by Logan Jacobs
“Okay, fine,” I sighed. “We’ll stay one night, but that’s it.”
“Oh, thank you, Vander!” the centaur princess exclaimed and flung her slender arms around my nearest neck as her huge dark eyes sparkled with joy. I started to worry that she would never want to leave Galeurn, since she seemed so convinced that it was the absolutely perfect place. Part of me hoped that whoever or whatever was stealing these golden apples would turn out to be menacing enough to change her mind.
Chapter Eight
“So where is this tree with the golden apples anyway?” I asked the pair of teenagers.
“It’s in the mayor’s garden, because it doesn’t belong to anyone, it belongs to the whole village,” Zan said. “A few generations ago a really wealthy treasure hunter found the seeds that it grew from and brought them back, but then in his will he bequeathed the tree to Galeurn.”
“We’ll go with you tonight,” Bill offered eagerly.
“No, you won’t,” Florenia said. She looked impatient with the way he seemed physically incapable of removing his eyes from her. “We’ll need to maintain our focus. We can’t be distracted.”
“But you will want to be distracted, so you don’t fall asleep,” Bill whined.
“We are perfectly capable of distracting each other,” Florenia purred as she tossed me a wink.
Even that unsubtle hint didn’t seem to deter the practically drooling teenagers.
“Yeah guys, you don’t know much about how this golden apple thief situation works, but it’s been going on for several months, and almost everyone in Galeurn has tried sitting up at least once, so we’ve heard all the stories by now,” Zan said. “We know a lot of stuff that can help you.”
“Like what, exactly?” Florenia inquired. “No one else’s tactics have seemed to work yet, have they? It sounds like everyone is at the point of giving up?”
“You don’t even know where the mayor’s garden is,” Zan huffed.
“I am confident that we can find it,” Florenia replied. “Everyone here is so wonderfully cordial, I am sure we will find a citizen generous enough to provide us with directions.”
“We don’t need your permission to be in the mayor’s garden,” Zan pointed out. “He’s opened it to all challengers, and we live here.”
Bill elbowed him and shook his head slightly. “They clearly don’t want us there, Zan,” he sighed and waited hopefully for one of the women to contradict him. None of them did.
“Sorry,” Lizzy said. “We just don’t have time for babysitting.”
That seemed a little unnecessarily harsh, but it did the trick. The two boys scowled, opened their mouths to retort, realized that pretty much anything they could say at that point would just embarrass themselves more, and stalked off bristling.
“Poor kids,” I said.
“They would have been clingy and hopeful all night, it was best to get rid of them as soon as possible,” Florenia said.
“What do you think a golden apple tastes like?” Ilandere wondered aloud.
“Probably the same as a red one,” Lizzy scoffed. “Only it’s the kind of thing rich people like to pay extra for.”
“You know, maybe we should have brought those kids along, as bait for the monster,” Willobee said thoughtfully.
We all turned to stare at him.
“How could you say such a thing?” Ilandere exclaimed.
“What monster you talkin’ about anyhow?” Lizzy demanded.
“The monster that’s eating all the golden apples,” replied the gnome.
“Monsters don’t eat apples,” the she-wolf stated confidently.
“Monsters don’t only eat apples,” Willobee corrected ominously.
“Those kids didn’t say nothin’ about nobody getting killed in this orchard,” Lizzy said impatiently. “They just said people keep falling asleep. So if there was a monster wouldn’t it eat them when they were asleep?”
“Hmm, unless,” Florenia suggested, “the primary consideration is for there to be no witnesses, and inducing sleep serves that purpose, but any witness who remained conscious would have to be disposed of in an alternate manner.”
Ilandere was usually the most fearful of all my companions, with the possible exception of Willobee, but in this case, she seemed so ecstatic about the prospect of spending the rest of the day and an entire night in Galeurn that even the discussion of a hypothetical man-eating monster could not dampen her spirits. “Any creature that loves apples so much that it comes back every night to eat them can’t possibly be that evil,” she said.
I really didn’t think the logic of that statement held up, but I wasn’t going to say anything about it.
“Hmph,” Lizzy snorted. “It’s probably some kinda long-lost horse cousin of yours.”
“I just hope it’s not a magician,” Willobee said nervously.
“Well, if we’re going to do this, we should go scout out the mayor’s garden,” Elodette said.
“Minna mentioned that she has a neighbor who makes some kind of dessert that she calls ice cream,” Ilandere said with wide eyes. “Because it’s icy but also has a creamy texture. And it’s flavored with--”
“Apples, we know,” Lizzy groaned.
“There’s plenty of time to do both,” I said. “It’s not even time for dinner yet. We have several hours before nightfall.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening wandering the pretty cobbled streets of Galeurn and sampling various apple-flavored, apple-scented, apple-shaped, and otherwise apple-centric goods, each of which delighted the little centaur princess more than the last. The villagers certainly recognized that we were strangers and paid us extra attention, but they seemed more used to having strangers around than the people of other small rural communities typically were, because it sounded like people came from far and wide to trade with them.
We brought up the topic of the mysteriously disappearing golden apples in the mayor’s garden a few times to see if we could learn anything else about the situation, but all the villagers said much the same as what Bill and Zan had already told us. They didn’t know who was taking them or why, but everyone who stayed in the garden overnight to try to figure it out inevitably just fell asleep. The golden apples were an extremely valuable commodity and this displeased them, but it also wasn’t ruining their lives the way the slaughter of their sheep herds had been ruining the lives of the Sanctimians in another village my friends and I had visited once. It was just a frustrating mystery, and one that they were willing to offer a generous reward to have resolved. But at the same time the mystery itself brought in tourist money from adventurers who would show up to Galeurn to stand a watch.
For dinner, we found an inn where they served apple casserole, stuffed apples, steak drizzled with an apple reduction, and so on and so forth, accompanied with copious quantities of apple brandy. Willobee said that it was a little bitter for his taste, and he preferred honey mead, but that didn’t stop him from outdrinking all four of my selves combined as usual.
It was easy enough to find our way to the mayor’s garden from there after asking for directions from the innkeeper. By then, it was twilight, and the various ornamental bushes and shrubs that comprised most of the vast garden were just dim shapes, livened by the colors of some of the more vivid flowers. There were a few trees, but most of them were decorative. We found a few in a relatively sparse area where we tethered Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry for the night and hoped that they would do the minimal possible damage to the vegetation.
There was just one grove of apple trees planted in a circle, and in the center of the circle was the golden apple tree, which stood taller than the rest.
When we went up to get a closer look, we could see that this central tree had faintly gold-flecked leaves.
Then Ilandere pointed high up into its branches and said, “Look!”
Near the crown of the tree, there was a small round golden object gleaming faintly.
Wil
lobee waddled over to the other side of the tree and pointed up too. “There’s another one,” he said.
In total, we found three apples. They looked perfect to me, but they were about twenty feet up so it was hard to tell, and the villagers had all agreed that they were not ripe if plucked before morning, before the nightly visit of their mysterious thief.
Then we settled down at the foot of the golden apple tree to wait. One of my selves waited there with the rest of my friends, while the other three of me dispersed to patrol the garden walls.
I sat down in front of the tree, and Ilandere settled down beside me and folded her knees beneath her, and nestled herself against me with both of her hands laid on my shoulder and her pointed little chin resting on top of them. Florenia snuggled up on the other side of that same body with her head on my chest and her hand absently stroking my thigh.
Lizzy meanwhile declared, “It’s wolf o’clock,” morphed, and padded off into the shadows of the garden, presumably to sniff around for clues.
Elodette didn’t move off any more than a few yards from us, but she used the uncanny ability that she had to blend into the shadows so that it became easy to forget she was even there, silently watching with her bow at the ready.
Willobee found a nearby rock to lean against like an armchair, crossed his arms over his round little belly, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes to rest, but I knew he was still conscious, since he wasn’t snoring.
“What’s everyone else’s favorite fruit?” I asked after a minute. “I know what Ilandere’s is.”
“Strawberries,” Florenia said. “Preferably dipped in chocolate.”
“Grapes,” Elodette said.
“The parcantewli melon of the Kirajistan steppes,” Willobee answered.
“Yeah, what’s that like?” I asked, just as I knew the gnome had wanted me to.
“It’s striped green and scarlet on the outside, and the shell is so tough that it requires a hatchet to crack it open, and it’s juicy and delicious on the inside,” Willobee said, “and the seeds have hallucinogenic properties.”
“Of course that’s your favorite,” Elodette sighed. “Are you ever completely sober?”
“Not if I can help it,” the gnome replied.
“What about you, Vander?” Ilandere asked. “What’s your favorite fruit?”
I thought about it. “Back at my temple, on special occasions, like holy days, we would have fresh orange slices sometimes. I think that was my favorite.”
Everyone fell silent again. I knew that it was because we were all feeling quite drowsy, not necessarily supernaturally drowsy, but just the kind of drowsy that you get after a really heavy meal when you’re resting with friends in a peaceful garden after a series of tiring adventures. So I decided that I had to force my companions to keep talking to stay awake.
“Okay, if you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” I asked.
“Apples,” Ilandere said immediately and predictably.
“Boar meat,” Elodette answered.
“Hmm, perhaps quail eggs,” Florenia said. “But perhaps they are too rich. I would need to take care to maintain my waistline.”
“I would soon die of boredom and a broken heart, no matter which food it was,” Willobee said. “Unless-- would liquids also be restricted, Master? If you pureed the foods would they count as drink instead?”
“You can’t cheat at everything, gnome,” Elodette said tiredly.
“The world is a more flexible place with more moveable factors than you think, my dear,” Willobee retorted. “If everyone played by the same rules, it would be dull indeed.”
“You mean if all of society were just and honorable?” Elodette asked.
Willobee’s response to that prospect was a loud, rumbling snore.
“Damn it,” I said. “Willobee, wake up. We’ve been here for less than half an hour, we can’t be a man down already.”
The gnome ignored me, even when I disentangled myself from the women to go over and shake him gently. That was pretty typical of Willobee and didn’t necessarily reflect some kind of mystical apple-thieving powers at work, though. Also, when I shook him, it caused a small glass bottle to fall out of one of his pockets and roll across the ground. I picked up the bottle and squinted at the label.
“Hmm,” I said. “When did Willobee get the chance to purchase apple cordial?”
No one could answer that question, but no one was surprised by the discovery either.
Ilandere covered her mouth as she yawned and said, “Oh! Pardon me. Do you think the curse is starting, Vander?”
“No,” I said. “I think we’re all just tired and ate a lot today. It doesn’t feel like a curse to any of you, does it? Because I just feel tired in a normal way.”
“I don’t know, I just know I feel awfully tired,” Ilandere said. “I’m sorry in advance if I fall asleep. I’m trying my best not to. I want to stay up and help you.”
“Don’t worry, I’d like your company but if you can’t help falling asleep, that’s fine too,” I said.
“I feel a bit sleepy but it isn’t anything I can’t handle,” Florenia said.
“Well, I don’t even feel tired at all,” Elodette said. “Maybe it’s like with the dosage for medicine. I’m just too large and powerful to be affected by a curse designed for humans.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I said. “But I don’t really know anything about magic, so maybe. If Willobee were awake, he might have a better idea.”
“Someone told me today that the sugar in apples helps give you energy and keep you awake,” Ilandere said. She stumbled to her hooves and trotted over to one of the ordinary apple trees that surrounded us to pluck what must have been her dozenth apple of the day and brought it back to munch on. At first, I could hear the dainty little crunching sounds near my ear. Then a few moments later they ceased.
“…Ilandere?” I asked as I turned my head her way. Luckily, the horse parts of her anatomy were already in a seated position, but her upper body fell unconscious across my lap as the half-eaten apple rolled out of her hands. I placed a few fingers on her throat under her jawline to make sure her pulse was strong, which it was. The little centaur sighed a little in her sleep.
“Okay, Florenia and Elodette, I’m counting on you two now,” I said. Lizzy, too, at least I hoped so, but the she-wolf was off pacing the dark corners of the garden, and I didn’t know for sure whether I could still include her in my count. I tried to get eyes on her through one of my wall patrolling selves and suddenly realized that I only had three available points of view in total.
I reached out through my consciousness for my fourth self and found my self asleep. I forced myself awake and came to facedown in a hydrangea bush.
“Ugh,” I groaned and got back up to help my other selves look around for Lizzy.
Finally I caught a glimpse of the giant wolf padding around between some bushes. I was about to call out hello to her when she staggered and toppled over. She breathed heavily and twitched a bit. Then thirty seconds later she growled, shook herself, forced herself back up to her feet, and kept pacing.
“Do centaurs, ah, get a lot of sleep in your herd?” my self that was by the golden apple tree asked Elodette. “Or are you all up-before-dawn types?” I had a feeling it was the latter, and that the warrior centaur was about to display a superior attitude about it.
But she didn’t answer me at all.
“… Elodette?” I tried again. With my other companions, I had been slightly dismayed each time one of them fell asleep, because that reduced our chances of succeeding at catching the apple thief. But with Elodette, I had to admit there was a part of me that enjoyed the prospect of her being forced to admit that there was at least one thing she didn’t have superior discipline at.
When I got up to go investigate and make sure the huntress was okay, I discovered that she had fallen asleep standing up. There was almost no change whatsoever in her pos
ture. She hadn’t even lost her grip on her bow. Her sharp gray eyes had simply closed, and her breathing had slowed slightly. She even looked just as stern and unapproachable asleep as she did awake.
“She’s asleep?” murmured Florenia when I sat back down. She was definitely struggling by then, but the beautiful duke’s daughter’s intense willpower was not to be underestimated.
“Think so,” I confirmed. “Unless she’s just pretending. I don’t know who sleeps like that. It’s creepy. People are supposed to look sloppy when they’re asleep. Or angelic. Or something. But not just exactly the same.”
“Hmm,” Florenia purred. “That leaves you and I all alone then.”
“Well, Lizzy’s still toughing it out too,” I said. Kind of. My other selves posted by the wall had seen the she-wolf fall over three times now. But each time, I had also seen her get back up.
“Well, Lizzy is welcome to join us if she’d like to,” Florenia replied, and leaned in to kiss me. I tangled my hand in her chestnut colored hair and pulled her body into my lap. Our tongues darting against each other’s and her breasts pressing up against my chest and her crotch grinding against mine sent the blood pumping through my veins and made me feel more awake. A hell of a lot more awake.
After a few minutes Florenia reached down to unlace my pants, pulled them down to my knees, and ran her tongue lightly from the base to the tip of my shaft. I closed my eyes as my cock throbbed with anticipation.
Then after a few seconds I opened them again when I felt no further contact either of hand or mouth.
“Florenia?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Damn it, are you fucking kidding me?”
She wasn’t kidding me. She was completely asleep in the grass.
“How could you do this to me?” I grumbled.
Meanwhile, one of my other selves went to check on Lizzy. I found a huge tawny mound of fur in the grass.