I felt ashamed for not recognizing their value, I had to swallow my preconceived opinion dry.
At the end of the garden were fruit trees. They had cherry, apple, and even pears.
A little more to the front was a cliff where the wall ended and the ocean guarded the Village coast. We entered a secret tunnel used by the Keepers and came out behind the castle, on the inside. There was a green field for polo games and at the end we could see stables and lines marked on the ground, the place smelled like fish. According to Nefarious, the smell was typical of this sport, they didn’t use horses as I thought. We kept walking on the castle surroundings until we found a simple wood door without a latch, and on a tent covering the entrance was written Makali.
“Come, Lola. Meet Makali, our library. This is where our students and readers have fun. It is easy to get lost, follow me.”
I went through the door with a little smile at the corners of my mouth, who would get lost in a small library with a door that barely closes on the outside?
We crossed a tunnel made by books, from the floor to the ceiling. My jaw dropped as soon as we entered the main room, where my eyes went from the ground to the fourth and last floor, admiring the greatness of the castle’s library. Seeing it from the outside, it was impossible for a library of this size to fit on only one side of the castle. But as I already said, Lumen is a magic place. A brick-color dragon with red eyes was going up and down a pillar in a spiral form. We could only hear his breath. He was observing everyone who could get in. Nefarious nodded with his head, and he kept his way up. It was a place with more books than I’ve seen in my life! There were thousands of them, or maybe millions. In sharp silence, prisms searched through thousands of shelves for books of all types and sizes, on every floor. I could notice everyone from kids to the elderly, everyone used the Kingdom’s library. I could see some sections as we passed through - Prisms History, First Dimension, Evolution Age of Hybridus, Potions, among others. My eyes sparkled. They had an infinity of themes.
“Let’s go to the last floor, I want to show you something.”
Nefarious got closer to the main pillar, knocked rhythmically with his nail, and not even I, who was standing beside him, could hear it. The dragon came down as fast as a watchdog.
“Don’t keep standing there, Lola. Come on, get on Kosar,” the white beard whispered. If he told me himself, I shouldn’t be scared. Even if I was feeling Kosar’s hot breath, coming from his nostrils, so close to me. Nefarious whispered something in the dragon’s ear and we got a ride on his cold body filled with scales until the last floor. He let us get off carefully and then got back downstairs, snorting his hot breath.
That floor was abandoned, all its shelves were empty. I saw an iron door full of padlocks, with a large wood beam preventing anyone from getting in at the end of the hall. That’s when I understood - the dragon was the keeper of this floor, especially of that door. Just a few prisms were allowed to go there, Nefarious was one of them. He rolled up his sleeves and touched his forearm on the heavy wood beam. I heard the noise of the padlocks being opened.
“This is an enchanted door. It opens with the family mark, mine and yours. No one can come in here without permission, unless you are a master at the Black Magic theory. When Professor Frey needs access, I bring her here. Now, take care. Come on.”
The wood beam was pushed up like it was a feather and the door opened. We went into a dark room, where the chilling wind made me look back all the time, I felt a shiver on my spine, different from the coldness of other places in the castle. By the looks of it, the cleaning stick weren’t allowed there either, it had so many spider webs on the shelves, a humid smell followed us all the way. Dusty objects were lying around, smelling like mold.
I start yawning uncontrollably while we walked by the cold shelves, until I heard a sound of a music box coming from the corner of the room. When I got closer between the moldy walls, I saw a Ferris wheel which was alive, glowing and turning at the sound of the music. It caught my eye, which went to its holder - a box that seemed to be made of bones closing as a jaw, full of teeth stacked into each other. I was tempted to certify if it was real bone, I confess. But when I stretched my fingers, something stopped me.
“NO! Lola, never touch this box! By the way, don’t touch anything in this room without being prepared to. The black magic section is not for anyone. This is a place that sucks your strength, as is already happening to you, see? You can’t stop yawning. This is a sign of energy loss. You must get away from here, for your own good. Not all knowledge is good or can set you free. Some makes you a prisoner, sometimes ignorance can protect us. I brought you here, so you are not so curious or hearing about this from gossips in the Village. Now it is better if we get going, I have something else to show you,” said the white beard with his eyebrows frowning, taking me away from that thing.
He could rest in peace. After all this, I wasn’t going back there in my sane mind to be alone in that haunted room if my life depended on it. But what was in that box that even he feared? Better not even know it.
As soon as we got out, the door and all its padlocks closed by themselves, putting the wood beam back to its place. We were already at the highest floor of the tower. It was an easy way to get to the castle terrace, but it was a passage too tight for my taste. This castle is full of shortcuts and passages, almost all the rooms are connected - library, bedrooms, salon, Valkyrie. We reached the top of the main tower, just below the two suns’ clock. The castle was right in the heart of the Village. Nefarious told me that royalty should be able to see the entire Kingdom. At the south side I could see Pantanal Forest, with Aratama Water up beside it, which runs up into the directions of a mountain chain that surrounds all the Village’s east side, a beautiful shield. There was the training field too, where the grass is nicely groomed.
Looking a bit closer, I could see the rustic houses around the castle. Each street was shaped as a layer of a giant half-moon marked in the middle by the Amethyst Avenue (it looked like the frills of a skirt). We were following the shape of the tower, to be able to have an entire vision of every corner. At the north side, behind the castle, was the community recreation area. There was the polo field smelling like fish, Rock Tavern where all the prisms met to have a drink and talk, and in the corner, there was a more reserved pompous garden with green walls and many flowers. It was the King’s garden, a small space where a white iron bench was waiting for someone who wanted to appreciate the flowers.
I raised my eyes to the horizon, I could see that the ocean was right outside the walls, giving us a view to be appreciated every day, it looked like a painting. When I looked east, Nefarious put his hand on my head, where he could lean his elbow, ending my ‘contemplation’ moment.
“Passing the huge vegetable garden, there where the sky is no longer blue and our forest grass ends, it is a dead land which smells like suffering. There is Leike’s Land.”
He just confirmed what the goose bumps were telling me, and it wasn’t nice. I came back to reality at the snap of a finger and remembered my world was crashing down. I wasn’t there for vacation. He kept going.
“Your father is there. Elof won’t hurt him until he gets what he wants.”
“And that would be…”
“You, dearest. We have a few days to train you and for your rescue journey.” I took a hand to my chest. I felt a twinge. Somebody help me! He went on.