Snippet 4: Witchlight, Wilfreda Pomfrit #0
It was a day like any other day.
Wilfreda Pomfrit D'Umfraville - Freddy for short - was in a bad frame of mind. It could have been the fault of her ridiculous name, handed down by her ubiquitous mother at her unfortunate birth, or it could have been the heat and dust.
No-one was stupid enough to ask.
In fact Urg the Ogre was quietly polishing glasses at the other end of the bar, just about as far as he could get from her critical stare and idly twirling battle-axe.
It had been ages since she had had a chance to use it. Business had been slow – nobody needed their farm goods protected on the way to market, no-one had a random troll pestering their herd. She was 19, and it was high time she got on with earning her own bread and making a name for herself.
She dreamily pictured William the Witchfinder – now there was a sell-sword of note. Slaying maidens and rescuing dragons at the tender age of 17, he was. She had a poster of him tacked up on her bedroom wall.
Every day she ran up and down the hill carrying buckets of water (and delivering them while she was at it), practiced her sword skills with the rusty blade she had found buried in an earthen mound, and hacked the stuffing out of the backyard scarecrow.
Sometimes the local villagers paid her a copper to watch over their crops, or asked her to escort someone to a neighboring village.
But it wasn’t enough.
She had been languishing in this stupid village for years – all to please her eccentric father. A member of the Low Order of the Druidic Order of Small Shrubs, which admittedly had a place in the world, he kept going on about some prophecy and dangers ‘out there’. If she prodded him too hard for more details, he had a minor apoplectic fit and had to lie down with The Booke of Divers Shrub Dyseases, and a hot toddy, to calm him.
He kept finding excuses to keep her home. First the crops needed watching, then they needed harvesting, then the silly sheep went a little mad and she had to help talk some sense into it because she was the only one who could. As if talking to sheep was anything special.
She could never be a real fighter in a place like this, there was simply nothing to fight.
She sighed in disgust.
A neverending list of boring farm chores, thinly disguised as important and heroic feats. But she saw right through that, oh yes, she did.
And now she was way past a reasonable age to make her fortune. How could she make the Ongrameki Book of Records now? She was already a washed-up has been.
"Freddy, do you have to wave that thing about in here?" an exasperated Linux spluttered as he wafted by in spotless white apron, on his way to check on the progress in his kitchens.
The Spotted Duck Bar and Grille was THE place to be in town. Well, the only place to be, in a village which sported 3 mules and one lame cow. And some sheep – who don’t really count. That didn't stop Linux, who had travelled in his youth and had foreign pretentions and strange notions about fashion, decorating, and something he called "Howt Kwisine".
The Spotted Duck employed the only able-bodied woman in the village, if you didn't count Wilfreda, who was under 70 years of age and still had most of her teeth.
Gerda, the woman in question, was busy writing out the day's specials in charcoal on a large board. "Lam Stoo - 2 coppas; Lam soop and bredd - 1 coppa; Lam Keebab ynne a wyld tomato jus - 3 coppas"
Spelling didn't really matter, as not many of the locals could read anyway.
Flies buzzed dolefully around the room. Wilfreda felt her agitation growing. Urg quailed further down behind the bar.
Linux emerged from the kitchens to the sound of a dull thunk, just in time to see Wilfreda's axe quivering in the expensive imp-polished woodwork of his doorframe, and her back as she strode out the door.
"You'll pay for that, Missy," he yelled after her.
If she didn't do something constructive soon, Wilfreda thought, she might explode with irritation, boredom and sheer bloody-mindedness, and end up locked away like poor Uncle Humphrey d'Umfraville - who had had a real problem with undiagnosed berserker rages.
“Rotten, dead-end life,” she grumped all the way up the hill towards the shack she called home.
A small brown bird fluttered down to her shoulder and sat sweetly, nuzzling her cheek as she strode along.
It could have been an enchanting woodland scene.
“Got any whishky,” the bird grated out in a slightly slurred voice too deep for its small, feathery frame.
“Great,” Freddy muttered, “my special drunken woodland friend.
And the answer is NO Snack! Last time I gave in to your drunken demands you nearly ended up a cat snack – again!”
The bird stopped nuzzling and pecked her hard on the earlobe.
“Why, you dirty, rotten little blighter,” she shrieked, “I’m gonna turn you into chicken pie for my dinner!”
She swung at the bird with a fist, missed and hit herself in the jaw. Roaring in pain, she took several more jabs at the fluttering felon, before she gave up.
Snack chittered with laughter and flew off to harass some other poor soul.
Luckily, not many could hear him, and just thought, “How sweet,” until he got into their mead bucket and took a bath.
“You need a new hobby,” she shouted at his feathery form as it fluttered away.
“We all do,” she sighed.
Just then a piece of paper tacked onto the village oak caught her eye.
“Helppe Wantyd,” it proclaimed loudly. “10 gold pieces to any able-bodied fighters. Must have ownne sword.”
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