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This is a book I've been posting for a while now. The links to the previous posts will be at the end of this post.
Chapter Two (part 2)
They started walking towards the voice, Milo leading the pack this time, followed closely by Mary and then Marvin. After some seconds, they were standing in the presence of a living breathing human being.
She was like a normal human being, Marvin was surprised. The end of the cave was well lit with candles. The light reflected on her silver-grey hair. Her hair covered her face as her head was bowed like she was looking at her feet.
She raised her head revealing her pale face, she looked like a vampire that had been blood starved. She smiled and exposed the perfect set of teeth. When you think of a disarming smile, this was it. The trio was immediately distracted, a frail looking silver haired witch was in their presence but damn look at that smile.
The witch was sitting on a rock that was shaped like a table, her two hands by her sides holding the rocky platform and her legs drawing some patterns on the sandy floor of the cave. She looked at the trio and whispered, “Welcome to my world, my name is Argenta, and I am the most powerful witch of the new world”.
Her voice and the way she talked sent shivers down Marvin’s spine. He just stood there trying not to look afraid. The cave was quite cold, but he was feeling sweat running down his back, he was rubbing his palms on his jeans to dry the pool of sweat that had settled there.
Argenta then stood up and walked towards Milo who was still in front of the group and stretched out her palm to shake him, “Nice to meet you Milo”, she said.
Milo was mortified, but somehow his hand managed to move to shake the witch, maybe it was reflex or not. Just as their hands were about to meet, his hand hit a wall, an invisible wall. He could see past a certain point, but he couldn’t go past that certain point.
Argenta smiled and said, “Don’t worry kid, my world is also my prison, and no human being gets past that point”.
Mary and Marvin couldn’t believe their eyes, so they both tried to move beyond the invisible wall, it was surreal, there is a space in front of you but you can’t occupy it. Wow. This was interesting. There was really magic at play here, if they was even a doubt at this point, it had disappeared.
Argenta looked at them as they took turns trying to gain access to her cell, it was almost funny to her, but then she couldn’t allow this to continue, so she asked, “Does any of you have any object you can throw, on you? A button? Or you can pick the sand on the ground and throw it here.”
So Marvin dried off his hand one more time, picked up the sand on the ground and threw it and it passed the invisible wall. Mary brought out a coin from her pocket and flung it at the open space in front of them and just like the sand it landed on the other side.
The witch observed their faces and saw their fear and decided to calm them down, “I was put here by some witches, some jealous witches, they were afraid they would become irrelevant, I was providing for the poor when the other witches only served the rich.
They asked for expensive gifts to heal people, and I only required a fair reward for my troubles.”The witch kept looking at their faces to know if they were interested in her story as she kept talking, “I have been confined to this cave ever since with nobody to talk to and nothing to do, I don’t even know how much time that has passed”.
Marvin looked at the witch and asked, “Our friend here”, hinting at Mary, “Said you could do some magic tricks, if so, why haven’t you been able to escape with your magic?”
Argenta looked at Marvin and laughed. “It’s not that easy, and perhaps I don’t know the details of the spell they cast, so I wouldn’t know how to undo it”, the witch replied.
She looked at their faces and knew she was boring them and decided to distract them with a few tricks, “Hey, who wants to see a magic trick?”
A faint smile appeared on Milo’s face because that’s exactly why he was there. He came to see magic. “I heard you can make things appear from thin air?” he asked.“That depends on what you want”, Argenta replied.
“I don’t want much, I just want to see magic”, Milo said.
The witch bowed her head and walked around for a bit like she was thinking about what she would do to garner applause from this miniature crowd.
And then she looked up, eyes glowing like she knew exactly what to do. “Stretch your hands forward, Milo.”Milo stretched his hands forward and a bird cage appeared in his hands, he was amazed, he couldn’t believe his eyes.“I’m not done yet”, Argenta said, “pick up sand from the ground and throw it into the cage”.
Milo put the cage on the ground threw sand into it and a bird appeared inside, he couldn’t contain his excitement, he just started laughing uncontrollably.
“You can take the bird home; it’s yours now, think of it as a souvenir, a gift from the witch in the cave to you”.
Mary and Marvin couldn’t believe their eyes, and they asked the witch for their own pet birds. She agreed and very soon they all had birds of their own.
Marvin looked at the witch and asked her, “So what else can you do apart from ice cream and birds?”
“I think you should be asking what can I not do”, the witch replied while scanning their faces, observing their reactions to what she was saying, “Everything comes at a price and the limit, really, is your imagination.”
Mary’s eyes lit up with the thought of the things that can be wished for, and she then asked, “So you can really do anything, as in anything at all?”
“Well obviously, not everything, I can’t leave this cave even if someone told me to, I can’t kill someone, I can’t make someone fall in love with another person, I can’t bring someone back from the dead and some other limitations”, the witch replied.
“We are not those kind of humans, we don’t want to kill anyone or bring anyone back from the dead, and it’s getting late, we would like to be on our way home, thank you for the birds”, Marvin said.
“You are leaving already? The witch asked.
“Come again some other time, I will be waiting for you, my friends.”
As they walked out of the cave, Milo tapped Marvin’s shoulder from behind to ask him why he wanted to leave so soon, and Marvin put his index finger to his own lips to signal Milo to keep quiet.
When they got outside and arranged their birdcages on their bikes, Marvin spoke up, “I don’t think we should come back to this place to see this woman.”
“Why?” Milo and Mary asked in unison.
“Personally, I think she’s cool”, Milo added.
“She’s cool? Didn’t you see how she was looking at us? To be honest, I felt uncomfortable there. In case you people forgot what she said, she is in prison inside there; nice people don’t get imprisoned, do they?” Marvin was almost shouting.
Mary was tired of listening, and she decided to pitch in, “Clearly you were not listening very well, did you not hear when she said she was put there because her peers were jealous?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m certainly not coming back here, I don’t know about you guys”, Marvin said as he moved his bike. As he was riding away he said, “And if any of you come back here, I’m going to tell their parents.”
Milo and Mary quietly climbed their bicycles and rode home.
Back in the cave after the trio left, the once empty cave was starting to get filled up as different things appeared, from voodoo dolls to mirrors to scattered pages of different books glued to the walls. They were multiple volumes of magazines stacked from the floor to the ceiling.
Argenta had cast an illusion spell in the cave to make it appear like it was empty. A parrot appeared and flew towards her, landed on a rock near her and said, “It seems you have new friends already. You know for someone serving a life sentence in solitary confinement, you make a lot of new friends all the time.”
The witch turned her eyes to the parrot and it flew away to the far side of the cave. She stood up and moved towards the parrot’s new position.
The parrot feared the worst and pleaded, “Before you do anything rash, remember I’m your only company in here.”
The witch walked to where the parrot was pleading, and went back to her former position and then back and forth and again and again. She was lost in thought.
The parrot after finding out that he had exaggerated Argenta’s temper slowly asked, “So what do you intend to do the children?”
Argenta with a wry smile on her face, “They are my ticket out of here, but they don’t know it yet.”
The parrot flew and landed on her shoulder as if it wanted to whisper in her ears, “Do you have a plan in place?”
“Just be a good parrot and shut up please, you are going to be doing a lot these coming weeks”, Argenta replied.