48. Books and magic

Thoroughly warmed up, Hilda stretched herself, putting one of her arms over William's face. "Oh, I feel good now. I could do with more, but I'm afraid that Babs would not appreciate that."

"Hmmffmm," replied William.

"What was that, sweet man?" The wicked witch leaned on an elbow and looked at him.

"I tried to say that I think you are right."

"Yes, she is!", a voice came from the other side of the door, "and you'd better get your lazy parts out of the bed because there is food and beverage waiting." Baba Yaga stomped off extra loudly, muttering about young folk making lots of noise in the middle of the night, straining all four legs of her hut. She did go on for a while longer, but Hilda and William did not understand that.

They did get their lazy parts out of the bed and into some clothes, after which they presented themselves for breakfast.

"You two are terrible," said the ugly witch, "it's a good thing I am deaf or I would have been awake all night."

Hilda screamed for laughter, William was entirely puzzled by the contradiction in her words. He let himself be pulled to the table by Hilda.

After breakfast, Hilda and William collected their things. "We may have to come by again, before our challenge," Hilda said, "we should be very aware of the forest."

"I wouldn't bother," Baba Yaga said. "It changes itself, so there's little point in coming over. It even confuses me at times. The only thing relatively stable is this here, where I live."

William frowned. This was relatively stable. Okay.

"Well, kids, have a nice flight home, do give me a yell when you got there okay?"

The three exchanged hugs and then Hilda and William mounted their brooms and headed for home.

The house was glad to see them, once the chains were gone. "You have missed some company," it reported.

"Oh, really? Who wanted to see us?"

"Hmmm. See would be the least of your problems," said the house. "It was a small regiment of soldiers that wanted to take you away."

"Soldiers?" William was surprised that someone would send soldiers to capture a witch.

"Magical soldiers, William," Hilda enlightened him, sensing his confusion. "Herald has friendly ties with Ringeholm and Oxfern, both of whom have legions of soldier-magicians. And when a horde of those march through Lorn, there are not many in that kingdom stupid enough to try and stop them."

"I see..." William boggled at the idea of a legion of soldier-magicians. Even a dozen would be bad.

"The good news is that they left without shooting too many arrows in me," the house proclaimed further. "There probably was not enough visible of me, thanks to the chains."

"This is something you must remember, William. The house was glad it was chained up! There's a first!" Hilda laughed, pulled six arrows from the wood, and they went inside.

Each arrow carried the same message. Lamador was shocked about the invitation to the challenge, as this could not be taken serious. But he accepted.

"I wonder why they shot six arrows with the same message," said William as he magicked up two glasses of wine.

"Uhm, sweet man, isn't it a bit early for that?", Hilda asked. She did take the glass with the diluted wine though, before he had the option to make it go away.

William took his glass and toasted with her's. "We'll decide about that after drinking, I'd say. The fact that Lamador accepted our challenge means something."

"Oh? And what does it mean?", asked Hilda after taking a good sip.

"I'll let you know when I find out, okay?" William took a healthy swig from his wine also.

"Well, at least he takes us serious," said Hilda. "I'll talk to Babs and let her know we've arrived."

William raised her glass to her and sat down at the table, opening his valued precious book. It made him relax, looking at the scribbly writing and the pictures. As he paged through the book, there was something wrong. No, not wrong, he corrected himself. Different. He just wasn't sure what it was.

Hilda returned to the table. "What are you looking at?"

"Not sure, it just looks as if it tried to make sense to me."

Hilda picked up his wine-glass and put it out of his reach. "I'm afraid, William, that this was indeed too early for you. When you came here first you said you could only read one out of every twenty or so pages, and now that page starts making sense to you? I mean, I can read this because I am a witch. I am magical."

They looked at each other.

"Oh... suck an elf... you are becoming more and more magical too..."

William nodded. He held out his hand and his wine-glass floated to it. "I'll drink to that, Hilda."

They spent the remainder of the morning going through the book. William managed to decypher one of the spells that were in it. It was a simple one, to recolour flowers, but Hilda was amazed that the book salesman turned wizard could actually read it.

"Gimme," she said then, pulling the book towards her. Quickly she paged through it, until she reached a page that was almost at the end of the book. "Can you see what this says?" She pushed the book under his nose again.

William scratched his nose. "Well, that looks like an S... That could be a T..." It was obvious that the page Hilda had selected was still a few steps too high.

"Too bad. I really would love to know what is written there," Hilda pouted, "I can't read that either."

"Which means?" William looked at Hilda and touched her hand for a moment.

"Means that we both don't know," she grinned. "But who knows, maybe the book keeps it up to make more sense to you. And when you can read it, you can tell me."

"Sorry, sweetwitch, but somewhere in that, there seems to be a flaw in your logic. You've been able to read a lot of this since the first time you saw the book, while I could merely read the nursery rhymes and look at the pictures. And now you tell me that I may be able to read things that you can't?"

"Sure." Hilda saw his wondering face not getting any less wondered. "Okay, listen carefully. You are making the big mistake again. You talk about logic. Now logic is a wonderful thing, but do not try to substitute that for magic. Magic is an entirely different beast. It compares to logic like a brick does to a blackbird." Hilda frowned at that comparison, but as William did not seem to mind, it was fine with her. "I'm a witch. A wicked witch, born and raised. You are... uhm... well, you are not born and raised a witch. I do things, you do things. And magic assists us in doing what we do, and enables us to make us do it as well as we can."

"Oh. I see. I didn't know that," said William.

"Neither did I," said Hilda in response, "I just made that up, but it sounds pretty convincing, doesn't it?"

William looked into her eyes. There was no red, no blue. Just black eyes. He had no clue if she was joking, being serious or anything else.

"Remember that I am a wicked witch, William. It is inside me." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Now someone has to go do the rounds. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay here and spend time with your book?"

He knew she was asking that without wickedness. "I'm coming with you."

She smiled, blue sparks in her eyes.

In the days that followed, they worked on their plans concerning their challenge. William convinced Hilda that it would be a sign of fair play to write up the guidelines for their challenge and send those to Lamador.

"But why? That way he can prepare himself!" Hilda shook her head. "If ever I heard a stupid thing, it's called fair play. He doesn't do that either."

"Hilda, you are just wicked. You need to learn about some other techniques."

"Do they involve magic, flying or sex?"

"No."

"Sorry William, but why should I bother then?"

"Because perhaps we want to win this challenge and unsettle our friend Lamador?"

"Hmmf. Really no...?" She looked at him, her face a question mark.

"Before and after, okay?"

"Yes! Let's start with the before!"

"Hilda..."

They started with the before.

Inbetween the before and the after, Hilda lay on William, a happy smile on her face. "So what are these techniques you were blabbing about? I warn you, make it interesting or I will fall asleep on you and you will have to lie still until I wake up again."

William could think of a worse fate, but tried to tell Hilda a thing or two about bending the rules. He had written the rules for their contest in such a way that for an untrained reader of writing by an ordinary, the whole thing looked simple and unambiguous. But, he explained, there were little things here and there that could also be interpreted in another way. "I put that on paper quite flexibly," he said.

Hilda frowned and tried to find a hole in his reasoning. "I don't really get this. You were not lying when you wrote the paper, right? Still, now you tell me that the paper isn't exactly telling the truth?"

"It is telling two truths. One for the people who expect nothing but the obvious truth, one for us. And we can take advantage of that."

"I hope you are not going to tell me everything in detail, because then I will fall asleep on you." In preparation, the wicked witch closed her eyes and tightened her hold on William's arms.

"I won't. Just trust me on this one."

Hilda nodded. She wiggled herself into a slightly more comfortable position, did her kitten purr, and relaxed. The wicked witch was quickly bored that day, William decided.