Chapter 22.2 Guardian Spirit

Many tens and hundreds of years ago, in a small town in Japan, a child was born — an unusual girl with impossible green eyes. Like a bright star in the dark sky, she was always and everywhere different from other children. Where by her beauty, where by her cheerful, open disposition, and where by her unexpected, unchildlike wisdom. Her mother was the servant of a samurai and her father worked in the stables.

A simple and common story for those distant times: the local lord lost, all his samurai were destroyed and the lands were seized. The girl's father had been conscripted as an ashigaru, a simple militiaman with poor weapons and training, and died; her mother was also lost when the victor's troops took over the lands.

Left with her grandmother, the girl changed, becoming sullen and brooding. Seeing the changes in the bright child, the old woman took her granddaughter and together they went to live with an old friend, a medicine woman.

Since then, the girl seemed to revive, but not completely: she almost did not communicate with other children, and only with people, but she could wander long hours in the woods and meadows, gathering herbs and learning her art from the medicine woman.

The old women did not lose sight of the fact that strange things sometimes happened around the girl: objects moved by themselves, the fire in the hearth lit by itself, the evil "dog" became ill, and so on. It was also strange that the born witch wasn't accepted for training.

There were no big schools and academies in those days, and why should there be, since there was no central authority. But there were something like European covens: magicians of the same or a similar orientation got together and opened small schools, where children were collected personally and felt their power.

There were also special itinerant magicians — merchants who roamed the land and could find a place for a born miracle. But no one found this particular girl, and no one began to teach her.

Year after year, the girl impressed the old medicine woman more and more with her talents, her thirst for new knowledge, and her closeness to nature — it was as if the forest itself gave the girl what she needed or was interested in. But life was hard in those distant times, and people quickly grew old and left.

The same fate befell the two old friends. After burying her last relative and a kind teacher, the young girl of sixteen went to live in the city. Not that it was any easier there, especially with her beauty, but her reserved coolness towards people in general and suitors in particular solved most of her problems without her active participation.

Within a few more years, she had become widely known as an incredible medicine woman and a master at making cosmetics, but in smaller circles she was known as a purveyor of certain poisons. However, such a life was beginning to weigh on her.

 Too much attention, too much brazen behavior from the rich and the lord's vassals, and they all ate up enough of her time, leaving almost no time for experiments and walks in the woods. As the years went by, she spent more and more time in nature and experimenting, and she was drawn to more and more of it, so she decided to move again. She had saved enough money to live comfortably for the rest of her life. So she moved to a half-submerged forest, in the swamps, a few hours' walk from a small village.

But even there she was not left alone for long. Wealthy people began to send servants to her for goods, and sometimes to visit her in person. The calls to the sick did not stop, but she refused to go anywhere.

Living in the midst of nature, away from people, was a turning point in the young witch's life, and she felt a change in herself, and communication with people was reduced to a much smaller volume.

 Research took hold of the girl, and she often took some rare minerals or unusual plants as payment for her wares. Sometimes she demanded payment with a detailed description of the effects of the new development on humans, as she only conducted her experiments on animals.

Again, the years passed, and the girl changed with them, but not as one might expect. She did not age at all, but the color of her skin, eyes, and hair changed. The girl began to wear a kind of turban on her head. She established permanent business contacts with several healers, to whom she delivered the fruits of her experiments.

One day, one of these healers accidentally mixed two liquid medicines, resulting in a terrible poison. After testing it on a dog, the healer was horrified by the effect: in just a few minutes, the animal completely lost its hair, which fell off with pieces of flesh, experienced terrible convulsions, and bled from its mouth. More than one culprit immediately came to the healer's mind, but he decided to take revenge on the one he hated most.

After ordering more such potions from the swamp doctor, he found the right person, and in a few days, one of the respected mages of the nearest school experienced all the "charms" of the terrible poison. On Avenger's Mountain, the mages also knew how to search, and they quickly found the main culprit. But before he died, he managed to slander the medicine woman.

A few weeks later, the girl felt a strange trembling in the world and wanted to do something about it, but then a terrible weakness overcame her. It was as if her strength, her magic, her life were being drained from her. She wouldn't last long in this world... alive. The mages did their best: they surrounded her forest with a barrier and performed a cruel curse ritual that not only took the girl's life, but also condemned her to live as a ghost and erased her name.

A few decades later, a nasty old woman was discovered in the same swamp, who knew how to make terrible poisons or cunning booty. However, it always resulted in a painful death for both the avenger and the victim. Mages for many generations felt her vengeance, but did not renounce her malice. The Swamp Witch used fear, insects, and howling to drive ordinary people from her swamp.