Hilda - The Challenge (43 page)

There was incredible tension between the two
men. Hilda quickly glanced at Baba Yaga, who could not pull her
eyes away from what was going on. She could not believe it, that
William was challenging Lamador this way, confronting him with
something that was so stupid and simple, and yet so humiliating for
the great sorcerer to have fallen for this.

Lamador then dropped his hand. There was no
more pointing finger. "You are going to regret this," he said to
William, then brusquely turned and walked off. Tudris followed his
leader.

The two judges assigned by Lamador looked a
bit forlorn. "It looks like you won," the woman said. "I hope you
enjoy the winning." Slowly she and her fellow judge flew off.

The three stood in the forest where now some
form of peace returned. Hilda dropped her remaining twigs. "I am
not sure if this was such a good idea, now."

Baba Yaga nodded in silence.

"Well, it happened," said William. "Not much
we can do about that. i'm sorry I dragged you into this."

Hilda slipped her hand into his. "We were in
it together, sweet man. At least we can say we beat Lamador
once."

He kissed her dirty cheek. "We did."

Baba Yaga worried. "You know he is going to
kill you on the next meeting, right?"

"No. He is not. He is going to be careful
with us." William said it full of confidence. "Lamador now knows
that he does not know what to expect from us together. This show
has taught him that much."

"You two scare me," said Babs. "Come, let's
find your brooms and go back. Get you cleaned up. You two look like
a mess."

"Can you wash my back, please?" Hilda looked
at William, who was also in the bathroom of the hut. The bathroom
was far too large for the entire hut. The bathtub itself already
was, and still somehow it fit.

"Of course, just don't drop your hair on me,
okay?"

Hilda's wet hair was floating over her head,
the waterdrops falling down into the tub like a fountain. "Of
course not. You still get your turn to clean yourself up."

William sat down on a low stool behind the
tub, hoping the four legs would remain standing where they were
now. The bathtub had moved about a few times already, and he did
not feel like chasing after it. He took the washcloth that hung
from the side and started washing Hilda's back and shoulders.

"Ah, yes, that is good. A bit lower please...
yes... ooohhh..." She groaned with pleasure and asked him to go on,
even though her back and shoulders were clean. He didn't mind.

"Aren't you getting a bit too much fun out of
this, sweetwitch?"

"Too much? No, William, no. There can not be
too much of this, believe me. I promise I'll wash your back also,
okay? Just go on a bit longer..."

He sat back and made the washcloth go over
her back.

"Hey, not fair! That is not the same thing,
William Connoley. Be a man and do your duty!"

William grinned and scrubbed her back one
more time.

By the time he was in the tub (it had similar
convenient 'empty' and 'full' plaques as had the one at Hilda's
house), Hilda got in it again, together with him. She sat in his
lap, holding him close, making somewhat of an attempt to wash his
back.

"I was really scared in the forest, William.
Lamador could have hurt you very badly." Hilda stopped her washing
movements and looked in his eyes. "I was very very afraid
then."

"Nothing happened, Hilda." William pulled her
against him, feeling her skin warm against his own. "I was afraid
also. But I did not want to show it. And I am glad you didn't
either."

They sat together like that for a while,
until Hilda shivered. "I'm getting out of here. Your water is
getting cold!"

"Well, so much for the backrub," William
pouted as he winked at Hilda.

She laughed, wrapped a large towel around
herself and disappeared into the living room of the hut.

William finished quite quickly after that and
tried not to wonder about the bathroom.

Babs had 'thrown something together' that
should serve as lunch. It looked thrown together also.

As they were digging in, the ugly witch asked
them what their next move was going to be. "I would be very careful
for now," she said. "Lamador is extremely pissed off at the
moment."

"Well," Hilda said, "we do have to get back
home again, and deal with things there. You know, the regular
things that go about. Teasing the king, knocking up some naughty
villagers."

"I miss something in that short list," said
Baba Yaga.

"Such as?"

"Trying to get to the other side of the
world?"

"He'd find us there too, I'm sure," said
William as he took a something from a plate. He looked at it.

"Don't look. Eat," was Baba Yaga's advice,
and she demonstrated how to do it. William noticed that she closed
her eyes while putting the ominous black something in her mouth.
Alas, he had held and seen the black object too long. He shook his
head and put it back.

Hilda grinned.

After the exotic lunch, Baba Yaga asked them
if they wanted to stay a bit longer, or head for home straight
away.

"I want to go home," said the wicked witch,
"but I do want to be certain that Lamador and his army have left
already. And no, you are not getting on a broom to have a look,"
she added for William.

Babs said they should give the group a few
more hours to pack up and leave, and then she would go out and have
a look.

That sounded like a sensible thing. As they
waited, Babs told them about her new artistic exploits. "I am
trying to go into surrealism now."

Hilda frowned. "What's that?"

William groaned. "If it is the same thing as
what I know, I don't want to know."

Baba Yaga laughed her laugh, making the
windows rattle. "I doubt it will be the same, Willy." She got up
and brought an old teacup back to the table. "See, this is a real
teacup."

William already feared what was going to
happen. Visions of the art of Salvador Dali swam already in front
of his eyes.

Baba Yaga put the cup on the table, made her
wand appear and muttered somethin in Russian. The cup seemed to
deflate itself and reduced that way to a two-dimensional object.
From one side it still looked like the teacup, but from the side
there was absolutely nothing that remained visible of it.

William was impressed. Dali had only done
this on canvas. This witch did it for real. When looking at the cup
from the front or the back, they could even pick it up and put it
down. From the side however, there was nothing. "I really had not
expected this, Babs," William said.

Hilda looked at the cup from all sides also.
"Yes, nifty, but what's the point? The only advantage I see is that
you can stick more of them in your cupboard, but then you would be
preparing for shitloads of company, and I am not going to do
that."

Baba Yaga laughed. "It is not yet something
that I would do with all my things."

"And why not? It looks shiny!"

"Well, as I said, I am getting into it.
Making the stuff flat already works, but I have not quite figured
out yet how to undo that, so you can actually use the cup
again."

"Oh. Yes. That is something to take into
account," nodded Hilda who sat nibbling a cookie.

Babs threw the flat cup away and talked some
more about the surrealism thing she was now pursuing. Time passed
by and she then got on her broom to check the surroundings. One of
them in particular.

When she came back, she was able to report
that the group of Lamador had left, but that they had left rather a
big mess in the area where they had stayed.

Hilda and William felt responsible for that.
"We'll go by there and clean things up. It is because of us that
they were there, so we should do that."

Babs then said they'd go there together and
take care of the place. So the group of three flew out to the
former campsite.

The view was heartbreaking. Lamador had
definitely not taken his loss well. Trees had been broken in two,
most of the grassland was burnt black, and there was a stack of
waste that seemed impossible for a group that had been there for
only a few days.

Baba Yaga and Hilda started to restore the
trees, as far as they were still in a shape to be saved. William
did what he could to turn the grass back to green and alive,
although some patches were so severely burnt that he could not do a
thing but only remove the black matter.

They worked for hours, and when they were
done the sun was already setting, but the area looked presentable
again. Hilda did her trash compacter trick and William took the
handful of dice with him so they could toss the stuff away.

With a sigh, later, they stretched their legs
as they sat down outside the hut on its large chicken legs. Hilda
had magicked up glasses and a large pitcher of ice cold wine. The
idea was great, but William frowned at the light blue liquid.

"Are you sure that is wine, sweet woman?"

"Sure. Don't like the colour? You can have
yellow too. Or green..."

"No, no. Blue is fine." He did not say it
with a lot of vigour, but Hilda blamed that on the hard work they
all had done that afternoon.

She handed him the glass. "Here you go, sweet
man."

"He is an insane man, Hilly, a very insane
one. But despite that, I have to admit that he has spunk, standing
up to Lamador the way he did." Babs accepted a glass also. "Well,
you two idiots, here's to you, and may we all live happily ever
after."

They all toasted and enjoyed the nice chilled
wine. William made a tray of sandwiches and that way they spent a
reasonably nice and relaxed afternoon together. There still was,
however the gloomy shadow of the challenge gone so terribly sour
hanging around them.

The talks died out after a while, and they
sat quietly together, until the time to go to sleep came. That
evening that moment arrived quite a lot earlier than otherwise.

The next morning Hilda and William said
goodbye to Baba Yaga and set off for their journey home. Over a
large lake William dropped the dice that were the trash Lamador had
left behind.

They came back to their house. At least there
everything was in order. On the flight over they had already agreed
that they'd change into their normal clothes and do the rounds. At
least that routine made things a bit better for them.

As the days passed, they managed to forget
the nasty experience somewhat.

One day they came back from the rounds and
discovered a man sitting near the house. There was an animal with
him that tried to get away all the time.

After they had landed their brooms, they met
the man who was fighting to hold on to a goose.

"Good day, honourable witch," said the man,
"honourable wizard. My name is Alfred Esop. I hope you can help
me."

"Maybe, if you tell us the problem," Hilda
said, eyeing the goose.

"You see," said the man, "this is the goose
with no golden eggs."

Hilda looked at William, then back at the
man. "I doubt this is the only one."

The man stared at the witch as if she had
turned purple. "Honourable witch, this is the only one!"

Hilda scratched her head. "Either you are
losing it, or I am. And I am not losing it. Am I losing it,
William?"

"Can't say that I have noticed that around
you..."

The goose-holder was starting to panic a bit.
"But please, if you can, help me. This is the goose that had golden
eggs, but they are not golden anymore. Actually there is nothing
egg-like coming from it anymore."

"Oh. You mean that." Hilda considered the
goose again and still did not find it very appealing. "William, do
you know anything about geese?"

"Yes, I do, but that is kitchen-related, and
I don't think this one is ready for that yet." William saw how the
goose-owner flinched.

The goose did not like it to be the centre of
all this attention, it tried once more to escape from Alfred's
hold, making feathers fly around.

Hilda flipped up her wand and touched the
goose with it. "Dormio." It went limp, fallen asleep at the witch's
request. "Right, now that has calmed down a bit, let's take it
inside and see what we can do with it." As they went in, she
muttered that someone should open up a place to heal animals.

The good goose-owner picked up his coat and
followed the magical couple inside. His lower jaw became heavy for
a moment as he saw the two brooms find their place on their own.
Then, on Hilda's word to put the sleeping goose on the table, he
snapped out of it.

Hilda walked around the goose, not detecting
anything special about it. "So it worked fine for a while and
suddenly it fails to lay eggs?", she asked, to buy herself some
time.

"Yes. The last egg came out just fine, about
twelve days ago. Since then, nothing. I have travelled four days to
get here."

"Four days? I am sure there are wizards or
witches closer than that!", Hilda said, who had just opened a book,
trying to find something about geese. "Why did you come all the way
here?"

Alfred sat down on a chair, uninvited. "I
have tried to get to them, but they all thought I was crazy. Geese,
they say, don't lay golden eggs. Well, this one did, until a while
ago. And I did not have a spare egg to show them, so they just
laughed at me and sent me away." The man looked at the wicked
witch. "So if you want to laugh at me, go ahead. Then I'll pick up
the goose and leave again."

"Do you have more geese, or is this the only
one?", William asked Alfred.

"This is the only one, sir."

"And I guess you checked with other
goose-owners if there was something similar happening with their
geese?"