The Frog Collector

Chapter Eleven Part 3/3

The group arrived at Mirian's house. There was no sign of her on the way, no movement inside the house that had all the windows and doors open. The garden at the back of the house was destroyed. The soldiers surrounded the place and prepared to enter.

They were planning to break in together to surprise Mirian when someone shouted, "The witch is over there!" and pointed behind the house in the distance where the witch was kneeling and digging in the dirt in despair. Everyone was apprehensive.

"Stay five soldiers to accompany the boys. The rest of us will go there, we need many to face the witch if we have to", ordered the king.

The king, Lilian and the soldiers went towards Mirian while the five soldiers, Emily, Agatha and James entered the house.

When they reached the living room, they saw the furniture overturned and destroyed. Emily made mention of running into the bedroom, but one of the soldiers told her:

"Wait! We'll go ahead in case there is any danger or trap".

They entered the room, investigated it, and since they saw no one, they allowed the group to enter. Two guards stayed at the entrance of the room while the others went to check the other rooms of the residence so that there would not be any unpleasant surprises.

Emily entered and went to the closet at the back of the room. The princess and the prince admired the size of the room.

"A room this size for one person?", asked the prince.

"There were more people here in the old days... I'll tell you more details later", replied the princess as they went to meet Emily.

The girl felt a chill as she gazed at the broken closet, checked it hard, and said:

"It seems that she didn't find it".

Then she took out a black flower she was carrying and ate the center of it.

"Where do you...", began to ask the princess.

"This? I picked it when you were leaving for Mom's house", said Emily smiling and started to look around.

Then Agatha remembered seeing the girl pick up something on the floor as she was leaving towards Lilian's house. Emily ran her hand over the piece of furniture, said words that the couple didn't understand and that made James very curious, and then took out an old box from the bottom of it. Emily was overjoyed and showed the many flowers inside the box to her friends. They looked at them for a while.

"Finally... Now you can be free", said the princess to Emily, who was teary-eyed.

The soldiers who were checking the house came back to the bedroom door, saw that they had made it, and were cheerful.

"Let's go quickly", one of them said.

The group headed toward the door with James at the front. But they stopped, startled, when they saw part of one of the walls of the room move. Little by little, eyes and mouths appeared, and then they understood that it was Mirian camouflaged there.

James shouted to the soldiers at the door who had not yet noticed the witch and threw his sword at Mirian, but the old woman dodged the sword which jammed into the wall, turned towards the direction of the soldiers, shouted a mysterious phrase and several bolts of lightning came out of her hand killing all five men. She turned to the James, Agatha and Emily who were shocked and said:

"So that's where it was all this time".

End of chapter eleven. Three to go.