The tiny witch from the.., p.1
The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods: Volume 2, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
Color Illustrations
Carmine Continental Map
Book 3: The Kingdom of Redford
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2: Arrival in Redford
Chapter 3: A Meeting in the Castle
Chapter 4: A Place to Relax
Chapter 5: The King’s Sister Lalaya
Chapter 6: Begin Treatment!
Chapter 7: The Truth of the Illness
Chapter 8: The Cabin in the Garden and Miranda’s Feelings
Chapter 9: Problems in the Herb Garden
Chapter 10: The Terrifying Karas
Chapter 11: Embarrassment of the Morning After, and Then...
Chapter 12: Children of the City
Chapter 13: The Problem with the Herb Garden
Chapter 14: A Mysterious Boy
Chapter 15: Fun Times
Chapter 16: Caro’s True Identity
Chapter 17: Sense of Unrest
Chapter 18: At the Home in the Forest
Chapter 19: Sudden Surprises
Chapter 20: A Dance and a Walk
Chapter 21: Walking in the City (Alone with Kite)
Chapter 22: Her First Ball (Part 1)
Chapter 23: Her First Ball (Part 2)
Chapter 24: An Epilogue, or a Prologue?
Side Story: Kyne
Side Story: No Shoes!
Afterword
Bonus High Res Color Illustrations
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
Book 3: The Kingdom of Redford
Chapter 1: Prologue
The Kingdom of Redford was one of the largest and oldest nations on the continent of Carmine. Since it was on the southern end of the continent, its climate was fairly mild, the temperature remaining fairly stable across the year. Underground springs in the center of the kingdom fed a large lake that, coupled with large stretches of flat ground, made Redford well suited to agriculture and dairy farming. The kingdom produced such an overabundance of food that they often lent a helping hand to their neighbors. On top of that, good government over the past generations had led to the Redford royal family being famously adored.
As a result, the last few hundred years had been a time of unmitigated prosperity, cementing Redford as a powerful nation. The current king, Ryan Lou Redford, had taken the throne six years prior. He’d displayed remarkable charisma as he took over leadership of the country despite the chaos at the time, and he’d quickly made a name for himself as a wise king.
Born as fourth prince to a concubine of the previous king, he had grown up with the bare minimum of education in statecraft, his distance from the throne leaving him saddled with little in the way of expectations. As such, he had lived a relatively unfettered life. Fully intending to support his older brother’s claim to the throne, he’d spent most of his time traveling around allied nations under the pretense of studying abroad. As for how he’d ended up becoming king, it could only be said that coincidence had conspired in his favor.
Ryan’s father had never been great at building new things, but he was renowned as a king capable of protecting what already existed. Peaceful times were prosperous times. Instead of carrying himself with a striking charisma, he’d had a gentle, graceful aura about him. That personality should have attracted the best people, leading to a peaceful and effective government.
That was what was supposed to have happened.
Shortly after Ryan left to study abroad in the kingdom of Jaunbrillant, a mysterious illness swept through the capital of Redford.
At first, it had seemed to be nothing more than a mild virus, but as time progressed, it developed brutal symptoms: fever, vomiting, and violent coughing fits. In the end, victims lapsed into comas, their bodies covered in strange bruises resembling worms crawling across their skin. It came to be called the “Red Eye plague” from the color of the victims’ eyes upon their deaths.
More than half of people who contracted the disease died from it, and it spread indiscriminately, found just as readily in the slums as in the mansions of the rich and powerful. Most terrifying of all was that even the women of the inner palace succumbed to the disease despite rarely leaving the wing of the palace set aside for them. Strangely, there were no instances of the disease reported outside the capital.
The king immediately locked down the city. He couldn’t allow the disease to spread throughout the entire kingdom. With no clues as to the source of the disease, the only hope of containing it was to quarantine the people who carried it.
However, that also meant locking the royalty and nobility in the capital. Even if they understood this lockdown was meant for everyone’s safety, people acted irrationally when their own lives were at stake. In order to suppress those high-running emotions, the king and his close associates decided to remain in the capital themselves. Most of the remaining objections were quashed once the king allowed the children of those who were asymptomatic to evacuate.
However, the third prince decided to remain in the city. “There’s the crown prince, the second prince, and even a fourth prince off studying in foreign lands. Three heirs is more than enough, so it should be fine for me to work on the ground,” the third prince declared, heedless of his own life. He always joked about being too dumb for his position and that he’d leave the hard thinking to his much smarter brothers. Ever since he was young, he had spent most of his time training with the knights of the kingdom, and that didn’t change when those knights were sent across the disease-ridden capital.
The king, his queen, and his concubines elected to remain in the capital, hoping to offer solidarity with those suffering within the city. That act bolstered the resolve of the remaining nobility. Rather than panicking and fleeing, they followed the king’s orders. Even those permitted to evacuate respected the period of quarantine demanded of them to keep any infected from leaving the area.
And so, despite being unable to find a cure for the disease, as winter set in, the disease mysteriously vanished...though not before taking the wise and gentle king with it, alongside many of his subjects. Over half of the royals had lost their lives at that point. While the kingdom was deep in mourning, the crown prince ascended the throne, preparing for a dark and lonely winter.
As citizens held out hope for a gentler spring, news of an uprising at the edge of the kingdom poured in. In such a distant city, the people struggled to find accurate information on the crown’s handling of the disease. One person with ambitions for power began spreading rumors that the king had been a fool and had wanted to bring down as many of his own with him as possible when he’d grown ill. Such gossip incited people against the royalty.
Despite the plague having decimated their army, the second prince led the majority of Redford’s surviving knights to quell the rebellion. They made every effort to minimize the casualties on both sides, but splitting the kingdom’s army between quelling the rebellion and protecting the capital had been the rebels’ goal from the beginning. With the capital’s defenses stretched thin, a neighboring nation launched an attack on Redford. It had all been carefully calculated.
Upon discovering the deception, the second prince immediately led his army back toward the capital, but the lord of the rebelling city marched out to attack them from behind. This ended in their killing of the second prince, who died in despair from this betrayal.
When news of the invasion reached Ryan, he immediately gathered a force from among the troops of Jaunbrillant and returned home.
Ultimately, he was too late. By the time he reached the capital, the damage had already been done; the city had been devastated, and the newly crowned king was dead. The sudden invasion had besieged the king and his people in the capital, where they soon learned their walls were not as sturdy as they had hoped.
On the third night of the siege, someone opened the gates to the city from the inside, and the food being supplied to the defending soldiers was drugged. Even if the sabotage couldn’t reach the king or those close to him, with more than half of their military outside the city and more than half of those remaining brought down by the drugged food, Redford had no chance against the invaders. Enemy soldiers overran the capital in no time.
In order to create a window for women and children to escape, having already been evacuated to the castle for their protection, the king marched out himself. When Ryan finally reached the castle, he was greeted by the sight of his now headless brother.
Embracing his dead brother’s body, he roared, “Is this what you people do?! Crush everything underfoot in the name of greed?! You think I will let that pass?!”
Together with the forces of their allies, Ryan gathered his kingdom’s remaining soldiers and returned to the battlefield. Unlike his gentle father and older brother, Ryan very much had a talent for warcraft, driving back the enemy army with every tactic imaginable. Above all, the king’s willingness to sacrifice himself to protect his people had united the hearts of the common citizens. Anyone who could hold a weapon, from the elderly to the young, gathered for battle. Even an untrained militia could accomplish something with sheer numbers, especially with the individual determination each soldier brought to the battle.
In short order, Ryan found himself victorious. He returned home to take the throne. Having lost his father and brothers, even as the nobles bowed to him, he found the idea of taking the throne too much to handle. However, he’d survived; thus, he
Ryan was nineteen years old at the time of his coronation. Redford faced many hardships from that time on, but with the remaining authority of his father, he and his young advisers quickly grew into their roles and forged a new future for their kingdom. He delivered vicious reprisal with a smile to those who underestimated him for his youth. Those who tried to suck up to him were accepted happily on the surface, but behind every smile the king weighed each of them coldly and analytically.
When Ryan muttered that all the politicking was corrupting him, the old prime minister replied with a smile, “Yet your determination has led others to revere you as a wise king.”
“But my father was known for his kindness,” Ryan had said, and his ministers could only share sympathetic expressions, no answer for him. It was only his newest advisers that could provide consolation.
“Your brother was said to be just like your father, but he wasn’t just kind.”
Even when surrounded by the enemy army, he had used his own life as a shield to protect his people. It was perfectly ordinary for someone to prioritize their own life above everything else, but Ryan’s brother had instead chosen to prioritize the future of his people.
No, maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe he’d just loved them that much.
Ryan’s brother had been betrothed since birth, marrying a marquis’s daughter—a childhood friend—as soon as he reached adulthood. The two had been remarkably close and supportive of each other. In fact, Ryan’s brother was the one who’d wanted the two of them to get married so quickly. His wife scolding him for being too openly affectionate had been a common sight around the castle.
Even so, the two had experienced some difficulty in producing children. The crown princess’s aides had told her, “If the parents get along too well, the children don’t want to come in and break them up,” and her husband took that as an indication they should continue enjoying life as a couple as much as they could.
By some strange twist of fate, the crown princess had found herself pregnant just as she was evacuated from the capital at the outbreak of the Red Eye plague. Although she had been stunned that it would happen then of all times, the child was born just as the disease disappeared, marking that child as a symbol of hope for the nation. Ryan’s brother had given everything to protect that hope.
After escaping the capital, the queen and her infant son managed to find shelter in the port city of Kananté. When Ryan discovered them in the rubble of the city, he thanked the gods from the bottom of his heart, despite having never believed in them before. As he held the smiling baby boy in his arms, Ryan swore to make Redford into a kingdom that would ensure a future where this boy could keep on smiling.
Soon after he took the throne, people pressured him to marry, but with a declaration that he only intended to hold the throne temporarily, he avoided marriage for fear that having children might spark further conflict. For the same reason, he had his brother’s wife and his nephew sent into hiding. In the restless period after the war, he felt it was necessary to stay on guard against the unstable political situation in the palace.
Colluding with the previous prime minister, he only allowed the bare minimum number of people he could absolutely trust to know of the two’s whereabouts. Consequently, while the populace knew the boy was growing up strong and healthy, he had no exposure to the public eye. Behind closed doors he was known as the “phantom prince.”
Four years after Ryan assumed the throne, the advisers remaining from his father’s time collectively resigned. They stepped back to allow the younger generation to take hold of the kingdom’s leadership, but they were never far from the front lines, watching with bemused smiles as their young successors struggled desperately to keep everything together. They lent a helping hand where it was needed. Their resignation was mostly a move to help push the next generation onward.
Little by little, the peace Redford had been known for returned. However, unlike in previous generations, its army was now remarkably robust.
“We can’t let go of power.”
That was the lesson Ryan’s generation had learned through their turmoil. Specifically, he sought power not for the goal of controlling others but for protecting them, drawing a stark distinction between Redford and other militaristic states.
Information was power. Having learned the bitter lesson that came from enemy spies being allowed to roam freely within their borders, Ryan bolstered the presence of his military throughout the kingdom, getting a strong grip on the flow of information. On top of that, he greatly expanded positions for common people in the military. After they trained the local people to guard their own cities and villages, crime sharply decreased, yet it was perceived as the people defending themselves, not heavy-handed oversight from the kingdom. After all the lives that had been lost, Ryan and his associates were desperate to gain the power to protect their citizens.
It went without saying that this also included a huge investment in medical study. Having just laid the groundwork for the expansion of agencies for doctors and apothecaries within the kingdom, it was no wonder he had immediately taken an interest in the People of the Forest.
A despondent voice filled the somewhat dreary looking office. “So, when is he getting back?”
The bluntness of those words, the first thing this man said after stepping into the room, took Ryan aback. It was true that Ryan didn’t care for formalities and that this was very much a private space, so he wasn’t about to scold the man for his tone. Even so, any other day, this was the exact man who’d be scolding others for speaking in such an impolite manner. He had barely waited for permission to enter before opening the door.
The shock on the king’s face sent Tris into a reflection on his behavior, and he stopped to clear his throat.
“A runner just arrived from the port. He brought news of Geord, did he not?”
Tris’s chilly tone finally brought Ryan back to his senses. “Yeah. They plan to come by ship from Dola, but the Dragon God Festival is being held now, so they’ve decided to see that through before leaving. Also, they have another person joining them, so he requested we make preparations for them.”
“What? Staying for the festival is one thing, but they’re bringing another person here?”
Ryan handed the letter to Tris, whose expression grew steadily more severe with every sentence he read.
“Another one of the People of the Forest. And this one is full-blooded. Looks like he’s caught someone incredible.” Tris closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh.
The People of the Forest were said to value the bonds of blood above all else. It was entirely reasonable to hear one of them had elected herself guardian of the girl that had lost her mother, especially given that girl was being sent to another country instead of staying under her father’s care.
“Looks like we’ve got quite the scary ‘guardian’ to worry about. I guess if we mess up, that’s the end for Redford,” Ryan chuckled, earning a hard look from his prime minister.
“This is no laughing matter. We are sticking our heads in the den of a mother lion here.”
Tales of the disastrous fates met by many other kingdoms came and went through Tris’s head.
Ryan couldn’t help but sigh, seeing Tris already starting to cook up some countermeasure or other. “That’s not very nice. We’re not abducting this girl. It’s more like we’re taking her under our wing. We have no ill intentions. They’re not just going to lash out and attack anyone who gets close. Besides, I hear the newcomer is a young woman. The People of the Forest are supposed to be quite attractive, so I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Tris found the unconscious tension in his shoulders relaxing at Ryan’s optimistic attitude. He was right, but as someone who had taken an interest in Misha for less forthright reasons, it was hard for him to simply agree.
“According to Geord’s report, there were no signs of the People of the Forest around Misha when they first left. This means one of them has finally shown themselves. That’s lucky for us, don’t you think? If things go well, we might be able to build a relationship with them.” Resting his head in his hands, Ryan’s eyes seemed to shine, his smile entirely guileless.
