Dieana came inside with slow, hesitant steps. She sat on the bed. I remained standing. For at least a couple of minutes neither of us spoke. I finally cleared my throat.

“So…?”

Dieana looked up, her gaze lingering on my face.

“Are you really not my husband?” she said to me.

So here we were again.

“If I was, then why would I say that I am not?” I reasoned.

She gave me a long stare. A few more seconds passed.

“If you weren’t,” she said, “then why am I attracted to you?”

Because she had an eye on me prior to the time bomb’s explosion. But of course I couldn’t tell her that.

“It’s just a temporary attraction,” I said. “It will go away after some time.”

“You know,” Dieana said, “I-I really do love you. Maybe everything is fine as it is. Maybe we can live together.” And suddenly she stood up and held my hand. “You know,” she continued, “I am ready to die if you ask me. I love you so much.”

I wrenched my hand out of her grasp.

“No,” I said firmly. “No… this is… I must tell you. Kiara is not just my friend. She is my girlfriend. And I hope to get married to her some day. This is the truth.”

The queen recoiled from me in shock, trembling.

“Look,” I told her, “I am not trying to hurt you, but this is just the truth. You are a nice person and I will always consider you a good friend of mine, but that’s that.”

“So I am alone?” Dieana said. She was on the verge of tears, her eyes shimmering. I wanted to give her an arm to comfort her but that would send a wrong signal.

“You aren’t alone,” I said to her. “You have Tulip and Kanim. You have all the zombies! They all love you. In fact, if there is anyone alone in this world, it’s me. To tell you the truth, I do not even belong to this world. I am trapped here. I can’t even live with Kiara!”

Out of the blue I did something unexpected. I seized Dieana’s shoulders and pulled her close to me. So close in fact that only a few inches separated our faces. The queen was an undead, but she was beautiful in her own way. “You say that you love me,” I told her. “If you really do, then you must let go of me. If you truly love me, help me get back home. I will always remember you then, as someone more than a friend.”

The queen was speechless. We remained close for some long moments, staring fixedly at one another. Finally, I released her.

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The zombie queen wiped her eyes.

“I love you,” she said. “And I will help you.”

***

By this unique turn of events, the zombie queen became willing to support me and provide the required evilese.

But only one hurdle had been overcome. Now I needed to verify the evilese didn’t alter its form or degrade when transferred to the real world. This process was to last at least a week, so we could effectively monitor the behavior of evilese in the real world.

The zombie queen gave me evilese, which I in turn gave to Kiara. I observed Dieana was much more lively following our secret talk. I didn’t tell Kiara how I had got Dieana to help me.

From time to time I wondered how much I had said to the Zombie queen was true. A voice inside me insisted that all of it was, even though I was ever in a state of denial. I was aware that in some nook of my heart I harbored affections for the zombie queen. I refused to admit they were anything more than friendly affections.

The days rolled by. Kiara visited me every evening and reported the condition of the evilese in the real world. Five days passed, and then a week. I allowed some more time to pass. Finally after ten days I decided that it was time to embark on the quest.

The morning of my departure, I went to thank Dieana for all she had done for me.

“A wife can do at least that much for her husband,” she said to me with a grin.

“Right…” I said, feeling a bit odd.

The queen shook her head and began laughing. She pulled me into an embrace. Inwardly I felt miserable, like I was cheating Kiara. Thankfully, she wasn’t there. Dieana patted me on the back, then without another word she freed me. Our eyes met for a few seconds. Her’s were quite moist.

“Farewell, my husband,” Dieana said, sniffling. “I hope Kiara… your g… your friend will take good care of you.”

“And I hope that you will take good care of Kanim and Tulip,” I said to her.

The one thing that I was bound to miss was the company of the boys, my ‘sons’. It wasn’t easy at all to tell them that I was leaving. During the course of my stay in the village I had become really attached to the two.

“When are you coming back?” Tulip asked me in his innocent voice.

“A few weeks,” I said, struggling to maintain eye contact with him. “Perhaps a month. Perhaps even a year.”

Or perhaps never.

“But isn’t that a long time, a year?” Tulip asked me.

“Yes, it’s very long,” Kanim said.

“I want you to take care of your mother, all right?” I said to them.

They promised me that they would. Tulip said he looked forward to playing hide and seek with me when I returned.

I left the village with a heavy heart. I left in the late morning. I left alone since it was a working day for Kiara.

It was an arduous journey. I passed my old palace where the sage now dwelt. I didn’t pay him a visit this time. Shortly after putting the village of the Skhites behind me, I confused my way and strayed off course. This cost me an additional forty minutes to rectify. In about four hours’ time I reached the river and swam across it.

When I finally reached the town of the monsters, where I had once been the supreme authority, I threw the gold dust into the air and the floating ring of fire appeared. Kiara seemed to have just returned from office and was still in formal attire. She quickly changed and crossed to the game world.

“Let’s begin,” I said to her.

We gathered all the stones that we could find lying around and placed them right at the edge of the blue liquid that occupied most of the town.

“Here we go,” Kiara said. She activated her spell. The temperature of the stones spiked, heating the air so much I had to step back. The stones turned red and their sides began to fuse.

Kiara halted and took a long breath. She rested for a few minutes and went at it again. The stones turned into a single mass, and could no longer be distinguished as individual pieces. Kiara stopped again. The third time the boat was complete. It looked like a poorly designed canoe at best, but it ought to get our job done. I collected some pieces of discarded wood to row the boat.