Carrot and Stick: How to Practice Responsible Witchcraft in a High-Crime Neighborhood - Chapter IV

Chapter IV

I alllllmost named this Chapter IIII just to annoy people. Hehe!

***

Walking was painful, but Silas followed Carrot out of her home anyway, bottling in any complaints he might have. The muscle ache was nothing compared to the magical ache, and that was... a lot as well. 

They exited into a tight little corridor, with faded, well-worn carpets, and a single dusty window overlooking a street below. They were on the third, maybe fourth floor up? It was hard to tell, but Silas instantly had the impression that this was some cheap tenement of some sort. 

“This way!” Carrot said. “The elevator’s out, do you mind walking down the stairs?”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “How did you bring me here? Did you have help?”

“Hmm? No, I princess-carried you,” Carrot said.

He eyed her. Carrot was relatively average in height, probably. He wasn’t well-versed in the average heights of young women, but she didn’t strike him as particularly tall. At best she came up to his chin, and he was kind of tall. Her sweater and coat hid any musculature she might have, but he was quite certain that she wasn’t hiding a body-builder physique under there. 

“How?” he asked.

Carrot glanced back and grinned, unabashedly proud. “Magic!” 

He supposed that wasn’t entirely implausible. There were plenty of spells that could make one stronger, temporarily. The Ordo had a few that they insisted that all wizards doing fieldwork learn, though at the end of the day, magic itself was the determining factor in most everything, not physical strength.

“Okay! That was one!” 

“Pardon?”

“I’ll not count that as a second, because I’m generous and nice,” Carrot said with a firm nod. “But you have two more questions before it’s my turn!”

“Oh, right, that,” he replied. Fair was fair, he supposed. Which left him with the problem of finding what question to ask. “So, where did you learn magic?” 

“Oh, here and there,” Carrot said with a vague wiggle of her hand. “Mostly I picked up some spells from anime and books!”

What the hell was an anime? Books he could understand, however. There was a definite and noted trend with mages being rather bookish and being fond of their literature and research materials. 

“Hi Misses Smith,” Carrot said as they came upon an older lady walking down the corridor. She was pushing along a small steel cart with a few bags of groceries squeezed within. “Do you need help with that?”

“Oh no, I’ve managed to bring it all the way up, I can get it the last way to my home,” the elderly woman said. She glanced at Silas, but he almost seemed like she couldn’t quite focus on him entirely. His hat was still working, then, even when he was nearly drained of energy.

“Oh, shoot. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you up here. Next time, send my mom a text when you arrive, I’ll head down and carry your things up!” 

“You’re a dear,” Misses Smith replied.

“No you!” Carrot replied with a giggle before they were past. She turned towards him, still smiling. “Misses Smith used to work at the bank, but she retired two years ago. She makes gingerbread cookies every winter that are soooo good.”

“That’s... nice,” he said. “I believe I have a final question, and to be clear, that wasn’t one.”

“Haha! Yeah, you do!”

“In that case, do you have any contact with the magical society?”

“Nope!” Carrot said. “You’re the first real wizard I’ve met. Hey, since I’m a girl, am I a wizard too?”

“Wizard is a rank, it’s not tied to gender,” he replied. “That was an interesting question.”

Carrot smacked herself in the forehead. “Nooo! I’ve goofed!”

He chuckled. “To add to it, so that you don’t feel too slighted, Wizard, like Doctor, for example, is a protected term. Anyone who can use magic is a magic-user, or a mage, but a Wizard is educated. You need to pass an accreditation first. It is a little generic, however, and those new to the magical society at large tend to use the rank incorrectly.”

“Oh, neat!” 

He nodded. His turn again. But before he could ask any questions, they met with someone else living on the same floor as Carrot, and older gentleman with a cane who asked Carrot if she could fetch his mail for him from downstairs. He gave her a dollar bill for the effort.

“Sorry, I’ll be right back!” she said before darting away. 

Silas followed. He was a little annoyed to see her run off, but then he had to navigate the stairs and was happy that no one was around to see him struggle with each step.

He was only down one floor when Carrot passed him on the way up, a few letters in hand. It wasn’t long before she rejoined him. “So, your questions? You have three left!”

“Right,” he said. “So, first, what can you tell me about the daemons in this city?”

“Daemons?”

“The... monsters, like that racoon yesterday,” he clarified.

Carrot perked up. “Oh! Well, they’re usually pretty big and scary, but not usually all that smart. They seem pretty mean, though. So I give them a good bonking or use some magic on them, and then they’re not a problem any more.”

“Second question, are there any other wild mages--that is to say, people like you, who aren’t wizards--around the city?”

“No? I don’t think so. There’s a witch in town, but she mostly just tries to sell me herbal remedies, and I never felt any magic around her, not like I can feel around you and the mons--daemons.”

“I see. So, you’re it. That’s fair enough. It more or less matches the expected magical population of an area. To be clear, your mother...”

“Not a wizard or a witch or a wild mage,” Carrot confirmed with a shake of her head.

“Okay. In that case, as a final question, do you know about the masquerade?”

“Are you talking about a ball where everyone wears cool masks, or are you talking about how no one seems to know that magic is real?”

“The latter,” he said.

Carrot shook her head. “Nope! No one’s told me anything about that, but I kinda figured. You know, since there’s nothing about magic around. I’ve kept it hush-hush, just in case.”

“That’s wise of you,” he replied. “Magioc is kept concealed. Your turn for a question.”

They’d reached the ground floor, and he turned, stepping up to pretend to retie his shoe. In reality, he was entirely out of breath and his heart was beating hummingbird fast in his chest. He needed a moment to cool down. 

“Oh, I have so many... I want to ask why magic is supposed to be hidden but I have a more important question. What’s your favourite flavour of ice cream?”

He looked up from his shoelaces. “My favourite kind of ice cream?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Vanilla.”

“Wow!”

She didn’t even sound sarcastic there, and he wasn’t sure what to think of that, or of her question. “First question,” he continued. “I just want to confirm, but has the number of deamons risen in the last few months?”

“Yeah, by a lot, I think? Like I said, there have been more of them.”

“I see. That’s good to know, and it matches what we know as well.” At her questioning look, he felt like he ought to explain more. It wasn’t part of the deal, exactly, but he was being surprisingly helpful and kind, and three-to-one was an unfair exchange on his part. “The Ordo Logistica, one of the organizations that are part of the magical society, has placed devices in key locations to monitor magical energies. There are too few wizards and too many daemons, so that allows us to be where we’re needed most.”

“Cool!” Carrot said.

He nodded along. “Second question,” he said as they slipped outside. He tugged his coat closed, then watched as Carrot gave the dollar she’d received from the old man to a middle-aged woman huddling on the side of the road. He cleared his throat when she returned. “Second question, how have you been discovering these daemons?”

He glanced around. They were on a rather short side-street off of one of the main thoroughfares that he vaguely recognized. They started walking the opposite way.

“That’s easy! They feel icky.”

“Icky? Can you elaborate? That would count as a third question.”

“Sure! So, uh...” Carrot blinked, then tapped her chin. “Huh... well, you know how magic feels all wishy-washy, but kind of warm? When there’s a lot of it, it feels like a blanket is over the whole world.”

“Sure,” he replied. He wondered if she’d been in an area with particularly high magical energy. There were places like that where one could literally feel the magic in the air. It was suffocating, but he supposed that it could be described that way, more or less. 

“Anyway, sometimes there’s kind of a... stink to the magic? And it looks all weird? Hazy, I guess? Like, um, windows in the winter, when they’re rainbowy?”

He wasn’t sure he followed exactly, but he nodded all the same. “You must be very sensitive,” he said.

“I cry a lot, yeah,” Carrot said, sounding a little wistful. “My turn?”

“I think I have one more,” he said. This was one that was just plain unkind to ask, but he had to know. 

Everything he saw so far painted Miss Cuddlesworth as nice. Too much so. No one was this kind. It wasn’t impossible, of course, there were kind people out there, he was certain, but this felt exaggerated. So he was going to ask something a little unkind, and something that most wizards would find almost offensive to be asked. 

“Where is your spellbook?”

“My spellbook? Oh, I guess I just write down my cool spell ideas in normal notebooks, or in the margins when I’m in school. Should I get one? Like a big, big book. What are those called? A tome? Yeah, a tome! I should get a tome... only that’s not very magical-girl-ish, is it? I just memorize my spells, mostly.”

“What’s a magical girl?” he asked. Ah, so she had hidden her book somewhere. Fair enough, he supposed. Maybe she wasn’t entirely innocent. Though he did wonder how she was learning spells at all to begin with. It would be interesting to see a wild mage casting something, if only to see someone who had come up with a spell from first principles. 

She gasped. “Oh my gosh how do you now know-- nope! That’s not my question!”

“Go on,” he said.

She eyed him for a moment, then shrugged. “So, you’re here for a mission, right? And now that mission’s kind of complicated because you’re a bit hurt. So... uh, I guess this is less of a question and more of an offer, but if you want, I can help you! I’m pretty strong, you know! I mean, probably. I don’t have much to compare to except for anime, but I think I’m pretty strong! I bet I could help you beat up all sorts of daemons.”

She flexed.

He stared, then actually considered it.

***

She knew she had him when he didn’t say ‘no’ right away. He was thinking about it, and if he was thinking about it, then there was a possibility that he’d say yes. Still, that might not be enough. She had to sweeten the deal. “I’m guessing that your job is to take care of the daemons, yeah?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

“Cool! So, I can do that, but you can come with. It’ll only be a few days. Then you’ll feel plenty better, and I’ll just be there for support. Really, you’ll only be taking me on as an apprentice for like, three or four days right?”

“I am not taking you on as an apprentice,” he said.

She pouted, but only for a second. “Student?”

“Nor that,” he said.

“Nice girl that just wants to learn one or two itty-bitty spells pretty please?”

He eyed her, then sighed. “I... do want to accomplish my mission, and I also doubt that we’ll run into any daemons in the next couple of days, so I suppose I could use the assistance. It would at least mean that I’m not reporting a failure so soon after arriving," he said, though that last was nearly a murmur. 

Carrot skipped ahead. Hehe! She had him! 

Now she’d pick up a few new cool spells, and she’d have something else to work on and improve to become an even better, stronger, Dark Magical Girl!

***