A servant accidentally dropped a pitcher of water outside of our room and that was what brought me back to the present. I reckoned quite a while had passed. Dani was snoring softly and I thought it was odd I was hearing it only now. I had totally gotten lost in Rozy’s memory. I couldn’t wait for the time when I would meet her again. I was going to make Mintuk repent for abducting her. I didn’t know how exactly I was going to do it, but I swore to do it anyway.

And then a sudden urge came to me. I wanted to go and see Slia in her room. There was something rather foreign about the urge, as though it was not my own mind that was creating it. I recalled the dream I had seen last night. Could it be the rabbit, Xoris?

The hair of my arms and legs stood up.

Was Xoris real?

The urge to go and see Slia got stronger. I stood up from the bed and thought over what I was going to do. I would ask directions to a servant to Slia’s room saying that I wanted to see how much she had recovered.

In a couple of minutes I was ushered into Slia’s room by a servant.

“Slia, look one of your saviours has come to see you,” the servant said to the girl. The servant had told me that Slia hadn’t been informed yet of her groom’s demise, and had only been told that he had been injured while out gathering plants.

I went near Slia’s bed.

“I do not remember thanking you,” she said with a weak smile, “so thank you. Without you and the two women, I would have been dead by now.”

Yet another urge came inside me to ask the servant who was still standing near me and Slia to go. I tried to battle the urge, but it only came stronger.

“Um, you… you can go and continue with your chores,” I said to the servant somewhat awkwardly and made a small smile that I had no bad intentions of any kind by being alone with Slia. The servant seemed to hesitate and then smiled awkwardly and left the room.

Then a third urge came to me to ask a question.

“Did you see anything odd in the forest?”

Slia frowned.

“Sorry, I did not understand what you meant.”

“I mean, did you see anything out of the ordinary in the forest before you were injured?”

“Um… I do not remember,” Slia said.

“Well, I hope you recover fast,” I said to Slia, aware that the conversation was slightly going awkward. I cleared my throat, “Um, take good rest.”

Saying thus, I turned around to leave the room, when suddenly Slia spoke.

“Wait!” she said. “I think I remember something.”

I spun around.

“It was a well,” she said.

“A well?” I asked. Slia had seen a well in the forest. “Like the one from which we can draw water?”

“Yes,” Slia said. “I had been gathering the plants near it and hadn’t really realised its presence. It was only when I got very close to it that I realised there was a hole in the earth and I was lucky not to fall into it. When I looked into the well, I couldn’t see its bottom. All I saw was darkness. I thought it looked like a very old well. When the lightning came I forgot all about the well.”

I returned to the guest room. A well in the middle of the forest? Maybe it was just an ordinary well from an old village that no longer existed and which had been taken over by plants? A new urge came within me. This one to find out the said well that Slia had seen. This urge was however only partially foreign. I was myself genuinely curious now why the rabbit Xoris (if he indeed was not a figment of my imagination) wanted to know about the well. Could it by any chance help me in defeating the sorcerer and rescuing my wife? But I was well aware of the fact that to find out the well, I would require the assistance of Slia as only she knew where the well was. And to have any chance at receiving her assistance to get to the well, I would have to wait for her to completely recover.

It was late night that day when the chieftain and the other people from the household who had gone to the groom’s village returned. All of them looked very haggard from the tragedy of the groom’s death.

Dani, Lia and I were mostly left alone. We tried to assist the grief-stricken household in the small things as much as we could. The chieftain told me to enjoy our stay in his home even though we had arrived at one of their sad times, and said that he would have a good talk with me the next day.

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Dani and Lia were keen to continue on the quest to the Wahaki mountain that night itself, as the lightning storm had completely died out and there was no chance being hit by lightning bolts. But I told them about the well that Slia had seen and asked them to trust me again, like they had the last time when I had asked them to move towards the civilised realms.

Lia pursed her lips.

“Well, it was a wise decision the last time,” she said. “Maybe this well can also help us in some way or the other.” Dani agreed with her, even though she didn’t seem quite sure. So it happened that we stayed at the chieftain’s house the next day, as well as the day after that. The chieftain didn’t speak to me the second day as he once again left for the groom’s village and returned late in the night.

The third day, two children of the chieftain’s brother came to the house saying that they wanted to meet Slia. Dani, Lia and I sat in the outside of the house, watching the children play catch with a cloth ball that they had made themselves. One of the children was a chubby boy around the age of eight, while the other child was a girl, perhaps a year or two older. They were initially shy to our presence, but after a while they came to us and began to ask if we had been the ones who had saved their cousin in the forest. After we said that we had indeed saved their cousin, they became more carefree with us.

The chubby boy, Duk, was trying to throw the cloth ball as high as he could, while his sister, Kira, was complaining and asking him to not throw it so high as it was getting difficult for her to catch the ball.

“It’ll get stuck in the sky and we won’t get to play with it!” Kira said.

“You are just jealous that you can’t throw the ball as high as me, ha!” said Duk.

“I’ll stop playing with you then,” Kira said.

“Fine, take this,” Duk said and he rolled the ball to Kira who grimaced.

“I wish if we had children,” Lia wished.

I gritted my teeth. I had been married to Lia for three years and to Dani for two. Yet the Creator had not blessed us with children. It was a fact of my life that I tried to ignore as much as I could.

“To look at the bright side,” Dani said, “I think the Creator has been kind. I do not think I would have accompanied Rabbi to recue Rozy if I had a child at home to look after.”

“Are they not cute?” Lia said smiling at the two kids, quarrelling playfully between themselves over whether the ball should be thrown or rolled on the ground from one to the other.

“I guess we too would have kids once we get back home with Rozy,” I said to Dani and Lia. Both of them leaned against me affectionately. In my kingdom in the civilised realms, most of the common folk stuck to monogamous relationship and polygamy was a practice of the royals. However in the village of Collosi, I had seen quite a few households with families where there were more than one wives or husbands. Because of this the household of the chieftain didn’t seem to think that Dani, Lia and mine relationship was an odd one even though we had not told them that we belonged to royalty. Not that I had ever particularly been boastful of the fact that I was a royal or a king in the first place.

“Catch it, Rabbi,” Duk shouted with a giggle, snatching the cloth ball from his sister’s hands and throwing it at me. I was not able to notice the ball coming and it hit me on the face and bounced down to the ground.

“You hit him!” Kira scolded Duk.

I stood up and threw the ball back to Duk. Duk threw it to Kira and Kira threw it back to me. I had a sudden idea and threw the ball to Dani who was taken with surprise. She grinned and then hit Lia on the face with the ball. In a matter of seconds the ball was passing around from one to the other and for the first time in a while I was having a truly great time. The sun was shining bright up ahead, which was a good change to the cloudy weather of yesterday and the day before.

Just then there was a sound of laughter and I turned to see that it was none other than Slia and she was at the threshold of the house, looking at us play with the cloth ball. I had asked her and her father the chieftain yesterday night if she could take us to the well that she had seen in the forest once she was well and they had answered yes.

She walked slowly towards us.

“Take it, Slia,” Duk shouted and he threw the ball at her. Slia hadn’t been expecting the ball, but she tried to catch it, but in the process she lost her balance. I was the one standing closest to her and I immediately ran to her and caught her just as she was falling.

Time seemed to slow down as I supported her weight with my arms and she looked into my face. There was a cough from the direction of Dani who didn’t have a pleased expression at all, while Lia had a cold face. Slia blushed as I let go of her. Duk and Kira came running worriedly.

“See, you are an idiot!” Kira said to Duk, “She could have fallen and broken her bones and once again would have required the help of healers just because of your carelessness, Duk!”

“I am sorry, Slia,” Duk apologised, genuinely sorry, hanging his head ashamedly. “I shouldn’t have thrown the ball at you. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s okay,” Slia said, giving the ball back to Duk with a smile, while at the same time she tried her best to keep her distance away from me. I walked back to Dani and Lia.

“I hope that doesn’t happen again,” Lia said, almost hissed to me.

“What? She was falling!” I said.

“Catching her was okay, staring at her face was not that okay,” Dani said to me.

I didn’t know how to explain myself and kept quiet. I hadn’t really known that I had been staring at Slia.

“Look, her groom just died and she must be in a lot of pain,” Lia said, “Don’t try to woo her, all right?”

I kept quiet.

“If you ask me, she doesn’t look like she is in a lot of pain,” Dani said. “It’s like she almost doesn’t care that her groom died. I don’t get it so much. She looks more like a friend of hers died, not her lover.”

Dani was more or less correct. More than once I had heard laughter coming from Slia’s room. Of course, everyone was trying to keep her happy. But at the same time she didn’t seem very grief stricken at the fact that her groom was dead.

Well, it was none of my matter. Did I find her somewhat attractive? Yes. But I was not going to try and woo her like Lia had said. It would be idiotic on my part, not to mention also very selfish. I already had Lia, Dani… and Rozy.

***