The cat warriors who had survived me so far were in the process of fleeing from the chamber through the passageway. I followed them out of the chamber. The passageway led out to open air. In the distance, about five kilometres away, I could see the port of Hostania. The chamber that I had presently emerged from was at the bottom of a hill not far from the sea shore. There were no settlements here and the place was covered in thick woods. The cat warriors were fleeing from me, carrying their King, Narth, whom I had hit and who had lost consciousness.
I wanted an outlet for my rage and I began to punch and kick and bite the trees near me. I felt so unlike myself, as though I was not the one in control. I was so glad that I had asked Gnaria to not come to aid me. I might have hit her in my present state.
After a few minutes, the rage slowly began to leave me, and a feeling of great exhaustion came over me. I felt like if I lay down to the ground, I would fall into a sleep that would last for days. But somehow I managed to drag myself towards the sea beach, with the hope that after Gnaria, Julia and Oli were out of the tunnel they would come to the sea surface to check for me and find me in the beach. The party of the warriors that was carrying the king was moving very fast and I was sure that once they reached the port they would come back for me with hundreds more of cat warriors. And then I would be unable to do anything.
The moment I reached the shore, the last remaining bit of will power inside me died. I fell onto the soft sand of the beach. Little crabs crawled on the surface of the beach and somehow staring at them as they moved about the sand helped me to keep my eyes open.
After a while a figure appeared at the edge of the beach. A cat lady.
Gnaria.
She moved towards me with a hurried pace. The moment she reached me she fell on her knees beside me and took my head onto her lap.
“Are you okay, Timmy?” Gnaria said, her voice shaking with emotion.
“Yes,” I managed to mutter.
“I shouldn’t have left you,” Gnaria said, “I shouldn’t have left you.”
“It’s okay,” I told her.
Suddenly Gnaria bent her head and then she kissed me on the lips. I didn’t have the energy to kiss her back, but by the time she broke her lips from mine, I felt quite rejuvenated to an extent, as though she had somehow transferred fresh energy from herself to me through the kiss.
I kept staring at her for a while. The intertwined plants that I had seen in Dom’s garden flashed in the back of my mind. Were Gnaria and I really meant to be together?
And then, from the corner of my eyes, I noticed something move in our direction from the port of Hostania.
Warriors. Hundreds of them. They were coming for me.
“I think we should better get out of here,” I said to Gnaria. She nodded and she helped me to my feet. We moved towards the sea fast, Gnaria supporting most of my weight.
Chapter 31
By the time we reached the sea, a head appeared above the sea water.
Julia.
“So you found him,” Julia said to Gnaria. “Let me cast the spell on you two.”
Once underwater, Julia’s spell allowed us to breathe. We went to the bottom of the sea where Oli, the half human, half cat and half octopus wife of the goat king was waiting. Barely did we reach the sea bed when we saw cats jump into the sea overhead, near the surface of the sea. Some of them dived down in search of us, but they didn’t have Julia’s air bubble spell and they couldn’t remain under the water for long and had to return to the surface.
“I do not know how I can thank you,” Oli said to me.
“You can, by telling the second part of the code,” I said to her. Oli frowned, not seemingly understanding. She turned to Julia as though seeking an explanation.
“The code that can be used to find the goat king, our husband,” Julia said to Oli.
“But why do you want to find him?” Oli said, befuddled, “After all these years have you forgotten our last day together. Do you not remember that we wives hated each other because of him, when the true problem lay in him alone?”
“I can never forget that last day,” Julia said, “All the same there is a small chance that the goat king didn’t do what he did because he hated us. There is a chance that he didn’t want to hurt us, but something had compelled him to do it. If we can find him, we can ask him and perhaps know the truth.”
“So you need the second word?” Oli said, though she appeared unsure if she should give it to Julia.
Julia nodded.
“The second word is—”
Julia did the most outrageous thing before Oli could say the second word. She pointed her hands at Oli and some kind of a black liquid shot out of them and hit Oli. Oli was thrown many metres back and she lost consciousness.
“What have I done!” Julia cried.
The black liquid was still floating above the unconscious Oli, and now the black liquid assumed the rough form of a cat, one in a hood.
The liquid cat let out a laugh, which sounded so much like the laugh of Glosis.
“So sorry, Julia,” the voice of Glosis said, “I had to put this spell on you the last time we met so that in the scenario you set out on a quest to meet another of the wives, you would not be able to receive the second part of the code from them. So sorry!”
And then the black liquid dissolved into the water and was gone.
Julia clutched her hair.
“Glosis!” she said, as though she couldn’t understand at all what had just happened. “What… why?”
Meanwhile, Gnaria and I rushed to the unconscious Oli. We tapped her cheeks and tried to revive her, but she wouldn’t open her yes.
Gnaria put her ears over Oli’s chest.
“Her heart still beats,” she said, “thank the gods she is still alive.”
Julia finally came to us and bent down next to Oli.
“I never realised when Glosis put the spell on me,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” I told her, though I still wished if only Julia had been on her guard during her encounter with Glosis, otherwise by now we would have come to know about the location of the goat king. We had been so close… It stung my heart. I wondered if Oli was going to revive any time soon. All the hard work we had taken to free Oli had gone in vain. Still, I couldn’t help but think that there was something seriously wrong with Glosis, the goat king’s cat wife. First she had gone to the extent of killing Minnata so that she could acquire the map. And now she had made sure that Julia couldn’t receive the second part of the code from another wife. Why did she want to find out the location of the goat king, and at the same time didn’t want the other wives to find his location? I was sure that even if Julia had given Glosis the second part of the code to Glosis, then she would have only harmed Julia, perhaps even killed her, so that only she knew about the Goat king’s location.
Julia tried several spells to revive Oli, but none of her spells worked. She said that Glosis had used some powerful dark spell and she hadn’t been able to detect the spell even though the spell had clung to her for so many days, and it was also likely that Oli would wake up only after a great length of time from now, if ever.
Since all attempts to revive Oli had failed, we decided it was best that we first take her to Julia’s island, which happened to be at a great distance from where we were. I had also not replenished my mana which had been depleted after using the rage barbarian spell, so for a couple of hours we just rested. We had rested little anyway ever since we first embarked for Hostania. We were able to catch little fish that Gnaria and I ate raw after swimming to the surface of the sea, as we couldn’t eat with the air bubbles about our heads. Julia however refused to eat the fish saying that she had never eaten fish raw in her entire life.
Gnaria behaved in a somewhat shy manner to me. I reckoned she hadn’t expected herself to kiss miss on the sea shore, and it was her emotions that had made her do so, and she was probably wondering now if she had done the right thing.
&nbs
p; Once my mana replenished, we set off in the direction of the island. The three of us together carried Oli. Oli, despite all her tentacles, wasn’t very heavy. All the same, defeat clung to each one of us like a parasite. We felt like our efforts had gone in vain. I then thought of the cats that I had killed under the influence of the rage barbarian spell. Had they deserved it? I did not know. They were at the end of the day mere warriors who worked for the king. The word of the king was their command. The fault was entirely that of the king’s at having imprisoned Oli, and yet he had been able to escape my wrath. If I should have killed anybody, it should have been the king. But then there was also the fact that had I not killed the warriors, they most certainly would have killed me.
I decided it was best not to think about the matter and to focus on the important task at hand which was to return to Julia’s island. I wished if another gentle whale came along and I could use my Long Hands spell on it and transport everyone to the island in the matter of a few minutes.
We had made little progress over the span of a few hours and the light at the surface of the sea was fast decreasing telling us of the fact that sunset was going to occur soon, when we saw at least a dozen logs of wood floating on the sea surface. On top of the logs of wood were cats.
They were going in the direction of Hostania, which told us that they couldn’t be the warriors of King Narth.
“Are they the cats from the island?” Gnaria wondered.
There was a possibility. We swam up to the surface of the sea. It wasn’t easy to swim up, while carrying Oli at the same time, but somehow we managed it. When we surfaced, we saw a bunch of familiar faces.
“Why did you come?” Julia asked them.
“To take you back to the island,” one of the cats replied. “We were getting worried for you and so ventured to the sea after cutting down some of the trees.”
Chapter 32
So it happened that Julia, Gnaria and I got onto one of the logs of wood. We hauled the unconscious Oli on top of another log of wood. The cats were awestruck seeing Oli. But then, who wouldn’t be awestruck when they saw someone that was such a mixture of three different creatures? The cats had fashioned oars out of the branches of trees and with these we rowed our logs of wood in the direction of the island.
Thankfully the sea remained calm. Had it not remained so, or if a storm had come there was a good possibility that all the logs of wood and the cats atop them would be scattered in different directions or an even worse fate might have befallen everyone. By the time we reached the island finally it was very late at night. The cats that had remained on the island had created a big fire on the shore of the island, making sure that we would not miss the island in the darkness of the night.
When we reached the island, none of us went to rest. Instead we set to digging a pond of considerable size on the sandy beach of the island which we connected to the sea by digging a drain, such that the sea water flowed to it. In this pond we kept Oli, for we feared that spending too much time out of the water could be harmful for her. And then we fell onto the sandy shore and I would have readily closed my eyes and fallen into the blissful realm of dreams if not for the other cats that had prepared a good meal for us and they insisted that we eat before we lay our bodies to rest.
Only as I began to eat did I realise just how hungry I had been till then. The fish we had eaten at the sea were a distant dream now. We gobbled down the food, muttering thanks to the cats who had prepared it for us.
The next day when I awoke, it was already noon. Julia and Gnaria both were still fast asleep. I took out the map that I had snatched from Glosis so long ago. I had been to all the places mentioned in the map, except one. A place called Cragor.
Did another wife of the goat king reside there? There was a strong possibility for sure. If we were able to get to her then we should be able to get the second part of the code which could finally tell us about the location of the Goat King. Glosis’s spell on Julia had already been used up when Julia had asked Oli to tell the other part of the code. So there was some hope that we could finally get the full code.
We had slept on the beach and the pond containing Oli was only a few metres away from us. I walked to the pond. She was still unconscious. I wondered how long she would remain so. If she revived then we needn’t go all the way to Cragor, which was a great distance away and it would take at least a few days to get to the place. On top of that who knew how long it would take us to find another of the wives once we reached Cragor? We had been extremely lucky in finding the tunnel that had led us to Oli. Relying on luck was not an option. And then there was the possibility that Glosis would reach the goat king before we did. She had the other half of the map after all. I wondered if she had already reached the goat king.
I did not understand the motivations of Glosis. Did she plan to stay with the goat king alone and saw the other wives as her rivals? Or was she after the treasure of the goat king? I reckoned I would only know the truth after reaching the goat king.
I thought of my parents and of my brother. I wondered how they were. Father had not replied to my message. Perhaps he no longer considered me as his son as I had defied him. Still I hoped that he was all right.
Once Julia and Gnaria woke up we talked about our next course of action. We decided that the only option left was to travel to Cragor. Meanwhile, Julia would try to use her healing spells on Oli with the hope to revive her.
We instructed the soul of the island to move as fast as it could and then gave up everything to fate and to time. The days of travel to Cragor were ones of relative merriment, even though every time our gaze went towards the unconscious Oli we would feel a certain sense of sadness and guilt. I spent time with Julia and Gnaria and with the other cats, who organised various games for leisure. For decades the cats had been slaves to the vile catmen and they were very much enjoying their newfound freedom. They told us that they had barely been allowed to talk to each other when they had been enslaved.
I did not ask Gnaria about her feelings for me. That kiss by the seashore the other day had been something as unexpected to her as it had been to me. Then one night, I felt a sudden urge to take a piss and I found myself wide awake. I went off to the woods to relieve myself and when I turned back to look at the spot where Julia, Gnaria and I had been sleeping, a few metres away from each other, I saw only Julia fast asleep. Gnaria was missing.
Then my eyes fell on something that my sleepy mind had previously thought to be a boulder and realised that it was actually Gnaria. She was sitting alone a short distance away from where everyone was sleeping. She was staring up at the sky. I wondered if she knew if I was awake too.
I walked up to her.
“Hey,” I said to her, rubbing my eyes to get rid of the drowsiness, “not feeling sleepy?”
She shook her head, her eyes fixed in the stars above. The sky was clear that night. There were barely any clouds. The stars shone bright.
For a moment I sat beside her in silence, while she continued to stare up at the stars. I began to feel a bit uneasy. Should I go back to sleeping? Perhaps she just wanted some time alone?
And then she spoke, just as I was about to get up.
“What do you do when you miss someone?” she said to me.
“Miss someone?” I said, not having expected that particular question. “Well… there is nothing much to do except think about the times spent with whoever I am missing.”
I did not really miss my life at the castle. Hell if I ever had to be back in the castle for a great period of time, I would certainly miss the adventure that I was currently in. I would dream about all the deeds I had done over the course of the quest, and spend my time desiring to do something similar once again. I might even write a book about my adventure and put it in the library, so that someone in the future might find the book and be inspired by it to break free from the chains that are preventing them from doing whatever they really want to do. The title of the book? Timmy’s Great Adventures… tho
ugh “The Goat king’s Wives” wouldn’t be a bad title either, I reckon.
“You know, whenever I miss someone I look up at the stars and try to imagine their faces in the stars,” Gnaria presently said, before I could decide which one of the titles would be better for my book.
“You are missing your friends?” I asked her.
“I like my friends… but it is my parents that I am missing,” Gnaria replied.
“You never told me about your parents earlier,” I said to her. “Where do they live? Do they approve of your life of travel?”
“Actually there are dead,” Gnaria said. She just stated it, as though the fact that her parents were dead didn’t bother her.
“Um, I am sorry,” I said to her, not sure what else to say.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Gnaria said. “My parents died a long time ago when I was a kid. I remember little about them. The aunt I went to live with said that they had flown away to the stars and I still do not know the real cause of their death. And then I left my aunt and took on the life of travelling. Still, I miss my parents. I try to imagine the stars forming their faces.”
A moment of silence passed. A cool breeze blew and I caught a chill. And then I decided to ask the most important question ever. I knew it was the time to ask it and I did not stop my tongue.
“Gnaria… do you love me?’
She did not reply for a while and I wondered if she was going to reply at all, her gaze still fixed at the stars, trying to find her parents in them.
And then she slowly turned her head towards me and her eyes locked with mine.
“In the short time that we have been together, we have gone through a lot,” Gnaria said. “I think I have seen your true self and I think I do love you.”
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks. Gnaria hadn’t said anything in a shy manner and I found it hard to keep looking at her.
“And you?” Gnaria asked me.
My cheeks and ears had gone so hot by now that I was sure that after a few seconds they would catch fire. As for my throat it felt very dry such that I found myself unable to speak anything. So I just nodded.
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