Closer observation revealed no marks on the windowsill, so I levered myself up slowly and carefully, so I could look down into the garden below, for prints in the earth. Nothing visible to my naked eye. I would need aid.
I climbed back down out of the window and into the kitchen, fighting the urge to run. Yes, time was slipping away from me, but I needed to be careful, controlled. I could not afford even one mistake. Instead I walked carefully to a different windowsill, on the other side of my house. There I had a collection of pretty crystals- none currently charged with energy, but all pleasing to the eye, and many good for throwing rainbows on walls and floors. They had amused Elisa.
One of them was a sphere, clear as a drop of water, large enough that I could not close my hand around it. I polished it carefully on my apron as I walked to the door and then, kneeling carefully, I began to examine the soil along the edge of the house.
It was painstaking, methodical work, to ensure I wasn’t going to disturb anything before I inched forward. I didn’t not think I was going to find anything before getting to the window, but I could not take the chance. Every inch must be examined.
I saw evidence of Elisa crossing and recrossing herself, but the marks were old. Finally, I came to the earth beneath the window, and found something else.
Toad tracks are not something that normally attracts one’s attention. For one thing, they’re so haphazard that it’s difficult to identify them as tracks in the first place. For another thing, your average person is not going to care what toads get up to, especially in a garden, where a toad might naturally be expected to dwell, and where he has every right to be. I knew there were several that did, in fact, call my garden home.
But.
But toads can be used as familiars, and thus witches make it their business to be able to recognize toad-sign, and recognize it, I did.
There was toad-sign leading right up to the wall of my house, as a matter of fact. Right under the window that Elisa used as her primary exit and entrance. I narrowed my eyes and examined the wall. Yes- I could see fresh little scars here and there, as though something had used tiny claws to drag itself upwards. Perhaps even two somethings. I glanced back down at the tracks again. Yes, definitely two toads, because one was markedly larger than the other. But that made no sense- a witch only ever had one familiar at a time. And where were the retreating tracks? I cast my eyes further afield- there. They had not climbed down, but rather leaped. The tracks of the larger toad were more defined here; heavier. With the weight of my child.
I bared my teeth at the trail in a feral smile. “Sloppy,” I hissed, then stood and returned to the house. I would find them, and I would flay them alive- then feed each skin to the other.
But not until I knew who had sent them, and why.
I approached my bed, lay down on my stomach, and reached beneath it to the plank I knew had two notches in it. Fingertips in the notches, I raised it just enough to slip it over the board next to it, then slid my fingers into the resulting gap and moved it all the way out of the way. Once the narrow space below was revealed, I pulled my hand back out, spat into my palm, and put it back beneath the floorboards until I could close it around the gnarled wooden shape resting on the ground.
The spell I’d laid on the thing, all those years ago, stabbed into my hands like a spark of lightning, and began to crawl up my veins- but it recognized my essence, and withdrew between one breath and the next. Which was good, because if the spell had reached my heart, it would have stopped it, sending me into an enchanted slumber until someone came along to either release me, or kill me. My personal plan had always been to kill whoever might have been meddling about in my secrets.
Well, perhaps after extracting a bit of information, first.
I pulled the thing out.
It was not large- perhaps the size of a goose egg- and it was not shaped like anything in particular. But it was a key. My key, taken from the heart of a willing oak tree. And it would unlock the past I’d left behind.
Because while yes, I was retired, I was also somewhat set in my ways. And those ways included being prepared for any eventuality, including the eventuality that I might have to come out of retirement. And if I had to come out of retirement, I wasn’t going to want to have to rebuild my arsenal from scratch, now was I?
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