Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina, Vol. 1

by Jougi Shiraishi

  “Oh, no. It’s just that my clothes always get like this when I cook, and changing is a pain, so I just wear them this way.”

  “What kind of cooking are you doing…?” I was disappointed by the trivial explanation. I was expecting her clothes to be hiding a big secret.

  “Anyway, this will serve as my uniform for the battle.”

  “But now they’re tattered and muddy.”

  “Actually, my undergarments are also part of the uniform.”

  “Are you planning to show them off to the Javalier?”

  “It’s an attack with sex appeal.”

  “If only that would work.”

  As we continued our ridiculous conversation, the smile returned to her face.

  Thank goodness. My strategy was a success.

  However, just as the relief set in, she said, “Thank you.”

  “…Huh? For what?” I turned my face away from her. The heat I felt in my cheeks was just from the sunset. Definitely.

  “I understand what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to ease my nerves.”

  “Hey now, we were just having a chat. I’m sorry if you felt that way. Don’t be upset.”

  “You’re ridiculously straightforward, and yet you can’t be honest.” Mirarose poked me in the side with her wand. It tickled. “I’m fine. I won’t die,” she said. “Let’s meet up again afterward. I’ll treat you to my home cooking for dinner.”

  “That’s all right. I’ll make dinner tonight,” I said. “So don’t die, okay?”

  “Of course not.” As she spoke, Mirarose used magic to hide the surface of the pit. This way, the Javalier should run right into it without knowing any better.

  The last rays of the setting sun painted the distant sky red. The horizon split into distinctly red and blue halves, both of which would soon be overtaken by the darkness. And not long after that, the Javalier would come.

  “All right, off you go.” Mirarose pushed me away.

  “See you later,” I said, and she smiled gently at me again. And so I turned my back on her and walked off.

  Hang on—who said I was leaving?

  That was a joke. If I left now, it would be all over for my humanity. Though I think I was being very levelheaded when I turned her down at first.

  At the moment, I was inside a house on the other side of the pit, waiting quietly for the right time to strike. The strategy was to make a concentrated attack. To be honest, I hadn’t been planning to help if I could avoid it. I mean, the situation didn’t have anything to do with me. I had no idea whether it was worth risking my life, or whether there was any real need to defeat the monster.

  But my feelings had changed, just a little. I didn’t want to let that wonderful girl die. That’s why I was going to fight.

  And I was going to fight hard enough to survive, of course.

  Even now, I couldn’t just jump in and offer to help, but I hope it’s a forgivable offense.

  “……”

  Before long, I heard a dreadful roar that sounded as if it had welled up from hell itself. It was very near. When I sneaked a peek outside, I could see black scales slowly passing by.

  If it continues on that path, it ought to fall right into the pit.

  “…Phew,” I sighed deeply.

  It was strange. Even though I had only just met her yesterday, I really wanted Mirarose to live. When this was over, we would make dinner together, and I would take the opportunity to see her fierce style of cooking. I was really intrigued by it.

  As I lost myself in thought, at last the time came, and I heard the monster howling. The sound of its rampage was fainter than before, but the reverberations still reached my hiding place.

  I stealthily peeked outside, where Mirarose was fighting an admirable battle. She was mercilessly launching spell after spell against the Javalier as it attempted to crawl up out of the hole. Spears of ice, balls of fire, swords and axes made with magic, blades of wind and lightning bolts, and other spells rained down on the monster.

  Eh? Huh? She looks like she might win, I thought for a moment, but my first impression was mistaken. She was definitely doing her best, but Mirarose was struggling.

  The Javalier was blowing flames up into the sky, negating Mirarose’s spells as it tried to crawl back up out of the hole.

  If I’m going out there, now’s my chance. If we strike at it together, we should be able to send it back into the hole again. And then bury it there.

  I shut my eyes and took another deep breath. I gripped my wand tightly. Let’s do this.

  “Mirarose!” I readied myself and leaped out into the open.

  Just as I did, something whizzed by my side with unbelievable speed.

  Whoosh. Smearing my face with something as it went, it crashed into the house behind me with a thunderous noise.

  I touched my hand to my face and noticed a faint iron smell. This slimy, lukewarm liquid was blood.

  …Blood. No way. No, it can’t be…

  Struggling to keep my pounding heart under control, I turned around.

  “……Ah.”

  There, buried in a mountain of rubble…

  …it was…

  …the black, dragon-like head of the Javalier. It had been cleanly decapitated, as if with a very sharp blade; fresh blood was pouring from the wound and pooling on the ground beneath it.

  Why is the Javalier’s head here? Huh? Don’t tell me…don’t tell me she won without me?

  I was standing there, unable to fully grasp the situation, when I heard a voice. “…While I was battling the Javalier, I remembered.” Her icy tone sent chills up my spine, and at first I doubted it was Mirarose at all.

  But when I turned around, Mirarose was the one standing beside the headless Javalier.

  “I remembered all of it, everything, everything, everything. Ah-ha, ah-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha!”

  I wondered whether this girl was really the one I knew.

  Tearing at her own hair, Mirarose cast more spells. Instantly, the four limbs of the headless Javalier were severed and flew off in different directions. The flying cuts of meat sprayed blood as they went, covering the already destroyed city with gore.

  “……”

  I shuddered.

  She was smiling, bathed in blood. Her expression wasn’t the gentle smile she showed me this morning, but something twisted and dark.

  “Ah-ha, ah-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  Words failed me. I could do nothing but stand there in shock.

  After we returned to the castle, Mirarose told me everything.

  It was quite a tale, and she gave me all the details.

  Several years ago, she had had a lover.

  However, he was a servant, and they had kept their relationship secret from everyone. If her father had found out that she had fallen in love with a boy from a different social class, he would have disowned her. Out of fear, she kept his company in secret, so as not to be discovered.

  The two of them had nothing but trust and love for each other.

  However, all secrets come to light sooner or later, and theirs was no exception. The fact that she was in love with a servant became a well-known piece of gossip.

  Then Mirarose became pregnant with his child. Realizing that it was no longer possible to hide their love, the two of them confessed everything to Mirarose’s father, the king.

  The king listened silently to their story, nodding seriously several times, and when they finished, he announced, “The servant will be executed.”

  No one could appease his wrath.

  The king carried out the punishment himself. He mounted a horse and dragged the servant around the city behind a carriage, carefully pulled his nails off one by one, smashed his teeth, submerged him in water, gave him just enough food to keep him from starving, held him teetering between life and death for two months, and tortured him in every other way imaginable until the boy went mad, then finally brought his wretched life to an end by burning him at the stake in fr
ont of Mirarose and all the citizens.

  Then, after he was finished with the servant, it was Mirarose’s turn.

  As she was his beloved daughter and the country’s only witch, the king didn’t kill her, but he couldn’t forgive her for carrying a servant’s child in her belly. The king paid a high sum to a local doctor to secretly terminate her pregnancy. Naturally, the child was never born, no matter how many months she waited.

  And so, having lost everything, Mirarose made a vow. A vow to kill everyone.

  She carefully developed a plan. The very first thing she did was to block off the castle. For the purpose of her plan, the castle would have to become a reliable safe haven. Since the other people who lived there were getting in the way of her preparations, she locked them all in the basement.

  Everyone, that is, except the king.

  She threw the king out of the castle and sealed him out. It was a seal so strong that only an individual possessing strong magic powers could break it—which was why I, a witch, had been able to enter.

  Next, she had written a letter to her future self—rather, she had the letter written for her. She pulled one of the castle residents from the basement prison and ordered them to do the writing while she stood next to them dictating. If the letter had been in Mirarose’s own hand, it could jeopardize the plan.

  Then, after concealing the letter she had written in a desk drawer, she looked down from the window of her room at the king, who was trying desperately to get into the castle. The king spotted her, and his ire rose again. He shouted awful things at her: “This is all because you got pregnant with a servant’s child” and “You are no longer my daughter!”

  She calmly lowered her wand at the clamoring king and cast a spell on him…trading her own memory for the spell’s power.

  The magical energy born from Mirarose’s memories and despair washed over the king and transformed him. He grew extremely large, scales appeared on his skin, and he seemed to lose all of his human intelligence. He became a black dragon.

  The king’s name had been Javalier. It was no simple coincidence that the monster had the same name. With the creation of the monster that would only be active at night, her plan was complete. Her magic nearly exhausted, she fell into a deep slumber.

  The next time Mirarose opened her eyes, she had forgotten everything. However, it had all gone according to plan. At that point, there was nothing to do but walk down the path she had laid out for herself. Mirarose’s battle against the black dragon was also part of the plan, as was the fact that during the battle, the memories bound to the monster would return to her.

  However, I still had some questions.

  Why had she gone out of her way to transfer her memories? Mirarose must have been quite troubled to have woken up with amnesia. Moreover, I wondered if retaining her memories would have made this less unpleasant.

  When I asked her, she let out a little laugh. “I gave the king my memories to show him my anguish.”

  In truth, King Javalier had not lost all of his human intelligence when he became a black dragon. Apparently, though his body had been taken over by the transformation, his human consciousness still existed within a corner of the beast’s mind. That was Mirarose’s plan for him.

  She must have wanted to torment the king very badly indeed to go through with such a complicated plot. After becoming a rampaging monster, King Javalier had crushed his subjects with his own hands. With his head full of the memories that Mirarose had forced into him, he had slaughtered the subjects he had once loved, and then…

  …And then the rest proceeded neatly according to her plan, and the story came to an end. She had become the queen of an empty country, all by her own doing.

  The following morning, I left the castle without so much as touching the breakfast that Mirarose had fixed for me.

  “You’re going already, are you?” she said calmly. She didn’t seem particularly saddened by the idea.

  “I’m sorry. I am a traveler, after all. I must hurry to the next place.”

  “Oh, is that so? That’s too bad. It was so much fun talking with you.”

  “……”

  “Can’t you spend a little more time here?”

  “Please, stop.”

  “I’m only kidding.” She smiled, but there was nothing gentle about it anymore. It was twisted and full of darkness. The girl I had come to know was nowhere to be found.

  “What will you do now, Mirarose?”

  “Let’s see, what shall I do…? If I feel up to it, I suppose I could go traveling.”

  “I don’t recommend it.”

  “You wouldn’t mind if I joined you, would you?”

  “Really, stop.”

  “Kidding again. The truth is, I haven’t thought of anything yet. For now, I want to savor my vengeance.” She rubbed her belly, just like a mother who was nurturing new life.

  There was nothing more I could say, so I decided to wrap things up.

  “Well, good-bye, then. Take care.” I got on my broom as I spoke.

  “You too.”

  I took off into the air and made a beeline through the wind.

  She must be waving good-bye. But I don’t feel like looking back.

  I left that place as fast as I possibly could, speeding past the rubble of her fallen land.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Start of a Journey

  When I was young, I loved books.

  I can’t even remember when I started reading, but I’ve been a bookworm for as long as I can remember. Whenever I had free time, I would pull a book from the shelf at home and read, and nearly every time my family went out, I would pester my parents for a new one.

  Maybe that’s why I didn’t have many friends my age. I didn’t play outside much, choosing instead to spend my time holed up in my room. My parents worried about me, but I had everything I wanted in life. After all, I always had a book by my side.

  Among my books, I had a favorite novel series called The Adventures of Niche. A short story collection in five volumes, it contained the adventures of a witch named Niche who traveled to various exotic locales across the globe.

  The author’s name was Niche, same as in the title. But that was simply a pen name; her real name was something completely different. In the afterword to each volume, she wrote, “I penned these novels based on my own experiences.”

  To young Elaina, a girl who had not taken a single step outside of the Peaceful Country of Robetta, the hero Niche, who wandered from place to place as she pleased and saw the wide, beautiful world, was a shining beacon. I loved those books maybe a little too much and read them all many times. The books started to fall apart.

  And eventually, I decided I wanted to be just like Niche.

  I want to try traveling like that, too, I began to think.

  And so young Elaina made an announcement to her mother. “When I grow up, I’m going to go on an adventure like Niche,” I said.

  Gently patting my head, my mother answered, “All right, when you grow up.” She smiled and added, “But if you want to travel, first you’ll have to become a witch like Niche, okay?”

  “If I become a witch, I can become a traveler?”

  “Yes. That’s why you must try your hardest at your magic studies.”

  “Study hard, become a witch, and then I can travel?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Really, really?”

  “Yes, really, really.”

  “Yay!”

  It all started from such a small thing, but my desire to see the world spurred me on through the years I spent working to become a witch.

  I spent almost every day studying alone.

  My mother kept me company while I practiced my magic.

  My mother was so skilled at magic that you would be surprised to know she had never had any formal training. She was a good teacher, and before I knew it, I was quite good at using magic. So good, in fact
, that I was able to become an apprentice witch at the age of fourteen.

  It was a long, arduous path, but never once did I think of quitting. I simply continued working hard.

  Then I completed my training with Miss Fran and became a full-fledged witch.

  I believe it happened several days after I returned to my parents’ home with the star-shaped brooch on my robe. I was sitting across from them at the table after we had finished breakfast, and I said, “I’m a witch now, so please allow me to travel.”

  My father lifted his head from his newspaper and frowned. My mother didn’t look particularly surprised and calmly sipped her after-breakfast tea.

  My father glanced at my mother’s reaction, then cleared his throat forcefully, folded his newspaper, and laid it on the edge of the table. “D-don’t you think it’s best not to rush into anything?” he asked, acting as neutral as possible.

  I was a little miffed. “That’s not what you said before, is it? Didn’t you promise me that when I became a witch I could go traveling?”

  “Well, we might have promised that, but…we never thought you’d become a witch so soon…”

  “What does that matter? I worked as hard and fast as I could so that I could go and see the world when I finished.”

  “…Humph.”

  Defeated, my father slumped back, and after grumbling a bit, clapped a hand on my mother’s shoulder. She was still gracefully sipping her tea beside him. “N-now, you say something, too, Mama.”

  My mother set down her teacup. “Goodness. You’re the only one who’s against Elaina setting off on her trip, Papa. I think it’s just fine for her to go traveling.”

  “But…”

  “And besides, haven’t we been telling her this since she was a little girl? We said we would allow her to travel once she became a witch.”

  “Maybe you made that promise—”

  “You agreed to it, too. Have you forgotten?”

  “But…”

  “You agreed, didn’t you?”

  “……”

  My father was silent. Well, more like silenced, really.