Hilda - The Challenge (24 page)

After they had cleared the table, Hilda made
a serious attempt to explain a few theoretical things about magic.
That did not exactly go as either of them had hoped. Hilda's
perspective was that of a witch who had been living amidst magic
all her life. William's was that of a book salesman from a world
where magic was considered something from fairy-tales, or the stuff
that magicians the likes of David Copperfield would perform:
incredibly artful, but obvious trickery.

Hilda was getting more and more worked up and
annoyed that all her efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears. William
really tried hard, but most of Hilda's concepts simply had no basis
in his knowledge.

"I am really sorry, Hilda, but this so called
simple thing you mentioned just now means really nothing to me."
They were looking at one of Hilda's books, one that dealt with
basic magic and protection. The page spoke of using air as a
protective layer to ward off incoming projectiles, and Hilda had
demonstrated how simple it was to conjure that up.

The wicked witch groaned. "But you see how it
works, don't you? I mean, you threw the arrow at me and it did not
hit me, right?"

"Yes, I did, and it didn't, but that does not
make it a piece of cake for me to copy the trick, pretty witch."
William read the passage in the book again. "It looks simple
enough. Umbrea. I can say the word, but..."

Hilda slumped back in her chair. "You need to
use your imagination, William. Think of air coming around you and
making a wall around you. There is no need to do it fast yet, it
would just be very nice for me to know that you can protect
yourself with that."

William tried again, but the paper ball Hilda
threw at him hit his chest. Again. With a muffled grunt he picked
it up and threw it back at her. It bumped off her protection. "I
really don't get it. Maybe you should throw an arrow at me." He
leaned on the table and studied the page again.

"I am not throwing arrows at you if you can't
even defend yourself against pieces of paper." Hilda got up. "I'm
going to watch the mirror. You, please, keep trying this.
Okay?"

She took his hands in her face. "You're mine,
William, and I aim to keep you for a very long time, so don't you
get any funny ideas in your head about getting yourself killed
because you can't defend yourself." Hilda pressed a hard kiss on
his lips. Then she let go and sat down in front of her mirror.

No matter where she looked, however, she
could not stop thinking about William's inability to handle
protection. That was crucial. Not at the moment, but with the
challenge coming closer every day...

The next morning. The couple was outside,
ready to go do the rounds.

"Very well, mister Breakneck. If you want to
try that, be my guest, but don't come whining when you fall on your
face. See, that also is where protection comes in handy." Hilda
stood looking at William, hands akimbo. He had announced that he
wanted to try and lift off by himself. "And don't get me wrong when
I stand to the side a bit, okay?"

William nodded, waited until Hilda had
reached a place that she deemed safe and mounted his broom. This
morning he felt well rested. He closed his eyes to sense the magic
inside him, and once he had located it he let it flow. It was
there, it lived inside him and it wanted to do things for him,
William knew. He held the broom with both hands and made the magic
go into it.

At first there was a mere slight tremble.
Then the broom wanted to go and it told the wizard in training, who
kicked off. The broom lifted William up. Until then everything was
going amazingly smooth. There was just one detail missing: the soft
and protective layer of air around, and most importantly, under
him. The broomstick pressed hard into his genitals and
pants-area.

William gasped for air, forgot to hold on to
the broom, tipped over, and as he went down, the broom went up.

Had it been a contest, the broom would have
won with ease. It shot up at least twelve feet with William's
weight not holding it down, where William only fell three feet.

Hilda held back a scream, the fall had
happened much sooner than she had anticipated. She squeezed her
eyes for a moment as William hit the ground, declaring it an
'oompf'. The 'ouch' sounded just a bit later as the broom, lacking
magical inspiration, came down to its lord and master that lay in a
heap.

With all dangers gone, Hilda walked over to
the fallen pilot. "Very subtle, William. This reminded me of a
flying mallet."

"Since when do mallets fly?", the man in blue
asked from his undignified position.

"Exactly."

William got the hint. He got up, brushed the
sand and grass from his robe and picked up the broom. "I assume
there is something you want to say to me?", he asked, knowing that
she had every reason to have a go at him.

Hilda shook her head. "I think we're all in
the clear now. I'll do the flying for now and you work on
protecting your ass." The sparkles in her eyes emphasised her
meaning: they were red.

As they were on their way, Hilda loosely
remarked: "Really, William, protection is very imperative. Did you
know that Babs is a master in that field? I could ask her over to
help you." His inner reaction made her giggle. She knew now that
she had a powerful incentive to make him work on it.

William was thinking about the idea of air
compacting around himself. In physics-books he had read about
compacting air, but that required large amounts of pressure. He was
convinced that Hilda used another trick. No way that she would know
about pressure and containers with air, like pressurised tanks.

"You are thinking about things of your own
world, aren't you?", Hilda asked, her broom close to William's. She
couldn't understand most of the things she sensed coming from him
through the link. The link, she thought, that so far only worked
one way.

"Yes, I am trying to think of things that
might help me get this protection bit going. I am not making much
progress with the air that you insist on."

"Yes, okay. That is good. At least you're
busy with it. Maybe in a bit you can tell me what people in your
world use for protection, but now you'd better play along. The
castle is coming up and I have a feeling that Walt wants to
play."

"I got the message, sweetheart, I'll sit back
and you do the stunts."

"Cool puppies," said Hilda, a grin on her
face. "Just you keep that hood on your head, and I don't care how
you do it."

They swooped in over the moat again, this
time Hilda made the brooms leap over the castle walls without
stressing the guards, though. The guards, new ones at the gate but
they had heard about the exercise theirfellows had already had,
kept out of sight. Hearing about that was quite enough for
them.

Walt, the king, was outside and sat on one of
the low marble benches that surrounded the magnificent fountain.
"Ah... there you are," he said as the two figures floated over the
water-display. His face brightened at the sight of the witch and
her silent companion. "I have been waiting for you... I have a new
challenge,Grimhilda, and I feel that this time I will win."

Hilda leaned forward, resting an elbow on the
bristles of her broom and putting a hand on the palm of her raised
hand. "Is that for real, my dearest king? I am game, and so is my
friend the wizard. But tell me... how does your wife like her
dancing shoes?"

Walt's face clouded slightly. "Sometimes I
have to tie her hands behind her back, she discovered that if she
puts things in her ears, she does not hear the music and then she
doesn't have to dance. But hey, we live and learn, don't we? Even
she does."

Hilda caught the gleam in the king's eye and
she knew he was all prepared to get them.

Walt's hand slowly moved to the white
handkerchief that lay on the seat next to him. Then quickly he
grabbed it and waved it while shouting: "Now, now, now!"

From behind shrubs men and women came running
with buckets of water, and inside the castle someone was working
like a sod to increase the pressure on the pipes that fed the
fountain.

Hilda shrieked her laugh as she made the
brooms jump upwards, while the water-bucket people tried to throw
the contents of their carry-on vessels over them.

William had perceived the tension building up
and all kinds of memories shot through his head. At the moment that
Hilda made their brooms tilt upwards, a vision of an airshow
floated in front of William's eyes, where he had once seen two jets
revolve around each other while red and blue smoke came from
something on their tail wings. The sudden rush, and the brooms
lifting up straight made him apprehend that sensation. The magic
that was waking up inside him was caught by the idea. Hilda sensed
it also, picked up on the idea and shrieked even harder. As she
made their brooms revolve around each other, William made coloured
smoke trail from behind the brooms. Purple from Hilda's, yellow
from his.

The cheers that came from below and the
applause that followed were the icing on the cake that the thrill
of the ascent had already provided them with.

"William, that was shiny!", Hilda exclaimed
as they had reached the highest point of their climb. She looked
back at the smoke that was being chased around by the wind, the
yellow and purple mixing and making a stunning show before it
disappeared. "How did you do that? Tell me later, we're going to
stick our tongue out at Walt first."

They spiraled downwards, without smoke.

"Very nice try, king," Hilda said. "You
almost had us there." It wasn't true, but she knew it would not
hurt to flatter the king. After all, he was the king.

The brooms swooped around the fountain and
then took off into the sky.

King Walt was satisfied. "Next time I'll get
them."

"So, how did you get that idea with the
circling and the smoke? That was so fabulous!" Hilda made a serious
attempt to smile the top part of her head off.

"It was something of my world that sort of
just popped into my head. A memory," he said. "And you picked that
up quite well!"

"This was fun! We should do things like that
more often." Hilda nodded to herself. "You made pretty colours,
William. You used magic, you know. I am proud of you for that. If
only you could make that more consistent."

"I'm working on that, Hilda. Not very fast, I
know, but I do my best. And the fact that this little bitty worked
just gave me a good idea. Coincides with your question from before,
about how people in my world protect themselves."

Hilda picked up his underlying thought. "By
using examples of your world, things you know."

"Precisely. I just have to find out what
examples work..."

"Shiny. As long as you don't start
experimenting up here, okay? It's a long way down."

William looked at the green earth and the
trees below. "No kidding. I'm not going to do anything heroic up
here, believe me." They were at least three hundred feet up in the
air. "Where are we going after the village?"

"We could go visit the shepherds again. I
know they are on a different slope today. Oh yes! Let's do that, I
suddenly thought of the most wicked idea!" Hilda beamed at him,
filling him in on her plan as they were approaching the
village.

There was no market in the square that day.
The village look a bit dull and dreary.

"Hood?", Hilda opted to William.

He winked at her, willed his hood on his head
and was ready.

"We're going to slowly cruise some of the
streets," Hilda told him. "Make them see us. I doubt there will be
anything worth doing, unless we make something happen
ourselves."

William just nodded, he knew they'd be
fine.

Hilda dropped them into one of the streets
and hovered them there for a while as she watched the few people
who were walking along or working there.

They all knew Hilda the witch and greeted her
and William. Nobody was afraid of the woman on the broom, unless
they had something on their mind. Hilda had an uncanny gift to pick
up on things like that.

Hilda floated them through the street and
from there into another one. This second one had a lot of small
workshops. Furniture was made, all by hand and beautifully made.
William was disappointed that they could not stop so he could have
a closer look.

Hilda looked at William for a moment and
smiled. She sensed how he felt. They past the shop of the tailor
and the seamstress, the house of the woman who cooked for the sick
and the elderly and at the end of the street was the shop of Johan
the mirror-maker. "We'll go in here," she said to William as they
were out of earshot from anyone. "This is a nice person, he makes
my mirrors."

Well-trained, William got off the broom and
held it in his hand until he knew what Hilda was doing. She winked
and simply put hers against the wall of the shop.

"Hello Johan, my favourite mirror-maker!"
Hilda came in and it was impossible not to notice her. There were
two customers in the shop, who respectfully backed away as the
witch and her silent companion entered the shop.

"Honourable witch," Johan said, from behind
his work table. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"Nah, everything's fine. I just wanted my
friend the wizard to meet you. This is Johan," she said to
William.

"Hello, honourable wizard," Johan said. He
did not come to greet William as he was working on a crucial part
of a mirror.

William made a slight bow, keeping his
silence. He hoped that was the appropriate thing to do. He had the
time of his life, so to speak, to be in this little shop and see
what was going on, to smell the real life of this town.

"My friend the wizard may be around for a
little longer," Hilda told Johan, "and I thought that it would be
good if you meet him. It could be that he needs a mirror in the
future, so it makes things easier if you have seen each other."