Joe had almost missed the corpses at first.

The tiny bodies were spread around haphazardly beneath the trees like fallen fruit, rotting and sinking into the soil of Sandora. Only the pink feathers remained. Joe had dismissed the pieces as some strange exotic flower growing in the magical forest, until she stepped right over one such bunch of feathers.

“Careful.” Nero called behind her.

Joe peered down at her shoes and sprang up in the air like a kangaroo.

There was a shallow patch of wet ground near her feet, peppered with wispy pink feathers and small white bones sticking out of the soil. A faint stench wafted through the air, which smelled something like a nauseating mix of flowers and decaying flesh.

One didn’t need to be some genius to guess what it was, really. Joe paled at the sudden realization. She turned to Nero with a horrified look. “A-Are these possibly — ?!”

“Bubblebird corpses.” Came the generous reply. “Stay away from the feathers, milady. The stench will stick to your clothes.”

Joe had to resist the urge to puke all over her clothes. She had seen enough corpses for a lifetime, dammit! The stench was growing stronger by the second as she tiptoed around the feathers. A fresh wave of nausea washed over her. “Wait —! I just saw a bunch of these things beneath several other trees!” She sputtered, aghast at her bodyguard’s lack of reaction. “Why is there a pile of bubblebird corpses in the forest of Sandora?!”

How many weirder things were lying innocuously in the depths of this sinister place?!

“That is the natural order of things in this world.” It was the Witch of the West who answered this time, glancing at the girl out of the corner of her eyes. “All bubblebirds fly back to the forest of Sandora at the end of their lifetimes. The ground you are walking on? It’s composed of layers and layers of bubblebird fossils piling up over the years. This forest is like a giant graveyard of the birds, that’s what it is.”

Joe paled even further at the words. Somehow, the ever-magical forest of Sandora did not seem all that magical anymore.

The girl suddenly remembered the strange songs associated with the Witch of the West. “I-Is that where the rumoured smell comes from?” she blurted out before she could stop herself.

“…Maybe.” The witch smirked mysteriously, but said no more.

It was wiser to let the subject drop, Joe thought. Currently she and Nero were being led by the witch to her self-proclaimed ‘atelier’ at the center of Sandora. The nature was now eerily quiet around them, and the beautiful yellow-orange leaves were gradually turning to shades of bloody red as they ventured deeper into the ever-autumnal forest.

Joe didn’t know how she felt about being blindly led into a witch’s lair, but she did know that she would prefer it over the maddening hallucinations any day.

The Witch of the West looked surprisingly normal. But then again, Joe had heard too much and known too little about the woman. Rumours and stories tended to make the imagination go wild. Joe was mildly ashamed that she had actually let the silly stories get to her head. For all she knew, this ‘witch’ might as well be an eccentric old woman who preferred to live in solitude.

But the old woman walked a certain grace and poise that had the girl questioning the rumours in her mind. The witch looked, dare she say — elegant? Confident? Powerful?

“Of course she looks powerful.” Lady Joanna snorted. “This is a witch we’re talking about! I wouldn’t be surprised if she was already plotting to use us as her guinea pigs! What if she plans to trap us inside her hut forever?!”

‘You and I get to stay the fuck away from Patricia Winsten and your darling murderous prince.’ Joe thought with a wry smile, ‘I think it’s a win-win situation, my Lady.’

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The villainess harrumphed, but didn’t grumble anymore. But her words couldn’t soothe the blaring suspicion in Joe’s mind. She sneaked a peek at the witch marching ahead of them. The woman looked powerful indeed, but it wasn’t an ‘I-can-turn-you-into-a-chicken-with-a-snap-of-my-fingers’ kind of powerful. It was something else, something Joe would swear she’d seen before but couldn’t remember for the life of her.

The exhaustion was pounding upon down on the girl like an oversized hammer over her head. The paranoia was just adding fuel to the fire. ‘Calm down, you idiot.’ She told herself firmly, ‘Let’s try talking to the witch like a normal, civilized person first.’

Joe cleared her nervously. “Umm, madam witch, do you not feel err— any discomfort with the constant stench?”

“Got used to it.” Came the short reply. “It was either this place or the cold Casterwing mountains. Sandora is the better option. Keeps the nosy humans away from my yard. Heh.”

Joe wanted to generously point out that she was a ‘nosy’ human as well, but wisely kept the opinion to herself.

“Don’t worry girl. You will see more corpses as we go deeper into the forest.” The witch said conversationally, as if talking about the weather.

“O-Oh, got it.” Joe shouldn’t have chosen such a terrible topic to begin with. But the silence was making her nervous as hell. It was a pleasantly cool morning, but she was already sweating through Mathilda’s tunic like a smelly pig.

The girl delicately pressed on. “So madam witch, do you ever go out of the forest to the town?”

The old woman gave an amused snort. “Where do you think I get my eggs and bread and meat from, girly? There ain’t no animals in this forest to hunt, even if the rumours will make you think otherwise. Those idiots probably believe that every last animal on earth lives here, prowling about all round the year. I also need my crockery and my books, my papers and some ink. Where would I get ‘em from, hmm?”

Joe stared.

“Couldn’t you, err, you know—” she vaguely gestured with her hands in the air. “—conjure them up with magic or something? You’re a witch right?”

The witch actually burst out laughing. Joe clamped her mouth shut. She went ahead and said something stupid, didn’t she? What was it with people laughing at her expense today?

“Where did you get the idea that one could conjure books and crockery and eggs and meat out of thin air using magic, girly?” The woman wiped a tear of laughter, grey eyes alight with mirth. “You don’t remember how magic works?”

Oh right, Joe did remember. Magic was elemental in this world. Anything outside of the basic four elements and their combined effects was out of question. She scratched her head in embarrassment. The lack of sleep was doing quite a number on her brain.

“So to answer your silly question,” the witch continued nonchalantly. “I do need to go to the town every now and then, much as I hate doing it. The people of the capital piss me off, but a person’s gotta eat! But well, lately, it has been quite difficult to venture out into the towns nearby. These desolate trails haven’t quite kind to lonesome travelers these days.”

The girl raised a curious brow. “What makes you say that, madam witch?”

“It is those damned bandits out there!” the witch growled, her eyes blazing with fury. “As if the greedy nobles and merchants out in the capital weren’t enough, now I have to deal with the bloody bandits of Grimm canyon! Bah! The entire kingdom has gone to the dogs!”

Another victim of the bandits, Joe thought. It was a small mercy that Nero managed to chase off most of them out of the canyon, but from what she had learnt so far, the road to Casterwing Mountain was crawling with many, many more of them.

Nero’s vicious water magic immediately sprung to her mind. “Erm—” Joe wasn’t sure she wanted to ask, and perhaps make more of a fool out of herself once again. “—Could you not have used any elemental magic to get rid of them? Surely there would be an offensive way that you could use your magic to deal with them?”

The witch turned to give her an inscrutable look. “I cannot use magic.”

Joe almost tripped over her feet. She caught herself in time, mind reeling with shock. Was the witch pulling her leg? Was this another one of those giant cosmic jokes? Was she supposed to find a hidden meaning beneath the words, in order to pass some inane secret test of Sandora? Was she supposed to laugh along?

“Don’t believe that woman! She is probably lying through her teeth!” The villainess spat; Joe could feel the shock rippling through her unlawful tenant’s mind. “How else can she keep living in this blasted forest without going mad?!”

Lady Joanna had a solid point. It wasn’t everyday that Joe was willing to admit that.

But the look on the old woman’s face didn’t make it seem like she was joking. Either that, or she must have trained in the sacred art of poker-faces from Nero himself.

“B-But you are a witch!” Joe sputtered indignantly, and then wondered what she was supposed to be indignant about. “Witches are supposed to dabble in magic! Why, you live in a magical forest itself! How in the blue blazes can you survive this place without an ounce of magic?!”

And that she thought about it, how the hell did Nero survive the hallucinations anyway? Joe had a feeling that the witch had a hand in this matter, but the Witch of the West herself was magicless, dammit!

The aforementioned witch smirked knowingly. “Oh, jumping to conclusions, are we? How do you know what witches are supposed to do? Besides, when did I ever introduce myself as a witch, girly?”

“B-But they said–” Joe stammered like a fool, gears turning in her mind furiously. “But I— wha— you— HOW —?!!”

“This is trap! A bloody trap, I tell you — !” Lady Joanna was screeching inside her head.

“On that note, don’t call me madam witch. Such a tacky name, that one. Call me Sandy. That’s what I prefer to be called.”

Shit! Shit! Shit! Too much information at once! Joe’s mind was whirling. Who was this woman? How could she live her without magic?! What about the rumours, the animated corpses? Where was the real Witch of the West? Who the hell was—

“Sandy?” Joe repeated incredulously.

“The one and the only. They call me the Witch of the West out in kingdom, but never stopped to ask me about it!” The woman grinned, evidently enjoying the flutter of confusion on Joe’s face. “Didn’t you wonder how the name of this forest came to be?”

The revelation bounced off Joe’s head like a rubber ball; she still hadn’t quite recovered from the fact that the Witch of West living in the magical forest of a magical world was just a harmless old woman. Joe had actually hit the nail right on its head with her first hunch. If Lucia knew, she would probably spout off a string of confused ‘Hey Hey!’s before fainting on the spot!

As if on cue, the forest swayed and whistled with a chilly breeze, picking up the blood red leaves off the ground in a madly spinning dance.

“I am Sandy of the Sandora.…and you shall address me as such.” The woman stopped in her tracks and turned to Joe with a look that made it abundantly clear that witch or not, she was perfectly aware of her own strength in this bizarre manifestation of a forest. “There lies my atelier beyond that giant maple tree. Watch your step, Joanna Winsten. And remember you place in Sandora.”