Hilda - The Challenge

by Paul Kater

  Hilda opened the box. "Oh!!! Chocolate!!! Good thing that ghosts don't eat chocolate cookies."

  A howl echoed through the corridor, but this one was less convincing than the previous ones.

  "Did you hear something?", Hilda asked her wizard.

  "Hear? What? No, must have missed it," William played along. "More coffee?"

  "Oh, yes. Please." Hilda held up her cup, and the ghost appeared again. It did not howl. It just seemed to observe what these silly people were doing in its corridor.

  The ghost floated at about two yards distance from the table, close to the wall. It almost looked as if it wanted to make sure it had a getaway spot.

  Hilda and William knew it was there, they just did not pay any attention to it. They drank more coffee and almost cleaned out the box of cookies, and all that time the ghost hovered near them. Then Hilda looked at it. "Oh. Look. A ghost."

  William looked at it too. "Really. A ghost. Amazing. Want me to make more coffee, or should we go? Or do you have another suggestion?"

  "Well, he's not adding much to the conversation, so we could just as well pack up," Hilda shrugged.

  The ghost howled. Somewhat.

  "As I said, he's not adding much to the conversation." Hilda got up. "Can you take care of the furniture?"

  "Of course." A swing with a wand later, the chair, tables and coffee stuff were gone. William held out his hand, and together they walked up the stairs. A thundering howl followed them, and the ghost shot up and down the corridor like crazy.

  "So, what was all that acting?", William asked after they had returned to the ground floor of the castle again. The howls of the ghosts were almost continuous now.

  "I wanted to anger it." Hilda patted the door. "And it looks like we succeeded." A big, satisfied smile was on her face.

  "Great, so now we have an angered ghost in the cellar. And the next logical step in this is?"

  "We leave it there for a while, and then we go back. It won't have a clue how long we were gone. Ghosts have no sense of time. And then we'll see if it wants to talk."

  "Talk. The ghost."

  "Yes," nodded Hilda, "you catch on very quickly, William." Tiptoeing, she kissed his cheek. "Come, let's go for a walk and look at the bad paintings here."

  The couple returned from their walk quite quickly. The amount of bad paintings was more than they could take. There was the occasional howl from the ghost, but that was hardly impressive anymore.

  "Gods, I wonder who has such a taste," said William, "most of that is an attack on the eyes."

  Hilda nodded. "I know. It's interesting to see how much garbage is produced. So, ready for another ghost meet?"

  "Sure. I ain't afraid of no ghost," William giggled.

  It earnt him a frown from Hilda who then opened the door. They went down the stairs again, this time not needing a torch. They'd been here before.

  The ghost was nowhere to be seen. It howled once in a while, but kept itself hidden.

  "Hey, ghost! Come out where we can see you. We need to talk." Hilda magicked up two chairs, on which they sat down. "We're not leaving until we've talked to you. And you'd better make it snappy or we're going to make things really hard on you."

  William wondered if she was referring to his non-existing second plan.

  64. Bustin' makes me feel good

  They waited. And waited quite a while, their only source of entertainment being their chatting and the howls of the ghost that did not show up.

  "Not really snappy, is it?", William commented.

  "As I said, ghosts have no sense of time. We'll just wait."

  A loud howl later the ghost hung before them, again at a safe distance.

  "Well, look who we have here," Hilda took control of the situation. "I'd love to ask you to sit down, but that would be a bit odd."

  "There are only two chairs," a hollow voice said.

  William tried to keep his surprise under control but failed miserably. He did leave the talking to Hilda, that evidently was the safest thing to do.

  "Right..." Hilda made a third chair appear.

  The ghost went and hovered over that. "Thank you." It seemed to wait for more.

  "So, what brought you here?", Hilda asked as if she was talking to someone she had not seen for a while.

  "An opening," was the simple and hollow answer. Then the ghost howled again, be it moderately loud. "I take it this annoys you. I mean to annoy."

  "I must say that I have heard nicer sounds," Hilda agreed. "Now, what opening brought you here? This is the King's Castle and he's a bit ticked off with the sound you make."

  "Oh. That is good." The ghost howled full force for a moment. That probably was its way to tell the world how pleased it was.

  "Actually that is not good, because a ticked-off king is not good for the people. And ticked-off people are very bothersome to deal with, which in turn will anger the king even more."

  The ghost rose up from the chair and bobbed down again. "And all that because I am here?"

  "Quite, yes."

  A loud and long howl was theirs to not enjoy. "I had no idea that my presence here would have such an impact. I am happy here, this is a good ghosting place."

  "Crappedy crap, you don't get it, do you?", asked Hilda. "This is not the place for you to be, ghost. You had your own place to howl, and you got here by accident. Now you will show us where that opening was that you came through, and you will go back through it."

  "No." The ghost sounded very determined. And even more hollow. "My old place was no fun. People were not scared of me there."

  "So it is scaring them that you want, not annoying them," William pitched in.

  "The scaring comes after the annoying," the ghost replied.

  "I beg to differ. You seem to be uncertain of what you want. You first claimed annoying, then you claimed scaring and now you claim both," argued William.

  Hilda stared at her wizard, not really understanding what he was getting at, but since he had the ghost's attention, she sat back and let him have a go at it.

  The ghost was silent for a moment. "But isn't scaring a higher level of annoying?"

  "It is definitely not. I have worked with books and language for many years, and there is no book that I have found which would underwrite your statement. Annoying people will in the end make them nervous and break down. If you scare people, they will in the end either get used to it or turn against you."

  "Ah." The ghost sounded now mostly hollow. It seemed to become unstable a bit, more and less opaque.

  Hilda now got William's meaning. He was trying to confuse the ghost. "I agree with the wizard," she told the ghost. "And you don't want to be there when people turn against you. That is when they bring in the heavy artillery, like witches and wizards. Now, you may have gathered that we are a witch and a wizard. What does that tell you?"

  "Uhm... that the people are scared already?" The ghost clearly had problems coping with being questioned like this.

  "No, dumb ass," William said, "they are getting smarter. You won't get away with the same old routine over time. People understand by now that all they have to do is call in the help of wizards and witches to deal with a ghost. They hire the ghostbusters, as it were."

  "And that's us," Hilda said, "and you see that it works when they call us."

  "It does?" The ghost was losing ground by the minute. "I am still here, am I not?"

  "Yes, you are," William confirmed as he got up. "The question is: for how long..." He drew his wand and conjured up a set of weird looking utensils. He just did his best remembering the objects he had seen in the Ghostbusters movie long ago. "Perhaps you care to know what these things are."

  The ghost hovered away from the chair and hung over the assembly of strange things. "Do I need to know?"

  Hilda grinned to herself. So far they had managed to keep the ghost from howling for quite a while already, and whatever it was that William was doing: it worked!

  William tried to feed Hilda so
me information about the fake equipment as he was explaining about what looked like a mutilated vaccuum cleaner. "See, this thing is what we use for Slimers."

  "What are slimers?", the ghost asked.

  "I beg your pardon? You don't know what Slimers are? The silly round ghosts that spit around slime and other goo? We have this magical tool to simply suck them up. Once they're inside this, they can't escape." William patted the vaccuum cleaner. "Good thing, works perfectly."

  Hilda got up as she wanted to join in the fun and grabbed another device. It looked like the cup of a giant blender. "This is what we have to put the small ones in," she told the ghost.

  William stood back and watched Hilda go on, biting his tongue to keep from laughing.

  "See, the smaller ghosts, as you probably know, are not that fast. So we only have to wait for one to zoom by" -she took the lid off the cup- "whack it over the ghost" -in a fierce and fast movement she whacked the cup over the ghost- "and close the cup." Which is what she did. Then she stared at the transparent cup. "Suck an elf. It worked." She shook the cup a few times. A faint howl came from it as the ghost was frantically moving around.

  William was totally flabbergasted. "How the hell did you do that?"

  "Not sure. It looked like a good thing to try." The witch held up the cup. "See, we warned you." She looked at William. "What are we going to do with it?"

  "Good question. How about we give it to the king, as a present? I don't know if it is a common thing for a king to have his own ghost in a... blender."

  "Shiny!! Let's go and do that!" Hilda grinned a wide smile. She watched how William made all the strange equipment disappear, including the three chairs, and then they walked up the stairs again, and down the long corridor that took them to the courtyard.

  Many eyes followed them as Hilda carried the big cup to the king. "King Walt, we have your ghost. Here it is, all yours." She put the cup on the table, in front of the chubby royal man.

  "That is... the ghost?" The king picked up the cup and reached for the lid.

  "I would leave that on, King," William said, "unless you want to be the first king with a ghost in his garden. They're pretty hard to catch."

  Quickly King Walt put the cup down. "Yes, I thought the same. I was just making sure the lid was on tightly." He blushed for a moment. He got up and thanked the witch and the wizard. "I will see to it that a proper compensation will be brought to your home, dear magical people. And thank you ever so much for this speedy operation. It is definitely not pleasant to be a king when you have to sit... there." He pointed at the small seat that had probably hurt his extensive royal rear quite a bit.

  The witch and her wizard remained near the castle until the entire staff had entered the castle again. They then went inside with the king.

  "The ghost told us it had come in through some opening. It is probably a good thing to let some good people check the cellar and make sure that there are no openings left that should not be there," Hilda warned the king. "Otherwise there is no saying what will come through that opening next."

  "Yes, yes, my thoughts exactly," King Walt nodded as he handed them both a glass of wine. A servant offered them a tray with a choice of handmade chocolates.

  "Oh, chocolate!" Hilda grabbed a handful and happily munched away.

  William took one and was happy with that.

  "I am really grateful that we have such a fine working relationship, dear witch and wizard," Walt said as he lowered himself on a comfortable couch.

  They chatted for a short while longer, and then the magical couple left the king, fetched their brooms and made for home.

  65. No buts or maybe's

  The days after catching the ghost went by rapidly. The couple was preparing for the challenge which now was coming close.

  "Today we have to pack up and go there, William." Hilda lay in his arm, close to him. She enjoyed the feeling of closeness and the strength in his arm with which he pulled her even closer to him for a moment.

  "Yes. I know. We did all we can do, I think. And we can count ourselves acquaintances of Gurthreyn."

  "As if that helps," the witch snorted.

  William doubted it too. The experience of meeting the magician had drifted to the back of their memories, and they both considered it a very strange kind of dream by now.

  As they were getting up and ready, the sound of trumpets rang through the air.

  "The king is here," said the house. "And he did not come alone."

  "You don't say..." William peeked out the window. "Good grief. Looks like he brought half the country."

  "Don't exag- Crap, looks like he brought half the country," Hilda said as she looked out with him.

  As they were dressed already, they stepped outside. One does not keep a king waiting.

  "Dear honourable witch and wizard," said King Walt from inside the carriage. "We thought it only proper to come to you on this day and inform you that we wish you all the magic you need to make this challenge a favourable one."

  Before either of the two could say something, the trumpeteers blew their hearts out, and the crowd started cheering like crazy. It left the magical couple completely flabbergasted. A relatively small delegation of the enormous amount of visitors came to them, to personally wish them well. There were about ninety people in that group.

  After a few hours the horde left the area again; they heard the trumpets' sound long after the group had gone.

  "Shiny, wasn't it?", said Hilda.

  "This was... wow." William had an arm around her shoulders. "I'd never have expected that."

  "No, really. This was quite a surprise." Hilda looked up at her wizard. "My hands hurt."

  William took her hands and kissed them. "Better now?"

  "No, but it feels nice. Could you do that again?" Blue sparkles flew from her eyes.

  With a grin, he kissed her hands again.

  "Thank you. Now we should get ready to leave, sweet man."

  It did not take them very long. They had been preparing for a while already, their luggage had been pre-shrunk even. With brooms in hand they left the house and Hilda put the large iron chains around it. She mumbled something extra and William was a bit worried as he sensed her feeling through their bond.

  "We are coming back, Hilda."

  The witch stared at her house. "I hope you are right, William. This is just in case. If we don't make it, then in five years the chains will disappear."

  "You must come back sooner. I do not want to be chained up for five years," said the house.

  "I know," Hilda said with a nod. "We're going to do our best. Five years of chains is not good for your paint."

  William was a bit surprised. Did he just hear her brave and boisterous witch sniff away a tear?

  As she turned to him, nothing showed of it. "Come. Let's go."

  They mounted their brooms and flew away. They had decided, a few days ago, to make a detour to the castle, but as the king was still on his way there, they looked for the caravan that was going there. That was quite easy. They flew low over the crowd and along the carriage, raising a few hundred people to cheer again, and then they turned their brooms toward the east.

  The couple had planned plenty of stops, so they would not arrive at the labyrinth totally exhausted. It took them a full two days, in which they did nothing remarkable, but they spent a lot of quality time that way. The challenge hung over them like a tangible thing, and they did their best to to ignore it.

  In the afternoon of the second day, they passed through the magical field that separated the labyrinth of Gurthreyn from the rest of the world. They had been expecting it, and yet again, as happened with their previous visits, they had their load of nausea hitting them by surprise.

  The large terrain outside the actual labyrinth looked peculiar. There were tents, people, horses and brooms. Lots of banners with the sigil of King Herald were put everywhere, but the lack of wind made the banners look remarkably pathetic as they hung down listlessly.


  Despite the large number of people on the grounds, there was hardly anything one could hear. The magic that reigned over the fields dampened almost everything from sounds to moods.

  The labyrinth itself, with the high grey walls, looked as uninviting as ever. The massive iron doors were closed as usual. High up, out of reach of the most depressing layers of magic, there were magicians and witches cruising over the daunting walled area, making sure that there were no stranger things happening than what had been recorded throughout history. Big solid walls that moved by themselves were not considered strange things here.

  As Lamador, the magician of King Herald, had called for the challenge, the court of his king was responsible for supplying quarters for the adversaries. For that reason there was a large tent set up a bit away from what could be considered a village of citizens of Heraldion. The tent was simple in its looks, brown and red.

  That was the view presented to Hilda and William as they finally approached the place where they would be doing the duel with Lamador.

  "I don't know about you," said William, "but that whole circus down there just looks wrong."

  Hilda agreed. "It is the way Lamador travels. Big. Pompous. Attracting attention. Let's go down and see what they have lined up for us."

  The two brooms did not make a nice and elegant swoop to the ground. Instead, because of the thick and heavy magic there, it was as if they were plowing through mud. Hilda was now again flying the both of them, to keep everyone ignorant of William's abilities. She steered them to the brown and red tent. She knew the layout of the camp and the rules, so that had to be their place.

  First thing they did was go into the tent, to unload their luggage. The tent's inside was strictly functional, there was nothing lavish about it. William put the handful of dice on the ground, Hilda did her trick and then the wizard put away the boxes and cases. "Right, that's out of the way. And now?"

  "Now we're going to see Lamador. He will probably gloat and try to intimidate us, so be prepared for that. He's a real prick in things like that." Hilda thought back to the latest challenge. Intimidating was not even the word then. Humiliating was more like it.