Nasty Little Witchling

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, propped myself up on my elbows, and shook off the arm I had been sleeping on for so long that it was numb. Faint, colourless outlines of the items in my room sent my empty mind searching for why that confused me so much.

The smooth material of my nightgown moving against the sheets felt like another clue. I moved my legs back and forth, trying to figure out why.

I also couldn’t remember having dinner despite it being dark out.

The last thing I did remember was…drinking that foul potion.

Drinking that foul potion in an office, in my overalls.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand someone had moved me and changed me into my nightgown.

My mouth didn’t have enough moisture in it to wet my tongue, so I cupped my hands together near my mouth and let the water I made drip into it. I had to breathe deeply after drinking for so long.

I reached around my nightstand, found a full class jug and an empty cup, and rolled my eyes at my wasted effort. A small piece of folded paper was sitting next to them, but no amount of time would let my eyes adjust to let me see what was on it.

Feeling around some more, I found my original target, the bedside lamp. A bit of mana later, and the glass bulb started to glow.

I squinted enough to read the flowing handwriting without blinding myself.

‘It’s gone.’

After a moment of acknowledgement, I put the paper back down and let out a sigh of relief. I expected joy and elation but felt very little of it. It was gone, and that was it. I did scold myself for my lack of trust and promised to thank everyone who helped.

All I wanted to do now was see how far I could go, though that probably had to wait until sunrise. The knights that roamed the castle walls wouldn’t appreciate me trying to climb all over their enchantments.

I slipped out of the covers and over to the balcony doors, bracing myself for the chilly air of a fall night.

It wasn’t as bad as I expected. There wasn’t much moonlight coming from the curved sliver of the moon, sitting amongst the stars.

The bigger the settlements the less the stars seemed to shine. I was used to seeing the sky covered in specks of light sitting on colourful cloud-like backgrounds. Here, only the brightest specks were still visible.

I looked out across the vine-covered wall of the palace, the beginnings of an idea forming.

It wasn’t a very good idea.

Putting on some real clothes made it a somewhat better one, since if I got stuck on the ground I wouldn’t have to try to sneak past Haily to get back into my room. I didn’t think I needed my boots though.

The palace walls, along with the castle, were similar to the trees in Tamil, only so far as they had a lot of mana. These stones had much more, making little hand holds felt like pushing against a mountain.

But, if a treant could lift me up with vines, then so could I.

I stepped up onto the railing, and peeled off the two vines from the wall that I could control at a time. Then set one up near my feet and the other above my head, to hang onto.

Peaking over the edge had me reconsider how silly this was. Would it be better to tangle each around my arms and lower myself that way?

I tried but couldn’t get the vines to hold on well enough.

An experimental prodding of my foot pushed the vine down with some resistance. Half my weight strained my muscles to hold the vine up. My full weight made my body tense so much it felt wrong to breathe.

The vines and I lurched down to the side, it was too late to step back onto the railing, no matter how much I wanted to.

I quickly lowered myself. One floor, two floors, almost three as the vine under me tore and snapped.

A squeak let the last bit of air out of my lungs as I hurtled towards the bushes below. A strong gust of wind from my outstretched arm pushed out all the fallen leaves in a wave.

It didn’t stop my fall, but it made the crash into the sticks and leaves less violent.

Mother birds used something similar to catch their young when they pushed them out the nest before they were ready. I’d needed a lot more air to cushion my fall compared to a baby bird.

I groaned and slowly started to free myself from the bushes, sticks scraped across the scratches I had already earned from the fall. After stumbling out I flung off the dirt and leaves that clung to me, then detangled the ones that pulled at my hair while trying to follow my direction.

No one seemed to care about me dropping into the garden.

I slowly walked around, feeling a need to stay away from the patrolling knights despite not doing anything wrong. At least I thought I wasn’t.

I glanced longingly at the hammock and passed it, making my way to the paddock outside the stables. I thought of ways to try to get out as I walked, the best I came up with was jumping into the water, or asking nicely. I didn’t truly want to leave, just wanted to know if I could.

Missy perked up when she noticed me approaching, and trotted over. Polem lazily followed after her, driven only by faint curiosity.

I climbed over the wooden beams of the paddock fence and sat on the top, my head was just high enough for Missy to bump her nose into it. “I doubt this fence could hold you.”

She agreed. My fingers brushed up and down her long neck while her warm breath tickled my face. “Why do you let it?”

Missy, Polem and the few others that had wandered over didn’t understand my question. This was where they slept, where they got to run, they were fed grain and fruit just a few dozen yards away, and they got to stay out of the wind and rain.

Missy added that she also liked her rider.

“I do too, Missy.”

I stayed a while with the horses before they got bored of me. I tried not to be offended, and went to my hammock, lamenting about no longer having anyone to share my fruit with.

I didn’t think I was as useful as a horse, but as long as the duke wanted to give me a place to sleep, food to eat and a way to stay out of the coming winter’s cold, I’d stay.

It also helped that I liked most of the people. And didn’t have the faintest idea where to go if not here.

I couldn’t tell how late it was, but I let sleep catch up to me as I swayed in the breeze, catching glimpses of stars through the leaves.

…

My back made a series of satisfying pops and cracks. I stretched out my arms further and pointed my toes as far away as they could go, rolled over in the hammock a few times, and went limp.

The sun was out this time and from where it was shining through the leaves, it must have been quite late in the morning.

All my stretching let my necklace fall out of my shirt, I sat up to tuck it back into place, and to see what was going on around me. A few people in staff uniforms were hanging up clothing on a line drawn taut between two posts.

Haily had tried to explain their way of doing laundry to me but lost me at the need for some clothes to be treated differently. Cotton couldn’t be used in the drying enchantment, night gowns got hand-washed, and wool had to be washed cold. To many rules, it was probably better she didn’t let me do my own laundry because I would be washing it in the pond.

My thoughts seemed to have summoned the girl. “Ma’am? Good morning, I’ve been instructed to take you to Madam Riker as soon as you wake up.”

“Morning, Haily.” I slid off the hammock and onto the dewy grass, not wanting to waste Janette’s time. “Where is she?”

“Ah…I’m taking you back to your room first.” She eyed my feet and then lifted her gaze to my hair.

Haily took my arm and led me back, had me go into the lavatory to wash the grass stuck to my feet, sent me back in again to wash completely and shouted what soaps to use from behind the door.

She gave me a weird look when I walked out dry but started to brush the tangles out of my hair. My head was pulled back and forth as she gathered it up and tied something to hold it in place, it looked like a horse's tail as I made it swish back and forth in front of the mirror.

“This isn’t in my job description,” she grumbled from behind me.

“I said we didn’t need to do any of this,” I grumbled back.

“Madam Riker is in a meeting with the duke and a score of other chiefs and officials. I wasn’t going to let you in there looking like you’d crawled through a jungle. What would she think of me?”

The younger girl could be strangely assertive at times.

“I thought that was dirt,” she said, pointing to my arm. “Why do you have bruises?”

I glanced down to the small brown splotches peeking out of my shirt, the scratches having already faded. “Ah, the hammock tipped over.”

Haily sighed, stepped back and stretched out her hand. When all I did was stare at it she made a little ‘give me’ motion with her fingers.

She sighed again. “It’s customary to provide gratuity to a person providing you a service if they go above and beyond what is expected of them, I think I have.”

I nodded, pulled open the drawer I kept my rolls of coin in and handed her one of the bronze ones; she handed it back.

“Just a few is fine, ma’am.”

I tore at the paper wrapping, thumbed out four of the coins, and tipped them into her waiting palm.

Haily handed one back to me. “Ma’am…you’re weird. Can you tell me why you’re here? There’s a betting pool going and I want to get ahead.”

I shrugged. Yesterday I would have shrugged because I didn’t want to talk about the doll, but today I genuinely didn’t know.

“Please, everything went back to normal the day you showed up. You’re on the top floor of the guest wing but Chief Yanla is letting me train with you. None of it makes sense.”

“You were a lot more timid when we met.”

“I thought I was being assigned to the daughter of someone stupidly important, but instead—” She waved her hand over me. “Unless you’re just here to test me in secret.”

I quite liked the new Haily, maybe she would even be convinced to use my name. “Let’s go see Janette already.”

…

The foyer was busier than usual, with a line of carriages waiting outside the doors in the loop around the fountain. The horses didn’t like their blinders and harness very much, but didn’t openly complain.

The knight stationed outside the dining room door opened it for me and Haily motioned me to go in without her.

The raised voices coming from inside made me double-check I was in the right room.

Janette and Duke Riker were at the head of the long table we’d used for dinner the other night, this must have been the right place despite the ongoing arguments. Piles of paper lay amongst plates of pastries, folders, detailed drawings, and what must have been lightgraph images of streets.

I got a few glances from those not speaking, Janette motioned me over to the side of the room where sofas and chairs lined the wall. Sam and his brother, along with a few other people our age, scribbled on paper or talked with each other on the sofas.

Seeing Sam made me realise I might have said I would exercise with him this morning. He still smiled at me so I thought it wasn’t that bad of a mistake. Come to think of it, he might have seen the reason for me not being there out the window, near the pond.

I walked over to where Sam had stopped scribbling and moved aside so there was a space for me to sit between him and a girl I hadn’t seen before.

“You have an interest in city planning?” he asked.

I looked over at his paper and noticed the sketch of a castle under siege. “That doesn’t look like city planning to me.”

He turned the pad of paper upside down. “Right, this is Linh Sardakur.”

The girl offered me a fist while balancing her drawings of a tube, labelled with precise numbers, on her knees. She didn’t look up at me while she sucked on a pencil and studied the drawing.

She had large light blue eyes, long eyelashes and tanned skin that worked well with her dark blonde hair.

“Linh, Valeria.”

I offered my own fist, then pointed to the drawing. “Your area is off.”

“Huh? No, it’s not?” she said, not looking up.

“You’re not subtracting the thickness of the bricks on the outside.” I pointed to the shaded area labelled ‘brick’ she had included in her calculation.

“Oh. Right.” She pulled the pencil from her lips and scratched in an extra formula after the old one.

“You’re good at mathematics?” Sam asked with raised eyebrows.

“Only if it relates to alchemy in some way.”

He looked at me sceptically, then to the drawing, and nodded slowly in a way I thought might be condescending. “How come you’re here, if it’s not to listen to them argue about literal crap?”

A woman stood to shout down the table from near the end. “We have an opportunity to get this right the first time. Every other major city has had to redo their sewer and water systems. The previous duke didn’t plan for this much expansion, we should learn from her mistakes.”

“And where exactly, madam, is this mana and funding coming from? Your plan would additionally require us to tear up established systems so you don’t create a bottleneck. That will disrupt business and the lives of many people.”

Another group was off to the side, crowding around someone tangling together a complicated spell designed to strongly shake a very specific area, similar to the numbers Linh was now finishing.

“If we do this underground with a temporary bypass, made using the tailored spell, it won't cost as much. We also build a separate set of tunnels that will be used for maintenance in the future, cutting future costs, there will be no disruption to businesses or people's lives.”

“Where is the initial mana coming from, Chief Sardakur? We don't have enough trained mages in construction. We’d need to get private contractors which would inflate the price.”

“Ah, no,” I said, blocking them out again. “I’m here to see Janette.”

Linh finally looked up from her paper and eyed my clothing, it stood out amongst the sophisticated people in the room. She leaned forward to look at Sam, whose shoulder was close enough to mine that I felt him shrug.

Sam brought up the exercising and I told him I wouldn’t forget to come down tomorrow morning, at sunrise. He made a point to let me know it would be hard to run in the material of the overalls and the boots I was made to wear again. I tried explaining again that this was all I had, which got Linh eyeing me again.

I turned my questions to her as a distraction from my weirdness. Linh wanted to be an artist but her mother, the woman still arguing her case with the duke now involved, wanted her to follow in her footsteps and take architecture.

Asking what the difference was once she explained it, was entirely the wrong thing to do. Sam had to swoop in and save me with a lengthy explanation on my ignorance.

He and Haily would get along so well.

By the time the meeting broke for lunch, I was more than happy to walk over to Janette when she called.

“How are you feeling? You seem to have at least slept plenty,” Janette said and motioned her head to the windows.

“Feeling alright.” I put my wrist into her waiting grasp.

She twisted my arm about after the spell and frowned up at me. “Why are your arms and legs covered in bruises?”

“I fell out of the hammock.”

“Valeria.”

“I used a lot of mana?”

Her eyes narrowed, but she let go.

“Your body is under strain during casting?” the duke asked.

“Yeah, I used the most mana I ever had a few weeks ago and could barely move my arms, or use more mana for days.”

“Doing what?” he asked.

“There was a fire.”

He and Janette shared a look I didn’t know the meaning of.

“Can I take Missy and go to the library?” I asked, finally able to think of going places outside my immediate vicinity.

“Oh, she and Anna left this morning. Up to Kiteer, to oversee that mess with Tamil,” Janette said.

“Can I take Polem then?”

The duke chuckled. “If you get that brute into his tack you can take him anywhere you want.”

Janette swatted his arm. “Ask one of the stable hands to ready you one of the gentler ones. Better yet, take the Manafold boy with you, don’t want you getting lost in that mess.”

“That’s my city you’re insulting,” he said with mock indignation and was ignored.

“Thank you.” I turned to go back to Sam, then remembered my promise. “Thank you, for helping me with the doll.”

“You did save me from a lot of pain, don’t worry about it. Enjoy your outing, Valeria.”

“Enjoy, dear.”

I walked away faster than I meant to, cheeks heating. I’d forgotten about the whole cure the curse thing.

Sam turned over his drawing again and raised his eyebrows as I approached.

I didn’t bother sitting down again. “Janette said you should come with me to the library, so I don’t get lost.”

“Are you asking me to come to the library with you?”

“Who cares, let’s go. I’m tired of this meeting,” Linh said and started stashing away her stuff into a satchel.

“I need to get something from my room, I’ll meet you in the foyer?” I said to Linh.

Sam started to pack his stuff away. “I didn’t say no.”

I went back up all the steps to my room for the second time that morning, to get the letter Yanla gave me for the library. The coins came as well, placed in the deepest pocket I could find.

Sam and Linh were waiting beside a familiar carriage owned by the Manafolds. Since his father would be in meetings the rest of the afternoon we could take it out until then. I had been looking forward to getting Polem to cooperate with me, but didn’t complain as Sam helped me up the steps.

Linh was already lounging on one side of the cushioned interior. A long black coat was added to her pants and blouse, the neck of which was tied together with a blue ribbon that matched her eyes.

I sat down where I was, Sam shut the door and went past to sit next to me, ducking his taller frame away from the shallow ceiling.

“Why are we going to the library?” he asked.