Himal, Silaro and Quan, the sons of the baker, the carpenter and the hunter of the Ingara village respectively were known to be routine pranksters, a source of thorough annoyance for some and warm endearment for others.
The one truth that was undeniable however was their unrelenting curiosity.
While the results of their curious experiments made them competent and stand out from the rest, their actual process of satiating that curiosity often landed them in more trouble than it was worth.
So it was that on a day when spring flowers were in full bloom, a sheep ran in carrying Silaro on its back with nothing remaining of his limbs but bleeding stumps.
The village elder was startled at the sight as the sheep ran directly towards the witch’s cabin, bleating loudly the entire time.
A crowd of villagers along with the Village elder gathered near the witch’s door, unsure what to do. Just as the village elder started to try and help Silaro, the door opened, revealing a middle aged woman in dark worn robes, with dark hair, an exhausted look on her face and holding a cup of some steaming brew in her hand, a hand that seemed to be made of greyish wood.
She looked down at the sheep and the unconscious boy on its back.
The witch sighed, downed her entire cup in one go and turned around
‘Bring them in’ she said with a tired voice
‘The sheep too?’ the village elder asked, wearing his confusion clearly on his face,
‘Yes, the sheep too…Sigh’
The villagers watched as the sheep and the boy were led to the centre of the cabin to stand in the middle of a silver circle inlaid on the stone floor.
First the witch lifted Silaro off the Sheep’s back by simply gesturing with her wooden arm that moved just as easily as a regular arm of flesh and blood, and gently floated him down to the ground.
After a sudden flare of red light from Silaro’s body and the faint smell of incense, all the wounds on his body sealed completely, the heavy bleeding from his severed limbs stopped and new skin grew to cover what remained.
Turning now to face the sheep, the witch reached down and touched its head, humming softly.
The villagers watched with morbid fascination as the body of the sheep seemed to dissolve into a cloud of mist and fade away, revealing in its place Himal, one of the three boys, sitting on the floor, clothless. The witch grabbed some grey robes from a chair and threw them to Himal who covered himself quickly. But there was something that was off… Himal’s iris and pupil still resembled that of a sheep and his head was adorned by horns curling back and down to either sides of his face.
The village elder then histantly spoke up ‘ Uhm, he is still a little bit…sheepish’
‘That’s permanent I’m afraid’ the witch walked to one of her cabinets and looked through her bottles,
‘There have been some deep additions to his spirit that can’t simply be removed without causing spirit damage’
she then looked pointedly at Himal and Silaro ‘I’m guessing you decided to raid my cabinet for your “experiments”?’
Himal didn’t meet her eyes and Silaro was only now coming back to consciousness, though she was pretty sure he had heard her question.
One of the villagers, a farmer, started walking forward ‘This is all your fault, Witch!! You shouldn’t have left your vile potions lying aro..!’ With surprising speed for his age the Village elder clocked the farmer on his temple with his elbow and knocked him out.
‘Please don’t mind him’ the elder said, holding the farmer up by his shoulder so that he didn’t fall to the ground,
‘…I wasn’t going to’ the witch responded simply.
Walking to the corner of her cabin, she reached into what looked like stacks of firewood and returned with four large grey branches and laid them next to Silaro.
Now more lucid Silaro looked at her with confusion, he still couldn’t sit up as his missing limbs made that a lot more difficult.
‘I can’t grow back your limbs kid’ Silaro’s eyes widened, ‘whatever happened to you left some pretty deep scars in your spirit, deeper than I am capable of repairing’
Despair was clearly visible in his eyes as he looked down at the stumps that remained, he was probably imagining what this life was going to be like, not being able to move without assistance, constantly depending on others to live even a semblance of a normal life.
Before he could spiral down too much, the witch continued ‘but… I can give you the next best thing OR…’ She showed him her grey wooden arm, moving with fluidity and occasionally glowing from gaps in the outer bark ‘ …Something even better’.
Shooing out the villagers that were still lingering by the door, she got down to shaping the branches slightly to resemble arms first, holding individual branches in her hands and focusing on them, the branches seemed to soften, bend and twist until they resembled an arm, well a rather simple arm one might make for a doll anyway.
Touching each of them to the ends of his stumps, a small spark passed between them and then one by one the wood slowly merged with his flesh.
The wood seemed to spasm ever so slightly and then the rough fingers and tows at the ends twitched.
Not waiting, the witch placed her palm on Silaro’s chest and a light flared from within him like before, but this time the shaped branches sticking out of his limbs twisted and flexed violently until they reshaped and settled to a form fully proportional to his body.
Looking down at his now grey wooden limbs, Silaro moved them with wonder, no doubt realising that they felt perfectly natural for him.
‘These should grow with you as you grow older and gain strength over time with the rest of your body’ the witch turned around and pulled on a bag from one of the tables ‘and they should do a fine job of reminding you of your own idiocy’.
The elder stepped in then ‘…Where is Quan?’
The witch looked at them, ‘Ah yes, aren’t there usually three of you?’
Silaro and Himal looked at each other, and hesitantly looked at the elder and the witch,
‘He turned into a monster… he drank a mix of the potions, he couldn’t recognise us, he attacked me and… I don’t remember anything after that’ Silaro looked to Himal, who spoke up ‘ He ran away after Silaro lost consciousness. He didn’t attack me, maybe because I was already a sheep…’
The witch didn’t look the least bit surprised by any of it, ‘Where did he run off to and what did he look like’ she was already moving towards the door as she addressed them.
‘Uhm , he was still changing when he ran and… he ran into the Umber woods’
Leaving the two to rest, a search party organised by the village elder left for the Umber woods. The witch and Quan’s own father, who was a trapper and hunter by profession, led the search.
The initial tracks were rather easy to follow as the uncontrolled transformation that Quan had gone through left a very clear trail of carnage through the forest with several trees clawed into and broken.
But even after several hours of searching they couldn’t find a trace of Quan. The tracks had run cold a couple of hours ago and it was getting dark.
Only as they began to debate whether to set camp or head back, was when they realised 2 among the search party were missing.
Hearing a scream, they all turned to see a massive form jumping from tree to tree away from them.
Running after it they saw its form more clearly, with it being around 7 ft tall with three pairs of arms joined at the shoulders and covered in light grey fur. It had carried one of their party members, and was wrapping her in a cocoon as she screamed.
They could see one of their men already in a cocoon hanging from one of the higher branches, they hoped that he was just unconscious.
The witch calmly walked towards the creature until she was right beneath it.
It turned to reveal three pairs of yellow eyes and two large mandibles to go along with its jaws now lined with sharp teeth.
Letting out a deep hiss, It lunged at the witch, grabbing her arm but all of a sudden it was slammed into the ground by what looked like two massive bat wings extending from the witch’s back.
The monster hissed again, trying to get up but got almost effortlessly swatted into the ground once again, causing a small crater.
The witch let out a tired sigh and touched the monster’s shoulder.
A flash of light filled the forest and once it died down an unconscious kid lay on the floor, with most of his clothes torn. His mandibles were gone and his eyes were back to normal, but he still had two additional pairs of arms sticking out from behind his shoulders.
Once back in their village, the two from the search party who were thankfully still alive, if a bit mentally scarred, were properly healed by the witch.
The three kids on the other hand sat through an hour long session of scolding not just from their own parents, but from the rest of the search party and the village elder as well.
As it turned out, the three had experimented with some alchemy and potion making of their own and had managed to turn Himal into a sheep, but couldn’t manage to turn him back.
So they raided the witch’s cabinet to find a way to turn him back on their own, only for one thing to lead to another and Quan turned into a monster, Silaro lost his limbs and Himal, surprising nobody remained a sheep.
Most of the adults that were now in the witch’s house looking at the three kids were quite reasonably extremely angry and disappointed, except for one.
The witch herself seemed to be smiling with a gleam in her eyes.
The three were looking down, they looked defeated, desperate but the witch could still see a spark of curiosity and defiance still remain within them, that spark had to be nurtured and cultivated in the right direction or it could go far worse for them in the future.
She stepped forwards and indicated the three of them
‘Due to your own idiocy, the three of you are going to be treated as monsters for the rest of your life because of the way you look’
The three looked at her
‘…Given that, why not just embrace it?’ the witch raised her wooden arm
‘Make it work for you, instead of against you?’
The kids watched as the witch’s wooden hand changed shape to resemble talons and the large black bat wings emerged from her back once again.
‘What do you three think about becoming a witch’s apprentice, hm?’
Just as she had expected, the spark within them though momentarily subdued reignited, flaring brighter than ever.
The other adults in the room looked surprised, some dismayed as they looked between the smiling witch and the three crazy kids whose own wide smiles were identical to their new master.
The village elder just shook his head in resignation, accepting their fate as he left the witch’s cottage.
There were going to be four monsters in the village now…
Maybe it was time he retired after all.
