Forever Green

~ 7 ~ Witch Song

It had happened again.

Theiden stared up at the rafters in disbelief. He squeezed his eyes shut, and then reopened them. Sure enough, sunlight had found its way up to his cot in the loft, spilling over the stacks of books walled around him and giving a golden hue to the motes of dust floating in the air.

It was dawn—in other words, he had slept soundly through the night and failed to kill the witch. Again.

Like the previous morning, the witch was somehow up before he was—a fact evidenced by the muffled sounds of life coming from downstairs. Theiden wondered if creatures like her ever actually slept.

Sighing in annoyance, Theiden got to his feet. He ignored the fresh set of clothes laid out for him and instead made his way through the maze of books to the loft ladder. This time, there was no cat-shaped witchlight to eye him from the armchair as his feet touched the floor.

The witch was chopping fruit on a cutting board in the kitchen, and Theiden slowly approached her, keeping his eyes on the blade.

"Good morning," the witch began, much as she had the day before.

"How long are you going to keep me here?" he said, ignoring her greeting. It would certainly never be a good morning until the witch was dead, and he was free of her.

A slight twitch of her lips was the only indication of the creature's displeasure. "There are only two ways that you can leave this place," she said. "Either I let you go, or you kill me."

"Until today, then," Theiden answered his own question. He lunged for the knife in the witch's hands, but she stepped back just in time to evade him. There was the sound of metal slicing through the air, and for a moment, Theiden found his vision obscured by a whirl of ocean blue fabric. Then he felt the sharp chill at his neck.

The witch had moved behind him, and was now pressing the blade of the knife against his skin.

"You're a hunter, aren't you?" she asked coldly. "Those knives you were carrying when we met looked like they had been well-used."

The blade slowly traced its way up his neck, and Theiden had to fight back the instinct to shiver as the witch continued. Her breath ghosted across the skin at his nape, just as cold as the weapon in her hand.

"You know how to kill, but you're irrational when you're angry. You might as well be a baker who over-samples his own pastries, for all the grace you had when you attacked me just now. Careless."

Finally, Theiden felt her step away, and the metal dropped from his neck.

"I'll be sure to be more efficient next time," he growled.

The witch chuckled humorlessly. "You have a long way to go yet, before you can be called efficient."

Theiden clenched his jaw. "I will kill you, one day."

"Yes, yes, I deserve nothing short of a painful death for being such a horrid creature—something along those lines, am I correct?"

The witch didn't seem too bothered by his threat, and it only angered Theiden more. He fought to keep his expression neutral.

"You can't keep me here forever," he argued.

To his surprise, the woman nodded and washed off the knife at the sink.

"You're right. It's good to move around. Perhaps we shall travel to a different mountain, in a few years."

She stored the knife in a drawer, and looked up. Upon seeing Theiden's frustrated expression, the creature only widened her wicked grin.