He led us to a table which was rather large considering it was only Dom who lived inside the castle. Thankfully there was a fireplace near the table and I liked sitting near it. Dom soon brought us tea, and as I sipped it, lost in thought watching the logs of wood in the fireplace which were reminding me of that moment in my father’s chamber when I had seen the map in the fireplace and I had made the biggest decision of my life.
Soon, I was done and Dom took away our cups. He came back and slumped onto his chair, relaxed.
I recalled the goat king’s legend and I decided to ask about it to Dom.
“Um… have you heard of the legend of the goat king?” I asked Dom.
“Legend?” Dom said, not seemingly getting me, “But he only came here a few days ago, how could he become a legend?” And Dom chuckled as though he had said something that he thought was really funny, letting down his authoritative tone for a moment.
Gnaria and I exchanged glances.
“The goat king came here a few days ago?” I asked.
Dom look up, as though trying to recall how many days had passed since the goat king had come.
“Wait a minute,” he said, rubbing his lips with his paw, “I think it was more than a few days. Perhaps a few months, could even be a year… or years. No, it was longer that. A decade? Maybe a few decades?”
I wondered if Dom’s mind was messed up. It wouldn’t be a surprise if that was so. Dom had lived way too long. So long that ‘decades’ and ‘few days’ seemed to him like the same amount of time.
“Was the goat king a friend of yours?” I asked. I only now realised why Ultur was mentioned in the map. It was so that anyone who embarked on the quest for the goat king’s treasure would meet Dom. Dom and his garden had to be an important element in the quest.
Dom shrugged.
“He probably was,” he said, “not the best of friends perhaps, but a friend all the same. You see, I never had many enemies.”
I was sure that Dom had forgotten if he even had enemies.
“Do you recall your last meeting with him?” Gnaria asked Dom.
“Let me check my memory,” Dom said and he closed his eyes. A minute passed and Gnaria looked at me and she seemed to wonder if Dom had fallen asleep.
Dom finally opened his eyes again. His eyes were unfocused as though he was back in the day years ago when the goat king had last come.
“He came suddenly that day,” Dom said, “usually he would send me a message before coming as he had the message spell. It was only when I was taking a stroll when I suddenly saw him. Hell, at first I had thought he was a thief before realising it was actually him. He looked a bit stressed. So I offered him some rum—”
“You have rum?” Gnaria asked eagerly.
“Yes—”
I let out a loud cough. Gnaria looked at me with a somewhat guilty expression.
“Please continue with what you were saying about the goat king,” I said to Dom.
But Dom seemed to have come back to the present time and his eyes were wider and more alert.
“You know I haven’t had a glass of rum in a while,” he said, “today would be a fine day to have it with the two of you…. But darn it, the taste of tea is still in my mouth.”
“I think we can have it after you tell us about your last meeting with the goat king,” I said. I hoped by then Dom would have forgotten that he wanted to have rum. I didn’t really want Gnaria to end up drinking a gallon of rum after promising to drink a glass.
“So it shall be,” Dom said and I was grateful to him. He closed his eyes again, transporting himself back in time. He spoke with his eyes closed.
“But the goat king refused to have rum,” Dom said, “he said he wanted to think clearly. And then he told me a poem and he asked me never to forget it. He even made me recite it a dozen times and I have never been able to get that poem out of my head. And then he left, almost in a hurry, and it was the last time I ever saw him. Before leaving he did tell me that if someone that I trust ever comes to my garden and asks about him, I should recite the poem to them.”
“Can you recite the poem to us?” I asked, somewhat tentatively.
Dom narrowed his eyes at Gnaria and me just a bit, then he relaxed and said.
“Okay, I trust you two. Besides, I don’t think I would get into any war with the goat king if I recite the poem to someone that I don’t trust. The goat king is barely a memory now and I do not think he is going to pay me a visit physically in the near future if ever.” And then Dom coughed. “So here goes the poem.”
But then he did not recite the poem. Silence followed instead.
“You forgot it?” I asked finally.
“It had something to do with fifty steps and a fifth post,” Dom said. He looked a bit embarrassed since only a few moments back he had boasted that he had never been able to forget the poem. And then a twinkle overcame Dom’s eyes. “The fountain in the centre, Fifty steps away from the fifth post to me you are, Someday we shall be wed.” Dom smiled. “That was the poem.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
Dom nodded.
“Three lines only. It’s the complete poem, believe me.”
The poem was obviously some kind of a riddle.
“Does your garden have a fountain?” I asked.
“It does,” Dom replied.
“Can you take us there?”
“Sure.”
So Dom led Gnaria and me to the centre of the garden. We had not come to this part of the garden earlier as the stream goddess’s plant had been in a different part of the garden. The water of the fountain fell rather silently. On all four sides of the fountain, there were a total of forty small posts on the sides of the paths that led to different parts of the garden.
I ran the poem in my head again. “Fifth post from me.” What could ‘me’ possibly be?
The goat king?
But the goat king was dead.
Was he?
“Do you know where the plant of the goat king is?” I asked Dom. Dom and Gnaria had been gazing at the fountain. The garden contained plants of everyone in the world of Arun. If the goat king was alive under any circumstance then his plant should be in the garden as well.
“Over there,” Dom said, pointing at a rather purple plant a few metres away. The three of us moved to it. The plants surrounding the one of the goat king were all green and lively. The goat king’s one however looked sick and on the verge of death. I bent down next to it.
“I wonder if the goat king is in the best health,” Dom remarked. “But then, he must be very old by now, and the fact that he is alive is in itself a miracle.”
My mind meanwhile was busy with the poem.
Fifty steps away from the fifth post to me…
I considered the nearest post that was to the goat king’s plant as the first post and then I walked to the fifth one. I put my paw onto it and leaned against it. Fifty steps away… But in which direction?
And then I saw it.
It was a small arrow. One that had been engraved near the very base of the post rather crudely with a sharp object. None of the other posts had a similar arrow. It was pointing towards the east. I felt a rush of adrenaline inside me.
I began to take one step after the other towards the east in a straight line, keeping a count on the steps I was taking, while Gnaria and Dom followed me.
My seventh step took me away from the path and into the place where the plants were growing.
“Be careful,” Dom said from behind with a note of warning, “do not harm even a single leaf.”
I was careful as I walked through the plants. And then finally, I took my fiftieth step.
There was nothing remarkable at the spot, just a few plants with the names of the people written at their bases just like the other plants in the garden. I had been expecting at least something a bit different and was disappointed.
Chapter 14
“Do you see anything?” Gnaria asked from behind.
&nbs
p; “Nothing out of the ordinary,” I replied. I felt odd speaking those words for we were in the most extraordinary garden in the world of Arun. “I have taken fifty steps.”
“Your paws and the goat king’s hooves are probably not of the same size,” Gnaria said.
“The goat king had feet, not hooves,” Dom corrected. “He was half goat, half human.”
Why, I had almost forgotten that bit about the legend of the goat king!
I began to move forward. I was pretty sure that the goat king’s feet were twice the size of my paws and he had been probably twice my height as well. Even the dogmen with their half human bodies were larger in size than cats.
A minute later I reached what I had been searching for. It was an extraordinary plant compared to the rest of the plants in the garden for it had no name at its base. What more, there was a curious house-shaped flower in one of the branches of the plant.
Rather absentmindedly I held the house shaped flower in my paw and I repeated the poem under my breath.
“The fountain in the centre, Fifty steps away from the fifth post to me you are, Someday we shall be wed.”
The moment I said the words when a bright light engulfed me from all sides. The garden disappeared and so did Gnaria and Dom. There was only light all around me. Panic seized me. What was happening?
And then the light around me disappeared.
I found myself in a room.
There was a bed in front of me and on the bed there was a female. She was a strange cross between a goat and a human. She had horns on her head and her ears were very much like that of a goat. However, the rest of her body was very much like that of a human female. Her face was very pale though and her eyes had sunken deep. Yet, there was a great beauty about her. A beauty that was dying. She was sipping what looked like a medicinal liquid from a cup.
She suddenly realised my presence and her sunken eyes went wide.
“Who are you?” she asked, spilling some tea on her clothes in her astonishment.
“I… I am Timmy,” I managed to say. And then I hastily added, “Do you know anything about the goat king?”
She did not reply to my question. Instead, with an overly curious face, she somehow managed to get up from her bed with much effort, put the cup of tea on a nearby table and then she came to me and touched me on the chest.
Her finger went right into my chest and only then I realised that my body was translucent.
“You are translucent,” the goat woman said, and then her eyes widened even more in horror, “Are you a ghost?”
“No!” I said. I didn’t know why I was translucent. But I felt alive and was sure that I hadn’t died.
“What do you know of the goat king?” the goat woman asked me, even though it was more or less the same question that I had asked her only a few moments back. She didn’t seem as afraid of me now.
“I am on the quest of the goat king,” I replied.
“To find him?”
I thought a moment before speaking. I was ultimately after the treasure. But I wondered if I should say that to the goat woman.
“Yes, sort of,” I replied.
The goat woman observed me for a while, and then she rushed to a cupboard and then she took out what looked like a plant from there. Why, it was the same plant back in the garden that didn’t have a name at its base. Except this one was a very small replica of it. There was even a small flower in the replica that looked like a house. The plant was also glowing.
The goat woman kept the replica plant on the bed and then she fell on her knees and began to sob as though she was having a breakdown overcome by emotions.
“Uh, are you all right?” I said to her, taking a hesitant step towards her and wondering if I had said or done anything that had hurt her. I tried to put a paw on her shoulder in a weak attempt to console her, but I couldn’t touch her. My paw went right through her.
“I… I am Hoovemine, a concubine of the goat king,” the goat woman finally spoke through her sobs. “I am playing host to an illness that has refused to leave me since it started decades ago. I have even tried to kill myself, but it is just not possible for me for I am destined to be united with the goat king and become his queen. A long time ago, before I was stricken with this malady, the goat king came to me with this plant and told me to keep it safe and he told me that he would soon marry me. But he looked very distressed that day and it was the last day that I ever saw of him. I cannot die without him being still alive, but I do not know why he has not come to take me with him. Why did he make all the promises if he couldn’t fulfil them?”
Hearing the tale of Hoovemine, I did not know what to say. I could however see the point why the goat king had told the poem to Dom and asked him to always remember him. He had probably hoped that someday someone who was after his quest would be able to solve the poem and come to know about Hoovemine.
“Please,” Hoovemine said to me, “if ever you meet the goat king, will you tell him about me? That I am still suffering all because of his false promises?”
At that moment, the replica plant that Hoovemine had kept on the bed began to glow very bright. Hoovemine and the room disappeared. And after a while, I found myself back in the great garden in front of the plant, my paw still touching the house-shaped flower. I withdrew my paw.
“You are back!” Gnaria said behind me. I turned at Dom and her and saw that the two of them looked quite relieved to see me.
“Where did you go?” Dom asked.
“We were so worried for you,” Gnaria said.
And just then a message popped up in my vision.
Your relationship with Gnaria has improved!
She cares for you enough to worry for you when you are gone!
“I met a concubine of the goat king,” I said and for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off Gnaria’s face. The message was still slowly disappearing from my vision. I had received relationship messages a few times before, mostly of my degrading relationship with my father and occasionally improvement messages for my brother and mother, but even that was a long time ago. I had certainly never received a message that said a girl liked me enough to care for me.
“A concubine?” Dom asked. Then he looked up at the sky as though trying hard to remember something. “I recall the goat king had quite a few wives.” He sighed, “Not everyone is as lucky as him.”
Lucky? I thought. He must have broken a few too many hearts with his promises. I made up my mind that if I ever met the goat king I would definitely tell him about Hoovemine.
Dom asked us if we would stay at his home for the night. But Gnaria and I turned him down and instead asked him if he could show us a way to get out of the forest of Ultur.
“Hmm,” Dom said, looking a bit turned down, “if that is what you want, then so be it.”
Dom then clapped his paws and the moment he did so that at the edges of the garden walls appeared. Beyond the walls we could see the town!
“Just climb over those walls,” Dom said.
“We wouldn’t have come to know of the concubine if you had not told us the poem,” I said to Dom to thank him. He nodded with a smile.
“It’s a wonder that I remembered it in the first place.”
Chapter 15
It took Gnaria and me just a few minutes to get to the wall. And the moment we climbed on top of the wall that the garden behind us disappeared and was replaced by the forest of Ultur as we had first seen it from atop the wall, with the wall at the opposite side visible through the trees despite the darkness.
“You all are still here!” Gnaria said with a shrill cry.
Why, Gnaria’s group was still at the place where we had last seen them! It was late at night and I had been pretty sure that they had left, but here they were. All of them were asleep though.
Gnaria and I jumped down from the wall. The moment I did so that a new notification appeared in my vision, even as I felt a fuzzy feeling take hold of me.
Congratulations!
/> You have survived the forest of Ultur from which few have ever returned!
You level up!
And then another notification appeared.
Congratulations!
You receive a new spell! The messaging spell.
Using the messaging spell you can send messages to people that you know or have met in the past near and far away. To send messages to people nearby, make sure that they are in a direct line of sight from you so that the spell would consume less mana and you would be able to send more messages.
Note: If you send messages to someone far away it can deplete all your mana. You might not be able to use any of your spells until your mana replenishes.
Gnaria began to go from one of her friends to the other shaking them awake. They were positively surprised on seeing her and said that they had never thought that they would ever see her again. But still they had decided to wait till the next day, hoping for a miracle—one that had actually happened.
Zuli winked at me and said that had I not been with Gnaria then Gnaria would have never been able to get out of the forest on her own. As Gnaria began to tell them about the adventures that we had had, I decided that I should send a message to King Kitty, my father.
He was a good distance away from where I was, and I knew sending him a message would deplete me of all my mana, but I felt like I was obliged to send him a message. Despite the fact that I had never liked him a voice inside me told me that he had been deeply hurt when he had discovered that I was gone. I wanted him to know the reason why I had chosen to embark on the quest and it was not solely because I had been fanaticizing of discovering the treasure of the goat king ever since I had been a little kitten.
Dear father,
I have decided to embark on the quest for the treasure of the goat king. I came to your chamber yesterday at the break of dawn and discovered the map in your fireplace. As soon as I took out the map from the fireplace it became as though it had never been touched by the fire. Then I was offered the quest and I chose to accept it.
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