The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods: Volume 1 (eBook)

Yanagi (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
250 Seiten
J-Novel Club (Verlag)
978-1-7183-1304-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Growing up deep in the forest, Misha is a thirteen-year-old girl learning how to craft medicine from nature's bounty, but she's also picked up a tremendous amount of knowledge from her mother, an estranged member of a distant tribe of remarkably skilled apothecaries. When tragedy draws the pair out of their forest home, Misha finds herself confronted with a grim truth: all the knowledge in the world is of no help if she doesn't have the experience to put it to use. Faced with her own inadequacy, the young girl resolves to learn how to put her gifts to use properly. Her world is about to expand far beyond the forest she once called home.

Textauszug

Coming to a stop in front of the house’s door, she took a moment to catch her breath and fix her skirt, disheveled from all the running. Then, swinging the basket on her back around into her arms, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.

“I’m back, mom! I found those herbs you were talking about this morning! I also got some mushrooms. They were growing in the usual spot. It looks like we’ll get a lot of them this year.”

As she set the basket on the table, her shouting brought an older woman in a deep-green dress out from the depths of the house. The woman sighed, but her exasperation did nothing to mar her youthful beauty.

“Keep your voice down, Misha. No polite young lady should be shouting. Oh my, were you running again? Your hair is a mess.” After looking her daughter up and down with eyes the same forest green, she gave a wry smile and a shake of her head before fixing the young girl’s hair.

Misha could only laugh with embarrassment at being found out, surrendering to the pleasant sensation of her mother’s hands smoothing her hair. Clearly, Misha had to do more than straighten out her clothing to fool her.

“I also found a cluster of honeyberry growing off to the east. Now we should be able to make more painkillers!” she reported.

“Wow! That’s great, Misha. Your father was just saying that he’s running out of painkillers and is worried for his people,” her mother said, elated.

Misha’s attempt at changing the subject had worked wonderfully.

“That’s good too, but don’t forget to keep some for yourself. Otherwise, you’ll be the one in trouble!” Misha reminded her.

Her mother had injured her leg a long time ago. It had healed enough for her to walk on it again, but when the weather changed or she pushed herself too hard, it still hurt terribly. Despite that, her mother laughed it off every time, saying it was convenient for alerting her of incoming rain.

“I know, I know. If I can’t walk, that makes things harder for you, right?”

“That’s not the point!” Misha frowned at her mother’s smile.

She doesn’t get it at all. I just don’t want her to be in pain.

Despite her youth, Misha had picked up on the fact that something untoward was going on outside the forest for the past few years. Requests for painkillers and salves had been steadily increasing in both frequency and dosage. That must have meant there were more and more people getting hurt. Her mother seemed concerned about whatever was happening, as whenever a messenger came, she sent back all of the medicine the two of them had.

As a result, she suffered during every rainfall. Though she never said as much, Misha was sure the pain was keeping her from sleeping.

I’ll have to keep my own stockpile separate for mom, she decided secretly, suppressing a sigh. They might have been apothecaries by trade, but that didn’t mean they could afford to ignore their own needs. Because if you’re in pain and can’t concentrate, you start to make mistakes!

She knew her mother was too skilled to let something like pain mess her up, but it was still a good excuse to convince herself to hold some medicine back.

There wasn’t an unlimited supply of herbs in the forest. Though Misha had found a good amount of honeyberry—the base for their painkillers—today, she knew there wasn’t much left for them to take. If you pulled up a plant by its roots, it wouldn’t grow back. Maintaining the natural ecological balance was just as important as making medicine. Even with her injured leg preventing her from walking around much, Misha’s mother knew the forest much better than her daughter did. There was no way she hadn’t noticed the dwindling plant life. That was likely why she was keeping less of the medicine for herself.

“I hope things go back to normal soon,” Misha murmured, earning a troubled smile from her mother.

Deep in the forest sat a small log cabin. Misha and her mother lived there alone. Although sometimes it was lonely to live in a place with few visitors, it was all Misha had ever known, so she could easily accept that life for what it was. Her father visited once a month and always had plenty of gifts for her, so they really wanted for nothing here, and the forest kept her plenty occupied. Above all, Misha was happy to be able to live with such a smart, kind mother.

When she was younger, she had once asked why her father didn’t live with them. She had been reading a picture book left by her father on his visit a few days prior, and that book had said a family was supposed to live together.

Her mother apologetically explained that she had been born to a clan of apothecaries in a country far, far to the north. She had met Misha’s father when he was traveling across the world as part of his education. The two had fallen in love, and Misha’s mother had cut her ties with her family to follow him home.

But after growing up in a quiet forest, she couldn’t adjust to life in the city. Her longing for the woods all but drained the life from her. Worried for her well-being, though it broke his heart to do so, Misha’s father brought her to a forest at the edge of their lands.

He wanted to live together with both of them, but he was a duke. He had important responsibilities to take care of. And so that brought them to their current living situation.

“I often think you would have been better off if we lived in your father’s mansion with him,” her mother said sadly, but Misha shook her head vigorously.

“I want you to be happy! And dad comes to visit, so I don’t miss him at all! And I love the forest!”

Hating to see her mother looking so sad, Misha never brought up the topic again. And besides, living in the forest with her mother really was fun.

However, ever since that day, her mother had started teaching Misha how to act as a noble would—“just in case.” Misha had asked how she knew all this stuff if she was from another country, to which she had replied that she’d studied hard to make sure she didn’t embarrass Misha’s father.

“In the end, I thought it was all for nothing, but now that I can teach you, I’m glad I went to the trouble.”

As much as she hated the stiff manners and tons of studying, Misha swallowed her complaints when she saw how happy her progress made her mother. A little hardship was worth her mother’s smile.

Someday, those skills would become exceptionally useful for her. Of course, she had no idea of that at the time.

After moving to the forest, her mother recovered immediately, and she found she was familiar with many of the herbs and plants growing in the area. Once she had the opportunity, she started using the herbs to make medicine. Misha’s father received them with great joy; her creations were much more effective than anything his duchy had. And so, her mother returned to her original work as an apothecary.

And she poured every bit of knowledge she had into her daughter. Instead of studying at a desk, Misha learned everything hands-on, her mother turning instruction into a game ever since the girl was tiny. With nothing else to distract her as she grew, Misha acquired the skills of an apothecary—from the collecting of raw ingredients to the production of medicines—by the time she was ten years old.

Now, she spent her days running through the forest in her injured mother’s place, collecting medicinal herbs and all sorts of other things from nature.

“By the way, is dad coming to visit us next month?” Misha asked as she worked the mortar. She hoped she’d sounded as relaxed as she thought she did.

Her father had visited her once a month without fail ever since she was little, but he had missed the last two months. Instead, he’d sent a letter with a messenger, who’d then grabbed a bunch of medicine and left.

“I don’t know. It sounds like he is still far away,” her mother replied sadly as she boiled some herbs in a kettle.

Misha had to struggle not to click her tongue in frustration. Her mother would scold her in an instant if she did, so she made sure to suppress the urge.

She knew how much her mother loved her father, and though she never said it, her mother clearly missed him and worried about him. They did their best to make as much medicine as they could, hoping it would be at least a little helpful, but they didn’t even know if it reached him.

The only news they got from the outside was from their father on his monthly visits, or the irregular mail birds.

“Maybe we should send a mail bird?” Misha suggested.

Her mother thought for a moment but ultimately shook her head. “We need to save that for emergencies. I don’t think this counts.”

Mail birds were the primary means of communication in this world. These birds were trained to travel specifically between two places, carrying letters tied to their legs. They were smart, capable of following simple instructions. Consequently, they were extremely expensive. Even the high-ranking nobility usually possessed no more than a small handful of their own. On top of there being very few of the birds in nature, they lived deep in the dangerous wilderness, had temperamental natures, and warmed up to people slowly. Ideally, you grabbed them before they hatched, so they could be raised by hand....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 23.5.2025
• Reihe/Serie: The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods
• Illustrationen: Yoh Hihara
• Übersetzer: Nathan Macklem
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• Schlagworte: apothecary • Coming of Age • female protagonist • journey • Light Novel • Medieval • Naturalist
• ISBN-10: 1-7183-1304-7 / 1718313047
• ISBN-13: 978-1-7183-1304-0 / 9781718313040