“No, I can’t,” she told me plainly. “I’m fine, really, as long as I stay here in this flower field. I spend all day with the flowers. I’m happy just being here in the sunlight. Isn’t it wonderful?”
The girl never got up from her spot.
“Stop right there, missy. Hey, I said stop!”
I had flown my broom several hours from the flower field and arrived at another country when a guard in black clothing came out to greet me in a less-than-welcoming tone of voice.
He has no reason to yell at me like that, and why’s he calling me “missy”?! Even the most good-natured person in the world would have a hard time being treated this way. Naturally, I got a bit angry.
However, I didn’t let it show. I’m an adult, after all.
“You a traveler?”
“Yes. Can’t you can tell by looking at me?”
“What’s with that bouquet?”
“Oh, it’s nothing really.”
“……”
“What?”
“Lemme see it.” He pushed toward me and snatched the bouquet from my hands.
“Wha—? Hey!” Enough was enough, and I wasn’t about to let him treat me this way. I got down from my broom, grabbed ahold of the flowers, and tried to take them back. But the guard brushed my hands aside and stared so hard at the flowers you’d think he was trying to burn a hole through them. My protests had no effect.
To make matters worse, the man just grimaced and muttered, “Wait a minute… Are these from—?” but I had no idea what he was on about.
…This guard is such a jerk.
“Where did you get these?” he asked.
“What does it matter? Give them back.”
“Don’t tell me you picked them up in a flower field?”
“What business is it of yours?” You’re really underestimating me, you know. How should I go about punishing you? Perhaps I should reduce you to ashes. I pulled out my wand.
“Hey, what’re you doing?”
I was getting ready to fire off a gust of wind when I heard a new voice behind me—and this one had even more authority behind it.
What the heck? Is this country just full of macho guys with big attitudes? I turned around, fuming.
“That belongs to the traveler. Give it back.”
Standing there was a middle-aged man dressed in the same black clothing as the young guard. He was glaring not at me, but at his young colleague.
I turned back to the younger guard to find him gripping the flower bouquet and clearly upset at being caught. “But, sir, this…this is…”
“I’ll know when I look at it. I’ll handle the rest, so stand down.”
“No, this is—”
“Stand. Down. Didn’t you hear me? Go take a break.”
“…Tch.” The young guard clicked his tongue, and after shooting me another nasty look, he turned to leave.
“Ah, my bouquet, if you would.”
“……”
The young guard turned back, radiating protest with his entire body. “…Here.” He shoved the flowers back at me.
“Thank you kindly.”
He didn’t answer, but he did finally leave. Every single thing he did was irritating. I was glad to be rid of him.
If we ever met again, he wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
After confirming that the younger guard was no longer in sight, the older guard who had been addressed as “sir” turned to me with an apologetic expression. “My apologies, Madam Witch. His younger sister recently went missing, and he’s been acting this way ever since. Please forgive him.”
“It didn’t bother me that much.” A lie, obviously.
“Anyway, as for those flowers… I’m sorry, but would you please let me dispose of them? Bringing them into this country is strictly forbidden.”
“Forbidden? Like, these flowers specifically?”
I didn’t understand what he meant or what he was trying to accomplish. Unconsciously, I hugged the flowers tightly.
“Those flowers are cursed,” he said matter-of-factly, without trying to pull them out of my hands. “They’re harmless to a witch like you, but apparently they contain a spell that drives nonmages mad. I don’t know all the details, but that’s the information we have now.”
“…Cursed?”
He nodded. “People who fall for those flowers are led to where they grow, then become their food. They’re never seen again. That’s why the flowers are forbidden.”
“……”
“Is something wrong?”
“…No.”
If we assume there really is a curse on these flowers—and I suspect that might be the case—why didn’t the girl who gave me this bouquet try to stand up even once? And why was she sitting in the flower field? I’d been puzzling over these points the entire time.
What if it wasn’t that she didn’t stand up, but that she couldn’t stand up? What if the lower half of her body was no longer hers?
……
“Um, about that young guard’s little sister…”
“Oh. Several days ago, she went into the forest where the flowers grow, and she hasn’t been seen since.”
He lowered his gaze. He was looking at the bouquet. “Say, miss…did someone give those to you? Perhaps—”
“No.” I interrupted him. “I gathered these myself. The clothing wrapped around the flowers is one of my spare shirts.” So I don’t know anything about the guard’s sister.
I cut off his questioning with a shameless lie.
After that, I entered the country and found that there wasn’t much in the way of sightseeing, so I headed for an inn. I rented a room for only one night, took a bath, and slid under the covers.
Staring up at the cheap wooden planks of the ceiling, I deliberated about the flower field, and about the girl sitting there.
There was a book I had read a long time ago, The Adventures of Niche, in which there had been a story about another strange plant. As I recall, in one part of that story, there was a plant with a mutation that caused it to absorb magical energy rather than exude it the way normal plants did. It gained sentience and eventually became violent.
First, I should clarify that the substance we know as “magical energy” flows freely from every part of the natural world. Flowers, trees, and other flora especially produce and exude magical energy by absorbing sunlight. Honestly, I don’t really understand the theory behind it all.
Anyway, the human body is typically unable to absorb this energy, but there are certain people who can harness it regardless, and even use it at will. We call them mages.
That’s why our powers can reach their full potential in the middle of a forest overflowing with raw magical energy. When I was still studying to be a witch, the place where my teacher trained me was also a forest.
You could say that we mages resemble the mutated plant in The Adventures of Niche. We have become able to handle things that humans ordinarily can’t.
…Or is it that people who can’t do magic are the rare ones?
I don’t know which is which. I feel like it might not be a good idea to think too deeply about these things. Plus, sitting and trying to puzzle it out doesn’t amount to much in the end. It’s like trying to logic out which came first, the chicken or the egg. Completely unproductive.
“…Yawn.” I covered my mouth and rubbed my eyes. I’m not tired yet. I’m fine. Not tired, not tired—the flower field.
Maybe the flower field had evolved in a strange way because there was too much magic. Like the sentient plants in the story. Thinking about it, the forest around the flower field was so overgrown with trees, you couldn’t see the sun through the foliage. The magical energy produced in such a place could create the necessary conditions.
It wouldn’t really be so strange for the flower field to mutate due to the great overabundance of magical energy.
And so the flower field began to draw humans in with whispers of nectar-sweet poison. What on earth had been born there?
>
“……”
What had become of the humans lured to that flower field?
A bad feeling took root in my mind, and I couldn’t shake it.
“Hello again, Madam Witch. Leaving already?”
It was the following morning, and the older guard I’d met the previous day was standing at the border gate. It seemed that he remembered me, and he greeted me with a cheerful smile.
I returned his smile and said, “Yes. It wasn’t a very large country, so I saw everything I wanted to in a day.”
“Yeah…this place isn’t the most exciting.”
“Not at all. It was very enjoyable.”
“Ha-ha, thanks for the laugh.” He saw right through me.
“By the way, what happened to the young guard from yesterday?”
“Hmm? He’s off today. He left the country last night and hasn’t come back yet. Did you have unfinished business with him?”
“Just another joke.” I asked because I’m trying to avoid him.
“Anyway, he said he would be coming back this evening, so you can wait if you want to see him.”
“It’s fine.”
“Mm. So you’re going, then?”
“Yes. I’m not in any particular hurry to get to the next place, but if I don’t leave the country where I’m staying in the morning, I can’t usually reach the next one before sunset.” Plus, there’s a stop I want to make.
I was more concerned with that place than anything here.
“Is that so? Well, take care of yourself.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
And so I stepped through the gate.
Then…I could see the forest in the distance. I looked toward the area I had come from the day before and took off on my broom.
A few scattered trees led the way, as if they had been flung from the forest, lending a different hue to the sea of green spreading out before me. The cool wind blew wildly, twisting me around and chilling the earth. Clouds hung in the air, blocking out the sunlight. The gray sky had already begun to turn the color of lead.
It’s going to rain soon.
In the forest, I avoided the creaking trees that brushed at my shoulders and found the clearing.
There was the flower field.
It looked as gloomy as the sky, and the faded colors were completely different from the vibrant tableau of the day before.
“……”
And the flowers were not only the wrong colors, but the wrong shapes as well.
As far as I knew, I had retraced my path from the day before, so I shouldn’t have ended up in a place that looked so different despite its similarities. However, there was a certain uneasiness that I couldn’t shake.
I got down from my broom and walked over to the source of my unease. My foot made an unsettling squish when it touched down, and I could feel the flower petals dying underfoot.
A pleasant scent hung in the air above the flower field.
In front of me was a person. The true source of my discomfort was there—she was the discomfort.
“……”
It was the young girl who had given me the flower bouquet, and now there was a man facing her, too. He was wearing different clothes from yesterday, but I remembered his face. He was sitting in the flower field, smiling at the girl.
It was the young guard.
“Hello again.”
“Ah, the traveler from yesterday. Hello.” He gave me a very simple reply.
“Is that…thing your little sister?” I asked.
He tilted his head. “Yes, I finally found her. I couldn’t believe she was in a place like this.” Still wearing a gentle expression, he grasped the girl’s hand.
The longer I looked, the stranger it became—somehow, I couldn’t call the girl holding the young man’s hand human anymore. Flecks of green dotted her skin, ivy vines curled around her body, and her vacant eyes stared into the stagnant air without blinking. Her mouth was gaping wide like a cave, and drool oozed out from the corners.
The strangest thing, though, was her lower half. From the waist down, she was wrapped in huge red flower petals, as if a human had grown out of an enormous flower. Flower and human had become a single, bizarre sight.
The guard gazed at her, spellbound. “She’s so pretty. Who would have thought she was all the way out here, becoming so beautiful?”
“……”
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head, “It’s nothing. I’m just surprised because she looks very different from yesterday.”
“Ah, yesterday. I’m sorry about all that. I was just feeling out of sorts because I didn’t know where my sister had gone.”
I turned my gaze slightly downward and saw his leg had ivy coiling around it. I’m sure he couldn’t move any more than his sister could. Or rather, he could, but he had probably lost any desire to move.
“……”
He paid my presence no heed. If I didn’t speak to him, he would soon turn back toward her and continue talking to her with vacant eyes.
“…I can’t believe you kept this amazing place all to yourself.”
“…Ah, that’s right. Say, why don’t we bring everyone here from back home? If we show them, they’ll be so happy.”
“…I especially want them to see you, now that you’re so beautiful.”
“…Hey, that’s okay, right?”
“…I see. Thank you.”
I suspected he was hearing words I couldn’t. To me, it just looked like a one-sided conversation with the thing that used to be his sister.
The little sister had been able to converse with me the day before, but now she couldn’t even blink anymore. She certainly couldn’t express anything verbally. Her emotions, her physical body, her entire self had been lost in the flower field somewhere. She had lost the ability to do anything except be admired.
Just like a flower.
I flew over a field of grass.
Luckily, by the time I remounted my broom, the rain had stopped. I’d like to get to the next country before it starts to rain again, but we’ll see about that.
“…Oh no.”
Beneath the ashen sky, I saw something moving in the direction I was headed. As I got closer, and the blurry form grew clearer, I could tell it was a person. Without slowing down, I passed by them.
“……”
I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. Their age was a mystery. I could tell only that they were human. The person was walking along to some unknown destination; if they continued straight ahead, maybe they would eventually reach another country.
All of their features had vaguely blurred together except for one thing, something they were carefully cradling in both hands. I had seen clearly what it was, but I wished I hadn’t.
They carried a bouquet of flowers.
CHAPTER 3
On the Road: The Tale of a Muscleman Searching for His Little Sister
SHORTCUT STARTS HERE
There was a signboard right there, so I followed it obediently. The road was too narrow—in fact, it wasn’t much of a road at all, more like a simple trail—so I couldn’t use my broom. I could have insisted on flying if I’d really wanted to, but I didn’t want to deal with the constant twisting and turning.
With no other option left to me, I walked along the unpaved road that wasn’t a road, trampling grass underfoot. The grass, damp with morning dew, flung water droplets at me as I pressed on. The hem of my robe was already weighed down with moisture.
This might be a shortcut if you’re walking, but I’m using a broom, so this is obviously a longer way around. Shoot.
Anyway…I wonder what kind of place the next country will be.
Trade must not have been big there, if this path was so undeveloped. Meaning a country just as undeveloped as this forest. Well, that’s just my guess. Hmm… Suddenly my desire to go there had vanished. Let’s turn back, shall we?
Just joking.
I walked on for some time, compl
aining all the while in my head. Finally, a change appeared in the otherwise uniform forest scenery.
“…Oh my.”
A tree had fallen—a big one, maybe several hundred years old by the look of it. And it wasn’t the only one lying wearily on its side; there were a whole bunch.
Whoa. What a roadblock.
However, I could still proceed onward. I crossed over the fallen trees, spreading out both arms as if I was walking a tightrope, then caught sight of a black shape moving in the shadows of the forest.
Oh, a bear?
Alas, it was just a human.
A giant one, with rippling muscles. Scary.
“I knocked down all the trees around us with my own two hands. How about that? Pretty impressive, huh?”
With a grunt, he struck a pose to show off his muscles. Plenty of people could fell trees with raw strength, but I kept that thought to myself.
“Would you happen to be a resident of the country up ahead?”
He spoke while taking a different pose. “That’s right. I come from that country. How did you know? Could you tell from my muscles?”
“Huh? Do you mean to say that your homeland is full of musclemen like you?” Maybe I should turn back.
“No, not at all. They’re all scrawny little bean sprouts there.”
“What were you trying to say, then?”
“Doesn’t matter. How about these muscles?”
I don’t think I’m going to get very far with this guy. I tried to humor him. “Oh, what amaaazing muscles. Can I feel them?”
“Go right ahead!” The huge man offered his arm to me with another grunt and flexed.
I didn’t really know how best to touch it, so I tried poking it with my index finger. “Wooow, amazing.” It was as hard as a rock.
“……”
“Um, why are you turning red?”
“…Forgive me. It’s the first time any girl has ever touched me, other than my little sister, so…”
By that logic, do you mean you’re fine with your sister touching your arms? I see. Seriously, what’s with that twisted rationale? Go die.
Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina, Vol. 1 Page 4
