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Howl sank back into the shadows on the edge of the crowd as he moved toward the nearest alleyway. The mousy haired young woman picking her way through the crowd was nothing remarkable to the cheering festival-goers, but a wizard knows better. She looked different now – would look different, he supposed.
In his memories her hair was shorter and shone like starlight, eyes fierce and strong. This girl had long brown hair and dull, sad eyes. It didn’t matter. The instant he had caught sight of her profile he knew exactly who she was. Well, he didn’t know who she was at all really, but he knew that she was the girl from the fields.
Would be the girl– Whatever. He shook his head sharply. What mattered was that he had a lot of questions for her and until now he had never been able to demand answers. Every spell, every scrying, every sly interrogation in every town he’d ever visited, they’d all turned up nothing. He had told himself years ago that he was giving up, that maybe he had imagined the whole thing.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. If Calcifer wasn’t at risk of sending the entire castle up in flames, he probably would have gotten a much more violent response the day he dragged himself back to the castle, soaked in beer and wine, too depressed to sing any of his Welsh drinking songs, and declared himself finished with the whole terrible ordeal. He had woken on the floor in front of the hearth the following afternoon, head pounding, and they’d silently agreed never to speak of it again.
And now here she was in front of him.
She made her way out of the crowd and slipped down a side street two doors down, completely unaware of her shadow. As he trailed her down cobblestone streets, he surreptitiously traced a symbol in the air which flashed metallic gold and then disappeared. Interesting. Some kind of magic then, whether she knows about it or not.
He paused in his amble down the back road and sank further back into a shadow as the oblivious young woman walked right into a pair of soldiers occupying a doorway. Something long unfamiliar crawled up his throat as he watched her exchange with them - an acidic, unpleasant, burning feeling. He frowned momentarily before immediately passing a hand over his brow to chase away unsightly wrinkles. Anger. He hadn’t felt anger in a long time.
Almost without his conscious permission, his legs carried him towards the motley group. He straightened his shoulders and threw an unaffected swagger into his step as he walked up behind the girl and threw an arm over her shoulder casually.
“There you are sweetheart, sorry I’m late. I was looking everywhere for you.”
He could feel her heart racing with fear and confusion. Something hollow in his own chest twinged painfully in response and he forced himself not to react.
He refrained from turning the unwelcome soldiers into something unpleasant, but only just. A minor hex on their clothes had the uniforms marching away stiffly with their wearers inside. He took the girl’s arm and guided her gently down the street. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
He held back a scowl as he surreptitiously checked behind them for the foul magic of the Witch of the Waste. He was supposed to introduce himself grandly to the girl from the fields and dazzle her with charm, while he figured out why she had shown up all those years ago and what it all meant. Instead homunculi oozed from the wall ahead and behind, and he was forced to call up a wind under their feet to lift them above the oily, grasping hands of the witch’s henchmen.
Howl knew it would only be a matter of time before they untangled themselves and followed the feel of his magic across the city, but at the very least he could leave the girl somewhere safe before turning back to deal with them.
They moved easily above the crowds, a playful summer wind buoying their steps and ruffling their hair. As the girl relaxed in his arms and matched his stride, he felt a second wispy breeze tangling around them and threw his head back with a chuckle.
“You are a natural,” he declared, with no small measure of surprise. How had no one caught this before? And what was one untrained witch supposed to do for him?
Catching sight of an empty balcony across the main square, he guided the mysterious witch down gently and bowed with a flourish that hid the flick of his pointer finger as he left a tiny locating spell on the hem of her dress. With even more questions than before, there was no way he was letting her slip away like last time.
“I’ll make sure to draw them off, but wait a bit before you head back outside,” he instructed. After running from homunculi and flying on a southern wind, the girl’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled with life.
“That’s my girl.”
That painful thump in his chest happened again and he dropped her hand quickly before drifting backwards off the balcony and down into the crowd. The locator spell sparkled at the edge of his vision, the tiniest thread tugging him back towards the girl he’d left on the balcony. But for now there were other things to deal with, and he knew they would meet again.