Three hours into their drive, Grace turned the car onto a poorly paved strip of road that looked too narrow to fit two bikes riding in opposite directions, nevermind two cars. This road took them straight into a forest that soon grew so dense overhead that the leaves all but eclipsed the midday sun. The path—it could no longer be called a road—wound this way and that, rolled uphill and downhill, and at times deteriorated to uneven gravel that shook Grace’s car like a carnival ride.

  On the bright side, navigation became a non-issue. This cow trail of a path was the only cleared ground in sight—on each side of the car stood a wall of thick tree trunks skirted by an ocean of ferns and other flora. There was nowhere else for the car to go but this singular path forward. They advanced on, covered by the shadows of those great trees.

  After a whole hour of driving and seeing nothing but the short stretch of forest path in front of her, before yet another hill rose ahead to block her view, Adah began to think they’d been transported to another world entirely. Surely modern humans had developed so much of the planet that an abyss of wilderness like this couldn’t exist any longer. They should have popped out on the other side of this forest long ago, back into civilization.

  But no such luck. The winding path through the woods did come to an end soon, just not in the face of civilization. When the car crested the last hill of their journey, a quaint log cabin set in the center of a wide clearing came into view. Grace drove them up the remainder of the path, which devolved into dirt before slowly blending into the grass of the clearing and disappearing entirely. They parked right in the center of the clearing, which couldn’t really be called a lawn or yard. The grass wasn’t an accessory to the cabin, rather the cabin seemed to sprout up in the middle of all this wilderness like a particularly large fungus.

  Now that they were well into the clearing, the unobstructed sun finally shone down on Grace’s car again, freeing the girls from the dark stranglehold of the untamed wild. After spending so long under shadows, Adah did in fact feel like she’d entered a new world. The cabin looked like something out of a fairytale, with how disconnected it seemed from the sprawling forest around it.

  “Let’s go ahead and unload,” Grace said. “I’m sure she noticed us coming—she doesn’t get many visitors.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Adah said.

  As she left the car, Adah looked back down the path they’d traveled. Ever since they’d entered the forest, the road had never once branched off into multiple routes. It didn’t continue past this cabin either. There was only one reason anyone would drive down it: to reach this clearing.

  Not that it looked like anyone did drive down it.

  Just as Grace popped the trunk of her car, the cabin door swung open with a loud groan. Out stepped a woman in a well-worn ensemble consisting of a tank top and blue jeans. Her hair looked as black as Adah’s until she walked into the sunlight and revealed its deep tones of brown. She had tied her hair into a simple braided ponytail that flowed down the entire length of her back. To Adah’s surprise, the woman looked to be the same height as her. She’d been expecting a towering lumberjack type.

  Perhaps she’d been staring too long, for the woman looked back at her with a toothy smile and yellow eyes that glowed like a cat’s at night.

  Wait, why did they glow? And they were yellow?

  Those questions were shoved out of Adah’s head as the woman bellowed, “Yo, Grace!”

  She whistled as she bounded down the steps of the porch and over to Grace’s car. In response to her signal, a small flame burst above her shoulder. Out of that flame, as if by some kind of reverse combustion, the skeleton of a raven-sized bird appeared. The skeleton perched on the woman’s shoulder and jerked its head back and forth as it looked over the new visitors.

  The woman, speaking at a normal volume now that she stood close, pointed at her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry about Lesh here. He doesn’t sort out his body until nighttime, but his brain’s all there. Kinda the opposite of me.”

  She hugged Grace like she was wringing out a sponge, but stopped just before the other woman’s eyes popped out of her head. When they broke their embrace, she turned her attention to the four magical girls she was tasked with tutoring.

  “Damn, I must look old,” she said as she looked them over.

  Actually, she could’ve fit in just fine. She could even pass as the youngest of the group, based strictly off appearance.

  “Let me introduce you,” Grace said, adjusting her glasses back into place. She went through the girls’ names one by one, and the woman flashed each of them that same big smile. Finally, Grace held out a hand towards the woman and finished, “And this is Ketzia. Or should they call you Ardent Aletta?”

  “No, no, no,” Ketzia said. “Bad luck to call a retired magical girl by her old name.”

  “Wait,” Ami said. “Are you that Aletta?”

  Ketzia crossed her arms and laughed. “Probably!”

  Ami’s eyes widened and her face went pale. Emi took a step closer to her sister as if preparing to protect her.

  Adah and Rika exchanged a glance, each of them looking equally confused.

  “What’s up with you two?” Adah asked the twins.

  “You Region 1 kids don’t know,” Ami said, the color still gone from her face. “Aletta is infamous in Region 4. She used to be a normal magical girl, then all of a sudden she snapped. She went on a rampage and tortured the old Secretary of Magic until she got what she wanted from him.”

  “Barbecued his office,” Emi said, now holding her sister’s hand. “Then vanished.”

  Ketzia and the bony bird on her shoulder chuckled in unison this time.

  “You’re half-right,” she said. “I did burn down his office once, but that was more like an accident. I never hurt him one bit, though. He always came to his senses before I needed to!”

  Grace came over and stood next to Ketzia. The bird—Lesh, as Ketzia had called him—hopped over to Grace’s shoulder, and she accepted him like she was used to it.

  “It’s probably good to get this out of the way early,” she said. “I told you that magical girls need three things to become Untethered: ridiculously high FP, the support of the regional government, and the go-ahead from their mascot. Ketzia was good to go on the first and last points, but the old Secretary had… reservations.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I had too much fun when I was younger,” Ketzia said. “He was worried I’d just mess around instead of working if they let me loose.”

  Grace nodded slowly and said, “Something like that. Anyway, this is why I thought she’d be a good fit for you girls. Ketzia was never supposed to be Untethered, but she knows better than anyone how to get what she wants. Despite the government’s best efforts to turn public opinion against her, people ended up supporting her anyway. Her methods were a little extreme, but that only means they’re perfect for the four of you.”

  Ketzia blushed and said, “It was nothing special—I just worked out a win-win deal with the old geezers. They’d set me up in this cabin and let Lesh and me enjoy our magic, and in exchange I’d stay out of their hair and watch over these woods. Had them throw in a little stipend to boot.”

  “Wait,” Adah said. “If you’re holed up here, how do you sustain your magic? What about the will of humanity and all that? Wouldn’t your FP drop without fans?”

  “Huh?” Ketzia cocked her head. “Who said I don’t have fans? Besides, what I’m doing is the will of humanity. It’s not all about famous girls smiling for the camera. People want things to run smoothly without having to think about it. They don’t want to think about how the sewers are maintained or whether the food in the store is safe to eat. Maybe garbage men aren’t famous, but people sure as hell want them working. That’s the kind of job I do.”

  She had a weird way of putting it, but Ketzia was probably right. She certainly wouldn’t make the news fighting Cruelties out here, but somebody had to do it. Otherwise any Cruelties that spawned here could feast on local wildlife until they decimated the whole ecosystem.

  “There’s your introduction,” Grace said. “You girls should finish unloading the car—I’m still trying to make it home before sundown. Double check the seats, too, so you don’t forget anything.”

  “You came all the way here just to leave so soon?” Ketzia said.

  “This was a work trip, not pleasure,” Grace replied. Then, seeing Ketzia’s frowning face, added, “But we can catch up a little.”

  The two of them walked off, leaving the four girls to haul their luggage out of the car. The older women talked as they went, with Lesh still perched on Grace’s shoulder. Adah realized he’d never been properly introduced to them, despite being so familiar with Grace. Clearly he was Ketzia’s mascot, but what exactly was he?

  “We’re so fucked,” Ami whispered as each of the girls grabbed their bag from the car trunk.

  “Why?” Adah whispered back. “She seems like someone you’d get along with.”

  “She’s nuts,” Emi said.

  “I don’t know how they know each other,” Ami said, “but Grace’s opinion of her is totally warped. And now she’s gonna abandon us in the middle of nowhere with a witch.”

  Adah had packed most of her clothes and necessities in a large gym bag. She slung the bag’s strap over her shoulder and went over to the front seat to grab anything she may have left there. When she returned to the rear of the car, the other girls were huddled tight together, still whispering.

  “I would’ve thought I’d have the hardest time with this trip out of all of us,” she said. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting? She’s a little strange, but she seems nice.”

  Ami reached out and yanked Adah into their huddle.

  “It’s because you didn’t grow up here that you don’t get it,” she said. “Aletta is like Baba Yaga, except she’s real.”

  Adah looked at the twins, and their faces were dead serious.

  “She’s just a magical girl,” Adah said. “Like us.”

  “She’s a witch,” Ami repeated. “Why do you think Grace wouldn’t mention her name until we were already here? I would’ve jumped out of the car no matter how fast she was driving if I knew this was who she was taking us to.”

  An image flashed in Adah’s mind: Ketzia’s toothy smile and her glowing eyes. That face had scared her a little at first, but it didn’t make Ketzia some folklore monster. Besides, her eyes were probably related to being Untethered, not anything wicked.

  “You’re all just scared because you heard tall tales growing up,” Adah said. “How can you say this stuff about her after meeting her in person? If she was actually dangerous, she never would’ve been allowed to be Untethered.”

  “I’m with Adah on this one,” Rika added. “Our own captain beat the shit out of a fellow magical girl, and we still trust her.”

  “Thanks?”

  The twins shook their heads and conferred in a new huddle that excluded Adah and Rika. Adah rolled her eyes at them, but they were too busy whispering between themselves to see. When they finally broke apart, they stared at her with no expression on their faces.

  “City girls don’t know the kinds of scary shit that lurks in the woods,” Ami spoke for the pair. “Don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

  The longer she engaged with their childish fantasies, the worse their delusions would get, so Adah simply gave up. Let them hide under their covers at night if they wanted—she was going to learn all that she could on this trip.

  By this point, Grace and Ketzia had made their way back to the car. The twins picked up their bags in a hurry, acting as best they could like they hadn’t been gossiping about their host.

  "Everything all cleared out?” Grace asked.

  Adah was the only one who spoke up to answer—the other girls just nodded silently. Grace squinted at them, but they avoided eye contact.

  Eventually, Ami worked up the courage to say, “So this was an overnight thing, right? What time should we be ready to leave tomorrow?”

  “You’re staying the week,” Grace said. “Ketzia’s being very generous by taking you four troublemakers in, not to mention teaching you. You’d better be good guests while you’re here.”

  Ketzia put her hands on her hips and said, “Yeah, or I might cook ya up!”

  She broke out laughing—there didn’t seem to be much that wasn’t funny to her—while the twins maintained their dead serious expressions. Ami nudged Adah with her elbow. The message behind the subtle bump was obvious: See? A witch.

  “With that said,” Grace continued, “remember why you’re here. Remember how you felt when you lost that duel. How you felt when you came up short on FP for a weapon. Remember how frustrated you were when you couldn’t accomplish what you set out to do. You have an opportunity to learn from someone who’s achieved most things a magical girl could hope to achieve. Make sure you take advantage of it.”

  Grace’s short speech made Ketzia blush again. “I was mostly just goofing around,” she said.

  After saying her goodbyes to the girls and Ketzia, who embraced her with another back-snapping hug, Grace got in her car and drove back down the narrow path into the woods. She hadn’t wasted much time; she must have been serious about getting home before dark.

  Ketzia shrugged one shoulder up—a signal for Lesh to fly off it—then stretched both her arms to the sky with a satisfied groan. She took a look at each of the four girls and recited their names back to them. Surprisingly, she got all of them right, even the twins.

  “Well,” she said, “I only have a few plans for the week. A little bit of fun, little bit of work. Mostly though, I keep things simple out here. So if you’ve got anything you wanna work on—or any secrets you wanna know—all you have to do is ask. But first things first: let’s get you set up inside. Bad luck to leave guests waiting outside.”

  Ketzia led them up to the cabin while Lesh flew a few feet above their heads as if inspecting them. She’d offered to help carry some of their bags, but no one took her up on that offer.

  Adah walked in front of her teammates, acting like a barrier between them and Ketzia. As she climbed the steps onto the cabin’s wooden porch, a pair of stray thoughts connected in her mind with a spark. Ketzia’s magic seemed to be fire-themed, and if she’d accidentally burned down the Secretary’s office once…

  “Isn’t it dangerous to have someone with fire magic guarding a forest?” Adah asked.

  “Not at all,” Ketzia said. “Watch this.”

  She spun around, held out a hand in Ami’s direction, and snapped. Instantly, Ami’s entire shirt was engulfed in flames. She started screaming and calling for her mascot so she could transform and protect herself, but then Ketzia waved her hand like swatting a fly and the flames vanished all at once.

  Ketzia smiled at Adah. “See? No problem.”

  “You burned my sleeves off!” Ami protested.

  It was true, she was suddenly wearing a singed tank top. She gingerly touched her exposed shoulders to check for damage, which made Ketzia bend over laughing.

  “It’s a good look!” the woman said. “I can trim hair with this, too, if you’re interested. Smells awful, though.”

  Having had her fun, she turned back around and stepped through the doorway into the cabin. The four girls remained glued to the front porch. Ketzia beckoned them over with a grandiose wave.

  “Come on, you’re letting the bugs in. I’m not as good at zapping them as I used to be.”

  She held up a finger—a tiny flame jumped off of it and popped in the air like a bite-sized firework. Ketzia let the sparks fall to the wood floor of the cabin without a care.

  Maybe Ami was right.

  Maybe there were witches in the woods.