“Bú jánì na dì na!”

At Xisa’s spell, the ferns and grasses around her immediately crept towards the sky before stilling again, towering over the witches like trees. Morg and Songbai looked at the large plants in surprise.

“Haa!” Xisa cried aloud when the magic actually worked. “M-Maisha!” Xisa called out in delight, hoping her mentor had caught a glimpse of her success. Massive fern fronds now obscured Xisa’s line of sight on her mentor, and the thick stalks of various clover-like and grassy plants restricted her movements. The pink and white flowers that had once been the size of her thumbnail now loomed, their succulent petals as large as her palm.

Susususu

The fern fronds rustled gently as a salty breeze drifted through the air, dropping disoriented little bugs from time to time. Luckily, only the plants had been affected by the spell…

Xisa wove her way through the thick web of foliage, intrigued to find that the plants rapidly shrank in size as she walked further from where she had started. Eventually, the plants around her returned to their usual size and she easily made her way over to where Maisha was sitting against a tree.

Unfortunately, the elder witch was asleep. Xisa fought against the frown tugging at the corners of her lips. She tentatively prodded Maisha’s shoulder.

“Maisha…”

The elder witch made no sign of waking up. A growing sense of worry began replacing Xisa’s initial disappointment. Now that she was looking closer, didn’t Maisha look a little ashen? Had she always had such dark circles beneath her eyes?

“Maisha…?” she tried again. The elder witch remained silent.

After a moment of thought, Xisa rushed back into the thicket of towering ferns and sought out Songbai.

*

“Maisha…? Maisha!”

Xisa and Morg looked on with worry as Songbai tried shaking the sleeping witch awake to no avail.

“Let’s head inside for now. You two, work on studying the materials Maisha gave you last time,” Songbai instructed as she lifted Maisha’s limp body and started towards the house. Seeing as she had only given these instructions in Mandarin, not repeating herself in English as she usually would, Xisa realized the elder witch was a lot more flustered than she was letting on. Anxiety began bubbling up in Xisa’s throat. What exactly was going on? Was something wrong with Maisha?

Beside her, Morg looked between Xisa and Songbai in confusion. Xisa stiffened when that same wave of confusion briefly washed over her before dissipating. Morg had been sending these blips of feeling to Xisa ever since she had figured out how to. And while it had seemed convenient at first, the unwelcome waves of feeling were beginning to grate on Xisa’s nerves. Then again, she had probably been doing much worse over the years. She supposed this was karma of a sort.

With a sigh, Xisa grabbed Morg’s hand and led her towards the house as Songbai had instructed.

Songbai and Maisha had already disappeared by the time they entered. Xisa assumed the two had gone down into Maisha’s room. Xisa led Morg to the table and grabbed the worksheets Maisha had prepared for them.

Ugh, Xisa thought upon seeing their contents. I had hoped it would be language practice, but this is just more math. Why does a witch need to learn math anyways… ridiculous.

Morg also whined when she saw what Xisa had placed in front of her on the table. Perhaps another day the two would sneak out to play while their mentors were preoccupied… but Xisa suspected that Morg was just as worried as she was about Maisha. Neither wanted to risk causing unnecessary trouble for their mentors under such circumstances.

So the filial little girls quietly began working through their worksheets.

Or at least… trying to. Xisa couldn’t concentrate. Was Maisha okay? What exactly had happened? How serious was the situation? Why hadn’t Songbai come back yet?

The questions buzzed around her mind for a good several minutes before another set of thoughts surfaced.

Aside from worrying about Maisha, Xisa kept reliving her success at magic in her mind. She had finally beaten Morg and successfully cast magic first. And plant growing magic at that! If she could improve and learn to cast that longer term crop-sustaining magic Maisha had been talking about, she could have a supply of food capable of weathering both droughts and floods! No one would have to go hungry again- whole villages could subvert the horrors of famine!

If she had only known that magic back then… if she had been stronger, even just as strong as she was now, perhaps her brother…

Xisa let out a long breath and glanced down at the math symbols dancing nonsensically around the page in front of her. If only Maisha had cast that magic on the farmlands of her hometown. It would have been so easy for her. If only…

Takatakatak!

Xisa’s head shot up at the soft clattering noise coming from across the room. Had she just imagined it? Aside from Xisa and Morg themselves, only the familiars, Yuzan and Baigu, currently occupied the house with them. Yuzan was, of course, tucked away under Xisa’s shirt keeping warm, while Baigu was asleep on the rug by the unlit fireplace. Xisa glanced at Morg, but her companion seemed not to have heard anything, her nose scrunched and her eyes studiously scanning a problem on the worksheet.

Did I imagine it…?

With a slight frown, Xisa stood and made her way across the house. Baigu peeped an eye open as Xisa passed by her, searching around for the source of the suspicious clattering.

Maybe some little critter got in? Or could Maisha’s snake be back?

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Entering her and Morg’s bedroom, Xisa finally found the source of the out-of-place noise. On the bedside table near the window, a cup that usually contained a handful of pencils and pens had been knocked over, scattering the writing utensils across the floor and table.

Ah, did the wind knock it over…? Xisa wondered with a frown as she crossed the room to close the open window before collecting the mess of pens and pencils. But why was the window open? Did Morg sneak out again…?

Finally finished cleaning up, Xisa turned back towards the kitchen with a sigh.

“AAHH!!” Xisa yelled aloud when she noticed the stranger in her house.

“Aahh! …ahaha… B-bonjour(?)” Suhail sheepishly tried, instantly regretting his decisions.

“AAWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Baigu yowled, leaping to her feet at the sound of an unfamiliar voice in the house.

“WHA- What’s happening?!” Morg cried from the other room. Yuzan wriggled in discomfort at the sudden commotion.

Xisa stared in disbelief at the kid she had never seen before as his hand slowly retracted from the bookshelf it had seemingly been rummaging through. He looked to be about Xisa’s age, if a bit taller, with rich honey-hued skin and a glittering smile. His hair, a soft barley brown, had a couple of leaves and twigs stuck in it, and a tiny braid hung down the side of his neck, almost obscured by the rest of his hair.

The boy opened his pale violet-brown eyes wide and held his palms out innocently as Morg and Baigu came scurrying into the bedroom at the commotion.

“Who the heck are you?!” Morg cried in astonishment. The boy responded with words that were equally gibberish to Xisa’s monolingual ears. Seeing their attempts at communication becoming more and more hopeless, the boy quickly changed tactics, raising his hands again and gesturing at the window, then at something behind them. Upon seeing Morg and Xisa’s extreme confusion, he crossed to the window and re-opened it, gesturing emphatically outside, then gesturing desperately at something behind them.

What the heck does he keep pointing at? Xisa wondered in frustration, following Morg and Baigu’s gazes at the empty room behind them.

Just what is he-

Xisa turned back to the strange boy only to find him gone, the open window letting in a slight breeze.

“Wah! Where’d he go? He disappeared! Is he a ghost?! Xisa, I think we just encountered a ghost!!!”

Xisa blinked slowly.

?

???

What the hell was that?!

*

Songbai had never entered Maisha’s personal room before, and couldn’t help but worry she was intruding on a private space. But at the same time, she wanted to assess the state of Maisha’s health away from the girls’ piercing questions and worried gazes. That chittering monkey, Morg, would become distracting especially quickly.

Laying Maisha on her bed, Songbai examined her fellow witch. Heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature- everything seemed normal aside from one thing. As expected, Maisha’s mana was dangerously low. Songbai clenched her fist. Just what was this idiot thinking?! Overusing mana like this could be critical! Not to mention painful! How does one even manage to get themselves to this state? Perhaps in a life and death battle, it's understandable, but something like this should never happen while going about one’s day-to-day life…

Songbai pursed her lips and began racking her brain. Maisha’s state seemed stable, but at this rate, it could take months for her to build her mana stores back up again without external interference.

She had heard tales of witches using powerful artifacts or spiritual instruments for the purposes of transferring the mana of one witch to another, but she knew such things were difficult to come by and even more difficult to make. And attempting to transfer mana without the proper tools would at best result in an inefficient transfer. Most likely, Songbai would wind up near Maisha’s state with miniscule improvements to Maisha’s health.

If only she could use her transformation spells on depleted mana like she could on a broken arm- but problems with mana systems were never so concrete as physical injuries. Trying something like that carried more risk than it did reward.

Songbai paced back and forth through Maisha’s room, scanning the shelves and desk-tops as she did so, looking for something, anything that might help Maisha.

What am I so worried about? She’s not in any immediate danger, she’ll probably even be fine in just a day or two. Even if it takes a long while for her mana to restore itself back to regular levels, her life isn’t in immediate danger. She will heal with time.

Slumping down into Maisha’s desk chair, held her forehead in one of her palms.

I need to get a grip.

As Songbai calmed herself, stared dazedly at the matte silver stone laying on the center of the desktop. The flickering candlelight glinted off its semi-reflective surface in an eye-catching manner. Furrowing her brows, Songbai looked closer at the object. It was rectangular in shape, and while it was flat and thin, Songbai could see a seam running along the thinnest side of the stone. Gingerly, she pried it open like one might open a clam.

As if pricked by a needle, Songbai immediately sensed the overwhelming amount of mana contained in the object. She quickly snapped it back shut, but not before seeing the symbols covering one half of the inner surface. It looked like the keyboards one might see on a typewriter, but much more streamlined and filled with the symbols of the Swahili alphabet rather than those from the English one.

What the fuck is this?!

Songbai glanced at Maisha’s sleeping form in mild horror, wondering if this was the reason her fellow witch seemed to be completely lacking in mana these past several months.

But those thoughts all disappeared when she saw Maisha’s state. With her eyes tightly shut and her expression scrunched as if in pain, Maisha’s brow glistened with sweat. Songbai quickly approached and sat on the side of her bed, staring at her pained expression with helpless frustration. With a bit of elemental magic, Songbai whisked some of the heat and sweat away from Maisha’s body. Maisha’s expression seemed to relax for a moment before stitching together again.

Songbai cursed internally. She had no power over the delicate state of dreams, nor did she understand the complex mechanics of the mind.

She had studied anatomy for years, and could determine the exact placements of a person’s bones at a glance. Mending injuries, transforming a human to an animal, stopping the heart of an enemy- such delicate actions came as naturally now as breathing. But she had no power over the mind. So if Maisha was stuck in a nightmare, unable to wake up, there was nothing Songbai could do.

“Awwwwooooooooo!” Baigu howled from upstairs. Songbai leapt to her feet, instantly worried about the girls.

“N-no…” Maisha muttered before sucking in a sharp breath. Songbai’s gaze slid back to Maisha. The sweat had already returned to her brow.

What is it? Songbai snapped in Baigu’s mind. Though she knew there was next to nothing she could do, she hated the thought of leaving Maisha on her own.

Nothing urgent. Some kid just wandered into the house, Baigu answered meekly. Songbai sat back down. Baigu could handle it on her own. After a moment of ruminating, Songbai stood again and began rummaging through the books and stoppered potion bottles littering the shelves of her bedroom. Maybe that idiot witch had stored something helpful here.

Songbai gritted her teeth. Once again she found herself worried about this woman. A stupid woman who refused to take care of herself. A stupid woman who refused to tell Songbai anything.