Hilda - The Challenge

William almost slapped his tea from the table. He turned and looked at Hilda, whose red housecoat back was turned towards him. "No! That can't be true!" Hilda turned and beckoned him to come over, which he did.

  "Drago, this is William. Tell him what you just told me."

  William saw a black face with even blacker hair in the ball. The eyes of the person were red, his teeth scarily white in his black frame. "William," the face said with a short nod, "someone has taken Calandra from her house. I went to visit her and she was not there. It seems that she was taken by force, telling from the state of her house."

  The wizard-to-be looked at Hilda who was already staring at him. They both had the same idea of who had done that.

  "Any signs of Grizbles?", William then asked Drago, which got him an appreciative look from Hilda.

  This seemed to surprise the black man. "No," he said after thinking about it, "not that I noticed anyway. I do have to admit that I didn't pay much attention to that. I can go back there-"

  "No, Drago, don't. It is much further for you than for us," Hilda interrupted him. "William and I will see that we go over there tomorrow. I wish we could do that now, but we've already done a long flight today, and then William went to do the rounds after that-"

  Drago's eyebrows flew up. "You let him do the rounds?"

  "Uhm, yes? Why not?"

 

  "Calandra mentioned something about you and him, and him not being a magical person, so I wondered..." Drago's face changed into a frown. He wondered if he should better have left that unsaid. "Uhm..."

  "Technicalities, Drago, technicalities that don't matter now, okay? Point is that she disappeared also and-"

  "Also? What do you mean 'also'?" Drago's expression changed again. His face was like rubber.

  Hilda told him about the flower-witch Fidelma that had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. "First her, and now Calandra. We suspect that this is all Lamador's doing. I suppose you've heard..."

  Drago nodded. "Yes. We all know about it. Lamador is not exactly keeping this a secret, Hilda. And now I also understand the question about the Grizbles..."

  Hilda and William nodded.

  "Good luck, both of you," Drago said, "I'm afraid you will need it. Let me know if there is something I can do to help."

  "Thanks, Drago," said Hilda as the black face vanished, leaving the crystal ball.

  "Drago is a warlock. He and Calandra are close friends," the witch explained to William as they returned to the table, William sitting on his chair and Hilda sitting in his lap again. "They are really close. Not like us, but good friends." She started fidgeting with a button of her housecoat.

  William knew that this latest news was highly disturbing his little witch, and with reason. It unnerved him also. He had no real experience with Lamador, save the encounter with the huge image in Gerdundula's garden. He put his hand over the one from Hilda that tried to amputate the innocent button. "That is not going to solve things, sweetheart. We have to find a way to make Lamador feel the way we do."

  Hilda looked her man in the eyes. "Sure. And how do you plan on doing that?"

  William smiled and pulled her against him. He whispered in her ear, and as he spoke, her face became stage to a host of expressions that were chasing each other around it.

  "That is the most outrageous, crazy, insane and impossible thing I have ever heard," the wicked witch said as he was done talking. "Damn it, it might actually work!"

  As evening had come and they had found their way to bed, Hilda lay on top of William and looked at him. "About that plan of yours... are there more people in your old world who think in such strange ways?"

  He smiled as he slipped his hands under her hair and slid them over her back. "Trust me when I say that this plan is not at all considered insane there."

  "Hmmm - oooh yes that's nice don't stop - I mean, so you are one of the more sane and- aaaaahhhhh do that again - coherent people that lived there?"

  William grinned as she tried to comment on two different things at once. He did not stop his handiwork though, as she requested. "I'm not sure if many people would call me coherent and sane back there, but I do know there were many who were far less stable."

  "Aaahhh...." Hilda lowered her head on his shoulder and decided that this was a good moment to attempt a change into putty.

  "Are you somewhat comfortable?", William asked, playing the innocent one.

  "Uhuh...", she breathed heavily in his neck, "as long as you go o-ohhhhh...."

  He took the responsibility and went on. This was one of the really good ones.

  40. The plan (1)

  In the days that followed, Hilda and William did the rounds together constantly. They had gone to look at Calandra's house and indeed found footsteps of Grizbles. That made it clear Lamador had his hand in Calandra's vanishing.

  They enjoyed flying together, and it made William more and more certain of his grasp of the broom. Hilda thought up challenges for him to perform while they were in flight, and some of them were pretty severe. He had to learn how to keep in flight while doing magic that required lots of attention.

  After the rounds they spent a lot of time on preparing all things for the plan that William had brought up. They had one and a half moon of time to put it all into effect, and stage one was arriving very quickly.

  "Are we all set?" William looked around, trying to remember everything they had worked on. "Nothing forgotten?"

  "No, I am certain we have everything, William." Following that, she went to check the closet where they had stored their gear and made sure for the fourth time it was empty. "See, told you." Secretly she was glad she had taken that last look.

  "Good." William picked up the two dice that were on the floor and slipped them in his hidden pocket. He sealed it so the two itty bitty objects could not fall out. "Then we're ready to move out."

  Hilda nodded. "House, be good, okay? We should be back in three days at the most."

  "Yes, yes, I know. You have not stopped talking about it the last weeks so I know everything about it."

  "As long as you keep your- ehm... don't say a thing to anyone, okay?" William said.

  "Don't worry. Who wants to talk to a house anyway..."

  The couple went outside, the brooms floating along behind them. Hilda closed the door. "Okay William, better step back a bit more."

  She took her wand, said a spell, and the giant amount of chains and padlocks materialised around the house again.

  "Holy Bejeebus," William said as he saw the incredible size of it all.

  Hilda grinned. She snipped her fingers, and the sign appeared in her hand. "Hmmm... not all correct now," she mumbled. She moved the wand over it and put it on the main padlock. "Right, we're clear. Let's go."

  The two mounted their brooms and flew off, leaving the house encapsuled in iron. The sign said: "The witch (and wizard) is out."

  "I must say, William, that this is the weirdest approach to a challenge I have ever taken," Hilda said as they were on their way. "I hope I am not regretting this."

  "What is your alternative?", William asked, his face serious.

  "Oh, shush you. I am still the witch in charge, remember?" She threw her hair back and her eyes flashed blue. Her laughter was music to William's ears.

  "I love you, you wicked witch," he grinned and pulled her close to steal a kiss from her.

  "Hands off, you," she grinned, "I am in charge of navigation as you don't know where we have to go. If someone does the grabbing and groping, it's me." And she proved that immediately.

  The landscape beneath them slowly changed. The hills slowly flattened, but the grassy areas remained, as did the forest. The only change in those was the slightly more reddish colours that came into the leaves.

  "The trees will get more and more red, the more we get west," Hilda explained. "It appears to be something in the soil that makes them turn the colour of rust."

  William nodded. He had heard o
f things like that happening before. "So first we get to the kingdom of Lorn, right? A friendly one."

  "Yep," Hilda confirmed, "that's a piece of cherry pie. And after that we have to make our way along the borders of Ringeholm and Oxfern. Each of them don't like Walt and his ways, flying is forbidden there, so we may have to do some fancy flying to avoid the people who will be shooting at us."

  "Yes, you mentioned those." William went over her words in his mind. "They have the terrible bows that can take out a flying witch."

  "Yes. Not too bad because they are slow to load and not very accurate, but still it is best not to get one of those suckers in your eye. Or anywhere else."

  William wondered about bows that were powerful enough to fling a large arrow up several hundred yards into the air. The prospect of meeting them filled him with eagerness, awe andalso a healthy dose of fear.

  Not long after that, they came past a long thin silvery line. The River For Lorn, William remembered. "Very nice view, it is like a silver strip."

  "Yes, it's nice from up here. They drown their death convicts in it," Hilda said. "But they drag them out again after some days, otherwise the water will go bad."

  "Oh. Uhm. I see." Suddenly the river looked very different to William. Hilda did not appear to be affected in any way. Well, the convicts probably deserved that fate, he told himself and tried to forget the remark the witch had made.

  The trees by now had turned completely red.

  "Hilda, would it be possible that we go lower for a few moments? I'd love to see these trees up close," said William.

  "Sure,