Ha Ildo Tracks the Witch #2
What were the nymphs doing up on the rooftop? I followed them up to find out, and there they were — dancing in circles around a round glass bottle, spinning round and round like a procession of tiny dervishes. It was a deeply strange sight. It was also, I'll admit, pretty funny.
"We are performing the Moonlit Dance…!"
"It is the Luna Dance…!"
Round and round they spun, the glass bottle at the center of their orbit. And then—
Something remarkable began to happen inside the clear glass. A light cool as mercury, silvery and shimmering, started to fill the bottle from bottom to top, as if the darkness itself were pouring in.
Oinoi finally hoisted the bottle high overhead and shouted, "We have captured the moonlight…!"
Capturing moonlight in a glass bottle. I'd never seen anything like it, so to me it looked exactly like magic. I'd thought I'd known the nymphs long enough that nothing could surprise me anymore — turns out I still had a few wonders left to see.
Cradling the bottle of rippling moonlight, Oinoi came down into the yard, trotted over to the footprints left by the fake Seo Yerim, and poured the silvery light over them in a careful stream. What happened next defied belief: the blurred prints began to glow, each one shining with a pale silver radiance.
The trail of light led out across the pitch-dark rice paddies, and when I looked further along it, it continued straight into the apple orchard belonging to the neighborhood's ijang — the local village head. "Let's go!" I followed the glowing footprints into the orchard, and there, at some point, the trail simply stopped. Incredibly, mysteriously, the footprints just cut off.
"What the heck?"
Where on earth had she vanished to? Before I could puzzle it out, Illinoi cried out. "Ahh! Everyone, look at this! Something has been dropped in this apple orchard…!"
What she'd picked up was a feather — an enormous one, roughly the size of Illinoi's entire head. I couldn't guess what beast it belonged to, but it was monstrously huge.
"This is without doubt the feather of an owl…! I, Oinoi, once learned how to tell owl feathers from hawk-owl feathers…!"
According to Oinoi's expert testimony, the feather Illinoi held was from a very, very large owl. Judging by the size of the feather, the bird itself would be about the size of a person. An owl the size of an adult human. If that was real, then…
"The witch must be able to change her shape freely…! A witch who can transform into animals, that is surely what she is…!"
That explanation made the broken trail of footprints click into place. If the witch had turned into an owl and simply flown away, then the footprints ending abruptly in the middle of an orchard made perfect sense.
Ari, who had come along to help with the chase, ran her fingers over the prints with an expression of pure disbelief. "Shapeshifting magic? I had no idea anything like that actually existed in the world."
"Yeah, me neither."
Turning into a giant owl, huh. Honestly? It sounded a little cool.
Morning came at last. The trail of the fake Seo Yerim had ended at that owl feather, and there it stopped.
Whoosh. Seo Yerim coaxed a small flame to life above her open palm, watching it dance with a bitter twist to her mouth.
"It feels like someone bolted shackles around my body. My mana — you're telling me it's dropped to A-rank?"
Ever since her hair had been cut, Seo Yerim's power had fallen and stayed fallen. An S-rank awakener, down to A-rank. Having watched Lee Jeonghun go through exactly that collapse, I knew better than anyone what it meant, and it worried me in more ways than one.
"Don't worry. We'll catch her soon."
I glanced over at the nymphs. They were feeding the owl feather into a country-sized cauldron, boiling it at a rolling bubble. Apparently they intended to perform a special ritual.
"I, Coris, have arrived…! I, Coris, have heard about this witch who turns into animals…! She must be a truly terrifying woman, of that there is no doubt…!"
Around noon, Coris, the ice water nymph, came waving both hands wildly as she appeared. Apparently she'd made the trip all by herself on public transportation.
"I, Coris, have torn up a whole mountain of clover to help with the ritual…!"
"Hee-hee, I, Illinoi, also performed takeout on a great quantity of weeds…!"
Splash, splash. The nymphs began stuffing one herb after another into the jar. The cauldron bubbled and gurgled. Then Oinoi took hold of Keongkeongi and, with a pair of scissors, snipped off a tuft of his tail fur.
Snip.
━Grrr…!
Poor Keongkeongi, whose tail fur got shortened a little more every time the nymphs worked their magic. He seemed genuinely fed up with having his tail harvested, but there wasn't exactly an alternative. I'd have to build him a proper dog-squirrel tower one of these days. A big one.
Splash, splash. Oinoi threw in ingredient after ingredient, then announced: "To undo the Curse of Weakening, the hair of the witch who cast it is required…! But Kore Yerim's hair has lost its power, so we need the hair of another witch…!"
It was the exact same process that had freed me from my own curse. The only problem was that Seo Yerim's hair couldn't be used.
That was when Illinoi produced something from the folds of her clothing. "I took custody of a lock of hair for the purposes of Honorary Nymph Yuranoi's enrollment in the Sisterhood…! We shall simply use this…!"
Splash, splash. A strand of Cha Yura's blue hair went into the pot. The stovefire roared to a furious boil, and watching it, the three nymphs began their spinning dance once more.
Pop!
About five minutes later, perhaps, a small explosion went off inside the cauldron. What remained within was a liquid that gleamed with a rainbow iridescence, luminous as a jewel.
"Drink it…!"
"Drinking time…!"
"I, Coris, do not know what is what, but it was fun making it…!"
The color was a little different from the potion I'd drunk. Maybe because three nymphs had brewed it together instead of one.
"You want me to drink this? This suspicious swill?"
Seo Yerim's face crumpled. But with no other option on the table, she poured the bizarre-looking potion into a glass and gulped it down, gagging between swallows. She retched violently. "Ugh, that's disgusting! But—"
Whoosh! The temperature around her shot up in an instant.
Then Seo Yerim stretched out her hand toward the ice scarecrow Cha Yura had built and shouted, "Fire Gun!"
Pew! A compressed bullet of flame tore from her fingertip and punched clean through the ice scarecrow.
"My power's back!"
The Curse of Weakening that had shackled Seo Yerim was broken. She was overjoyed, and the nymph sisters threw their hands up in celebration right along with her.
"I, Oinoi, have helped Kore Yerim…!"
"Hee-hee, I, Illinoi, am the master of potions…! The effects speak for themselves…!"
"I, Coris, do not know what happened, but it was fun…!"
As Seo Yerim stared into her own palm, I turned to Oinoi. "You said reflection curses return to the sender, right? Then the witch who attacked Seo Yerim might be in serious trouble right now from the rebound."
"That is indeed so…! A dreadful curse must have returned to her…! By now she is surely nursing a very great bruise to her pride…!"
"Tch. Failed. We went on an entire date, man and woman, and you're telling me they weren't even into each other? What is wrong with these people? My disguise was seen through — that's never happened before! And after I went to all the trouble of getting the hair!"
Flap, flap. A huge owl came soaring through a window into a dark room. The moment it landed, the great bird retched violently. Every ounce of strength seemed to be draining from its body.
"…Ugh, damn it all — the curse came back!"
The giant owl had realized it: the curse she had hung on Seo Yerim had come home to roost. Rather than flustered by an attack she'd never anticipated, she was simply furious.
"Was it those little brats? Did those things actually reflect my curse back at me?"
Hooo. The giant owl steadied her breathing, and in her mind's eye the small fairies who had been with Seo Yerim came into focus. "I thought they were idiots, but they've got some teeth on them. Little nymphs, of all things."
A creeping chill crawled up from the tips of her feathers. The curse was taking hold. Left alone like this, it might well cost her her very life.
"Well? Honeyhead. Can you undo it?"
The woman seated before her — the one with honey-colored hair — had been gazing into the burning stove and hearth. At the question, she opened her narrow eyes. "No."
"…You're joking, right? If this keeps up I'll die! Hurry up and undo it!"
"Dunno. I forgot how."
"Fine! I'm sorry I ran off and did my own thing! But come on, you have to admit — sitting around doing nothing was eating at you too! After coming all this way from America to this rabbit-shaped country at the far end of the world!"
Whoosh. The owl rose from her spot and went careening around the dark room, wings battering the air.
Flap, flutter. Flutter!
Watching the owl raise her racket, the honey-haired woman let out a long sigh. "Fine. I'll undo the curse, so sit still."
She lifted a syringe and pressed it into the owl's body. The bird flapped her wings as if in terrible agony — and then the shape melted, and a woman stood in her place. Brown hair, sun-bronzed skin. She was tall and willowy, with the kind of bewitching eyes that could snare a person's soul at a glance.
Only one thing about her was unusual: between the strands of her brown hair, a short, pointed triangular ear was visible.
"Finally, I feel alive again. Sisters should look after each other, after all. Don't you agree?"
"…"
"You're saying it's a nymph?"
My head snapped up at Oinoi's words. She conferred in whispers with Illinoi and Coris, then turned back to me with a face set like stone. "The witch's true identity is without doubt a nymph…! The sorcery the witches use is unmistakably the art of nymphs…!"
"…A nymph?"
I couldn't believe it. Weren't nymphs little chattering fairies with triangular ears, like Oinoi, Illinoi, and Coris? Weren't they the friends who'd pick up pretty pebbles and try to sell them to you for five ten-won coins apiece? And now I was supposed to believe that one of them had hurled a lethal curse and attacked with dark magic?
But Oinoi's expression was dead serious. "The world does not hold only good nymphs. There are bad nymphs too…! Nymphs filled to the brim with resentment and hatred…! And such nymphs become truly dreadful things…!"
Nymphs — dreadful!? Honestly, I couldn't picture it. But Oinoi was trembling like a leaf in the wind, and Coris shook right along with her, wailing, "It is terrifying…!"
Illinoi crossed her arms and gave a grave nod. "I, Illinoi, have listened on the subject of nymphs who forget their own names…! Nymphs seized by terrible grudges until they became nameless…!"
According to her, there existed in this world nymphs so consumed by resentment that they had forgotten — or been forgotten out of — their very names. Seo Yerim listened to all this, hesitated for a long moment, and then turned to Illinoi.
"Illinoi. The ice cream you were going to eat — I'm the one who ate it."
"Hyeeek…! I, Illinoi, shall never forget this grudge…! If you wish to make amends, you shall raise my allowance…! Ten thousand won a day is too small…!"
She fumed and fussed with all her might. Watching her, I fell into thought for a moment.
So the witch was a nymph.
But whatever the truth was, my path forward was already set.
"Then we hunt the witches."