A Wicca's Tale Book One: Beautiful Magic

The Inn

Chapter Three: The Inn

Luna was touching her newly shorn hair. I’d never cut anyone's hair before, and quite honestly, I was surprised that she had let me that close to her neck with a sharp object. I was inspecting my hasty work on her hair with my small dagger, ready to cut off any stray locks. "So how does it look?" Luna asked.

"Not bad," I said looking at her face in contrast with her newly cut locks, "You look really different with short hair."

"This feels so weird though," she said, "I feel like a giant weight had been lifted from my head and I'm in danger of floating off."

I laughed and decided to give her my honest opinion, “Well, you don’t look entirely like a girl from the back,” I said. “My clothes really help with that though.” I’d given her a spare set of clothes that were too small for me. However, they were too big and they swallowed her. On the other hand though, it hid her woman’s figure, so Luna looked more like a boy. I handed her the dagger so she could look at my work.

Her hair was cut to the nape of her neck and with it brushed a different way, she looked a bit like a boy, but---. “It’s no use,” she said to me. “I just don’t look like a boy from the front.”

I couldn't help but agree with her. Luna's feminine face was just too prominent. I frowned and cocked my head to the side. “Maybe if you put on a hat it would help.” I reached into my pack and pulled out a farmer’s hat, worn on the sides and made of leather. I pulled it on her head. The hat went past her ears and eyebrows. I guessed that she could barely see. I grinned, “Nice, you’re sure to attract all the girls in town like that.”

She rolled her eyes , “I don’t care how attractive I may look, I just want to know if I can pass as a boy.”

“Sure, if no one looks closely, you could be a boy,” I said.

A little relieved, she sat down and asked, “So where do plan to go exactly? You must have some sort of idea.”

I shrugged, “Not really, I was just planning on walking till I hit something.”

“Smart plan,” Luna said, “Look where it got me.”

“Touché,” I replied, “Well I suppose we could look at a map and keep walking. We are pretty far from where I came from and we might be close enough to a town to stop for the night.”

“Okay,” she said, “Do you have a map?”

I reached into my pack and pulled out the stolen map. “Sorry about the paper,” I said. It was all crumpled up from the days in my pack and wasn't as good looking as when I had first acquired it, “I didn’t really have a lot of money to spend on expensive maps.”

She opened it up and looked. “Well, I don’t exactly know where we are, but I can use some magic to search.” I was surprised at that, I didn't think she was so advanced at magic. From what she had told me while I was cutting her hair, she had never had a formal trainer and had learned everything by herself.

Nevertheless, she put a finger on the compass at the bottom of the map. A slight buzz filled the air and I felt a tingle in the pit of my stomach. The compass on the map lit up and the light traveled across the map to rest on one place called The Woods of Brutus. Nearest to the woods was a town called Circa. “We could stop at this town,” she said looking back at me. I just stared at her with an amused look. “What?” she asked.

I looked away so she wouldn't see the lie in my eyes, “Nothing, its just that, I’ve never seen anyone do magic before.” I couldn't let her know, not yet.

She looked at me strangely and said, “I thought you said you had witches in your village?”

“I did,” I said quickly, regretting my slip in words before, “I just never saw them do any magic, they only did it on special occasions. Somehow, I never got to see them, my mother kept me home.” I tried to pass this story off as convincing as possible and not allow the pain to show in my eyes.