Relena swooped down through the leaves and elegantly hopped off her broom, trotting to a stop near Dala and Ellie where they stood watching Iris preparing to attempt yet another launch, “she’s still not off the ground yet?”
“She’ll get there,” Dala said, “did you find Grey?”
“We caught up to her, but instead of coming back she convinced Anna to ditch with her. Said something this new girl being a ‘waste of time’”
Dala sighed, “where are they going?”
“To fight some monsters in the old temple, probably.”
Iris launched into the air and flew in an almost-straight line for a few dozen feet, but lost her balance while dodging a tree and skipped across the surface of the water.
“You’re getting it!” Ellie shouted from the sidelines, “you missed the tree that time!”
Iris raised a tired thumbs up as she once again climbed to her feet.
Dala leaned over to Relena, “go join them at the temple, keep them out of trouble the three of you can’t handle.”
Relena blinked in surprise, “you’re not going after them?”
The matron shook her head, “perhaps I will arrive later. For now, I need to get this one flying so she can be on her way sooner rather than later. Once she’s gone, I have urgent business to attend to.”
Relena didn’t hide the curiosity from her expression, but refrained from inquiring further. With a simple nod, she hopped on her broom and flew up above the swamp. Dala waited for Iris to complete her next attempt, which ended with a panicked swerve away from a tree and a stumbling landing. It was the first time Iris had successfully taken off and landed without crashing or falling, and Ellie was jumping up and down with cheers.
“Good job, Iris,” Dala called out, “let’s take a break.”
Iris was too out of breath to speak, so she held up another thumbs up and followed Dala to the steps of her hut.
“Have a seat,” Dala motioned to the steps. They were covered in mud, but so was Iris. “Your biggest problem is still in your mana-control,” the matron explained, “but that’s not a skill you can learn overnight, it will take you months of practice to perfect. The good news is that for your current goal, we can sidestep it.”
“How so?” Iris asked between gulps from her waterskin.
“There won’t be any trees to dodge in the open sky, and restricting your speed won’t be a concern. Which means, now that you can get into the air, all you need to learn is how to stay up there.”
Iris took a few deep breaths, “well, I’m ready whenever.”
“You should rest for a while longer.”
“Then can I ask you some questions?”
Dala appeared to think about it for a moment, then nodded. Before Iris could speak, however, the matron looked up to Ellie and called out, “prepare a runway for Iris to reach the sky.”
“Yes Matron!” Ellie responded dutifully and immediately set about raising and lowering small sections of the ground. It was a slow, methodical process which unfolded with the simple raising and lowering of Ellie’s hands.
“How’d this coven come to be?” Iris asked after a moment of watching Ellie, “I mean, you’re really far out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Most covens are, it’s partly tradition, partly habit. Historically speaking, witches aren’t particularly welcome in towns and cities. As you might imagine, this way of life often appeals to those who don’t fit in where they come from. That’s how each of these girls ended up in my care.”
Iris quickly swallowed another gulp of water, “why is that? Witches not being welcome, I mean. You all seem very nice.”
“You come from a land of libraries and storybooks, yes? In those stories, how often are witches depicted as the good folk?”
Iris thought about it for a moment, “I guess not very often. They’re not always the bad guys, though.”
Dala nodded as she made her point, “and I’d wager that even when presented morally neutral, we’re still othered as mysterious and unsavory. It’s a tale as old as magic. Even our tensions with the frogs are ultimately born from their legends and folk tales of our kind.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Iris furrowed her brow, “where I come from, wizards are esteemed and respected. They’re seen as oddballs, maybe, but most people still like them. They spend their time in grand towers and king’s courts. Why are witches treated so differently?”
“People fear what they cannot understand. Wizards, despite their eccentricities and dramatics, define their respectability by their ability to understand and explain, which eases the minds of governors and noblemen — it makes them feel like they have some measure of control over magic, even if they themselves do not practice. Witchcraft is much more nebulous, and while a witch can often tell you with a high degree of confidence what will happen, we often cannot tell you how or why it will. This concerns a layman.”
“Then why not just figure out how it works and tell people?”
The matron laughed, “that’s the wizard in you speaking. There is much a witch must learn throughout her life time, wasting it on appeasing others would only stifle our progress. Not mention, there is a fundamental difference in approach between witchcraft and what might be commonly thought of as civilized magic — one that does not account for the finer details, but seeks to master the broader strokes.”
Iris slumped her shoulders and look away, “it doesn’t seem very fair.”
“This world usually isn’t,” the witch acknowledged.
“All done!” Ellie called out. There was now a straight stretch of mostly solid ground leading from the edge of the small village into the central clearing, where a small break in the canopy would hopefully allow Iris to reach the skies.
“Ready for a real flight?” Dala asked.
Iris nodded and shot to her feet. A short while later she was standing at the start of the runway, which aimed towards Dala’s hut. She waited as the matron took flight and rose up out of the canopy before stepping into place to line herself up for takeoff.
“Alright, I’ll be right behind you,” Ellie assured her, “just remember to hold on tight, and only give it as much power as it needs.”
Iris nodded intently as she mounted her broom. Once Dala disappeared beyond the leaves and the way was clear, she gently kicked off the ground and applied a semi-steady trickle of mana into her broom. Air whipped across her face as the ground zoomed by and the steps of Dala’s hut rapidly approached. Iris yanked up on the broom and her world tilted as she shot up through the gap in the canopy and the open sky exploded around her.
She wavered and wobbled as she struggled to level out her flight, but was soon soaring over a vast expanse of green below a blue, sparsely clouded sky. Daring to look behind and below her, Iris found that the small arrangement of huts was already lost among the trees. Dala came up beside her, effortlessly matching her speed and altitude with masterful control of her own broom.
“You’re doing great!” Ellie’s voice called out over the wind as she rose up on the other side of Iris.
“T-Terrifying!” was the only word Iris could muster as the wind whipped her hair and blistered her eyes.
Dala and Ellie laughed, and Iris noticed they seemed nearly unaffected by the wind. Despite traveling at the same speed, their hair simply fluttered as if jostled by a gentle breeze, and their voices carried easily across the gaps rather than being ripped away by the wind as Iris’s was.
Noticing her perplexed expression, Ellie guessed her questioned and promptly answered, “wind control goes a long way when you’re flying, but we don’t have time to teach you that.”
“That’s a problem you’ll have to solve on your own,” Dala said, “for now, see if you can keep up.”
Dala shot off ahead of Iris, and was soon joined by a laughing Ellie. Iris leaned low and forward on her broom, tightened her grip, and pumped in more mana. The already oppressive wind seemed to double in force as the stick lurched forward, threatening to leave Iris behind were it not for her ironclad grasp. She quickly caught up to — and even passed — the pair of witches, but they responded by banking low and to the side. Iris tried to replicate their movements, but her arc was wide and sloppy, and the gap between them stretched out as the witches recovered from their tight half-circle to fly off in the opposite direction.
The game of chase continued for several minutes, and Iris was slowly getting the hang of maneuvering. Though she still felt wholly unprepared to attempt flying between the trees of the swamp, she at least was beginning to feel comfortable in the open air. Only once did she lean too far into a turn and tip over, but with ample space to recover she was able to lean into the spin and complete an entire roll until she was upright once again.
Just as Iris began to feel like she had at least become a novice at flying, she tried to pull up on her broom and found that nothing happened. The swamp was growing closer, and she was rapidly entering a spiral. Ellie and Dala fell in behind her and one of them shouted something, but Iris didn’t register the words. She was stuck desperately trying to pump more mana into the broom, but no matter how much she offered it refused to respond.
With only seconds left before she would crash into the trees, it occurred to her — the enchanted stick was out of force. Several ideas flashed through her mind, and she quickly plucked one almost at random and initiated it without hesitation. Now in a complete free fall, she twisted in the air to place her feet against the stick and kicked it away as hard as she could — but despite her strength, the stick didn’t go flying. Instead, it absorbed the force of her kick and only lazily tumbled away from her. Iris completed a flip in the air before reaching out with a void-torn palm, shooting out three tentacles which wrapped around the broom and pulled it back into place for Iris to mount it once more. With a sharp upwards pull and a burst of mana, Iris countered her downwards momentum enough to recover into a wobbly flight just above the canopy.
Dala and Ellie leveled out their flights and trailed behind her, both of them perplexed in their own way. Ellie looked confused but amazed, while Dala eyed the first-day witch with a wary look of apprehension. Iris, however, was wholly oblivious to their stares as she rocketed over the swamp and pumped a fist in the air with excited cheers.