The daily walks continued, sometimes interspersed with the witch's songs, or "kulning", as she called them. Theiden and the witch never spoke much on these outings, and he partly wondered if the woman just saw him as a chore, like caring for a pet. He was useless in the garden and the kitchen, and Kettle took care of the cleaning at night. He didn't have a purpose in the cottage, and he mostly spent his time sorting through the stacks of books in the loft and picking out interesting ones to read.

The witch was usually gone in the evenings—she never told Theiden where she went or what she did, no matter how much he asked. The tomte wouldn't give him any answers, either.

"I was thinking," the witch began after a sip of her tea at breakfast one morning, "that we might travel to the east side of the mountain today."

Theiden raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Why?"

She shrugged innocently, and immediately Theiden became suspicious.

"Well, after your repeated attempts to attack me, I gathered that you like to fight," was the eventual reply.

"Only wild beasts," Theiden retorted. He was a hunter, after all.  She was no different from the other animals except in speech.

The witch ignored the insult and continued.

"You could practice there, if you like," she said. Theiden frowned.

"Practice what?" he asked.

"Your fighting. With me."

The witch wanted to fight with him? Theiden pretended to examine the porridge on his spoon, not wanting to appear too eager at the prospect of hurting her. "Would I get a weapon?" he asked casually.

She nodded. "I still have that hunting knife of yours," she said. "You could have that."

It was tempting, but then Theiden shook his head. "You'd just throw me to the ground with your magic," he said. Whatever trick she was trying to pull, he wasn't going to fall for it.

"I won't use magic."

Theiden blinked and looked up from his bowl in surprise. "How can I know you're not lying?" he asked.

The witch took another sip of her tea. "You'll just have to trust me," she said, and Theiden nearly choked on his food at her response.

"Never," he replied firmly.

The witch sighed. "It's not like you're that tough to beat without using magic to begin with," she said. "I was hoping to teach you a thing or two.  But I suppose you'll never improve, then. Oh well."

Theiden knew she was baiting him, but he finally gave in. "Fine, then," he snapped. If the witch was offering him the chance to fight her, he would take it. He wouldn't back down until one of them was dead.

They headed outside later that afternoon, with the blue of the wisp bobbing ahead of them. Forty minutes of hiking later, they finally drew to a stop. There were more rocks on this part of the mountain; huge gray boulders stretched up into the sky and left gaps in the forest where trees could not grow. The witch stopped on top of one of the smaller rocks and drew out an hourglass from the pocket of her cloak.

"Half an hour," she announced.

"To fight?"

The witch ignored him, and instead turned the hourglass and set it down at her feet.

"Here, catch."

Theiden caught the object she tossed to him—his long hunting dagger, wrapped in a protective linen cloth. He looked back up just in time to see the witch reach into her sleeve and draw out her own blade, a sword twice as long as his own weapon.

"I thought you said you weren't going to use your magic," Theiden growled.

She met his accusatory stare and explained, "Just because I have promised not to use my magic does not mean that my clothes suddenly lose the charms I have put on them. I have to carry things somehow."

"Charms are still magic," Theiden snapped.

The witch hopped down from the boulder and landed gracefully in front of him. "I made a promise," she said, raising her sword. "Will you fight me, or not?"

Theiden scowled and yanked the cloth off his dagger. "With pleasure."

He lunged, relishing in the feel of the weapon in his hands as it cut through the air. The witch held her ground as he neared, and deflected his blade with a quick swipe of her own. Theiden swung again, and she twisted away as metal sliced the air where her shoulder had been a second earlier.

The witch's sword gleamed as it came at him, and Theiden barely managed to bring up his dagger in time to block the attack. His breath came out in a whoosh as he strained to push the blade away—the witch had greater leverage with her heavier weapon. Before he could fully recover, however, he heard the singing of steel as her blade returned, and the dagger was knocked from his grasp in a swift blow.

Palm stinging, Theiden glared at the woman before him as she held her sword to his throat.

"You fight well, for a hunter," she commented. "Usually people in your profession are more adept at the bow, and are unused to hand-to-hand combat." Her eyes flicked down. "Your footwork could use some improvement, though, and you need to work on your grip."

She lowered her sword, and Theiden went to pick up his dagger.

"How did you learn to fight?" he asked, and the question came out more like an accusation than he cared to admit.

The witch looked at him with an unreadable expression, before finally saying, "Shall we make an arrangement, then? I'll answer one of your questions, if you answer one of mine."

Theiden was about to snap that he was through making deals with a creature like her, but the protest died on his lips as an idea came to him. If he could learn more about the witch, he might be able to exploit her weaknesses and use the information to escape later.

"All right," Theiden agreed. "So, where did you learn to fight?"

The witch tilted her head, studying him, perhaps to see if he would abide by his promise. At last it seemed she believed him, and she gave him his answer.

"Another witch taught me," she said. "But she is dead now."

Almost immediately, she looked away and bit down on her bottom lip, as though she hadn't meant to have let that last part slip.

"How did she die?" Theiden asked, but the witch swung her sword at him. His dagger came up to block, but the force of the attack vibrated throughout the blade and hilt of Theiden's weapon. For a moment, he wondered if the witch would have truly killed him had he not defended himself in time.

"My question is next, I do believe," she growled, pushing away from him. Theiden stumbled back, nearly tripping over a tree root as he struggled to regain his balance.

"What do you want to know, then?" he asked, finally regaining his footing. In front of him, the witch had lowered into a fighting stance, and he warily copied her motion.

"I suppose I'll ask the same question," she replied, narrowing her eyes in concentration. "How did you learn to fight?"

Theiden swung at her, and she danced away before resuming her stance. "I was in the military, for a while," he said. "Until my wife—" He bit back the rest of the sentence, but the witch's eyes flashed in understanding.

"Until she passed on," the witch finished for him. "You mentioned before that Em had no mother."

At the mention of his wife, feelings that Theiden had been trying to ignore arose fresh in his memory. Malisse had been gentle and kind—nothing like the spiteful thing currently standing before him. Sadness tore open that old wound in his heart, and the longing to hold his wife in his arms one more, to feel the softness of her hair and smell her floral perfume again, swept through him. And he felt as though the creature before him could read it all in his eyes, as easily as a book.

Before Theiden could even push aside his memories and remember how to feel angry again, the witch struck, stabbing with her blade as quickly as light splitting clouds in a thunderstorm. Theiden stepped to the side, boots crunching on stones beneath him as he evaded the sharp steel.

Still, he was not quick enough, and there was a loud tearing of fabric as the sword tip caught on his borrowed clothes and tore a hole in the side. Cool mountain air brushed his skin, and Theiden let out a breath at the near-miss.

Focus. He would not let the witch defeat him so easily.

Anger renewed his energy, and Theiden lashed back, driving the witch back between the trees and looming gray boulders. It was more difficult to trade blows without a weapon equal in size to the witch's sword, but the hunting dagger was long and wide, and years of using it had trained Theiden to handle it well.

Still, it was not enough. The witch accepted his strikes without a hint of fatigue, and her footsteps were light as she continued to back away from him. The clash of their blades rang out in the comparative stillness of the forest, and Theiden began to grow desperate as sweat trickled down the back of his neck. She fought better than half the men in the city! How could he defeat her?

He tried a high kick, and the witch ducked beneath his foot. When she straightened back up again, it was with a smile, as though his attempts were amusing to her. It only made Theiden angrier.

"So how did that witch die?" Theiden asked through gritted teeth, hoping to distract his opponent with the question. "The one who taught you how to fight."

Clang. The dagger flew from his hands on the next strike, and Theiden was left holding his hands up in surrender as the witch held her sword at his neck. Her eyes smoldered with an emotion Theiden couldn't quite place, and she was breathing heavily.

"Your endurance is lacking," she replied after a moment. Her voice came out as dry and brittle as dead autumn leaves. "It's quite tedious to spar with you when you're like this."

"You're avoiding the question," Theiden snapped.

The sword withdrew from his neck, and the witch sheathed it somewhere in the sleeve of her robe. "Ask me when you've learned how to fight," she replied, holding out her hand. Theiden's dagger flew hilt-first into her outstretched palm, and that, too, was stored in her sleeve pocket.

"You said a half hour!" Theiden protested.

"It's been close enough," she retorted.

"Argh!" In his frustration, Theiden snatched up a rock from the ground that had broken off from one of the larger pillars around them. Before he could think about the consequences of his actions, he sent it hurtling towards the witch's head.

Of course he missed. The vile creature sidestepped his attack without sparing him so much as a second glance. Instead, she reached down to pick up her hourglass, and the wisp swooped down from his branch to resume his perch on her shoulder.

"Let's go home, Shwei," she said.

Left with no other choice, Theiden followed after the two in silence, save for the harsh, angry huffs of each breath and the thudding of his boots on the damp ground. He swatted aside branches and kicked away stones, all the while envisioning the various painful ways his captor might meet her end.

Drawn and quartered.

Tied up for the wolves and birds.

Burned at the stake.

Sunk in a river.

Finally, they reached the cottage, and Theiden retreated once more to the loft—the only place where the witch would not bother him. Meanwhile, the creature herself went into the kitchen. Theiden could hear the dry swishes of movement as she sorted through the herbs hanging from the ceiling beams and placed a few in her wicker basket.

The sun had nearly vanished by the time the witch left the cottage, but Theiden's anger had not. As soon as he heard the click of the lock, he threw down the book he was pretending to read and scaled down the ladder.

He tried the doorknob, just in case, but the metal didn't budge. He tried the windows next, but the latches were just as firmly locked. Even if he managed to break the individual glass panes, the metal framing would be nearly impossible to destroy.

"Hoohoo! Rice pudding!" a gleeful voice exclaimed from somewhere near the stove. Theiden didn't bother turning around. Judging by the contented sniffing of the honey and cinnamon wafting through the air, it was evident that the tomte had awoken and discovered the meal left out for her by the witch. There was dinner for him, too, but he wasn't hungry.

"Shouldn't you know by now that it's always locked?" Kettle's voice chimed out from the kitchen. "You've been checking it every evening for a week now."

Seven days. It had been that long already, and he still had to find a way to escape. Theiden let out a shout and slammed his fist into the wall. The pain only fed his fury.

"Oh, don't make such a fuss about it," Kettle reprimanded. A series of slurps followed her statement as she finished her meal.

Theiden grabbed a basket of knitting supplies off of a shelf and threw it across the cottage. Balls of brightly-colored yarn went rolling across the floor, and the pair of knitting needles clattered somewhere in the shadows.

"You're cleaning that up," Kettle said.

But Theiden wasn't finished. Next off the shelf went a box of paper and brushes, an empty jam jar, and a glass inkwell. This last item he aimed at the armchair by the fireplace. Yet, as if sensing that something was heading straight for its floral-upholstered back, the chair's clawed wooden legs each took two steps to the left, and the inkwell sailed past to shatter in the fireplace.

The blue fire that Shwei had lit in the grate belched out a cloud of sickly green sparks and smoke, and when Kettle next spoke, she didn't sound so nonchalant.

"Would you keep it down?" she hissed. Finally, Theiden turned to face her, chest heaving with labored breaths. Somehow, underneath all that hair, the tomte was watching him with her beady little eyes.

"Why, am I disturbing you?" Theiden snapped.

"No," Kettle said, leaning on her pudding spoon as though it were a staff, "but you might be disturbing them."

She jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen window. Theiden scowled.

"There's nothing out there."

"Fool!" the tomte snapped, pounding the spoon against the countertop. Theiden blinked at the unexpected outburst, but kept up his hostile façade.

"I'll yell if I want to!" he said. "You can't keep me from doing everything in this cursed place!"

"Stop making such a racket," Kettle interrupted in a much darker, quieter tone than Theiden's. "You are just like a child. How rash! To think only of yourself and your immediate surroundings. You may well doom us both, if you haven't already!"

"Who would be around to hear?" Theiden growled back, still not convinced.

"If you'd listened to what I said earlier—" Kettle began.

"You're not making any sense," Theiden interrupted. "I don't understand."

"You wouldn't, would you?" Kettle snapped. "You never bother to listen. One would think your ears would fall off from disuse."

"All you said was 'them'," Theiden said. "That's hardly an explanation."

Before Kettle could reply, a loud scuffling sounded from just outside the door. Theiden gave a start at the unexpected sound, and Kettle let out a squeak and hid beneath her empty porridge bowl.

It's just the witch returning early, Theiden tried to reassure himself. But the sound came again, clumsy and unsure as something clacked against the front door. Warily, Theiden backed away, his footsteps crunching on broken glass and fallen brushes.

When a shadow moved outside the kitchen window, Theiden crouched down behind the armchair. A few long seconds passed, and then a voice spoke, full of darkness and longing.

"Ahhh...such a passionate heart. Won't you let me in?"

The door shuddered again, and while all of Theiden's efforts to break it had so far been unsuccessful, this time there was a loud crack and the ominous splintering of wood.

"That," Kettle whispered across the cottage from beneath her upturned bowl, "is them."

~*~

I'm on a roll! I can't believe this is the 3rd chapter in one week.  Trying to make up for not having posted in so long, I guess.  We'll see if this backfires terribly or helps keep my motivation up.

The absolutely incredible drawing of Lenesa is by moonshadow8888, who has a witch story of her own!  (I haven't started it yet, but it looks really fun!)  Thank you so much Lily!

Image of the mountains is not mine--I found it on pinterest (surprise, surprise) which sources it from a china tours site it looks like?  I would love to see mountains like that some day!

Who's excited to meet the "them" that Kettle is so worried about?  :D  I'll try to post the next chapter soon and not leave this hanging on a cliffhanger like *cough*Secrets of the Swords*cough*.  Sorry about that.

Well, lest I start rambling, I'm going to stop here.  Thanks for reading, and don't forget to vote!