Secrets of the Silent Witch - Volume 4 - Chapter Pr

PROLOGUE

The Girl Who Fled Into a World of Numbers

Before Monica Everett was known as the Silent Witch and the youngest ever to join the ranks of the Seven Sages, before her adoptive mother, Hilda Everett, took her in—back when she was still Monica Reyn, there was a period of time where she forgot how to speak.

She was ten years old when her biological father, Venedict Reyn, was executed for the crime of researching forbidden magic. The motherless Monica was taken in by her uncle on her father’s side, and she lived every day in fear of him.

Her uncle hated her father. “Because of his idiotic research, they treat me like the brother of a criminal,” he’d said. “Because of him, my life is in shambles.”

Each time her uncle said these things, Monica would desperately protest. Her father’s research was wonderful. It could have saved the lives of so many people. He had done nothing wrong.

But each time Monica opened her mouth, her uncle screamed at her in anger. “Be quiet! Silence! Shut your mouth!” He’d swing at her with his fists and refuse to feed her.

He’d chase her out of the house for stretches of time, and Monica would plod aimlessly through the streets. The townspeople she passed spoke derisively in whispered tones—all of them criticizing her father.

And as this gradually wore down her body and spirit, she eventually began escaping into a world of numbers.

Every time her uncle hit her, every time he locked her in the shed in the dead of winter, she would single-mindedly repeat to herself all the equations and magical formulae she’d seen in the books in her father’s study. Doing so dulled the pain in her body and the brutal chill of winter.

Those strings of numbers were her salvation. That perfect and beautiful world would never harm her. It was simply there, forever perfect and beautiful.

Sometime after she began retreating into the world of numbers, Monica’s mind started to distort. First, she lost the ability to recognize other people as people. She understood all their numbers—the size of their faces; the angle and distance between their eyes; the length, width, and height of their noses; the angles of their jaws; their height; the length of their arms; the length of their legs. But they no longer registered to her as people. In her eyes, everyone looked like a bunch of numbers.

Next, she lost the ability to recognize the words other people were saying. She could tell the bunches of numbers in front of her were making sounds, but their meanings escaped her. And since she didn’t know what they were telling her, she would assemble the numbers of their sounds into equations, solve them, and give the results.

“All you ever say is numbers, numbers, numbers! You’re a freak!”

Even her uncle’s insults were indecipherable. Monica couldn’t understand what the words meant anymore.

The only thing around her was that beautiful world of numbers.

After a year in her uncle’s care, Monica had broken so completely that numbers were the only thing she could perceive and recognize.

“The world is filled with numbers.”

This was a pet phrase of her father’s, and Monica clung to those words as she turned away from reality, fleeing into that beautiful numerical world that would never hurt her. Her body shut everything down save for the bare minimum needed to keep her alive, and her already skinny frame thinned until she was just a stick.

Every day her body withered, and she drew closer to death. But what did it matter?

If I learn lots of equations and magical formulae, my father will praise me.

Calling to mind her father’s gentle smile as he patted her on the head, Monica slumped against the outer wall of the house—she’d been kicked out again—and grinned vacantly. “Five hundred fourteen thousand two hundred twenty-nine, eight hundred thirty-two thousand forty…”

“One million three hundred forty-six thousand two hundred sixty-nine,” came a voice, providing the continuation to Monica’s sequence.

Slowly, Monica lifted her head. A bunch of numbers in front of her had just made a sound.

“The sequence from ‘Old Man Sam’s Pigs’…” said the voice. “Professor Reyn must have taught that to you, Monica.”

After a moment, she repeated, “Mon-ic-a?”

How long had it been since someone called her by her name? All her uncle ever called her was “trash” or “blockhead” or the like.

It had been a long time since she heard her father’s name, too. After all, everyone treated it like a curse they dared not speak aloud.

Her name—and her father’s—dragged Monica out of her unfocused numerical wanderings and back into the real world.

“My name…,” she said. “The name Daddy gave me—Monica Reyn…”

She hadn’t spoken any words besides numbers in a long time. She noticed how parched her throat was. Gradually, she regained her sense of hunger, of cold, and of physical pain.

Despite these sensations, her eyes opened wide as she looked up at the bunch of numbers—no, the human being standing in front of her. It was a woman, likely in her mid-thirties, with neatly combed brown hair and sharp glasses. And she knew Monica’s name. This was Hilda Everett, a researcher who had once served as her father’s assistant.

The woman got down on her knees in front of Monica, then removed the stole looped around her neck and put it on the girl. At last, she hugged her, saying, “The professor would be so sad if he saw you like this.”

“Daddy… Daddy… Daddy…”

The woman didn’t punch or kick her, even when Monica talked about her father. She simply held her in a tender embrace and mourned his loss.

Tears began to form in Monica’s dry eyes. “It’s…not Daddy’s f-fault…,” she stammered. “He’s… Daddy isn’t…”

“Professor Reyn was a wonderful person.”

“Daddy, they burned him, they burned it all…,” she managed before sobbing convulsively.

Hilda’s arms tightened around her. The act was enough to tell Monica that the woman was sad about her father dying.

Wrapped up in her embrace, Monica cried. “Daddy, Daddy,” she wailed between sobs and sniffles—the loudest sounds she’d produced in a long time.

She cried and cried and cried, just like a little child.

Hilda was an exceptional member of the Royal Magic Research Institute, and that made her a very busy woman. But she still adopted Monica and gave her the best care she could. She would cook for her, bake with her—and when she ended up setting the kitchen on fire, she rushed to hire a housemaid. Hilda was disastrously unsuited for housework, as it turned out.

The housemaid’s presence improved both their lives dramatically, and within a few months, Monica had mostly regained her speech.

While Hilda worked at the Institute, Monica passed her time reading books on magecraft in Hilda’s room. Both Hilda and Matilda, the housemaid, were kind people, but Monica was still scared to go outside and be around others. So instead, she would read Hilda’s books and decipher the magical formulae within, thinking of ways to break them down and put them back together.

One day, when Hilda returned from the Institute, she saw the girl silently writing a magical formula on a sheet of paper, and her eyes went wide.

“That formula…,” she said. “It’s an ultra-small flame spell with a fixed coordinate axis, right?”

Monica’s head bobbed up and down.

Hilda looked confused. “I don’t recall having a book with that formula…”

“It’s, u-um,” stammered Monica, “based on the formula you used while, uh, we were baking cookies.” Her words were still broken up and muddled. “I was, errr, um, just thinking about, well, what kind of formula would be optimal. For, um, baking the cookies without, well, burning them. And it was fun, so…”

Monica went on to explain, in her own faltering, awkward words, this magic formula she’d come up with. Baking a delicious cookie wasn’t just about putting it under a flame. You had to heat it all the way through from all sides. To that end, she’d been thinking about how to construct a heat-resistant barrier. If you confined a flame spell within such a barrier, the heat wouldn’t escape. Place the cookie inside, and in a few minutes you’d have a perfectly baked treat.

Hilda was both a member of the Royal Magic Research Institute and a first-rate mage in her own right. Monica was frankly embarrassed to show a magical formula she’d come up with to such a talented person. Especially since this formula had been born as a result of the woman’s massive failure to bake cookies. Monica trembled, afraid that her adoptive mother would be angry with her.

But Hilda wrapped her up in a hug instead. “Monica, that’s amazing!” she exclaimed in excitement. “I can’t believe you learned compound magecraft on your own and even used it to put together your own formula. Not everyone can do that, you know!”

Behind her, the veteran maid, Matilda, took on a more critical expression. “Lady Hilda,” she said, “I can’t help but wonder what on earth led you to try and use magecraft to bake.”

“I made the most rational choice at the time,” insisted Hilda.

“Scorching the kitchen walls was rational?” asked the maid.

Hilda released Monica from her embrace and pushed up her glasses. Then, with the air of a scientist setting about a difficult experiment, she said, “The most rational choice doesn’t always lead to the best results.”

“Please use the oven next time,” said the housemaid.

Hilda ignored the maid’s very reasonable solution and looked straight at Monica. Her eyes were filled with kindness and compassion, but they also seemed distant. She was probably seeing Venedict in his daughter.

“You really do have talent, Monica,” she said, taking the girl’s hand. “If I teach you the fundamentals of magecraft, will you take the entrance exam for Minerva’s?”

Minerva’s was the Kingdom of Ridill’s highest learning institution for magecraft. But to be perfectly honest, Monica didn’t want to go to school. She was afraid of being around other people. Especially a school like Minerva’s, which used a dormitory system for all its students. And she’d be separated from Hilda.

But she understood she couldn’t simply stay holed up in Hilda’s house like this. If she graduated from Minerva’s and gained her mage certification, she wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job. And she could repay Hilda for all she’d done, too.

“Minerva’s… Okay, I’ll take the emphrance examph,” she murmured with a nod, fidgeting.

Hilda nodded firmly. “I’m absolutely certain you’ll become an amazing mage!” she said. “Let’s put it to the test right away! We’ll bake some cookies using the compound spell you came up with!”

“Please use the oven, my lady!” urged the housemaid.

Hilda brushed her off, determined to test out Monica’s idea of using a small flame spell and heat-resistant barrier.

The experiment was a brilliant success. The cookies heated all the way through, turning into wonderful little lumps of charcoal.