The children in the farming area had a strong longing for the city. Full of curiosity, they weren’t satisfied with just Irias’s created songs and begged to hear songs that were being heard in the city. For countryside children who would probably never go to the city in their entire lives, that interest was natural, and it was unavoidable that they would beg the knowledgeable Witch-sama who knew everything.
However, Irias’s expression froze, and sweat dripped from her forehead.
“W-wa-wa-wait a moment……!”
Seeing her troubled friend, Aoi approached to help.
“Listen here? Listen well, you all. Witches don’t know anything about the city. Rather, witches as existences are even more distant from the city than you are.”
“Eeh? Why?”
The children raised voices of innocent questions.
“That’s…… because we’d get caught……”
“Witch hunts are scary, aren’t they……”
Mages normally spent their days living in hiding in the mountains away from people’s eyes to escape witch hunts and inquisitions.
“Most mages only know mountains and die that way……”
“We’ll never have a chance to wear trendy clothes in our entire lives, huh……”
“Apparently there’s a delicious confection called cake in the city……”
“Though we’ll never have the opportunity to taste it in our entire lives……”
“Things that are popular in the city—honestly, we’d like you to teach us……”
The two witches spoke in voices steeped in despair with pale faces. There was the pathos of those burdened with karma who could only live in hiding.
“Witch-sama is lame.”
“Shut up, shut up! Don’t say things we’re sensitive about……!”
At the child’s ruthless remark, Aoi lets out a scream that is just a little too loud.
“We want to wear fashionable clothes from the city too, you know—…!”
“Witch-sama is so lame.”
“Dammiiiiiiiiiiiiit……!”
It was a warm early afternoon in a small village where a cheerful atmosphere stretched as far as the eye could see.
The time for teaching the songs of Irias was over, the magic work was finished, and the two were preparing to return home. Stuffing the carriage with goods received from the villagers as payment for their work—wheat, alcohol, clothing, and the like—Aoi and Irias attempted to leave the village.
Just then, the village chief, who had come to see them off, called out to them.
“Witch-sama……”
“Yes?”
“It seems the movement for witch hunts has been escalating even further lately. Please, do take care……”
“…………”
The village chief bowed respectfully, and at those words, Aoi and Irias swallowed a small breath. They could only offer a short reply of, “You stay safe as well.”
They set the carriage in motion and left the village behind. Aoi and Irias’s work had concluded without a hitch.
Nestled between rugged mountains, hidden away as if to remain unseen, there existed a small secret village. The mountains were overgrown with oak trees, spreading their branches and leaves to cover the surroundings in deep green.
Proceeding along a trackless path that had merely been hardened by footsteps, Aoi and Irias passed through the mountains and arrived at that small hidden village.
It was a tiny settlement where only about fifty people lived, and because it was surrounded by mountains on all four sides, it remained unseen by others. It was a quiet, standing village whose existence was unknown even to the country.
It was a village of mages. It was a place where those labeled as heretics—people who could not live openly in the world—gathered to live in secret.
For its population, the village had a long history; the buildings and facilities possessed a sense of gravity and age, and in the summer, white Edelweiss flowers would bloom in glory across the fields.
And in the center of that village, a great tree with exceptionally wide-spreading branches towered high.
“Yo! Welcome back! Just got in?”
When they stopped the carriage near the village warehouse, Aoi and Irias were called out to from outside the carriage. It was a woman’s low, projecting voice, and the two opened the door to poke their heads out.
“Verdi.”
“Oh, Aoi, Irias. Otsukaresan (Good work).”
Standing there was their friend, Verdi, who was close to them in age.
She was a girl with very short black hair and healthy, sun-tanned, wheat-colored skin. Her job in the mage’s village was primarily hunting; she was a strong girl who would enter the mountains to catch plenty of games, procuring food for everyone in the village.
“Thanks for the hard work on the long trip. You were gone for about a week, right?”
“How many days was it, Irias?”
“Uh, umm, it was six days. Since we went around to two villages.”
Mountain roads were difficult to travel, and the villages were far; it was standard for Aoi and the others to spend several days just traveling to reach the neighboring settlements.
“You’re putting the carriage luggage into the warehouse, right? I’ll help you out.”
“Th-thank you, Verdi. That helps.”
“Wahaha! Weak Witch-samas who do nothing but face desks would run out of breath immediately, after all!”
“Don’t lump us in with a muscle idiot who does nothing but go into the mountains.”
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Trading light banter, they carried the cargo earned from their work into the village warehouse. Verdi was strong and handled the heavy labor with ease, while Aoi and Irias turned red in the face as they desperately carried the heavy items.
In this way, the inside of the carriage became empty. Winter was gradually approaching, and the village warehouse was beginning to fill with stockpiled food.
“Ah, Aoi-oneechan, Irias-oneechan, you’re back!”
“Welcome home—”
“Hm? Ah, I’m home, everyone.”
Peeking their heads in from the warehouse entrance were the village children. They were small kids, around 10 years old, who had spotted the returning Aoi and Irias and called out to them. The job of hauling luggage to the warehouse was done, so Aoi and Irias approached the children and lightly patted their heads.
“Aoi-neechan! Irias-neechan! Teach us magic! There’s a part we don’t get!”
“Ehh? Nooow?”
A boy grabbed the arm of Aoi, who had only just returned, and pulled insistently. Outside the village, magic was treated as a heresy, but in this village, it was useful for daily life—something that was naturally there.
These children had just begun learning magic in earnest, and both Aoi and Irias often taught magic to the younger kids.
“Verdi-neechan is an idiot, so even if we ask her, she doesn’t understand at all!”
“Ah! You little…! You tryin’ to pick a fight!?”
Verdi got angry at the child’s merciless verbal violence. She was bad at studying and absolutely hopeless at magic. In exchange, her skill at hunting was outstanding, performing enough work to more than make up for her poor magic skills.
“Teach us magic!”
“Teach us! Teach us!”
“Ah—, geez, alright, alright. Look, just for a little bit, okay?”
Aoi and Irias were swarmed and hugged by the children, getting jostled around. The fact that they came to say “Welcome back” wasn’t so much a welcome for their return, but nothing more than prioritizing their own convenience.
Aoi and Irias were being dragged away by the children, while Verdi was left ignored.
“So, what part don’t you understand?”
“Umm, well, no matter how many times we try, the fire won’t burn!”
“Fire?”
“Fire……?”
Aoi and Irias widened their eyes at the children’s complaint. The children pulled Aoi and the others along, bringing them to a spot where several magic circles were drawn in the soil. They were magic circles the children had drawn for practice.
“We want to make fire go whoosh and burn with magic, but we can’t do it at all!”
“We don’t know what’s wrong. Please look at it!”
“Fire…… Fire, huh……”
“Fire is……”
In response to the children’s questions, the two smiled wryly for some reason.
“Aoi-oneechan, Irias-oneechan, teach us how to start a fire with magic?”
“…………”
The children looked up at the two older girls with pure, earnest eyes. They seemed to completely believe that if they asked the big sisters, they would get an answer for anything and be able to create magical fire themselves.
“Ah—……”
“Umm……”
However, Aoi and Irias scratched their heads as if troubled and were vague in their response.
“Before fixing the magic circle…… maybe let’s study a bit about magic?”
“Study?”
“Yes. About the actual role that magic has……”
Irias began to explain, while Aoi picked up a wooden stick that had fallen nearby and started drawing pictures of human souls and gods on the ground. They weren’t magic circles, just simple drawings.
“Magic, you see, is a technique that is bad at lighting fires.”
“Bad at it?”
“Yes. Magic is a technique that is good at dealing with things that cannot be seen by the eye, like souls and fate.”
Irias spoke.
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