And the Julia laughed.
“Do not worry,” she said, “I will set a charm on you which will enable you to breathe underwater. Now come along.”
Well, Julia had just used her magic to heal my broken paw and there was every chance that she knew magic with which she could make us breathe underwater, so I decided to let my doubts blow away in the wind.
After a few seconds the water was reaching my neck. Julia placed her hands on me and Gnaria and then she mumbled a spell. Immediately a bubble formed around each of our heads. When I put my head underwater, I could easily breathe. Julia sure knew a few spells.
Chapter 21
Julia led us to the very bottom of the sea bed. It was a one of a kind experience to walk on the sea bed. Perhaps the most wondrous experience I had ever had. Fishes and other sea creatures swam past us, not seeming to mind land intruders in their underwater territory. Sea weeds grew in plenty everywhere.
A curious little fish swam up to Gnaria’s bubble. Gnaria was frightened that her bubble might burst and she chased away the fish. The fish had only gone a short distance when a larger fish that had been lying on the sand in wait shot up and gobbled up the small fish.
Eventually after having walked the sea bed for at least a mile, we reached a place where there was a great ring of fin-like structures. This ring of fin-like structures seemed to surround the entire island. The fin-like spongy structures were in the hundreds and each was at least a few metres tall.
“What are these?” I found myself asking to Julia. My voice reverberated all around the bubble that was around my head.
Gnaria knelt down near one fin and she dug some sand out of curiosity. A black spongy mass was revealed and it was to this tissue-like mass that the fin was attached. In fact all the fin-like structures were probably attached to the same tissue-like mass. I suddenly realised that the tissue-like mass below the sand must be spread all around the island.
“The island in reality is not an island,” Julia answered and her voice too reverberated about my air bubble.
“What is it then?” I asked, not getting Julia.
“This fins that you see and the spongy mass that you see below the sand when you dig it are parts of a living organism,” Julia said.
I felt like someone had hit me on the face as I suddenly realised what Julia really meant.
“The… the island is a living organism?” I asked in disbelief.
Julia nodded solemnly, while Gnaria was gaping, apparently what she had heard being too much for her to digest.
“The island is a living organism,” Julia said, “or to be more precise, the island rests upon a living organism. A living organism that is one of a kind. I called it the soul of the island.
“This great living organism used to be under my command, and it would move wherever I would command it to go, taking the island along with it. But then the catmen arrived, and with them they brought black magic. Somehow, the filthy catmen were able to drug the soul of the island with their black magic, such that it was rendered motionless. There is only one place where the soul of the island can be interacted with and it is in a temple that my forefathers built that is on the other side of the island.
“The catmen have taken over that temple and they keep drugging the soul, degrading it, making it feel like it is not a living being. Numerous times have I tried to get to the temple, but I can only keep my wind form for certain lengths of time. Once the wind form is gone the catmen can easily see me and they are able to attack me. I can easily deal with small numbers of catmen myself, but larger numbers—especially large numbers of necromancer catmen who can do black magic— are hard to be dealt with.”
“So you want us to help you get into the temple so that you can speak to the soul?” I asked.
“Precisely,” Julia answered. “I want you to distract the catmen enough that I can make my way past them and to the soul. Once I revive the soul and speak to it, all the catmen would have to flee this island or perish. We shall do this tonight. I hope you will help me?”
I thought over it. We would have to face catmen, and not ordinary ones that too, but necromancer catmen. It was not going to be even remotely easy.
“What do you say?” I asked Gnaria.
Gnaria seemed pretty sure of her decision.
“We are stuck in an island and there is no way we can get to Hostania,” Gnaria said, “unless we walk the length of the sea bed to Hostania which wouldn’t be easy. If we are going to have to stay in the island for a while, we would have to help her. Otherwise the catmen might attack us some night when we are sleeping and kill us.”
Worse would be if the catmen decided to make a breeder out of me. Gnaria they might kill and… do the same that they did with poor Maltuk, who apparently had been too old to serve as a breeder.
“We will help you,” I said to Julia, “for better or for worse.”
Princess Julia nodded, a smile of determination embracing her face.
Chapter 22
“Ugh! I think there’s a leech sticking to my leg sucking my blood!” Gnaria said. We were half way up the hill of the island. Julia had said that we would have the best chances of success if we attack the temple from atop the hill. The sun had set an hour ago. There was only faint light available and with it I could make out the faint shape of a leech sticking to the side of Gnaria’s leg. I bent and pulled it out and threw it away even as blood oozed from the place where the leech had previously been sucking blood from.
“I can heal it in a heartbeat,” Julia said, “but if I use any of my powers now it would get more difficult to keep my wind form later on.” She was indirectly saying that she wouldn’t help Gnaria.
“It’s okay,” Gnaria said, although there was a wince of pain on her face.
At that moment I glanced towards the sea in the distance and my heart skipped a beat— boats.
There were at least ten of them in total. And they were boats of considerable size and each held at least twenty cats. Some of the boats had already reached the shore of the island while the others were about to reach the shore. A cat in a hood got off the first boat that had reached the shore. For some reason I felt that the cat was a female one, because of the way she walked. She was carrying a torch and the light that fell from it on her made me wonder if I had known her in the past. The other cats hurried after her and she seemed to be the one in command of the group of cats.
The night when Minnata had died suddenly flashed in front of my mind’s eye and I recalled that one of the killers had been a female… one wearing a hood. Was there any possibility that this was the same cat? But why would she come to a remote island that was filled with brutes unless she wanted to give her male followers as breeders to the catmen?
And then the cat in the hood broke out into a song. Her voice was beautiful yet somewhat manly, and from it I knew that it was the very same cat who had been involved in the killing of the librarian Minnata. The song seemed to have been magically made loud.
“Come here O Princess,
“Come here Julia,
“There are things that old wives must discuss.”
And she kept repeating these lines over and over. Gnaria and I looked at Julia, who was staring at the new arrivals on the sea shore, lost in thoughts, her eyes wide.
“Do you know her?” I asked Julia, because it was obvious that the cat in the hood was calling her.
But Julia seemed to have forgotten that we were standing next to her. She began to run down the hill, while Gnaria and I uneasily followed her. I wondered if we would ever be attacking the temple tonight. I had no clue as to what was going to happen next so I just grabbed Gnaria’s paw. At least there was one person in the island who was as confused regarding what was happening as me.
Soon we reached the bottom of the hill but Julia kept running. Soon she was at the edge of the woods and then she went to the shore. Gnaria was about to follow her to the shore, but I stopped moving and held on tight to her.
“What
?” Gnaria asked me.
“Let’s stay here and watch what happens,” I said to her.
It was best to stay in the woods and not to move out in the open. There were at least two hundred cats in the shore now. And that female cat in the hood had been involved in the murder of Minnata. It was best to not forget that.
“I am glad that you are still here and have come,” the hooded female said as Julia reached her.
“What do you want from me?” Julia asked. There was not much friendliness in her voice though from her tone it seemed like Julia knew who the hooded female was.
“It’s good to see you,” the hooded female said. I wondered if she was trying too hard to sound affectionate. “Too bad we all have to be living in separation from each other for so long.”
“How did you find me?” Julia asked and somewhere in her voice there was a trace of anger.
“Perseverance,” the hooded female said. She was shedding her affectionate tone now apparently realising that using it was not going to be of much use anyway. “I yearn for the good days of old.”
“Good days that ended in pain,” Julia said.
“But good days they were nonetheless, regardless of how they came to an end.”
“Why have you come here,” Julia asked. “And don’t say it’s because of the good days. Get to the core of things or get off my island.”
The hooded female sighed.
“Okay then, if that is what you please. I want to find him, you do realise that I cannot do it alone. To complete the code, I would need a second word… one that you can provide.”
“I shall not provide it,” Julia answered. “I have no interest in finding him.”
“Come on, Julia. He was a good person. We should not judge him for what he did in the last days.”
“Ask the second word to one of the others,” Julia said. “Now please leave my island.”
“In that case I will have to insist,” the hooded female said.
A moment of silence passed.
“I shall not give the second word to you.”
Another moment of silence passed.
“Fine,” the hooded female said. And the next second she took out a container from under her robes. The moment she did this that Julia let out a shriek, and then she began to flow into the container as though she was made of gas and the container was pulling her into it.
Gnaria beside me let out a gasp. Soon, Julia had completely disappeared and a smaller version of her appeared inside the transparent container. She was in a fit of panic and was banging her hands on the sides of the container in an effort to break it but to no avail.
“If you do not give it to me, I will never let you be free,” the hooded female said looking at the jar. “A few more days and I hope that some sense will come to you.”
The hooded female then turned towards her cats.
“Set up camp for tonight,” she said to them, “tomorrow we go to—”
She couldn’t say past the word, for the next moment a cry pierced the air. I turned and saw that there were dozens of catmen at the foot of the hill. They had somehow come to know the arrival of the cats. All of the catmen were carrying swords and daggers. And there were also some strange looking catmen who were wearing robes and seemed like necromancers who knew evil spells.
Chapter 23
The catmen charged towards the shore. Almost instinctively I activated the Long Hands spell and I shot my paw to a branch high up the nearest tree. I grabbed Gnaria around her waist, and the two of us shot up to the branch as the first of the catmen reached the place where we had been till now.
The cats at the shore drew out their own swords as the catmen reached them. Gnaria and I watched from atop the safety of the branch even as the catmen began to overpower the cats who were far weaker.
The hooded female had been struck with surprise at the arrival of the catmen, and all she did now was to hold the container and run towards one of the boats. Some of the cats were butchered by the catmen at the spot and I was pretty sure that the butchered cats would end up becoming dinner for the catmen, while some of the other cats were pinned down and then tied up such that they couldn’t move. The necromancer catmen went about throwing spells. The cats that were hit by the spells dropped down unconscious.
“She’s trying to escape,” Gnaria said, pointing at the hooded female. The hooded female pushed a boat desperately towards the sea even as her countless followers fell. Just then a sudden idea came to my mind. Could I sneak up to her somehow and take the container away from her and save Julia?
“You wait here, all right?” I said to Gnaria. Gnaria frowned hard at me.
“What are you going to do?” she said. “Please stay here, it’s dangerous.”
“I know, but we need to save Julia.”
“Then let’s do it together,” Gnaria said.
Well, why not? I was better off not trying to play hero. Gnaria’s knife spell would obviously come handy in the situation.
The two of us got down from the tree.
“Keep the necromancers in sight,” I said to Gnaria. “If we get hit by one of their spells, we are dead.”
The two of us then moved, keeping ourselves as close to the edge of the woods as possible, hoping to not attract any attention of the catmen, who were busy with the cats.
And then we made a run towards the sea. The hooded female had almost pulled the big boat to the sea on her own by now.
Just then a catman appeared before us seemingly from nowhere. Gnaria immediately activated her knife spell. But I stopped her from launching herself at the catman. Instead I pointed my paw at the face of the catman and threw a rope spell, such that ropes immediately appeared all around the head of the catman. As the catman struggled to remove the ropes from over his eyes, we made our way around him towards the hooded female.
The moment she got the boat to the water that we reached her. She was so focussed on the boat that she missed us sneaking to her. I got behind her and grabbed the container from her. She let out a yelp of surprise.
“You!” she said to me.
“Yes, me,” I told her.
“How did you know that this island has one of the wives?” the female cat asked, although I was confused with her question. “You don’t have that part of the map.”
I decided it was best to completely ignore the female and instead make a run for the woods before a necromancer saw us. But as I fled from the female, accompanied by Gnaria, the container in my hands, when suddenly I tripped and fell face first onto the ground and the container rolled a few metres ahead of me.
I didn’t remember any stone that might have caused me to trip. I looked down at my legs and saw that there were ropes binding my legs together. I suddenly realised that the female knew the rope spell much like myself.
“Not so easy getting away from me,” the female said as she approached me. I heard a sound of whimpering and I turned my head sideways to see that even Gnaria was down on the sand, ropes binding her legs as well. “We are not in Drastak.”
My legs and torso might be tied up, but my arms were still free. I grabbed a nearby rock with my hand and hurled it as hard as I could at the glass container a few feet away from me. The moment the rock hit the glass that it shattered. The next moment Julia was fast flowing out of the container and before long she stood in front of me, glaring hard at the hooded female.
Thankfully, Julia raised her hand and muttered a spell. Immediately the ropes binding me became very loose. I was able to remove them from my body and I stood up. I went to Gnaria and helped remove her ropes as well.
“Should have brought a better container for me,” Julia said to the hooded female who was smirking. “You forgot that glass can be broken easily.” And then Julia turned at me and said:
“Go to the temple, it shouldn’t be hard for you to spot. The necromancers are busy here and you can get inside it with less difficulty. I’ll deal with this woman.”
I prayed that the hooded female di
dn’t have another hidden container in which she could trap Julia again and then Gnaria and I ran towards the woods away from the shore. We were able to get past all the catmen who were busy dealing with the cats.
It was when we were halfway up the hill when suddenly Gnaria grabbed my arm and stopped.
“What?” I said, casting a glance towards the beach that was in chaos.
“Don’t you remember,” Gnaria said panting, “Julia earlier told us that our main purpose was to distract the catmen so that she could get into the temple and speak to the soul? Maybe we should have remained in the beach and sent her to the temple?”
I scratched my head, trying to digest her words. My heart was beating way too fast. It finally dawned on me that Gnaria was correct. What if we got inside the temple only to find out that it was impossible for us to talk to the soul of the island? And in the instance that we were able to speak to the soul, what will we say to it? To somehow rid the island of the catmen? Something else?
“I-I think you are right,” I said. But my eyes were still fixed at the beach and I saw that some of the necromancers were returning towards the temple, letting the other catmen finish the job with the cats. “But I don’t think there’s any time left for us to return to the beach to get Julia. Let’s get to the temple and do what we can. If we can’t speak to the soul, maybe we’ll at least be able to free the cats?” I didn’t care for all the cats that the catmen were beating down at the beach, for they were related to the murder of Minnata. But I did want to help all the innocent cats that that were being already used as breeders by the catmen.
Chapter 24
The decision made, we moved up the hill as fast as we could. My legs grew weary and felt leaden, but I pushed them on. From time to time both Gnaria and I would get down on all fours and move like the cats we were.
And then we finally reached the top of the hill. From here we could see the other side of the island. Down below, near the foot of the hill, there was what looked like a pyramidal structure. This I reckoned was the temple that Julia had told us about. Farther away near the beach there were tens of pillars. To each pillar a number of cats were bound by chains of iron. The cats all looked like they had lost the will to live. Not far away from the pillars were a few catmen sleeping in the open.
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