Will and the Wisp: Part Four (Finale)
Will and the wisp have their showdown with the witch
Illustrated narration by the author and others:
WILL AND THE WISP
written by Zossima Granger, illustrated by ValerieAnne Volpe
narrated by the author and a full cast
Part Four
Electricity surged through the twelve-year-old, making him spring to his feet, legs shaking with excitement now, instead of fear. “Which way?”
‘Not so fast, my eager buck-toothed mammal,’ sounded the wisp sharply, rebounding off the jar glass with a distinct pong. ‘You must swear to release me once we reach the witch’s house.’
“I’ll release you after I’m back to normal,” Will said impatiently, looking around at the yawning black forest. “Why should I let you go when we get to her house?”
‘Because you’ll probably be eaten shortly thereafter.’
Will shivered. “You’re just trying to scare me.”
‘That would be as redundant as trying to make a river wet.’
“Fine, I swear.” Will crossed his toes, because he only had one hand now. “Now tell me which direction is the witch’s house.”
The wisp bounced off the side of the jar, pulling it to the right. ‘Thataway.’
Will set off between the dark trees, his way lit not only by the waxing wisp but his own growing light as more and more of his arm dematerialized into bright, silvery smoke. To distract himself, he talked to the captive wisp as he trekked through the night.
“Do you have a…I mean, what’s your name?”
‘Notsure,’ came the immediate reply, a note of longing in the softly ringing voice.
“You’re not sure what your name is?”
‘I can’t remember what I was before. But I’ve been in these woods so long, doing that evil old hag’s bidding that I’m sure I’ve been not sure longer than I was anything else.’
Will felt a little sorry for Notsure, even if the light had been what got him into this mess.
“Oh, that must be hard, not being able to remember who you really are.”
The mote of living light gave a noncommittal twitch that might have been a shrug.
Will very much wanted to remember who he was in the morning, so he forged on faster through the dark forest. Notsure’s light bounced in his one-handed grip, his breath coming in short, painful gasps as more and more of his body was consumed by the silvery glow.
‘Stop!’
Will threw up a wave of wet leaves as he skidded to a halt at the urgent ring from the captive wisp. ‘We’re here,’ Notsure rang softly, like a distant church bell over a graveyard.
Heart beating his ribcage like an anvil, Will crawled forward through rotting leaves to peak through the cleft at the base of a two-trunked hemlock. In the small, moonlit clearing visible, he saw an ancient wattle and daub hut with a sagging sod roof.
“Is that it?” he whispered, barely moving his lips and keeping his eyes fixed on the hut’s door.
‘No, that’s an unrelated millennia-old shack. Of course that’s it.’
“I thought witch’s houses had chicken legs,” Will admitted, squinting to make sure the hut was indeed flat on the ground.
‘You forget we’re in rural Pennsylvania, not Tsarist Russia, you semitransparent ingrate.’
Will bit his lip to keep from crying out as the numbness reached his right shoulder. The wisp-light had now eaten away his entire arm, leaving only a slender feeler of amorphous silver luminescence, like a baby octopus’ arm. He had to do something fast, before he lost his remaining arm.
“Just tell me what I have to do,” he hissed, looking away from the witch’s hut to stare down at Notsure.
‘Let me out and I’ll tell you. Remember our accord.’
Not giving himself time to second guess his decision, Will unscrewed the lid of the jar, allowing the light to rise into the cold shadow beneath the trees.
“Quick, now how do I stop the witch?” Will gasped, his shoulder disintegrating as he spoke.
‘About that…’ The wisp’s glow dimmed, and it appeared to shrink a little, descending toward the loamy forest floor. ‘There’s no way to destroy my mistress. I haven’t found a way to bypass her magic in all my years as a slave.’
Unease encircled Will’s heart like an icy serpent. “What are you talking about? There must be some way—in all the stories—even this jar stopped you going back to her—”
The snow-cold snake suddenly tightened its grip on his insides as he looked down at Notsure, who looked the most ashamed a mote of light possibly could. “Then why did you bring me here?”
‘I’m sorry, Will,’ the wisp’s bells whispered. ‘I truly am. Please don’t resist…it will be over quicker that way.’
Will turned to run. Two more wisps appeared from behind trees, their dimmed lights flaring to miniature stars, blocking his path. They floated forward like shining, poison jelly fish, forcing him backward, out of the trees and into the clearing.
Behind him he heard a creak as a rickety old door swung open.
He turned to see the hunched figure emerge from her cottage, burlap cloak scraping the doorframe as the witch moved slowly into the moonlight. Will felt frozen to the spot as two fleshless, sinewy hands reached from within the cloak toward him as if for an embrace.
“Little bitty snacky,” the witch’s cracked, sing-song voice spoke from within the black cowl, not even eyes visible in the void there. “My favorite little star brought me a new pet. Good little slave, the very best of servants.”
Help, help, help, help, Will thought frantically. His body rebelled against his mind’s urges to run, glued to the spot as the evil, bent creature limped toward him, hands outstretched. Somehow, he knew that it would be all over once she touched him. His transformation would be complete in an instant, and she would devour his light in a mouthful.
The two unfamiliar wisps now hung behind the witch as she stalked closer, hanging like a pallid constellation in the darkness. Where was Notsure? Will looked, and then he stared, dumbfounded.
The light that had betrayed Will twice over wasn’t with its fellows at the witch’s back. It had stealthily risen twenty feet above the clearing grass, its glow dimming quickly with the effort of lifting the pickle jar.
‘Bombs away, mistress.’ With a faint, discordant clang, Notsure slipped free of the glass container, which plummeted silently down to bounce off the cowled head of the witch with a sharp THONK.
The burlap cloaked figure collapsed without a sound, the pickle jar rolling beside it in the grass. With a chorus of jangling bells, the pair of wisps behind the witch swooped down to hover close to the stupefied figure. The third light zoomed down to shine right in Will’s shocked face.
‘Make haste!’ Notsure rang, flashing with agitation. ‘We only have moments before she wakes! Quickly, go into the shack and find her wand. Break it, and her and her magic will be destroyed! None of her slaves can pass the entrance of her house, but you can while you’re still human. Go!’
With no time to ask questions or argue, Will sprang forward, feeling the numbness of his magic infection crawling up his neck toward his hair. Dodging the wisps clustered around the still unconscious witch, he threw the shack door open with his left hand.
Inside was a single, windowless room. Will looked around feverishly, spotting a cauldron, shelves full of bottles, and a moth-eaten bed. And lying on a low table in the center of the shack, illuminated by the square of light from the doorway was a long wooden wand.
Rushing forward, Will was jerked to a stop, half in, half out of the shack. The left side of his body could enter, but his right side, overtaken by the wispy light, was stopped at the door as if hitting a brick wall.
Will reached as far as he could with his left arm. His remaining hand’s fingers scrabbled on the dirt floor of the shack, a foot from the wand’s table. “Notsure!” He shouted desperately, turning his head. “I can’t reach it. I need your—”
The witch was rising to her feet, Notsure’s wisplight trapped in one of her claw-like hands. “Tricky little snacky,” hissed the evil voice as the black cowl pointed straight at Will.
“I think I’ll eat you, and then you,” she ground her gnarled fingers into Notsure’s light, making him ring with agony. “You’ve outlived your usefulness, getting all soft in your old age, my bright little slave.”
Will threw himself at the shack entrance, but the invisible wall didn’t budge. His insubstantial right side refused to cross the threshold. Behind him he heard burlap hiss over grass. The witch would be on him in seconds.
Kicking wildly at the doorframe, Will felt the ancient, rotted wood shudder, then buckle slightly. The witch screeched behind him. He threw his entire weight against the weakened frame, which collapsed in a cloud of splinters, half the shack roof caving in as its support vanished.
The invisible force stopping Will disappeared and he fell forward into the wreckage of the shack. Dust and bits of desiccated thatch swirled around him as he scrabbled through debris, eyes streaming, lungs choked. He wrenched a table from under a collapsed piece of roof just as a hand, impossibly strong for its size, seized him by the back of the neck and yanked him away from the half-ruined shack.
Bony fingers dug into his throat, and he cried out as his head was forcibly turned to stare into the depths of the witch’s cowl. Putrid air burned Will’s face as a mouth gaped pinkly out of the blackness, broken gray teeth bared to sink into his flesh.
Raising his remaining left hand to the level of the cowl, Will waggled the wand he had snatched from the shack’s table between his fore and middle fingers.
“Whoops,” he rasped through the witch’s crushing grip. A choked hiss burst from the witch’s mouth. Balling his fist, Will snapped the slender piece of wood in two.
The grip on his throat vanished and Will fell heavily to the ground. Putting his hands to his bruised neck, he realized his right arm was once again intact. Flexing all ten of his fingers, he looked up in time to see Notsure drop from the witch’s grasp, hitting the clearing grass less like a supernatural light and more like a discarded baseball.
As he watched, the witch’s protruding arms seemed to shrink inward. Then Will realized they were crumbling into nothingness. In seconds the burlap cloak caved in on itself and collapsed to the ground, empty but for a pitiful pile of desiccated dust.
Will gave a sob of relief, shaking all over as he crouched in the moonlit clearing.
The two wisps that had hovered behind the witch began to vibrate, then shine so brightly that Will had to cover his eyes, a piercing ringing in his ears. The sound and light cut out at the same time and he heard two thumps and a joint cry of discomfort.
Will uncovered his eyes to see a black boy and a pale, red-headed boy lying where the two lights had just been. He recognized them. Brian Thompson and Alvin Specter; the kids from his neighborhood who had gone missing.
Realizing what this must mean, he turned to look at the spot where Notsure’s wisplight had landed. In its place, sat a large, fat squirrel.
Dumbfounded, Will stared at the rodent, who blinked at him for a second, then scuttled away into the trees. “Notsure!” Will called after him, reaching out a pleading hand.
“Odds bodkins, lad, no need to shout,” said a deep voice from behind him. “I’m right here.”
Two large hands lifted Will to his feet, and he turned to look up at a tall man wearing a waistcoat and corduroy pants. He had bright green eyes and thick brown hair.
“N-Notsure?” Will said shakily. The man grinned and clapped the twelve-year-old on the back.
“Please, Will, call me Algernon. Algernon Livingston-Bailey. Thanks to you I remember everything. Pleased to meet you, officially that is.” Taking Will’s hand in both of his, Algernon shook it vigorously.
“How long have you been a wisp?” Will asked, staring at the outlandish clothes the former magical light was wearing.
Algernon considered, tapping his lip with one finger. “Bit hazy, don’t you know, but stap me if it isn’t two hundred years since my horse wandered off and I met old dusty britches here.” He made a face, nudging the witch’s empty cloak with one of his riding boots.
“But let’s talk more on the go, shall we? Must needs get these fellows back to their governesses, wouldn’t you say?” Algernon pointed to Brian and Alvin, both of whom were getting to their feet and looking around, clearly confused and frightened.
Will nodded, taking his first deep breath since this whole mess had started.
“All right, let’s go.”
THE END