"Nothing really special. A few requests for
better soil and stuff like that." William tossed the papers on the
table. "No business that can't wait."
"Good. I am in need of food. This dragon
stuff was not what we needed. And we haven't seen Zelda's place yet
either. We should go there this afternoon." Hilda dropped herself
on the couch. "Will you be my sweet wizard and make me food?"
William ruffled her hair. "I'll get you food.
And food for me also."
"Hey, no harrassing the resident witch!",
Hilda whailed as she slapped at William's hands, but she laughed as
she did so.
William made it clear to the kitchen that
they were in no mood to wrestle it for food, so he was done
remarkably fast, and soon they were happy and filled up.
"I want to go to sleep," Hilda announced. She
lay down on the couch, her head in William's lap, curled herself
into the most comfortable position and fell asleep. It did not take
her a second.
William fell asleep only a few seconds after
her.
-=-=-
"William?"
"Hmmm..." His awareness dreaded coming
back.
"You were sleeping."
"I know. So were you. You're addictive, also
in that way." William worked his way through the nebula's in his
head.
"Oh. In that case it's good you were
sleeping. But you have to wake up now, sweet wizard. I have strong
tea and cookies, and after that we have to go to Zelda's place.
Really."
William opened his eyes.
Hilda's face was in front of his, carefully
examining him. "You woke up. Good wizard." She planted a kiss on
his nose. "Now, tea and cookies. Naps are good." She nodded to her
own words, affirming them.
They sipped their tea and the tray with the
cookies was reduced to a tray with crumbs in no time flat.
Hilda got up, her teacup in hand, and walked
over to the corner where her spare brooms were. "Hmm. This one
should be good." She picked one from the collection and made it
hover. She pushed it from several sides; the broom's response was
smooth. "Yup, new broom accomplished. I get more tea for that."
They finished their tea and hauled themselves
outside. The rest and food had done miracles; they were airborne
quickly, and heading for Zelda's house.
This time there were no interruptions from
dragons or other flying objects. It took them less than an hour to
reach the village where Zelda had waved her wand. They landed near
the house, wands in hand. There was no strong magic around.
"She's been gone for a while already," Hilda
told William, "you can feel that too? A witch that's gone away
always leaves a sad feeling around her house."
"Grizelda the witch is not at home," the
house said, "if you care to leave a message, she will get back to
you as soon as she can."
It made William grin.
Hilda shook her head and walked up to the
house. "Sloppy. No chains, no locks, no-" Then she flew through the
air, landing on a small haystack. "Okay, I take that back. There is
protection." She crawled out of the hay, magicked the straws out of
her hair and looked at the house. "Okay. Now we certainly have to
get in there. Do you have one of your interesting ideas?"
William grinned, then looked at the house
again. He prodded towards it with his wand and tried to find out
how far he could go before he was thrown away. After he came out of
the haystack also, he had a fairly good idea. "Not a thick layer of
magic around it," he decided. "And I wonder..." He took his broom,
lifted off and checked the roof. "Thought so. Most people forget
that." He looked at Hilda. "No magic here. We can go in through the
chimney."
The wicked witch raised an eyebrow. "Chimney.
Right. Do you hear what you say, William, my deranged wizard? No
way that I am going to crawl through that pipe there."
"You don't need to crawl, Hilda, I can just
drop you down there."
"Do you see me laugh, William?"
William turned to the chimney and looked
down. "Not too high, could be worse." Using his wand, he cleaned
the inside of the smoke channel and for convenience's sake he made
a simple ladder appear in it also. "I'll open the door for you,
from the inside, if all goes well!", he called out to Hilda who was
walking around Zelda's domicile.
"And if things don't go well?", the witch
returned.
"Hell if I know," William replied, and then
he swung his first leg over the rim of the chimney. Using the
ladder, he quickly moved down and soon he was in the main room of
the house of the missing witch. He carefully reached for the door.
It opened without a complaint.
There was a shimmer that seemed to go around
Zelda's house as the magical protection was lifted.
"Well, that was easy..." William looked
outside. "Hilda? Door's open, it should be safe to come in."
Hilda came in. "How did you remove that
protection?" She couldn't believe he had pulled that off.
"I just opened the door. From the inside.
That seems to be enough..."
"Really? That's all? Hard to believe..."
But it was that way. There was no problem, no
trap or any other kind of surprise.
"Zelda's always been the odd one," Hilda
explained to William as they were examining the living room. They
did not find anything out of the ordinary. The bats were still
hanging from the beams overhead, in the darkness. The jars with
herbs and frogs were nicely arranged on shelves, although there was
no way William could decide what order they were in.
The kitchen in Zelda's house was entirely
different from the maniac at Hilda's. It asked them, as they
entered, if there was anything it could make for them, and listed a
handful of ideas that would be good for them. And healthy.
"Did I mention odd?", Hilda grinned as they
listened to the kitchen talking. "Where's the fun in things with a
kitchen like that?"
William could see some advantages though and
memorised a few details about the kitchen. Perhaps, he thought,
there was a way to convince Hilda that her kitchen needed an
upgrade.
"Say, house," Hilda said out loud as they
returned to the living room, "did Zelda ever mention something
about what she was going to do?"
"Yes. But I am not allowed to tell you," said
the house. It had a sultry voice, and an accent that reminded
William of something Italian.
"Not allowed? Come on, house. She's a witch,
I'm a witch. No secrets, you know. We both know the winks, the
nudges and the secret handshake, so spit it out."
"No." The house was determined.
"And if I promise I will take you apart if
you don't tell us?", Hilda asked.
"Even then: no."
"Suck an elf, she really put a spell on you,
didn't she? Oddball..."
"What can I say," said the house, "she's a
witchy woman."
"Hilda... come and have a look here," William
said. He was in Zelda's bedroom.
"What did you find?" Hilda curiously entered
the room and looked around. "Eeeuw!" The very prominent thing in
the room was a huge canopy bed, with golden posts and enormous
layers of red velvet. There were golden fringes on the draperies.
"How obnoxious! She wants nightmares, I am sure of that!"
"Hey, witch. Over here." William stood near a
table-like thing, a desk of sorts without legs, that hovered
against a wall.
Hilda looked at the desk. "Hmmm. Odd, but a
nice touch. So, what's it you found?"
He pointed at a few sheets of paper on the
desk.
Hilda looked at them. "Crappedy crap..." She
saw drawings. They showed William's battered truck in the mountains
where he had 'arrived' in her world. Hilda put her fingers on some
doodles that were scribbled at the edges of the paper. "This is
definitely Not Good."
William considered the scribble and couldn't
make more of it than that. "And what does that signify?"
"These things are magical symbols. This is a
transporting symbol. That one is a travelling symbol. Here's a
protection sign, and that one is something to put spells on
dragons."
It took a moment for William to grasp the
implication. "Holy Bejeebus. So you think..."
"Not think. I'm sure. Zelda charged these two
Nobblebacks to go after us. I don't know exactly for what reason,
but this is something bad, and I think we should get to your truck.
Something there attracted her attention."
William folded up the drawings and tucked
them in his pocket as they left the house and collected their
brooms. They jumped on them and took off into the air. They did not
talk a lot as they raced their brooms to the limit.
-=-=-
The mountainous area came into view. Hilda
beckoned William to slow down. "We should be careful now. We don't
know where Zelda is, what she's doing here and what she prepared
for possible unwanted visitors."
William nodded and popped out his wand.
They moved ahead relatively slowly.
Everything around them was rock and stone, making it hard to find
the way around, but Hilda's sense of direction here was remarkable.
They crossed over the lower mountains, made their way around some
of the higher ones, and so far they did not encounter a
problem.
Wands sensing out, to increase their range of
finding magic, they reached the spot where William had appeared,
after Hilda's call for help. The truck, severely deteriorated,
still sat against the wall of rock. There was no sign of magic.
Also there was no sign of Zelda.
They landed near the truck. William regarded
it with a strange mix of emotions and walked over to it. Hilda
watched him go and started going around the plateau, trying to
locate something out of the ordinary.
William touched the metal of his truck. It
was strange, after so long a time, to see the vehicle again, or at
least what was left of it. The door on the driver's side was open.
He tried to recall if they had left it that way and couldn't. Both
Hilda and he had been shaken up quite badly after his appearance.
Things inside the car were still a mess.
Hilda walked around the immense boulders on
the plateau. There were faint traces of residual magic, but not
strong enough for her to get a clue to what had happened here.
Zelda was not around, that was clear to her.
William got into the truck and looked around
the inside. It looked relatively normal. As he sat in the seat, he
looked around another time, and then he noticed the thing that was
off. There had been a small plastic dreamcatcher hanging from the
rearview mirror and that was gone. He got his wand.
"Where's the dreamcatcher?", he wanted to
know. The wand shuddered for a moment, telling him that the
dreamcatcher was not around.
"Where's the dreamcatcher?", he asked again.
The wand responded in the same way, so he was not mistaken. "Shit."
He almost fell out of the truck in his hurry. "Hilda!!"
She heard him yell and used her broom to get
back to him. "What is it?" His voice had sounded worried, the bond
even more.
"Something from my world went missing from
the car. I think Zelda got it." He reached for the drawings he had
taken with him and looked at them. "Car...", he pointed. "Rocks..."
He held up the drawing and started walking about until he had found
the viewpoint from where the drawing was made.
"Crappedy crap," the witch said as she looked
at the drawing. She pointed her wand at it. "See that?"
In the drawing there was a nice flat area of
rock, slightly to their right. In the actual rock, there was a
rift, five feet wide. It was in almost the exact spot where William
had come from.
"Oh no. Don't tell me what you think
happened," William groaned. "She can't. She didn't."
"I think she did."
The bleak facts all supported what they
feared. Zelda had found the truck, and a way to go to William's
world.
"Are we now officially screwed?", William
wondered.
"Depends on how you look at it. We're free of
Zelda. That could be good." Hilda felt the worry that took William
in its claws. "Yes. Your world now has a witch on the loose."
"I have to go back there and do something
about that."
Hilda nodded. "And I have to go with
you."
William looked at her. "I am glad you will do
that."
"Mind you that I am not crazy about it. Your
world is insane, so you have to help me, William." Hilda looked at
her wizard and her face showed fear. Her memories of that crazy
place were daunting.
William hugged her. "I will. Nothing will
happen to us, Hilda. I'll make sure of that."
She nodded and drew in a lot of breath. "Then
we have to go. Now."
William nodded. "It's not what we planned.
But you are right."
They mounted their brooms and flew towards
the opening in the mountain wall. The rift was black. It looked as
if the light that fell into it just disappeared. They looked into
it, but there was nothing but blackness.
"Let's go," said Hilda. She took William's
hand. Together they flew into the void.
-=-=-
The magical couple was sucked into a kind of
whirl, tossing and turning them around for several long seconds.
Then the strange feeling was over and they were in a different
darkness.
"William. Where are we?"
William looked around before he could answer
the question. There were trees. No streetlights. He used his wand
to make light and gasped. "We are where I was when I came into your
world." He looked behind them. "And that is what we came
through."
A strange blob, looking as air liquified,
hung in the air. It seemed to wait for someone to dive into it.
Hilda popped up her wand also and examined
the blob. "So we are in your world? Suck an elf... This thing has
Zelda's signature all over it. Looks like she managed to secure the
route back. Well, let's make a surprise..." She mumbled a few
words, stated that she hated Latin, and then put a spell on the
blob that it should not allow passage or any meddling by anyone
else but herself and William. "Right. At least we have a way back
home."