Rain (The Quest Trilogy-Book Two) (27 page)

“Now, I should be telling you off for touching the backside of a lady in such an ungainly manner, but at my age, such encounters with handsome young men come few and far between – so I’ll take it!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …” began Rain, walking to the front of the tree, but she cut him off.

“Oh, do be quiet! Don’t spoil the moment for me by admitting you never meant to do that!”

Rain’s eyes widened in surprise. “You’re certainly not what I expected.”

There was the face of an old woman in the belly of the tree’s trunk. It might have looked pleasant if it were made of flesh, but it was as though the tree itself were molded in the shape of a human’s face lined in woody wrinkles and with bits of moss and lichen sticking everywhere. Her voice, though, was not really a voice. It was as though the brushing of the leaves and branches against each other was producing a soft, soothing sound that formed into words in Rain’s head, and actually made sense.

“Expected a frumpy woman, did you?” the tree demanded in mock offence. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint. And if it’s not too much to ask of you, I would prefer not to be reminded that I am an ‘old’ willow tree.”

Rain raised his eyebrows in amusement. “As you wish, ‘youthful’ Willow tree.” he amended, good naturedly. Hey, if she was playing, who was he to pop her bubble?

“Now that’s more like it! I’ve always preferred young men who indulge in false, yet morale-boosting, flattery!”

Rain made a great show of checking the Willow tree out from top to bottom. “You’re covered in everything from moss to exotic mushrooms. Nice!”

“You like my style?” she asked.

“I like it very much. It’s very … bohemian.” said Rain. Well, that was as close to the truth as anything. The tree creaked and groaned with pleasure in response.

“Aren’t I a dish?” she sang.

Rain smiled.

“You’re certainly one of a kind. And that is no ‘false-yet-morale-boosting’ flattery!”

The tree bestowed Rain with a benign look. “You can have a date with me whenever you wish, young man.”

“Why, I am honored to have that privilege. How about today?  Right now?” said Rain, enthusiastically taking her up on her offer.

“Certainly! What shall we do?” she replied with equal enthusiasm.

“Talk?”

“Oh, I love talking! What shall we talk about?”

“I have certain questions … maybe you could answer them for me? I have heard much praise of your wisdom. Maybe I could get a chance to witness it today?”

“Would I miss the chance to impress my first date in five hundred years? I think not! Fire away, young man. My wisdom is at your disposal. Now, make yourself comfortable. It seems like you and I are going to be spending a while together.”

Rain smiled at her gratefully and sat down cross legged at her roots.

“Let’s begin with a question about life.” said Rain. “Can you tell me what are the four lessons that life teaches?”

The old Willow tree pursed her lips and looked at Rain sternly. “You have been playing with the witch sisters, haven’t you?”

Rain looked down guiltily. “Not really, no. I haven’t been playing with them. They have trapped … three of my friends. And in order to free them, I need to answer their questions.”

Okay, so maybe they weren’t really his friends just yet. But since he was going out on a limb to try and save them, surely they would like to be friends once they woke up, or were revived or whatever?

The tree heaved a sigh.

“All right, if you must. But be careful. They are a cunning lot.” she warned.

“I’ll be careful.” promised Rain.

“Good. Now, what was it you wanted to know of me?”

“The four lessons that life teaches…?”

“Ah, yes. The four lessons … life teaches everyone four lessons. They are love, humility, hope, and death. Let us start with the lesson of love: depending on which lesson life chooses to teach you, you will learn much about the lesson of love. Maybe you will learn what it is like to have loved and lost, or to have loved and been loved in return. Or you may learn of the dangers of obsessive love …or the emptiness of never having been loved at all … I could go on and on …but you get the idea.”

Rain nodded and she continued.

“Then, the lesson of humility. As children, everyone is born humble. And it is a lesson we must hold on to for life. If, at any point in life, you become conceited or arrogant, then sooner rather than later, you will receive the smack of a lifetime that will bring you down to earth once more.

Thirdly, the lesson of hope: there may come a time when you feel that in all the world, you have it the worst. But as you go on, you will realize that nobody has it easy…  Then you will learn to hope for the best, because life does with you as you hope and expect from it.

And so, we come to the last lesson. That of death. Treat death not as an enemy, but as a friend, for it is the most dependable of them all … it will surely come. Death teaches you the value of all the other lessons that life teaches you. Death teaches you the value of life itself. As a teacher, none can compare to death.

And so you have them, the four lessons that life teaches you: love, humility, hope and death.”

Rain was listening carefully, and also glancing at his chain time and again. Just in case.

There were several wisdoms she had sprouted while giving him his answer and he was here looking for a wisdom, after all. He looked up at the waiting tree.

“My next question: How can I see without using my eyes?”

“To do that, look within yourself.”

Rain closed his eyes for a while and reflected on the twenty four years of his life gone by. He sifted through thousands of memories from his childhood to his adolescence to adulthood. He remembered some good times, some bad times. Some incidents that he had forgotten, but remembering which now made him laugh, like the time he had hidden all of Diego’s underwear in retaliation for Diego’s having hidden a valentine’s day card that he had received at school. Some horribly embarrassing moments, like the time he had wet himself in class as an eight year old because he could not hold it in any longer and was too scared to ask the teacher for permission to go to the bathroom. How the days had passed before he had left with his brother for his Quest. All that had happened since then, since he had entered Quniverse. At last, Rain opened his eyes feeling mixed emotions in his chest.

“I did it … I saw a lifetime worth of incidents, and I saw it all without using my eyes … within my mind.” he said.

“Exactly.” The tree said with satisfaction. “Now, what is the third question?”

“This one’s tricky. She asked me to bring an example each of the ugliest, and the most beautiful, man and woman who ever lived.”

The old tree’s eyes went wide. “Oh, my!” she exclaimed. “Is that so? Well, I am going to leave it up to you to figure that one out.”

Rain looked at the tree in alarm. She could not do this. Not now, when things had been going to well for him, too.

“You are? Why?”

“Because you already know the answer to that.” she replied sagely.

“I do?” said Rain, looking worried and doubtful.

“Yes.” she said with finality.

Rain didn’t know what to make of that, but he was grateful enough to have answers to two of the witches’ questions. At least, he told himself, if not all three, he would at least be able to rescue two of the girls. But his conscience nagged at him. It just didn’t feel right to leave one of those sequestors trapped there. If the old willow tree had said that he knew the answer, then he must have it. He would just have to look for it inside his head.

Rain got up to leave. “I should be on my way. It’s been very pleasant talking to you.”

“Leaving so soon? I thought you would spend the next one thousand years here with me.” said the tree with a wink.

“I would have, if I had that kind of a lifespan.” laughed Rain.

“Oh, well. If you must go …” she said dejectedly.

“I must.” said Rain. “But thank-you for everything.”

Four mangoes dropped at Rain’s feet out of nowhere.

“Mangoes?” he asked. “Wherefrom?”

“Take them. They are a gift from my children. Something to keep up the energies of a young man.” said the tree with a smile.

Rain, who was absolutely famished and practically dying of hunger, picked the fruits up from the ground, his hungry stomach lurching and growling in grateful anticipation.

“Do you mind if I eat these now?”

“As long as you sit close to me.”

Shaking his head in irony, Rain sat down at the foot of the tree once more, eager to enjoy this unexpected meal and not caring in the least where he had to sit to do it.

The old Willow tree hummed softly all the while he sat there eating. When he was done, she asked him to bury the seeds somewhere near her.

“Will that be all?” he asked her, washing the mud off his hands and face with a short burst of rainfall.

“Yes, that will be all. Good luck with the witches!”

“Thank you.”

Rain smiled and turned to leave.

“Before you go, young man, I feel a little itch on my backside. Could you …?”

Rain laughed and patted the frisky old tree’s rump before he left. She threw him three more mangoes in return. He waved to her and set off towards the graveyard.

*****

Throughout the journey back, Rain kept meeting with some or the other minor accident. Tree roots would suddenly jut out from below the ground. Heavy jack-fruits would drop out of the sky, narrowly missing his head. In the three days it took him to reach his destination, he fell as many times into well hidden ditches. Each time, his Geeya rescued him by pulling out. When he finally reached the entrance to the marble hall, five shadowy figures rose from the ground and converged upon him. Rain, who had removed his sword midway in his journey through the forest in wary anticipation of an attack of some kind, was prepared for this onslaught, and he slashed at them blindly with his sword, ripping through their dark bodies and rendering the air with a series of piercing screams.

“Is that all?” he panted, when no more seemed to be coming at him. “Well, let’s go find out.”  Rain strode into the marble hall and went straight out of the back doors to the graveyard.

“All right, you three witch sisters!” he bellowed into the empty night air. “Come on out. I have the answers you wanted of me.”

With three deafening cracks the witches reappeared along with the electric bands connecting them to the three capsules.

“You seem to …”

“Have made it …”

“Back safely.”

“Pity, isn’t it? And after all your efforts to the contrary.” said Rain, as it struck him that these witches were the reason he kept meeting with accidents on his way here. They didn’t want him to come back with the answers.

Cold smiles lit their pallid features.

“Let’s …”

“Hear …”

“Them.”

“Who’s first?” asked Rain.

The witches scattered and began to circle around him in a wide radius once more. The first one to fly up to him was the witch connected to the blue capsule.

“Tell me, what are the four lessons life teaches?”

Rain repeated the answer the Willow tree had given him. When he had finished, the witch said nothing. She simply flew behind, allowing another of her sisters to come forward. The witch connected to the pink capsule came forward.

“How can you see without using your eyes?”

“With my mind.” answered Rain. “I closed my eyes and I was able to see the twenty four years of my life gone by.”

“And what did you see?”

“I saw the mistakes I made, the lessons I learnt. The people I have hurt, the situations I could have avoided … I saw everything.”

Again, the witch said nothing. She, too, flew back to stand next to her sister.

The witch connected to the green capsule flew forward.

“Have you brought me an example each of the ugliest, and the most beautiful, man and woman who have ever lived?”

Rain took a deep breath, knowing he was about to wing this one and hoping he was right.

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“As my examples, I would like to present Adam and Eve; the first man and woman and the representation for all humanity, because every man and woman has the capability to be the ugliest- or the most beautiful- person.”

“How so?” asked the witch.

“Angry people are the ugliest people, while kind people are the most beautiful people. The truth is, beauty, or the lack thereof, doesn’t just lie in the face of a person.”

The witch flew back to join her sisters. The three of them stood there regarding Rain silently.

“Well?” demanded Rain.

“None of your …”

“Answers is …”

“Correct.” They sneered.

It was now Rain’s turn to regard them silently.

“I see,” he said, tightening his grip on his sword, “Well, it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t have to be.”

“Is…”

“That …”

“So?”

“Yes. You asked me to bring you the answers to your questions. You never said anything about them having to be correct.”

The witches cackled.

“Ah!”

“But you are …”

“A wily one!”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to have the girls freed.”

The witches cackled again.

“We have lived for over a thousand years …”

“And have learnt lessons that nobody can teach you …”

“Young man, in this life, nothing is precious … until it belongs to you!”

Rain felt a warmth at his neck and he knew, his chain was glowing. He had found his wisdom in the words of the last witch.

“What are you trying to say?” asked Rain. “Don’t speak in riddles. Tell me clearly.”

“Our lives are precious, because they are ours…”

“We have lived for so long, because we survive on the life force of others …”

“In this case, that force comes from each of these girls.”

“Are you going back on your word?” demanded Rain, dreading their reply. After all, what was a promise to a couple of witches?