Hilda and Zelda (10 page)

The stream of liquid washed down the stairs
and flooded the elevator shafts that had never before been cleaned
so thoroughly. The smell of alcohol slowly rose up from the street
that was the final destination of the flow, which damaged just
about everything inside the building.

The witch and the wizard hung on their
brooms, high up and well out of reach of the fumes that were slowly
coming upwards, despite the frost that still was in the ground.

"How long do you think we'll have to wait
before it's safe to go in?", Hilda asked. "I've never attacked
someone with so much of that, so it's a gamble for me as well."

Knowing how badly she held her liquor, with
even diluted wine, William said she should stay outside and he
would fly by to have a look.

"Be careful, William, you don't sense where
she is," Hilda warned him as he flew off.

William slowly approached the building.

Below, people were streaming into the street,
as they had noticed the strange happening in town hall. Nobody
wanted to miss what was now going on there.

The wizard lowered his broom to the floor
where he had found Zelda. Their flood had cleaned out the offices.
The furniture, desks and chairs, lay on the ground. The bodies of
the people he had seen in the offices lay among them, arms and legs
pointing in strange directions.

Zelda's throne had not fallen down yet, it
hung outside the building, caught in a web of electrical wires.

The smell of the alcohol wasn't bad, William
noticed. He popped up his wand, cast a spell, and most of the
alcohol was gone. Slowly he flew into the building, through what
once had been a wall of glass.

Hilda had caught what he'd done to the
alcohol-wash and deemed it safe to go after William, so not much
later they both were in the desolate building.

"She's not here, William," Hilda said.
"Either she's dead or she's gone."

They shared an unruly feeling that Zelda was
not dead.

"Crappedy crap, William, she got away. I'm
sure. Somehow she must have picked up on something."

"Or she was gone earlier..." William hovered
his broom next to the destroyed throne. There was a silver band
hanging from it that was wrung and out of shape. He picked it from
the hook it somehow had remained on and handed it to Hilda. "I've
seen her wear this."

Hilda examined the disfigured headband.
"Looks like you are right. She would not leave this behind. She was
going to come back."

"What is that thing?", William asked.

"I'll tell you later. When we're back in the
apartment."

William looked around. "The town council
won't love us for this," he said as he took in the devastation they
had created with the liquid shockwave.

"We can help clean the mess up later,
William," said Hilda. "First we need to get Zelda-"

"Hello you two up there!" A loud voice,
electronically amplified, boomed up to them. A group of four
policemen had taken position in front of the building.

Hilda turned. "What?"

"You are under arrest!"

"Oh, okay!" Hilda, not at all impressed,
turned back to William. "As I said, first we need to get Zelda, and
that might make that we break some more-"

"This is the police! We order you to come
down so we can arrest you!"

Hilda rolled her eyes and sighed. "If you
want us, then at least come up and get us. Do something for your
silver," she yelled back at the policeman. Her response triggered a
subdued wave of laughter going through the crowd that had
gathered.

The strong arm of the law stood and
conferred, debating if it was wise to actually enter an unsafe
building and try to capture two people who were flying on
brooms.

"You are the insubordinates here," the
policeman tried as they failed to reach a decision, "therefore you
are required to surrender!"

"Okay. That's it." Hilda swung her broom
round and dropped to the policemen's level. William was right
behind her.

"Now listen," she said to the megaphoned man.
"We may be the insubordinates here, whatever animal that is, but we
are also the ones with the brooms and the wands. It will take you a
good deal more than words to get us. And then something: you are
not really doing what you can to catch the witch that's around. At
least we do something. Now leave us be and do something
sensible."

As she was ending her tirade, one of the
policemen quickly slapped handcuffs on the witch. "You, lady, are
under arrest. Get off that... broom."

Hilda looked at the metal rings around her
wrists. She wiggled her nose and the handcuffs sprung open. "How
neat. Toys. Thank you."

On her signal through the link, William and
she climbed into the air quickly and shot away towards another part
of town. A place where their apartment was not.

In the crowd, a slender woman with a pale
face and black hair, all dressed in black, slowly unfolded her
fists. Her nails had dug into her palms; blood slowly trickled from
the wounds. "I'll get you, you bitch witch," Zelda muttered.

"She was around, William."

They were taking a large detour back to the
apartment. Hilda had sensed Zelda.

"And we did not do a thing to get her?",
William asked.

"Indeed. Too many people around. Someone as
crazy as Zelda can inflict any kind of harm on them. I don't want
that to happen. But she was there and not in the building."

The wizard understood the implication. "She's
seen us and knows we're still alive."

"Yes. So we lost our advantage. And I still
wonder how she knew we were planning something," Hilda said as they
started back towards their temporary home.

"Maybe she was planning something as well,
and was out for that reason." William shrugged. "Hard to tell
without asking her."

"Seriously... She does like to live big here,
though. Perhaps the next place she takes over is a big building
also. Any idea what's bigger than the town hall building?"

"Plenty of choices, I'd say. The library, the
cinema, the theatre."

"Crappedy crap, William, looks like we might
need to relocate also..." Hilda stared down at the street they were
flying over, where many people were looking up at them. Somehow the
news of the witch and wizard living nearby had spread.

"Do you think Jeff, the neighbour's kid, did
not keep his mouth shut?"

Hilda shook her long grey mane. "Doubt that,
sweet man. He was scared enough after being a frog for a few
seconds. I'm sure he's not our worry."

"Then someone must have spotted us flying
off," William concluded.

It seemed the only viable alternative. The
closer they came to their part-time home, the thicker the crowd in
the streets became. Voices from below came up to greet them as they
were lowering their brooms a bit.

"Crappedy crap."

The gallery that ran in front of the
apartments on the floor where they had taken up residence was
littered with people, all looking out for them, pointing, waving,
shouting.

Hilda and William stopped in mid-air. "What
do you think they want?"

"We should ask, I think." William flew his
broom closer to the building. "Hey, what're you looking for?"

"We want to see you!", someone yelled. "And
we have some things for you to do with your magic!"

"And we want a broom like that!", another
voice called out.

The noise from the voices became louder and
louder, from the building as well as from the street below.

William steered his broom back to Hilda and
together they rose up high, to get away from the cries. "Looks like
we have lost our advantage there also. Is there anything in that
apartment we'd need?"

Hilda shook her head. "No, nothing magical
there. We just need a new place to stay, clearly. And that might
get tricky. We're known now."

"Indeed... we should be able to find a way to
become unknown though," William said. He started to smile.

"And you know the way, right?"

"Follow me." William led Hilda to the
outskirts of town, where he knew a few stores. At least, they had
been there before he had left this world to end up in Hilda's. For
once the torn up streets were in their favour: there were no people
able to follow them quickly, as cars were either destroyed or
unable to drive along.

The area was close to deserted. It had always
been a miracle for William how enterprises in that part of town
managed to stay in business. Things had changed somewhat, but it
was still very recognisable for the wizard.

The place had been a military base of some
sort, and after it had been abandoned, the government had agreed
that it could be transformed into a business area, for offices,
trucking companies and some wholesalers. Most of the fence around
the premises had been taken down, but for originality's sake, most
buildings had been left the way they were.

"So, what's here?" Hilda looked over the camp
gone commercial as they hovered over the roof of the highest
building.

"Clothes," said William, "and if all things
are the way I remember them, a hiding place also. And yes, that
sounds wrong."

"Why is that wrong?"

"We're here to capture Zelda. And in trying
that, we need to hide from the people we're trying to save."

"As I said, that sounds wrong," Hilda agreed.
She popped up her wand as William looked round. "Over there,
William." She pointed.

"Over there what?"

"Hiding place. Even when it sounds
wrong."

Hilda was pointing towards a small shed that
seemed wedged between a giant warehouse on the left and what looked
like a garage for trucks on the right. There was no apparent
opening, like a door. They saw no windows either. Just a wall of
dark brown brick with a roof of something dark grey.

From the building on the right, a mighty roar
emerged. It was followed by thick, black smoke billowing out of the
opening.

"Suck an elf," Hilda muttered. The sound had
surprised her. "What monster lives in there? Perhaps the shed isn't
such a good idea after all."

The roar stopped.

"It's a machine, Hilda. Probably a truck. A
big truck."

"Can we go see the big truck?" A childlike
happy expression jumped up to her face and hung on.

"Sure. Let's find a way to get there withoug
being seen."

Hilda had already figured out the way to go,
using her wand, so they soon arrived on the roof of the building
that was for certain a workshop for trucks. There were several
hatches on the roof, some of them opened for fresh air and an
improvised vent for the smoke. Hilda knelt down on the roof and
peered into the huge building.

William sat next to her and saw four men
working on a big White Freightliner truck.

"Doesn't look like your truck, William."
Hilda shook her head. "Yours was a lot smaller."

"Trucks come in many sizes. Small ones like
mine, and big ones like that."

"Oh! Are there even bigger ones?" Hilda's
face betrayed that she suddenly was fascinated by this colossus of
the road.

"I'm sure there are, but not here," said
William.

They agreed to have a closer look at the
shed, since they were there anyway. They found, looking down from
the roof, that the shed was bigger than they had thought. Although
it was no more than fifteen feet wide, it was at least fifty feet
deep as it ran halfway along the two big buildings. On broomsticks,
the magical couple dropped to the ground, into the alleyway that
made up the rest of the space that the two buildings left between
them.

"Oh, look!" Hilda pointed at the roof of the
long shed. It stuck out several feet from the back wall, so there
was some kind of covered open area. And in the back wall of the
shed was an opening. Evidently there also had been a door once; the
twisted hinges were the silent, rusty evidence of that.

"This is a nice place, William," the witch
conveyed her feelings. "Could do with a bit of paint, but still."
She quickly repressed that thought. Suppose this shed would put up
as much of a fight about the colours as her own house always did.
She was not going there.

The majestic roar of the truck's engine
prevented William from responding, so he just pointed at the
opening and went inside the shed, stepping over all kinds of metal
and wooden bits that someone had left there. Hilda was on his
heels.

Wands came out, lights came on. Brooms were
mounted, and the magical two slowly floated through the shed after
magic had cleaned their shoes. The floor of the shed was covered
with some sticky stinky gunk. William could only guess what it was
and he would probably be wrong.

Scattered everywhere in the shed were loads
of big things. Halfway disassembled engines of trucks, two empty
fuel tanks of epic proportions, a huge workbench with an amount of
tools on it that would be the envy of the average hardware
shop.

"William, this is a treasure," Hilda
whispered, the echo of her voice hissing after them.

"We can use a lot of it, yes. Let's first mop
the floor a bit so we can walk around and organise things
here."

Half an hour later they were done. The floor
was clean. The gunk was stowed in the large fuel tanks, most of the
large objects were shoved to the far end of the shed and some of
them had been transformed into simple conveniences, like a bed, a
table, some chairs, a small kitchen and a luxury privy.

"Now. Clothes and food."

"Food, then clothes," Hilda corrected the
wizard. "Fastfood." She swung her wand, and there was food on the
table. "Very fast food."

The food was devoured almost as fast as it
had been called into existence. Then the two magical people
transformed their magical robes into regular clothes.

Hilda muttered about that. "I hate doing
this. The dress always feels awkward for a while when I change it
back."