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Chapter 5: Information

It was still very early when Towy went to see the witch. He decided to go
alone this time.
The witch welcomed him right in as soon as he came to her door. She seemed
to have been waiting for him.
He was ready for the terrible stench from the skunk, but it was still hard
to stand. It was so bad, it was hard to think about anything else, but he
needed to do his best to endure it.
"I'm about to cast a spell this morning," she said to Towy as they sat on
the sofa. "A boy came to me last week, but I had to wait until I had eaten a
fairy before I had the power to cast it."
She got up and went over to a small table near a corner of the room. She
wrote something down on a heavy piece of paper and laid it face down on the
table. Then she started jumping up and down, shaking her fists in the air.
She was yelling in a harsh, inhuman-sounding voice that scared Towy. Smoke
came out of the paper on the table.
When she was finished, she sat back down next to Towy. "There was a girl
calling him names. He couldn't pay me much, but he just wanted me to do
something that would embarrass her. So now all her hair will fall out, and it
will never grow back. And then just for the fun of it I covered her body with
pimples. I even infected a few of them, especially one big red one on the tip
of her nose!" She laughed hard about that. Towy found it disgusting, but he
tried to force himself to laugh along.
"Now," the witch said to him, "I'll give you a free spell. Name somebody
you don't like and I'll do whatever you want to that person."
"No thank you," Towy answered, "I don't have anybody I want to do anything
to right now."
"Oh come now. There must be somebody you don't like! Well, you tell me when
you think of somebody. In the meantime, I could use your help with some
equipment."
The witch led Towy into another room. There were bowls and cups there with
weird designs on them. She gave Towy some herbs. She asked him to wash the
insides of the bowls with them, until they had a sweet smell. She did the
same with a pile of cups.
Towy was worried that the witch might become suspicious that he wasn't
really there out of admiration, since he didn't ask her to curse anybody for
him. But he did want to start finding out as much as he could about how she
captures fairies.
"How do you catch fairies?" he asked her, trying to sound like he was just
curious.
"There are many ways to do it," she told him. "The method I've been using
lately is with webweed."
"What's that?" Towy asked.
"It's a tough, sticky kind of magical plant that looks exactly like grass.
I turn a small plot of grass into webweed, and wait for a fairy to come by.
When one does, I project a picture of a hurt fairy into the webweed. The
fairy sticks in the webweed like a fly in a spider web, and can't get out.
Then I simply bend over and pull out the webweed that the fairy is stuck in,
and carry the fairy home. Then I take a few bites of fairy until it's dead.
Then I stick my hand in ice water, and then the webweed isn't sticky anymore.
That's why I only use that method in the summertime."
This was some very useful information. He had many more questions he wanted
to ask her, but couldn't without revealing what he really was. He wondered
why she screamed and jumped around to cast her spell, when fairy magic is
always calm and quiet. He also still wondered about the way using fairy magic
did not hurt her or tire her out at all.
Towy stayed with the witch all day, but didn't ask her any other questions.
He didn't want to sound too curious right away. So far, the plan was working
as well as they could have hoped. They had completely fooled the witch.
That night, back at Trisha's house, Towy told them all about what had
happened at the witch's house. He and told them all the things he didn't
understand.
Before they went to bed, Towy told them some fairy legends. They were very
entertaining, especially the stories of Towy's hero, Dunerre Goblinslayer the
Berserker. He told them the legend of his victory over the Goblin King and
Goblin Queen, how he stood at the head of a fairy army long ago, and gave
them the courage to fight the goblins, how he beat the goblins without the
loss of a single fairy, and how all the goblins were killed or were sent off
with their Queen Yner so far they could never return. And he told the sad
part of the story: how, after the threat of the goblins was gone forever,
Dunerre went away, never to return.
After everyone else was in bed, in the middle of the night, Towy slipped
outside. He pulled some bark off a tree to make into magic maple wood. He
brought it inside with him. He went to his room, and quickly transformed the
plain maple bark into magic maple, and called the fairies back at Dawnhill.
Bax answered Towy's call.
"Chieftain Bax," Towy said, "I have discovered some things."
"Good," Bax said. "We were worried. Since you've been gone, another fairy
has been captured."
"I know," Towy said sadly. "She was eaten before I met the witch. Today I
spent all day in the witch's home. She's completely fooled. She thinks I'm an
ordinary human, and I just want to help her because I admire her."
"Have you learned anything that might help us?" Bax asked him.
"Yes I have," Towy said proudly. "She uses something called webweed to
capture fairies. It looks like grass, but it's sticky like a spider web. She
gets fairies into it by making them think there's an injured fairy there. She
says she has other ways of capturing fairies, but I don't know what they are
yet. But knowing about the webweed may help save some fairies in the
meantime."
"Do you have anything else to report?"
"I have made friends with some humans. They discovered that I am a fairy,
but they are good people and they're helping me. I am living at their house.
Don't worry; I'm sure they can be trusted."
"Wev and Oca asked me to send their greetings as soon as I heard from you.
All the fairies are talking about you. You will be even more famous when they
find out how successful you've been so far. You'll be quite a hero when you
return!" Then the magic maple turned dark, and Bax's face could no longer be
seen in it.
Towy slipped the magic maple under his pillow, and he fell asleep. Now he
was a little less worried about his next visit to the witch.