We dug a hole at the base of a tree and put the rabbit into it, laying it down in what I believed was a comfortable position, even though it didn’t really matter. Then we put soil into the hole and a stone over it to mark the spot. Not far away was another freshly covered hole which was the place where Dani and Lia had buried my heart. It was odd to think that my heart would be decaying and turning to soil, while I myself would hopefully remain alive at the same time.

Dani and Lia next set out to gather fruits. I wanted to help them, but Lia aggressively told me to sit quietly and let them do the work. Even though my chest wound was healing very fast, I still experienced some light pain if I tried to make any abrupt movements and the skin surrounding the wound stretched too much.

It was afternoon before I even realised that the morning had passed. We remained at the spot. Lia said that we should get moving only after I had properly healed.

“But what would we do next?” I said, “There is little that can be done. I have no powers and you two are far weaker in these parts that in the civilised lands.”

“Are you saying that you want to give up on rescuing Rozy?” Lia said. For some reason she seemed to be getting more and more irritated with me over the course of the day. Was it because I was leaning too much towards pessimism? But how could you not be pessimistic after all your powers had been taken away from you? Dani on the other hand seemed much calmer than Lia even though I had spent most of the day speaking about how there was nothing left to do.

When I remained quiet. Lia shot another question at me.

“Would you leave Dani and me to our fates too if someone abducted us?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I tried to explain.

“I am sure you made countless promises to Rozy, as you did to us, but making promises is not enough, you have to stick to them regardless of whatever happens.”

I kept quiet. I didn’t really know what to do. Without my powers I felt weak, weak of the body and of the mind. And then I remembered something.

Gardening.

I hadn’t tended to the garden of the mind, ever since I had come on the quest to rescue Rozy. My attention fixed on the quest, I had completely ignored the garden over the past few days even though I used to tend to my garden almost every day while at the castle. It was a practise that all members of the royal family were advised to carry out to keep ones mind health. What more gardening also helped to gain levels in situation when there was no other activity to do which could potentially make one to level up.

“You know,” I said and there was something about the renewed energy in my voice that made me happy, “let’s garden.”

Lia looked into my eyes. Any anger that she had possessed for my pessimistic behaviour vanished. She smiled.

“That’s the best thing you have said all day.”

The three of us sat in the gardening position with our legs crossed and our eyes closed and our hands clasped. I let my mind wander away to the garden of my soul. All sounds of the forest faded away and all that existed was my consciousness and my garden. I walked about in the garden and I saw that my tree of will power had greatly shrunk in size. I placed my hand on its trunk and told it that it was okay. I watered the tree.

“You are going to grow big and strong again,” I whispered to the plant. An ugly plant of considerable size had grown in my garden. It was the plant of despair. It had giant black flowers which had a fragrance that could suck away all hope. I conjured an axe in my hands and cut the plant at the base and destroyed it. Some distance away was the plant of desire… desire for Rozy. It had shrunk in size and seeing that I felt quite sad. I whispered good things to the plant and encouraged it to grow tall and strong and watered it. Then I walked about the garden sowing the seeds of little plants of peace. These plants acted as fertilizers and enabled the good plants to grow and forced the bad plants to shrink and die. Of course, it was impossible to completely kill any plant, regardless of whether the plant exhibited a good trait or a bad one, but it was possible by sheer mental determination to make the good plants big and the bad plants tiny. Finally I went over to the plant of anger. The plant had shrunk considerably in size, and even though in a normal situation this would have made it happy today it didn’t. I was supposed to feel angry at the sorcerer for abducting Rozy and this anger could help grow other good plants like the will power plant.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You are going to grow big and strong, you understand?” I said to the plant of anger. “You are going to grow bigger and stronger than any plant in this garden.” I watered the plant. There were a few of the little peace plants growing near the anger plant and I uprooted them, telling the ones I had not uprooted to go and grow near other plants and leave the anger plant alone.

After a while, I left the garden and opened my eyes. Dani and Lia still had their eyes closed and were in their respective gardens. Both of them looked so peaceful. Both of them were beautiful women and I couldn’t help but admire the contours of their faces. Dani had a sharper nose than Lia and darker eye brows. Lia had larger lips than Dani and her face was more triangular.

A few minutes went by and Dani slowly opened her eyes. She saw me staring at her and smiled.

“I haven’t felt so peaceful in a while,” she said, “why did we even stop gardening?”

And then Lia opened her eyes as well.

“I feel so much better now,” she said. She placed her hands over mine, looking almost apologetic.

“Sorry, I was angry with you earlier,” Lia said, “what happened to you could have broken down anybody. I should have been more understanding. But I reckon, what’s important is that we do not give up. We cannot give up on Rozy by any means.”

I nodded, making up my mind.

“We shall rescue her by all means,” I said.

“You know,” Dani chimed in, and she came closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder, “when I was a little child, my mother would tell me about King Razak, the founder of the civilised realm. He was a nobody from a small tribe. But he had a well of determination unlike anybody. There were many times when he was defeated. Once he was betrayed by a close friend whom he trusted with all his heart and had his kingdom taken away from him. He was an old man at that time, but he never gave up. He rose again, even more powerful and became the legend that the bards sing about. It is said that King Razak could be defeated, but he couldn’t be defeated for long. I reckoned like him we must also rise again despite the hardships because they will only make us more powerful.”

Dani was right. I too had been a sucker for the tales of King Razak when I had been a child. He had been my hero. But after becoming an adult I had cut the connection with the old tales. Maybe I had come down to level zero for a reason, maybe it was only so that I could become more powerful. As long as I could remain determined everything would be all right.

And even as I was thinking about all the tales that my parents had told me when I was myself a kid, a notification popped up in my vision.

It has been ten hours since the heart of the rabbit was installed in you. Rabbit has now been initiated in you.

Rabbit initiated? What did it mean?

I said about the notification I had received to Lia and Dani.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Lia said, “why should it even happen? In all the books on healing I have read, I have never come across anything like that happening.”

I thought about the notification for a minute. Then I decided that it was pointless. There was nothing I could do. My real heart was now buried in the soil and I was better off keeping the rabbit heart in me. After the gardening session, I felt enough relaxed that I wasn’t worried about the Rabbit initiation thing.

“It’s okay,” I said to my two wives, “there is nothing we can do about it. And I reckon we will know soon if it’s for good or bad, until then we needn’t think about it too much.”

Dani and Lia didn’t exactly look convinced with my words. So I decided to change the topic.

“There are other things we might have to deal with,” I said, “the Wahaki men and the monkeys might return again tonight. We must be prepared for them.” This got their attention. I didn’t really think that the Wahaki men would return. If they had wanted to kill me, they could have done so yesterday night itself, but they hadn’t. They had just wanted to break my spirits my taking away my powers. They hadn’t been interested in causing any harm to Dani and Lia either.