She must’ve been afraid of earning their ire, as she grew even more depressed and began searching her person to see if anything was out of place.
When her fingers brushed over one particular location, she let out a high-pitched shriek.
“I-It’s gone!”
Rose was startled by the desperation in her strangled voice. The girl looked as if she might faint as she checked her body again for the missing item.
“Oh no… It couldn’t have…?”
Without worrying about soiling her gorgeous cloak, the girl kneeled on the dirt and craned her neck to peer into the hole. Rose stood behind her, since she couldn’t bear to see the child fall back in after all the energy it took to pull her out.
“I can’t believe it… How could I have left it down there…?” the girl muttered into the pit, appalled.
Rose peered over her but couldn’t make anything out. She strained her eyes until she glimpsed something small reflecting a shaft of sunlight spilling through the trees.
With no one else to look to, the girl turned her troubled face toward Rose. “Help me retrieve it?”
Her plea was so genuine and her face the poster child for adorableness that it would surely incite any human to do her bidding with a salute.
Rose, however, was a witch.
“Why? I don’t want to.”
The girl was stumped by her curt answer. She never expected to be refused.
“I will be…in ever so much trouble without it.”
“And I will be in even greater trouble if I can’t climb back out of the pit.”
“I will reward you handsomely.”
“No can do.”
“I’m doomed…”
Tears welled in the girl’s grass-green eyes.
Is she going to cry? Rose backed away from her. It might have been her first time witnessing someone cry.
She felt restless for reasons she didn’t understand. She was worried about how to handle the situation if the girl broke down in tears, and that surprised her. Rose was a witch—it mattered not who wept or raged.
Fortunately, her worries were unfounded. The girl lifted her chin and closed her eyes; the next moment, she opened them, and not a trace of tears could be seen.
“I will come back another day,” the girl announced, pangs of disappointment in her determined voice. She wrenched her gaze from the pit and her lingering regrets, and faced Rose. “You helped me at your own expense. I have to thank you. What do they call you?”
“I am the Good Witch of the Lake.”
When Rose introduced herself, however, the girl’s eyes bulged and her face stiffened as she was trying to pull a reward from her pocket.
“Wha?!”
Astonishment washed over every feature of her face.
She did all right conversing with a stranger, but she seemed paralyzed with fear to discover said stranger was a witch. It was foolish to expect such a young girl not to judge a book by its cover, even if she was nobility.
W-W-Wi-Wi-Witch…!”
The leather bag slipped from her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her hands trembled over her mouth, and tears misted her eyes once more.
Depression hit Rose a little harder this time because this reaction was becoming the norm of late. Knowing that just because Harij accepted her didn’t mean the rest of the world would didn’t make it any easier on her.
Rose was proud to be a witch, but she mustn’t ever forget that her race was viewed as a threat to humans. She pulled away from the girl, drawing an “Ah!” from her. Rose tilted her head, unsure of what was wrong, but only got a string of incoherent noises from the girl. She thought she heard “Real one” somewhere in there.
I already saved her from the pit. She should be done with me. Nothing good will come of us staying together any longer. Drawing that conclusion, Rose picked up her soiled robe and shook out the dirt. Then she slid it on and was trying to leave when she heard an unintelligible voice mumbling, “Ah! Uh! Wai—”
“What is it?” Rose asked, curious why the girl seemed to be calling her back.
“Ah, uh, no way, Witch, like, the real thing—? I’m meeting you here…?! Um!”
“…?”
“Ah! Um, er, uh… I’m a fan!”
“…A fan?”
Fan of what? Rose repeated in her heart.
She knew what the word meant but wasn’t confident it coincided with how the girl intended it. After all, people were only a fan of things or people they had positive feelings toward.
“Um, um! I never, ever dreamed I’d run into you before visiting the hermitage— Aaah! What an unthinkable occurrence!”
The girl pulled out a dainty handkerchief and began diligently wiping her hands clean as Rose stared at her in utter confusion. She turned redder than a tomato under Rose’s watchful eye and frantically tried to string her words into a coherent sentence.
“I…I’ve…always longed to meet you s-since I was little girl…”
“You’ve longed to…”
“Y-Yes! T-To meet a real, almighty witch!”
“Almighty witch…”
“Aww, shucks. I wish it hadn’t happened while I look like this! I w-was really planning to come back later, after I cleaned up! Even my present for you got ruined…”
“Present for me?”
“P-Please won’t you, um, er, well, sh-shake…shake my hand!”
Two hands were vigorously thrust before Rose.
“…Handshake.”
Those hands were shaking so badly it was nerve-racking just looking at them, so Rose took hold of them, though she didn’t really follow what was happening.
“I-I will never wash my hands again!!!”
A tear spilled from the girl’s grass-green eyes. Once one fell, the dam broke, and she couldn’t hold the rest in anymore. She cried with trembling shoulders.
Rose had been concerned that she wouldn’t know what to do if the girl started weeping, but she couldn’t afford to pay her any attention now. For Rose was more dismayed than the girl overcome by her emotions.
Up until this moment, Rose had never met anyone who had stammered and tripped over their words in excitement, sought to shake her hand, or declared they would never wash their hands again after touching her.
✦ ✦ ✦
Something beyond her imagination was happening here. Rose embraced an unknown sensation.
“…Did you need something from me?” Rose asked, battling with an uneasiness she couldn’t put her finger on.
Rose had assumed she was a client’s child, but seeing as no one had come looking for her yet and the way she was behaving, she might have been the actual client.
The girl clicked her toes together and stood up straight and tall to answer. “I c-came here today for…no other r-reason than to…” She placed a hand on her chest as if to calm the raging waves inside. After taking a deep breath, she rushed out the rest of her sentence in a voice loud enough to shake the trees: “…ask you to please make me your a-apprentice!”
Startled by the noise, the birds loudly took flight. Rose stared up at them as she answered. “I can’t.”
“O-Of course you can’t… Not someone like me who suddenly showed up out of the blue, looking like a mud monster…without a proper present…and after I dropped the potion I made imitating the great witches, hoping to prove my worth to you… It was a pipe dream, trying to convince an almighty witch to make me their apprentice…”
“No, it has nothing to do with any of that. If you aren’t born a witch, you can’t become one. I have no intentions of taking on an apprentice who can never become a witch.”
Being a witch was more than a title or a job—it had to be in your blood. Humans gave birth to humans, witches gave birth to witches.
Rose suddenly stopped speaking when she realized there was a chance the girl might have actually been born a witch. If she was, then she would be the first witch Rose had seen since her grandmother.
“Or were you born into a witch’s bloodline?” Rose asked, careful to keep her face straight and her mounting excitement in check.
“…N-No, I am actually…” The girl chewed on her words, hesitant to answer. She looked aggrieved, as if admitting her lineage would dash her last ray of hope.
So she’s not a witch. Rose pretended not to notice her disappointment. But it was a potion that she dropped? She looked into the hole. It had no way of becoming a true “witch’s secret potion,” but she had to admire the girl’s dedication to becoming her apprentice by bringing an already completed attempt.
Rose wished she could have taken her on, but a person didn’t become a witch just because they wanted to, nor could a witch stop being one on a whim. After all, witches were vague entities that drifted through the generations.
“How did you manage to come this far?”
“Oh…with the assistance of my attendant…”
“And where might that person be now?”
“Waiting at the forest entrance.”
“I see. You can return by yourself, yes?” Rose asked to confirm. The girl slightly bobbed her head in response. “Then this is where I take my leave… If you have business with a witch, I suggest you ask your parents to buy you a witch’s secret potion.”
Rose pulled her hood deep over her face, lightly bowed her head, and walked away.