The Maze of Life

Yew recalled that his mom once told him, that all men were always in a good mood after the meal, and that was the best time to talk with them.

He also wasn't a stupid kid and he did realize that his father was always more willing to do for him whatever he asked for after a large tasty meal. On the other hand, whenever Kapok was hungry, Yew would get scolded over little things that shouldn't matter that much.

Seeing as Ginkgo finished eating all of the soup in the pot, he wondered. They were alone, so it was a good time to talk about private matters. Ginkgo was in a good mood, because his adventure succeeded, and he was also sated. What if a good occasion like this wouldn’t happen again?

Yew gathered up his courage, "can I ask you a question?"

"Anything!" Ginkgo replied with a wide smile. He was looking forward to the conversation, but he didn't expect the question that arrived next.

“What is your family name?”

The man looked surprised, but he composed himself fairly quickly. “I don’t have one. I cut ties with my ex-family quite early, before I graduated from Nike.”

“Your ex-family, was it the Sea household?” the tired boy was tactful like a bullet.

Upon hearing the question, Ginkgo's face lost all its brightness and joy. He looked at Yew with a cold stare of someone analyzing a dangerous trap laid out in front of him. After staring at the boy for a while, he asked in a cold threatening voice, "Is this all you want to ask?"

"No," Yew responded calmly. Since he could no longer take back his words, there was no reason for him to act suspicious or dishonest. He decided to go all the way, deep into the lion's den. "The full question is: Are you Ginkgo Sea, the oldest son of the Sea household, who was disowned after he went to Hypnos; who decided to study in Nike as his cover-up school, but who's actually a graduate of Hypnos?"

At first, Ginkgo was surprised. He never expected that a little boy, whom he never met before, could have so many infos about him. Furthermore, Ginkgo kept much of it an absolute secret, so there were only a small number of people who’d known all those facts about his past.

Ginkgo relaxed a bit, drank some water and changed his tone to respect combined with wary, "So may I know, who is this boy," he took a short pause, "who's so interested in me?"

"My name is Yew Sky. I'm currently a student of Hypnos, attending Hecate," Yew introduced himself in a way that he would never introduce himself to anyone. However, he already knew that Ginkgo was also a student of Hypnos, and the easiest way to make the man trust him was to reveal the one thing both of them had in common.

Ginkgo grabbed his chin between his thumb and the index finger, "that explains a lot. So what do you need from me?"

"Did you break off all your ties with the Sea household?" Yew wanted to hear the confirmation from the man himself, before he talked about Cypress.

"Of course," he said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It's not like I had a say in this. The head of the Sea household decided that."

Yew now knew for certain that Ginkgo was really disowned by his father, "what about your siblings? Did you break off the ties with your younger brother?"

"My younger half-brother to be correct. Our mothers are different," Ginkgo said something, which normally would have been a very sensitive info and most people would rarely talk about it.

Upon hearing the statement, Yew was taken aback and he couldn't think of what to ask next. He wasn’t prepared for learning that much about the connection between Ginkgo and Cypress.

"My mother died when I was a baby," Ginkgo explained. "I was less than one yrold, so I don't remember anything. I don't even know what she looked like. And her husband didn't want to babysit a child, so he went against the Divine Laws and found himself another woman."

Ginkgo sat more comfortably and continued, "Since marriage is possible only once in a lifetime, he couldn't marry her, but she still became my adopted mother and the biological mother of my younger brother."

"She was fine with that?" Yew couldn't imagine that any woman in the world would want to be treated like a backup - like nothing more than a fake copy of a real wife.

Ginkgo sighed, "I don't think she had much of a choice. You see, the Sea household is very powerful and it often uses its influence behind the curtains. That’s why it's hard to tell what really happened and how much was arranged in the shadows, prior to the official pseudo-marriage."

"I see," Yew quickly understood, what he failed to understand the first time he met Cypress. He finally knew why Cypress warned him to never make enemies with the Sea household.

"But she was a good woman," Ginkgo continued. "A much better woman than her husband. It's a pity that she ended up as a stand-in wife, but I am thankful to her for all the care and love she gave me, and also for my younger brother that I had the opportunity to grow up with."

"That’s a bit similar to my childhood," Yew recalled his background. "I was born to some parents, whom I know nothing about. I was adopted, and my adopted mother is a very good woman, oh, but my adopted father is also a good man," he quickly added to avoid a misunderstanding. "He's a very good man. And I have an older sister, their biological daughter, who is a great sister. They all love me like their biological family member," Yew stopped before he added, "but I want to know more about my biological parents."

"Ask your parents?" Ginkgo offered.

Yew shook his head sideways, "in my family, we never kept secrets from each other, so if it was something they could tell me, they’d have done it already.”

"Then maybe it's better for you, if you don't know?" Ginkgo pointed out the most logical assumption.

"Even if it's like that, I still want to know," Yew looked straight into Ginkgo's eyes, "that's why I need to ask you something."

"I'm not good at looking for people," as an adventurer, Ginkgo’s specialty was looking for treasures not humans.

"No, it's not that. I want you to come with me to Hecate and meet your younger brother, half-brother - Cypress Sea." Yew corrected himself, but realized that maybe it was better to avoid the word 'half-brother' after all. After a quick moment of thinking, he concluded that he wouldn't have to worry which term to use if he just used the name.

Ginkgo furrowed his eyebrows, "you know Cypress?"

"I…" Yew wanted to explain to Ginkgo how he met Cypress, but looking back, he realized that so much happened, that it would be impossible to summarize it all in less than a paragraph. "A lot happened, and it's going to be a long story," he started.

"Then let's leave it for tomorrow," Ginkgo responded. "Today, I only want to know two things. One, do you know Cypress? Two, why do you want us to meet?"

"I know Cypress," Yew answered. "and he promised to find info on my parents, if I can find info about his older brother."

"And you agreed?"

"I tried looking for info on my parents by myself, but I couldn't find anything."

"So you thought that finding me is easier than finding your parents?" Ginkgo smiled at the boy.

"Cypress said that his older brother is a graduate of Hypnos, so I thought of asking other students of Hypnos for infos."

"If he asked you to find me, that means Cypress knows that you're a student of Hypnos."

"No, of course no! I kept this a secret," Yew raised up his hands in a denial.

Ginkgo slowly clapped, "if you really managed to keep it a secret from him, I'll be impressed, but if I were you, I wouldn't be surprised if he already knows your secrets."

"I wouldn't be. I already know that he's good at reading people," he recalled the previous meetings with Cypress.

"So you already experienced it?" Ginkgo chuckled. "He's always been that skilled at knowing people better than they know themselves. That’s why Cypress wouldn't ask you for anything, if he didn't see you as someone capable of doing it."

Yew listened, but he didn't know what to say to Ginkgo's comment.

Ginkgo looked at the entrance of the cave, which was already blocked by snow. "It's already late," he said. "Let's go to sleep for now. We'll continue tomorrow."

Yew nodded in agreement, went back inside his wool blanket, and rolled himself up like a caterpillar. He lay down near the three stones on the ground, which no longer flamed, but they still provided some heat.

Ginkgo drew an upside-down triangle pattern on the butterfly sticker that was functioning as a lamp, and the light immediately dimmed, but it didn’t turn off. It was dark enough to sleep, but light enough to see around. Afterward, Ginkgo lay down without any cover on the stone floor of the cave.

Yew went back to sleep fairly quickly. Ginkgo, on the other hand, couldn't fall asleep for a while, as he was looking back through his memories. Eventually he fell asleep, and in his dreams he saw again the events from his past: his childhood, his school years, his family, and the day when he was disowned. At the end, he dreamed of the day, when he graduated from the school of Nike, and about the day after graduation. That day had left the strongest impression on him.

At that time, all the other graduates had already left the schoolground and headed off for their new goals. All the students of Nike had left for their vacations a week earlier, and the teachers left as soon as the graduation ceremony was over.

Ginkgo was sitting on the ground in the main square of the schoolground, with his back leaning on the fountain walls. The ground was covered with uneven pebbles half-buried in concrete and didn’t look like a comfortable place to sit on. Behind him, a large fountain threw water high up into the sky and sprinkled it all around, but barely any droplets arrived far enough to reach Ginkgo.

A young-looking man in late thirties, but heavily scarred, approached Ginkgo and sat right next to him. He had a scar above his left eye, which stretched up onto the top of his head. The scar discolored his skin and no hair grew on and around it. The tip of his nose was missing as if it was melted off by acid. There was a clear break of bone on his nose ridge, so that the top of his nose bent right, but the bottom was bent to the left side. His left ear was also missing with a little bit of skin left around the hole like a rim, which made it look more like a navel than an ear.

When the man sat down by the fountain, Ginkgo looked at the man’s right hand, which was missing two fingers: the pinky finger and the ring finger. Then he looked at the man's short but thick beard which most likely covered many more wounds that he had on his face. Between the beard hair, he could see skin discolorations - an indication of scars.

"Everyone left, but you're still here," the scarred man said.

"I don't know, where to go," Ginkgo responded to him.

"What do you mean, you don't know where to go? Go forward. The world is endless. No matter, where you go, you'll never reach the end."

"I've already reached the end," Ginkgo hung down his head.

The Chairman of Nike, looked at his ex-student and asked, "what end, you wimp? Is this what nine years in Nike taught you?" he sounded strong, but not angry. "Do you have legs? Do you have hands? You imbecile. You still have your head attached to your torso. Unless you lose it, you better use it."

"But…"

"No buts," the chairman interrupted. "Dead men have a good excuse for doing nothing, but the living do not. If you cannot walk on your legs, walk on your hands. If you lose your hands, crawl like a snake. If you cannot crawl, use your mouth to ask others to pull you. And even, if you lose your voice and sight, wiggle like a worm, unafraid and shameless of your powerlessness. For no one will ever help a man, who has already given up, but a man who never gives up will always find a way."

Ginkgo sighed.

And the chairman continued in a softer voice, "all men are weak, even when they're strong. And all men are cowards, even when they're brave. You can never separate from the imperfections that restrict your possibilities, but you can always push through them to reach the impossible that lies beyond."

Ginkgo nodded in acknowledgement. It wasn't anything new to him. He had heard this preaching every day for the last nine years. The school of Nike was founded upon the belief that one must never give up, no matter what happens. The death was the only good excuse to quit trying.

"Do you remember the tale of two brothers in the valley?" the chairman asked.

Of course Ginkgo did remember it. It was a tale that was taught on the first year, and recalled many times throughout his nine years in Nike.

"I do," Ginkgo answered and the tale immediately passed through his mind.

Once upon a time there were two brothers, who lived in the valley surrounded by hills. The hills were covered in thorny bushes, and nobody had ever tried to go up a hill. One day after many days of drought, the valley was caught in a fire, and there was no water anywhere around. One of the brothers decided to run away through the thorny bushes up the hill and away from the fire. The other brother was afraid of getting hurt by the thorns, so he remained in the valley in hope that the fire would stop before it killed him.

The brother, who ran up the hill was hurting all over, but from the top of the hill, he saw the world beyond the valley, where he lived. And that world captivated him, because it was much more plentiful than all he had seen until now. He built a new home right there, outside the valley. Over time his wounds healed, and he lived a better life. But the brother, who remained in the valley, died from the fire.

"He, who doesn't have the courage to face the suffering head on, doesn't have the strength to improve his life," Ginkgo stated the moral of the story.

"People don't die, because they're weak. People die, because they fear," the chairman rephrased the moral. "It's the fear, which kills humans. So if you kill the fear inside you, you will live a long and abundant life."

It was only natural to show respect to those, who fought for their lives with everything they had, even if their struggles were in vain. However, it was always hard to understand men and women, who chose death willingly. In the eyes of all the people, they were weak, and in the eyes of the graduates of Nike, they were not only weak but also fools, who allowed themselves to be killed by their own fears.

"Life is pain," the chairman stated the school wisdom, which Ginkgo already knew. "Life is suffering. Life is misery. Life is agony. Life is torture. No one comes to life and leaves unharmed. If not your body, then your soul will suffer. If not your heart, then your mind will be hurt. This is why you don't live to seek comfort. You live to struggle. Because without struggle you cannot achieve. And you were created to achieve in order to acquire that, which is written deep inside your heart; the goal that is engraved in your soul, and hidden in the back of your mind. Use this body of yours, which you were given with a purpose, to struggle for that goal. Because, once you achieve your goal, no suffering will ever be powerful enough to take away from you the peace in your final breath."

Ginkgo looked at the chairman, who wasn't even in his forties. However, all the students were always in awe of the man, who was missing half of his left arm and had scars on his face. Both of his legs were hidden by long pants, which couldn't hide the fact that he didn't have his right foot, and was using a fake limb in a boot to keep himself walking.

However, the chairman didn't lose his limbs on an adventure. And he didn't gain his scars from a fight. When he was still a kid, he survived an accident, which took away his right foot, left arm, two right fingers, one ear, and a part of his nose. At that time, he was much more damaged, but many of the smaller scars disappeared over the period of almost thirty years.

Yet the most amazing thing was that he still managed to arrive on the schoolground of Nike all by himself, when he was just ten yrold. Even more unimaginable was that, for the nine years of his education, he has never failed to keep up with the dangerous curriculum of the school.

When Ginkgo was finishing his seventh year, the previous chairman had nominated the scarred man to the position of the new chairman. No one was surprised by that. Quite the opposite, many wondered why it didn't happen sooner.

“I was only five yrold, when I got into that accident,” the chairman said as he looked at the clouds travelling through the sky.

“Everyone knows that,” Ginkgo said, looking at the ground.

“But do you know what my father told me, after the accident?” the chairman kept looking at the sky.

Ginkgo raised up his head and looked at the other man, “no?”

“A disability is merely a handicap given to amazing people, who’d be too impressive without it...”

Ginkgo was astonished by the bluntness of the statement.

“..and every suffering is a proof of your value,” the chairman finished recalling the sentence from his memory before he added. “Weak never suffer, because they burst like bubbles from the tiniest touch. Only the strong are capable of suffering. Never forget that.”

Ginkgo woke up in the morning with a recollection of his dreams. His mind was focused on his dream about the first and last time, when he personally spoke with Abiu Gale, the current chairman of the school of Nike. He had never thought much about their last conversation, but it felt so odd that he dreamt about it after so many years.

He looked at the sleeping boy and wondered, if Yew had anything to do with all those dreams from last night. He closed his eyes for a moment, and after freeing his mind of any more wandering thoughts, he sat up and looked around. The cave was in exactly the same state, as before his sleep.

He stood up, took out a pack of dried meat from his backpack and put it near Yew's face. While the boy continued to sleep, he began packing up everything else in that semi-lit cave.

Yew, who heard the sounds of movement, woke up and after he sat up, the meat pack fell off the blanket and onto the floor.

"You're awake," Ginkgo said, grabbed the wool blanket and stared at Yew. "Get off," he ordered.

Yew promptly crawled out of his only source of warmth.

Ginkgo packed up everything into his backpack except the butterfly sticker, which he removed from the wall and put in his pocket.

"That's for breakfast," he said pointing at the meat pack next to Yew. "You can eat it on the way."

Yew took the meat pack off the ground, and asked, "we're leaving now?"

Ginkgo, who went deeper inside the cave to do his morning business, answered loud enough for Yew to hear. "The sooner we leave, the sooner we arrive at Hecate.”

Yew also felt the need to relieve himself after waking up, so he ventured deeper into the cave. He arrived right when Ginkgo finished and was on his way back.

"Don't you want to hear more about me and Cypress?" the man asked, when Yew returned to the camping spot.

Yew nodded in response.

Ginkgo approached the cave entrance and tapped the snow, "we'll have plenty of time to talk on the way." He turned his face around, "do you know any spells that could remove this wall of snow?"

Yew looked through his memory. He did learn how to make fire, but should he show Ginkgo the extent of his abilities, or was it better for him to keep his enormous talent a secret? Suddenly another thought flew by his mind.

"Aren't you magic-talented as well?"

It was something that Yew should have realized earlier. Ginkgo was the brother of Cypress, and the ex-member of that Sea household. Even if he was disowned, powerful magical talent should still flow in his blood.

"I graduated from Nike, not from Hecate," Ginkgo commented, but after seeing no response from Yew, he added, "I don't use magic."

Yew found it odd at first, before he realized that most of his magical talent would have also been wasted, if he hadn’t attended Hecate. A tiny needle pricked his conscience as it reminded him that he signed up as a magicless student, but he quickly pushed away the thought and instead concentrated on recalling everything he read about the fire variation of magic.

"I can give it a try, but I don't know if it'll work," he approached the snow wall and put his hand on it. He took a deep breath and concentrated.

The snow under his hand began to melt into water, which flew downward to the ground and formed a small puddle under Yew's shoes.

Yew was glad that his shoes weren't the type to soak in the water. Thus, as long as he didn’t step into waters, deeper than the height of his boots, his thick shoesoles should have kept his feet dry.

"Nice," Ginkgo said. "You have talent," he added after a while of watching how the boy was melting the snow bit by bit.

In less than half an hour, Yew sighed and looked at Ginkgo, "I need to take a rest."

The man laughed, grabbed the boy and pulled him away. "Good job," he congratulated Yew with a chuckle, then turned his back to the boy, "stay behind me," he said before he faced the snow wall.

From his pocket Ginkgo took out a ring, put it on his finger, and tapped it three times. He stretched out his hand forward and as soon as he opened his palm facing the snow, the ring changed from silver color to bright orange-red, and before Yew realized what was going on, something like a large wildfire burst out from Ginkgo's hand and evaporated all the snow out of the way.

Immediately afterward, Yew could see the outside scenery, which hasn't changed at all since yesterday. The cold winds blew white snow all over the area. The visibility was horrible, and the snow layer on the ground was much thicker than yesterday. It was already more than a meter tall on each side, but the fire has cleared it out in front of them, creating a corridor through the forest somewhat-buried under the snow.

Ginkgo walked out of the cave first. Yew kept holding on to him, because the strong wind made it impossible for the boy to walk by himself.

The man faced the direction, where the wind was heading, and he repeated his actions to create another corridor in the snow. Afterward, he took off the ring and put it back in his pocket.

"Let's go," he said to Yew as the wind was pushing them both forward.

Yew concluded that he doesn’t have to hide behind Ginkgo and hold onto his clothes, because the wind wasn’t as strong in the corridor, and it was blowing from the east, so even if it pushed him, he would only arrive faster at their destination.

He let go of Ginkgo and tried walking side-by-side.

“If holding my clothes is difficult, we can hold hands,” Ginkgo stretched out his hand.

Yew didn't share hands with anyone other than his mom, and he hadn't done that for years. He was going to refuse, because he felt like he could handle this much on his own, but a strong blow of wind pushed him off his feet. Ginkgo catched him right before his face met the ground.

With his face ten centimeters from the ground, Yew quickly changed his mind and was very willing to hold hands with Ginkgo. He certainly didn't regret his choice. While they walked, the strong gusts of winds kept trying to blow the smaller boy off his feet, and they would have succeeded many times, if not for Ginkgo’s strong grip, which has saved him many times from hitting random trees, rocks, and bushes in the area, like a broken kite, mercilessly thrown around by wild winds.

As they walked farther and farther away from the Windworm Tower, the winds were steadily getting weaker and weaker. The corridor they walked through was quite long, but like everything else eventually it ended. Ginkgo didn’t make another one, because the snow layer in the area ahead of them was only up to his knees, and he could push through.

By the end of the day-long travelling, Ginkgo let go of the boy's hand, because by that time, the winds were weak enough that Yew could walk all by himself, without the fear of losing his balance and falling to the ground.

"Shouldn't we rest somewhere for the night?" Yew asked as he observed the sky losing its blue color and slowly turning black. The sun has since long hid behind the trees present all over the area, and could no longer be seen from within the midst of the forest.

"Not yet," Ginkgo responded. "There should be a village up ahead." He looked at Yew, who was already tired from walking all day long. "If you cannot walk anymore, I will carry you."

Yew recalled the great moments from his childhood, when Kapok let him sit on his shoulders, and looked hopefully at the big man walking next to him, who put out his hands, signaling for Yew that he'd carry him like a princess.

Immediately the boy changed his mind, "I can walk on my own."

Ginkgo smirked as he took back his hands.

The sky got dark, and the forest turned eerily quiet. The noise of snow cracking under their feet was the only sound that remained and it echoed between the trees notifying all forest inhabitants that the two men were passing through.

Yew looked up and around, and he couldn’t feel any signs of life anywhere near or far. Surrounded by the leafless branches of the empty trees and the large white cones of snow hiding within themselves the evergreen trees, he felt as if the world had quietly died, and there was no coming back to life.

As it got darker and darker, it felt as if the universe was slowly returning back to nothingness, just like everything used to be before God created the world.

All the distant sounds of the forest were conquered and subdued by the overwhelming whooshing sound of the wind unceasingly blowing from the east. All around Yew and Ginkgo, there was nothing anymore other than darkness and the movement of the wind, like the sun, using all its strength to push the time forward in order to create another beginning of the world.

In the distance, right above the ground they saw a light.

"That should be the village," Ginkgo stopped for a moment and looked at Yew walking right behind him before he moved on.

The darkness around them was so dense that they could barely see anything around and their figures appeared as nothing more than moving shadows. Both kept looking at the light in front of them. As they were getting closer, another light rose from the bottom up, then a third one, and two more, making it five. The nearer they were, the more lights appeared as if they were growing out from the ground.

Finally, they walked out of the forest. In the alley beneath, there was a small village in front of them.

Yew looked behind at the forest, and realized that all this time they were walking up the hill. No wonder he felt so tired.

The hill and the trees of the forest protected the village from the cold winds that blew from the direction of the Windworm Tower, so once the two men began walking downward, the wind appeared as if it had ceased.

When they arrived at the village, there was no one outside, but the lights were still on in the homes, illuminating the snow outside through the windows.

Ginkgo approached one house, and knocked on the door.

"Who's there?" a rough voice of a man shouted from inside.

"Travellers," Ginkgo shouted back. "Can we spend the night?"

"Go to the house with a red rooster on the door," the rough voice shouted in response. "You can stay there."

"Thank you," Ginkgo shouted back and stepped away from the front door.

He looked around, but there was no house with a red rooster on any door in the vicinity. He began walking around the village, but Yew, who was too tired to walk, just observed him from a distance. The lights coming from inside the houses were enough for Yew to keep track of the lonely black figure moving around the small village, which had no more than sixty houses.

Eventually in the distance, the black shadow waved at Yew, and called out his name. The boy moved in that direction, and Ginkgo waited until Yew caught up with him.

Afterward, the man approached a house at the outskirts of the village and knocked on that house’s door. Yew stood right next to Ginkgo, in front of a wooden door with a decoration in the shape of a rooster painted on the wood.

After a long moment of silence, Ginkgo was ready to knock again, but just right then they both heard sounds coming from inside. The door slowly creaked open, and inside stood a matriarch, covered in two big ponchos, one on top of the other.

"We're travellers," Ginkgo said right away. "Can we stay here?"

"Twenty hundred per night," the matriarch said and stepped to the side letting them inside. She looked at the boy following behind Ginkgo, and Yew looked back at her.

After both travellers stepped inside, she closed the door behind them, latched the lock, and led them to a room with four beds. "Sleep anywhere you want," she said, and turned around.

"Where's the toilet?" Ginkgo asked and Yew thought that it was truly a great question.

"There's a bucket with water in that corner near the back door," the matriarch pointed in the direction.

"Thank you, milady," Ginkgo responded, and the woman took a long look at him, "are you hungry?"

"How much?"

"It'll be free, if you cook according to my instructions," she said.

"Sure, but first I need to use the bucket."

The woman turned around, "come to the kitchen once you're done."

After Ginkgo took care of his immediate need, he went to the kitchen, which wasn't hard to find. The house was very small. On the right side coming in from the entrance, there was a kitchen area, which wasn't separated in any way from the living area right next to it. On the left side, there was the bedroom with four beds. On the wall behind the bedroom area, there was a staircase leading to the attic, and next to the staircase there was a back door behind the area, where the matriarch kept her cleaning and gardening tools.

After Ginkgo came out, Yew took his turn to go inside the narrow hallway. The lamp shining in the living area provided enough light that he could navigate his way all the way to the end, where the backdoor was. He immediately located the bucket, approached it, and stood facing the wall. There was nobody close enough to see, but the lack of privacy in a small house made him feel uncomfortable and he moved closer toward the staircase as he hid behind the large toolcase.

The backdoor frame wasn't sealed at all and cold winds sharply blew between the cracks, right onto the undressed part of his body. The cold air forced him to hurry up, and as soon as he finished, he tucked his body parts inside the warm clothes, and came to the kitchen to wash his hands.

Ginkgo was already listening to the granny's commands and peeling potatoes, exactly as she ordered him.

"Can you do anything?" the matriarch looked at the boy, who shook his head.

"My mom always cooked, so…" Yew couldn't finish the sentence, because he was interrupted.

"Useless," the granny commented then spoke to Ginkgo. "After you're done peeling, cut them into squares."

"Will do," Ginkgo responded.

Yew understood that he'd be only in the way if he remained in the kitchen. Ergo, he went to quietly sit on the sofa, while Ginkgo prepared everything as the matriarch commanded.

When the dill soup was almost done cooking, Ginkgo called Yew to come over.

"Did you hear what was the last step?" he asked the boy.

"To add three full spoons of sourcream," Yew looked at the matriarch, who stated so as a command to Ginkgo just a moment ago.

She furrowed her eyebrows and looked at the man.

"This is sourcream," Ginkgo pointed at a large cup, which he had already prepared with exactly three spoons of sourcream. He used the ladle to pour some of the soup into the sourcream, "take this fork and mix it," he said to Yew as he pointed at the cup.

Yew took the fork that lay down by the cup, and began mixing the sourcream with the soup.

"If it's not mixed well, it'll taste like crap," the matriarch complained.

Yew felt that maybe he shouldn't be doing this at all.

Ginkgo just smiled in response, as he kept waiting for Yew to finish the task.

"How long do I mix it?" Yew asked Ginkgo, once his hands got tired from mixing.

"Until you cannot tell the difference between the two," the matriarch responded instead.

"Let me see," Ginkgo took the cup from Yew. He stirred it several times with a fork. Each time he took out the fork to see if he could find a big clump of sourcream. Finding none, he dumped the mix into the soup, causing the matriarch to look at him surprised.

Ginkgo stirred the soup, until all the sourcream spread uniformly before he turned off the gas. "Let's eat," he announced and looked at the matriarch.

"The plates are there," she pointed at the cupboard, and left the kitchen heading toward the staircase.

"Won't you eat with us?" Ginkgo asked.

"I'm not hungry," she answered, as she climbed up the staircase. Soon she was out of sight.

Yew looked back and forth between Ginkgo and the staircase, "did I do something wrong?"

"I don't think so," Ginkgo took the plates and poured the soup for the boy. "Take it and eat," he said as he handed Yew the plate.

The boy once again looked toward the staircase before he walked up to the table, put down his plate, sat and ate. Ginkgo joined as soon as he poured the soup onto his plate. He was very pleased, when Yew asked him for a second portion.

After the supper, Yew went straight to the bedroom to sleep, while Ginkgo put the pot with the dill soup away from the oven, and near the front door, where the cold winds blowing through the cracks underneath the door kept the soup cold.

He turned off the lamp, and waited several minutes until his eyesight adjusted to the darkness, before touching his way to the bedroom. There, he took off his shoes, lay down on the bed, pulled over himself the thick covers, and fell asleep the moment he closed his eyes.

A ten yrold kid walking alone through a cemetery at night would be an unusual situation anywhere in the world, but Linden didn't care. He wanted to get back home as soon as possible and this way was much faster than taking the longer route around the large ceametery.

After Yew got sick, he didn't want to stay in the same cottage in order to save himself from catching the flu, or whatever else it was. Therefore, he decided that for a week or two, he was going to live with his mom, Sorrel Cave. He wouldn’t be in a hurry, if not for this temporary change of his residence.

Every minute he came home late added an extra minute of scolding from his mom. That’s why he had no choice but to use all the time-saving shortcuts he knew. It was a great way to decrease the amount of scolding he was going to get.

All the graves around him were covered by the snow, as were the trees that grew between the graves. Except for an occasional burning candle on some graves, the scenery was unchanging. Linden was walking quickly, but not quick enough to call it a run. He wanted to arrive early, but not too early. He wasn't a kid anymore, and he didn't like the idea of all those curfews, which his mom had set up the moment he moved in with her.

In less than a second his quick pace changed into an abrupt stop, almost as if someone spelled him to freeze. However, it wasn't magic that caused him to stop so suddenly, but the figure which he saw.

She was passing by in front of him, going through the cemetery toward the forest that was located to the east.

Linden watched her pass. He didn't take his eyes off of her until she disappeared in the distance. He kept staring at the place, where she disappeared, with his eyes wide open. He had read about those creatures, and he had seen many images, but this was the first time he saw a witch in person.

Didn't it say many times over and over in the books, which he had read in the past, that witches have disappeared after the war, and they don’t exist anymore? Didn't he hear it from everyone else, that no one had seen a real witch in the last ten hundred years, and any claims are just pranks? Should he report this? Would anyone even believe him?

What was a witch doing in the city of Sheepcrown?

With thoughts concentrated on the witch, whom he saw, Linden passed through the cemetery, took several turns walking through small narrow alleys without any street lights, crossed the train tracks, and arrived at the wall surrounding the Hecate schoolground. Using simple sky magic, he increased his altitude as he jumped over the wall. He landed neatly on the grass, and took a quick look around. After making sure, that nobody saw him, he ran through the lawn between the trees, then between the buildings as he headed directly to the schoolmanor.

Right after entering the schoolmanor, he went straight for the staircase, climbed all the way to the third floor, and while still deep in thoughts, he arrived in front of his mom's living quarters. He put his hand on the door handle, but he didn't push it. He stayed in that position for another five or more minutes, recalling the scene from the cemetery in as many details as he could remember.

"Why?" he asked himself and pushed down the door handle.

"Did you do your homework?" his mother's voice greeted him, even before he opened the door wide enough that he could come inside.

Sorrel Cave was sitting with a book in her hand, on an armchair in the living room, from where she had a good view of the entrance door. Clearly, she was waiting for her son's return.

Linden walked in, closed and locked the door. "I did."

"Don't lie," she pointed at the coffee table, where his notebooks lay open.

"Mom, can we leave it for tomorrow?" he asked almost as if he was pleading.

"Why?"

"Because I'm tired," Linden responded.

"I let you stay here, because your roommate is sick. But this is unbelievable. Is this how you're everyday? Is this how you've been living for the last half a year?"

"Come on, mom. I never skipped a class," Linden moved closer and sat on the armchair across from his mom.

"That's not the problem!" she pointed a finger at him. "Right after coming back from classes, you go to sleep. You wake up in the afternoon, go out and don't return until late at night! Sometimes, you keep coming back after midnight, then you sleep well into the morning. When are you studying?"

"I do, before the tests."

"What is with your lifestyle?"

"Mom, I'm already sixteen! You cannot treat me like a kid!"

"And whose fault is it?! HUH?!" the last statement made by Linden made his mother flip out in anger. She stood up and loomed over her son.

"Mom, calm down," Linden hoped that he could still undo the damage, but Sorrel Cave was already recalling all the problems that her son had caused her over the years.

"I cannot believe I gave birth to a son like you! First you wanted to be a merchant, so we sent you to Hermes, but you didn't even last half a year! After just four months, you told us, that you don't want to attend Hermes! We moved you to Aphrodite in hopes that four months will not hold you back."

"Well, I did get good grades in Aphrodite," Linden pointed out, but his comment was drowned by the continuous nagging of his mother.

"But after finishing the first year, you wanted to go to Apollon, because some girl told you that you're good at drawing."

"Well, all the kids talented in arts go to Apollon, right?" Linden added his excuse as Sorrel continued to speak.

"But soon after starting Apollon, you were told that your skills in drawing are mediocre at best, so you also tried dancing, singing and poetry, and you failed it all. Worse yet, you never told us about it. You simply moved to Poseidon without telling us anything!"

This time, his mother took a deep breath, and that gave Linden the chance to speak, but instead of apologizing he smiled reminiscing.

"I wanted to become a pirate," he recalled his past ambitions with joy.

"Poseidon is a school for sailors and fishermen!!!" His mother yelled out what everyone in the whole world would consider to be common knowledge.

"Which is why I quit," Linden said almost to himself, because his voice was too quiet for his mom to hear him clearly.

"And in the meantime, me and your father were shocked to find out that you also quit Apollon! Do you know how hard we were looking for you?" Sorrel hit her son’s head with the book, which she was holding.

"It's not my fault. I was on a ship for the whole year," Linden put his hands on top of his head in an attempt to protect it from any more hits.

"Oh yes, and after finally coming back you changed your mind again, and went to study in Ares," she shook the book in front of Linden as if to threaten him, that if his excuse wasn't good enough, she was going to hit him again.

"It was fun in the beginning," Linden's answer was honest, "I had an advantage in strength, because I was older than everybody else."

His mother immediately questioned him, "so why did you move to Hephaestus the following year?"

Linden took the hands off his head, "I started losing the battles in Ares, but that wasn't my fault. The swords were poor quality, so I wanted to be a blacksmith and make good swords."

Hephaestus wasn't limited to teaching the art of blacksmithing. Hephaestus was a school for anyone, who wanted to be a professional tool maker. Of course, among all different workers, a blacksmith was the most famous profession that many students of Hephaestus aspired to become.

"But you didn't even last one month in Hephaestus," she snapped back immediately.

"Well, of course! I wanted to make swords, but they told me to do pottery first."

"You could have been making swords, if you stayed there until the fourth year."

"Who wants to make clay bowls for four years?"

"I doubt that the curriculum of Hephaestus stays the same for four years."

"Whatever, I quit it anyway."

"Yes, you quit Hephaestus, then you came back home saying that you don't want to go to school anymore."

"Then you kicked me out of the house."

At this point Sorrel lifted up her arms to Heavens. It was obvious that she didn't know what to do with her crazy son, and she was begging God for some help to control herself.

When she lowered down her arms, she spoke in a strong tone, "we didn't kick you out. We only said that you either go to school or you go to work, but you won't be living with us for free! And then what?! Unbelievable, you applied to Nemesis!!"

"At least it wasn't Hades."

Sorrel acted like she didn't hear the comment, "we were actually shocked that you got accepted!" she sounded almost as if she was complimenting him, "and you actually studied there. You even got very good grades."

"Yeah, I liked it there," Linden recalled the time he spent in the school of Nemesis.

"BUT!! You mixed some sort of poison in a coffee pot, and killed one of your teachers!"

"That was an accident!" Linden immediately fired back in order to protect his reputation.

Sorrel ignored his appeal and continued, "After that, they kicked you out of Nemesis, and no school would ever accept you!" she added an extra stress on the phrase «no school» and raised her hand with the book, warning Linden that she'd hit him again, if he dared to speak up now. "Do you know how hard it was for me to get you accepted into Hecate? And I wouldn't have to go through any of that hell, if you only agreed to go back to Aphrodite."

"Aphrodite won't do. My old classmates would recognize me," Linden explained carefully, watching the book in his mother's hand.

"I even had to get a special permission for you to use the youth charm, because you refused to go to school looking your true age."

"I didn't want to be the only sixteen yrold guy among the first year boys. I would stick out like a sore thumb, and everybody would make fun of me."

"Listen here, Linden," his mother raised her hand as if she was ready to hit him with the book, and Linden immediately covered his head with his hands. "This is your last chance to graduate from a school. You MUST graduate from Hecate. Understood?"

"Understood."

"Don't lie to me! That's why I'm always worried about you!" she hit the hands on his head, before she turned around and walked toward her bedroom. She stopped midway and turned her face toward Linden. "If you dare to quit Hecate," she said in a desperate tone, "I'll turn you into a horse and sell you to a farmer! You'll be plowing the fields for the rest of your life, you stupid son of mine!"

After making her final statement, Sorrel Cave stomped out into her bedroom, leaving Linden alone on the armchair in her living room.

The boy, actually a guy, who was disguised as a boy, looked toward his mother's bedroom door, and said to himself in a voice so quiet that nobody around could possibly hear him, "It's not my fault that all those schools don't fit me."

After the unavoidable discussion with his mom, Linden relaxed and returned back to thinking about the witch, which he saw earlier in the cemetery. It was the first time for him to see a witch with his own eyes, but he didn't doubt that it was a witch.

It wasn't just the outside appearance that matched. Even the energy around her was that of witchcraft. If it had been a fake appearance created by magic or a magical tool, then the magic energy should have been all over her, but there was no magic anywhere near that creature.

Two years ago, Linden got a hold over a mysterious ancient magical item, which allowed its owner to see all the energy flowing around the world. The item was just a tiny smooth ball no bigger than an ant and it was kept inside a tiny bag sewn from all four edges.

Unfortunately for Linden, there were many others, who wanted the item. They came after Linden, and tried to kill him in order to get the magical item. One day, Linden was so badly wounded, that he couldn’t run anymore. While he was hiding, waiting to be found, he got an idea to take the tiny ball out of the tiny bag in order to make it harder for the greedy bastards to find the item.

He used a pocket knife to rip off the threads, and when he saw the tiny golden ball inside, he got another idea. He took the ball and he pushed it deep into the wound on his thigh.

When the pursuers finally found him, they only saw a guy in a pool of blood, and a ripped-apart tiny bag lying next to him but without the magical item. They assumed that someone had beaten them to it, and instead of checking Linden’s body they left searching for the competitors.

Somehow, Linden survived and woke up several days later feeling thirsty. The wounds by then had already begun to close, so there was no way to take out the magical item anymore without a surgery.

However, to Linden’s surprise he didn’t need a surgery. The wound on his thigh healed perfectly, leaving no scar and he didn’t feel any discomfort from the magical item still present inside his body.

Of course, the magical item worked as well.

Normally, in order to activate it, the user had to put the bag on one palm and cover it with his other palm, thus squeezing the magical item between his palms like a slice of meat between two pieces of bread in a sandwich.

However, with the item inside his thigh, Linden could use it all the time. He realized it as soon as he got up, that the magical item somehow activated inside him, and remained active all the time, day and night for the last two years. He didn’t know for how much longer the item would continue to work until it would run out of magic, but having it hidden like this made his life so much easier. Since no one saw him using it, no one in the world ever assumed that he had it.

Because of the item, Linden constantly saw the energy around people and objects. With one glance, he could tell whether someone was magic-talented or magicless. He could also easily tell what kind of magic was embedded in which magical item. With time, he also learned to differentiate even the energy types that weren't magics.

However, in the end, the amount and diversity of energy flowing around the world made it impossible for him to know everything, and no matter where he went or whom he met, sooner or later he would inevitably encounter an energy so unique, that he couldn’t even imagine himself ever understanding what it was.

For example, Yew Sky, had a huge magical talent based on the energy around him, but he applied to the school of Hecate as magicless. Furthermore, there were two other energy types around Yew. One of them appeared to be some kind of a curse. Was that a reason, why he couldn't use magic even though he should have been talented in it?

The third energy type around Yew was even more mysterious. Linden saw it only twice in his lifetime. One time was around Yew, the other time, it was around a sword that was made by dwarfs and embedded with some secret skill. Linden had no idea, what kind of energy it was or what effect it had on objects and people.

Aspen Breeze was an even more interesting case. He actually had almost no magical talent. Under normal circumstances, he shouldn't have been able to use magic at all. However, there was a gigantic blessing on Aspen, which was amplifying his magic whenever he used it.

Blessings were a type of magic that people could receive from others, but they had a different energy than standard magic, which was passed with genes. Most people carried blessings on them, but usually it was such a tiny amount that even Linden, who could see the energy, had a hard time noticing average blessings.

He often wondered, how did Aspen acquire such a gigantic blessing, which was three times bigger than the boy himself. But no matter how many possibilities he thought up, in the end he didn't know the answer.

Then there was Spruce Fire, who true to his word, was magicless. But magicless as he was, there were two types of energy always following him like loyal dogs. Linden sometimes saw people being followed by energy, but this was the first time, that someone was followed by two types of energy. Moreover, Linden had no idea what either one of them was.

In the last two years, Linden saw many types of energy, which he couldn't explain or comprehend. And as he encountered more and more unknown energies, he got used to seeing so many unique energy types everywhere, that he was no longer bothered by the fact, that he didn't understand most of them.

There was however one energy, which put him on high alert. It happened that time, when he met with Wasabi Water. For the first time, he met someone with no energy around them, but it wasn't the end of the odd encounter. Wasabi herself seemed to be unaware, but any energy in her vicinity disappeared like a smoke on a windy day. It was almost as if her lack of magic had a power to also remove magic from others, if they approached too close.

When Spruce and Yew were talking with her, Linden saw as the boys' energies were blown away from them and shredded in the air, as if there was a strong wind coming from the girl. Fortunately for the boys, the energies returned to them, once the girl was no longer around, but Linden didn't want to risk it, so he stayed away from the girl, who to his dismay, has become good friends with his classmates.

"It's already Friday!" Spruce angrily shouted at Aspen.

Both of them were in cottage four and four hundred thirty six, which was empty because neither Yew nor Linden was there. Spruce had been waiting for Yew’s return ever since he left, but neither him nor his roommate ever showed up in the cottage.

"He's been gone for three days already," Spruce pointed out. He got worried, when Yew didn't return on Thursday, but Aspen told him that Yew was okay. “I waited one more day, but it's already Friday. Are you still going to tell me that he's okay?"

Aspen looked at the other boy, and bit his lower lip, as he was swept by a sense of guilt.

On Wednesday, both boys reported Yew as sick for all the classes. Spruce showed each teacher the note, which the doctor wrote after diagnosing Yew, and everything seemed to work out smoothly.

The boys didn’t worry much, when Yew went out on Wednesday morning, because they both expected him to be back before the night.

Spruce tried to stay up late in the cottage four and four hundred thirty six, waiting for Yew's return, but eventually he lost his battle with nature and slept through the night on the sofa in his daytime clothes. The next morning, he woke up to find no one in the cottage, which worried him a lot.

He quickly notified Aspen, who told him to calm down. First he tried to mindteam Yew then Liquorice, but was unable to reach either one of them, so he mindteamed Chervil to try and find any info on Yew's whereabouts.

Chervil somehow succeeded in contacting Liquorice, who replied that she took Yew to the Windworm Tower, which was located a long distance away from the school of Hecate. Without asking anymore questions, Chervil cut off the communication and contacted Aspen again, to tell him that Liquorice took Yew to the Windworm Tower and that's why it would take them so long to return back.

Aspen gave a sigh of relief as he realized that the reason, why he was unable to contact Yew or Liquorice was the long distance, which separated them. His skills in magic were still at a low level, so it made sense that he wasn’t able to contact someone, who was that far away.

Once again on Thursday, both boys lied to the teachers, that Yew was still sick. One more day passed with Yew not attending the classes.

Spruce was told by Aspen that Yew was doing fine, but Aspen's assurance didn’t calm him down at all, because he still didn’t know where Yew was. With every passing hour, he got more and more worried.

Aspen didn't worry as much, because he was sure that Yew was together with Liquorice. However, on Friday morning it was Aspen, who woke up early and went straight to Yew's cottage. Upon finding nobody there, he tried his best to mindteam with Liquorice. He didn’t know how far away she was, and he didn't expect it to succeed, but to his surprise it did, and he had an in-depth conversation of what happened on Wednesday.

When he heard that Liquorice left Yew all alone at the Windworm Tower, right before the Fairy Rain, his face turned white like snow.

"Why did you leave him there?" he asked in an accusing tone.

"Because he wanted to meet Ginkgo," Liquorice was calm. "And we didn't want to get caught in the Fairy Rain, even the dragons can be seriously harmed by that."

"So you cared about your safety over his?"

"He wanted to meet Ginkgo, and we wanted to be safe. He never said anything about his safety, and if he cared about that in the first place, he wouldn't ever think of searching for that adventurer, right?"

"This cannot be…" Aspen said in a faint voice, almost as if he was dying.

"Oh come on," Liquorice was cheerful, "if he died after meeting Ginkgo then at least he died without regrets," and she laughed.

Aspen immediately disconnected and started to think of what he should do and whom he should contact next. The chances that Yew was still alive were almost nonexistent unless some kind of a miracle took place. However, even if Yew was no longer among the living, he still had to notify someone about this.

It was at that moment, when Spruce ran into the cottage and looked through every room in search of Yew. When he didn't find his magicless classmate, he confronted Aspen, who couldn't say anything as he was completely overcome by a sense of guilt. He felt that it was his oversight that cost Yew his life. If only he reacted sooner; if only he got better info right from the start; maybe then he could have saved an innocent life.

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Spruce looked at Aspen's pale face and quickly realized that something very bad must have happened. "Tell me what happened!" he urged.

Aspen opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He didn't even know how to say what he needed to say.

"Did you finally hear from Yew? Did he send you a letter or something? What happened?"

If Yew was still alive, would he have sent a letter? There was no letter from Yew, and Aspen couldn't contact Yew via mindteaming, which didn't surprise him, as he assumed that the boy was already dead. However, he just couldn’t give up hope without trying. He actually succeeded in contacting Liquorice, so maybe if he tried several more times, he could reach Yew as well.

He concentrated hard and with everything he had, he tried to spell the best mindteaming contact he could, but in the end there was no response. Yew was either too far away, or in a place, where magic wasn't working, or…

Aspen didn't want to finish his track of thoughts. To him, the last option was the most plausible explanation, and yet he didn't want to accept it.

A knock on the door distracted both boys.

"Yew," Spruce ran to the door, but Aspen was sure that the residents of this cottage wouldn't ever knock, so it was neither Yew nor Linden.

When Spruce abruptly opened the door, he was immediately disappointed to see Wasabi. She quickly walked inside and took off her fur coat.

"It's so cold outside," she said as she shivered from the change of the temperature, "Galangal told me to go somewhere, because she wants to sleep in peace, and I make too much noise. Isn't that just mean?"

She took off her shoes, and entered the living room. "How is Yew feeling?" she said toward Aspen. "I heard he caught the flu right before the break. Isn't that kind of bad luck? Or maybe, it's good luck, because he got to skip the last two days of classes."

The thirty sixth day of Tsun was the beginning of the year-end holiday break known as Raethosu, which lasted for three weeks. During this period some students would return home, while others would remain at school enjoying three full weeks without any classes. Today it was still Friday, the thirty third day of Tsun, but due to the short schedule, the classes had already ended and this gave many students three extra days on top of the Raethosu break.

"Why are you so gloomy?" Wasabi asked and went inside the bedroom. Before she came back, the boys already knew what she'd ask them, "where's Yew? Did he go back home?"

Spruce and Aspen looked at each other. Neither one considered this possibility. Would Yew just go home without a word? The chances were low, but not nonexistent. It would also explain, why he wasn't physically present in the Hecate schoolgrounds. However, since the boys didn't know the answer, they didn't say anything.

"Oh, come on, say something. You're acting like old men, who just returned from a funeral," Wasabi berated them.

Aspen swallowed his saliva.

"I don't know where he is," Spruce answered honestly, but the hint of anger was still present in his voice. "He should know," he looked at Aspen, who avoided his glare.

"I'm sorry," Aspen responded. "I also don't know where he is. I…" he stopped for a moment then said, "today morning I learned that he went to a dangerous place, and I don't know what happened afterward."

"What dangerous place?" Spruce asked.

"The Windworm Tower."

"Where's that?" Spruce sounded less angry and more curious.

"It’s a tower in the north. It's quite far away from here," Aspen explained.

"If it's far away, then it'll take him a lot of time to go there and get back," Wasabi pointed out. "So in how many days he'll be back?"

"I don't know," Aspen hung his head. He wanted to say: I don't know, if he's still alive, but the second half of the sentence got stuck in his throat.

"So he went very far away, and that’s why you lost all contact with him," Spruce summed up the story. Mysteriously, his voice didn’t sound angry anymore. "Why didn't you say so sooner? Now it all makes sense."

Spruce recalled seeing Yew on Tuesday afternoon, when he was under the influence of pwa-pwa. Now he finally understood, why Yew intentionally made himself appear that sick. He needed a believable excuse for the many days that his trip was going to take.

"What makes sense?" Aspen asked, not knowing what Spruce was thinking.

"The reason why he's not back yet. You should have just told us that he went somewhere far."

"That's not…" Aspen was ready to deny Spruce's deduction, but he changed his mind. Maybe it was better for them, not to know the real situation.

"Um, sorry for interrupting, but why did Yew suddenly go to that far-away tower?" Wasabi couldn't control her curiosity. "Or is it that you don't know anything?” She guessed after seeing the boy’s countenance. “Did he just leave without telling you anything?"

"Yeah," Spruce didn't like this fact.

"But even if he didn't say anything to you, he surely must have notified the school,” Wasabi came up with the most reasonable thing to do. “So if anything bad happened, the school would have already known about it."

Except, Yew kept it a secret even from the school of Hecate, was what the boys thought, but neither one of them had the courage to say it.

It was a good thing for Yew that they kept it a secret. Neither one of them knew much about pwa-pwa, thus neither one of them could ever suspect that Yew's method of tricking the school would surely terminate his enrollment, if it ever came to light.

"So anyway, let Yew do what he needs to do.” Wasabi pointed at Spruce, “and as for us, we need to come up with some fun way to spend Raethosu, unless you're all going home."

Spruce shook his head, "I'm not going home, but I already have plans on how to use this break to work on my scores."

"Eh?! So boring," Wasabi commented. "And you?" she pointed at Aspen.

"I'm going home tomorrow," he replied.

"Aw, that's too bad."

"What about Galangal?" Spruce asked.

"She's leaving today afternoon. Her parents already confirmed that they'll come to pick her up." Wasabi sat down on the chair next to Linden's desk and sighed, "so it looks like only you and me are staying behind," she pointed her finger at Spruce, then at herself as she was saying the sentence.

She didn’t ask them about Linden. For Wasabi, Yew's roommate was hard to understand and his actions oftentimes made no sense.

Spruce was also confused by Linden’s random acts of kindness mixed in with his overall nasty and unfriendly behavior. He also couldn’t excuse Linden for suddenly disappearing after he saw Yew get sick, and not returning back to the cottage ever since.

Nobody knew when Linden would return back to the cottage, but no one really cared about him. Which is why no one even mentioned his name, especially now around Wasabi, whom Linden didn’t like for some unknown reason.

The first time Linden met Wasabi, he was unbelievably rude to her. Afterward, he kept avoiding her as much as possible. When once in a while, he ended up around her, he kept his distance almost as if Wasabi was infected with a contagious disease.

Yew tried asking Linden in the past about it, but he just ignored the question, so in the end they just accepted things as they happened.

Wasabi also didn’t mind. She always had such a positive attitude, that even when things weren’t going well for her, she still remained optimistic and confident of a better future to come.

Aspen stood up and headed toward the exit door.

"Are you going already?" Wasabi asked.

"There's something I need to do before I leave Hecate," he said as he put on his shoes, hat, gloves and warm coat.

"Next time, don't scare me like that," Spruce yelled before Aspen closed the front door, and stepped out of the cottage. “You’re keeping too many secrets!”

Aspen heard Spruce’s last comment through the closed door, but he didn’t look back. He didn't return to his own cottage either. Instead he headed toward the cottages of older students.

The sky was snowing a bit, but not a lot, so the visibility was fairly good. The sunrise had just started, but it wasn’t that early anymore. The days of Tsun got so short, that the sunrise for many students meant the time period, when they had already finished their first earliest classes. However, today there were no classes and at least one third of the students had already left yesterday afternoon to go home for the Raethosu break.

On his way to Chervil's cottage, Aspen saw only four other people, who happened to have their own reasons to breathe the same cold air, while walking under the same snowy clouds, which moved slowly through the sky like the hands of sleepy giants.

When Aspen knocked on the cottage door, he didn't hear any response. No one came to the door for a while, so he knocked again. This time he heard the stomping of an angry individual coming closer and closer to the front door, which was opened with a bang.

Sage stood in front of him, dressed in a bathrobe with a hood, that covered her completely, and protected her from the sudden cold of the wind.

"What?" she asked.

"Is Chervil…?"

"Chervil went home yesterday," Sage responded and closed the door with another bang, right after the last word.

Aspen clearly heard her and now he knew that having a face-to-face conversation with Chervil was not possible, until she returned back to school, which would be in three weeks.

Having no other choice, he went to meet the only other student of Hypnos, Parsley Gold. However, he didn't know the exact number of Parsley’s cottage, so he headed toward the cottages of the seventh year students, while trying to mindteam his senior.

In order to keep herself protected from getting mindteamed at a wrong time in a wrong place, Parsley charmed a barrier to keep all mindteaming attempts away from her unless the other person knew the password.

Upon sensing the barrier, Aspen said in his thoughts the password «white flower petals», and he felt the barrier letting him in. "Parsley, this is urgent, and sensitive. I need to talk with you face to face. What's your cottage number?"

"Where are you?" he heard her response.

"In front of the cottages of the seventh year students."

"Let me see," she said, then added, "turn right."

Aspen did and he saw that the door to one of the cottages in the first row was opening up. Parsley leaned out of the door right there and waved toward him. She wasn't dressed in daytime clothes yet and wore only her nightgown, which was made up of thick wool. Clearly it was a clothing one would wear for cold nights, but it wasn't thick enough to protect her from the cold winds, so she mindteam Aspen, “hurry up! It’s cold.”

Aspen thought that she should have put on a bathrobe or something before opening the door, while he ran as quickly as the snow allowed him to. He slipped on the ice as he was almost at the cottage.

Parsley didn’t laugh. She embraced herself to keep warm as she waited for Aspen to get up and enter the cottage. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long.

When Aspen was already at the door, Parsley let go of the door handle, and with her arms wrapped around herself, she moved deeper inside the entry room. Aspen quickly closed the door behind himself to protect the gal from feeling any colder.

"I'll be waiting inside," Parsley said and walked into the warm interior of the cottage.

In the entry room, Aspen took off his outdoor clothes and shoes, and placed them orderly on the shelves.

"Would you like some chocolate milk?" she asked after Aspen walked inside.

Parsley was standing with her head peeking out of the kitchen. Before she heard Aspen’s response, she entered the kitchen and approached the counter with a bunch of machines arranged by the wall. She poured milk into one of them, then pushed the button in the front. She opened the cupboard, which held more than twenty cups and every single one of them had a unique flowery design.

"Yes, please," Aspen confirmed as he sat on a chair by the table. He still didn't eat any breakfast yet.

Parsley took out two cups, each one elegantly decorated with flowers, and she put them on the table. Aspen took the cup with blue flowers, and left the cup with yellow flowers for Parsley.

Right before the milk began to boil, the machine added a dark brown liquid to the white liquid and slowly began to stir the beverage until the two colors completely mixed together. The machine stopped all movements and announced "ready" with bold green letters floating on top of the machine.

Parsley took the big container cup from the machine and poured out the chocolate milk into the standard cups on the table.

Aspen looked at the chocolate milk in his cup, while Parsley put down the container with the hot beverage on top of the bamboo placemat in the middle of the table.

She took a small cinnamon shaker from a silver organizer that stood on the table near the wall, and sprinkled cinnamon on top of her drink.

"Do you want some?" she asked as she held the shaker in her hand.

The boy nodded and she passed him the shaker.

"Thank you," Aspen said as he added some cinnamon to his drink.

"No need," she responded as she took the shaker back from Aspen and put it back on the silver organizer, where she kept several of her favorite spices. Afterward, she finally sat down and realized, "I forgot the spoons."

She waved her hand at the drawer nearest to the fridge, which opened up. Two small spoons flew out of the drawer, and Parsley directed them to the table, where one of them landed near Aspen’s cup, and the other one landed inside Parsley’s cup. She pushed the air with her hand as if she was lightly slapping it, and the drawer abruptly closed.

Right away, she used her spoon to stir her drink, then looked at Aspen, "so? What's going on?"

Aspen told her the whole story from the beginning to the end. Although Parsley's countenance changed many times, she never interrupted him. Even after Aspen finished telling her everything, she remained silent.

"What should I do?" the boy asked as he looked straight at her eyes.

"First, you should notify the chairman of Hypnos," she said in a calm voice. "It's the chairman's duty to protect the students, while they're at school."

Aspen didn't think about that before. "Do you think he's still… alive?"

"Who knows," Parsley was calm and emotionless like a counselor. "However, the chairman of Hypnos is a powerful and influential man, so it's best to leave it all to him."

"Okay," Aspen accepted the solution and drank his chocolate milk, which managed to stay lukewarm, even though Aspen spent almost an hour telling Parsley all the details - many of them unnecessary.

Parsley was done with her drink by the time Aspen was halfway through the story, but looking down she found a little bit of the liquid at the bottom of the cup. She turned it upside down above her spoon, in order to get the last sip to drip onto it, before she ate the last drop of her chocolate milk.

Afterward, she put down the cup, “do you want me to contact the chairman right now?”

“Please do,” Aspen’s response was so fast, that it felt like he spoke it before Parsley finished her question.

The gal looked attentively at the empty cup as she concentrated to mindteam the chairman of Hypnos. "Chairman?" she asked as she felt a connection.

"Yes?"

"This is Parsley Gold from the school of Hecate," she introduced herself. "There is a problem with Yew Sky, who attends Hecate with us. It appears that another student of Hypnos has taken him somewhere on Wednesday, and he hasn't returned yet. No one among his friends knows, where he is right now."

"You want me to search for him?"

"Yes," Parsley confirmed. "The last place he went to was the Windworm Tower, and there's a possibility that he may have gotten hurt there. In the worst case scenario, he may have died."

"I see," Mesquite responded slowly. "As for his exact location, it will take time to determine his whereabouts, but as for his status, I can check his soul in the Dreamland to know whether he's still alive or not."

"Really?"

"Give me a moment."

Parsley's face lit up with hope and Aspen clenched his fists as he couldn't hear the conversation, but he felt as if something important was about to happen.

After a long moment of suspense, the chairman returned to the conversation with Parsley, "his soul is doing fine. If he had died, it would have left the Dreamland for the afterlife, but it's still there, which means that Yew Sky is still alive. I'll begin my search for him, and if he happens to need my help, I’ll assist him in order to safely return him back to Hecate."

"Thank you so much," Parsley responded, "thank you for your help.”

“I’m just doing what I need to do.”

“I know, but thank you and goodbye, chairman."

"Goodbye," Mesquite said and disconnected from the mindteaming conversation.

"Yew's still alive according to the chairman," Parsley spoke out loud to Aspen. "His soul in the Dreamland shows no signs of death."

Aspen sighed deeply with relief. "So where is he?"

"That's something he needs more time to find out," she answered, "but he also said that he’d help Yew, if Yew’s in need of help. So as long as Yew returns safe and sound by himself, let’s not tell Yew about this. He may feel belittled after knowing that the chairman was watching over him.”

"Okay," Aspen nodded his head.

He did understand what Parsley meant. Yew did everything all by himself in secret, so he surely wouldn’t feel good, if anyone was safeguarding him like a nanny.

"By the way, are you going home for the break?" Parsley started a new topic.

Aspen nodded, "I'm leaving tomorrow morning."

"So I'm the only student of Hypnos, who's staying in the Hecate schoolground."

The boy looked around in silence for a while. He realized that there were no signs of anyone else present in the cottage.

"Your roommate already left?" he assumed, while also realizing that Parsley wasn’t at all secretive when talking about Hypnos. He could have realized that sooner, but his mind was too preoccupied with Yew’s whereabouts.

"I don't have a roommate," Parsley stated.

“Huh?” Aspen was surprised by her response.

"You know, how sometimes students drop one school, then apply to another one? Even in Hecate, some students change their mind and leave the school before they graduate.”

“So if your roommate quits, you get the whole cottage for yourself?”

“As long as they quit on their fifth year or later,” Parsley pointed out. “Almost all quitters of Hecate do so after their first year or during their second year, so before the start of the year, the school makes a list of all single residents among the students under the age of fifteen, and arranges them into pairs, so they no longer reside alone.”

“What if there’s an odd number of single residents?”

“You get lucky and reside alone for one year,” Parsley smiled before she laughed. “That’s a joke. In reality, they add the youngest single resident at or above the age of fifteen to make the total number even. Then they arrange the students by age from oldest to youngest, and draw a dividing line between every two names. So your roommate will always be someone close to you in age.”

“But aren't class groups decided based on cottage numbers?" Aspen realized that rearranging cottages would mess up the class arrangement as well.

"That arrangement of classes applies to the first year students only,” Parsley shifted in her sitting position. “Officially the reason for that class arrangement is for new students to get along with their nearby neighbors, but I think the real reason is that the admins are lazy. There’s a lot of new students, who know no basics, so the school admins just put fifty of them together and call it a class.”

“So that’s how it is,” Aspen felt satisfied with the info.

“But on the second year, they shuffle people, so if you're unlucky you'll be separated from everyone you got to know on your first year."

"What?" Aspen wasn’t happy to hear that. "Why did they never say anything about it?”

“They do include that info in the guidebooks, but it's worded oddly, so most people don't understand the meaning until it actually happens."

Aspen wanted to go back to his cottage and check his guidebook right away.

"It was something like this,” Parsley recalled what she read many years ago, “on their second year the students are grouped diversely to provide them wider learning experience among different classmates,” she paraphrased the sentence based more on what she remembered about her second year than the actual info written in the guidebook. “It sounds fancy, but in reality, they just shuffle students, so it’s all up to your luck, in what class you end up.”

"So in the worst case, on my second year, everyone from my current class may be in a different group."

"Yup,” she confirmed. “Moreover, starting with the third year, the students are segregated based on their abilities.”

"I know about that," Aspen recalled something that Linden mentioned in the past. "Magic-talented and magicless students get separated."

"It's not only that," Parsley sounded as if Aspen had got it very wrong. "third year students get divided into many groups based on their abilities in learning. Magicless students go to Group Z, but as for magic-talented students, you'll be put in one of the twelve groups, from Group A, which is a group for most talented kids, all the way to Group L, which is for the least talented kids."

Aspen blinked, because all of this was not only new to him but totally unexpected. "Can you tell me more about it? How do they decide who's more talented and who's less talented?"

"There's an exam at the end of the second year. Your final score decides your group. Hundred percent is Group A, ninety nine to ninety five percent is Group B, ninety four to ninety percent is Group C, eighty nine to eighty five - D, eighty four to eighty - E, seventy nine to seventy five - F, seventy four to seventy - G, then sixty nine to sixty is Group H, fifty nine to fifty - I, forty nine to forty - J, thirty nine to thirty - K, and anyone twenty nine and below is Group L."

"That sounds like some groups may be very large, and other groups aren't," Aspen assumed based on the fact that getting hundred percent on a normal test was a rare occurrence. It would have to be even harder on a qualification exam.

"The main groups often get divided to keep each class with no more than fifty students. For example, I'm in Group B One. Since there are more than eighty people in Group B, we got divided into two groups: B One and B Two. On the other hand, there's only one Group A, because there were only fourteen kids from my year, who got hundred percent on that exam."

Aspen looked down at his empty cup of chocolate milk and began to think about something else.

"Magicless students have it so much better," Parsley continued. "Because there's so little of them, they just all go to one group and stay there until graduation."

"Do people change groups after a third year?" Aspen spoke out his thoughts.

"Not often, but it happens. When someone falls behind the rest of the class, and they don't catch up in time, they can get moved to a lower group. Or if someone's too good for the group, the teachers can petition to move such a student up by one group."

"Do the classes differ for each group?"

"The subjects don't, but the requirements do. The lower the group the less they need to know to pass the year. The teaching style is also different. Higher groups tend to have strict teachers, who advance quickly through the subjects. The idea is that students in higher groups do learn faster, so teachers would waste their talent by spending too much time on explanations."

“I see,” Aspen smiled to himself. He felt much better than he did in the morning. He was glad that Yew was safe, and talking about school made everything seem so normal again. “Thanks for the explanation. I’ll be going back now.”

“Take care,” Parsley smiled at him, while he got up from the chair, and headed to the entry room.

She didn’t go after him, but when he was outside, he looked back at the kitchen window, and Parsley waved a bye at him. He waved back and went away.

She remained sitting in the chair by the window, watching the scenery outside. It was a good thing, her cottage ten and hundred eighty two was right by the main road, so it was always a short walk to the schoolground. However, there were no school buildings on the other side of the main road across from her cottage. Instead she had a good view of the Western Park, which during winter looked like an ocean of white waves frozen in time.

When Aspen told her via mindteaming, that he was in front of the cottages of the seventh year students, she knew instantly that he was on the main road. She expected that she’d have to walk out to the main road to find him, but luckily he was already at a distance, where they saw each other, so she didn’t have to go anywhere.

With her eyes she followed the back of Aspen’s figure, until a carriage drove by and caught her attention. There weren’t that many carriages driving on the main roads of Hecate, but some still did in order to transport what needed to be transported by a vehicle.

The carriage left two narrow cuts in a perfectly smooth layer of the snow, which fell overnight. The snow wasn’t deep. It was only two or three centimeters, but nevertheless it still looked beautiful on the ground, while it was all smooth and undisturbed.

It wasn’t snowing anymore, but the sky was still cloudy with some clouds darker in color than others. There was no wind, so the outside temperature didn’t feel so cold as long as one was moving, which caused squirrels and birds to freely hop around, while the air was still.

Gorgeous frost paintings formed in the corners of all windows of every building in the school of Hecate. On sunny days, those paintings would disappear from the sun. And on snowy days they would get covered by snow, but today it was as if they decided to show all their splendor to the world.

Parsley sighed as she looked at the empty road. Normally, the road was busy with students, who used it daily to commute between home and school. However, due to the holidays, one third of all students went to see their parents. The other one third was packing up and planning to leave either today or tomorrow. The remaining one third stayed inside their warm cottages, still laying in bed, absorbing the relaxing awareness of the three-week long break from school.

While Parsley continued to stare at the scenery outside, the two empty cups on the table levitated behind her back and stood down next to the sink. The faucet turned on and filled the sink with water. Parsley looked at the sink. A sponge levitated up to a bottle of dishsoap. The bottle spilled out some dishsoap onto the sponge, which began to scrub inside the cups. The cleaned cups, one by one, self-submerged into the water, rotated twice underwater, then flew up and onto the small drying rack above the sink.

Afterward, the sponge submerged itself underwater in order to clean itself from the leftover dishsoap and it landed back on the plastic bar-like shelf next to a brush. The mostly-clean water remained inside the sink awaiting more dirty dishes, while Parsley left the kitchen and went inside her bedroom.

There was only one bed on the right side, as the other bed was removed by the school, after it had been confirmed that she would no longer have a roommate. However, the left side of the room wasn't empty. There were tall columns made of books stacked up one on top of another, next to a messy pile of tools and devices. All the books were about topics related to creation and alteration of magical items.

Parsley was magic-talented. She's been studying magic ever since her first day in the school of Hecate. However, there was no ban for any magic-talented student to read the textbooks for the magicless, and vice-versa.

Sometimes magicless students read textbooks for magic-talented students to have a deeper understanding of the subject. Sometimes magic-talented students read textbooks about magical items to see their talent from a different perspective. Either one was considered to be an extra activity, like a hobby, and while uncommon there was no ban for students to borrow those books from the library as long as it wasn’t above their school year.

Parsley began searching through the messy pile on the ground, until she found a compass. For her, studying magicless textbooks wasn't just a way to spend free time. She was serious about studying both magic and magical items, because she understood something most people didn't: magic and magical items weren't the same.

She looked carefully at a magical compass, which she created in her fifth year. Most of the time, magic and magical items could do the same thing, but that wasn’t always the case. One of the most common limitations of magic was its ability to find people.

In theory, it was possible to locate a person as long as he or she was still alive. However in practice, the limits of a human body greatly reduced any magical spell, which attempted to search an area bigger than an average city. Therefore, if the wanted person was just outside the city border, or if the city was larger than average, the spell would fail without locating the target.

On the other hand, the limitations of a magical item could exceed those of humans as long as they were well-made. Another benefit to magical items came from the fact that they could be, and usually were, specialized in just one spell or charm, which meant that all power was focused on one action only, and no power was wasted on other activities.

The compass that Parsley created had a very simple setup. All one needed was the name of the person. The compass would send out a circular signal, which would travel out from the center. At first at high speed, then slower as the circle was getting bigger and thinning out. If the magical signal found a person, whose name matched, it would travel back at a straight line from the location of the wanted person causing the compass needle to point in that direction.

The gal took a marker and wrote down the name, Yew Sky, on the compass’s transparent glass. Afterward, she pushed the button at the side, and the compass needle began to spin like crazy until suddenly it froze in the direction of northwest, but more toward the north.

"That should be the location of the Windworm Tower," she said to herself.

She already knew that the Fairy Rain had occurred ereyester, because it was already mentioned in the newspaper yesterday morning. Therefore, it was most logical to assume that Yew was still in the area searching for Ginkgo, or unable to find the man, he was already on his way back. If he was walking by foot, it would take him at least two weeks to return, unless he had another method of travelling.

She took the compass into one hand and using an alcohol-napkin, she wiped off the name of Yew Sky from the compass’s glass.

Afterward, she wrote another name «Ginkgo the Adventurer» and set her magical item to search the globe once more. The fast-spinning needle began to spin slower and slower, while the minutes passed. After more than half an hour, the compass needle just slowly kept on moving in a circle.

"No results," Parsley concluded.

She wasn't surprised. The compass used the blessing magic embedded in names in order to locate people. However, a title or a nickname carried no blessing, so it was much harder to create a magical item for that.

Parsley, like most people around the world, had no idea what was Ginkgo's family name. However, she recalled her conversation with Aspen, who briefly explained to her what happened to Yew. At one point of the conversation, Aspen said that, "Yew tries to find Cypress's older brother," and for that reason he went to meet with Ginkgo. At first, Parsley assumed that Ginkgo the Adventurer and Cypress's older brother are two different people, but what if they aren't?

She wiped out "the Adventurer" and wrote "Sea" instead. The compass swirled fast, until finally it lay still pointing in the same direction of the Windworm Tower.

"If the two of them are together, then there's nothing to worry," she said and cleaned the name off the compass before she put it back onto the pile of other magical devices, some of them more useful than others.

Afterward, she took one of the books about magical items and climbed back onto her bed, where she leaned back on her pillows, covered herself up under a comforter, lifted one pillow more upward for it to be higher behind her head, and opened the book above her stomach.

As the sun slowly began to peek from behind the clouds, one single ray managed to hit right through her bedroom’s window and onto the book in her hands. She didn’t mind it, as she continued to read, no longer worried about her younger schoolmate.

Mesquite Wind stared at a large dark navy globe standing in the corner of his office. It was uniform in color with bold golden lines sketching the outlines of the continents and landforms, as well as at least one thousand tiny dots shining like silver stars in the night sky.

While he kept his hand hovering above the globe, he spoke, “Yew Sky.”

One of the dots got bigger and the name Yew Chirabilva Araukaria Sky appeared right next to it.

"He's still alive," the chairman of Hypnos said almost as if he didn’t believe his own words.

There was another man in the room.

Pine Fire was sitting in an armchair, and quietly observed Mesquite's actions. He wore his usual noble attires made of high quality materials and hand-decorated with golden-red flames of fire. His face had the scary look of a veteran, who just returned back from a war, but his countenance was emotionless like a rock at the bottom of the ocean during a powerful storm.

The chairman of Hypnos moved away from the globe. As he did so, the name of Yew Sky disappeared from the surface of the globe and the dot returned back to its tiny size.

Mesquite sat behind his desk and picked up the long scroll, which he had been reading before Parsley Gold mindteamed him and interrupted his work.

The scroll had two rolls. One roll at the top, and another roll at the bottom. In order to read through the scroll, Mesquite had to unwind the paper from the bottom roll and wind some of it up onto the top roll every minute in order to move to the next set of lines. Alternatively, he could unwind all of it, but that would make a gigantic mess, because the paper was not only thin, but also extremely long.

He kept scanning the line of the scroll until his eyes got tired. At that time, he didn’t unwind the next portion of the scroll. Instead he winded back the unrolled portion, leaving the rest for later. He put the scroll down on the desk but continued to stare at it.

"Are you looking for the names of new students?" asked Pine, who up until now was quietly sitting in an armchair.

"Yes and no," Mesquite responded without raising his head. "I still cannot believe that Yew ended up in Hypnos."

"Isn't it common to see children of Hypnos graduates attend Hypnos?"

Mesquite stood up and put his hands behind his back. In that position he approached the window and looked outside. It was snowing really hard, and the visibility was close to none. Among the white scenery he could make up faint silhouettes of trees that grew in the garden, and that of a gate, which although beautifully decorated, was made of steel as black as coal.

In the corners of the window, the frost was painting the white flowers on the window glass, which was occasionally shaking due to the wind.

"When Larch told me about Yew, I came to this office and begged the previous chairman to show me the List of Silphium," Mesquite said as he touched the window in a place, where there was plenty of frost gathering outside. The window glass was cold, almost freezing cold, but he didn't move his hand away. He stood like that for a while.

Pine sat comfortably in the armchair, with both of his legs spread apart and both arms laying down on the armrests of the seat. He slightly tilted his head to the left, and turned it a bit to have a better view of the man, who was standing by the window.

"By the way," Mesquite spoke as he took away his hand from the window, but he didn't look away from the scenery outside the window. "Isn't it an eerie circumstance that the oldest daughter of Silphium Moon had the same name as her mother?" he said, while he kept on observing the white snowflakes getting blown around by the strong winds onto the window glass.

Silphium Moon was a historical figure. She was born more than ten hundred years ago, at a time when humanity was still amidst the war against the demons. Based on historical records confirmed by countless witnesses, she led the final battle against the demons, nowadays known as the Battle of the End, and defeated all of the enemies, thus ending the war, and bringing peace to the land.

However, there were almost no historical sources regarding her personal life. There was no info about her parents or her family tree. The Moon household was known as a small household of fishermen, who were murdered by demons. Silphium Moon would be the last living member, if she was really a descendant of that household. Unfortunately, no one and nothing could prove her bloodline affiliation to the Moon household, so it was up to one’s faith to believe in her family name or not.

There was also absolutely no info about her having any relationship ever. Naturally, there were rumors about a husband or a man, whom she loved, but without any proof, no one educated would even consider such a possibility.

Moreover, Silphium Moon had many children, who looked nothing like her and nothing like each other, so they were undoubtedly war orphans, whom she adopted. Several of them were also of the same age, so certainly they weren’t born all at once from the same woman.

After Silphium Moon passed away, some of her children made claims, that they were her biological children and that they carried her bloodline. These claims couldn’t be proven, so not many people believed them.

In order to end these and many other rumors, historians uniformly agreed to the most logical conclusion. Ergo, in all official history books, it was declared that Silphium Moon was indeed unmarried all her life and never had a relationship, and that she birthed none of her children, so there was no one in the world, who carried her bloodline.

However, even the official final declarations of the historians couldn’t stop the rumors. The children of Silphium Moon, who claimed to carry her bloodlines, separated themselves from other people and formed a new class they called royals. And up to this day, all royals boldly claimed that they were real descendants of Silphium Moon, and that her blood was still in their veins.

"Yes," Pine nodded his head slowly, as he answered Mesquite’s question.

Other than royals, who always paid attention to their ancestors, there weren't that many people, who knew the names of any of Silphium's children.

However, all graduates of Hypnos knew about the list of Silphium and because of it, they also knew about Silphium Moon, the founder of the school of Hypnos, who had the same name as her mother.

Pine wasn't a graduate of Hypnos, but he had already heard this story from Mesquite and Larch. The oldest daughter of Silphium Moon had the same name, but unlike her mother, she didn’t participate in the war. After the demons disappeared, she created the school of Hypnos and wrote down all the names of its future students.

"Each name carries with it luck and misfortune," Mesquite said. "Luck sticks to the soul, but misfortune sticks to the name. Why would anyone give his own child all the misfortunes from his own life?"

A name was among the most unique things in the world. It appeared as if it existed in the material realm, but in reality only the sound and the script existed in the material realm. The name itself was so much more than just a group of syllables or a bunch of letters. It was actually a spiritual entity and as such, it held enormous spiritual powers, which could shape one’s life in many mysterious ways.

Whenever someone received a blessing, it would attach to the name and transform itself into good luck. Whenever someone received a curse, it would attach itself to the name and transform into bad luck.

As long as the person was alive, his or her name carried both blessings and curses. The blessings attached to the name got passed along the spiritual bloodline to all the descendants, whether biological or not. However, curses did not. Curses remained attached to the same name for up to four generations.

Ergo, it was always unheard of for anyone to carry the same name as another member in the same family, unless the name hadn’t been used for at least four generations.

“Maybe it wasn’t her real name? Maybe she just used her mother’s name instead of her real name, when founding Hypnos?” Pine offered a suggestion.

For all the parents around the world, choosing the child's name was always the most important event of their lifetime. Everyone wanted to choose a unique name overfilled with blessings, because no one knew exactly what curses their children would gather over their lifespan. Thus, it was in parents' best intention to give their children a blessing powerful enough to counter any curse.

Mesquite shook his head. “It’s been written that way on her birth certificate.”

From the beginning and throughout her life, the daughter of Silphium Moon, carried the same name as her mother, but unlike her famous mother, she wasn't famous at all. No one knew about her existence, except for the graduates of Hypnos.

Mesquite turned around toward Pine and looked at his friend, "I never would have thought that the first royal would ever do something so cruel to her own child."

Pine didn't answer, but he knew the history and he understood what Mesquite meant. Silphium Moon defeated countless demons throughout her life. Even if one assumed that each demon cursed her only one thousand times, the amount of curses on her name would be so much that nobody even knew what to call such a large number.

Of course, Siliphium Moon herself also carried an almost endless amount of blessings from all creatures in heavens and on earth. These blessings were so numerous that they easily countered the curses, but none of those blessings could be passed with the name. Even if the blessings were passed with the blood, it was still an extreme gamble to make.

Therefore, it was a ten hundred yrold mystery, of why Silphium Moon gave her name to her oldest daughter, when she surely knew how dangerous it was.

"A name is a key to one's destiny," Mesquite walked slowly toward his desk. "One man can carry the key and never use it. Another man will use the key before even knowing what lies behind the closed door."

Pine raised his eyebrow, "are you implying that it's better for men to never use the key?"

"What do you think?"

"A life without courage to face the unknown is a waste of time," Pine smirked. "It's better to open the door of one's destiny and die knowing, rather than to live like a prisoner, never knowing what could have been."

“What if there’s no destiny behind the door?” Mesquite sat at his desk. “What if you open the door and find nothing there?”

“Then you make your own destiny,” Pine’s smirk got a bit bigger. “If the room’s empty, that means you’re free to put in there whatever you want.”

Mesquite sighed as he leaned his elbows on the desk. He put his chin on his locked hands, "I would never forget the day, when the previous chairman allowed me to look at the List of Silphium. I searched it over and over again, but I never found the name of Yew River on it."

Pine didn't say anything, while Mesquite paused to think.

"Larch said that the River household attended Hypnos for almost five hundred years. He said that their names appear on the List of Silphium as soon as their children are born," Mesquite looked at the photo of Larch River that stood on a shelf in front of heavy dark brown volumes of books.

The photo was inside a simple black square frame without any decorations. A part of it in the top right corner had burn marks, almost as if the photo was saved from a fire. The man in the photo, Larch River, smiled profoundly toward Mesquite, as if he could read right through Mesquite's thoughts.

"If the boy wasn't destined for the school of Hypnos, there was no reason for him to die, is what I thought," Mesquite said toward the photo.

"So if his name was on the list, you wouldn't have left Yew alive?" After many years of serving his lord, Pine finally learned the reason, why Mesquite for the first time in his life showed such mercy.

Mesquite leaned back in his chair and looked at Pine, "I don't know," he said. "It was a decision of that day and of that time. I'm not sure, if I would take the same decision today and at this time. I cannot know, what I would have done, if anything was different."

"And it doesn’t matter anymore," Pine added. "Past is past, and the time that flew by will never come back."

"Have you heard about time magic?" Mesquite asked.

"Nothing but a fantasy," Pine responded.

Controlling time was always among one of the goals of humans of every time and in every place. However, nothing like that has ever been successfully accomplished ever since the day, when God created the world.

Yet even though, in official records, it was never proven, some men and women showed up every once in a while with stories of time-travelling. However, except for the most foolish morons, no one believed them.

"True," Mesquite agreed. "God gave men the power over everything in the world, but time is the only thing that God kept for himself. Some say that it’s because time is not from this world, but it's actually this world, which exists within time."

"Then why talk about time control?" Pine wanted Mesquite to get straight to the point.

"There are three ways to control time. One is to travel back into the past. The second way is to move forward into the future. The third way is to stop time. According to the writings left by the oldest daughter of Silphium Moon, her mother had all three powers. All of them were granted to her by God."

Pine furrowed his eyebrows, "wouldn't that make her powerful beyond imagination?"

"Imagine," Mesquite whispered, "that it was true."

"I don't need to imagine to know how much power, she could have."

"That's not it," Mesquite shook his head sideways. "If it really was true, then that means that God didn't withhold the control of time from people."

"Are you growing senile?" for Pine the only logical explanation, why would anyone think of getting power to control time, was that their brains weren't working properly anymore and they needed medical help.

"If Silphium indeed had control over time, it means that this power is accessible for all men, but the criteria to gain this power are so difficult to match, that in all of human history, only one man discovered the way to control time," Mesquite spoke peacefully and analytically, with a tone that would imply that he wasn't in the slightest interested in controlling the time. Rather, there was something like a single note of worry hidden deep in his voice.

Pine leaned his chin on his left hand, but said nothing. His countenance was as silent as his words.

Mesquite once again took the List of Silphium into his hands. The scroll had many names of the past, present and some of the future students. The names of students were listed in chronological order, by the date of birth of each student. However, the same couldn't be said about the random appearance of the names.

By default, the names on the List of Silphium were hidden from view, and it was impossible to see those names until they officially appeared on their own. For some people their names appeared before their birth, for others it was during their birth, or right afterward. Yet there were also those, whose names appeared years later, and in some cases right before they were sent the invitation to the school of Hypnos. That was the case for Yew Sky, whose name remained hidden until the season of Dees in the year fifty seven hundred ninety nine, when it appeared on the day, when Mesquite was going to send out the invitations.

"How could she know all those names?" Mesquite spoke more to himself than to Pine. "She knew that Yew River would attend Hypnos under the name Yew Sky, which appeared when I was so busy that I didn't even realize that I sent out the invitation to his son."

Mesquite recalled how he saw the name of Yew Sky suddenly appear on the List of Silphium. In a hurry, he wrote the invitation. At no point, did he ever think that Yew Sky was the same boy as Yew River.

"But if you realized it afterward, you could have stopped the mail before it arrived," Pine spoke out.

Mesquite shook his head in a helpless motion. "I didn't realize it at all. It was only after I met with him and took a piece of his soul to Dreamland that I felt like I had met him before. Afterward, I checked up on Yew River in the orphanage, where you left him, and I found out that he was adopted by the Sky household."

"But it's not like he knows his previous family,” Pine pointed out. “I made sure that no important info was left in the documents I put together with the baby. As long as he doesn't know anything about his parents, it should be fine to let him be."

"He will find out," Mesquite responded, "If Silphium chose him to be a student of Hypnos, then it's even more likely that sooner or later he'll learn about his background. However,” Mesquite crossed his fingers, “I plan to give him a chance. Unlikely as it sounds, maybe he won't make the same mistake as his father."

"Larch always had the most foolish ideas," Pine recalled the past.

"Well, the idea isn't rare among the students of Hypnos. However, no one else has ever come as far as Larch. A little more, and he would have succeeded."

Mesquite unrolled the scroll, where it showed the names of students from almost forty years ago. He had found his own name among them, and looked at the number eight, which was handwritten next to his handwritten name in the exact same handwriting.

"The black is spreading," he muttered to himself.

The number eight was half black with green color remaining at the top. Mesquite was well aware of the meaning of this change in color from green to black.

Whenever a new chairman of Hypnos was appointed, a green number zero showed up next to his or her name on the List of Silphium. After one year the number zero would disappear and in its place a number one would appear. This process repeated every year until it was the chairman’s last year in office. On the last year, the number would begin to turn black and once the number turned completely black, a new number zero would appear next to someone else’s name.

Ever since Mesquite began his eighth year as a chairman of Hypnos, the number next to his name on the List of Silphium slowly but steadily began to change color, implying that soon the time to leave his position would come.

The previous chairman died of very old age, so the total number of years next to his name was seventy three. On the other hand, Mesquite was still far from dying.

"It looks like I won’t be the chairman of Hypnos for much longer," he said to Pine, who already heard about this matter two months ago, when Mesquite for the first time realized that his number was changing color from green to black.

Both men knew that there were only two possible reasons for that. The first one was that Mesquite was going to die around the month of Faev next year, but since he was quite healthy, that would mean either a murder or an accident as the only likely cause of his death. The only other possibility was that someone more powerful than him, would come to challenge him over the position of the chairman of Hypnos.

However, Mesquite couldn't think of any particular student (current or past) of Hypnos, who would be more powerful than him.

Since only the students of Hypnos had the right to become the school's next chairman, it was impossible for anyone else to challenge him. Even if they had won, the List of Silphium wouldn’t accept them.

After his sleep cycle had come to an end, Yew became conscious of his surroundings, but he didn’t show any signs of it for several long moments. As he lay down, he wondered why it was so uncomfortable. He didn’t remember his bed in Hecate to be this hard. In order to search for comfort he turned around. Upon finding none, he opened his eyes and looked around the room. There were beds, but there was no one else present besides him.

He quickly remembered what happened the previous day and sat up on the bed. His muscles and bones hurt, but he didn't know whether it was due to the adventure or from the hard bed.

He was still wearing yesterday's clothes. He had no spare clothes to change into, but even if he had spare clothes, he wouldn’t undress in order to change them anyway, because the dirty clothes kept him warm, and staying warm was more important for him than staying clean, since the room wasn't that much warmer than the temperature outside.

He got up and walked toward the door. When he stepped out of the room, he saw Ginkgo and the owner of the house looking in his direction. They had a conversation together, but paused it, when they heard the door of the bedroom opening up.

"You slept like a log," Ginkgo commented toward the boy. "It's already afternoon."

"Oh," Yew looked out the window, but the only thing he could see was the dark cloudy sky and big bushes buried under snow.

He hadn’t realized it yesterday, because it was dark, but the house was surrounded by tall bushes on all sides, except for the only path, which led to the entrance door.

"It was snowing in the morning,” Ginkgo said. “Now it's just cloudy, but we'll stay here for one more night, because the clouds look like a blizzard may be coming. If it doesn’t come, then hopefully tomorrow, we'll get a sunny sky to travel with."

Yew's stomach growled after Ginkgo spoke.

The man smiled, "I'll do dinner for us now, so in the meantime you can visit the bucket," he pointed in the direction of the backdoor, then got up from the armchair and walked up to the front door.

Yew went to do his morning business late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile Ginkgo, who was wearing no outdoor clothing, went outside and came back a moment later with six big frozen fish. He put them on the counter and began to prepare the meal.

"Where did you get the fishes?" Yew asked after he came back and saw the delicious-looking fat fishes.

"I caught them this morning," Ginkgo answered. "There's a lake nearby," he added.

"Lad," the matriarch called out to Yew, "come over here."

Yew looked at her, then at Ginkgo, who beckoned him with his head to go toward the elder. Yew slowly approached her, but stood a good meter away.

"Sit down," the matriarch gestured with her hand at the armchair, where Ginkgo was sitting.

Yew sat down uncertain of what she wanted from him.

"So tell me," she said and waited.

Yew had no idea, what she wanted from him, so after a long moment of silence, he asked, "tell you what?"

"What a rude kid," she commented. "Don't you know that it's only proper manners to tell your story, when you're at someone else's house?"

It was the first time Yew heard something like this, but it was also the first time he ever stayed at any house other than at his family, or at Mpingo's place, but Mpingo’s place also felt like staying with his family.

"You're going to Hecate, right?" Ginkgo asked while preparing the fish.

"Oh, the school of magic," the matriarch was interested. "So you're magic-talented."

Yew wasn't sure, whether he should confirm or deny her statement.

"So tell me what you learn in Hecate," she asked.

Since the first-year classes were the same for both magic-talented and magicless students, Yew felt no problem describing his school life in Hecate.

“My class is learning sky magic, which allows us to levitate objects and to move them without touching them.”

He began by talking about lessons. He described the magic spells, which his class was practicing with Sorrel, and he also spoke about history class, where he had to memorize a lot of info in order to get good scores on tests.

Then he talked about teachers. He had a lot of good things to say about Sorrel, and a lot to complain about Cacao. He also spoke about his tutors, but not a lot, since he wasn’t close with any of them except for Chervil, and since Chervil was also a student of Hypnos, he didn’t want to talk about her in fear of accidentally revealing one of their secrets.

After the tutors, he spoke about his classmates, his neighbors Spruce and Aspen, as well as his roommate Linden.

The matriarch was especially interested in Linden, because of how unusual that kid was. She asked Yew a lot of questions regarding Linden, and Yew answered as many as he could.

Yew was glad that the matriarch found Linden to be such an interesting topic, because Yew felt no problem talking about his roommate. Unlike Aspen or Chervil, there was nothing he had to hide, when it came to talking about Linden. Surely Linden had a lot of things, which he was hiding himself, but since Yew didn’t know exactly what Linden was hiding, he didn’t have to worry about revealing any of Linden’s secrets.

Eventually the matriarch slowly shook her head, "what a difficult kid," she said as she smiled warmly, while reminiscing about her own children. "Reminds me of my son. He was always such a troublemaker."

Yew wanted to ask her about her son, but just then Ginkgo announced that the fish was ready, and invited them to sit at the table, where the plates and utensils were already laid out.

The matriarch slowly got up, and headed for the table.

After the long conversation, Yew no longer saw her as the scary unfriendly woman, which he originally took her to be. He didn’t mind sitting with her at the same table, while Ginkgo was placing fishes on their plates.

He was surprised to see three fishes on his plate, while Ginkgo and the matriarch had only one.

“You’re the only one, who missed two meals, so you need to catch up or you won’t grow,” Ginkgo explained before Yew asked the question.

The matriarch had only one fish, but she herself had said that she wouldn't be able to eat all of it, so she cut off half of the fish and passed it to Ginkgo.

Ginkgo ate his one and a half fishes in several large bites, and was the first one to finish the dinner.

While the matriarch was still eating, Ginkgo continued to tell her the story, which he hadn’t yet finished telling, because he paused right when Yew came out of the bedroom. It was a story about that time, when he met a stone golem in a difficult-to-access mountain range.

Yew didn't say anything, while he ate and at the same time carefully listened to the story.

The matriarch, on the other hand, was asking many questions here and there, trying to find out all the details.

Yew was surprised, that Ginkgo’s answers were so full of details that he almost forgot what the main story was about. The boy was so immersed in the tale, that he didn't even realize when he finished his third fish and stabbed the empty plate with a fork. He looked down, and only then he realized that there was nothing left to eat on the plate.

"Still hungry?" Ginkgo asked after he heard Yew scratching on the plate with a fork.

"No, I'm fine," the boy answered and felt embarrassed, when he realized that he ate more than two adults combined, and if he had asked for more, he'd end up eating more than enough for two adults.

"Thank you for the story," the matriarch said before she got up.

Ginkgo and Yew watched her slowly walk towards the staircase.

"Don't you want to listen to the end?" Yew asked the matriarch.

Ginkgo hadn't finished telling her, how his adventure with the golem had ended, and Yew didn't understand why she would leave before hearing it all.

The matriarch looked back at him, and Yew saw a countenance that he had never seen before. It was a mix of sadness and joy - an expression of agony mixed with comfort.

"No, I'm fine," she answered, turned around and went up the staircase.

Yew turned to Ginkgo and whispered, "was it my fault?"

Ginkgo kept staring at the staircase. His face was frozen in deep contemplation "Her son was an adventurer," he said and Yew could hear the tiny note of regret in his voice. "She told me about him earlier this morning."

Yew looked straight into his face, and waited to hear more.

Ginkgo sighed before he put his palm over his eyes as he tilted his head backward, and slid his hand over his forehead, "one day he left for an adventure and never came back."

Yew didn't need to hear anymore to understand why the matriarch had such mixed emotions carved on her face. He bit his lips, not knowing how to react or what to say in such situations.

Ginkgo kept his hand on the top of his head as he stared at the ceiling. "But that's not all," he said. "Ten years before her son went missing, her husband, also an adventurer, went out and never returned."

It took Yew a moment to realize that the matriarch had not lost one family member, but two of them.

Ginkgo continued to explain that both her husband and her son left the house one day, and neither one had ever returned back. Not knowing what happened to them, she remained in the house more than forty years, waiting for them to come back. Since there was no proof that they died, she continued to hope that they were alive. That’s why she kept on letting the adventurers stay at her house. She still wanted to believe that someday some passingby adventurer might know something about her missing family members.

Yew recalled his family in Catriddle, or to be precise, his parents, who lived there, because Hyssop was surely still in the school of Athena. His hardworking older sister rarely took a break during a schoolyear.

He thought about his mom, Nettle, who was most likely home, then he thought about his dad, Kapok, who was a merchant and who was likely travelling somewhere right now. He imagined the scary possibility that his dad would one day leave home and never return. The idea so scared him that he immediately threw it out of his head and refused to accept such a possibility.

Instead he thought about the matriarch and felt sad for her. He wanted to help her, yet he didn't know how to. He understood that there was no way for anyone in the world to fix her situation, or to help her, unless her missing family members miraculously reappeared after more than forty years.

Yew felt lost in his own inability to change someone’s life for the better. In his heart, he wanted to help people in need, but his mind fought against that desire by coldly and logically pointing out to him all his powerlessness.

"If people could come back to life," he murmured loud enough for Ginkgo to hear. The man never said that the matriarch’s family was dead, but if they weren’t, then why haven’t they returned back home?

"What for?" Ginkgo asked quickly, albeit rather quietly. He looked straight into Yew’s eyes. "In order to die twice?"

"Huh? Wha?" Yew was confused at the unexpected sarcasm.

"Do you want to die twice? Or three times?" Ginkgo chuckled.

Yew was too confused to respond right away. Slowly he put his thoughts together. "Then why aren’t humans immortal? Nobody would die even once, if everyone was immortal," he smiled as he tried to be clever.

"Great idea," Ginkgo smirked. "Let me know when you're immortal. I’ll cut you into pieces, so you can happily live forever as parts."

Yew's smile immediately disappeared as he understood the main problem, that automatically came with an immortality.

"Did nobody tell you that death is not the end, but merely the beginning?" Ginkgo asked.

Yew had indeed heard this sentiment. It was often spoken by the clergy, whenever they talked about the afterlife, but he never understood it, so he didn't bother thinking too much about it.

"How can death be the beginning? When you die, your body rots and you disappear from this world, so how could that be a beginning?" he asked in hopes that maybe finally someone will explain it to him.

"Have you ever eaten a plum?"

"Sure," Yew shrugged his shoulders.

"A plum has a pit inside," Ginkgo connected his thumb and the index finger into the shape of a plum pit. "Inside the pit, there's a seed that is protected by the hard shell of the pit. When the plum fruit falls from the tree," he gestured the fall, "it lands on the ground. Over time, the weather buries it underground, where the shell decomposes, and the seed inside awakens, sprouts and grows into a tree."

Yew nodded in understanding. He already learned about this process from kindergarten.

"The same process occurs in humans," Ginkgo pointed at himself. "A living human is like a pit. Our physical bodies are shells that protect the seed within. When the right time comes, the body is destroyed, so the seed can be freed. For us humans, that seed is the soul that resides inside us. After the soul leaves the body, it grows into a spiritual being - one with an eternal life and an incorruptible body. That's why for us humans, death is not the end but the beginning of a better life."

"Then why not die right away?" Yew asked with his head tilted to the side.

Ginkgo smiled. "Good question, but the answer is simple. No one dies until they’re ready. If it’s not your time to die, the heavens will move and the earth will take action to stop you from dying, and if necessary, unbelievable miracles will happen just to keep you alive.”

Yew furrowed his eyebrows, "so how do I know, when I’ll be ready to die?"

"We don't, God does.”

“So it’s impossible to know one’s time of death?” Yew pondered.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Ginkgo responded. “I heard of people, who knew ahead of time, when it would be their time to go.”

Yew wondered what it would be like to know the exact date and time of his own death. When he was at the Windworm Tower, he was certain he’d die and yet that didn’t happen. But to be honest, he only felt the certainty, because it would take a miracle for him to survive and he hadn’t expected anything out of the ordinary to save him.

Yet he survived, while nothing miraculous occurred. Naturally, some would call the meeting with Ginkgo at the tower a miracle, but there was nothing impossible about it. Thus, it wasn’t a miracle - just a lucky coincidence.

He recalled Ginkgo’s explanation about the pit, and wondered if his soul isn’t yet ready to sprout. Then he recalled Mesquite and the piece of his soul, which was studying in the school of Hypnos.

“Hey,” he spoke to Ginkgo. “Pits sometimes get damaged or moldy. Can that happen to souls?”

"Sure," Ginkgo responded. "A soul can only be as healthy as its thoughts."

"What does that mean?"

Ginkgo pointed a finger at his forehead, "all evil starts from here," then he took the hand away from his head and put down the arm. "Any evil action is always preceded by an evil thought. The evil, which infects your thoughts, causes your soul to rot."

Yew's eyes went up and began going from left to right for a while before he said, "what if I'm infected?"

Ginkgo laughed softly. "Do you know what is the first symptom of evil?"

"What?"

"Pride."

Yew fell silent after he heard Ginkgo’s answer.

Even though he was still a kid, he already knew that pride was nothing good. His parents had warned him about it many times, and he himself had felt unpleasant, whenever he saw someone with even a little bit of pride. It disgusted him, when someone was proud of himself, because it felt like there was something abnormal about it.

And he was right.

Mother Nature, a sweet mother of all animals and plants, created by God long before He created humans, had never seen pride in any of her children. The fastest animals of the world never took pride in their speed. The strongest ones were never proud of their strength. And those with unique skills never felt any pride for being different from other animals.

In the same manner, the first humans were also pure and humble, just like the rest of their brethren. However, the demons, the most proud creatures to ever exist, started a war against humans. By coming in contact with the demons, the humans have learned about the existence of pride, and some humans began to practice it.

The pride had only one meaning in the whole world - it meant a sensation of superiority gained from one’s own characteristic, and it came from the evil side, where it had always existed.

The pride had destroyed the demons, who embraced it fully. It also destroyed those humans, who allowed pride to infect their hearts. In consequence their souls had rotten as they began to protect their pride like their own mother. Sometimes, they’d even spell the word with a capital letter, as if it was a real name.

In the end, the pride destroyed their souls thoroughly, so that there was nothing left of them but a rotten core inside an empty shell. And their wasted lives became a warning to all the men about the danger of pride.

This warning was passed from generation to generation, and yet occasionally a fool, who wouldn’t listen, would once again become another reminder that pride was never good.

Yew sighed in relief. His soul ought to be safe, because he had never taken any pride in anything. Therefore, it meant that his soul was still healthy. "As long as I don't have pride, I have nothing to worry about," he told Ginkgo.

"Yeah," Ginkgo agreed, then murmured to himself, "but once you do get pride, you won't even notice."

"Why?" Yew couldn't understand Ginkgo's last statement.

"Be careful not to get proud over little things," Ginkgo said in a normal voice. “Pride, like all evil, starts with an innocent excuse of «only a little bit».”

"I know," Yew responded. “At first, the evil wants to gain access,” he recalled something his parents taught him in the past. “Then it wants to grow. So to stop evil, it has to be stopped before it even starts.”

"Good," Ginkgo complimented him before he stood up, gathered the dishes, and went to wash them.

Yew remained at the table, where he began to reminisce about his childhood. His parents were never proud, and they both taught him in unison about the evil known as pride.

He learned how pride can destroy a man and turn him into a monster. He learned that pride caused men to become blind to the world around them, which in turn meant that they weren’t aware of what they were doing and how their actions were harming both them and others.

However, today he learned for the first time, an extremely valuable lesson, when Ginkgo told him that pride is the first symptom of a rotting soul.

He recalled people, whom he met in the past, and how some of them were proud in one way or another. Some were proud of their appearance. Some were proud of their place of origin, or their background, or their family history. Some were proud of their abilities, skills or talents. Some were proud of things too minor to even care about.

Yew understood that all their pride was in vain and it was a meaningless thing to possess. Nothing in the world could remain forever, so anything the men could be proud of, would sooner or later be gone without a trace.

Moreover, everything a man had was in one way or the other given to him by nature. Whether it was beauty or strength, one’s family or talents, intelligence or one’s predisposition to learn certain skills, everything was decided at birth.

If a woman took pride in her beautiful hairstyle, because of how much time she spent setting it up, she was forgetting that her hair was a gift. She could have been born without hair, or she could have lost her hair for one reason or another.

If a man took pride in his ability to run fast, because he was training for many years, he was forgetting that his legs were a gift. He could have been born without legs, or he could have lost his ability to move his legs for one reason or another.

Pride always stemmed from an inability to understand that one’s own hard work is merely a droplet in an ocean compared to the work done by nature. If the Heavens hadn’t set up the stage, no achievement would be possible. That was why the wise men never felt any pride. They fully understood the gravity of the divine setup. They knew that with just one piece being out of place, anything could be annihilated out of existence.

In other words, anything a human could be proud of, might disappear at any moment without a trace. And Yew understood that, which is why he never felt any need to feel pride.

But after hearing from Ginkgo about pride being the first symptom of evil, he began to feel concerned about the proud humans. He wondered, if there was a way to save a soul, which had already been infected with evil.

On the thirty third day of Tsun, the night came quickly. By the time Ginkgo began washing the dishes, the sun was already setting behind the trees, which were hiding the distant horizon. The heavy clouds, which were covering the firmament throughout the day, had left in the western sky a crevice long enough, that the last sunrays of the day quickly glazed over the village houses before disappearing completely.

The sky soon turned black, and if not for the lamp in the room, neither Yew nor Ginkgo would be able to see anything. All the stars were hidden by the clouds, and the faint light coming out from other houses wasn't enough to dilute the deep darkness, which consumed everything outdoors.

Freezing winds were blowing like mad dogs, howling in the chimney, knocking on the doors, and running quickly around the house, causing the windowglass to shake and rattle as if it trembled in fear of them.

Ginkgo finished washing the dishes, and Yew was glad that he wasn't alone in this shoddy house at nighttime with this weather. All the sounds around him made him shiver and his senses sharpened as if his whole body was expecting an imminent danger to his life. He has never encountered a house built so feebly that it felt as if the strong winds could blow it away at any moment.

Recalling his family home in Catriddle, Yew was glad that his father always made sure to build strong walls, doors and windows to protect his family from any danger, whether natural or not. He wished all houses had a sturdy build, because it was seriously stressful to live in such a low-quality structure.

As he watched Ginkgo wipe the last plate dry with a kitchen cloth, the realization hit him. "Do you need my help?" he asked.

Ginkgo stopped wiping the last plate, and looked at Yew with a smile, "I didn't think you're that slow."

"I'm not," Yew responded. "I was just thinking about something else," he didn’t want to tell Ginkgo that he was worrying about the roof falling on his head, afraid that the man would laugh at him.

"About Cypress?" Ginkgo assumed, as he put the last plate together with the other plates, and finished his work.

Ginkgo's question brought back to Yew's mind a lot of related topics that he still hadn't talked about. He also realized that he had almost forgotten that Ginkgo was Cypress's older brother. Even though they did look alike, Ginkgo had a completely different air about him.

The air around Cypress was the air of someone powerful, secretive, and bossy. Whereas, Ginkgo had an air of someone resolute although free-spirited. He also appeared to possess a lot of wisdom that would come naturally from diverse experiences collected throughout a long life. Yet Ginkgo was still in his twenties.

"He's not a bad guy," Ginkgo said about Cypress as he sat at the table across from Yew, "although he does like to play a bad guy."

"Ah…," Yew wondered, whether it was a good time to continue the conversation that they started in the cave. "Is it okay to talk about Cypress now?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?" Ginkgo asked.

Yew looked at the staircase, then back at Ginkgo, who smiled at the boy.

"He's my younger brother, and your schoolmate. There’s no reason to keep it a secret,” Ginkgo excluded the involvement of Hypnos. “I would like to hear how he's doing now. I'm sure you're at least a bit interested in what kind of a kid he used to be."

Yew understood that Ginkgo didn't have a problem talking about Cypress, as long as the conversation didn’t include anything related to Hypnos. Thus he began by telling Ginkgo, how he met with Cypress on the train.

“Those were his father’s,” Ginkgo noted about the cigarettes. “He must have had an argument with him before he left for Hecate. That would explain why he took the train.”

“He doesn’t take the train normally?”

“Normally, there would be a carriage dropping him off,” Ginkgo explained. “I bet Cypress had a quarrel with his father, stole his cigarettes and ran off.”

“Stole his cigarettes?” Yew could understand running away, but not stealing.

“Ah that, yeah… Ever since Cypress was young, he was good at holding back his emotions, but he developed this funny habit of secretly stealing from people, who made him angry. Our father smokes a lot, so I bet Cypress took his cigarettes.”

“Oh, okay,” Yew smiled, because he learned something interesting about Cypress. Afterward, he told Ginkgo how Cypress lured him into a maze.

Ginkgo did confirm Yew’s suspicion that Cypress is indeed extremely talented in magic, although he was surprised to hear that Cypress was able to create a maze out of Hecate schoolground.

Afterward, Yew described errands, which Cypress made him run, as well as the overall relationship between the two of them. At the end, he told Ginkgo all that Cypress told him about his older brother.

"And I think that's all," Yew concluded after he couldn’t come up with more things to talk about.

Ginkgo leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling and was thinking about something.

Yew waited, as he didn't want to interrupt the man's thoughts. He felt as if Ginkgo was pondering something crucial and it was better to leave him alone.

"I do have an idea, why Cypress wants to meet me," Ginkgo said slowly, while his eyes were still directed upward. "It has to be his freedom," he lowered down his eyes and looked at Yew.

"His freedom?" Yew wanted Ginkgo to be more specific.

"The children of the Sea household have a rather limited childhood," Ginkgo began. "Because the household has a reputation to uphold, it has more rules than other noble households, and a lot of rules compared with a commoner household.”

Yew knew that different households had different rules. Even in his village, some parents were more strict than others.

“The good fame of the Sea household is dependent on the actions of each family member," Ginkgo explained. “So everyone must follow the rules. Those who don’t are punished.”

"But then where's his freedom?” Yew was confused by Ginkgo’s description. “If Cypress has to follow all the rules, he has no freedom.”

Ginkgo nodded. “Yeah, he has no freedom. As long as he’s a member of the Sea household, he has no freedom, but that doesn't mean he doesn't desire it. It has been his wish ever since I remember.”

"So freedom is something he doesn't have yet, but he plans to get it," Yew was quick to understand, where this was going.

"That’s my assumption,” Ginkgo pointed out.

“How is he going to get his freedom?" Yew knew that there were many options to choose from, but instead of thinking through them all, he decided to take the quick route and ask Ginkgo, who may have already known the answer.

"That's something I also want to know," Ginkgo’s answer disappointed Yew, but the follow-up surprised the boy. "When he was a kid, he had often said that he would destroy the household, but that was childish, so I doubt that’s what he plans to do."

"He wanted to destroy the household?" Yew's mouth twitched at the extreme idea.

"When he was really angry, yes. It was his way of expressing his dislike for the rules. If he had been serious, he'd already have done it. With his powers, it would have been possible, but I’m sure he never meant it that way. He simply didn’t like the rules and was expressing his anger in a childish way.”

Ginkgo stroked the stubble on his face, "Cypress is currently on his ninth year in Hecate, so in less than a year he'll graduate. If he does graduate from Hecate, he'll be appointed as the next head of the Sea household. It’s a tradition that the head is appointed as soon as he graduates from Hecate, while the previous head remains somewhat of an advisor to the new head.”

Yew nodded to confirm that he was paying attention.

“I bet Cypress doesn’t want to become the head of the Sea household. Most likely, he wants to follow my path, and get kicked out. But that’s not easy, and that’s why he wants to meet me,” Ginkgo theorized. “I’d assume that his father would get seriously mad, if he ever found out that Cypress kept contact with me.”

"Still, I'm surprised that he'd ask someone so young to go and find me," Ginkgo smiled at Yew with awe.

"He didn't ask me to meet you in person,” Yew instantly clarified. “He only asked me to tell him, if I have any info regarding you. He thinks that I know some people from Hypnos, and he wanted me to go ask around about you."

"And come back with whatever you heard?"

Yew nodded.

"Then you really outdid yourself," Ginkgo commented.

"I didn't plan to," Yew hung down his head as he recalled how he almost failed to meet Ginkgo, yet the man's sudden but late appearance in the Windworm Tower saved his life. "Things just happened that way."

"That's how life is," Ginkgo sighed. "People form plans, God plans the form."

"What?" Yew wanted clarification. “God planned it?” he rephrased the proverb in the way he understood it.

"Planned what?"

"Our meeting?"

"Maybe."

"Didn't you just say so?"

"What-oh! That was just a proverb," Ginkgo laughed cheerfully. "You know, when people don't understand something, they always attribute it to God."

"But what if God really did plan it?"

"Does it matter?" Ginkgo responded with a question. "God is a mystery, and life is a mystery. No one can ever understand God, and no one can ever understand life. Why would you waste your time pondering something that has no answer?"

Yew thought for a moment in silence, "doesn't it just naturally bother you? That there are things you don't know? Wouldn't you want to know them?"

"Don't poke your nose into a beehive. Have you ever heard this proverb?"

Yew shook his head. He had no recollection of anyone ever telling him that.

"If you poke your nose into a beehive, you may find some sweet honey inside, but you'll also get stung by the bees. That's why this proverb is a warning that curiosity isn't always a good thing."

"Trying to understand God is a bad thing?"

Ginkgo scratched the back of his head, "that's not what I wanted to say. Give me a moment to think," then he furrowed his eyebrows and stayed silent for a long time.

Unable to sit still while waiting, Yew was swinging his legs, which were dangling just a several centimeters above the floor as he sat on the chair.

Eventually Ginkgo put his hands together, as if he was praying and he began his explanation, "Curiosity means trying to know something that you don't know. While the feeling itself isn't dangerous, this feeling can overpower all your other senses, such as wisdom or thoughtfulness. If you desire to know something too much, especially if it's something that can never be understood, you're very likely to go the wrong way. Especially with topics related to God. If you try too hard to have an answer, you'll end up with a wrong answer, and any wrong answer inevitably leads to bad situations."

Yew listened attentively and he did understand Ginkgo’s message. "Got it," he nodded his head.

"You do?"

"Yeah, I do. Like, for example, if I ask for directions to Hecate, and I get the wrong answer, I won't be able to arrive at Hecate. I’ll get lost, which would be a bad situation, right? And if I also wrongly assume that my life was planned by God, I'll end up making wrong choices in my life. I won't be able to reach my goal and that’s bad, if I cannot have the life that I want to have."

Ginkgo opened his eyes wider. He was honestly surprised at how fast Yew understood the problem of an uncontrolled curiosity. It was something that even adults often struggled to comprehend, but the ten yrold boy understood it with just one simple explanation.

"I'm impressed," Ginkgo said with a warm smile.

"Why?" Yew was taken aback by the man’s words.

"Because you’re so smart," Ginkgo responded and his smile got bigger.

Yew blinked twice, and stared questioningly at the man sitting in front of him. For a while, neither one of them said anything.

"Are you sleepy?" Ginkgo asked, and Yew shook his head. "Well, of course. Why would you be sleepy, if you slept for so long. Anyway, you told me about Cypress, whom you know. Now it's my turn to tell you about Cypress, whom I know."

Yew nodded his head, ready to listen.

"Cypress was born at the end of Veuf in the year fifty seven hundred eighty five, at that time I was already eleven yrold and a third year student of Nike. Originally I started Hecate at the age of seven, but I got invited at the age of nine. That’s why I changed schools.”

Yew understood that Ginkgo meant the invitation from Hypnos.

“After Cypress was born, I was interested in my younger brother, so I returned home every weekend and helped take care of baby Cypress. When he learned how to walk, he'd constantly run after me. I found it so funny, I wished there were more holidays.”

During the year, there were only three holiday breaks for students: vacations in the month of Dees, which lasted six weeks; Raethosu near the shortest day of the year, which lasted three weeks; and a two-week long break of Dhafhrenoo after the first equinox.

"When nobody was around, I used to tell Cypress about my adventures as a student of Nike,” Ginkgo confessed.

“What if Cypress told someone else?”

“Of course he did. He was a kid,” Ginkgo pointed out the obvious fact that little kids repeat everything they hear, “but I told the adults that he was retelling the stories I read to him. Nobody believed him that I was a student of Nike, because everyone was certain that I was a student of Hecate,” Ginkgo lowered his eyes and his voice sounded sad, almost remorseful. “Cypress loved my stories, but his teachers told me to limit my visits, because I was distracting his education."

Most children received basic education in kindergarten, where they learned the basic foundations of knowledge, such as reading, writing, and mathematics. However, some parents, who had enough money, would hire private teachers for their children. Cypress clearly had that kind of parents.

“Cypress was five yrold, when I stopped visiting him on weekends. Up to that time, he was always happy and lively. I couldn’t visit him at Raethosu, because I signed up for an extra adventure, and when I returned home at Dhafhrenoo, he…” Ginkgo stopped for a moment, before he continued. “he began to dislike the things around him.”

Yew recalled the time he spent in his kindergarten. He didn’t like that place, because he didn’t like some teachers, and he wondered if he’d end up hating his own home, if those nasty teachers were teaching him at home instead.

“That’s when he started having that funny habit of his. He’d do the homework as he was told like an obedient kid, but secretly he’d steal the red pen of the teacher, who’d have to score his work in another color.”

Yew smiled imagining the scenario.

“But when he got really angry, he’d threaten to destroy the homework, the desk, the room, the building, the teachers, and the household. By the time, he was seven yrold he stopped yelling, but his feelings hadn’t changed and in secret, he’d often whisper to me how one day he would destroy the Sea household.”

Yew never considered the possibility that Cypress could be carrying any negative emotions inside his heart, but he already understood that Cypress was really good at hiding his real feelings.

"He started the school of Hecate at the age of seven,” Ginkgo continued. “For him, it was a day of conflicting emotions. On one hand, he was able to escape the suffocating atmosphere of rules at home, but at the same time, by going to Hecate he was following those rules, which he didn't like."

"Was your childhood the same?" Yew asked, wondering.

"No," Ginkgo chuckled. "I was always a disobedient child. Instead of mentally suffocating from the rules, my back hurt all over from the beatings."

Yew showed a countenance of extreme loathing at the idea of constant beating.

Seeing it, Ginkgo laughed at his reaction and at the irony. Even though he experienced all those beatings, he still hadn't learned to follow even one rule of the Sea household. "It's precisely because I was such a bad child, that the Sea household considered me unable to be the next head. Because of my behavior, Loquat Sea had to find another woman to give him another son.”

Yew lowered his eyes toward the table before he whispered, “a better son.”

“Yeah, a better son,” Ginkgo agreed. “Unlike me, Cypress appeared to be an obedient child with a lot of magical talent, so they set in stone his inauguration as the next head of the Sea household on the same day, when he was sent to Hecate.”

“I see,” Yew didn’t know what else to say.

“Naturally, Cypress hates the idea. The head of the Sea household is the one, who has the most rules to follow."

"Is it not possible for Cypress to simply refuse?"

"Theoretically he could, but that would create problems for him, his mother and his younger sister. Even though Cypress has a strong desire to be free, he’s also the type, who builds strong bonds with other people, especially with his family. That’s why, if Cypress plans to get free, he has to come up with an intricate plan to escape without causing any damage to those, whom he cares about."

Until now, all that Yew knew about Cypress were the facts that everyone knew. Somehow knowing those facts made him feel like he knew a lot about Cypress. Hearing from Ginkgo a bit about Cypress’s childhood and about the feelings the guy was hiding deep inside, made Yew realize how little he knew about his schoolmate.

It felt odd to realize one's own misconception, especially since he would never ever guess that Cypress had such a past. In any case, he wouldn’t even believe it, if he hadn’t heard it from Ginkgo.

All this time, with just a little bit of shallow info, Yew thought that he knew Cypress. At the same time, he knew nothing about what was going on inside Cypress's heart and mind, but somehow this lack of knowledge never bothered him. It was almost as if Yew's own sensation of knowing the guy had blinded him from getting to really know him. Hence, he regretted ignoring the fact that humans are made of far more than what can be visible to the eye.

"I got disowned by the Sea household, so now I'm practically a stranger to Cypress," Ginkgo continued. “I believe that's why he wants to meet me. In his eyes, I'm free. That's what he wants to be - free from the Sea household to the point, where he’s treated as if he was never born in that family."

Yew understood that Cypress's situation was the opposite of his. While he was trying to find his biological family, Cypress was trying to separate from all of his biological relatives with the exception of Ginkgo, who was no longer welcomed in the Sea household.

A loud howling of wolves from outside interrupted the conversation.

Yew shivered at the sound. There were no wolves or bears near Catriddle, where he grew up. However, he heard stories about people, who were killed by wild animals, while alone in the wilderness, far away from any human settlements.

"This village is hidden deep in the woods," Ginkgo said as he got up, “I’ll get a map.” He went to grab his backpack, which he had left in the bedroom.

Yew observed him leaving. Seated in the chair, he watched inside the bedroom through the open door. In a short moment, Ginkgo returned back holding a folded map. He unfolded it on the table for Yew to see.

"This is the Windworm Tower," he pointed at a hand-drawn dot next to a dot called Wormwind, then slid his finger west-southwest toward another dot, "and this is the village of Harefence - our current location."

"What about those?" Yew pointed at dots on the eastern side of and closer to the Windworm Tower.

"These places have been evacuated, so right now there's nobody there," Ginkgo explained. "After the Fairy Rain is over, in a week or so, they'll begin to return."

The village of Harefence was only one out of two settlements west to the Windworm Tower. There were no other settlements in the vicinity. The next closest settlement was at least a week of walk to the west - a large city called Frogwindow.

Yew pointed at the city, and asked, "this is, where we're going?"

"Yes," Ginkgo confirmed and drew with his finger a line above the Harefence village. "A train passes here. Tomorrow, we'll go this way, then we'll follow the tracks to arrive at Frogwindow," he slid his finger all the way to the city. "It shouldn't take us more than six days to arrive at Frogwindow."

"Six days?!" Yew looked worried. "Where are we going to stay overnight?"

"We’ll have to camp outside," Ginkgo responded and tapped the map, "we can make a small detour each evening, but not too far from the tracks or we’ll get lost in the woods."

"What about the wolves?"

Ginkgo laughed, "if this is the worst of our worries, then we'll be perfectly fine." He folded the map again and went to the bedroom, where he put it back into his backpack. "Turn off the lights, once you're off to sleep," he said to Yew, then lay down on the bed, while still fully dressed.

To Yew, it appeared as if the man fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. The boy once again heard the howling of wolves coming from outside, or maybe it was a howling of wind, which sounded like wolves. Slowly he approached the window next to the front door. He pushed the heavy curtain to the side a little bit and from a corner of the window, he dared to look outside.

He saw that one house had their lights still on, but in a matter of minutes, the house residents turned the lights off, and instantly the whole village was devoured by the darkness so impenetrable, it appeared like a black wall behind the windowglass.

The boy looked at the lamp attached to the wall near the kitchen. It was the only light in the house, and the last light in the village. All he had to do was to turn the knob under the lamp and everything would be instantly engulfed by darkness, but he didn’t want to do it. After a long moment of hesitation, he decided that it wouldn't bother anyone, if he left the light on. He headed to bed, and while he lay down awaiting his sleep, he stared through the open door at the dim light coming from the other room.

It was rare for anyone to join a temple.

The clergymen were at the same time respected as those, who were chosen by God, and simultaneously they were seen as a gathering of eccentric individuals, who didn’t fit into a normal society.

They had a hierarchy among themselves, which was very different from any other form of hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy of monks stood the Most Elder Father, who was selected by Elder Fathers from among themselves. An Elder Father was a head of a temple, and regardless of the temple’s size all Elder Fathers were equal in power.

At the top of the hierarchy of nuns was the Most Elder Mother, whose role was often that of the advisor to the Most Elder Father. Her opinions were highly valued by everyone in the temple and no major decision was ever taken without her insight. She was so influential that one could call her the de facto leader of all the temples.

The Most Elder Mother was always the nun, with the longest experience of being a nun. Sometimes, she was also one of the oldest nuns, but she was always a nun, who joined a temple early in her life and persisted for many years.

All Elder Fathers followed orders from the Most Elder Mother, as long as these didn’t contradict the orders from the Most Elder Father. However, it was rare for the Most Elder Mother to give orders to Elder Fathers, as she was usually in charge of Elder Mothers.

Each temple had either two or three Elder Mothers. The title was always given to the oldest nun and to the one, who was a nun for the longest time. If both cases happened to point at the same person, the title was also given to the two other nuns - the second-oldest one and the one, who was a nun for the second-longest time.

On the thirty fourth day of Tsun sixteen monks gathered in a small room of the Divine Temple with nothing but one door and a mirror that covered the whole wall facing the door. The Most Elder Father and fifteen Elder Fathers from the temples around the world, sat in an uneven circle on the floor, some looking at the mirror with worried countenances.

The mirror, which stretched all over the wall, wasn't just a mirror. Ten hundred years ago, Silphium Moon brought it as a gift for the Divine Temple. It happened on the evening before the day, when she disappeared. She called it the Divine Eye, and explained to the clergymen, that God himself has created this mirror.

Anyone could enter the room, but only rarely someone would see anything other than his own reflection.

"It's been like this for years," the Most Elder Father spoke. "And it’s only getting more common."

For the last nine years, the Most Elder Father alone, was the only person to whom the mirror showed its secrets. However, recently even the visiting Elder Fathers could see the same scenes from a world so different from theirs.

"So this is the world ruled by demons?" one of the Elder Fathers spoke.

"A world without love," another one sighed.

"Yes," the Most Elder Father looked with pity at the people in the mirror. "None of them know love. They cannot feel it inside, and they cannot recognize it from outside." He stroked his beard and turned around to the others, "but how to describe love to those, who have none?"

"Love is love," one of the monks responded from the corner of the room.

"How do you explain that to one of them?" a monk sitting next to him pointed at the mirror.

"My father once said," another old monk began by looking through his childhood memories, "that love is to see your wife as the most beautiful woman in the world, even if she's uglier than a goblin."

All the monks laughed at the funny, but accurate example of love.

"My aunt was a good woman, but she didn't have a good husband," another Elder Father spoke, after they stopped laughing. "I once asked her: «why don't you leave him?», but she said that she cannot do it, because she loves him. She told me that love is a desire to do good, even when you receive nothing but evil."

"That's a good way to put it," the Most Elder Father nodded, "Love means forgetting about one's own self, expecting nothing for oneself, always doing good for people other than oneself." He took a deep breath, before he added, "some have more love than others, but thankfully all possess love in our world, which is ruled by God.” He looked once again at the mirror, “sadly, there’s none in that world.”

The monks nodded with a heavy sense of pity for the people ruled by demons.

"I was observing them for a long time," the Most Elder Father continued. "Such pitiful people. They search for love, but they can never find it. They seek love, but it's nowhere near them. They starve for love, but instead are fed with lust."

"Like that couple," one of the monks pointed at a couple kissing in a public place, with the man holding his hands on her buttocks. “They won’t stay together.”

Other monks nodded in agreement, knowing that lust was a horrible evil, which always destroyed relationships between humans. It was commonly known as the nemesis of love, because lust could easily convert a small sprout of love into an endless abyss of hate.

"Love is eternal," the Most Elder Father spoke. "If the relationship doesn't last until death, that means that love was never there in the first place. Sadly, they don't know that," he looked at the couple in the mirror, before he closed his eyes and shook his head. When he opened his eyes again, his countenance changed to one filled with determination. "This is the future that we must fight against."

"How many demons are there?" asked a monk sitting with his back toward the mirror.

“Countless demons, but two leaders: Anagape Infida, the demon of despair, and Nefastus Philema, the demon of deceit. The first one destroys love, hope and faith, and throws her victims into despair. The second one creates delusions, causing the men to regard the good as evil, and the evil as good. That’s why to these people,” he pointed at the mirror, "lust appears as love, but that’s nothing but a delusion created by demons."

"Most Elder Father," a monk, who was quietly sitting by the wall in the back, behind the others, spoke up. "I have a question."

"Yes, my brother," the Most Elder Father beckoned him to speak.

"Why do we have to fight? Shouldn't God do it instead?"

Some monks grumbled, others murmured, "what a stupid question," but the Most Elder Father silenced them by raising his hand up. After there was no more talk in the room, he slowly lowered it with his palm facing the floor.

"A long, long time ago, there was a loving mother, who gave birth to a son," he narrated the tale in a clear voice. "She took care of her son for many years. She fed him and protected him, and gave him all that he needed. She was willing to give up everything for her son. But when her son grew up, he turned against his mother. He came to believe that she didn't do enough, and he abused her, but she didn't fight back, because she so loved him, that she never said a bad word toward her son."

Some monks looked confused at each other. Only two of them, who have already heard the tale before, were smiling knowing the goal of the Most Elder Father.

"With each day, her son abused her more and more. He became more brutal and his abuse turned into torture, until one day he mercilessly killed her, because he no longer wanted to have her as his mother. At any moment of her life, she could have fought her own son in order to protect herself, yet she never hurt her son. Do you know why?"

"Because she loved him too much," the monk quickly understood the point.

"And God's love toward all of his creations is infinitely greater than the love of this woman, so even when all the demons came to fight God, He never hurt any of them. God loves this world too much. He loves this world so much, he cannot destroy anything in it."

"Tell that to the casualties of that avalanche in the north," a monk, who was well-known for his sarcastic statements, smirked at others, who glared at him, displeased that he chose such an uplifting moment to speak.

The Most Elder Father smiled warmly and stated, "the world is far more than just the material realm." Right after he said that, he disappeared without a trace as if he was never there.

Everyone knew that the Most Elder Father was magicless and the power he used, albeit similar to magic, was nothing of the sort. It was the power of a divine gift, granted by God to those, who had a very close relationship with Him.

Since the beginning of the world, God had always gifted some of His own powers to those, who served Him. Although there were plenty of candidates among monks and nuns, only a small number of them received something from God. Many times, it wasn’t anything special. Moreover, often it was a secret between the grantee and God, so it was hard to know exactly who possessed a divine gift and who didn’t.

Unlike magic, the power of a divine gift was unlimited. It had no restrictions, and no requirements. It could be used anywhere and at any time. And more important of all, it was capable of controlling all the World Laws, such as laws of physics, or laws of magic.

Thus, in theory anyone with a divine gift had the power to rule over the whole world, but it was in theory only, since all grantees of divine gifts were too humble to do anything other than serve God through prayers and kindness toward others. It was a trait so easily found among those with divine gifts, that bottomless humility became known as the main requirement to receive a divine gift.

Yet, there has never been a case of the Most Elder Father, who didn’t have a divine gift. That’s why no one was surprised, when the gloomy topic of the demonic invasion was discontinued abruptly by the disappearance of the Most Elder Father.

Brother Cynical, as he used to be known before he became the Most Elder Father, had no problem with his action. After all, there will be many more chances to talk about the demon. On the other hand, someone important was about to awaken. It was a once in a lifetime chance to see it, and he wasn't going to miss it.

He appeared out of nowhere in total silence at an underground temple that has been buried deep under the soil for more than thirty hundred years. Nobody had visited this place ever since, and nobody alive currently knew about it except for two people. One of them was Brother Cynical, and the other one was a man sleeping on the floor of this buried temple.

Brother Cynical approached the man, who lay down in the main chapel, right next to the wall, which held the statue of God inside the cavern.

The sleeping man began to awaken and grumble in his sleep.

The monk smiled. The whole place was shrouded in darkness so deep that it was impossible to see anything, and yet the monk acted as if he could see the man on the floor.

A luminous rays of light appeared from the ceiling and showered the man and the patriarch.

The man opened his eyes, and blinked several times, "is it the end of the world?"

"Not yet," the monk kept on smiling at the man, who just woke up.

"Then why is He waking me up now?"

"That's something I don't know, but I can make a guess."

"What guess?" the man turned around to move away from the light.

"A guess that soon this world will need you."

The man slowly sat up with his bones cracking here and there, as if he hadn't been using them for a long time. "What do I do?"

"I wasn't told anything about that. My Lord merely asked me to greet you," Brother Cynical sounded mysterious, as if he wasn’t telling the truth, but it was impossible for him to be a liar, if he possessed so many divine gifts.

The man looked around at the ancient walls of the temple, which had been well-preserved over the last thirty hundred years. "You know, who I am, right?"

"Willow Leaf, the only immortal human in the world. Although you gained your immortality not as a reward, but as a punishment, which had been lessened by God. That’s why you were allowed to sleep through all your remaining years until the end of the world."

"But it's not happening yet, so why did the Almighty Asshole wake me up? Tell me the reason, oh great and humble Divine Servant."

"I'm neither great, nor humble," Brother Cynical shook his head.

"Don't kid me," the man snapped. "If you weren't humble or great in wisdom, you wouldn't even be here. How many kilometers underground, do you think this is? It's damn hot in here. There's no oxygen. I cannot die, but I can feel this hell, and you're not even sweating, you damn Divine Servant. No such thing as Wordly Laws for thy divine ass."

The Most Elder Father stopped smiling and stretched out his hand, "allow me help you get out of here."

Willow Leaf, having nothing else to do, caught the monk's hand and both of them disappeared from the underground temple onto the snow-covered meadow.

"If He had to wake me up, He could have done it, when the weather was nice and warm." He looked up at the cloudy sky. At least it wasn’t snowing at the moment.

The monk unbuttoned the hood off his robe, folded it, then gave it to the man, who was standing stark naked.

"You want me to wear this hood?" he asked.

"No, not the hood," the monk responded. "Give me back the hood, but everything other than the hood is yours."

Willow shook the hood in midair. As it unfolded, all kinds of clothing fell out from the hood: underwear, socks, pants, a shirt, a sweater, a coat, a hat, and even a pair of shoes. Willow immediately recognized the clothings lying on the ground. It was his favorite set, which he wore everyday for almost a hundred years, until the clothes were too worn out to wear anymore.

"Can I have my hood back?" the monk asked politely, and Willow threw it at him.

The Most Elder Father swiftly caught the hood, and attached it back to his robe.

"Damn divine servants," Willow murmured as he began to put on the clothes. "That damn divine power to create something from nothing. That's so damn unfair. I don't know why He woke me up, but there's no way He needs me. One of you would be enough to wipe out an army of demons." When he finished dressing up, he touched his side. Upon realizing that he was missing something he asked, "where's my sword?"

"Exactly, where you left it."

"Oh great, so now I have to go underwater to pick it up," he tsk'ed before he began to walk away.

"Don't you need directions?" the Most Elder Father yelled after him.

"Nah, I'll figure it out," he yelled back. "I doubt the continents changed so much in a mere…" he turned around and asked in yelling, "what day is today?"

The Most Elder Monk smiled and shouted back, "thirty fourth day of Tsun, year fifty seven hundred ninety nine."

Willow didn't respond with any thanks. He simply turned around and walked away. If today truly was the thirty fourth day of Tsun, then it was exactly the same day, when God half-pardoned his offense, and allowed him to await the end of the world in his sleep. After all, due to his curse he must remain in the material realm until the end of the world. Under no condition was he to go to the spiritual realm any sooner.

However, the thirty fourth day of Tsun was also the day of his birthday, and if today was the year fifty seven hundred ninety nine, then his current age would be exactly forty hundred, but who cared about that anyway. Exact date of birth had little importance, because everyone counted their age up by one year annually on the first day of Toas.

When he was quite far away, Willow remembered that parents used to give birthday blessings to their children, but even back then he had no parents to do so for him. However, almost as if by intuition, he turned around.

In the distance, he saw the Most Elder Father move his hand up, down, left and right. That’s how Willow knew that he had just received his birthday blessing.

After he finished the blessing, Brother Cynical waved a bye at the forty hundred yrold human.

"What a joke," Willow complained as he moved on, walking away.

It was still morning, when the train finally arrived in the Owlway city after its overnight journey. The sky was almost cloudless and the sun shone brightly among the vast blueness of the world dome. The temperature was just a bit below zero centigrade, which meant that it was a warm day for a month of Tsun. The pleasant weather encouraged many people to walk outside, yet always dressed in warm clothes and wearing thick snow shoes.

The small train that had only two cars came slowly to a stop. It was an old train, all grey in color. It came from very far, but rarely anyone boarded it. After the train doors opened, a single boy, all covered up in layers of clothes, stepped out and onto the platform. Only the area around his eyes was uncovered. He soon squeezed his eyes, when the sunrays reflecting off the snow attacked his sight.

"Mpingo.”

He heard a voice calling out to him. He looked in the direction, where a man was waving at him. He approached, and greeted the man, "good morning, uncle."

Kapok Sky was not a biological uncle of Mpingo Forest. There was no blood connection between the two families, but they lived in the same village, and their sons were of the same age. Yew Sky and Mpingo Forest were best friends, and it was a common tradition that good friends often called each other's parents as uncles and aunts. After all, family members didn't have to be related by blood.

"I left the sledge outside the city," Kapok explained. "I couldn't bring it in, because they cleaned all the snow off the streets."

Away from urban areas, where the land was covered by deep snow, people used sledges to travel instead of carriages. However, cities and some towns had this weird idea of removing snow from the roads in order to make it possible for city people to ride wheeled vehicles, such as bicycles or carriages, even during winter.

For this reason, Kapok couldn’t bring the sledge all the way to the train station. Like most villagers, he was forced to leave the sledge outside the city limits, and walk the rest of the distance on foot or using the public transportation.

Kapok and Mpingo walked on the sidewalk in the direction set by Kapok.

"Did Yew come back?" Mpingo asked, even though he didn't want to know the answer.

"Not yet," Yew's father responded. "He hasn't sent us any mail in a while, so Nettle sent him a letter two days ago, asking whether he'll be coming home for Raethosu, but there was no response yet."

"I see," Mpingo felt glad that he wouldn't have to meet his best friend, who was surely an outstanding student of Hecate.

"Don't be sad," Kapok tapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sure sooner or later, he'll come home."

"Okay," Mpingo said, but inside he hoped that he wouldn't have to meet Yew, at least not now; at least not yet. He knew that there was something inside him, that needed to be taken care of, and he needed time to deal with it.

He didn’t ask for help. He knew that it was his problem alone, and he had to resolve it by himself before he met with Yew again. He didn't want to hurt Yew, who wasn't at fault, but he knew that his problem would inevitably destroy their friendship if he met Yew too soon.

Mpingo knew that everything was his own fault. He wasn't content with what he had. He wasn't satisfied with his life. He kept comparing himself with others, wondering why he cannot be like them. And at some point his ponder changed into jealousy. He couldn’t accept that others had what he didn’t have. He hated that others had, what he could never have. And he began to search for a scapegoat. He wanted to blame others for this state of things, but there was no scapegoat for him to blame other than his own emotions.

He wasn’t good at studying and his physical motions were slower than average. His brain would always take a long time to understand problems or questions, and no teacher would ever wait that long. Even tests had a time limit. In sports he was always behind. Even if he wanted to move first, his own body would react so much later than everybody’s else.

Mpingo was slow, but he wasn’t stupid. Quite on the contrary, he was very intelligent. Yew was the first one to realize that. Yew was the only one, who never gave up on him. Yew was ready to wait forever for Mpingo to solve his homework, and Yew never ever helped him. His best friend just sat by, and waited, believing that he could do it by himself.

And Yew was right.

If Mpingo was given enough time, he could solve any homework. His body was slow. His brain was slow, but he had yet to encounter a limit to what he could understand.

Yew was the only one, who treated Mpingo like normal. Everyone else treated Mpingo as an unfortunate mentally disabled boy. They didn’t care whether Mpingo could actually do it by himself. They only cared whether he could do it as fast as them, and he couldn’t, so they quickly labeled him as a failure and moved on.

Mpingo understood his own situation better than anyone else. He wasn’t unfortunate. He had a home. He had a family. He had a best friend. He had great neighbors. He lived in a peaceful village. He didn't suffer from any serious sickness. There was nothing in his life that he could complain about, but no matter how many times he repeated this to himself, in the end, it wasn't enough.

He wanted something else, but he didn’t know what exactly. He wanted more, but he didn't even know how much more. He hated all those, who were happy with what they had, because he couldn’t be like them. He desired what they had, but he knew that was a false desire, because in reality he just wanted to be like them, content with what he already had.

He walked on foot with Kapok for at least an hour before they arrived at the city border. During that time, Kapok asked him questions about the school of Hestia. Mpingo responded to all the questions as far as he knew the answers, but his responses were never long.

The sledge, which Kapok used to come to the city of Owlway, was big enough for four people. It was led by four dogs with thick long fur. It didn't belong to Kapok. It was owned by the village mayor, who oftentimes would lend it to other villagers, whenever someone needed to travel to the city.

When both of them sat in the sledge on the ice-cold bench, Kapok commanded the dogs to run back to the village. He didn't have to control them. They knew very well the direction toward home.

Kapok remained silent during the ride. Every once in a while he peeked at Mpingo, but he didn't say anything. Assuming that the boy was tired after the long travel, he decided not to bother him anymore. Once in the village, he steered the dogs toward Mpingo's house, and he stopped the sledge right in front of the building.

"Thank you, uncle," Mpingo said and got off.

"Take a good rest," he recommended. "I'll take the sledge back to the mayor.” Before he could add anything, the dogs moved on their own, eager to be back home.

Mpingo waved a bye, and Kapok waved it back.

The sledge made a turn around a pile of snow and disappeared behind the hill, where the road was going down.

The door of Mpingo's house opened, "Mpingo, my dear!"

"Grandma."

Mpingo smiled at the matriarch dressed in a warm turtleneck and a long skirt, under her full-body apron. On her head she wore a handkerchief tied under her chin, like many old women, who did so to protect their fragile hair from the elements.

"Don't stand there. You'll get cold. Come inside. Quickly."

Mpingo quickly followed her orders and walked inside. His grandma threw water out of a pot and away from the entrance, before she went back to the house.

The house, where Mpingo lived, had two floors and an attic. At the bottom floor, on the right side, there was the entrance door. In front of it, two stone steps and a patio with four columns. Above the patio, there was a balcony. On the patio and under the house wall, there was an old iron bench, which wasn't covered by snow, as the roof of the patio protected it from anything falling from the sky. On the other hand, the balcony was all white from the snow that accumulated on top of it.

Mpingo undressed in the entry room, which had a long wardrobe on the right side, and a mirror on the left wall. Next to a mirror, there was a door, which led to the kitchen, which had another small door on the right to the pantry, and a large arched doorless entrance to the living room in front. On the right side, next to the pantry door, there was a spiral staircase, and on the other side of the staircase, a door that led into a toilet, and another door to the bathroom.

The second floor had six bedrooms, but the old grandmother, who couldn't walk well, slept on the bed, which was located in the living room. Among the six bedrooms, the biggest one belonged to Mpingo's parents, and the adjacent bedroom was intended for guests, but usually it was occupied by Mpingo's dad after he had a fight with his wife. The smallest one of the six bedrooms belonged to Mpingo.

The other three bedrooms belonged to Mpingo's older sisters. Four of six sisters no longer lived in the house. Three of them were married and living together with their husbands and children. Only the oldest of his six sisters had no interest in any relationship, so she lived by herself. However two bedrooms, which were shared by the four sisters in the past, were left ready for whenever any of them came to visit.

The second-youngest sister, Calendula Forest, was on her eighth year in the school of Hermes. She was already married to a man from the same school and the two of them were planning to move out and live together after their graduation. Calendula shared a bedroom with her youngest sister, Mistletoe, who was a sixth year student in the school of Apollon.

"Mistletoe hasn't come home yet?" Mpingo asked his grandma. The youngest sister was known as the first one to always be back home for any school break.

"Oddly she's not here, but she sent a letter that she'll be late this time," the matriarch answered as she began putting mashed potatoes on a plate.

Mpingo sat down by the table. He knew what was coming. Grandma always made sure that nobody in her house was hungry.

"Calendula isn't coming either," Mpingo sighed.

His busy sister returned during vacation only for one week to tell her parents that she and her husband managed to save enough money to buy a small house, and the two of them will be looking through the offers during the holiday of Raethosu.

"She's a really amazing gal," grandma added two big pieces of chicken and a beet salad onto the plate. "At her age, I didn't have money to buy food, and she's already so rich."

"Money just sticks to some people and avoids others," Mpingo recalled the ancient truth. "Don't add sourcream," he voiced out his concern, when his grandma put a large spoon of sourcream on top of the chicken.

"Don't complain," she put the plate in front of him.

"But I don't like it," he said and poked the chicken. He grimaced that his chicken was covered with white goo.

"Do you know what my mother told me?"

"I know, I know, I already heard it hundred times," Mpingo moved some of the sourcream to the side of the plate.

"When my mother was young, she loved sourcream and ate it everyday, and she was always healthy. You know, why? Because our family always believed that milk is healthy, and the fatter the milk the healthier it is. Do you know why?"

"Because the healthier the cow, the fatter the milk."

The matriarch stood next to Mpingo. "Yes, and as cows grow old and sick, fat in milk goes away."

"Grandma, I know."

"You should know!" his grandma pointed her index finger at him. "We have a cow, so it'd be embarrassing, if you didn't know. And when my mother grew older," she returned back to her story, "there was a disease killing off people, and it killed many, many people. But my mother lived and lived, and when she turned seventy, some doctors found out, that the disease can be cured with milk fat. Huh? See? Our family was right long before the doctors."

Mpingo began to eat the chicken.

“Don't leave the sourcream,” his grandma added after she finished her story. "I need to check the laundry," she headed into the bathroom, where the family kept the laundry machine.

Mpingo didn't exactly hate the sourcream. He just had enough of it. His grandma always added sourcream to everything. Every soup had sourcream. Every salad had sourcream. Every dessert had sourcream. There was no such thing in Mpingo's house as a meal without sourcream. And once in a while, he wanted some change.

While he was in Hestia, the meals were made by the students. Oftentime the taste was far from desirable, so students often reminisced about home meals. Ergo, occasionally a student was eager to cook a dish from his or her own home. Usually, the final taste of the dish was something, that only the cook enjoyed. Meanwhile most students spent their meal times on philosophy of taste perception.

Upon his return, Mpingo knew that he'd get to eat something that is actually tasty to his tongue, but he wasn't missing the sourcream. Maybe, if he had been gone for many years, he'd happily eat a bowl of sourcream, but three months in the school of Hestia wasn't enough to make him miss the taste of sourcream.

He was still eating, when his mother returned home. She had a shopping bag in her hand.

"Thank God, you're back," she said as she saw her son at the kitchen table.

"God bless you, mom," he greeted her back.

She put the bag on the other side of the table, "bless you, too. Where's grandma?"

"Doing laundry," he answered.

"I told her I can do it," Mpingo's mom put her hands above her hips and walked into the bathroom, "mother, why aren't you resting?"

"I'm not that old yet," Mpingo heard his grandma's response.

"Your back was hurting just this morning."

"I'm fine now."

"Enough, let me do it."

"Don't you dare!"

"Mother!"

"I'm not old!"

“It’s not about your age.”

“Then what?”

“Your health!”

“I’m healthy! Ow, my back.”

“See?”

“See what? I’m fine!”

“Let me do it.”

“No, I’m almost done.”

“No, you’re not!”

“Let go!”

“Why are you so stubborn?”

“I’m not stubborn! You’re stubborn!”

“I had enough!”

“Then just go!”

“Don’t ask me for a back massage after this!”

“Like I’d ask you for anything!”

For a short while, Mpingo heard the typical quarrel between his mother and grandmother, and as usual the matriarch won.

Mpingo's mom stepped out of the bathroom and raised her hands up to the heavens. "Mercy of God," she said, then climbed up the stairs and headed to the second floor.

After Mpingo’s grandmother was done with the laundry, she asked her daughter for a back massage, and Mpingo’s mother did just that.

Garlic Desert, the grandmother of Mpingo Forest, was known throughout the village as the woman made of steel. She was physically the strongest woman in the village, even though at her old age, sickness and wavering health besieged her daily. However it wasn’t her physical strength, which gave rise to her notoriety. It was her personality. No matter what topic, she always knew better. No matter what work, she always did it better. And trying to change her mind was a waste of time.

Many believed that her loneliness was the cause of her personality. She lost her husband just five years after her marriage. Although nobody knew the exact cause. Many thought it was an accident, but some believed that he simply ran away from her.

As soon as she graduated from the school of Hephaestus, she found a good job in the city and nobody heard anything from her for more than ten years. Afterward, she returned with a husband and a daughter, Lovage Desert. However, her husband went missing just one year later.

She left Lovage with her maternal grandparents, while she went back to the city to work. Every month, she'd send back the money to support her only daughter. However, not even once did she come over to see her. Garlic Desert remained working in the city for almost forty years. She only returned back to the village, at the time, when her daughter gave birth to her seventh child. Since then, she has stayed with her daughter and her family.

Lovage Desert graduated from the school of Aion, which was often known as the school of eternal education. It specialized in training teachers, and she was working as a kindergarten teacher in the village. It was a job, which she always wanted to have since early childhood.

After graduation, she returned back to the village of Catriddle, where she grew up and married a man, who was her childhood friend and a neighbor, Maple Forest. Together, they had six daughters and one son - a total of seven children.

Unlike her mother, Lovage was a skinny woman with delicate fingers, but she knew how to work hard and she was skilled with housework. She always kept her hair tied in a braid rolled into a bum behind her head. Most of the time, her sleeves were rolled up beyond her elbows.

Her husband was a graduate of Tartarus and a miner, just like the majority of other graduates of Tartarus, which was the school focused on underground labor. He went to this school in order to follow in the footsteps of his father, whom he always admired.

Since his graduation he has been working at a local mine not so far away from the village of Catriddle. His workday was often long, and most of the time he didn't come home until late at night. Sometimes, he would take half a day off, but not without a good reason. The mine had to produce a certain amount of ores every month, and the less men worked, the more work each man had to do. Thus there was a sense of common responsibility shared among the miners, who were more like brothers than coworkers.

Mpingo also admired his father, but he knew that he couldn’t be anything like him. He had six older sisters, and all of them were known as the most beautiful women ever to be born in the village. Each of his sisters was not only beautiful, but skilled and intelligent.

Yet unlike them, Mpingo wasn’t good looking nor skilled. And he didn’t have that super quick brain his older sisters used to get into great schools. Ever since he remembered, most villagers often described him as clumsy, and felt sorry for his parents, while calling him “such a pity”.

Because of what he lacked, Mpingo didn’t have many friends in the village. Most other boys preferred to play with each other, because they didn’t like how Mpingo was always slowing them down. Ergo, they didn’t want to play with him, even when their parents encouraged them to.

Like this, Mpingo had no playmates, except for Yew, who was never bothered by other people’s flaws or lacks. However, Yew was a real oddball.

Everyone in the village knew that the boy was skilled beyond average, and when he started the kindergarten, many had high expectations of him growing up to be a genius. Unfortunately for them, Yew treated praise and rewards as unpleasant, and he avoided them like fire.

In the beginning Mpingo found it funny, when Yew was consciously giving wrong answers on tests in their village kindergarten. One day, his mom, got so angry, that she commanded Yew to write the answers on the board, expecting that Yew would be too ashamed to write wrong answers in front of everyone, but Yew smoothly got up to the board and without a moment of hesitation, he copied his own test answers onto the board for all pupils to see.

A dog has _«two»_ legs. A man has _«four»_ legs.

Fishes _«fly»_ in the lake. Birds _«swim»_ in the sky.

The sun rises in the _«west»_. The sun sets in the _«east»_.

The whole class laughed. Lovage didn’t know what to say. She refused to give Yew zero points, because she and everyone else in the class were sure that Yew knew the correct answers, but nobody understood why he had willingly got them wrong.

Mpingo also thought about it for a long time, and he couldn’t come up with a good reason. If he had as much talent as Yew, he would gladly score hundred percent on every test. A high score on a test meant a good school, and a good school meant a good job, and a good job meant a good life. Who wouldn’t want to have a good life?

Yet the world was all wrong.

Yew, who didn’t want to achieve anything, had all the talents, and Mpingo, who wanted to achieve a lot, had no talents to begin with. And this enraged Mpingo so much that he almost hit the table with his punch, but stopped at the last moment.

“What a waste,” he murmured, remembering Yew.

His mother heard him. “What’s a waste?” she looked at his plate, which was already empty, except for some leftover sourcream on the side.

“Nothing,” he answered immediately, “I was thinking about school.”

“You’ll have to tell us more, when Maple comes back,” she took his plate and utensils from the table, and carried them to the sink, where she washed them right away, before she put them on a drying rack.

“Do you need any help?” Mpingo asked after taking one step away from the table.

“Hmmm…” she looked up as she tried to recall what needed to be done around the house. “I think everything of importance is already taken care of. So you can use your time as you wish. But we’ll surely need your help later to dress up the house for Holy.”

“Okay,” he said. “Thank you for the meal,” he added a bit louder, so his grandma could hear as well, before he headed toward the staircase and up.

Mpingo’s bedroom was a small room, with a bed next to the desk, and both furnitures right under the window. A wardrobe stood in the corner next to the door, which was in front of the desk. This room wasn’t originally meant to be a bedroom, but a storage room. However, when Mpingo was seven yrold, he had enough of sleeping in his parents’ bedroom. He wanted to be independent like his sisters, who had their own bedrooms.

His parents told him, that they would remake the adjacent guest bedroom into his bedroom, once he got older, but he didn’t want it. He had set his eyes on the small storage room, and wouldn’t leave it until his father agreed to make it into his room. It still took his parents a month to remodel it into Mpingo’s bedroom.

At that time, Mpingo didn’t really understand what he was asking for. It was nothing more than his whim, and there was no reasoning behind it. However, he didn’t regret it. He liked his bedroom, and he especially liked it, because it was small. It felt more like a secret den rather than a bedroom.

Of course, his parents still walked in and out as they pleased, and he often got scolded for any mess he made there. However, cleaning was easy, because he didn’t have a lot of things and the room was small. Moreover, his bedroom wasn’t shared, so he never had to clean someone else’s mess.

The first night after he moved into his bedroom, he was feeling reluctant to sleep in the darkness all alone and wondered about going back to his parents’ bedroom. However, his mother came in and put on the wall by the door a small magical lamp in the shape of a shellfish. The lamp automatically lit up, whenever it got dark, and he quickly got used to sleeping alone.

Returning back from a trip into his memories, Mpingo approached the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat on it.

He looked up at his bed, where he could see nothing other than a mattress on top of thick wooden planks. The thick cover used to protect the mattress from dust had been removed and a folded set of sheets was left on top of the mattress for Mpingo to make his own bed.

He turned his head around and looked out through the window at the evergreen trees growing taller than his house. Behind the trees, through the gaps between branches, he could see the red roof of his neighbor’s house.

He thought about the school of Hestia. It wasn’t a bad school, and he liked it. He doubted that this school could ever help him with his lifegoal, because his lifegoal he had was so big that he wouldn’t dare to tell even under torture.

Back when he was in kindergarten, he read many different picture books about diverse topics. The purpose of those readings was to teach kids how to read, but also to teach them about the world in general. In one such picture book, the kids read a story about a world-traveller. It was a fantasy tale about a man, who could travel between worlds, and all kids knew that it was just a fictional story meant to improve their reading skills. Mpingo also understood that, but he didn’t want to accept it.

He wanted to be like the man from the story. He wanted to go from one world to another. He wanted to see different worlds. He wanted to travel to other worlds, and maybe he could find a world for himself - a place, where he could feel like that was where he belonged.

Just as he thought about that, the awareness of reality stabbed him in the heart. He put his palm on his chest, and curled up his fingers, trying hard to hold back the tears.

Why did others had lifegoals that could come true? Why was he the only one with a lifegoal that wasn’t even realistic to begin with?

He was forcing himself to believe that anything was possible. It should be, because that was what everyone said, but the more he forced himself to believe it, the less he believed it. The more he doubted his lifegoal, the more powerless he felt, unable to understand why did it have to be so difficult to go to another world.

If only he had Yew’s talents. If only he had endless talents in everything, then he’d have a reason to put up with this world and push for a lifegoal that was within his reach. However, with no talents the already impossible goal appeared ever more impossible causing him to lose all his will to act.

Everything was pointless.

An impossible goal was just a waste of time. He ought to find something better to do, but was there anything else that he could aim for? He didn’t know, and just like a dead mouse carried off by a cat, he let the cruel life carry his lifeless soul into the next day.

He closed his eyes, and tried to disappear.

“I’m baaaaaack!” a loud yelling by a female voice interrupted his negative thoughts.

He got up and headed toward the staircase. He went down several steps to be able to see what was going on, but he didn’t descend all the way to the first floor.

“Mistletoe, my dear,” his grandmother was greeting the guest.

At the door, there were actually two people. A gal, with short hair and a smirk as if she just pulled off a prank, and a guy, with long hair tied in a high ponytail and with a face as if he just woke up and had no idea, where he was.

“This my husband,” Mistletoe Forest introduced her guest to her family, “and this is my grandma, and my mom,” she pointed at Lovage, who was still peeling potatoes in the kitchen.

“Husband?” Lovage and Garlic spoke simultaneously.

Mpingo sat down on the staircase and listened on.

“Of course my husband. Who else?”

“Did you exchange the Marriage Vows?” Lovage asked.

“Not yet, but we plan to do it next year in the month of Dees.”

“How did you meet?” Lovage put away the potatoes, washed her hands in the water, and wiped them off with an apron.

“We’re classmates,” Mistletoe answered.

“Why have I never heard about him before?” she walked closer and stood next to Garlic.

“Because we were always in different classes. This year it was our first time taking the same class.”

“So you just met each other?”

“No,” Mistletoe shook her index finger. “We met each other millions of years ago and ever since then our souls have been together.”

“So you just met each other,” this time it wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“Excuse me,” the guy next to Mistletoe spoke. “I understand that you don’t trust me, because you don’t know me, but with my head as a collateral, I guarantee that I’ll make Mistletoe the happiest woman on Earth.”

Both Garlic and Lovage were shocked at the guy’s offer to sacrifice his head, and they looked at each other with uncertainty, wondering what kind of «crazy» did their daughter bring home.

Mistletoe, on the other hand, was full of admiration, “see? He’s such an honorable man. Who else would risk his head to protect his beloved woman.”

“Too extreme,” Lovage murmured to Garlic.

“Too much hatred turns into love, and too much love turns into hatred,” Garlic spoke to the couple. “By the way, what is your name?” she asked the guy.

“Cherimoya Mountain,” he answered.

“And soon I’ll be Mistletoe Forest of the Mountain household,” the gal was already imagining herself as a newly-married wife.

“Pff,” Mistletoe’s mother shook her head sideways, “not for parents to decide, not for parents,” she stated the ancient phrase used by many parents, who were not happy with their child-in-law, but had no choice but to accept it.

When God created the world, He created two kinds of people: those, who would remain single for a lifetime, and those, who would marry. Naturally, those, who were meant to marry, had to look for that one destined partner, who was somewhere in the world, but nobody knew where and no other human could help them on this divine treasure hunt.

Of course, more often than rarely, the destined partner didn’t please the parents. However, separating the two was like separating the tree from its roots. It was a murder of love, and a terrible disobedience of God, so only the most foolish parents would ever oppose to the marriage partner chosen by their children.

Everyone else knew that separating the two tied by a destiny was an act as horrible as setting a temple on fire. No wise man would ever do that, which might anger God. No wise man would do that, unless he didn’t care what would happen to him afterward.

Mpingo, who was quietly sitting on the staircase, stared at Cherimoya. It was the first time for Mistletoe to just suddenly bring a man over. It was also the first time, that any of his sisters brought a man over before talking about him. His other four sisters announced their partners first, they also talked a lot about them before they finally arranged to bring them over.

Yet Mistletoe was always a hasty type, who acted on sudden impulses. Almost everything in her life was a decision taken at the last moment based on an impulse-like sensation that lasted less than a second. However, the strength of that momentary impulse was powerful enough to make it the guiding force of her lifepath.

Seeing his sister so happy, Mpingo smiled as well. It would be so nice, if one day he could find such simple happiness in his own life.

He got up and walked back into his bedroom, while his mother and grandmother downstairs continued to talk among themselves, trying to learn more about Mistletoe’s guest.

His sister, who was never the type to plan her future, looked so happy. Mistletoe Forest, who has never had any lifegoal in her life, knew the pure feeling of joy that Mpingo hadn’t felt in a long time. He recalled his early childhood, when having his mom and his dad and his grandma and his sisters around him was all that he needed to feel happy. And he pondered, not knowing what had changed inside him to make him so different from what he used to be. 

Should he try to make himself like that again?

He closed the door to his bedroom. After walking in, he shook his head. “Nah,” he answered the question inside his own mind. He walked up and sat in the chair. “I cannot do that,” he acknowledged.

In his heart, he still felt warm from seeing his family act no different from always. He didn’t want to get rid of this cozy feeling, but he didn’t want to freeze himself in the past. He knew that the past would never be able to resolve his present dilemmas. He had to look for the answer in the future.

It was almost noontime, but Cypress was still in his bed.

The year-end break didn’t start yet, but classes had already ended on Thursday. His roommate left yesterday on Friday in order to spend the next three weeks with his family. In contrast, Cypress decided to stay in their cottage number two and nine hundred fifty. He didn’t want to go back home, and it wasn’t the first time he stayed in Hecate over the holidays.

Eventually he stretched out his arms upward, then looked at the window, where some frost formed in the corners. It was already in the process of being melted by the sun, which was at its zenith in the sky.

The days near the end of Tsun were short, and there were only two more weeks until the shortest day of the year. Afterward, the days would begin to grow longer and longer.

For Cypress the holidays were like a moment of a long-awaited rest. With almost all of his classmates gone for the next three weeks, he could finally be alone, and being alone meant being himself - no more living up to the name of the Sea household.

Slowly he pulled off the comforter, sat on the bed, and leaned slightly back on his arms with his palms flat on the bed. His cheap-looking greyish-blue pajama contrasted greatly with the purple bedsheets decorated with golden patterns at the edges, but he didn’t care much what others would think about it, because he liked this pajama.

Up until a month ago, he had a dark-purple pajama. He had bought that one two years ago and he liked it a lot. Unfortunately, at the beginning of his ninth year, he realized that he had grown out of his old pajama, and he needed a new one. He didn’t like the idea of separating with his beloved piece of clothing, so he was putting it off, but last month his favorite pajama got a huge tear between the legs and on the buttocks area, ergo he had no choice but to get a new one right away.

He went to the most expensive clothing store in the city of Sheepcrown, and looked for exactly the same pajama, or maybe something similar, but nothing matched his criteria.

He left the store feeling angry, but not showing it on his face. However he did softly tell the seller that their merchandise was such a piece of shit, even dogs wouldn’t wear it. He didn’t say it, because the merchandise was of poor quality, because it wasn’t. However, he was looking for something with a simple design, yet all the pajamas in the store were decorated like crazy.

On his way back, when he was passing by a middle-class clothing store, he stopped and thought for a moment. It was on the way, and he had already wasted a lot of time in the other store. Thus he decided to go in and take a quick look at the pajamas. To his surprise, he found a pajama exactly like his old one. It was even by the same brand, but in a different color, and a tad too big sizewise.

“Isn’t this a high-end brand?” he asked the seller at the checkout.

“It used to be,” the woman answered as she inputted the price, “but a year ago they had financial troubles. Nobody wanted to buy their merchandise, because it was too simple and they almost went bankrupt. But right before that happened, they sold all their leftover merchandise to middle-class stores around the world,” she took the card from Cypress and tapped it on the cashier machine, while she continued to talk. “Of course, once half-the-price, the goods sold like fresh cookies, and the company managed to stay afloat.”

The cashier machine shone green, yellow and green, then a confirmation word “Completed.” appeared above it in the air.

“Ever since then, they’ve been doing business with middle-class stores instead, and managed to avoid bankruptcy,” the seller continued. Cypress’s money card, which had a large sum of six hundred forty four thousand seventy seven  hundred seven syfras engraved on top of it, changed its number to six hundred forty three thousand sixty seven hundred seven syfras. “Would you like a receipt?” she asked, knowing the answer.

“No,” he answered just as she expected.

People, whose money card had the total sum showing right on the card, never took anything like a receipt with them. They knew immediately how much money was taken from their card and for what.

She gave him the money card back and Cypress left the store with his new pajama in a dark-grey bag. After he arrived home, he opened the bag and for a moment he thought that he’d been carrying an empty bag all this time. A second later he calmed down, when he realized that his new pajama’s greyish-blue color was similar to the dark-grey color of the bag, and in the dim entry room basked by the late afternoon light, the two colors looked almost identical to the point they almost blended with each other, creating an illusion of an empty bag.

He took the pajama out of the bag and washed them in the bathroom with the help of his personal mini-washing machine, which couldn’t fit more than four pieces of clothing, but was quite useful for washing underwear. Afterward, he dried it up with a spell, and on the same day, he wore his new pajama to bed.

As for his previous pajama, he gave it a respectful death by burning it to nothingness with fire magic.

Over the last month, he didn’t regret the purchase at all.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He was still wearing his greyish-blue pajama, even though it was already past noontime. The nighttime clothing was so comfortable, he’d happily wear it throughout the day, but he knew that walking outside in a pajama would be deeply embarrassing, so he changed into daytime clothings.

Wearing a thick coat and warm shoes, he stepped outside the cottage without a hat. His long hair was tied with a ribbon behind his lower back to keep the strands together, but some shorter ones still managed to separate from the rest. It was obvious that he hadn’t combed them, but there was almost nobody left on the schoolground to see it, so he didn’t care. An occasional wind slightly rearranged his hair anyway, so combing was meaningless.

“Wear a hat, or you’ll go bald,” he heard his mother’s voice call from inside his memories.

Ever since he was a kid, she always told him that over and over, but the hat was just another thing he didn’t care about. Why was it a bad thing to be bald? He never understood why so many men feared going bald. He would have gladly shaved his head and done away with all the hair, but he couldn’t do this until he would meet her again. Until the day of their reunion, he needed this hair to bother him all the time as a reminder, because he feared that without such an annoying reminder, he’d soon forget what he promised.

And he wasn’t allowed to forget. His own conscience would torture him to death, if he forgot the promise that he gave her.

He put his hands into his pockets after he closed the front door of his cottage, and took a large step forward into the knee-deep snow. The school of Hecate desnowed all the roads except for the short sidewalk right in front of every cottage’s main entrance, which was the responsibility of the students living in the cottage. Some students diligently kept that area clear of snow, while others, like Cypress and his roommate, weren't bothered as long as they could pass through.

However, ever after getting onto the main road, Cypress walked slowly and carefully. There was plenty of ice on the ground, and it wasn’t hard to slip and fall. As he kept on walking, Cypress breathed out and the water vapor coming out of his mouth instantly turned into ice mist. He lowered down his head, and hid his chin inside the collar of his coat. Maybe, he should have put on that hat. It was much colder than he thought, and he blamed the sunny blue sky for his misdiagnosis of the weather’s temperature.

But he was already more than halfway through to his destination, so he decided to keep going. He stopped as he suddenly remembered that on his way back, the temperature would get even colder. Yet he already saw the building of his destination in the distance and decided that somehow he’d make it back home without a hat.

He started walking faster. Once he arrived at the front door of the building, his ears, nose, and cheeks were already red in color. He took his right hand out from his pocket, quickly opened the door, immediately slid inside and closed the door to keep the cold air out.

He took off his shoes and put on guest slippers, which were a bit too small for his feet. Then he hung his coat on one of many empty hooks on the wall in the entry room, before he walked into the living room.

As he began to open the door to the living room, he heard the sound of a rocking chair and a man’s voice, “I thought you wouldn’t come today.”

“Why wouldn’t I come?” Cypress responded after he stepped inside and looked at the man swaying in the rocking chair. “I don’t have anything else to do,” he closed the interior door.

The patriarch looked as if he was approaching his two hundredth birthday. He was skinny and bony. His face was a desert of wrinkles, and his head looked like a shiny mudball with an occasional hair strand remaining here and there. His eyelids were open, but his eyes, filled with a sensation of emptiness, looked far into the distance toward a place, where no man has ever been.

Cypress came closer to the fireplace, which was burning just two meters away from the rocking chair, in order to warm himself up. In the whole room, there was no other place to sit, except on the carpet, but he chose to stand.

However, the lack of chairs and sofas didn’t make the building empty. Quite the opposite, all the rooms were full of shelves and drawers. The living room was the only room, with enough space for anyone to stretch out their arms. Any other room had nothing but narrow hallways between tall cabinets, all filled with historical items.

Not many students of Hecate knew about this building. Most students visited only those buildings, where they had classes. Other buildings were of no importance to them, but Cypress was different. Ever since he started Hecate, he wanted to know all about the school. Thus he ventured into every building and toured all the areas, even the most hidden ones. He had found a lot of interesting places, but no place was more interesting than this old building.

From the outside there was nothing unusual about it and it looked like all the other buildings. It could have been just another building with classrooms, but it wasn’t. The school of Hecate made this building into a storage for works created by previous students.

Unlike items related to the history of Hecate, which were kept in the library, nobody really cared what happened to the student’s old papers or crafts. Most students assumed that teachers got rid of them, but only Cypress knew that they weren’t discarded, but kept right here in this building.

In every room, each shelf and each drawer contained items of the students of Hecate, who have already graduated. There were countless papers on diverse topics, items charmed with unique magic, unusual hypotheses that some students put forth, ideas from different ages and times, plans for new spells, and designs of magical objects. There were also magical objects created by the magicless students, but Cypress had little interest in them, because those were prototypes and poorly made compared with average magical items sold in stores.

Most of the items gathered in the storage were hundred yrold or older, because the more recent items were typically kept in the schoolmanor by the teachers in their offices. That, however, didn’t mean that anyone could just do whatever they wanted with the items in the storage. Quite the opposite, the school of Hecate, treated those items as their own educational treasure, and as an important piece of the school’s history. For that reason, the very job of protecting the storage was done by none other than the previous chairman.

Even though the patriarch looked like a helpless elder, moments away from dying, he was nevertheless a school legend. Before he went to the school of Hecate, nobody heard about him, but he was a diligent student. A man, who possessed an average talent, but great passion for magic. He graduated with top scores, and in his prime, he was known as a genius, even though his talent wasn’t that high.

As a chairman of Hecate, he became a legend after he courageously refused the royals, who demanded to enter the Hecate schoolground in order to arrest one of the students. The crime? The poor guy fell in love with a royal princess, and dared to send her a love letter.

The chairman, however, was adamant. He wouldn’t let the royal guards arrest his student no matter what. He knew that he was risking his life, but it was due to his stubbornness, that the guy was saved. After seeing that the chairman didn’t fear death, the royals decided to just forget all about the love letter, and went back.

“Can you give me the blanket?” the patriarch asked.

Cypress looked at the blankets on the shelves next to the fireplace.

“No, not this one,” the patriarch said again, when Cypress touched a blue blanket, “I like the pink one more.”

Cypress took out the pink blanket, which was the softest of all the blankets on the shelves. He unfolded it and put it on top of the previous chairman’s legs.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“Your hands are cold,” the patriarch said as he took one of Cypress’s hands in-between his own hands.

“Yeah, I was outside just a...” Cypress felt the warmth coming off from the ex-chairman’s hands, entering his left hand and travelling through his whole body, rapidly warming it up. “Now I’m feeling hot,” he complained.

“It’s cold outside at this time of the year,” the man still held Cypress’s hand. “You should wear more clothes. It’s not good, when one feels cold nowadays, when we have so many clothes.” He freed Cypress’s hand. “There used to be a time, a long, long time ago, so long ago, that no one remembers it. There was a time, when people didn’t have enough clothes. They wore all they had, and even then, they didn’t have enough to warm themselves up.”

Cypress moved his hands away from the man, and let it hang down by his own body.

“No one talks about it nowadays, but that past shouldn’t be forgotten,” the patriarch continued. “It shouldn’t be forgotten,” he repeated himself again.

“You’re talking about the times, when the mankind was still at war with the demons,” Cypress spoke. “That was over ten hundred years ago. And the demons are no more.”

“Never forget your enemy,” the patriarch pulled up his blanket. “As long as there’s someone out there, who wants to hurt you, you should always watch your back.”

Cypress thought that the patriarch was getting paranoid with age, but instead he said, “the demons are gone.”

“You fool,” he raised his voice. “What do you know about the world? You brats, you always think you know everything, but when you live for a hundred years - such a short period of time - you’ll understand how little you know.” He took a deep breath and calmed down.

Cypress rolled his eyes. He didn’t dislike the man, but the preaching of the elders was always the same thing, and he was growing tired of it.

“Listen well,” the patriarch spoke clearly and in a low voice. “This is important. No one knows what happened to the demons after the war. Surely, they were defeated, but where they went, only God knows.”

“Aren’t they all locked in Hell?”

The patriarch shook his hand, “if life was that simple. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what happened to the demons, the problem is that people have already forgotten all about that age.”

“How is that a problem?” Cypress asked the man in the rocking chair, who remained silent for a long while.

The firewood in the fireplace cracked, sending sparks up into the chimney. The rocking chair stopped moving as the patriarch pulled up the blanket over his chest. A cold wind blew in from the chimney, and the fire danced in the gust. The rocking chair started swaying again.

“During the war, there were two kinds of people,” the patriarch spoke in a distant voice, almost as if he was recalling something, but Cypress knew that it must have been knowledge acquired from reading the ancient records. “One kind believed in the presence of demons. The other kind didn’t believe that demons had anything to do with their lives.”

Cypress sat on the floor, respecting the elder and his story.

“The first kind fought the war against demons. The second kind fought the war against men, because those who ignored the demons were the first ones to serve them.” The patriarch raised up two fingers, “there are two rules that one must always obey to win a war against the demons. If you break either one of these two rules, you will lose.”

The patriarch’s voice changed into something almost out of this world, and Cypress felt the atmosphere changing around the room.

“The first rule, never trust anything a demon says. Regardless if they speak truth or lie, never trust the words of demons. Close your ears, and don’t listen to them, because every word from a demon is meant to cause trouble. The words are meant to bring harm, physically and spiritually. Even if the words sound innocent at first, the final goal is always evil.”

Cypress never met or heard a demon speak, so he didn’t understand what words of demons would be like. But he paid attention, as he felt something inside his soul telling him that one day he may need this knowledge.

“The second rule, never doubt fellow humans. Demons win, whenever they split people. The more people they split, the stronger they become. That is why, you must never doubt other humans. All humans are good by nature, but once possessed by demons, even the most innocent men will turn into beasts. But you must never forget, that even under possession, humans are still humans. In the past, those who ignored demons, killed many humans. In the end, even they were possessed by demons. However those, who were always cautious about demons; those, who fought only with the demons - no demon could possess them, because they were always on alert against them.”

Cypress understood what the previous chairman of Hecate was trying to tell him, but how was he supposed to stay alert against an enemy that he knew nothing about? He never met a demon before, so how was he supposed to know what it was like to hear a demon? How was he supposed to recognize a demon, when he knew from the legends that demons can take on any form, and they can change their appearance to anything?

The harsh reality was that people never knew a lot about their worst enemies.

Demons were spiritual beings like angels, but unlike angels, demons had disobeyed and continued to disobey God. As part of their disobedience, they chose to fight humans, the most beloved of God’s creation.

By default demons didn’t possess a physical form or a physical appearance. Yet they were able to appear in the physical world under any disguise. They could even disguise themselves as angels or as God, and their disguise was always perfect. They also possessed powers, which allowed them to control anything they possessed. As such they could do almost anything.

Knowing this much about demons, all people always had the same question: how did humans defeat such a powerful enemy? In reality, nobody knew the answer. However, the official response was that humans used their pride, the only unchangeable characteristic shared by all demons.

That was how demons were found out. Unlike humans, demons couldn’t erase their pride and it always gave them away.

Furthermore, demons could never possess anyone with a humble heart. Thus humility, like an impenetrable barrier, was considered the greatest weapon in the war against demons.

Humility, which meant to acknowledge one’s own weaknesses, while putting full trust in God, believing that God had made mankind capable of overcoming any challenge, was a skill available only to humans.

Demons were always hiding their weaknesses, acting like they had none, and they didn’t believe in God. They believed that their victories were theirs alone.

Humans could lose their humility and act like demons, but demons could never lose their pride and act like humans.

“So you want me to live a life of humility?” Cypress came to a conclusion and directed his question to the patriarch in the rocking chair.

“If you can,” the patriarch responded.

“He liked the fire variation a lot,” Ginkgo laughed as he talked about Cypress. “After I read him a story about a monk, who used a fire tornado to destroy thousands of demons, he tried to do the same… at home! I had to erase that fire tornado before it burned down the house, yet I still got scolded for scorching the carpet.”

“He created a fire tornado, when he was four yrold?” Yew was attentively listening to everything Ginkgo told him.

“It wasn’t a real tornado,” Ginkgo put his right hand about twenty centimeters above his left palm, “it was small, about this size, but it was a real fire, so it could still burn down the house.”

“Wow,” Yew was amazed, hearing about Cypress, who was seriously skilled in magic long before attending the school of Hecate.

They talked, while travelling through the snow covered forest. None of the trees had any leaves on them, and there weren’t any evergreen trees in this forest. Each tree stood up like an empty pole with its branches covered by snow on the top, while the bottom was abundant with rows of long icicles threatening to fall down on anyone passing by.

When Ginkgo took a break from talking, Yew decided to ask something that he really wanted to know. “You also went to Hecate, right?”

“For the first two years, yes.”

“But you weren’t a magicless student?” From Ginkgo's stories, Yew was sure that the man was talented in magic.

“Of course not. Nobody’s magicless in the Sea household.”

“So why are you using magical items instead of your own magic?”

Ever since the first moment, when Yew met Ginkgo, he had never seen the man using any magic. Yet the famous adventurer had plenty of magical items, which he was using all the time like a magicless person. If Ginkgo could use magic, why wasn’t he doing so?

“Ah, that…” the man massaged the back of his neck. “When I got disowned, I cut myself off from the Sea household,” he spoke a bit quieter than before, as if he wasn’t sure whether he should talk about it or not, “and I thought that if I used magic, some clever people might realize who I am, and that’d bring me nothing but troubles.”

“So you stopped using magic?”

“I sealed it,” Ginkgo corrected Yew.

“You sealed it?” the boy raised his eyebrows.

“If I hadn’t sealed it, I could have ended up using it accidentally one way or another,” Ginkgo explained the obvious.

“No, I mean: How do you seal magic? Is that possible?”

Ginkgo looked at the boy, whose face was filled with interest. “Oh, that’s what you wanna know.” He looked forward, and kept walking for a while in silence before he answered. “I used banned magic.”

“Banned?”

“It’s a type of magic that was classified as too dangerous to use. There’s that one spell that causes the user to lose all ability to use magic. To be precise, the magic isn’t gone, but it becomes impossible to use it.”

“Why?”

“Think about it like this. Can you use your hand, if you chopped it off?”

Yew shook his head.

“That’s why I cannot use magic. All the nulls in my body are gone.”

“Nulls?”

“You haven’t learned that yet in Hecate, but I’ll tell you. Though I don’t know whether you can understand it. This world,” he ran a circle with his finger to point at all the surroundings, “is made up of two components: reals and nulls. In other words, the existing fragments and the nonexisting fragments.”

Yew paid attention, certain that he could understand it.

“The reals are studied by scientists, and the nulls are studied by wizards. Reals are easier to study, because they form the existing world. Nulls on the other hand are nonexistent by default, but under certain conditions they can manifest and cause a change in reals, and we call that final result of their manifestation - magic.”

Yew nodded his head. He felt like he understood it pretty well. 

“I used the nulls in my body to expel nulls out of my body. Ergo, now I no longer have any nulls in my body, which is why I cannot activate them to cause changes in reals.”

“Okay.”

Ginkgo didn’t know, whether Yew really understood what he explained, or did the boy give up on trying to understand.

“By the way, you said it was a banned spell, but you’re not a criminal, right?”

Ginkgo chuckled, “no, that’s not it. The banned magic isn’t exactly illegal. Well, most of it isn’t illegal. Spells get banned, when they have dangerous side effects. In this case, there’s no known way to undo the Null Expulsion Spell, and that’s why it was banned. Of course, in theory it should be possible to invent something like the Null Absorption Spell, but it hasn’t been done yet.”

“So if I invent it, then I can fix your magic?”

Ginkgo laughed, “if you invented the Null Absorption Spell, it would make you the richest man on Earth.”

“Why?” Yew was confused.

“With a spell like that, anyone would be able to become a magus. Anyone magicless would become magic-talented, and anyone magic-talented could get even more magic-talented.”

“Oh.”

“But no one was ever able to invent such a spell, so even your chances of success are slim.”

“But if one day it gets invented, then you won’t have to be stuck using magical items.”

“Are you looking down on wizards?”

“What? No!” Yew immediately denied. “I was just thinking how much of a difference there is between magi and wizards. Magi can use magic just by thinking about it, while wizards have to depend on items. If they don’t have the right item, they can hardly do anything.”

“You’re looking down on wizards,” Ginkgo said as a matter of fact.

“No! Why do you say that?”

“I was still only a fourth year student in Nike, when I met a wizard adventurer. We were both after the same treasure. He was a kind man and offered to help me out, while we travelled together. I didn’t have anything against the idea, but in the end, he did almost everything while I was only holding him back. Do you know why?”

Based on what Ginkgo told him before, he was disowned on his seventh year, so on his fourth year, he would have still been magic-talented. It made no sense, why a magic-talented adventurer lost to a magicless adventurer.

Yew slowly shook his head sideways.

“When both of us got stuck in a cave surrounded by falling boulders, my magic ran out. I was too tired to do anything, but he used the shirt, which he wore. And right in front of my eyes, amidst that dangerous situation, he created a magical item from his own shirt - a home-made teleportation scroll, saving both of us.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did he turn his shirt into a teleportation scroll?” Yew’s question was specific this time.

“Am I a wizard to know?” Ginkgo responded. “I studied magic for only two years in Hecate. I learned only the basics on how to use magic. The classes of the first two years are the same for both magicless and magic-talented students. The real studying begins on the third year.”

Yew recalled that it was on the third year of Hecate, when the school separated magicless students from magic-talented students. He was still on his first year, so he hadn’t thought much about it.

“Magic-talented students learn how to use the nulls inside their bodies, but magicless students learn how to use the nulls outside their bodies. Wizards cannot use magic directly, but they spend many years learning the rules of magic, and once knowing the rules, they know how to make magical items out of ordinary items.”

“If wizards can change any norman item into a magical item, then what about changing a magicless person into a magic-talented person? It should be kind of similar.”

Ginkgo chuckled. “I asked him the same thing. Unfortunately, one rule of magic is that living creatures cannot be made into magical items. That’s because reals cannot be created or destroyed, only changed. Whereas, nulls cannot be changed, only created or destroyed. Living beings are made of reals in a constant state of rapid change, so when nulls are applied to such reals, the nulls end up self-destructing, because they cannot change themselves to adapt to the ever-changing reals. On the other hand, objects possess reals, which are either dormant or slow changing, so nulls can have a strong effect on them depending on how slowly the reals change.”

Yew furrowed his eyebrows as the topic got more difficult.

“Did you understand the explanation?” Ginkgo looked at Yew.

“Yeah,” Yew felt like it shouldn’t be so hard to understand, but there was something about it that made him feel, that even though he understood it, he still missed the most important point.

Ginkgo smiled to himself, “some people compare magic to God’s powers, but magic isn’t that great. Whatever God created remains forever, but magic is fleeting. It doesn’t last forever, yet once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. You can spell or charm again, but it won’t be the same spell or charm, because you won’t be using the same nulls on the same reals.”

Both of them saw train tracks in the distance.

“Finally,” Ginkgo said as he moved faster.

Yew couldn’t keep up, but Ginkgo stopped after he got nearer the tracks. He stood by and looked to both sides.

The train tracks were recently desnowed by a passing train, so there wasn’t much snow left on the tracks. On the other hand, piles of snow removed from the tracks created a fence on each side of the tracks. While Ginkgo passed with some difficulty, Yew got stuck in a pile of snow up to his chest. The boy groaned as he tried to move forward.

Ginkgo turned his face around. “Go back, we won’t be walking on the tracks,” he passed back through the snowpile, grabbing Yew and pulling him out.

The two of them began walking alongside the train tracks, with the snow fence separating them from the infrastructure.

“You said that magic doesn’t last forever, but what about blessings? Some curses last for a lifetime,” Yew recalled what he had learned on his first year in Hecate.

“That’s because each blessing and each curse has to be approved by God, before it arrives at the recipient.”

“The teacher never said that,” Yew pointed out.

“Of course not. You’re attending a school of magic, not a temple. Officially, schools teach only what they’re sure of. And God in itself is something no one is sure of. That’s why anything related to God is always a speculation rather than a verified fact.”

“God is a speculation?”

“Have you seen God?”

Yew shook his head.

“Nobody had seen God,” Ginkgo said. “Yet too many things in this world cannot be explained unless you include the theory of God into calculations. Only when you add God into the mix, you get a logical outcome. Without God, you end up with a mess, that’s both illogical and unrealistic. However, there’s also a great danger of adding too much God and making everything useless, so a balance is always needed. Don’t add God, where you don’t need it, and don’t leave out God, where you need it.”

“Uhm, why do you call God «it»?” Yew asked. Normally people used the pronoun «he», when talking about God.

“Hahah,” Ginkgo laughed. “Pronouns «he» and «she» are used for people and other creatures, whereas «it» is used for objects and things, right?”

Yew nodded.

“God isn’t an object nor a thing, right?”

Yew nodded again.

“But God is not a person or a creature either.”

Yew opened his mouth, realizing it for the first time in his life.

“All pronouns are wrong either way, so does it really matter, which pronoun I use? Most people think that «he» and «she» are more respectful, but that’s because most people would feel angry, if you called them «it», but what makes you think that God is like most people?”

Yew had no words to respond. He was still puzzled by how he lived for so many years and never realized that God was always addressed by the wrong pronoun and that all pronouns were wrong, when addressing God, who was a being that was neither an inanimate object nor a living creature.

“So it’s possible to address God as «she», because all pronouns are wrong anyway,” the boy concluded.

“And there are people, who do just that,” Ginkgo added from his experience.

“Why don’t they teach that in kindergarten, or at least in school?” Yew complained, bothered that he didn’t know it until now.

Ginkgo chuckled, “unless you get one of those odd teachers, who add a lot of trivia into their lectures, you won’t learn much. Even when it comes to magic, monks have a different understanding of it. In temples, they believe that all blessings and curses go through God, who reviews each, one by one, and wisely decides the best course of action. That’s why unlike spells or charms, blessings and curses don’t work right away.”

“So spells aren’t reviewed by God? What if someone uses magic to do evil?” he asked as he recalled Liquorice in his mind.

When Ginkgo opened his mouth to respond, they both heard a train whistle in the distance coming from behind them. “Good timing,” the man stopped and turned around.

Yew also stopped. He looked at Ginkgo, then into the distance, where Ginkgo was looking at.

Ginkgo stretched out his hand and began waving them up and down, right when the train showed up in the distance as a speck of black on the white background. After several hand-waving gestures, Ginkgo raised up only his left arm into a horizontal position on the same level as his shoulder, and he closed his hand into a fist with his thumb pointing at the sky.

It was a gesture used by travelers, when they wanted a ride in an approaching vehicle, such as a cart, carriage, truck, bus, van, sledge or something similar. However, nobody in their right mind would even use it on a train.

Yew was going to point it out, because he felt embarrassed standing next to a man, who was trying to hitchhike a train. Yet to his utter shock, the train hit brakes so hard, that the whole normally-very-peaceful forest could hear the screeching sound of metal scratching metal.

Even with brakes applied, the train kept going and two of its cars passed Ginkgo and Yew, before it eventually came to a stop with its third car in front of the two travelers.

The back door of the first car opened, and two train workers looked out.

“See?!” one of the workers shouted to the other, “you own me beer!”

“God-made,” the other man sounded out of breath. “That’s really Ginkgo.”

“Let’s go,” Ginkgo said to Yew.

They tried to quickly move toward the train workers, but running through the snow wasn’t easy.

“Can we ride along?” Ginkgo shouted, when he was passing by the second car.

“Get on!” said the worker with a raspy voice, who lost the bet, and moved out of the way, giving them space to enter the first car.

“But hurry,” the other worker added, as he beckoned them inside. “We’re already running late.”

When they were right in front of the entrance, Ginkgo picked up Yew, and stepping into the snow pile, he passed the boy to the worker standing in the doorway.

Yew didn’t expect that, but once he was in the air, he quickly understood Ginkgo’s idea. He stretched out his hands and legs forward. His legs easily found the edge of the platform, and the worker caught one of his hands to pull him inside.

Ginkgo got through the snow pile, and easily pulled himself up onto the platform.

The worker standing by the entrance, slid the door shut. The other worker talked to the intercom attached to the wall of the train, with a thick cable coming out of it, going up and right under the roof toward the conductor’s room. “All aboard!”

“Get me his signature,” another man’s voice spoke from the intercom.

In less than a minute, the train with more than sixty cars began to slowly move forward.

“I still can’t believe my eyes,” said the man with the raspy voice, who was standing by the intercom. He did sound as if he was out of breath, but it appeared that it was his natural voice, and it wasn’t going away. “The famous adventurer, the great Ginkgo on our train.”

This train car didn’t look anything like a passenger’s car. There were no seats, and the two men sat on the wooden boxes, which were tied in place with thick straps. To the left, there was a door, which normally would lead to the next car, but since the next car was a cargo car, it had no door. To the right, inside the first train car, there was a wall with another door - most likely leading to the conductor’s room.

“Where can we sit?” Ginkgo asked.

“Anywhere,” said the man, who won beer from the bet with his coworker. He looked cheerful, and full of energy, but he was in his late adulthood, with old age soon knocking on his door. He had a glare in his eyes as if life didn’t spare him hardships, but his countenance was that of someone, who knew when to be happy.

“Sit down, sit down,” the other man said to Ginkgo, as he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a small notebook and a pen. “Sadly, this is the best we have right now.”

This man looked younger, but his voice was lower and heavily aired. His face didn’t look smart, but in no way was he dumb. He approached Ginkgo, who put down his backpack on the floor and sat down on one of the wooden boxes. Following his example, Yew did the same, and sat down next to Ginkgo.

“Can you get us three signatures?”

“Four,” the older man corrected. “One for Turnpuu.”

The man, standing in front of Ginkgo laughed, “he’ll die from joy, you know?” and they both laughed.

Ginkgo opened the notebook. The man told him their names and Ginkgo wrote down his signature four times, each time with a different addressee, “anything else?”

“God-made,” Avenbok repeated in his raspy voice as he took back the notebook, “I don’t feel real right now.”

“Don’t say that, what if we wake up?!” Daye scolded him as a joke.

After men laughed together, Ginkgo took a chance to ask them a question, “does this train make a stop in Frogwindow?”

“If we go according to the schedule, we don’t stop until Horselip,” Avenbok said, “but for you, we can stop anywhere,” he added with a wink.

“No, that won’t be necessary,” Ginkgo shook his hand. “Horselip is a much better option. How long will it take to get there?”

“We should arrive sometime around tomorrow morning,” Daye answered. “Before sunrise, if we’re lucky.”

Once inside the train, Ginkgo and Yew took off their outdoor clothing except for shoes, and put down all their baggage in one place on the box across from the exit door.

From the train crew, Yew heard that it wasn’t the first time that Ginkgo hitchhiked a ride on a train. Four years ago, he climbed on top of a slow train, which couldn’t move any faster due to dangerous weather conditions in the mountains. A worker found him, but instead of telling him to get off, Ginkgo was invited inside.

The second time, Ginkgo approached a train, which had stopped in the middle of its journey due to some mechanical issues and asked if he could join until his destination city. Of course, the train workers all agreed in unison, and Ginkgo got another free ride on a cargo train.

The two stories got so famous among train workers, that just a month afterward, a train conductor stopped his train, when he saw a lonely traveller walking alongside the tracks. He was hoping to be yet another conductor to give a ride to Ginkgo the Adventurer, and his hopes were fulfilled. Afterward, Ginkgo began to wave at trains and most of the time, they did stop for him.

However, all of this was a secret known only by train workers. They didn’t want any copycats trying to hitchhike their train, so they never talked about it to anyone outside of their profession. Ginkgo was the only man on Earth, whom train workers were willing to stop for.

Yet, for almost two years Ginkgo didn’t hitchhike any train, so some began to doubt the stories. Afterall, there were thousands of trains travelling all over the world, and less than twenty of them had made claims to have met Ginkgo the train hitchhiker. As a consequence, the stories were slowly fading away from the memories of those, who heard them.

Even the conductor of this train had almost all but forgotten about it.

While the train was going at an average speed for the terrain and travelled through the meadows and swamps on a vast but uneven plain, the conductor saw a figure of a man with a kid in the distance. The man was waving his hands before he gestured to hitchhike.

At first, the conductor thought, that he was seeing it wrong. Then he thought, that the man had to be an idiot. Who in their right mind tries to hitchhike a train, but in that same moment, he remembered the stories about Ginkgo, which he had heard from other train workers.

He hit the brakes.

Then he wondered about the kid next to the man. Did Ginkgo have a child? He never heard anything like that. What if that wasn’t Ginkgo? Avenbok and Daye, who were also in the cabin at the time, had similar suspicions, and they decided to make a bet out of it.

The moment, when the train was passing right next to the man, all three train workers saw a familiar face of Ginkgo the Adventurer, and Avenbok ran to the back of the first car, with Daye walking behind him.

After Ginkgo was finally boarded and the train was back on the move, the two men began to talk with Ginkgo, asking him about the kid. Ginkgo told them that Yew was his distant cousin, who sneaked out of the house without telling his parents. And now Ginkgo had to get him back home safely.

Yew also asked, why did the train stop for Ginkgo, because by common sense no train would ever stop for a hitchhiker. Daye told him all the stories, which he heard from other train workers, and how he was also glad that something like that happened to him. According to Daye’s count this was Ginkgo’s seventeenth time to hitchhike a train.

After Daye was done with his stories, he looked at Ginkgo. He and Avenbok requested to hear about Ginkgo’s adventures. Yew also wanted to hear the stories. Most of what Ginkgo told him until now were stories about Cypress, which weren’t bad and Yew didn’t mind knowing more about Cypress, but he also wanted to know more about Ginkgo.

Yet Yew was disappointed, when Ginkgo began with the stories that he had already told to the matriarch in the village of Harefence. He hoped to hear something new. However, after passively hearing the first story, he realized that it wasn’t exactly the same.

This time, Ginkgo omitted some parts, but added other ones, which he hadn’t spoken about before. Yew didn’t understand, why Ginkgo didn’t just tell the whole story in all the details.

By combining the story Yew heard before with the new infos, which Ginkgo only talked about now, Yew had a much clearer picture of events. Actually, the story began to look even more interesting now, that he knew so much more details than previously.

During the break between the stories, Yew learned that the door inside the car didn’t lead to the conductor’s room, but to the toilet room. Whereas, a narrow hallway between the toilet and the wall led to the front of the car. He didn’t see the hallway before, because the view was hidden by the boxes, but while going to the bathroom, he got a clear look at it.

Afterward, Daye switched places with Arinul. The train conductor came out to personally greet Ginkgo, while the train was travelling on a fairly even and safe ground. He couldn’t stay for long, but he assured Ginkgo that he could still hear him in his cabin, through the intercom, which was left activated by Avenbok. After he left, Daye came back and Ginkgo continued with his stories.

As they travelled, the sun rose up to its zenith, and began to slowly descend toward the ground. However before it reached the treetops, clouds came from the east and covered the whole sky. Soon the snow began to fall, and the outside world turned into a sleepy scenery of a land serenely ensnared in a dream.

They passed by a city of Frogwindow, where not many residents were walking outside in this dark cold weather. None of whom had any interest in a cargo train passing through their city.

Soon, the train was once again moving through the forests of mainly leafless trees with occasional evergreen trees scattered at a distance from each other like brides in their pure white dresses surrounded by countless grooms dressed in dark tuxedos.

There was only one large window in the sidewall of the first car of the train. It was located between the exit and the toilet room, and Yew used it like a TV screen. As much as he enjoyed listening to Ginkgo’s tales, his eyes were bored of staring at plain boxes and the old train floor. Unlike the train crew, who were completely absorbed in Ginkgo’s tales, Yew didn’t feel the need to stare at the man’s face.

The sun couldn’t be seen behind the thick layer of clouds, but as the day was approaching its end, the light in the air began to vanish away. While the world outside was turning into darkness, Ginkgo was talking about a treasure that he found in an oasis surrounded by a hot sunny desert.

Since the looming darkness outside affected the inside of the car, Avenbok turned on a lamp and at that very moment, Yew lost his TV screen. The window turned into a mirror reflecting four men inside the train car.

Yew squinted his eyes, still trying to look through the window. He saw something that looked like a pack of wolves right before Avenbok turned on the lamp. Yew wondered if they were running alongside the train or if there were more of them in the forest. Just then he felt Ginkgo grab him with both hands.

Yew was leaning toward the floor, in the process of falling off the box. He didn’t realize that by trying to look through the window he leaned forward too much to remain seated.

“It’s late,” Daye spoke as he looked at the complete darkness outside.

It was already after dusk, and the night ruled over the land.

“Do you have a bed, where he can sleep on?” Ginkgo asked, assuming that Yew almost fell off the box, because he was sleepy.

“Follow me,” Daye got up off the box and led them through the narrow hallway to the front of the train car. Over there, there were two bunk beds, on each side by the wall, and a door behind the bunk beds leading to the conductor’s cabin.

“This one hasn’t been used yet, so it’s fresh and clean,” Daye tapped the top bunk bed on the left side, then he approached the bunk bed on the right side and patted someone’s face. “Wake up, princess, your shift is coming up.”

A man sleeping on the top bed, unwillingly got up, stepped off onto a large wooden box next to the bed, and from the box he jumped onto the floor. He did all this with his eyes half-closed, but when he saw Ginkgo the Adventurer, he rapidly became conscious.

“We didn’t get you a sign, because you don’t need that, is what you said,” Daye put his hand on his coworker’s shoulder and smirked.

The man was too surprised to speak. After standing for a long time, confused but joyous, the nature has called him into the toilet room.

“Get me his sign,” he quickly yelled at Daye before he walked off.

“That’s our Wewarani,” Daye named his coworker to Ginkgo. “He always changes his mind.”

“So that’s one more signature for Wewarani?” Ginkgo looked back.

“Can be done later. For now, let’s put the kid in bed. He doesn’t need to take off his clothes. It’s not that warm here. The heater is on, but it barely keeps the temperature at ten centigrade.”

Yew took off his shoes, but there was no ladder. Ginkgo helped by lifting him up onto the box by the bed, then the boy pulled himself up onto the bed by himself. Once on the bed, he wrapped the bed covers around himself and snuggled near the wall.

If there was a woman on the train, she’d immediately raise concerns about a kid sleeping so high up without any safety bars around. However, the men didn’t see Yew as such. Surely, he was still a kid, but he was no longer a baby. And they could see that Yew had his own brain. After the boy moved away from the bed edge and toward the wall, both men were confident enough of his safety to leave him alone.

Afterward, the other man returned from the bathroom, passed the bunk beds, and entered the conductor’s room, where he changed shifts with Arinul.

Yew realized that the train began to slow down. Eventually it stopped, but the stop lasted less than a minute, before it began to move again. He heard the door opening again, and people walking in and out of the conductor’s room.

Afterward, Yew could still hear the sounds of conversation from the area beyond the bathroom, where Ginkgo was telling his stories, but slowly these and all the other sounds became more and more distant as he fell asleep.

On that night, he had a unique dream like nothing before.

There was nothing but thick impenetrable darkness. There was no floor, no ceiling, no walls. All the world was nothing but darkness, and in the middle of that world, there was a black bird cage with a white bird imprisoned inside. Somehow, through all that black darkness, Yew moved closer to the cage, and saw that the cage was much larger than him, and the white bird inside the cage was no bird at all. It was a girl in a white dress.

She wore a white tiara on her forehead. A white transparent veil covered her silky curly black hair. Her long dress completely covered her hands, her legs, and the bottom of her neck. Even the beads and the ribbons on the dress were all white. On her hands, she wore white gloves, and on her feet, she wore white dress shoes. Her skin was very light, but it wasn’t pale.

“Who are you?” she asked. “How did you get here?”

“I don’t know,” Yew answered. “Why are you here?”

“She locked me here,” the girl responded. “She knows that I can change the world, so she locked me here.”

“Who is she?”

“The demon, who destroyed my world,” she answered.

“Why did she lock you?”

“Because she couldn’t kill me.”

“She wanted to kill you?”

The girl nodded, “she possessed the world long before I was born, and I was given the power to change that.”

“What power?”

“The power to free the world from her possession.”

“How would you do this?”

“How would you do this?” she repeated the question back at Yew.

“Me?”

“Aren’t you the same?”

Yew didn’t say anything. He just stared at her.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Yew. And yours?”

“Right now, my name is Aria, but when we meet again, my name will be Arnica.”

“We will meet again?”

She nodded, “I may not remember you, and you may forget me too, but it doesn’t matter. When we were born, the wheels of the destiny began turning, and the cruel fate of my world began crumbling. She knows she cannot stop the change, but even so, she’ll try to.”

“I don’t get any of this,” Yew answered.

“Neither do I, but no prayers are ever left unheard, and the silent cries are always the loudest to the ears of God.”

Yew had a brief feeling as if he was on the verge of recalling something forgotten by his memory, but the feeling quickly disappeared, and he heard someone calling his name.

“Yew!”

He opened his eyes and saw the train ceiling above him.

“Get ready, we’re almost at Horselip,” Ginkgo was standing by the bed on top of the box and looking at the boy, who sat up. “Hurry up,” the man added and jumped off the wooden box.

Yew stretched out and slowly got down, while Ginkgo was watching over. When the boy was on the box, Ginkgo handed him his shoes, and Yew put them on before jumping off the box onto the floor. The two of them walked through the narrow hallway. Once in the back of the train, Yew looked outside the window.

However the scenery hasn’t changed at all from the last time he saw it. The night continued to be dark and the window continued to act like a mirror. After seeing the reflection of Ginkgo dressing up in his outdoor clothes, he woke up a bit more, grabbed his outdoor clothes and began putting them on.

Meanwhile, the train was already slowing down. Right when Yew put on his gloves, the sound of train brakes were heard in the car. A bit more than a minute later, the train came to a complete stop.

Daye opened the back door, and jumped out onto the platform.

This wasn’t a typical passenger platform. In front of the train there were tens of storage buildings, many of them with their huge gates wide open and storing hundreds of spare containers. Many large trucks were aligned by the train tracks, ready to pick up their share of the load. The platform was filled with cranes, pulleys, carts and a lot of other equipment needed in the process of transportation.

Ginkgo jumped out and looked behind at Yew, who also left the train car by himself.

“Who’s that?” asked the man, who approached Daye.

“Ginkgo the Adventurer,” Daye whispered the answer to keep the info a secret from others, who were working around the large platform.

The man, who asked the question, stepped back and his eyes grew as large as small chicken eggs.

“Don’t worry, we got you his signature,” Daye added and tapped Turnpuu’s shoulder, “I’ll be taking them out, you take care of the cargo. Just act normal,” he winked and waved a hand at Ginkgo beckoning the two hitchhikers to follow him.

Ginkgo and Yew left with the man, who led them into one of the large storages, and between the empty containers. There were people working around, but everyone was too busy to pay attention to the passerbys, who walked quickly, as if they were in a hurry themselves.

They eventually got to a door, which opened by itself after Daye put his hand on it.

“It’s a magical item?” Ginkgo realized.

“Yeah, we had one previously made by scientists, but it kept breaking, and locking us out, so we decided to go the traditional route, and got ourselves a magical door. This one not only opens for all the workers, but it gets us straight home.”

Inside the door, there was what looked like an entry room of someone’s house, and Ginkgo was going to ask, but Daye explained himself.

“That’s my home. I always visit my wife, and stay for a day, when I pass by the city of Horselip.”

“I see,” Ginkgo responded and walked inside.

Yew entered after him. Daye entered last and closed the door behind the three of them, at the same time as he turned on the light switch on the wall of the entry room.

“Is this also a magical door?” Ginkgo asked, pointing at the way, from where they just came from.

“This? Oh no. That would be too expensive. No quick way to go back,” Daye laughed as he opened the door to show his guests a snow-covered garden with a tall street lamp just outside the decorated iron fence. He soon closed the door to keep the cold from coming in for any longer and began to take off his clothes.

“I’m sorry to say this, but we need to leave,” Ginkgo said with a gentle countenance on his face.

“We have extra beds,” Daye said. “Our kids moved out a long time ago.”

“I appreciate it, but we cannot. There’s a place we must go.”

“After you rest?” the man offered.

Ginkgo shook his head.

Daye sighed and stepped to the side, “if you must.”

Ginkgo bowed down his head, “May God reward you for your help.” After expressing his endless gratitude, he passed Daye and opened the exterior door. Yew silently followed him, looking at the train crewmember observing Ginkgo. Then Daye looked at Yew, who immediately looked away and set his eyes on Ginkgo.

The two travellers stepped out of Daye’s house and Ginkgo closed the door. They walked on the snowy pathway toward the fence gate. It wasn’t locked and when Ginkgo opened the gate, it squeaked and drew a line on the snow underneath it.

Yew walked outside first and Ginkgo second. The man closed the gate all the way, creating another loud squeak followed by a noise of metals clashing at each other.

Yew looked up at the orange light of the street lamp, which was standing right next to him. Far above him, he saw the dark clouds looming over the city. It wasn’t snowing yet, but it could start at any moment.

As they began walking down the street among single family homes on both sides, Yew realized that the sky on the eastern horizon was brighter than on the western one. The dawn had already begun and sunrise was on its way. Yet it was hard to see any sunrays, because the heavy dark clouds continued to cover most of the sky.

Yew looked at the homes behind tall fences. Most homes had two floors, with some having three and one home even had four floors. Sometimes a carriage was parked in front of a home, but that was rare. More commonly it was hard to see the home, because of tall trees, which grew in the front yard.

Ginkgo was walking steadily. Surely, he knew where he needed to go, as he didn’t look to the sides at all and headed in silence for his goal.

Yew fought an internal battle of whether to ask him about their destination or just wait for the answer to show itself.

In the meantime, the first ray of sun broke through the dark clouds and hit the top of the tall tower in the distance. A moment later, the whole city heard the sound of the large bell coming from the tower, which announced the beginning of a new day.

It reminded Yew of the bell in the city of Owlway. That bell was also located in a high tower, which was built right by the temple. The monks always hit that bell every sunrise and sunset, and numerous times on important holidays.

On the other hand, the village of Catriddle had only a small bell, which didn’t have the powerful sound like those large ones from the cities. It could be heard by the villagers, but it didn’t send down those chilling shivers of awe, that the city bells were well known for.

As far as Yew knew, only the city of Sheepcrown was an unusual case. Instead of one large bell, the temple had several middle-sized ones, which rang together with countless smaller ones, creating a very unusual melody twice a day, which could be barely heard in Hecate. One had to really pay attention to hear those distant notes coming from the temple.

However, even without a big bell, no settlement was not devoid of smaller bells. Each house owned at least two of them and people rang them on holidays or when things weren’t going well. There was a belief all over the world, that bells had a power to scare away the evil. For that reason, some people always kept a wind chime hung by the entrance to their house to ensure that no evil spirits would dare to lurk anywhere near their home.

Accordingly, the big temple bells had even more of this evil-repelling power than small bells. Furthermore, bells blessed by the clergy were even more useful than large bells, because their power to scare away the evil manifested, even if they were silent. Thus all evil spirits were purified and chased away as far as the bell sounds could be heard.

As Yew looked straight at the tower bell, he realized that he had been going in that direction for quite a while. Ergo, without asking he understood that the temple of the city of Horselip was their next destination. He didn’t need to ask why. Temples offered free lodging for travellers, and food for the hungry. It would have been nice to spend time at a hotel or a tavern, but that wasn’t free. Yew sighed and wondered why Ginkgo didn't agree to stay as guests in Daye’s home. The train worker surely wouldn’t ask them for money.

They left the residential area and entered the downtown. The scenery changed from single family homes surrounded by gardens, to midsize buildings tightly packed one next to another. Each building had a banner with its name and a specialization. The bakery looked especially alluring to a boy, who hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning, but just like all the other buildings it wasn’t yet open.

The sudden reminder of food made Yew feel weak, as his body began to complain that he had no more energy to keep moving.

“I’m hungry,” he said.

Ginkgo took out a pack of dry meat from his front pocket and handed it to Yew, who quickly opened the package and began to consume the food. The boy didn’t even realize that the man was smiling at him.

Ginkgo, who knew that Yew would sooner or later get hungry, had the snack ready, but he didn’t expect that the boy would last so long without complaining. That just meant, that one day Yew would grow up into a great man. And he felt happy about that.

The dark clouds still covered most of the sky, but they were clearly moving westward giving the sun more and more freedom to shine. By the time they arrived at the gate of the templeground, the sun was already high enough that most of the city was basking in the delicate golden light. Especially the elaborate eastern temple gate, made from iron and gold-plated, shone in the sunlight like a giant jewel.

Ginkgo didn’t knock on the gate, instead he rang loudly the bell located on the right side of the gate.

A monk with a snow shovel opened the gate. From one look inside the templeground, it was obvious that he was in the middle of desnowing the pathway to the temple. Closer to the temple, another monk was still in the process of desnowing the same path, but from the other end.

The monk in front of Ginkgo was dressed from top to bottom in thick layers of habits, one on top of another making it too many to count. His head had no cap, but there was not much to protect from the cold. The monk was mostly bald.

“The earliest mass is in two hours,” he stated.

“We’re travellers. Is Brother Stupid still in this temple?”

It was a tradition that no one understood. After entering into the service of God, monks and nuns always shed their real names, and adopted a new name. This temple name didn’t sound or look name-like at all. It sounded more like an insult.

However, the clergy strongly believed that one cannot serve God without humility, so each monk and each nun always carried a name, which most of the time was a contrary of their best virtue as a practice of humility - a constant reminder not to be proud of what God gave them.

And so, a strong monk was known as Brother Weak; a beautiful nun was known as Sister Ugly; a hardworking monk was called Brother Lazy; a kind nun was Sister Mean; a highly-educated monk often became Brother Illiterate; a wise monk became Brother Dumb; and the most knowledgeable monk - Brother Stupid.

“Wait a moment,” the monk said and closed the gate.

When he reopened it after a long time, there was another monk with him.

“Ginkgo!” Brother Stupid spread out his arms and hugged his friend, who hugged him back. “Come in,” he invited them and they followed him inside.

The templeground was huge. It was the biggest temple that Yew had seen in his life. The temple at Owlway and the temple at Sheepcrown were about the same size. Architectural design was the only difference between them, since the architecture of each temple typically matched with the architectural style prevalent in the city.

Yet the temple of Horselip was like a palace.

A long pathway surrounded by trees, bushes, fountains, benches, and flowerfields led to the twelve-step staircase. All the garden was buried under the snow in the current season of Tsun, but Yew easily imagined how lively it would get during the warmer months.

Yew also realized that there were plenty of statues all over the garden, by the gates, and attached side by side around the temple walls. Some statues were small enough to fit inside a hand, but the largest ones were three times taller than a tall man.

After climbing up the entrance staircase, they walked through large doors, guarded by two large statues of angels on each side. The angel on the left stood in a long robe, with his wings put down, and holding a bow with an arrow directed at the gate. The angel on the right, was dressed in an armor like a knight, his wings were high up, as if he was ready to take off, and he held a sword with both his hands in an attacking position, as if he was just a split second away from flying up and attacking the enemy.

If the entrance door of the temple were opened wide, sixteen people could easily walk in simultaneously side-by-side. However, Brother Stupid only opened one of the two doors, and only wide enough, so that the three of them could enter one by one through the narrow gap.

The doors were heavy, and Yew, who tried to close them, pulled on the large round ring attached to the handle, but couldn’t move them at all. Ginkgo added his hand to the side of the ring, and pulled the door shut. The man didn’t say anything, but Yew felt embarrassed. Never before he had had a problem closing a door.

They walked through narrow hallways and equally narrow staircases, up to the highest floor of the temple. Each hallway had walls painted with scenes of the final battle against the demons from ten hundred years ago. That battle had no official name, but unofficially it was known as the Battle of the End.

Yew paused before another staircase and stood by the painting of a dragon blowing fire and setting a town on fire. He remembered what he once read in fairy tales. The dragons used to side with the demons for thousands of years, but right near the end, they realized that demons would never win and they changed sides. After they began to fight alongside humans, demons began to lose and the war soon came to an end with the victory for humans.

In the end, dragons were forgiven for all those years, when they harmed humans, but forgiven is different from forgotten. The records of dragons merciless assaults remained, some of it written in books, some engraved in stones, and some expressed in paintings.

“Yew!” Ginkgo called from a distance after the boy, who no longer followed him.

“Coming,” he responded and climbed up another spiral staicase, where at the top Ginkgo was waiting with Brother Stupid.

“Did you get lost?” Brother Stupid asked with a kind smile.

Yew thought that it was a very stupid question. How could he get lost, if he was right there with them. “I was looking at a painting,” he explained.

“Ah, indeed it is so easy for a delicate soul to get lost in art,” the monk nodded wisely and moved on.

“What was on that painting?” Ginkgo asked as the three of them were walking forward.

“A dragon. He was blowing fire at a town. The buildings were burning, and people were running away. There was a woman with a baby in a house surrounded by the fire. She looked at me. It felt like she was watching me, as if she was asking me for help.”

“Yes. Art can have that power, but not all can perceive it,” Brother Stupid spoke, then told toward Ginkgo, “he’s indeed spiritually-talented.”

“Do you think he’ll make a fine monk?”

Brother Stupid laughed, “not even close.”

They arrived in front of a door. Brother Stupid opened the door, and three of them stepped inside a library room. There was one large window, which took up more than fifty percent of one wall. The other wall was nothing but one gigantic shelfcase. A wall opposite to that had at least twenty different paintings of holy men praying, fasting, suffering, dying, and basking in light. Yew’s eyes immediately got locked on the image of a malnourished half-naked man on his knees, with his hands raised up, his eyes closed, and his mouth half-open.

In the middle of the library room, there were four comfortable armchairs, and Brother Stupid sat down on the one between the window and the shelfcase, while Ginkgo sat down next to him near the door, and Yew sat across from the monk.

Both of their backpacks were put down on the round wool rug, which was large enough to cover the stone floor under all four armchairs. There was no heating in the temple, so neither one of them took off any part of their outdoor clothes.

“I brought Fairy Rain crystals,” Ginkgo pointed at his bag.

“How many and how much?”

“About twenty, and I’m fine with a thousand for each.”

“We’ll give you sixty thousand for each.”

“No need…”

“You want to sell them cheap, we’ll buy them cheap, but no cheaper than this,” Brother Stupid’s voice was stern, as he interrupted Ginkgo’s refusal.

Ginkgo sighed, “fine.” He took his backpack, “close the curtains.”

Brother Stupid stood up, walked one side of the window and pulled in the heavy dark red curtain to the midsection. Then he walked to the other side of the window, and did the same with the other curtain, overlapping it on top of the first one, so that even if the sunlight did appear between the clouds, it could no longer enter this room.

After the curtains were closed the room got considerably darker, but Ginkgo still managed to take out a not-too-small pouch, which clearly had some crystals inside based on the sound. He handed the pouch to the monk, as he put down his backpack.

Brother Stupid opened the pouch, and dumped out the content onto the armchair, where he was sitting just a moment ago. One by one, he began putting the crystals back into the pouch. When he finished, he tightened the cord of the pouch, and faced Ginkgo, “twenty two. I’ll send the money to your bank account. Is there anything else?”

“I want to rest for a day. I’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”

“That room is only for visiting Elder Fathers,” Brother Stupid stated, knowing which room Ginkgo was asking for.

“Can I ask the Elder Father of this temple for a permission?” Ginkgo smirked at the monk, who shook his head.

 “You’re allowing yourself too much, just because the Elder Father is your fan.” He unbuttoned the outer robe, and hid the pouch in a pocket of the robe underneath it. Afterward, the monk walked up to the door and opened it wide. “Do whatever you want,” he said before he left.

Ginkgo stood up and went to the window, where he pulled away the curtains.

“Let’s go,” he told Yew and led the way to the very end of the hallway on the top floor of the temple, until they arrived at a rounded entrance composed of two doors, both of them unlocked.

Ginkgo pushed the handle and opened one door. Inside there were two large beds, so large that Yew had never seen a bed that large before.

“Shocked?” Ginkgo asked.

Yew quickly nodded.

“I think clergy are funny people,” Ginkgo said, while entering the room. “They have those extreme rules that they always follow. One of their rules doesn’t allow them to keep riches for themselves but only the basics of what they need. Yet another rule demands that guests be treated like messengers of God. So while at home, they dwell in poverty, but once a visitor, they drown in riches.”

Yew walked in and Ginkgo closed the door.

“This is for visitors?” the boy asked.

“For the visiting monks, especially for elders and seniors. There are other rooms in the temple, which are a bit less fancy, but even then they’re not worse than noble’s bedrooms.”

“What about the poor, who come to look for a free place to stay?”

“Beggars aren’t guests,” Ginkgo said as he began to approach the fireplace and lit up the fire. “Temples have different rules for those in need. They cannot send them away, but they are not obligated to provide more than what they live with themselves. Since they don’t own much, they only give to the poor the minimum of what the poor need in order to survive, and that’s the best way to help the poor.”

“Why?”

“Why is it the best way?”

Yew nodded.

“What people gain through their own work, is what they cherish. What people gain for free, is what they despise. To let a man die from lack of food or to let a man freeze from lack of home, is evil. But providing a man with free riches turns the man into evil.”

“Didn’t you get this room for free?”

“Nope,” Ginkgo smiled. “This is the result of all my work, which I’ve done over the years. When I first became an adventurer, no one knew my name, and so I had no fans. However, as I challenged more and more dangerous places - the kind of places, where nobody else wanted to go, my name spread, and I gained the reputation I have now. This bedroom is the result of my reputation, and my reputation is the result of my adventures, and my survivability is the result of all the hard work and knowledge that I’ve put to use over the years. So to sum it up, I earned the right to sleep in this bed,” he said all that as he undressed from the outdoor clothes and hung them on the wall hooks next to the fireplace.

Yew realized that the room was getting warmer, so he also took off his outdoor clothes. “Then what about me?” he asked, as he saw himself as an extra in Ginkgo's travels.

“Haven’t you worked hard enough?”

“What? How?”

Ginkgo smiled at the boy, “when you risked your life in order to find me, were you not aware of how many dangers you had to conquer to make our meeting possible?”

Yew thought for a moment, but he didn’t give any answer.

“Anyway, the room is warming up, so it’s time to take a shower, oh, and there’s a laundry machine in the bathroom. It’s best to take advantage of all this comfort, because it’ll take us one more week to arrive in Sheepcrown.”

The man went inside the bathroom, leaving Yew alone with things to think about.

On the forty eighth day of Dzon in the year fifty seven hundred ninety three, after finishing his second year in Hecate, Cypress was on his way home as soon as his last class had ended. It was an important day for him, but even more so for his older brother, who was also a student of Hecate until today.

Cypress’s older brother, Ginkgo Sea, was graduating this year, or at least that’s what everyone in the Sea household were certain of.

Two weeks earlier, Ginkgo sent a letter home, writing that he would come back home on the morning of the forty ninth, because he had classes until late.

However, unbeknownst to Ginkgo, Loquat Sea had sent two carriages to Hecate to pick up his sons. One carriage picked up Cypress not far from his classroom minutes after the noon, and drove back to the main manor of the Sea household.

Another carriage was sent for Ginkgo. The driver was supposed to park his carriage at the cottage, where Ginkgo resided and wait there for the guy’s return after his last class.

Ginkgo never liked taking the carriage home. On his first year in the school of Hecate, he ignored the carriage and came back home by himself, riding the train. After a short fight with his father, he got the permission to take the train instead of the carriage. Thus, for the next nine years, he never travelled by carriage again.

However, there were no trains travelling so late, and Loquat wanted his son to return home fast, because there was already a party prepared for the joyous occasion. If Ginkgo had returned by train the next day, he would miss most of the party, which was set to start at the sunset and last until Monday morning.

Cypress never visited Ginkgo in his cottage on the Hecate schoolground.

Right after he arrived at Hecate two years ago, Ginkgo visited his cottage. On that day, he requested from Cypress a promise, that he’d stay away from the cottages of older students and never wander anywhere near there. As a result, Cypress never loitered around older students, and in exchange Ginkgo promised to visit him every weekend, if he had time.

In this manner, the two of them have been studying in Hecate for the last two years. Once a week, Ginkgo would teleport in to visit Cypress, and Cypress would eagerly await his visits, but the boy never went to visit Ginkgo, even if his older brother failed to show up every once in a while.

Ginkgo always had a reason, whenever he couldn’t come, and Cypress never blamed him for it. They talked about everything, from the most boring to the most interesting topics. For Cypress, his life felt fulfilled. He was happy to be away from home, and he was grateful to have a brother like Ginkgo.

Before he went to Hecate, he couldn’t meet so often with Ginkgo, because his nasty private teachers didn’t like his older brother. Compared to that cage-like atmosphere of the manor, Cypress couldn’t get enough of his life in Hecate.

However, with Ginkgo graduating today some of that amazing life would finally come to an end. Yet on the other hand, from now on Ginkgo would be considered an adult and would have even more freedom than before.

When Cypress’s carriage finally arrived at the manor in the afternoon, he stepped out as soon as one of the butlers opened the door. He looked toward the front door of the manor, where he saw a lot of servants waiting outside. It could only mean one thing.

"They’re already coming?" he asked.

Some female servants standing in the front nodded in response.

The boy looked around, “where’s father?”

"Young master," one of the butlers approached him. "Your father has left to meet Ginkgo at the gate."

Well, of course, this had to be the reason.

It would take a long time to walk through the garden to the front gate, because the property around the manor was so vast that it stretched out beyond the horizon. Cypress recalled seeing a carriage travelling in the opposite direction, when he was almost at the manor’s entrance. He realized that that must have been a carriage with his father, who was leaving the manor to meet up with Ginkgo near the gate.

He walked through the large front door, which at the time stood wide open awaiting the return of Ginkgo Sea. Inside, all the doors and windows have been opened to ventilate the large building. The living room was turned into a fancy dining room with unlit candles decorating the walls and countless tables near the windows with beautiful views of the patio, which had been prepared like an outdoor ballroom.

The living room windows as tall as trees had their curtains tied so that they wouldn't dance in the wind, even though the wind itself was very delicate that day. Benches and comfortable chairs were set up outside near the end of the patio by the concrete railing for anyone, who wanted to breathe the outside air.

More than hundred people, all of them members of the Sea household, came to celebrate the joyous occasion. Cypress didn't know most of those people and he didn't care. Sometimes, he’d played around with kids his age, but for some reason, he couldn’t get to like them, and as such he couldn’t even think of them as his family. To Cypress, his family was not those, who shared his bloodline, but those, who shared his desire for freedom.

Yet other than his mother, who’d let him do whatever he wanted, and Ginkgo, who loved freedom as much as him, there was no one else in the Sea household, who shared his perception.

All the other members of the Sea household preferred status and all the recognition that came with it. They not only followed but also loved the rules, which they saw as the symbol of their important status. Freedom, on the other hand, was seen as something that’s for the poor worthless nobodys, who can do whatever, because no one would ever care whether they were alive or dead.

"Young master," a female servant quickly approached Cypress, "master has ordered me to take you to your bedroom."

He followed the woman into a hallway away from the living room. On his way out, he couldn't help but see the stares of some older members of the Sea household.

Last year, he was officially appointed as the next head of the Sea household, and not everyone liked the idea. Among them, there were some elders, who wished that the current head of the Sea household had no sons, so that they could put one of their own sons as the next head.

The possibility that someone would try to remove Cypress from the world of the living was unlikely, because that kind of an act would inevitably be punished with a death sentence for the perpetrator, and an absolute banishment from the Sea household of the perpetrator’s children and descendants.

However Cypress’s father was taking no chances, because Loquat’s own brother died in an accident on his sixth year in Hecate, merely a month after he was appointed as the next head of the household.

When Cypress was passing by his mother's bedroom, he spoke to the servant, "where's mother?" He didn't see her downstairs at all.

"Mistress isn't feeling well, so she's staying with the nurses in the wisteria garden," the servant explained and led him up to his room, where she stopped to open the door for the boy.

Cypress entered the room, and right away he walked up to the window.

The servant woman bowed down and quietly closed the door.

He watched the scenery outside from the window in his room, which allowed him to see the servants standing in front of the manor, awaiting the return of Ginkgo.

They didn't have to wait for long. In less than an hour, Cypress saw in the distance his father's carriage returning home, together with another carriage behind it.

When the two carriages finally arrived in the late afternoon in front of the manor, Cypress saw as his father stepped out, looking absolutely furious, and quickly walked toward the front door.

All the servants, who were waiting for him to return, bowed down too scared to face him, and remained in that position, aware that when Loquat Sea was in a bad mood anyone could end up punished for even the smallest mistakes.

"THERE'S NO PARTY!" he shouted out at the guests and headed toward his personal chambers.

When his father was passing through the hallway outside Cypress's room, the boy heard him shouting again. "HOW DARE HE?! WHEN THAT PIECE OF TRASH COMES HOME, TELL ME!"

Cypress waited until the sound of his loud footsteps became distant, before he slowly opened the door a bit and peeked outside.

Two butlers were standing in the hallway looking at each other, and Cypress understood that his father's last order must have been directed at them.

The confused butlers ignored Cypress, although they both were aware that the boy was looking at them.

"By piece of trash, master Loquat surely didn't mean the young master Ginkgo," one of the butlers said to the other.

"Let's ask what happened," the other one responded, and they both went downstairs to talk to the servants.

Cypress, who has never seen his father so angry, also followed the butlers at a distance. They looked at him for a moment, but decided to say nothing about it. In the end, both of them acted as if they hadn't noticed the nine yrold boy following behind them.

With the head of the household mad like a bull without a cow, the guests knew that they had to leave. The most clever ones had already packed, hopped into their carriages stationed in front of the manor, and left as soon as the party was cancelled. However, others were taking their sweet time, trying to figure out what happened in order to satisfy their curiosity before leaving the premises. Yet in the end, all of them left, when it became apparent that even the servants wouldn’t tell them anything.

Only after all guests were gone, the servants began to talk among themselves. From their conversations, which Cypress listened to at a distance, he understood only some words as other words were spoken or whispered too quietly to reach his ears.

The things Cypress did hear for sure, was that Ginkgo wasn’t anywhere in the school of Hecate, and that he lied about his education.

The servants, already fully aware of the reason behind Loquat’s fury, carefully looked at each other, afraid of what would happen from now on.

One patriarch among the servants, who had bad hearing, asked others to repeat everything but in a louder voice, because he couldn’t hear most of it.

The servants took him into the storage room behind the kitchen, which was farthest away from Loquat’s bedroom. Cypress followed the servants at a distance, and he listened, while squatting behind the door left slightly open.

"You know that young master Ginkgo went to study in Hecate?" one of the female servants started the explanation.

"Of course, we do," an old servant responded for everyone.

"And it's been nine years since then," the younger servant continued.

"Just tell him what happened," said another servant, an older woman, who had no patience.

"Young master Ginkgo dropped the school of Hecate," the servant went straight to the point.

"Seven years ago," another servant added, after seeing that his companion omitted the important info.

The patriarch, who wasn't aware of it until now, was shocked. "Dropped? How? Why?"

"Remember how seven years ago, young master Ginkgo received an invitation to Hypnos?" the servant continued the explanation. "When he dropped Hecate seven years ago, he told the chairman that he was going to attend Hypnos."

"Impossible!"

"And he kept it a secret all these years. Nobody knew, not even his own father."

Cypress listened attentively. He was both surprised and shocked. In his eyes, Ginkgo was always a much better man than his own father, which is why he liked Ginkgo so much. And now, after hearing that he dropped Hecate and went to another school, Cypress couldn't help but hold Ginkgo with regard as high as for a legendary hero.

Unlike his older brother, Cypress didn't have the courage to disobey his father in such a straightforwardly blatant, but outrageous manner. However, his lack of courage didn't stop him from imagining himself doing just that.

He wanted to hear more from the servants, but his mother approached him from behind, “finally I found you.”

Cypress turned around.

“Why aren’t you in your room?”

The boy looked at the servant next to his mother, who was carrying the baby girl.

"I wanted to see Galangal," he tried to come up with a believable excuse for his presence in the hallway in order to talk his way out of any scolding.

His mother looked at the one yrold daughter in the servant's arm, "fine, you can greet her, but return to your room right after you do."

Cypress nodded and approached the servant, who knelt down, so that the baby Galangal was on the same height as Cypress's arms. He stroked her forehead, and kissed her a goodbye, just like his mother did, whenever he’d go out somewhere.

"Hurry up, back to your room," his mother reprimanded him.

He quickly ran toward the staircase, and up the stairs. When he was finally on the second floor, he slowed down and walked back to his bedroom. He spent the rest of his day watching the outside scenery from the window, and thinking about all those times, when Ginkgo came to meet him in Hecate. How did he manage to meet him almost every week, if he wasn't a student of Hecate?

Cypress had so many questions for Ginkgo, but he doubted that he'd be able to ask them.

It was only the next morning, when Ginkgo returned home. The servants notified Loquat as soon as he walked through the main gate.

On that sunny morning, Cypress has been looking outside from his window ever since he woke up. The weather was pleasant and nice, with no wind and only several clouds far in the distance.

From the window of his bedroom, he clearly saw his brother approaching the manor. Ginkgo also saw his younger brother and waved at him with a big smile. A thought ran through Cypress's mind, that he should warn Ginkgo about what happened yesterday, but at this distance, Ginkgo wouldn’t hear him, even if he yelled.

He recalled the mindteaming spell, which he learned before he started the school of Hecate, but was told not to use it until he officially learned it on his fifth year, or otherwise he’d be punished. Thus he never used it for the last two years, and he had almost forgotten all about it.

However, it was already too late. Loquat Sea stepped out of the manor, and with open arms he quickly walked up to Ginkgo, meeting him several meters away from the staircase leading up to the front door. His anger was nowhere to be seen. Instead he looked joyous and welcoming.

"Finally!" his father said, when he was right in front of Ginkgo. Then he hugged his son, "How was your graduation?"

"Fairly boring, long speeches and all that," Ginkgo responded, feeling happy.

"So now that you have graduated Hecate, you are an adult member of the Sea household," his father said, then stretched out his hand, "give me your diploma. I want to put it in a frame and hang it in the living room as soon as possible."

"Sure," Ginkgo agreed and took out a roll of thick paper.

His father took it, unrolled it and carefully read the content. “Ginkgo Khangdaeng Matapal Sea, who has graduated from the school of Hecate in the year fifty seven hundred ninety three, has been granted the privilege of recognition under the heavens and across the earth as the the top student of the year.”

The servants, who stood close enough to see the diploma, were amazed at the content, because it looked like a real diploma from the school of Hecate.

Yet they all knew about the events that occurred the previous day, and all of them began to slowly back off and away from the master Loquat and his firstborn son.

Ginkgo looked around confused at the servants, who tried to keep their distance as if they were afraid for their lives. He could tell that something wasn’t the same as usual, but he didn't yet know what exactly was going to happen.

Out of nowhere, his father used fire magic on the diploma in his hand, which began to burn brightly with powerful flames. A second later, there was nothing left of it but ashes.

Ginkgo was shocked, "Wha…? Why?"

"You are no longer my son," Loquat spoke slowly, each word poisoned with hidden anger. "Yesterday I sent a carriage to pick you up from Hecate. Do you know what the chairman told the driver?"

Ginkgo sighed in defeat, "So you know."

"GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU TRAITOR, OR I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" the man yelled out in one breath, with his arm straightened out and pointed at the gate.

Ginkgo silently turned around. Without a word he walked off.

While he was on his way toward the gate, his father called out to him again, "Wait!" Loquat's voice, cold as ice, was filled with disgust.

Ginkgo turned around, but he didn't expect anything good. The young man had a countenance of a pitiful dog, who was kicked out of his house on a cold, rainy day.

"Never use the family name of Sea ever again," Loquat ordered him, while the rage was boiling in his eyes. "From now on, you have no family: no father, no mother, no siblings. Understood?"

"Understood," Ginkgo responded without any energy, then turned around and walked away.

From the window in his room, Cypress observed everything. He didn't look away from Ginkgo, who travelled alone on the long road away from the manor. When he entered the forested area of the garden, his figure disappeared behind the trees, and Cypress could no longer observe his brother. Ergo, he looked at his father, who stood unmoving like a stone column.

That day was the last time Cypress saw his older brother. Ever since that day, the name Ginkgo was never spoken or mentioned by anyone living in the manor. Even if Cypress tried to ask about his older brother, everyone would either ignore him or tell him that no such person has ever been born in the Sea household.

This became one more reason for Cypress to sincerely hate his household.