Hilda and Zelda

out, to the former pub. They climbed high, hoping the people in the tank would not notice them.

  Around the bar everything was silent. Very silent. Zelda had put up some kind of dampening spell, Hilda told William.

  "That should mean she's in. Let's pay her a visit."

  That was easier said than done, though. The spell was obviously intended to keep out more than just sound.

  "Not one for visitors, is she?", William muttered as they did not get through the shielding.

  Hilda nodded as she looked up. "Ah. Window. Maybe..." She launched herself with the broom. "Crap." The window was sealed also.

  William got an idea as he saw Hilda work. He went to the roof of the building and found it was possible to make an opening in there. "Hilda, up here."

  "Good wizarding, William," she said.

  William went down the hole first, having more experience with measurements of normal houses. Then Hilda followed, trusting William to catch her as she was coming down. Her trust was not in vain. Once in the attic of the building, Hilda took her wand and scanned if the protection that Zelda had put up was near. Things seemed safe though.

  Lighting their way with their wands, they found a door that led to a staircase, so down they went. Silence had claimed the building. It was shockingly present everywhere. It seemed to bounce off the walls that they passed and it ran up the stairs to meet them.

  Hilda looked at William and put a finger on her lips. They had to be silent. Slowly and with the utmost care they walked down the stairs. Hilda knew that she should not try a silencing spell of her own, as that would clash with the thing Zelda had put up. Walking down screaming and stomping would be smarter.

  As they descended further, the effect of the dampening spell became more prominent as moving became harder. Hilda silently cursed the spell, but persisted. Somewhere there had to be an end to this beast. Through the bond she encouraged William to keep coming down.

  They had to be close to the exit of the spell, Hilda was certain. After all, Zelda herself had to be able to move freely inside it. Just as she reached the landing on the lower floor, her foot was free of the syrup-like resistance they were pushing themselves through. With care Hilda dragged herself out of the layer that made up the spell and waited for William, notifying him that the ordeal was almost over.

  William left the invisible tar pit and saw Hilda again holding her finger over her lips. Of course. Now they were in the open, so sound would travel normally again. He nodded.

  They moved to the staircase that would get them to the ground floor, where Zelda probably was. As Hilda put her foot on the first step, an eerie wailing reached their ears.

  "She's singing," Hilda whispered, rectifying William's initial idea of the source of the sound.

  "That's singing?", he whispered back.

  Hilda nodded. "She probably knows we're here by now. I sense her clearly as well." She progressed downwards, the wizard in her wake, and when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she simply kicked open the door.

  The interior of the bar had declined even more since their first visit. All the furniture, coloured black now, was piled up in a corner of the large room. In several places large and ferocious-looking plants grew out of the floor. The large brown flower-heads turned towards the magical couple as they came in. They did what probably was the plant-version of drooling. A large bed stood in the middle of the room, black with everything on and around it black. On it lay a person. Dressed in black. The dreadful wailing came from the bed and only stopped as Hilda and William walked over and looked at Zelda.

  "Oh. It's you," the woman in black said. She had a deadly pale face, long black hair, and black fingernails. One would almost think she was fond of black.

  "Yes. It's me. And William. And you're coming back with us. You have no business here, in this world."

  "Hahaha!!" Zelda sat up and laughed at the couple. "But you are so wrong, honey. This place is my business as of now. I like it here, there is so much to play with and so much to get!" Suddenly Zelda had her wand in her hand and flicked it. Hilda and William wanted to jump but the bad witch had taken them by surprise.

  One of the large plants swung at them and slammed them to the floor, making them roll away from the bed, back towards the door. Another large plant seemed to fall on top of Zelda, sucking her into the large flowery head. It swung away from the bed and put Zelda on her feet close to the exit that led to the street. "Best for you if you go home, Grimhilda. This was a friendly reminder not to mess with me. Next time it will be unpleasant." A flick of the wand later, the plant that had knocked over Hilda and William dropped a load of sticky and foul-smelling goo over them.

  "Oh. Maybe this time it is unpleasant already." Zelda laughed, took her broom and walked out, lifting the silencing spell for a moment.

  "Crap." Hilda meant it. "Oh crappedy crap!" Quickly she got her wand out and magicked the goo away from herself and William.

  "Holy Bejeebus, Hilda, that was just in time," William gasped as the goo disappeared from his face. It had started to crystallise, immobilising them and also doing a fair bit of suffocating.

  "She's bad news, William. Very bad news. We have to handle her with care."

  "How on earth do you take on a witch like that? She doesn't seem to know the existence of the word mercy."

  "Mercy? What's that?" Hilda looked at him in surprise. Then, at his astounded face, she had to laugh. "Sorry, sweet man, I could not resist. Let's go and get our brooms. Good thing we left them on the roof, not the first place she'll look for them, if she does at all."

  Zelda had left a rather simple spell in place to keep curious people out. It was not a problem for the magical couple, and soon they were outside, in the street. They summoned their brooms that came falling down from the roof and calmly landed in the waiting hands.

  "Where would she have gone," William wondered. He tried to think of something that could be interesting for a really bad-tempered witch from his new world.

  8. Out cold

  A sound overhead took precedence over William's thoughts. Hilda also looked up, at what the source of the noise could be. What William already feared was true. And this time indeed, it was the worst kind.

  A helicopter of a news station flew over the buildings in the street. It flew dangerously low. It also flew very slowly.

  "Is it okay if I borrow your crappedy crap, Hilda?" Because it was in place. From inside the helicopter a large camera protruded, and it was pointing at them.

  "We can do something about that," Hilda said. She already raised her wand.

  "Perhaps it's better if we don't, sweetwitch. They're definitely filming us and if we use magic, we'll attract even more attention than we already do."

  The next moment, a black flash shot out of a sidestreet and came to a halt in front of the helicopter. It was Zelda. And she was curious. She flew around the helicopter a few times, making the cameraman as well as the pilot rather upset.

  "William?"

  "Yes?"

  "If you want, you can borrow it as often as you need to. Oh crap."

  Somehow Zelda's attention was pointed to the two people on the ground: she had turned her broom and was coming towards them at an insane speed, wand pointing and spraying sparks.

  Hilda as well as William cast protection spells around themselves, jumped on their brooms and flew off in opposite directions. William feared that the people in the news helicopter would have the day of their lives. And hopefully it would not be their last one.

  The building they had been in front of suffered severely from the fireworks that Zelda was spraying around from her wand. She screamed in anger as she saw the two fly off, hesitating as she tried to decide which of them she should chase down first.

  Hilda and William turned sharply, the air around them seemed to protest against this brutal treatment. Wands drawn, they charged at Zelda, slamming her with magic from both sides. It was not holding the raging witch. Zelda pulled h
er broom up steeply, swinging her wand wildly. Hilda and William had to retreat as the mad witch was not paying attention to where she was spreading her doom.

  "Suck an elf," Hilda growled as William had joined her again. "She's really gone bonkers, William."

  "You can say that again, Hilda."

  "What would that add to the situation?", she wondered, making William laugh.

  "I'll explain later. Now, first we have a witch to catch."

  "Hey, you!", a voice interrupted their talk. It came from a man yelling into a megaphone. He was inside the helicopter that was slowly approaching them.

  "Not them, not now," William grumbled.

  "Can't we just fly off and do what we have to?", Hilda proposed.

  "We want to talk to you!", the amplified voice boomed.

  "We don't want to talk to you, however," William said, nodded at Hilda, and they flew off. Quickly.

  "So now we have two problems," Hilda decided. "Zelda's the main one, and these people in that flying machine are the second."

  "Yup. We can ignore the second for now, as they're not able to keep up with us. But they probably filmed a lot of us, and Zelda. And they're not going to present that as special effects."

  "Sometimes, William, you still say the weirdest things."

  They rose up to above the buildings of the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the runaway witch, but as they had already expected, Zelda had found refuge somewhere. And she had not left a neon sign pointing in her direction.

  "Oh, shiny," Hilda