The carriage journey proceeded without any major issues, and in the evening, the group stopped off at an inn town where they enjoyed the spring baths and tasted some of the local cuisine. Charlotte got overexcited about every single thing she was seeing for the first time and ended up going to bed with a fever, but luckily she had recovered by the next morning.
And so, the group’s journey entered its second day since they’d left the royal capital.
At some point in the early afternoon, they alighted from their carriages and were now walking up a low mountainside, far from any nearby settlements. As the carriages wouldn’t be able to traverse this terrain, they had left them and the drivers at a village at the foot of the mountain. There was a wooden path underfoot for the first part of the journey, but after about an hour, they entered a completely unpaved path. The unlevel ground was difficult even to walk on, and exhaustion came upon them quickly.
“We’re almost there!” Cecily called out to the group behind her.
Charlotte had insisted on walking by herself, but she had run out of energy a little while back. Maria, now carrying the princess’s limp body piggyback, was as cool as a cucumber, keeping pace with Zeke and Alphonse on either side of her. As for Zeke and Alphonse, they had changed into the refined blue uniforms of the Celestial Knight Brigade before beginning the climb.
Zeke really was serious about wanting to greet dad while appropriately dressed.
However, she agreed with this decision of his. Why? Simply because of the fact that he looked absolutely dashing in uniform.
Although the Celestial Knight Brigade were known to all in the royal capital, Cecily doubted that anyone in her village would recognize their distinctive uniforms. Luckily, this meant that no one would jump to the conclusion that they had come at the behest of the king.
After a number of small breaks to refill their canteens and eat a light lunch, Cecily finally came to a stop. The place to which she had led them was a huge cliff face deep in the mountains, where only hunters would dare go. Charlotte had woken up by the time they arrived.
“We’re here.”
“Huh? We are?” Alphonse said. He wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced around. “But Cecy... There’s nothing here.”
“Wait behind me for just a second,” Cecily said, making sure the group was a short distance from her.
She placed her hands upon the cold, mossy rock and took in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the mountain air. It felt as if her whole body was being cleansed. With this feeling in her heart, she chanted: “Open.”
A barrier had been put in place long ago by a powerful witch to conceal the village entrance and keep away outsiders. As she poured her magic into the rock face, Cecily imagined a hole forming in it.
As soon as she took a step back, a crunching sound came from the rock.
“It’s a bit dangerous, so stay back, everyone!”
A crack suddenly ran down the rock face. The rock was so solid that it seemed like it hadn’t moved in many millennia. However, fissures now spread across its surface as it began to disappear right before their eyes.
Finally, a tunnel that looked man-made appeared before them, with no dust, debris, or pebbles to show that the rock face had ever been there to begin with. Apart from Cecily, everyone was speechless.
“Now that’s something,” Alphonse said, after a pause. He and Maria were in utter disbelief. However, Zeke was deep in thought, with his hand on his chin.
“It looked like a normal rock face... But it’s evident that it was merely an illusion.”
Zeke had a keen eye. Whereas the others had been convinced that the rock face had transformed, the truth was that it had never existed in the first place. The tunnel had been there all along, yet magic had made the brains and eyes of those who looked at it unable to perceive what was truly there.
“The witch village needs to remain hidden from people, you see. Ours is disguised behind a rock face, but other villages are disguised beneath the water, within great fields of ice, in heavenly flower fields, or upon protrusions hanging from sheer precipices. Or at least, so I’ve heard, as I’ve not actually been to the other villages.”
“Beneath the water or in heavenly flower fields... Wow, I’d like to see them. Although I’d rather avoid the one by the edge of a precipice...” Charlotte said. Having just witnessed such incredible magic, she found that her exhaustion had vanished in an instant.
“Okay, let’s head in. We’re almost there,” Cecily said as she walked on. Rolo dashed ahead of Cecily to lead the way, perhaps sensing that he was back in a place from which he had been absent for so long. At the end of the tunnel was Cecily’s hometown. Cecily’s feet were exhausted, but now that she was so close to the finish line, she found the energy to make the final stretch.
At last...the witch village.
There were other villages across the land with this name, but Cecily’s was a particularly small settlement. There were only approximately fifty witches and their families, and this number had been falling over the years. Sometimes people left for other villages or went on journeys of their own, often because they wanted to find love and start their own families.
With its own fields and livestock, life in the witch village wasn’t altogether that different from how it was in a normal village. Naturally, the villagers took care of the fields and livestock by themselves. What set it apart from regular villages were the workshops attached to each house. The witches who lived there would sometimes go and sell the potions they had concocted to nearby villages and towns to earn money for vegetables, seeds for crops, and more livestock.
As they followed the winding path into the village, roofs came into view in the distance. The village seemed to glitter in Cecily’s eyes as the sunlight shone down upon it.
“This wasn’t what I was expecting,” Alphonse said, his wide eyes taking in the bucolic scene.
“Really?”
Alphonse scratched his cheek awkwardly.
“Well, I don’t mean to offend you, Cecy, but I imagined a witch village to be more...I dunno, sinister-looking. Like gloomy skies, crows cawing in dead trees, creepy black houses with lizards crawling on them... That kinda thing.”
“Yeah, me too. But it’s the complete opposite!”
Cecily couldn’t help but chuckle at Alphonse and Charlotte’s honesty.
“Yeah, our witch village looks like any old village, really. I mean, people do like black and red things, and we have a few slightly odd traditions, but we’re all just living here, just like anyone else.”
Soon they had arrived at the entrance of the village, and Cecily began to wave as she called out, “Hey, everyone!”
A group of witches engaged in discussion at the well near the entrance glanced over with slight bewilderment. They had tensed up at the arrival of outsiders, but then surprise flickered across their faces as they realized who it was.
“It’s Cecily!” a child with a stick in her hand called out. Soon enough, the rest of the village had come rushing out to the entrance.
“Well, I’ll be—if it isn’t little Cecily!”
“Who’d have thought you’d come back before he did?”
“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon!”
“‘So soon’? But it’s already been two years!” Cecily said, having decided to try and pull the wool over their eyes.
“What are you on about, dear? It’s only been a year!”
Busted!
However, Cecily didn’t mind that they had seen through her lie. It was still her first time home in a year—their reunion was joyful.
Cecily reached out to hug her fellow villagers...
“I’m ho—”