Rewrite That Witch
CH256 · Rewrite
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Chapter 256: The Prologue to a New Life

The basket touched down and a woman climbed out — red hair to her waist, perhaps thirty, an expression that settled somewhere between welcome and the comfortable confidence of someone who had done this before.

“Hello. Welcome to Border Town. I’m Wendy.” She turned to Ashes and her smile shifted, recognizing an old face. “You came as well.”

That must be her, Sylvie noted. She could see what ordinary eyes could not: the warm, steady pulse of Wendy’s magic, present and controlled, nothing frantic about it.

“Welcome.” Another voice, quieter. A witch with pale blue eyes and dark hair stepped forward — those eyes were remarkable, clear as water and somehow still, but what stopped Sylvie entirely was the magic behind them. She opened her inner sight and went still. Anna’s power was immense. It sat in the air around her like weather, a slow three-colored rotation of black and white and grey that drew the surrounding magic into its orbit and held it there, patient and absolute. Sylvie had seen many witches on Sleeping Island. She had never seen power that bore down on the space around it like this, without effort, without display. Just weight.

“My name is Lightning!” The girl descended from the air beside the basket, Maggie riding her shoulder. “Googoo!” The pigeon waved both wings in greeting.

When Ashes had introduced the five of them, Wendy smiled and gestured toward the basket.

“The large sac overhead is called a hot air balloon — as long as hot air is fed into it, it can carry us over the mountains and into Border Town.” She turned to Ashes. “You really won’t come? His Highness would be glad to see you.”

“I doubt that,” Ashes said, dry and fond at once. “I came here to lure away his witches. That tends not to inspire warm welcomes.” She looked at the five. “Take care of these ones for me.”

“I will.” Wendy pursed her lips briefly. “That’s a promise.”

“Everyone—” Anna’s voice cut through the goodbyes without sharpening them. “Cloud Gazer is about to rise.”

The basket trembled once underfoot, and they were off the ground.

Sylvie watched Ashes and Molly shrink below her — two figures growing smaller and smaller until the mountains swallowed the distinction between them and the grey rock, and then there was only the ocean behind them and Graycastle ahead. She had looked down from heights before. This was different: the expanse available to her inner sight was vast in all directions, cliffs dropping into submarine canyons, underground rivers threading away from the coast, the bone-layered strata of the earth shifting in slow geological conversation beneath the soil. She reached for the inner sight to sort through it—

The headache arrived like a door slamming. Magic draining fast, faster than expected, the flood of images arriving all at once without the usual framework of walls and distances to organize them. She pulled the sight shut and sat down hard against the basket wall, pressing her palm to her temple.

“Are you all right?” Wendy crouched beside her.

“A little — dizzy.”

“Take slow breaths. It passes faster than it feels like it will.” A warm hand on her shoulder. “Many people are uncomfortable the first time they leave the ground.”

“Thank you. I’m already better.” Sylvie straightened.

She had expected something between wariness and strained courtesy — a diplomatic greeting masking the careful calculation of two groups who needed each other and weren’t certain they trusted each other yet. What she found was conversation. Lightning came in and out of the basket to chat with all of them, dragging Maggie along; by the third time she had revisited a story about a defensive battle against demonic beasts, even Candle was sitting forward to listen. Wendy moved between the newcomers with an attention that was neither obligatory nor performed. Anna answered every question put to her in full, with the particular care of someone who had decided the question was worth answering well.

Maggie was the axis on which the whole thing turned — she knew everyone, had travelled between both groups, and translated between their registers of trust the way she translated between her own forms: practically, without ceremony.

By the time Border Town appeared below them, Honey and Lotus were finishing a sentence together about what the town looked like from above. Sylvie looked down at the view and tried to hold the facts of it: small, yes — a third the size of Sleeping Island, if that — but thick with people. The central square, the river shore, the walls, the open spaces between buildings — all of them crowded, moving, loud even at this altitude, a continuous circulation of human activity that a place this small had no theoretical right to contain.

The balloon descended into the castle courtyard and landed cleanly on the stones.

Sylvie stepped out of the basket — and the air cracked open.

The explosion came from everywhere at once. She froze. Two of the others stumbled back; Honey retreated fully into the basket, gripping the rim with both hands and leaving only half her face visible over the edge. “What happened? What was that?”

Wendy was laughing. “Don’t worry — that’s His Highness’s gun salute. His way of saying welcome.”

The hall was cool and high-ceilinged. At the far end, behind the long table, the lord of the Western Territory sat in his seat.

Sylvie studied him as they crossed the floor. Grey hair — the same shade as the princess’s. No ornamental jewelry, no affected display. The same unhurried composure she recognized in Tilly, the quality of a person who was simply at ease in their own authority and did not require the room to acknowledge it. His features, plainly assessed, did not match his sister’s — Tilly’s face was something that made people instinctively feel better — but the resemblance was there in the way he held himself, in the economy of his movement.

He stood as they approached.

“Welcome to Border Town. I am the Lord of the Western Territory, Roland Wimbledon — I imagine you already know who I am.” He smiled. “Tilly Wimbledon is my younger sister. You have no reason to feel like strangers here. Consider Border Town a home the same way you would Sleeping Island.”

Sylvie opened her inner sight before she was fully conscious of having decided to.

No darkness — he was not wearing a God’s Stone of Retaliation. No distortion in the magic around him, no trace of interference or control, no camouflage, no secondary layer of concealment over a first one. What she saw when she looked at Roland Wimbledon was simply Roland Wimbledon. An ordinary man. Precisely what he appeared to be.

The contingency Tilly had briefed her on for this outcome — no clue detectable — was a single sentence: Send word to Sleeping Island.

That was it. Three words of instruction for a scenario that had just dismantled several hours of preparation. Sylvie shut her inner sight and stood in the middle of the hall while Roland continued speaking, his words arriving at some remove, her attention fixed on the space where her strategy had been.

There is a real nobleman standing here, she thought, who has staked himself against the Church to shelter witches. She had planned for deception, for danger, for imprisonment. She had not planned for this — the clean, vertiginous simplicity of it just being true.

It was only when Roland began discussing room arrangements that she came back to herself fully.

The current witch house was still under construction; they would stay in the castle for now, sharing rooms with established members of the Witch Union. Wendy would share with Sylvie — an easy prospect, given the trust Ashes had voiced. There was also, apparently, a third person in that room: a witch called Nightingale.

I hope she is easy to get along with, Sylvie thought, and realized she was already hoping for more than she’d brought herself to hope when the ship left Sleeping Island.

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