Maleki:

Amid a busy plaza, a creak flowed through the purposefully set stone, and through the loud murmuring of the crowd, I could again hear that familiar sound of the boy plucking the strings of his harp. He was in a daze, his head bobbing with a slight movement of his shoulder as if he was hypnotized by his playing. Miko pointed out the boy and asked if we should give him some food. Despite the busy crowd, almost no one paid attention to him or his playing. For a moment, I was frustrated. When Miko and I arrived here, we were in awe at the depth and height of the city and the walls. There were buildings that rose much higher than our house and barn, even taller than the tree’s on our property. All these people lived here with so much to their name and possession, but here sat a boy who looked unwanted and ill-treated by his kingdom. What is the purpose of excess wealth and property if not to share it with those who need more than you want? You can have walls to protect your borders, cities, or castles, but why do people shield themselves from their fellows? City life confuses me; maybe my parents were right to keep Miko and me out in the countryside.

We waited a minute for the traffic to clear up, and then I rolled Miko over to the boy, and he leaned over the cart to place some of the leftover fruit we had from last night. Again, not even a crack of a smile or facial expression could be recognized on the boy. We did not take offense and simply left him to his music since the leftover daylight was so slim after walking all this way to the corner. Miko, Kallen and I explored till even the sun had departed, and then we walked to the tavern in the dark. The light in the city from the torches and braziers was much different than we were used to out in the quiet of the fields and forests where the only light to guide you was that of the moons and the astral ring. Unfortunately, we hadn’t found much of anything yet that connected to the riddle or could even confirm that we were going in the right direction.

After some more days in the city and deliberation, we woke up, and Miko decided it would be in our best interest to finally go back to the museum and see if there was any information we could gather there. We had visited almost every pocket of the city from the corners inward to the center and had very little to go on. Every day, we would give out food to some of the people we passed by on our walks around the city and ask if they had any information that might help us. No one was very helpful.

Despite the previous incident, we arrived at the museum and entered without any fights or gates preventing our access. The whole place was as beautiful on the inside as on the outside. I was surprised people could even assemble a building of this size and keep it from crumbling down. We put everything together by hand on the farm, and even with tools, I couldn’t imagine this was possible. As we walked around the museum, paintings of armour-clad men and women surrounded in bold colours and textures were placed along the walls and exhibits. There were tools and weapons that had aged or rusted with time and were no longer useable in combat but had some historical or archaeological significance. Miko read every plaque and inspected all the museum’s artifacts while Kallen and I pretended to understand the importance of what we were looking at so we didn’t look out of place. This place also seemed to serve as a place of worship for these “Last Gods” that the temple had on display. I was hoping there would be a lot more information handed out or someone here to explain everything to us, but I guess that would be too easy, and we aren’t even sure this temple is where we need to be.

We spent three hours in the museum and repeatedly passed every painting, item, and statue until our brains could no longer process what we saw. Miko seemed in good spirits, but even he had concluded that although this place was important, it wasn’t to us. Kallen tried to settle the matter by stating, “This temple might be more important to Kaelum and Valor’s prophecy than yours.”

“Our prophecy?” Miko questioned.

“Well, yeah, all prophecies are riddles. Usually, prophecies are specific to a person or a couple of people.” Kallen responded.

“This riddle seems more like a call to action with a reward than a prophetic proclamation of events.”

“Well, where’d you find the riddle?”

“It was hidden on the back of a parchment that could only be exposed with a certain chemical.”

“Not exactly the typical mystical prophecy you hear of, but it is still mysterious. If it is a specific prophecy like all the ones I have heard in the stories from well before us, then there’s a good chance that it is generational. Sometimes, the prophecy calls to someone specifically, but they aren’t able to fill it, or they choose not to. In that case, the prophecy’s contents warp a little to fit the generation and time period of the next available person. There’s a good chance that none of the stuff in this building is useful to you.”

“I think you’re wrong, but I agree that this place doesn’t have anything that can help us right now. This riddle doesn’t feel specific; the contents seem so general and infer some specific path that has to be made. I don’t know. I’ve run through every word of the riddle, and without a hammer and fewer people around, I don’t think I can get much farther.” Miko slumped down against the wall with his arms limp and contained by his backpack.

“Not like a hammer would do you much good anyways.” I joked.

Kallen tried not to laugh, but his expression broke the seal of the moment and ended our frustrating day in the museum. This trip today meant we had exhausted every exterior and publically available interior that was available to us. If something were here in Quavoris, it would be much harder to find. We decided to leave the Temple of the Last Gods and get some much-needed food after the exhausting last couple of days. All this thinking and walking made me hungry for something more filling and meaty, so I suggested we return to the tavern we ate at after the first trip to the temple, and the others agreed. After the walk there, we found our table from the first visit and reviewed all the details that Miko had decided weren’t likely, and then Kallen labeled points of interest on our map that we could visit next. A woman approached our table asking what we would like to eat after explaining their available options. They were all meat-related foods, different sections of the same animal but with overly complex names. Kallen ordered very light, some sort of sausage from a mole pig. What intrigued me more was the King-Deer Miko spoke of before our journey here. I asked if they were on the menu and was assured that although they were rare, sharing them for first-time visitors was culturally significant.

The woman was middle-aged, with black hair tied behind her and an apron in front. I watched her eyes, and they seemed to show more care than a stranger would show. Perhaps it was Miko’s condition or our age, but she took extra care where otherwise we would not have seen it. After some explanation, she promised to return with a traditional and far less accessible part of the King Deer.

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Some time passed as we continued our conversation, and the lady returned with a large plate. Her voice was soft, and she explained the process and importance of the particular food we had received. On the plate was a set of antlers that were unlike the antlers I had seen on the deer of our kingdom and instead were denser and more prominent. They didn’t poke out the side of the top of the head like usual but instead arose from the top of the head like a fan with alternating spikes at the top. The shape resembled a king’s crown, like in my father’s stories.

The base layer of the crown is a hardened bone that then leads to a thick layer of condensed keratin. The meat we would be eating was from the thin layer of marrow between the bone of the crown.

Miko and I had already ordered with Kallen, so we were full to begin with, but we didn’t want to be rude and decline. We both tried a bit of the tough meat, which was very different texturally from the sausage we had earlier. The lady spoke of the healing properties that the ground-up keratin is used for and that their ancestors used this meat for bedridden warriors. Miko had tried every family remedy, unique concoction, and animal byproduct that our family could find or had heard of, so we didn’t particularly have any high hopes for this.

There was enough leftover food on the table to feel wrong for wasting, which was the fault of the large serving sizes and our smaller stomachs. We weren’t exactly warriors or even adults, for that matter, but I did eat more than Kallen or Miko due to my expulsion of energy a few days earlier. Miko had been watching the boy across the street play on a tattered harp, which matched his light-colored clothes. Although the harp was not beautiful, the worn strings were plucked with an enchanting passion, filling the fountain and the courtyard. No one else seemed to notice the boy or his playing, which surprised me, considering the level of skill someone our age was showing.

I tapped Kallen on the side of his arm and pointed to the harp player. “Our traveling musical entertainment is back. I haven’t seen him do much of anything other than play the harp, not even get up or look up any of the days we have passed him.”

Miko felt terrible for not eating all of his share, and we still had a fair amount of the King-Deer meat left over. “Maybe he hasn’t liked any of the food we have brought him. Should I bring him our food from today? It’s special, so he’s bound to like it, right?” Miko asked as his eyes tracked from his plate to his arms.

He’s not exactly going to be bringing anything with his arms like that. I grabbed the plate, and we slid out of our chairs together. “I don’t think you get to be picky if all your food is given to you for free, but we aren’t going to eat anymore anyways, and it shouldn’t go to waste.” We walked towards the boy, his harp passionately being strummed, but with no recognition other than from us. Neither of us intended to interrupt his playing, so we waited for the right opportunity or for the player to hopefully recognize our position on his own. Yet, he continued to play; our presence was not even in his mind. Now that we were up close, I could see that his eyes were closed again. He was plucking the strings in a pattern but with no rhythm detectable to the ear.

Miko also noticed this and asked aloud, “Eh, excuse me…Would you like this plate of food? We’ve had all we can eat.”

I handed the plate to the boy, who immediately ate the King-Deer marrow whole. There was silence for a moment. After opening his eyes, the harp player spoke for the first time, with a venerable tone, soft but with each word picked carefully. “Finally, a decent meal.”

“…What?” I asked.

Miko was as stunned as I was. “What do you mean? Have you eaten any of the stuff we gave you this last week!”

His voice was still soft, but more enthused now, “Ahh, would you like to depart now?”

Miko laughed, “Depart?”

“Yes, you have the map?”

Maybe he was sick or mentally ill. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, but we’ll be on our way now.” I put my hand on the crest of Miko’s back to nudge him the other way, but as I pressed, he resisted against me, dropping his shoulder to avoid it.

“The map? Yeah, yes! We do have it.” He looked over at me with wider eyes. “We, wait…how did you know?”

“Let me see the map. When would you like to leave?”

“Grab the map, Maleki! It’s in the big pocket.”

I grabbed the back of his pack, spinning him a little to the left. In his bag was the rolled-up parchment from the old healer’s house. Miko spun back around as the pack’s top flap fell back over. I handed the parchment to the boy, and he unrolled and inspected it intently. I’m unsure what he was looking for, as the letters were entirely invisible to the human eye.

“Do you wish to depart now or at a later date?” He asked firmly this time.

“Where are we going? How do you know what we need? We haven’t even told you what is wrong with him.” I asked.

“Your brother here is sick, isn’t he? Elsewise, you wouldn’t be here. Worry not though, The Garden provides.”

“The Garden?” Miko questioned.

“Yes, you heard the poem, didn’t you? ‘To The Garden, we are bound,’ The journey is quite enlightening as well. Although I must warn you, I can count on one of my hands the number of people who have attempted to travel there and met their destination. The conditions are unfair, the journey is rigorous, and who and what you find at the end may not be what you desire. Does this agreement suit you?”

“Suit us? What kind of pitch is that? Will this heal Miko or not?” I demanded.

The boy said in a monotone voice as if he was reading from a long text. “I make no promises of what The Garden provides. However, what it holds is otherworldly and incomparable to anything anyone could imagine or create. Does this explanation provide any solace?”

Miko nodded to signal his approval, which was enough for me. “Yes. We accept the terms, but isn’t this a little lucky? You weren’t difficult to find, and it all kind of happened by accident.”

“Oh, luck. Yes! You are quite lucky. You’re the only boy in this whole kingdom who can’t move his arms.”

“That’s not luck; it’s misfortune,” Miko said stiffly. “We just gave you some food, and coincidentally, you’re the guide, so it’s not like we solved the riddle. I just expected this would have been harder.

“Luck. Coincidence. Expectations. They’re all irrelevant to her.” The boy smiled and raised his white eyebrows; I had never seen a colour like that before on a person. Even Kaelum’s hair was only silvery, almost like smoke.

“I don’t underst-“

“You wouldn’t. Just know individual perception is different from others’ perspectives. You may not feel like you earned it, but you have more than you know. There is no such thing as luck — all things flow together — inevitably. You just have to be in the right place, at the right time.”

“Wait I-“

I interrupted, unable to listen to this madness any longer. “Do you want to keep arguing with the boy, or do you want to get healed?”

“Fine.” He muttered as I patted his head to signal my appreciation of his restraint.

“Great.” The white-haired boy said without enthusiasm. “We shall leave tomorrow, fifteen minutes after the first sunrise, outside of the city gates.” He closed his eyes, ignoring us again, and began plucking away at his harp, leaving Miko and me confused for the second time today.