Something inside me shifts at the very thought of her. This woman whose reputation is vast and yet no one knows of her personally. Like a myth.
“She is the only one there,” Jorge replies. “Find her. She can help you.”
“Do you have any information on where she lives?”
Jorge opens his mouth, but before his words reach me, his image breaks apart in the crystal’s facet and dissolves into shadows.
“Jorge,” I call again with dull irritation as I heave in a breath that raises my shoulders and then I crack my neck.
He doesn’t answer. The remaining power in the crystal flickers out, and the glowing light disappears just as Jorge’s image did.
My jaw clenches as rain drips from my hair down my face and the sky lights up with more lightning strikes.
I lean my forehead against the trunk of the tree and bite back more frustrated curses. Jorge may not have known where the witch is rumored to live, but he might have had some information, which would have made my next task easier.
I give myself a few seconds, then pull myself up. I didn’t become a soldier because such tasks are easy. I became a soldier because my greatest talents are fighting and using brute strength to force myself along any given path.
As the storm howls above me, I gather the crystals, then shoulder my pack and set out.
One step carefully after the other. Trudging through the mud, my senses are on high alert although my wolf is calm. Eerily calm. That grants me reprieve from worrisome thoughts.
Once I’ve reached the grassy field, it’s slow going. The storm, which seems to be gathering impossible strength, turns the soil under my feet to sludge. Wet grasses cling to my boots. The light of the moons is almost nonexistent behind the black clouds, and the lightning strikes do not let me see more than a few feet ahead.
I wait through enough lightning flashes to get some idea of where I am. This is the same side of the forest I came out of when I finished gathering the florals, and there was no sign of anyone living on the paths in this direction. I didn’t see anything to suggest a dwelling on my way to open the portal.
The witch must be living somewhere else.
A heady combination of doubt and curiosity crash inside me like a storm. It’s not only my curiosity that guides me now. It is my duty to find the witch. It is my duty to ask her for assistance in recharging my crystals.
Once again, the world—or the gods—seem to be aligning with my private desires, which rattles me. I couldn’t have imagined a circumstance that would send me through a violent thunderstorm to satisfy my curiosity about a witch no one has seen in years.
But I did everything I could to open that portal. If it is fate that slammed it shut, then I cannot argue against that. Not in any way that sends me home without searching for the witch.
My wolf stirs at the thought, and it urges me forward.
I travel during the flashes of lightning, squinting through the heavy rain to catch a glimpse of the forest on the other side of the fields. If I cannot find her dwelling here, I may have to begin searching the trees, which will be far more difficult.
But I live for the challenge. For intrigue to be satisfied.
With a slight grin at the thought of finding her and having a story to tell, I carry on. Hours pass in the early morning and I don’t stop. I refuse to give in until I’ve found her. The mud sucks my boots down into it, and my thighs begin to burn from pulling them back out again. The rain is cold on my skin, but my muscles warm from the work of moving me and my gear across the field. It is a comforting sensation. My body is used to taxing physical work, and when I am set to a task like this, my mind calms and sharpens.
The field seems endless in the dark and the rain, as if I’ll be walking across it forever, trapped in a vortex of magic that is meant to imprison me here.
I have the feeling time is passing. The day is passing. Sometimes I think it is passing too quickly, but then it feels like I have been trudging through the mud forever.
The line of trees on the opposite side of the field begins to materialize in the distance. I keep my eyes focused on the sharp shapes of the trees whenever the lightning illuminates them. I don’t think of the possibility that the witch will be tucked away in some far-off place that I cannot find. She will be here somewhere, even if it takes me days.
I simply keep moving.
Another shape begins to appear in the lightning flashes. It’s a gap in the trees—or rather a shape in front of the trees. I angle myself toward it and press on until… My breathing slows and a warmth runs through me. Stillness settles and finally. Fucking finally.
Yes, there is something here.
A garden plot, I think as a smirk forms on my face, turned to mud, and a smaller structure—an outdoor oven, maybe. It is hard to tell in the rain.
And then there is the cottage. Its pointed roof is the shape I saw from a short distance away.
I have to pause to catch my breath. It must be her. The witch.
