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Updated: May 26, 2025
The king gave them the castle and lands of Watho, and there they lived and taught each other for many years that were not long.
The foolish witch had made herself invulnerable, as she supposed, but had forgotten that, to torment Photogen therewith, she had handled one of his arrows. He ran back to Nycteris and told her. She shuddered and wept, and would not look. There was now no occasion to fly a step farther. Neither of them feared any one but Watho. They left her there, and went back.
The grand health, over which the witch had taken such pains, had yielded, and in an hour or two he was moaning and crying out in delirium. Watho was herself ill, as I have said, and was the worse tempered; and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches, that what works in others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion.
There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself only for knowing it. She was not naturally cruel, but the wolf had made her cruel.
Photogen went up to the wolf. It was a monster! But he was vexed that his first arrow had behaved so badly, and was the less willing to lose the one that had done him such good service: with a long and a strong pull, he drew it from the brute's chest. Could he believe his eyes? There lay no wolf, but Watho, with her hair tied round her waist!
A great cloud came over the sun, and rain began to fall heavily, and Nycteris was much refreshed, grew able to see a little, and with Photogen's help walked gently over the cool wet grass. They had not gone far before they met Fargu and the other huntsmen. Photogen told them he had killed a great red wolf, and it was Madam Watho. The huntsmen looked grave, but gladness shone through.
She thought with herself she would ask her presently, when she had come to herself a little, how she had made her escape, for she must, of course, like herself have got out of a cave, in which Watho and Falca had been keeping her. "Look at the lovely colours," she went on, pointing to a rose-bush, on which Photogen could not see a single flower.
And whether it was that her failure with Photogen foiled also her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that her illness made her yet more of a devil's wife, certainly Watho now got sick of the girl too, and hated to know her about the castle. She was not too ill, however, to go to poor Photogen's room and torment him.
Photogen listened respectfully, but, knowing neither the taste of fear nor the temptation of the night, her words were but sounds to him. The little education she intended Nycteris to have, Watho gave her by word of mouth. Not meaning she should have light enough to read by, to leave other reasons unmentioned, she never put a book in her hands.
One of them belonged to the court, and her husband had been sent on a far and difficult embassy. The other was a young widow whose husband had lately died, and who had since lost her sight, Watho lodged them in different parts of her castle, and they did not know of each other's existence.
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