The Wishing Well Pt. 2

The Wishing Well

Part 2 of 4

Part One :: Part Two :: Part Three :: Part Four

The second part to my take on The Wishing Well. Gwen begins to suspect that not all is well in her sheltered world. This was written prior to feedback on the first part. Improvements will begin starting with part 4.

She turned her head away and whispered, "Let's go home little brother; I'm sure there's lunch waiting for us."

Night fell with clouds nearly obscuring the horizon where a few hours earlier the sky had been clear. The final rays of the sun caught them and set them aflame. Gwen watched the sky as worry slithered through her heart. Lightning, she knew, could start forest fires. Later, as she fell asleep, she had terrible dreams of being trapped in the woods by a dancing walls of flame. She saw wicked faces in the flames, taunting her and crackling with laughter.

She woke late in the day to the sound of a fire burning in the hearth and a furious storm outside the safety of her home. The windows were shuttered closed and held that way by nails amongst other things. Worried, she rushed to the door and pulled it open looking towards the woods but the rain formed a thick curtain and she could see no further than a foot or two in any direction.

The rain had turned even the hard packed ground of the village into sticky, grasping mud. Gwen had to struggle to pull the wooden soles of her shoes free from it with every step she took as she made her way to the commotion at the village square, the only place in the village that was paved with large uneven slabs of stone. As she drew nearer, she could make out the difference between the rough loud voices but not yet what the argument was about.

"I'm telling you this land is cursed!" yelled a tall broad man with a scraggily beard.

The man he was directing his statement at gave an uncivilized growl as the skin on his faced flushed a deeper shade of red. His lip curled and his teeth bared as his voice strained," It's coincidence you daft fool!"

"Too much coincidence is no coincidence at all," a ill kept older boy with rough-cut blonde hair retorted from a the side of the first man, " a storm like this from clear skies as soon as you mention setting the whole wood on fire?"

The second man was about to reply but the boy didn't give him room," Then, a mudslide chooses to drag away our camp when there were much easier paths for it to follow?"

Many of the men in the group murmured their agreement and the groups of strangers that had gathered to watch, hoping for a fight, looked uneasy at the tale that was unfolding before them. They too whispered among themselves and cast wary looks towards the wood and each other. Although none would say it, they were all wondering if there was not a magic user amongst them seeking to scare them away to keep the treasure to themselves.

"Well, me and my boy are done here!" the broad man spoke in a quavering voice, " no treasure's worth our hides!"

He grabbed the boy by his upper arm and led him away, presumably to wherever they had come. A few other strangers, troubled by the possibility of facing a magic-user, decided the risk was too great and followed the man's example. However, most of the strangers remained and more were still arriving.

Earlier that morning, Gwen had managed to convince herself that she had imagined what she saw in the well. Upon hearing the conversation, the fear had returned ten-fold to her heart and she began to feel a little faint.

"Coincidence," her mind had tried to whisper only to be dismissed by the boy's words.

She swayed on her feet and barely managed to keep her balance as the world tried to spin with her as the axis. She brought a hand up to her face and closed her eyes in order to keep her feet beneath her. Moments later, the illness passed and she made haste back home to lay down. The mud was a lot less troublesome on the way back than it had been earlier.

Soon, the sun baked the mud dry and Gwen found herself once again looking down into the dark water of the well. She had not wanted to return but the well had started to become rather peculiar as to who could draw water from it since the storm and no one else in her family had managed that day.

As she pulled up her last bucket from the well and poured it into the larger ones she'd brought with her, one of the strangers approached the well with a bucket of his own. When she was a few yards away, the voice of the scruffy man stopped her. He was cursing the well and saying something about a never ending rope. She turned back, knowing that the well would let her draw water, for she could not allow a man to die of thirst when she had the power to stop it. Part of her disagreed and glared darkly from its sorry little corner of her mind.

Without a word, she took the rope from the man. He looked at her suspiciously through small eyes but took the water thanklessly when she drew it up. Gwen did not notice the black pebble that fell into the man's bucket with the water and the man did not know enough about the well to be wary. They both went on their way silently and without any further looks.

When she was sure that the man had left the clearing, Gwen looked back. The well looked as it always had but within its stones magic hummed as it had refused to for the long-ago mage. Although she did not know the cause, the sight of it now made her feel ill at ease. When she was moving again, the feeling rushed her steps and in little time she found herself outside her home.