Welcome, you’ve stumbled into part 8 of The Tori Story Series. If this is your first visit to this realm you might want to catch up.

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“I’m going to make The Witch reverse her spell.” Hunter told the gaggle of boys gathered around him. Bold words that sounded so good bouncing around the inner chambers of his mind, making him feel overconfident, strong and brave.

But the minute he voiced his thoughts, sending them out into the ether, he wished he hadn’t.

All the boys gasped. Oohs and Aahs echoed while comments like “No way!” “You can’t” “She’ll kill you” reverberated like a marble in a tin cup.

Words, once spoken, are very often impossible to take back. And these words, although they accomplished exactly what Hunter had intended, would be his undoing.

Once the marble settled, the boys stood before him wide eyed and speechless leaving Hunter with no other choice but to move forward.

You see, Hunter had jumped onto a royal carriage one beautiful spring morning. Crawling into the chassis like any boy with nothing to do would do. How was he to know who was inside?

He rode it out to the countryside pretending to be one of the guards. So brave the boy was in his mind. He alone would protect the carriage from robbers. After all, surely the King’s gold was inside. Why else would a palace carriage be leaving the township?

As the trees passed one by one, not one robber presented himself, and soon Hunter grew bored. No action whatsoever.

What’s the point of a forest without robbers? Hunter thought and shortly his thoughts turned a little more sinister. At that juncture, he transformed himself into a cunning thief. Yes, this suited him fine for now he could plot and plan his royal heist for the remainder of the short trip. What an imagination!

He was, after all, just a boy.

Right in the moment he was about leap out from under the carriage, charge the guards, and run off with the gold, he heard the Queen.

“Stop”

As the Queen stepped out into the sunlight, Hunter witnessed the delicate green shoes descend the carriage stairs. He heard the rustle of her heavy garments while she made her way down the path. And when he realized exactly where he was, he felt the sharp prick of the hairs on his neck.

Frozen in horror, he watched the guards stand motionless and do nothing to stop the Queen from walking straight into the Witch’s lair.

Since that day, when Hunter returned with this harrowing tale, he had become a celebrity amongst the boys. But, as perhaps all people do, he embellished the story so much that now the recounting of events that day was so very far from the truth that even he couldn’t remember what really happened.

What, to you and me, was a very ordinary mundane check up, became an incredible tale of danger and bravado. One in which guards stood paralyzed before a giant invisible barrier – a spell cast by The Witch, no doubt, and the Queen, as if entranced, somehow managed to walk straight through. Who knows what horrors she would be forced to face on the other side.

Hunter followed her (did he?). Yes, he followed her and watched as The Witch performed powerful spells, which now that he thinks on it must have been a spell to keep the baby trapped in the Queen’s belly forever.

Of course! What other spell would she have cast? And that was the exact spell Hunter would force The Witch to reverse.

Now, you know and I know, Hunter just sat under the carriage and waited the excruciatingly long morning for the queen to return. How could he possibly get out from under the chassis without being discovered by the guards? He couldn’t, not physically anyway. But that didn’t stop his imagination. Not one bit. He concocted the finest tale ever told in the township and when he returned home that day he came home to instant fame.

The trouble with fame… it gets you in trouble.

Today, trapped by his own words, Hunter scrambled to find a way to back out. He wasn’t interested in facing The Witch any more than he was interested in killing the Giant that sometimes roamed the land. That didn’t stop him from telling all the boys he’d once killed seven giants with one single sling shot.

He couldn’t help it, he had an overactive imagination.

(It served him well when he got older, because he grew up to become one of the finest story tellers Andor had ever known. Much like the Grim Brothers, and I’ve heard the brothers stumbled into Andor once and lived to tell the tale.)

The boys believed him. After all, Hunter did have the most accurate aim. And besides, the Giant hadn’t been around in ages, so he had yet to make good on that claim.

Have you ever been caught between a rock and hard place? That’s exactly where Hunter was now. The rock being The Witch and the hard place – his pride. To back out now meant losing his entire fan base.

“Who’s coming with me?” Hunter asked the crowd.

Crickets.

“What’s the matter? You scared of a stupid ‘ole Witch?” Hunter taunted with as much bravado as he could muster. But truth be told he, himself, was shaking – I would say in his shoes but he didn’t have a pair to his name.

Hunter turned to his best friend John and grabbed his arm. He pulled him closer to his side. “Come on, John. The rest of these guys are a bunch of pussies.”

And just like that Hunter roped John and John’s little brother Smith into facing The Witch – after all, where ever John was, Smith followed.

Mother would have it no other way. If word got out Smith was wandering about alone, John’s ears were guaranteed a good boxing when he got home. (It happened once and I assure you, the boxing was so severe it never happened again.)

And of course you know, that’s how it came to be that Smith always followed John. So much so that the two were simply lumped together – John Smith.

The boys gasped, and stared at Hunter and John Smith with wide eyes. Poor little five year old Smith, he had no idea what he was getting into. He just grinned in his new found fame and continued to chew the bit of sugar cane he had stolen from his mother’s cupboard.

What could John do? With the crowd of boys looking on, he grabbed a tuft of Smith’s hair and yanked. Smith’s grin turned a twisted contortion of pain. He howled, and the sugar cane dropped out of his mouth.

“Keep crying and I’ll box your ears” John hissed as the three boys took off down the path toward the Witch’s Lair.

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