Rewrite That Witch
CH901 · Rewrite
☕ Support

Chapter 901: The Witches From Afar (Part III)

“What do you want to know?” Azima asked, cutting a glance at her.

Wendy took Scroll’s hand, worry plain on her face. If what Tilly said was true, these women had not come to Neverwinter of their own choosing. They had been driven here by conflict within the Sleeping Island witches themselves. If that wound was not properly addressed, it would drag the Witch Union into the middle of it—and, worse, shatter the trust of every newcomer before it had even taken root.

“Don’t worry.” Scroll raised one eyebrow and turned to the witch who had spoken of returning to the Eastern Region. “You miss your hometown, which means your family almost certainly didn’t abandon you. Like the other refugees who fled to Sleeping Island, you were forced out of the Eastern Region by the church. Is that right?”

“So what?” Azima cut in.

Scroll ignored the provocation entirely. “Let me tell you the state of the Eastern Region.” Her tone was level, indifferent—not cold, but careful. “Since Garcia, the Queen of Clearwater, plundered Seawindshire and Valencia, His Majesty has not yet fully recovered those lands. First came the demonic plague the church spread. Then Timothy’s army swept through what was left. Farmlands across the whole area lie deserted. People cannot sustain themselves. Many have become refugees.”

The witch’s expression darkened but she didn’t yield. “If we don’t see it ourselves, how do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“Two years ago, His Majesty Roland began taking in those refugees.” Scroll’s voice did not change pace. “Neverwinter now has more than a hundred thousand residents—seventy percent from other cities, the majority of them refugees from the Eastern Region and the Southern Territory. Your family is most likely among them.” She paused. “Can you tell me where you lived before? Name a town or a village, a local landmark, a specialty product.”

“You plan to find her family with only that?” Azima’s voice was sharp. “She wasn’t born in some city where every alley has a name and neighbors all know each other!”

Scroll did not answer Azima. She reached up and gently tucked a strand of hair behind her own ear, then looked steadily at the unnamed witch with the patient expression of a teacher waiting for a student to find the words she already had.

After a long silence, the witch answered quietly. “My village had no name. There were no other villages nearby. It was very far from Valencia—so far that if you wanted to sell wheat, you’d sell it to a passing merchant at whatever meager price he offered.” She hesitated. “It wasn’t official, but people sometimes called it the Sixteenth Village.”

“Six—teen?” Wendy echoed, involuntarily.

“Because on the road back from Valencia, it’s the sixteenth village you pass.”

Scroll closed her eyes. “Let me see… There’s a branch of the Sanwan River winding behind that village, isn’t there.”

“There are countless branches of the Sanwan River in the Eastern Region.” Azima grunted. “What village survives without a river to water its fields?”

“But this one is different.” Scroll raised her hand. “It isn’t wide enough for boats, and in a dry season the riverbed shows entirely—that’s why the villages nearby can’t ship food and supplies by water. But the branch spreads into a large lake just at the Sixteenth Village, a lake that never dries even when the river does. Because of it, the wheat there always grows better than anywhere else nearby.” A pause. “Am I right?”

The witch’s eyes went wide. “Have you been there?”

“I heard it from someone.” A short silence. “The person who told me is here in Neverwinter now—though he was never a resident of the Sixteenth Village.”

“What do you mean?”

Scroll turned to the City Hall clerk assigned to the registration table. “Bring me Watt. His ID number is 0024578. He’s a furnace worker—he should be recycling slag in Zone 2 at the North Slope right now.”

“Yes, Ms. Scroll.”

Half an hour later the clerk returned with a ruddy, broad-shouldered man at his side.

The witch studied him and shook her head. “I don’t know him.”

“There you have it.” Azima’s voice was triumphant. “There’re how many people in the whole Eastern Region? You can’t just—”

“Ah—” The man’s whole face lit up, heedless of Azima entirely. “Are you Tillan’s daughter? Thank God. Thank God you’re alive—and look how you’ve grown!”

The witch froze. “The ‘Tillan’ you’re talking about… is she my mother?”

“Who else would I mean? You have her eyes exactly. And that mole beneath the corner of your eye—the same as hers, perfectly the same!” Watt’s voice cracked slightly. “You’re far prettier than she was, though. But wait—you don’t remember me? Well, you wouldn’t, you were just a little girl when I left the village. When I came back, you were already gone.” He was almost laughing now, or trying to. “She used to call you Little Orchid, didn’t she? Tillan always gave her children names from flowers.”

“That was just a childhood nickname.” The witch’s cheeks flushed. “My name is Doris now.”

“I see—Doris, a fine name. You know, when I was digging trenches back in the Sixteenth Village, everyone used to talk about you. They all thought the witches had taken you away, and—”

As Watt rambled on—the words spilling out of him like water finding its old course—Wendy began to piece together the shape of his story. He had grown up in the village just north of the Sixteenth, the Fifteenth by the same naming logic, near enough that the two communities had kept each other company for generations. He had envied his neighbors their lake, that impossible persistent lake, and had traveled all the way to Valencia to learn trench-digging. When he came back he had spent years working at the expansion project that would push the lake’s reach toward his own village, and those years had made him as much a Sixteenth man as a Fifteenth one.

“Are my parents and my elder brother…still in the village?” Doris asked when Watt finally paused. Her voice had gone smaller. “Or did they come to the Western Region with you?”

At that moment Scroll let out a short, quiet sigh.

The brightness in Watt’s eyes dimmed at once. “They didn’t make it.” His voice came out heavy, each word measured. “The second prince’s army took our food stores. By the time we reached the king’s city—starving, barely walking—a plague had broken out. The nobles shut the gates. We were left crying at the base of the wall. A great many people from the surrounding villages died because of their selfishness. By the time His Majesty’s relief teams arrived, only a few of us were still breathing.” He stopped. “Your family… were not among them.”

“No—” Doris pressed her hand over her mouth.

She stood very still for a moment. Then she began to sob—hard, shaking sobs that she could not contain.

“I’m sorry, child.” Watt panicked immediately. He hovered beside her, wanting to help and not knowing how, before finally stepping forward and laying his large hand gently on the top of her head. “Tillan called your name over and over again before she died. If she could see you now—alive, grown, well—she would be glad. She would be so glad.” He patted her head again, awkwardly, carefully. “So don’t cry anymore, girl.”

Doris bit her lip until it must have hurt, nodded once, and cried harder.

Discussion

Suggest a change