Mannat returned to the clearing at noon. Raesh dropped him off. Mannat refused his father’s offer to pick him up the next morning. He wanted the opportunity to jog instead. Raesh agreed with him. Mannat couldn’t say goodbye to Pandit, as his friend had gone hunting by the time he left. He left a message with Gande and hoped she would tell him to meet him on the road the next morning.

He wanted to meet Sharmilla by the way, but time was tight, hence he left their conversation for some other day. He wasn’t hesitating to meet her. It just wasn’t the right time to meet her; he had too much on his mind.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back?” The Witch’s sharp ear scratching voice pierced right through the calm atmosphere of the clearing. Mannat almost bit his tongue in surprise. She really found the perfect time to sneak up on him that time.

He turned and found her standing between the potato plants. She was checking the plants. Her slouched back made it easier for her to examine the garden variants, though whether it was a product of her age or something else, Mannat couldn’t say.

“Do you have any news worth sharing?” She said.

Mannat saw the chance. His eyes lit up. He really had good news to tell her, but he wanted to show her the taste of her own medicine. He said in excitement, “There is a group of entertainers staying in the town.” The sneer on the Witch’s face deepened – it was the perfect opportunity. He interrupted the Witch and plainly added, “Oh yes, ‘Inspect’ leveled up once while I was away. There’s also that.”

The Witch raised her head as he expected, but looked weirdly at him from head to toe as if he was a foreign animal who had wandered into her garden. She didn’t seem to be regretting anything.

“Anything else?” she asked. There was no rise or fall of emotions in her voice. Seeing that he had nothing more to admit, she disbanded him. “Go on then. Do your work. Don’t be idle.” She shook him off so easily Mannat felt embarrassed. It was like the arrow he fired changed direction midway and stabbed him in the back.

He left her behind dispirited. Inside the hut, the table looked untouched. Everything was in the same place he had left them. Even the pieces of used charcoal sticks that had rolled off from the table were still where they had fallen on the floor. He put the book that the Witch had rented him back on the table and went out.

He was eager to get back into learning. The two quick levels in ‘Inspect’ had him in high spirits. He very much wanted to raise ‘analyze’ by another level, even though he was not close to getting it by a long shot. He had an inkling it would only rise once he gets the hang of the grammar and the sentence structure of his mother tongue. However, Mannat was young, and the young are bold and frivolous.

He left the hut first and went out. He wanted to get through the garden once, gather some roots to cook a non-veg stew and grind Inspect along with it. He had brought enough pig meat and jerky to last him three meals. He wanted to taste the boar, but Gande was slowly cooking it. He would have to wait for a couple more days to get a taste of that. At least the jerky didn’t taste bad.

Gande was giving him a cooked pot of deer meat, but he denied it saying he wanted to learn cooking. Though Pandit mocked for it and asked if he was thinking of becoming someone’s wife, Mannat didn’t give in to his friend’s mother or to his mockery.

It was really his day. First, both he and his father earned skill levels, later he managed to hit nine out of ten times in the garden. The pot was overflowing with roots and potatoes when he finished harvesting. Just a look at the juicy carrots in the pot made his stomach growl in hunger. He put the pot on the fire and then decided to do more; He didn’t feel satisfied. Knowing the vegetables in the garden could grow in as early as a day; Mannat went in and uprooted the whole garden, not to store the roots for later use, but to practice ‘Inspect’.

He would keep a few and take the rest back to the village. The villagers might not take them from the Witch or him, but they shouldn’t have any reason to anger his father or Gande. In the worst case, they could simply distribute them to the people they knew. He was sure the Witch wouldn’t care. He had never seen her eat at all.

He even thought she planted the whole garden for him. It was a silly thought was, but he had come to know her scheming mind pretty well. He believed, there was a huge chance of the thought being true. Now, he really wanted to get the job. His mother was the top priority, but he was interested in the garden on the other side of the pathway. He didn’t think it would be a simple training ground for leveling up ‘Inspect’. It probably was a training ground, but for a job skill that actually had something to do with mana.

If, maybe, probably, he was full of guesses, but had no definite answers.

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He put his thoughts on hold when he was in the garden. He didn’t only harvest the roots, but systematically analyzed their growth. He expected the work to overwhelm him, but in reality, he barely filled the bucket. The whole thing weighed approximately fifteen kilograms in the end. He wasn’t getting it back to the village next morning, for sure -- not if he wanted to run all the way, no sir.

The most amusing thing of all was the number of duds or baby carrots he found. Too many. At least a third of the roots were of no use to anyone, person, animal, or rodent. He planted those sorry excuses back in the soil. In the empty places, he bowed seeds, potatoes, and ginger. The more tired he got the lower his efficiency dropped. In the end, sweat was freely dripping from his forehead; it had slathered his naked upper body like a layer of oil. His legs were shaking, and finally, weakness overwhelmed him. He continued working in the garden for a little longer, but a string of failures forced him to take a break. He’d done enough for one day.

He had started purely guessing at the end and stopped using the skill. That was his downfall. It would have been tragic if he were in a war somewhere; thankfully, he was only pulling carrots in a well-hidden garden in the forest.

Mannat spent two hours there, half an hour of which he took to had lunch. The soup was good as usual, but the meat was unbearably chewy. He shouldn’t have boiled the pig meat. Thank god, the raven arrived while he was eating and he managed to dispose of -- feed her the meat.

It kept eyes on him while he took a bath in the open, and then followed him inside the hut. It didn’t try to get close to Mannat though. Perhaps, it was the soap.

Mannat pulled the chair back and took a seat. The raven also took perch on the stand, right behind his back. Perhaps, he was being delusional. Mannat felt her staring at his back and it made him uncomfortable. She had never been so aggressive before. What changed? He turned upon the chair to face her and asked, “Why are you being like that today?”

She snarled in response and Mannat understood that something was annoying her and she was in a bad mood.

“You don’t want to talk to me and neither do it. However, I can’t focus if keep staring at me like that. I don’t want you behind me.” The scratches it had given him had faded, but he hadn’t forgotten the evening he had received them. She had attacked him. The raven had not pulled back her claws; she wasn’t scared of drawing his blood. If a situation like that arose again, the red-eye beast was sure to attack him. What would he do if the raven hurt his eye or other sensitive organs? Whom would he blame? That’s why Mannat didn’t want to take the chance.

The raven was after all only a bird, or too lazy to move, and didn’t oblige to his request. It kept to its stand and relentlessly stared at Mannat. Eventually, Mannat changed seat. He took his chair –yes, he was obsessive-- and for the first time since he had taken over the hut, sat on the other side of the table.

It wasn’t a good seat.

The light from the window was glaring, the scenery outside was distracting, and his bedding was now in his line of sight. The raven was also there and staring directly at him. However, he stuck to his decision and didn’t move back. At least the bird wouldn’t be able to surprise him.

He worried at first for the seat change to affect his study, but all the distracting thoughts evaporated from his mind once he focused upon the book. Night had fallen outside when he raised his head up. Who knows when the raven vanished, but it was not around. It did leave him a speckled white gift on the floor, which he had to clean before it left a permanent mark of its existence on the wood. It was not even his place. He didn’t understand why he was so eager to keep the hut clean, but he did it without grumbling, and then made himself carrot soup.

The clearing looked marvelous at night. He couldn’t figure why none of the villagers talked about this view and the glowing tree. It could be that none had ever ventured out in the night to find the Witch –it was impossible. Perhaps the tree itself was the reason why parents advised their kids to not venture close to the Witch’s place at night. Mannat thought it was highly probably to be the real reason.

“Perhaps, all of this is just an illusion created by the Witch to fool me.” He couldn’t help thinking about such things. Though he stayed busy, there was no denying that he was alone there. The raven and the Witch were like the wind that comes and goes. Only he was permanent.

He left the hut when the night darkened and went to the tree. The Witch’s staff was still in its usual place. It hadn’t been moved since the last time the Witch used it to open the underground garden. Like every night, Mannat approached the staff, stopped in front of it, placed his hand on its crystal head, and tried to rejuvenate it. It didn’t even make a firefly glow, much less do the unthinkable.

He didn’t dally around it much longer, went forward, and took a seat under the tree with his back resting against its trunk. He closed his eyes and shoved his thoughts to the back of his mind. He sat cross-legged and tried to sense the mana bubbling inside the gigantic container behind him.

He could easily sense the rich energy in the air. Mana enveloped the tree in a thin layer of warmth, as it did everything else from grass to people –including him. He could sense that cover of mana, but inside that layer was a void where his sense couldn’t penetrate. However, he wasn’t in a hurry. He had to stay calm if he wanted to sense mana. Patience and persistence were the only keys to the world inside the void.

He was sure he would feel foolish the day he did learn the trick to it, but for now, it was the most difficult task on his plate.

He didn’t stay there all night, of course. At midnight, he went back to sleep inside the hut like a good boy.