The Ether Witch Volume 2

"Go fish."

"Do you have any… nines?"

"Go fish."

Bes narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Hamil. "Oh, really?"

Her friend looked up from his dwindling hand of cards innocently. "Would I lie?"

Luca and Penelope giggled.

"Yes. Yes, you would. Because you always cheat at cards. I just thought you would be on better behavior with the impressionable audience we have," Bes sniped.

Luca looked at Bes curiously. "What's impressionABle mean?"

"It means you're prone to copy what you see," Hamil answered before Bes could. "For example, you might try to smile at a pretty girl the same way I do, and try to make her blush."

Luca wrinkled his nose. "Why would I do that?"

Penelope loudly sighed. "Can we please keep playing the game?"

Hamil lowered his cards and leaned an elbow on the small table they had gathered around to play. "You need to have more fun Ms. Penelope! Otherwise, what's the point in life?"

"Not everything in life is fun," Penelope responded dryly while moving some of her own cards around in her hand.

"Well what do you like to do for fun?" Bes interjected interestedly with a kind smile.

Penelope looked at the Lobahlan woman disapprovingly, making Bes shrink back in both surprise and awe at the look that would have made any strict grandmother proud.

"You like playing hide and seek!" Luca reminded brightly.

"Only because you're actually quiet during that game."

"Don't be mean," Luca said with a frown.

Penelope paused and met his eyes, then with her mouth twisting to the side, she quietly responded. "Sorry."

"Do you like reading?" Bes pressed again, her tone still gentle.

The little girl gave a noncommittal shrug.

"Drawing?" Hamil prodded.

Penelope crossed her slim arms over her chest. "Who cares what I like?"

"We do. We're asking about it, so we care." Bes settled her own cards in her lap patiently.

The little girl narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Mhm."

"I kind of want to know." Luca faced Penelope squarely. "You always play what I want to play, but you don't say what you want to do."

A pink flush appeared in Penelope's cheeks. "I'll tell you later."

"You don't want to tell us?" Hamil asked with mock offense.

Penelope shot him a withering stare. "I barely know you."

"We have spent days playing together! You know us quite well!" he argued sincerely.

"People who are desperate for me to trust them aren't usually good people."

The maturity of Penelope's response succeeded in stunning Bes and Hamil into silence.

"Can we keep playing?" Luca swiveled in his seat so that he could once again rest his elbows on the table.

"I just wanted to know what I did to make Ms. Penelope feel so wary of me," Hamil bristled.

Luca's eyes snapped up, a sudden stillness in his face that was entirely out of character. "She doesn't want to talk about it. Let's play the game."

Startled, Hamil neither moved nor spoke until Luca dropped his attention back to his cards. "Goddess, Luca. You reminded me of your father just then."

Luca didn't respond.

Hamil sighed, and with a disapproving eyebrow glanced back at his cards."Though at the very least you didn't threaten me, I suppose…"

This time it was both Penelope and Luca whose gazes rose up eerily to fixate on the Lobahlan.

"Why was my dad threatening you?" Luca slowly placed his cards on the table, the seriousness on his face alarming in more ways than one.

Hamil's eyes rounded and he didn't risk taking his eyes off of the two children that moments ago had been sweet as pie, but now looked like they were about to steal his coin while punching him in the groin without a second thought.

"What… is wrong with this family?" he whispered to Bes.

She stared at the children; she didn't feel as disturbed by them as Hamil did. "I think this family is frightened, and they only have had themselves to count on. Though I don't know why they are so afraid," she paused. "What with that winged beast below deck keeping them safe."

"Wha—" Luca started to say in response, his brow furrowed, but Penelope cut him off.

"Our family isn't your business."

Hamil chuckled. "I hate to tell you this, tuts, but your father has been hinting that we might be stuck together for a while yet."

The children shared a look, then turned back to the Lobahlans.

"We'll see," Penelope responded evenly.

Bes shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The children were surprisingly sharp. She would've thought they'd have been overly eager to talk about the winged beast being on their ship. Which then made another thought occur to her.

"I admit, I'm curious about the large flying cat. Lobahl doesn't have many hybrids of ancient beasts."

"Hy…brid?" Luca sounded out slowly.

Hamil's pointed look at Bes's profile went ignored. She already knew she was going out on a limb revealing this much.

"Ancient beasts sometimes have babies with one another, or even humans, and it makes different animals."

The way Luca's face lit up completely eradicated the ominous shadow that had settled over him moments before that made it almost impossible to imagine him looking as threatening as he had just moments before.

"I know how babies are made! And my dad told me all about imps and sirins!"

There was a beat where both Hamil and Bes struggled not to laugh at Luca's confident declaration pertaining to reproduction.

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"Right… Right… So, if say, a sirin and a dragon have a baby, they may have something like a phoenix. Though, again, it's rare. I've never seen a cat with wings before," Bes elaborated while doing an impressive job—in her opinion—at subduing her smile.

"That's because a dragon didn't make Kasha," Luca blurted indignantly.

"Kasha?" Hamil tilted his head interestedly.

"Hey!" Penelope yanked on Luca's sleeve, her finger pressing into her lips. "Ssh!"

"Oh!" Luca pressed his lips together. When he looked back at the Lobahlans, he scowled.

Hamil held up his hands, and Bes gave a nervous laugh. "Sorry. I was just explaining why I was curious about the flying cat. The one I think you just called Kasha."

"Hmph." Penelope set her cards down on the table. "I don't know that I like you two anymore."

"You liked us at one point?" Hamil asked with a teasing grin.

Penelope glared at him then turned to Luca. "Come on. Let's go play somewhere else."

Visibly disappointed, Luca nodded in agreement, then jumped down onto the deck.

The day was warm, and the sun was out. Off in the distance, everyone was able to glimpse the shadowed outline of Daxaria. As a result, the sailors seemed to be particularly busy that day organizing themselves for their time ashore.

The two children had only just reached each other's sides, when a thrumming rush of air made everyone turn to the side and find two women and a man flying in the air, and a fishing vessel off in the distance rushing toward them.

One of the women with wild, black hair threaded with white curled a finger toward Luca.

Hamil launched himself from his seat, grabbing Luca right before a rush of air wiped his feet out from under him, making him come down hard on the deck. The move would have easily swept Luca over to her.

"ELI!" Penelope shrieked.

Bes was rushing toward the little girl as the three witches descended onto the ship's deck.

The male witch opened his palm, and a tendril of water flew up from the water behind them. The water rope launched forward. Hamil curled himself around Luca. Bes, having reached Penelope, wrapped her arms around her protectively, her back to the witches.

However, the water rope didn't hit its mark, as a massive black cat landed between the children and the witches, and let out an echoing roar that made the witches back up a single step.

The sight of Kasha did not deter the witches for long. As the water witch summoned three more tendrils of water, and the two other witches flexed their hands, the one beginning to float, and the other summoning a fireball…

Only they were interrupted again.

At first by a fluffy black cat launching himself at the fire witch's ankles and making her yelp.

The second, by a bellowing cry of the word: "FIRE!"

Followed by a thunderous boom, and the sound of splintering wood. The witches—save for the fire witch who was losing her struggle against Kraken and was already in the process of falling on her arse—turned and found that their handy fishing boat that had expediently joined them, had a rather new, large hole in its hull, stopping it in its place.

Before they could react to this strange new development, the boisterous shout of Captain Sun echoed overhead.

"EVERYONE! I BELIEVE THIS IS A PERFECT TIME TO FORMALLY INTRODUCE THE CANNONS!"

*

"Well that explains it," Tam managed between gasping laughs.

"I mean I know I'm not the most powerful witch, but at least it did something!" Henrietta wheezed.

"I thought it was just some new detail about the kraken we didn't know about!" Tam clutched his stomach as his abdomen ached. "A feathered tentacle… I should've worked it out sooner that it was you who'd done that."

Henrietta wiped away a tear from her eyes as she still continued to laugh. "I mean, it's one of the reasons I got away…" her good humored expression dwindled.

Tam had a hunch that it had something to do with the fact that she had been one of the few survivors of the sea monster kraken attack when she'd been with the Coven of Wittica weeks earlier. He'd visited the chicken witch nearly everyday since their initial conversation, and the time was nearing that they would land in Daxaria, and then things would get really messy.

He sat with his back on the opposite side of Henrietta's cell, his arms braced on top of his knees. His mother had wandered off at some point during their lengthy conversation. Judging from the dimming of the light outside the small port window, he could tell dinner time was nearing.

"I'll change your mother back once we reach Daxaria," Henrietta's quiet voice called over the brief span of quiet.

Tam smiled at her, his fingers fluttering against his palm. "Thank you. I'm guessing you're only going to do that after we dock so she won't have time to torment you?"

"I… Never would've imagined the wife of the house witch would be so scary," she said with a shudder.

Tam chuckled again, his eyes searching the young woman's tired face. "Even scary people need to have someone that cares about them."

Henrietta nodded slowly. "I wish we could be friends, Lord Tam. I don't get along with most people. Even if they're witches."

"I'm seriously judging the people you've had the misfortune of putting up with. You're hilarious."

Henrietta beamed, but the twinkling smile didn't last as her eyes lowered. "You're making me really hate this war."

"You didn't before?" Tam asked wryly.

Henrietta rolled her eyes at his teasing. "I already told you it's more violent than I thought it'd be."

"Mhm." Tam raised his eyebrows at her, causing her to make a noise of irritation.

Tam was just about to say something along the lines of how he had left his children unattended for enough time, when a shout from above deck and the sound of splintering wood sounded out. Simultaneously, a terrifying image came into his mind that instantly drenched him in a cold sweat…

Three witches had come aboard. And they were dangerous.

He instinctively knew that this was one of the first times Kasha had utilized their connection as witch and familiar, and she was trying to tell him to get the hell above deck.

Leaping to his feet nimbly, his mother, Annika, darted by with impressive speed whilst clucking.

Tam briefly touched the knives at his back to make sure they were still securely fastened, and was about to bolt above deck to find out what was happening, when Henrietta once again called out. "Is it the coven do you think?"

"Probably, we're only a day or two away from Daxaria," he responded grimly, already in motion.

Henrietta nodded, her eyes then flitting upward as another thud sounded above them.

It'd seem violence had once again found them.

Tam felt his gut roil.

It wasn't quite the homecoming he had been dreaming of having, but it wasn't exactly surprising. He only hoped that at the very least he'd be able to say he'd been able to set foot back on familiar land before he suffered any other great problem.