2. Guarded Bumps

Chef wouldn’t stop talking, even when Minneka closed her eyes and rolled into a ball to prepare for sleeping.

“Oh, yes, the Strawberry Forest. You’ll experience some odd events there, you do. Once I had to bake bread for an entire herd of horses. They’d promised to give me one seed per piece of bread, but they ended up having far too little seeds to fulfill that promise!”

Even in deepest dark you knew exactly when you’d reached the forest. The smells became sweet and the air tasted of the juicy droplets inside fresh fruit. It was almost as if you could eat from the air.

“Oh, yes, that reminds me of the time I visited the Innica. They could grow plants in the weirdest places, they could! Even on ground that was completely infertile! They refused to share their secret with me, so I snuck outside in the night and spotted a flock of birds over their corn fields. Their bird poop let the plants grow. They even called it bread from the sky.”

The smell was so deliciously fresh and fruit that Chef almost jumped out of her wagon. Could she—no, she could take no detours, not even to snatch a few strawberries.

Minneka cracked open an eye, as if she could read her mind. Could desert foxes read minds? It was only a recently evolved species, so nobody knew what they could do.

Could her employer be the king of Floria? As far as Chef knew, that barren desert had no king. All animals fled to it because they still had to determine who was boss. And besides, her wagon now drove away from Floria, and Minneka had not protested.

When daylight returned, they reached the Green Path. Ever since the Loveline fell, it continued all the way to Amor, and even deeper into Traferia.

Traferia. The place where she lost her little sister. The place that brought her the best of memories—and the worst. The place where the King of Lions ruled over a good and peaceful rainforest, she assumed. Everyone eagerly awaited the moment they finally received a child who could succede him. Yes, nothing but praise for the Lions.

Just as all animals they passed had nothing but praise for Chef. Rabbits, horses, foxes, dogs, other Primas, they all recognized her wagon and waved. Minneka hid even deeper inside her cloak to draw no attention.

Chef kept her eyes wide open. She searched the surroundings for something that looked like the sketches in her recipe book. A deserted cave. A tall tree. A—

Halfway into the second night, she smelled a new scent. One that did not belong in this part of the world, Origina. A smell she recognized from Floria: Elephants.

Just in time, she slammed on the brakes and dodged the tusks of a gigantic elephant. In the dark, she only saw the shiny white teeth and nothing else. A grey blurry silhouette, five times as tall as her wagon, turned around sheepishly and looked down.

His front paw slid forward and pushed against her wagon until it tilted sideways.

Chef grabbed her windowsill to prevent falling over. Minneka was too late and landed inside the cauldron.

“Hmm. Strange piece of wood. Heavy.” The elephant pushed the wagon back onto four wheels, but only to push it even further to the other side. “Suspicious.”

Minneka had freed herself and elegantly climbed to the roof.

“Go away, monster! This forest belongs to everyone!”

“You shall not pass.”

Minneka drew two sharp daggers from the folds of her cloaks. Chef didn’t even know she carried weapons. She must be a really, really important person.

“Then feel the wrath of—”

The elephant laughed at her as his front paw arced through the sky. Minneka jumped up and landed on the paw, allowing her to climb further, towards his face. The elephant did not like that. He shook his head wildly and stomped the dirt, mere centimeters from the wagon.

“Please be careful with my wagon! My roof!” Chef yelled upward, as she checked if her plants survived. Including the one she invented recently and still hadn’t revealed what it was.

She wanted to join the fight, but knew it was useless. Her front paws had never fully grown, just like her frayed tail.

“This is private terrain,” the elephant grumbled. “Nobody passes, or we’ll take you prisoner.”

He shook again. Minneka could not hold on. She twisted through the air and landed inside a tree so far away that Chef lost sight of her. The elephant raised his paw to destroy the wagon.

Chef jumped outside.

The elephant froze and stopped trumpetting.

“CHEF! What are you doing here? Traveling with a … filthy fennec?”

The elephant said her name with such volume that she was blown backward. Laying on her back, in the dirt next to her wagon, she looked inside two happy elephant eyes.

An annoyed Minneka trudged past her, twigs and leaves stuck in her fur as if she had a hundred tentacles. “Call my species filthy again and you will feel the wrath of—”

“Yes yes, bla bla, wrath and revenge.” His trunk lifted Chef from the floor. “Chef may pass, not you.”

Finally, Chef remembered his name. He’d only been a small baby then. She’d helped his mother grow extra trees in Floria. After an exhausting search, they’d found a plant seed that would survive in the desert and didn’t need that much water. She saw Olm’s muscles, and his giant body, and knew it had been a success.

“It is fine, Olm. She’s with me. We have an urgent mission and need Bumpbarachts.”

“Hmm. We don’t like giving those away, but for you, yes, we’ll make an exception.”

She followed Olm deeper into the forest, as the sun rose once more. Chef hoped the next location would be further away so she could sleep. She would have to teach Minneka how to steer the wagon, though.

A stone wall appeared, taller than the surrounding trees. They walked straight at it. The wall had not grown there, of course, it had been built. Chef guessed it was the city wall of Fruitgard, the first city inside the Strawberry Forest.

She had to laugh at the idea that Olm was going to climb over it. Of course he did not. He took a sudden left, and turned left again, until he suddenly walked through a tree that hugged the wall.

Minneka and Chef looked at each other.

“I will not be made a fool and walk straight into a solid tree.”

“Oh come on,” Chef said. “It’s an illusion. They stole that from the pyramid builders, who also feel you by pretending their pyramids have no entrance.”

Chef close her eyes, also walked into the tree, and discovered it was indeed nothing more than a convincing painting.

Two heartbeats later, all scents had changed to fresh flowers and running water. She stood inside a fenced-off field overflowing with Bumpbarachts, also hiding a waterfall that crested the Fruitgard city wall and ended here.

The Bumpbaracht looked more like a mushroom. It had a very short stalk, with a red ball on top that was covered in bumps. Like a broken umbrella that it tried to unfold. The older the plant, the more numerous its bumps. If they really feared an animal, they could fold so quickly they launched themselves like a flare. And if you were lucky, one of the bumps popped and seeds rolled out.

Chef had always wanted her own little collection of Bumpbarachts in her veggie patch.

Every step from Olm made more Bumpbarachts close their umbrella. Some even sunk deeper into the dirt, until they weren’t much more than a tiny blade of grass. But they were used to Olm—and he was too fast for some of them.

His trunk rapidly grabbed a handful of stalks.

“The mayor of Fruitgard created this place. These forests still contain a lot of Wilderness areas, lacking protection from the city. She found it too dangerous for the smallest prey animals, such as rabbits.”

Minneka impatiently tapped the floor and mumbled. “Always they give preference to prey. Exactly why we made the gods disappear.” Then she laughed. “And then? The rabbits use these plants as weapons to defend themselves?”

Olm and Chef laughed as well, as she received the odd plants in the palm of her little hand.

“A fox can only track a rabbit from far away by smelling them. These plants obscure scent. By covering yourself with these, or placing them behind you, nobody will ever smell you.”

Chef was familiar with the idea. It was also an old trick from Paraat to force their children to eat awful—but very healthy—food.

Minneka turned around. “We must move on.”

“Thank you, Olm,” Chef said. He came down to tap his trunk against her nose. “I’d stay longer, but—”

“We must move on!”

Minneka hastily jumped towards the tree through which they entered.

She hit a solid piece of wood, hard. A red bump appeared on her forehead and her mouth twisted, then she fell to the floor.

“The exit is not the same as the entrance,” Olm said with a smile. “Another trick from the pyramid builders.”