3. The Broken Woods

Chef and Minneka rested against the walls of the wagon, exhausted. Chef’s fur was covered in dirt. She’d immediately planted a few seeds and carefully removed the stalks from the Bumpbarachts.

Minneka had washed herself immediately and looked pristine: fresh and beautiful.

“You must learn to fight,” said the desert fox. “This could’ve gone terribly wrong.”

“You must learn to steer this wagon,” Chef said yawning. “It’s very simple. You pull on that thing in front of the brakes. See that round circle? It’s called a steering wheel. An invention from my species.”

“I know what a steering wheel is.”

“Then show me.”

Minneka placed her snout on top of the wooden wheel. “Of course. Simple.”

She had an odd definition of simple.

As soon as the brake disengaged, the wagon shook wildly and startled Minneka. She tried to grab the steering wheel, but the wagon had already gained too much speed. Hastily, she pushed her snout into the wheel, but used too much force and turned it five times.

The wagon turned and left the Green Path. It took some other path that nobody had traveled before. Minneka yelled in a panic as she tried to dodge the trees coming at them.

Chef reached for the wheel, but her arms were too short, her stump unable to grab it.

Their front wheel hit a large stone, which launched them into the air for a good ten seconds.

When they landed, they were back on a road. Chef was happy to be out of the woods, but recognized this as the first road to Amor, built out of unpolished stones and nothing else.

It was not made for wagons.

Every second, their wheel hit a new stone. Animals looked over their shoulder and fled from the incoming danger. Chef tried to talk, but her body shook up and down, up and down, up and down.

“The idea,” she yelled over the din of wood crunching and grinding against stone, “is that you don’t drive over loose cobblestones.”

Minneka had climbed on top of the wheel and wrapped her entire fox body around it. This gave her more control, but the damage had been done.

The right front wheel broke in two. The wagon slanted, like an exhausted horse that sinks through its legs. Their speed helped them continue for a while, off the road again, until reaching the border around Amor.

The city of Seven Hills, and the front of her wagon now bumped against the first one.

Chef pulled herself to her foot using the heavy recipe book, which had not moved at all during the chaos.

“Well, I call that a success.”

“Success? Success!? We can’t continue without a wheel!”

“I’ve never arrived at Amor this quickly!”

Minneka kicked open the door. The entire area around the wagon was deserted, all animals on the Green Path too afraid or surprised.

She studied the wheel. “Hopeless. Even I can’t repair this.”

“Oh well, I’ll make a new wheel in a few days. There are kind creatures everywhere to help—”

“What is wrong with you?” Minneka yelled.

“Erm, sorry?”

“You pretend this is a vacation! All the time in the world! Your plants are more important than the death of the King of Lions!”

Minneka sighed and smoothed her black cloak. “My apologies, that was improper again.”

“The … the King of Lions? That’s whom the medicine is for?”

The fox ran away from the wagon towards the gates of Amor.

“I’ll be purchasing a new wheel so we can continue by nightfall.”

Only once the fennec had vanished, an entire herd of animals approached Chef.

A deer spoke first. “The King of Lions is dying?”

“Terrible news, dreadful news,” spoke an old rabbit with gray fur.

“Erm, well, yes, but we are making a medicine!” said Chef as cheerfully as possible.

If the King of Lions dies, before having a successor, then it’s chaos again. Nobody will accept the wolves. We’ll be thrown back into a Second Conflict, the peace in these woods broken.

A group of badgers approached her with wooden planks between their teeth. Slowly, they placed them in a circle, while the rabbits found some plants to tie them together.

“Thank you, thank you,” said Chef, as she entered her wagon.

“We’ll do anything for the Good Chef,” she heard the deer say.

“If she makes the medicine,” another mumbled, “then the king will surely survive. All will be well.”

Chef herself leaned on her recipe book, almost hiding from the animals. All those expectations. In a few days, all of Origina would know the King of Lions was fatally ill and Chef was supposed to save him.

But she didn’t know this whole recipe! And the next plant was just as impossible to get. What if she didn’t succeed? Would she be banished too, like the thieves from Heroeshaven? Like … almost anyone these days? If she couldn’t travel freely with her wagon … hand out food to animals who need it … what would she even do?

She read the recipe book.

Dinodear, sometimes called Dinosweetie or Dinodarling. Animals say that Donte invented this plant, but that is not true. It was the demigoddess Nisah who, in her grief, kissed a fern and thus invented this medicinal plant. Little is known about what the plant looks like or how it works. All stories merely say that the plant changes itself based on the being that tries to pluck it.

That’s where the recipe book ended. The dinosaurs used to live everywhere, but they originated from the Saursea and the Mouth of Din. Those were on the path to Traferia, so that’s where they’d go.

Her wagon shook. Somebody hammered against it. She leaned over the windowsill and saw that another Primas had come to attach the new wheel. An apelike creature who did have fully grown arms and hands, and could therefore use the hammer with power and precision.

Thumbs—what an invention by nature.

The wheel wasn’t perfectly round. If Minneka chose another stone path, it would probably break again. But it was enough for now.

Her veggie patch had survived well. By now, she’d garnered so many plants that there was barely space for walking inside her wagon. Everything grew through each other, even grabbing or circling one another for support. Vines curled around vertical twigs she’d placed in the dirt. Her wagon wasn’t tall enough to grow a full-size grain stalk, so she’d been trying for years to design seeds for a smaller stalk.

Each summer, she only kept the seeds from the smallest versions she had. Only those were planted again, not any of the others. She’d been doing so for ten years, and by now the grain had stopped growing so tall that it broke through her roof and left behind holes. Continue for a few years, and she should have created a new type of grain. One that produced less food, but could also grow in tiny spaces like her wagon.

But away from everything, safely inside its own flower pot, stood her new plant. She had discovered it using the same process. Only plant seeds with specific properties, only combine seeds that seemed to work well together.

The problem, however, was that the plant did not look like anything that she knew. It seemed better than other plants in all ways: stronger, faster, fuller, thicker. Fruit had started to grow underneath some leaves. It simultaneously smelled of delicious roses and stuffy old paper.

But what did her new plant do?

The hammering stopped; the wheel was attached. She thanked everyone and carefully rolled her wagon towards the gates of Amor.