Hilda and Zelda

by Paul Kater

they flew downwards to clean up the mega fishmarket they had created. After removing the smell and the fishy bits, they repaired the street again. After all that, Hilda called it the end of the day.

  They flew along the street, in the direction where they had seen Zelda fly off. Hilda did her best to pick up traces of the magic that always remained for a while after a witch flew by.

  "Damn, I lost her," Hilda muttered at a certain point.

  "This way, sweetwitch," said William, pointing into a street.

  "And how do you know that? Can you pick up magic better than I do all of a sudden? Simply because you have lived in this crazy world for so long?"

  "No. I just follow the smell of the fish."

  "Oh... shush you." Hilda glared at him, then slowly made her broom go into the street that William had pointed out. She decided to let William take the lead and follow his nose. Alas, after a few streets the fish smell, as well as the wet trail on the ground, ended.

  "Looks like Zelda cleaned herself up here," William said, looking around.

  Hilda also looked at the buildings. Then a smile happened on her face. "Maybe, William, maybe. But she is around here somewhere... I feel her."

  From the top floor of an abandoned office building, Zelda looked down into the street at the two people on brooms. "I'm gonna get you two. Soon. And that's a witch's promise."

  17. It's an art

  Hilda and William were satisfied with the achievement of the day. They went back to repair one more street and then they went back to their new temporary home in this world. They took another extensive detour to make sure nobody followed them.

  The magical couple ate something and then talked about their following steps to try and catch the wild witch, until the night was all around them.

  It was way past midnight when Hilda woke up William.

  "What?", he wondered why he was dragged away from his dreams.

  "Something funny going on outside," Hilda said, quietly.

  William listened intently, and indeed, he also heard things that one would not expect there overnight. The sounds were many. Men talking, cars driving around, loud laughter.

  The two got up, dressed in their normal attire and slipped out of their shedly home. Once outside, the noise was much louder, there even was music and some singing as the sounds of large objects being put back and forth became obvious.

  Their brooms lifted William and Hilda into the sky, from where a strange and intriguing view was laid out before them. The place they had seen to be a truck garage was brightly lit. Many cars, among which a few trucks, were parked inside and outside of the large building. Men in dark clothes walked around in the lights that came from headlights and flooded out of the garage. The noise of the object being moved came from small wooden boxes and crates that were taken into the garage, coming from one of the trucks. These things were replaced by other, similar crates and boxes.

  The men who were busy with the whole enterprise seemed carefree, and had not a worry in the world of someone discovering or seeing them.

  "Doesn't look like a big deal to me, Hilda. They are offloading and loading."

  Hilda frowned. "It is strange that they bring in boxes and take out the same ones. I bet my wand that there is something fishy going on down there."

  They moved easily and unobserved through the dark. The roof of the building had several large venting shafts through which the witch and the wizard could peek down into the well lit hall.

  "Of course, Mr. Harmon," a voice rose up through one of the shafts, "things are all in order here. We're taking out the boxes as we talk, and the other ones are going in soon, so the shipment should be on its way in about an hour. No, not sooner as there are too many small things, sir, no option for a forklift this time."

  William spotted the talking man. He sat at a desk, feet on top of it and a mobile phone in his hand.

  "When the guys from the museum ship things in larger crates, Mr. Harmon, then the swap is much faster. No, sir. Yes, sir. Right, sir, Mr. Harmon." With that the call was ended. Phone-man got on his feet and started yelling directions to his mates, followed by a series of the most bizarre and incomprehensible threats if they were not careful with the goods. Apparently Mr. Harmon, whoever he was, wanted a good deal of care unleashed over the objects that the guys from the museum had sent on.

  The word 'swap' had gotten William's attention, and he mentioned that to Hilda, who nodded.

  "It did not look right. They are doing something that's... not right." She drew her wand. "Care to go and change their minds?"

  With a grin, William got out his wand as well. Then they flew up and found a large window, high up in the wall, from where they could see the interior of the garage.

  Against the far wall they saw two stacks of boxes and crates. The men took stuff from a truck to the left stack and then picked a similar box from the right stack to be taken back to the truck. Well, that was more evidence than the two people on brooms needed. There was some very slick art theft going on.

  Hilda grinned as she pointed her wand at the stack of fake crates, the ones that were stowed as replacements. In a few moments that nobody paid attention to them, she shrunk the stack to something that would fit in a pocket. Half a minute later one of the dark clothed men came in again with a box. He walked up to the one visible stack of boxes and stopped.

  "Hey, Carlo!"

  The man who had been on the phone came sauntering in. "What?"

  "Where's the other bunch of stuff?"

  Carlo pointed casually. "Right- hey, where's the other stuff?"

  The man that had yelled out put down the box he had in his hands and started looking around. The stack of boxes that were to be the replacements had shrunk so much that it had fallen into a black shadow cast from the lights above, so the two men did not see the miniature packages.

  "Do you think we can do some more fun here?", Hilda asked William.

  William nodded. "I think we can trouble them a bit by letting the air out of the tires of all the trucks." He had once seen how much work it was to change one tire of a big truck, so doing that to all tires would certainly create a lot of work for the men in the garage.

  They changed position, high over the area. Darkness was their ally, and gravity became one as they let the air escape from the rubber circles that allowed the trucks to move. At first none of the art thieves noticed that something out of the ordinary happened with the trucks, as all were busy looking for the missing crates.

  Only as a few men came out and noticed that the two trucks were lower on their feet, there was an alarm going into the garage. William and Hilda then blew up the tires of the trucks, making the heavy vehicles slump down to the street, going nowhere for the time being.

  Guns appeared in hands, flashlights went round the area and suddenly the men were not making any sound at all. Hilda and William calmly watched the men spread out, searching the area for the insolents that had ruined their evening. The men were clearly used to this, as they did not make a big fuss. Also their weaponry was more than sign.

  "Do you know what these metal things do?", Hilda asked William. She was not at all aware of the deadly firepower that the guns packed.

  "I do, and yes, I'll take care of them," William nodded. Through their link he sent images as well as he knew, about the guns.

  Hilda grinned. She understood what her wizard was trying to tell her.

  They divided the area in two and at their leisure went on to disable the guns. Gunpowder changed into mud, springs changed into straw and mere minutes later the fire-arms of the men were rendered useless, unless they wanted to throw them at someone.

  The magical couple returned to the garage, where only three more men were looking for the crates. As Hilda and William pulled up by the window, one of them had clearly just found the small package that had been the fake load for the trucks. He stood in the warehouse part of the building, something small on his hand, pointing and yelling at
his comrades.

  Marco, the man with the phone, ran upto the man with the lost boxes in his palm. Hilda nodded and mumbled a spell. A second later, the two men lay buried under the boxes and crates that suddenly had returned to their original sizes.

  Number three came running in, to find his mates covered in boxes. William decided that a few of the boxes that were not too damaged could just as well jump up and knock out the third man.

  With that taken care of, the magical couple was confident that the rest of the group of men was ready to be rounded up. They moved their brooms around to the front of the garage, where the two trucks stood as stranded whales, the only difference being that whales did not need flat tires to be stranded. And whales lay, they would not stand.

  They touched down on one of the trucks and took their time to look around over the group that was still attempting to find people that were not there.

  "Hey. Are you looking for us?" Hilda threw in her natural diplomacy that sometimes made William whince.

  Diplomatic or not, her words had the desired effect. All guns were pointing at the magicals within two seconds, aims were taking and trigger fingers were ready to blow the two strange people to the next kingdom of their choice.

  "Before you think about calling on your boss, let me tell you that he is under several crates and boxes, and for now indisposed," Hilda said to the men on the ground. "And your guns are useless, so you are free to try them on us."

  This invitation did not go