you can throw me if you want

[truthwright]

It turns out that there was really not much point to making a schedule. Kas and Helen visit the witch clan whenever Helen feels like it, and stay as long as she wants, and go when she wants to be somewhere else, and it all adds up to plenty more time spent with the clan than away.

After the aquarium jaunt with Ranata, it's a little more than a month before they visit the clan again.

Comments

[carillons]

"I'm going to look in the ladies' room," says Helen.

She goes into the restaurant.

[alicornucopia]

The witches do not expect that she will find her daddy in the ladies' room. They wait.

[carillons]

And sure enough, Helen comes out again.

"He wasn't there," she reports. "And I asked somebody to look in the men's room for me and he wasn't there either. I guess he's lost. How are you going to find him? Will you use magic?"

[alicornucopia]

"We know plenty of magic," replies the first witch reassuringly.

[carillons]

"I know lots of magic too!" she says. "But I don't know any daddy-finding spells. Will you teach me one? Or are there runes and things in all the ones there are? I don't know runes yet."

[alicornucopia]

"Lots of runes," says the second witch. "If he's very hard to find it might even take a sparrow or a pigeon."

[carillons]

"Can I watch?" says Helen, fascinated.

[alicornucopia]

"I suppose," says the first witch.

[carillons]

"What are your names? I'm Helen," she says. "Helen Ianthe."

[alicornucopia]

"I'm Kana Setira and this is Loviisa Lerandi," says the first witch.

[carillons]

"It's nice to meet you!" she says. "Where are you going to do the spell to find my daddy?"

[alicornucopia]

"All our magic things are home," says Kana. "It's not a long flight. You can sit on my cloud-pine with me."

[carillons]

"Okay," Helen says agreeably.

[alicornucopia]

And so off they fly. The flight is a little long, but Kana happens to have a children's book on her for Helen to read.

[carillons]

She hasn't read it before, but it is cute and she likes it.

"I hope he's not worried," she says when she finishes it, most of the way through the flight.

[alicornucopia]

"Well, if he is, he will soon stop," says Kana. "All done with the book?" She tucks it away again. "Do you like magic? Are you studying old languages?"

[carillons]

"I love magic!" says Helen. "It's so much fun! I can count to fifty in Svaaric, but I don't know real words yet."

[alicornucopia]

"Counting is a fine place to start," says Kana.

They land in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere, and Kana helps her off the cloud-pine. An osprey daemon is peering out the window at them.

[carillons]

Kalavar perches on Helen's head and becomes a gorgeous violet dragon with black-edged scales and blue-striped wings.

[alicornucopia]

In they go. Loviisa starts setting up a complicated spell diagram, with lots of runes and lines, out of dark wine.

[carillons]

Helen peers thoughtfully at it. She doesn't really understand it, but it's interesting anyway.

[alicornucopia]

It takes a long time to set up the spell. The osprey - Loviisa's - keeps murmuring to Kana's bluejay softly, not near where Helen can hear. Kana summons an animal to sacrifice; the pigeon takes a while to arrive and doesn't look happy about it when it shows up. Loviisa scatters a great many different herbs around the diagram.

And then she recites a verse in Svaaric.

[carillons]

Helen listens, but there aren't any numbers, or any words she vaguely sort of recognizes. Or any goddesses.

She waits to see if they have found him or not.

[alicornucopia]

"Now we wait," Kana tells Helen. "Would you like a snack?"

[carillons]

"Okay!" says Helen.