Hilda and Zelda (6 page)

"They don't need us," William decided. "I
suggest we go back to the room that Bert allowed us, and rest up a
bit. And we should see about some food also."

Food was no problem, of course, their magic
was more than capable of producing some.

"I miss the crazy kitchen," William said as
they lay on the bed, staring into the darkness.

"It's not crazy, sweet man. It just has an
attitude. Like a witch does. It's this world that's crazy." Hilda
snuggled up to her wizard. "And there's something else I have to
tell you."

"Which would be?"

"I love you." She pressed her lips against
his cheek.

-=-=-

The next morning came with a loud noise. The
couple flew from the bed and looked out of the window. An army tank
moved through the street. The machine had problems conquering the
debris that was in front of it, but it made progress.
Unfortunately, it was going the wrong way, as O'Malley's was down
the other side of the street.

"Crappedy crap," Hilda muttered, "that's no
way to wake up a witch." She was tempted to use her wand on the
noise-maker.

"Let's wait until they're gone before we go
out," William suggested.

"No. We have to move now. It must have woken
up Zelda too. Provided she was asleep at all." Hilda had a point,
so they opened the window and flew out, to the former pub. They
climbed high, hoping the people in the tank would not notice
them.

Around the bar everything was silent. Very
silent. Zelda had put up some kind of dampening spell, Hilda told
William.

"That should mean she's in. Let's pay her a
visit."

That was easier said than done, though. The
spell was obviously intended to keep out more than just sound.

"Not one for visitors, is she?", William
muttered as they did not get through the shielding.

Hilda nodded as she looked up. "Ah. Window.
Maybe..." She launched herself with the broom. "Crap." The window
was sealed also.

William got an idea as he saw Hilda work. He
went to the roof of the building and found it was possible to make
an opening in there. "Hilda, up here."

"Good wizarding, William," she said.

William went down the hole first, having more
experience with measurements of normal houses. Then Hilda followed,
trusting William to catch her as she was coming down. Her trust was
not in vain. Once in the attic of the building, Hilda took her wand
and scanned if the protection that Zelda had put up was near.
Things seemed safe though.

Lighting their way with their wands, they
found a door that led to a staircase, so down they went. Silence
had claimed the building. It was shockingly present everywhere. It
seemed to bounce off the walls that they passed and it ran up the
stairs to meet them.

Hilda looked at William and put a finger on
her lips. They had to be silent. Slowly and with the utmost care
they walked down the stairs. Hilda knew that she should not try a
silencing spell of her own, as that would clash with the thing
Zelda had put up. Walking down screaming and stomping would be
smarter.

As they descended further, the effect of the
dampening spell became more prominent as moving became harder.
Hilda silently cursed the spell, but persisted. Somewhere there had
to be an end to this beast. Through the bond she encouraged William
to keep coming down.

They had to be close to the exit of the
spell, Hilda was certain. After all, Zelda herself had to be able
to move freely inside it. Just as she reached the landing on the
lower floor, her foot was free of the syrup-like resistance they
were pushing themselves through. With care Hilda dragged herself
out of the layer that made up the spell and waited for William,
notifying him that the ordeal was almost over.

William left the invisible tar pit and saw
Hilda again holding her finger over her lips. Of course. Now they
were in the open, so sound would travel normally again. He
nodded.

They moved to the staircase that would get
them to the ground floor, where Zelda probably was. As Hilda put
her foot on the first step, an eerie wailing reached their
ears.

"She's singing," Hilda whispered, rectifying
William's initial idea of the source of the sound.

"That's singing?", he whispered back.

Hilda nodded. "She probably knows we're here
by now. I sense her clearly as well." She progressed downwards, the
wizard in her wake, and when she reached the bottom of the stairs,
she simply kicked open the door.

The interior of the bar had declined even
more since their first visit. All the furniture, coloured black
now, was piled up in a corner of the large room. In several places
large and ferocious-looking plants grew out of the floor. The large
brown flower-heads turned towards the magical couple as they came
in. They did what probably was the plant-version of drooling. A
large bed stood in the middle of the room, black with everything on
and around it black. On it lay a person. Dressed in black. The
dreadful wailing came from the bed and only stopped as Hilda and
William walked over and looked at Zelda.

"Oh. It's you," the woman in black said. She
had a deadly pale face, long black hair, and black fingernails. One
would almost think she was fond of black.

"Yes. It's me. And William. And you're coming
back with us. You have no business here, in this world."

"Hahaha!!" Zelda sat up and laughed at the
couple. "But you are so wrong, honey. This place is my business as
of now. I like it here, there is so much to play with and so much
to get!" Suddenly Zelda had her wand in her hand and flicked it.
Hilda and William wanted to jump but the bad witch had taken them
by surprise.

One of the large plants swung at them and
slammed them to the floor, making them roll away from the bed, back
towards the door. Another large plant seemed to fall on top of
Zelda, sucking her into the large flowery head. It swung away from
the bed and put Zelda on her feet close to the exit that led to the
street. "Best for you if you go home, Grimhilda. This was a
friendly reminder not to mess with me. Next time it will be
unpleasant." A flick of the wand later, the plant that had knocked
over Hilda and William dropped a load of sticky and foul-smelling
goo over them.

"Oh. Maybe this time it is unpleasant
already." Zelda laughed, took her broom and walked out, lifting the
silencing spell for a moment.

"Crap." Hilda meant it. "Oh crappedy crap!"
Quickly she got her wand out and magicked the goo away from herself
and William.

"Holy Bejeebus, Hilda, that was just in
time," William gasped as the goo disappeared from his face. It had
started to crystallise, immobilising them and also doing a fair bit
of suffocating.

"She's bad news, William. Very bad news. We
have to handle her with care."

"How on earth do you take on a witch like
that? She doesn't seem to know the existence of the word
mercy."

"Mercy? What's that?" Hilda looked at him in
surprise. Then, at his astounded face, she had to laugh. "Sorry,
sweet man, I could not resist. Let's go and get our brooms. Good
thing we left them on the roof, not the first place she'll look for
them, if she does at all."

Zelda had left a rather simple spell in place
to keep curious people out. It was not a problem for the magical
couple, and soon they were outside, in the street. They summoned
their brooms that came falling down from the roof and calmly landed
in the waiting hands.

"Where would she have gone," William
wondered. He tried to think of something that could be interesting
for a really bad-tempered witch from his new world.

A sound overhead took precedence over
William's thoughts. Hilda also looked up, at what the source of the
noise could be. What William already feared was true. And this time
indeed, it was the worst kind.

A helicopter of a news station flew over the
buildings in the street. It flew dangerously low. It also flew very
slowly.

"Is it okay if I borrow your crappedy crap,
Hilda?" Because it was in place. From inside the helicopter a large
camera protruded, and it was pointing at them.

"We can do something about that," Hilda said.
She already raised her wand.

"Perhaps it's better if we don't, sweetwitch.
They're definitely filming us and if we use magic, we'll attract
even more attention than we already do."

The next moment, a black flash shot out of a
sidestreet and came to a halt in front of the helicopter. It was
Zelda. And she was curious. She flew around the helicopter a few
times, making the cameraman as well as the pilot rather upset.

"William?"

"Yes?"

"If you want, you can borrow it as often as
you need to. Oh crap."

Somehow Zelda's attention was pointed to the
two people on the ground: she had turned her broom and was coming
towards them at an insane speed, wand pointing and spraying
sparks.

Hilda as well as William cast protection
spells around themselves, jumped on their brooms and flew off in
opposite directions. William feared that the people in the news
helicopter would have the day of their lives. And hopefully it
would not be their last one.

The building they had been in front of
suffered severely from the fireworks that Zelda was spraying around
from her wand. She screamed in anger as she saw the two fly off,
hesitating as she tried to decide which of them she should chase
down first.

Hilda and William turned sharply, the air
around them seemed to protest against this brutal treatment. Wands
drawn, they charged at Zelda, slamming her with magic from both
sides. It was not holding the raging witch. Zelda pulled her broom
up steeply, swinging her wand wildly. Hilda and William had to
retreat as the mad witch was not paying attention to where she was
spreading her doom.

"Suck an elf," Hilda growled as William had
joined her again. "She's really gone bonkers, William."

"You can say that again, Hilda."

"What would that add to the situation?", she
wondered, making William laugh.

"I'll explain later. Now, first we have a
witch to catch."

"Hey, you!", a voice interrupted their talk.
It came from a man yelling into a megaphone. He was inside the
helicopter that was slowly approaching them.

"Not them, not now," William grumbled.

"Can't we just fly off and do what we have
to?", Hilda proposed.

"We want to talk to you!", the amplified
voice boomed.

"We don't want to talk to you, however,"
William said, nodded at Hilda, and they flew off. Quickly.

"So now we have two problems," Hilda decided.
"Zelda's the main one, and these people in that flying machine are
the second."

"Yup. We can ignore the second for now, as
they're not able to keep up with us. But they probably filmed a lot
of us, and Zelda. And they're not going to present that as special
effects."

"Sometimes, William, you still say the
weirdest things."

They rose up to above the buildings of the
town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the runaway witch, but as they
had already expected, Zelda had found refuge somewhere. And she had
not left a neon sign pointing in her direction.

"Oh, shiny," Hilda muttered. "We had her, she
had us, and now we're back at the start again. And she knows that
we're here."

"Indeed. But she has the same problem we
have: she doesn't know where we are staying."

Hilda looked around. "This village is very
large. We're going to have a very interesting time here. And the
village will never be the same again after that, I tell you."

William nodded. "It's not the same anymore
since Zelda got here, so we can only add to the damage."

The news-helicopter came after them again.
"Hello?", the amplified man said.

"I suddenly feel like adding to the damage,"
said Hilda as she made her wand appear. Before William could react,
she swooped to the helicopter and hovered close to it, apparently
unaffected by the turbulence of the big rotor-blades.

"Hey you," she said to the reporter inside
the helicopter. The camera-man was struggling to get the best
footage of this strange woman on her broom. "You are making things
hard on us. We're here to catch a witch and now you are on our tail
all the time. We have enough on our hands without you, so you can
either go away by yourself, or I will make you go away. And what's
that thing?" She pointed at the camera.

"That? Oh, that's nothing," the reporter
tried to stall.

"Really. If it's nothing, you can do without
it." Hilda swung her wand, said some Latin, hit it right the first
time, and the camera fell apart in many tiny bits. "Now you can go.
There's nothing."

The reporter and the camera-man stared at the
now worthless expensive camera.

"Hey you. I'm waiting. Go before I- Oh, suck
an elf. Recidi. Goodbye..."

As the witch flew back to the waiting wizard,
the helicopter started to descend to the ground. The pilot fought
the controls all he could, but there was no way his flying skills
were a match for magic. An additional problem he faced was that the
rotors were no match for the buildings that were just too close to
the helicopter.

"What did you tell them?", William asked as
the helicopter fell the last few feet to streetlevel.

"Oh, just that they should leave before I
made them," Hilda shrugged.

"Right. They didn't."

"Indeed. So I did it for them. Now, where can
Zelda be?"

They spent a long time looking for the wild
witch, but to no avail.

"We'll probably have to wait until she makes
a move again," said Hilda. "And that sucks. I hate waiting."

"We can go find some food," William
suggested.

"Okay. Let's do that..."

-=-=-

They did not find a new trace of Zelda that
day. After food and cruising over the town for a while, they
decided to give up for the day and retreated to the room Bert had
made available to them. It was still in one piece, so they assumed
Zelda did not know where they stayed. Still, before laying down,
they spun a light web of magic around the building that housed the
bookstore, so they would be alerted if someone magical came
near.