Bathsheba tilted her head in wonderment, “What makes you say that?”
“I fell in the water and almost drowned myself,” actually the word wasn’t almost. If it weren’t for Damien she would have been lying in the bed of the sea forever where no one would not know that she was down there. The thought horrified her.
“Hmm,” she hummed.
Damien asked the black witch, “Penny doesn’t possess the ability yet?”
“That would be truly hard to tell. There should have been some sign when you must have started to drown. It is often the hardest time we find our abilities. Especially in the darkest ones. You should probably put her back in the water and see what happens,” suggested the black witch.
“That is ridiculous,” thank you, master Damien! Penny thanked him. She saw the black witch chuckle.
“I was only giving away quick and reliable ideas. But then it is not that it is necessary for you to work on something which you might not be gifted. I am definitely not wrong but something appears to be off,” Bathsheba heard someone knock on the door which alerted all the three of them.
Their heads turned to look at the door where another knocking was heard outside. By the intensity that the hand behind the door knocked with, one could tell that it wasn’t a female but a male.
“Airen? Airen?” came the man’s voice. Airen? thought Penelope to herself was he asking for the black witch?
“Another admirer?” asked Damien for Bathsheba to look at the door with a frown.
Bathsheba hurriedly pushed away objects that were on the table. Clearing any other things that could bring up suspicion, “I do not remember talking to someone with that voice,” she said after hiding whatever a human would find suspicious. When she was about to answer the door, Damien stopped her by placing his hand on the door so that she wouldn’t open it. Seeing Bathsheba raise her eyebrow at him Penny wondered what was going on.
Before Penny and Damien had arrived at the door of Bathsheba, one of the humans who was passing by had found something strange about the woman who lived at the edge of the house. The human went by the name Eugine. With his short brown hair and rough scruff around his jaw and cheeks, he had found a beautiful maiden to be walking from the river back to her house.
The man intrigued by the woman had followed her back home. He hadn’t noticed it before but with him where he only caught sight of the side face of the woman hadn’t noticed her hiding the other side of her. She spoke to everyone she met and she might have been the perfect girl but there was just something he couldn’t point his finger on which made him doubtful of the woman. Maybe he was doubtful because he was a witch hunter, a man who took the bounty of witches so that he could hunt them down one by one to kill them off.
Bathsheba had worn the stone to protect herself but the stone she had was made by a mere black witch from whom she had stolen from. Unfortunately, the stone being one of a low quality which lacked the ingredients to sustain its power, she didn’t realize that the effect of it was fading away.
Everyone often thought they were safe but there was always a loophole no matter how safe a person tried to walk on the delicate thread of false pretense.
Eugine had been following Bathsheba for two weeks before inquiring about her with a fellow passerby to find out her name discreetly without being too obvious. Airen. What a sweet name one would say but it was always the one that didn’t stand out to be troublesome. With the recent wind of witches being spread out in the four lands who had come from the north, there was no telling who was who and when a human would go missing under the witch’s cloak.
Deciding to go and check, he first looked around the house which looked clean. Similar to any other house that belonged to this village, but when his eyes caught the windows, he noticed how it was shut close. Dust sitting in the corners to indicate that the windows had not been opened for more than a few weeks.
Stepping close to the front door, he stepped in front of the door to knock on it. Keeping his ears clear to listen to any suspicion movement, he leaned back and to the side to make sure no one had used the back door. When the door finally opened, a female opened the door but it wasn’t the same woman he had been following. His eyebrows scrunched together looking at the female who had blonde hair and green eyes.
“May I help you?” she asked, where she had a questionable look on her face.
Eugine looked confused. Had he got the right house? He sure had but who was this woman and where was the other woman he had been following for the last two weeks?
“Airen?”
“Sorry, who?”
For a moment, he stopped to look left and right before asking, “I am looking for Airen,” he said with a straight face, “He was sure he had not seen this person before. Was it Airen’s sister? But then there didn’t seem to be any obvious resemblance that he could spot right now.
“I am sorry but she isn’t here today. She’s gone out. Was there something you needed?” the girl asked with a smile on her face which seemed harmless. On a closer look of her face- her eyes, lips, tongue seemed to appear normal. There wasn’t any sign of her being a witch. Hmm, he thought to himself.
“I am one of her acquaintances. She left this,” Eugine pulled out a handkerchief which had been dipped in holy water before running through several prayers.
The cloth was an alarm indicator if there was a witch around as the witches both white and black were affected by it. The girl seemed to stare at the cloth he handed her, her eyes looking at it and then shifting to look at him. If the girl was involved in something of witchery, there would be no doubt that she would sneeze first and then start to convulse. It was one of the easiest ways to draw the witches out without causing any riots around the village. If the girl named Airen was a human whom he had suspected wrongly then it would be fine too. No harm would be caused by if there was a witch living here, he would have to pull out his sharp arrows that were made of silver and the wooden grasses which were found in the mountain of Eve which affected the witches greatly.
Before the door had been opened Damien had stopped Bathsheba from opening. As if already distrusting the person who had arrived at the door. Instead of letting the black witch open the door, he had asked Penny to open it while telling her to make a story that wasn’t at home right now.
