I've never been so scared during a job."
"What is it?" Pieder asked, wondering what could cause someone such trouble.
"I don't know!" the traveler almost wailed. "I tried to open it on my third day out from (Magician-ville) when I realized I was being tailed, but the wrapping reappeared as quickly as I could tear it off. I ended up with a pile of brown paper and a package that burned to the touch."
Pieder frowned. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "I will get it the Witch. Good travels."
"Thanks," the traveler said automatically. "Good bye." And then she waved a spell of whistles and hand gestures at the Glub, turned on her heel, and sped off down the path the way she had come.
Pieder looked at the package in his hand, it's roughly spherical shape and remarkably heavy weight making him more and more suspicious that it was a spell of some sort. Perhaps a crystal ball ensorcelled as a communicating device.
He had read of such things, though to his and the Witch's best knowledge the means to cast such a spell for any length of time beyond about one cycle of the moon had been lost more than a century ago. Beyond that time, the crystals that communicated with each other had to be brought within sight of each other for the spell to be renewed. Even then, the spell was unpredictable in effectiveness, and could be ruined by weather, overuse, or a flawed crystal. All in all, it was only useful to the most advanced magic manipulators and only for a brief time.
The most reliable use of the crystals was to store a message, and that could be done indefinitely. Pieder had read of whole museums filled with crystals with messages from those long dead. They were called (some clever name) and were rumored among the less educated to be storage places of souls. Pieder knew better; they were merely imprints of moments. When percieved correctly, and few knew how to do so, the crystal could impart a sense of being in the moment when the imprint occurred. The sights were easy to perceive, as that was the sense that people expected to be triggered by a crystal ball. With a little effort and skill, sound could be gotten from the ball. With much more effort and skill, smell and taste and touch and even a sense of existing in the moment could be gotten from an ensorcelled ball of quartz, crystal or glass. All senses were strangely twisted by the unusual perspective granted by the ball. But though sound echoed and hummed into odd harmonics and sight writhed and turned in on itself at unexpected moments, it was still a fascinating lens into worlds otherwise unreachable by the passage of time.
Pieder arrived at the Witch's cottage and whistled an eerie tune, a fanciful ghost song about the dead speaking to their living loved ones through crystal balls.
"I loved you, oh I loved you
And now that I am gone
Still I see you, oh I see you
And know that you've moved on
I ache for you in my dying
I miss you from afar
I see you through this crystal ball
And know that you've moved on.
Darling how I wish
That you were here with me
Frozen in this crystal ball
And not able to move on
I see you through this twisted lens
I hear your cheerful laugh
And darling, oh my love
I know that you've moved on.
Do not forget my face
Or my loving tones
And remember to watch this crystal ball
Even though you have moved on."
The Witch murmured in his mind as he walked through the doorway to her cottage, "Pieder, I do not like that song."
Pieder jumped guiltily. "Yes, mistress," he said apologetically. "I have a package for you."
"From your parents? How sweet of them," the Witch sighed. Her voice, the imagined sound of her words in his head, had been growing fainter and fainter the past two months. Pieder was concerned for the Witch, but any time his thoughts of worry grew too loud she chided him and bid him think of other things. So in the Witch's home, he obeyed. He was her apprentice after all, and in exchange for her knowledge Pieder followed her commands.
"No," Pieder said into the warm air of the shell-like cottage. He had never quite gotten the hang of speaking in his mind and not with his voice. "I met a woman on the road."
"You what?" the Witch exclaimed, half finger-wagging and half pleasantly surprised.
Pieder made his way through the house to the library, where the Witch sat in a rocking chair with a book open in her lap and a warm blanket wrapped about her slim shoulders. "I met a traveler," he reiterated. "And she had a package for you."
"For me?" the Witch said, suddenly very guarded. Her mental voice was suddenly much stronger than it had been recently. It felt the same way as it did any time Pieder inquired about the Witch's past. He guessed this was related to all of the things about her life she kept so jealously secret.
"Yes," Pieder said. "Here." He set the package gently in her lap. As soon as it touched her robes, presumably sensing her presence, the brown paper sublimated into the air and revealed, unsurpisingly, a transluscent sphere of slightly yellow crystal. It began to glow.
6,800 words out of 50,000 total.
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