The next morning we had to decide on the course of action that we needed to take. One thing that kept bugging my mind was how the Wahaki tribesmen had been able to find our location the night they took away my powers.

Were they constantly keeping a watch on us? I wanted to ask Ramda about this. Ramda was the Wahaki tribesman who was pretty much the only good Wahaki that existed. He had always been a good friend of my wife Rozy. I had seen him only once. He had helped Rozy come to the civilised realm and enter my kingdom which was how she had ended up as my wife. Ramda was also the person who had sent me the letter through a bird informing us that a sorcerer called Mintuk had become the leader of their tribe and had abducted Rozy. Without him the sudden disappearance of Rozy would have always remained a mystery to me.

But contacting Ramda would be very hard, if not impossible. First off, we would need a trained bird. And secondly, even if we had a trained bird, still there was little chance that the bird would be able to make it to Ramda without being killed. Ramda himself had said in his letter that he might not be able to contact us a second time.

All the same, if the Wahaki were indeed keeping a watch on us, would it be sensible to go towards their village which was located at the top of a mountain? Say, braving all the obstacles, if we were able to get to their village, they would still have the upper hand because they would know of our coming already. Something inside me said that it would be wisest if we somehow used our situation to our advantage instead of letting it cripple us.

My cut had healed completely over the night. I was able to peel off the blood scab and was happy to see new skin underneath. And then something happened. I had an urge to go towards the civilised realm instead of towards the Wahaki mountain. For some reason I felt that doing so would solve all our problems.

I debated with myself if I should tell about my hunch to go towards the civilised realm to my wives. There had been times in the past when trusting my gut instincts had successfully pulled me out of grave problems. This particular hunch was rather exceptionally strong, so…

“Let’s go towards the civilised realms,” I said to Dani and Lia. Their mouths fell open.

“You are giving up?” Dani said with a disappointed face.

“No,” I said, making up my mind to have faith on my hunch, "trust me. Let’s go towards the civilised realm.”

“But, what about Rozy?” Lia protested.

“I am asking you to trust me,” I said to them, “Can you trust me this once?”

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So it happened that the three of us began to journey towards the civilised realm. Dani and Lia were not at all convinced that what we were doing was the right thing, but I repeatedly kept asking them to trust me such that after a while they stopped protesting.

It was noon and we had come about five kilometres towards the civilised realms, when suddenly a notification popped up in my vision.

Congratulations!

You can now see Sense Screens that are otherwise invisible to the normal individual!

Would you like to activate this ability?

Yes/No

New ability? Well, that was weird, considering I had not really done anything worthy of receiving a new ability. With some hesitation I selected “Yes” before the notification faded.

The moment I did so that a giant pink screen appeared just a few metres in front of us. It was at least ten metres in height and twenty metres in length. And what more, it was not the only one! As I turned around with wide eyes, much to the confusion of my two wives, I saw quite a few such screens scattered about the forest. What exactly were they?

As if to answer my question, another notification appeared in my vision.

Sense Screens are magical screens that are created by wizards are sorcerers such that whenever anyone passes through a sense screen, the person who created the sense screen immediately comes to know all information about whoever had passed through the screen. The only way to avoid this is to avoid passing through the screen entirely.

Okay, that explained a lot.

So the sorcerer had put Sense Screens all about the forest and that was how he knew of where we were in the forest. At the same time I also realised that I needn’t have kept quiet about what I had in mind to Dani and Lia.

“What’s happened?” Lia asked me curiously, observing that I had abruptly stopped walking and was looking at all the sense screens, which she obviously couldn’t see.

“I just received a new ability,” I said to Dania and Lia. “Don’t know why I received it, but it is enabling me to see these large pink screens that Mintuk put all about the forest, so that he could detect us whenever we passed through them.”

Dani and Lia too began to look about the place, as if they too expected to see the screens.

“I don’t see anything,” Dani said.

“Of course you don’t,” I said, “It’s because of my new ability.”

“But why would you receive a new ability?” Lia said thoughtfully.

I shrugged. Then my mind went back to the rabbit initiation message that I had received after ten hours of possessing the rabbit heart.

“Could it have anything to do with the rabbit heart you put into me?” I said to Lia. She frowned as though she didn’t think there was the smallest possibility of that.

“I don’t know,” Lia said, “but say if it were so, then did the rabbit possess the ability to see these magic screens that you say you are seeing. I mean it was simply a little rabbit with a little heart.”

“Let’s look at this from a different angle,” Dani said, “His Majesty King Rabbi receives a heart transplant from a rabbit and begins seeing stuff that he couldn’t see earlier.”

“You are saying it has something to do with my name sounding like ‘rabbit’?” I asked.

“Well, maybe,” Dani said, “the point is, maybe the rabbit heart is happy to be inside someone called Rabbi.”

There couldn’t be a more senseless explanation. But I smiled and sighed.

“King Rabbi with a rabbit heart!”

***