Release That Witch

As the only one professional with sailing experience, Lightning was honored to be the navigator.     

In fact, she was also very interested in the weirdly-shaped, peculiar barge. Although it looked very ugly, it had all of the basic parts that a ship should have. However, she was unsure about whether it would sail. After all, she was mostly just a bystander on the sea as her father always refused her requests of steering or hoisting the sail.     

In accordance with the tradition, Lightning smashed a bottle of ale on the bow and ordered to raise the sail for the barge's maiden voyage. Carter, as the commander, surely did not want the little girl to take over the position and thus, the knight always followed with the same command after her.     

The sail of the Littletown was made of animal skin. It was mostly calf leather and sheepskin with a mix of some Border Town's specialties, such as wolf skin and bear skin. It looked like a rag, patches mixed with different colors and shading, with brown, white and gray colors. The sail was leader-shaped and was separated by four sticks of beams in which the cable passed through the iron ring on the top and fell onto the deck. The entire sail could be raised by simply pulling the cable.     

Both the sails at the front and the back of the Littletown were single sail that ran parallel to each other and perpendicular to the center line for easy operation. If the normal brigantine was set in the same way, it would cause one sail very little wind consumption and would almost make it useless. However, the design would enable the power to be evenly distributed on both sides of the central line with Wendy's ability to control the wind, and would be more convenient for the helmsman to operate a direct.     

Lightning commanded the men on the shore to untie the rope once the sail had completely risen up. The weather was still fine at the time with occasionally falling snow. The boat was slowly leaving the shore, driven by the breeze and water flow.     

The little girl landed beside Brian and shouted, "Full rudder towards the right!"     

Carter also shouted, "Full rudder towards the right!"     

"Uh, what do you mean by full rudder to the right?" Brian scratched his head and asked, "How many circles should I steer towards the right?"     

"No, turn it all the way to the left," Lightning hit her forehead with her hand and said, "Forget it, I'll do it."     

She forgot that it was the first time for the crew to operate a two-masted sailing ship, they did not even understand basic commands. The sails of a standard brigantine would not have unfurled so quickly. The design of the Littletown was indeed so unique that the cement boat had smoothly left the shore with less than a 10 man crew.     

She held onto the steering wheel which was taller than she was, and lifting her feet off of the floor, she rotated it towards the left. The huge steering wheel was very heavy for an ordinary woman. It was hard overcoming the water resistance in order to direct the iron rudder at the bottom of the boat in the absence of mechanical assistance. However, all these were not a problem at all for Lightning who could fly. She noticed the block that was set to prevent the turnaround at the bottom of the steering and wondered, [I heard that this ship was designed by His Highness, Prince Roland himself. How come he could be so clear about all these little details? Even experienced sailors who were out on the sea all the time may not how to design a ship.]     

"Sister Wendy, the wind."     

Wendy was amused, standing on top of the roof. [This is the reason His Highness asked whether I have acrophobia... to let me activate the sailing ship?] She suddenly felt a subtle sense of contrast, thinking of her usual chores like drying the meat and clothes, she opened her arms to get into the state of her usual practice. She let the wind evenly blow beneath her feet and over her head in order to make sure both sails received equal wind resistance.     

Honestly, Wendy did not expect the seemingly simple request to be so difficult.     

Although she had awakened as a witch 15 years ago, she had never tried to understand and control her strength thoroughly. Both summoning a swift current that wrapped around the rocks to attack the enemy or summoning a storm to wipe out the enemy required her to release a huge amount of magic power at once. While dealing with the chores in the campsite did not require the wind power to be constant as long as it achieved the purpose. Wendy suddenly felt ashamed of herself while thinking back to Anna's serious look during the practice.     

"The first thing you have to do is to practice your ability repeatedly until you can completely master it... just like Anna."     

It turned out that the prince meant it when he said so.     

[In this case, let me start from now...] She took a deep breath and concentrated all of her attention on sensing the wind.     

Although the wind was not completely balanced, the sail was still bulging up and the continuous thrust had caused the mast to make a squeaking noise. The bow started to swing rightwards.     

"It's really moving." Carter exclaimed.     

"His Highness made a cement boat that floats on above the water," Tigui smiled and said while touching his stubble. "Is there anything he can't do?"     

The Littletown was going further and further away from the shore and gradually moving into the center of the river.     

Wendy could create wind from nothingness, but she could not make the existing north wind disappear. The ship was not sailing forward in a straight line due to the effect of both winds, it needed to rely on the steering wheel to adjust accordingly. Brian could only experience it personally as Lightning was not able to clearly state the point. In order to let Brian master this feeling as soon as possible, the little girl had commanded him to implement a few big changes of steering direction to feel the relationship between the turning angle of the steering wheel and the swinging amplitude of the bow before making further little adjustments.     

Wendy was the first to be worn out after sailing on the Redwater River for over an hour.     

It was not because of the exhaustion of magic power but that her body had hit the limit.     

Although her body was wrapped up like a dumpling, she still could not resist the cold wind. There was a thin layer of snow gathered on top of her cotton-padded cap, and her frozen hands and feet were almost numb, her body was shaking unsteadily on the platform. She would probably persist until she passed out if Lightning did not notice anything unusual when she was patrolling in the air.     

Lightning quickly flew beside Wendy and tightly held onto her body while shouting for Brian to pull in to shore.     

Brian steered the helm to the right and the bow deviated to the left. Lightning flew down with Wendy, although she could only stir a sail from the deck, at least she could temporarily avoid the cold and prevent the excessive loss of body temperature. As pulling into the shore required fine controlling, Lightning did not dare to entrust it to be operated by someone who just learned to steer, although she was not very experienced herself either.     

The Littletown finally landed after tossing around for a while. Everyone's heart was raised when it collided with the river bank. The hull made a dull noise when hitting the land, but fortunately, it looked just fine. The men quickly gathered the sail and put the springboard up to the shore.     

Luckily they did not choose a straight path for the trial but instead chose to practice, sailing back and forth in the spacious area of the river way. Thus, the Littletown was not too far off from the dock of departure.     

Lightning flew straight towards the castle with Wendy at her back. Carter looked at the stone boat and sighed as it was not possible to sail the boat back to the dock themselves without the witches help.