Release that Witch

When Scroll knocked on the door, she quickly heard an answer from the other side, “Please enter.”

Hearing this she pushed open the door and stepped into the room. Within the room she saw Anna sitting at her table in front of the window, busy reading a thick book.

The sunlight was flooding the room through the window, stretching the woman’s silhouette until it was unusually long. Within the sun her soft cheeks and neck were dazzlingly white, and her shoulder-covering flaxen hair seemed to be made of white gold.

After nearly a week of living together, Scroll had a basically understanding of Anna’s temperament. For example, if she had something to say she would speak bluntly and never equivocate. She was calm and quiet, especially studious… In short, it was difficult to find any other civilian born person like Anna who was totally at peace with herself.

“How is it that you aren’t playing that… card game?” Scroll took a chair and placed it next to Anna. During the last two days, whenever her sisters had finished their daily practice, they would immediately rush back to the castle, crowding Soraya’s room playing the so-called Gwent card game and competing against each other to collects more cards. It seemed like they would never get tired of this. She even saw that Anna and Nana played this game every day after they learned the rules. There were only rare occasion where they didn’t play. Unlike the previous days, she would often see the young girl with the healing powers coming to the castle to play.

“I just wanted to read some books,” Anna turned to the next page, “Since I don’t have your ability, I have to spend more time to read the books.”

Anna almost read everything, from historical biographies to long poems, including every book she saw on the streets even if it was only a variety of folk tales, as long as they were collected into a book, she would read them with relish.

Scroll touched her head sympathetically, “Don’t worry. Remind me that I wanted to give you a new book to read.”

It was only because of her, that the fate of us survivors of the Witch Cooperation Association had so greatly changed, Scroll thought. If it wasn’t for her, Nightingale would never have left halfway for the direction of Border Town. So we would never have met the 4th Prince of Kingdom of Graycastle, and so would never have come to know the method to staying healthy. In a sense, she was the savior to all witches.

Which was also the reason why Scroll had from the beginning felt only goodwill for Anna, while the latter also quickly accepted the other witch who had so much knowledge and experience. But it was also clear that Anna greatly envied Scroll for her ability, which in return to Scroll was a little ridiculous. In the Witch Cooperation Association, the sisters never showed any envy for another witches’ abilities. It was even more ridiculous since Anna had the largest magic capacity Nightingale had ever seen a witch possessed before, furthermore the ability of her green flame was also one of the strongest.

“Your hair has become a little long,” Anna’s curly bangs were nearly covering her eyes, “Is there no one who can help you cut them?”

Anna shook her head. “No, I’m all on my own.”

Suddenly Scroll became totally motivated, “Your tangled hair isn’t good-looking, let me cut it for you.”

“You’d do this for me?”

“I’ve cut the hair of most of the sisters during our time in the camp,” Scroll answered happily. “Wait a minute, I’ll go get the tools.”

She soon came back while holding a cloth bag. When she spread the bag’s content out, Anna saw several white pieces of clothes and a bronze scissor. The scissor was V-shaped, and at both it ends it had many scratches, already losing its gloss and clearly showing that it was well used.

Before Scroll had joined the Witch Cooperation Association, the scissors were used to help her cut the hairs of her customers in the Sea Wind Region. All the copper royals she didn’t need to buy bread were handed over to an old captain with a broken leg. This captain was the one who’d taught her to read and write until he died of old age.

Scrolls skillfully put one of the white clothes on Anna’s neck, and started cutting her hair.

“I had some questions I wanted to ask you,” Anna announced.

“What do you want to know?” Under her skillful fingers the scissor flew through Anna’s hair, always releasing a crisp Kaka sound. Soon the first cluster of finger length hair was cut and fell to the ground.

“Many of the stories described in the books I’d gotten from you yesterday, almost always have the same ending. Will the Prince always take a princess as his bride?”

Hearing this question Scroll’s hand paused for a moment, the stories in the book were not stories of a real people, instead it was a collection of stories she had heard within her ten years in the Sea Breeze Region. They were stories told to her by the sailors. But Scroll had specifically put this kind of stories together, and every story where the Prince wouldn’t marry the Princess didn’t have a happy ending. These kinds of stories were put together in one book and which she then gave to Anna to read.

Always knowing that after reading Anna would ask her exactly this question, but now that she really had to answer the question, she hesitated.

“Most of the time this is the case, of course, some princes will also marry the daughter of a Grand Duke or a Duke, for example, Graycastle’s King Wimbledon III, his wife was the daughter of the Duke of Silvercity.”

Answering the question like this, Scroll suddenly felt very sad. Wendy and Scroll herself had already talked about Nightingale’s situation but compared to the mature and calm Shadow Killer, she was more worried about the possibility that the Prince and Anna would develop deeper feeling and become closer.

Anna was a woman who was very important to His Royal Highness, and everyone could clearly see this. When Anna and Roland were in the same room, his eyes would always fall on her. Anna’s life was several times busier than that of any other sisters. Even more important than that was that even Nightingale had to share her room with Wendy, but His Royal Highness didn’t change Anna’s room into a double, making her the only one was allowed to have a room all to herself. The reason for this was that when Nana came over to sleep in the castle she could share the room with Anna – he seemed to not realize that he was the owner of this place and that there was no reason that he had to explain himself.

And for Anna it was the same case, when she was together with the other witches she was a person of few words, she was even for most of the time just a quiet listener. But when Roland was by her side she would immediately become active. If there was anything which was able to let her forget about her books, Scroll thought that only the Prince was able to achieve this.

Unfortunately, Roland was the 4th son of the former King of Graycastle, the future King who will support the witches, and Anna was only a witch.

Since Roland was a Prince, Scroll was unable to order him, so she had no other choice than to influence Anna in the direction she thought would be correct. She didn’t want those two to be estranged from each other, but she also didn’t want to see it ending in the only possible result, a tragedy.

“Why?” asked Anna shaking her head, as if to try to get the memories of her destroyed dreams out of her head. “Does he have to do this, even though he doesn’t like the princess or any other woman of the nobility?”

“Uh…” Scroll hadn’t thought that she would continue questioning, “Even then he had still has to marry them.”

Because the Prince would most likely become the new king and the king’s marriage can’t be his own personal decision. She tried to recall some of the knowledge from the books that would help her,

“In order to stabilize the powers within his own country. In order to appease the neighboring countries. In order to achieve a good deal, these are all important reason for marrying a princess. But the most important matter is that the King has to have heirs.”

Hearing all this, Anna did not ask any further, which in return made Scroll a little relieved. This kind of thing was something only slowly achieved, not something she could force. But she believed that one day Anna would understand her thoughts.

When the trimming came to its end, Scroll scratched the fringes on Anna’s shoulder away, “Now, you’re looking great.”

“Thank you,” said Anna and bowed thankfully.

“Well, for today’s book…” Scroll thought for a moment, then she decided to tell her about the Wolfsheart Kingdom’s history, trying to reinforce the impression she had installed today, “her own selection of the royal family biography.”

When Scroll was finally ready to leave, Anna suddenly began to speak, still holding the book of illusion within her hands, “I think Roland isn’t one of those Princes from your stories.” Her voice was very steady and powerful, nothing as if she was only speaking to convince herself, “He will do whatever he wants to do. His decision won’t be influenced by anything else.”

“…” For a long time Scroll was startled, and in the end, she could only merely ask, “Why?”

“If he were one of those princes, he would never have saved me.”