The White Witch was certainly a strange character.
She had used the metaphor of the plates to explain to me that each person’s definition of a beautiful plate was different. But if I were to follow that example, I think her plate would probably have been quite odd looking to most people.
After all, she took me, a complete stranger with absolutely no blood relation to her, as her pupil to study magic. She said it was wasteful for her to live alone in her overly large mansion and provided me with a room. Then she taught me everything about magic, starting with the fundamentals.
“I’m sure you’re eager to get back to your travels as soon as possible, but you can’t. There are too many bad people out there, and a young girl like you traveling on her own is a tempting target, easy to trick. It’s plainly obvious that if I let you go as you are now, you’ll be tricked in the same way again.”
“Well then, what should I do?”
I tilted my head questioningly, and she told me, as if it was the simplest thing in the world, “Become a witch. Show me proof that you are a mage in possession of advanced knowledge and skills and that you are powerful enough to use them. After all, I’m not going to permit you to return to your travels until you become a witch,” she said.
She was a strict but kind witch.
Day by day, she taught me not only how to handle my magic but also guidelines for traveling and other things that would generally be considered common sense.
Apparently, she was a witch of some standing in that country.
Every day, all kinds of people knocked on the gates to her estate with various requests. Whether she gave them the help they were seeking depended on the money they offered. She wouldn’t take a job for too little money, and she wouldn’t take one for too much money either.
When I asked her why, she answered, “Respectable people know better than to try to hire a witch for a pittance. And people who offer too much money almost always have hidden circumstances that they don’t disclose at the time they make their request.”
So she only accepted commissions from just the right type of people who offered her just the right amount of money, she said.
“Is that your definition of normal, Miss?”
“I suppose it is.” The White Witch nodded.
About five years after that, on my fifteenth birthday, I fastened a corsage of bellflowers to my chest. My training had begun to bear fruit, and so I became a witch’s apprentice.
My intense training in genuine magic began the day my apprenticeship started.
If I wanted to spend my life traveling, then I had to learn every possible kind of spell that would allow me to defeat any looming dangers—that’s what the White Witch told me as she instructed me in various spells.
After turning fifteen and becoming an apprentice, I also started lending a hand with the witch’s jobs.
We did everything from concocting potions, to exterminating pests, to locating things and people, to making and destroying objects.
She used her magic for the sake of the world and for the sake of other people.
But people didn’t always express gratitude toward the witch or her assistant. That was because when magic was used to help one person, it sometimes ended up hindering another.
Together with my teacher, I was sometimes appreciated and sometimes despised as I learned magic in that country.
“Why are you being so kind as to teach me magic?”
On the day I turned eighteen and became an adult, the White Witch said, “I think it’s about the right time for you to become a witch.”
And so, on the day of my birthday, I was recognized as a witch. “Congratulations. You’ve finally completed all the preparations to head out on your journey.”
The White Witch smiled gently, as she had when we’d first met.
I wore the black robe I had purchased for my travels while I was working as her apprentice. She fixed the star-shaped brooch to the breast of the robe.
Its modest weight pressed against my chest.
“I’m glad that I met you.”
These words, which I normally never would have said, came naturally spilling out of my mouth.
I must have been in high spirits at the prospect of setting off again.
“That’s my line.” She must have been in the same state as I was. “You could say that I was also saved by having you in my life.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not powerful enough to save you,” I replied.
But she shook her head, too, as if following my lead.
“No, no. I was saved as soon as we met…because I learned for a fact that I was not the only strange human out there.”
“……”
“And so these past few years have been fulfilling for me in their own way.”
At that point, I remembered something.
She never accepted jobs from the people who came to her for help unless they offered proper compensation.
If the compensation they presented to her was too high, she didn’t trust them, and if it was too low, she didn’t even show any interest. She had only ever accepted commissions from people whose sense of values aligned with hers, even just a little bit.
Whenever there was a gap between what she was being offered and what she was being asked, she entirely refused to hear the request.
The days I spent with her after we met had been happy ones for me.
I thought they had probably been happy for her, too.
“What kind of name do you want for your witch name?” she asked me.
I cocked my head.
“What kind of name would be good?”
For one thing, she was the only witch I really knew. I had never met another witch. I wondered what kind of names were appropriate to signify a witch.
At this point, I found myself asking her once again what was normal.
She answered me plainly.
“In this country, it’s considered normal to take a name that is connected to your hair color.”
“I see.”
I looked at her. She had beautiful white hair. And that’s why she was the White Witch. I felt like it was a little too simplistic, but—
“Well then, I’ll do the same. Please use the color of my hair.”
I bowed once.
She nodded. “All right, let’s do that.”
And then I received my witch name from her.
A simple name, connected to my hair color.
“The Ashen Witch.”
✦ ✦ ✦
After that, I went on a long, long journey as the Ashen Witch.
I flew around the world on my broom, often veering off the beaten path. Sometimes good things happened to me, and sometimes bad things happened instead.
The world was overflowing with every conceivable definition of normal.
Every day was perfect.
After a number of years had passed since I began my journey, I took on two students of my own. From then on, I continued traveling while raising the two of them as apprentice witches.
Then those two both became witches, and each of them went down her own path, and I found myself alone again.
“Welcome to our country! Are you here for some sightseeing?”
I arrived at a certain remote country, far from any other civilization. It was a peaceful place, a small, unremarkable country without any notable sights.
Perhaps because they very rarely got any sightseers, the guard at the gate greeted me with a stiff salute.
I shook my head.
“Homecoming.”
“Oh? Homecoming, you say?” The guard’s eyes went wide, and he dropped his salute. “Excuse me, but what is your name?”
“I am called the Ashen Witch.”
“Wait just a moment, please! I’ll check the departure logs!”
If I was coming home, that meant I must have left once. Apparently, the guard needed to examine the records to confirm I had left the country some time before.
This was my first experience ever coming home, so I was confused.
“We don’t have a record of your departure, but—”
When I first left the country, I wasn’t yet the Ashen Witch, so understandably, I wasn’t going to be in the records.
It was even less likely, since I hadn’t exactly departed under the best circumstances.
“Try looking under the name Victorica.”
I told him to look back over a decade prior in his records.
It was already quite a long time ago. I gave him the name of the naive young mage who had taken it upon herself to sneak out of the orphanage, fearing that she was not normal, and then forced her way out of the front gates.
Once I designated the specific year for him, he easily found the record of my departure.
As soon as he found it, the guard furrowed his brow.
“…It says here that it was an unlawful exit.”
“And that’s why I came back to pay the fine.” Nodding to him, I asked, “Any chance you’re going to let me in?”
“Well, if you don’t come in, then you can’t pay the fine, so…”
The gate guard stepped aside and ushered me in. Familiar, peaceful scenery spread out before me on the other side of the gate.
“Welcome home, Lady Witch.”
Then I bowed back to the saluting guard and walked through the gates.
The Peaceful Country of Robetta.
The final country I visited on my journey was my hometown, the very place I’d started.
✦ ✦ ✦
