7. Book of Confession

Ionadanaris knew exactly what her remaining four family members were about to say, but they didn’t say it. In her surprise, she only heard them the second time.

“You’re the youngest and the strongest. You have to do it.”

Crocodile? “What must I do?”

“Break into the Throne of the gods and steal back our Book. When it was taken from us, oh so long ago, we couldn’t read it. Now we probably can.”

She did not like the sound of that. Her entire life she—Crocodile!—had heard that everything was forbidden and she had to stay glued to her mother at all times. And now they sent her away to break into the Throne of Tomorrow?

“And then?”

“Read the answer: how we get back our Venomous Bite.”

“By defeating a crocodile! You told me a thousand times!”

“Yes, and the book must contain all the weak points of crocodiles!”

All the weak points, yes. Like their teeth were too sharp—Crocodile!?—they sometimes hurt themselves. That they were too heavy and strong, accidentally stepping on insects and crushing them all the time. So many weak points.

But if mother told her, she had to listen. Mother, father, grandpa and her older sister watched her go as she started her journey to the Throne.

The Gosti had given her a new invention long ago: some kind of cloth you could wear and use to carry objects. Without having to carry it all in your mouth! With that, she could bring the book back in secret. She just hoped the cloth would also hide all the light her family claimed came from the book.

She didn’t walk—Crocodile!—quickly. Maybe she hoped to avoid her task if she dawdled long enough. To her frustration, though, nothing weird or suspicious happened during her travels. She arrived some time later without a scratch. If she had to choose between a crocodile attack and a crime against the gods, well, her heart felt a slight preference for the first option.

The gods had created entire volcanos. They had let species go extinct—Crocodile!?—or burned them for breaking laws. They allowed the Poison Belt, which had now become three Poison Belts, to exist. I am insane. My family is insane. This will not end well.

The area around the Throne was busy. Animals happily chatted with each other, which just made Ionadanaris more nervous. She almost rolled into a ball when she thought someone was getting close to her. Bunnies, Gosti, Equids, doves, snakes, they all mingled and wanted to ask or have something of the gods.

They had enacted a simple rule: in the Throne area, nobody was allowed to attack or eat another. Outside of that small space, they called it the Wilderness and the natural chain of food had all the power.

Night fell. The area slowly drained, but Bella and Eeris kept talking with some Gosti for a while.

Maybe she was lucky. Maybe all the other gods were gone and these two would stay outside all night. Even then—Crocodile?—she had to know where the book was. Where would she hide it? No, the gods didn’t hide. They could protect a book like that and put it in plain sight. The book was Bella’s, right? Did every god have their own room?

She snuck to the backside. A small door led to a path they called the Backdoor, which ended in the Midterrasea, but was otherwise dark and deserted. She discovered, again, that she was a hopeless species. She couldn’t climb, couldn’t climb, couldn’t fly, nothing! Her only way to break in … was to walk through the door as if she belonged.

She clenched her teeth around the door knob and pulled on it. The door wasn’t locked and opened silently. When her tail already closed the door behind her, steps sounded through the hall. Bella and Eeris had gone inside and walked through the large Throne Hall next to her.

“Darus searches and searches,” Bella said, “but he knows no medicine against all that poison in the river. They’re all different particles, and he has to carefully find the opposite particle to combat it.”

“Can Gulvi not drain the entire river?”

“An entire river—do you hear what you’re saying?”

“They can’t fish anyway! Most animals have already adapted and now hunt on land. And Ardex—”

“Ardex is only grumpy. Calls it a cowardly way to kill an enemy. We are still grumpy about the fact he secretly suppressed and killed meat eaters for centuries. Leave him out of this.”

Ionadanaris looked around her. Multiple tiny rooms were attached to this hall. She once heard Ardex created the Throne as the mirror image of the Heavenly Palace. Surely the gods had their own rooms.

But it weren’t these rooms.

They were used as storage or—as a prison. Curiosity brought her closer, not wisdom. A—Crocodile!—snake stuck to the side wall in one of the rooms. Once in a while, she tried to escape, but a magical wall closed the room like a prison cell.

“Psssst. Free me. Oh—it’s you.”

“You know me?”

“No, but I know your ssssspecies. I’m here thanks to you.”

“Huh?”

“My grandparentssss, of my grandparents, of my grandparents, well, it continues like that, made the Poison Cave. They pulled your ancestors from the water to steal their poison.”

She was tempted to attack him, magical wall or not. The snake rattled on, as if he’d wanted to say this for centuries.

“That’s why only the non-poisonoussss children were left alive. After a while, your entire species only contained the non-poisonous variant, so you lost your Venomousss Bite. The gods arrested me and locked me up indefinitely.”

“But you have nothing to do with this?”

“Sssay that to the gods, yes.”

Ionadanaris stepped back in a hurry. “Are … are you venomous?”

“No. I strangle my enemies. Making poison and never using it is a big waste of energy, so I also lost it somewhere. I don’t think there’s a single snake with poison.”

Poison is not something you get and keep forever, she repeated in her head. But if poison wasn’t taken from us in a single moment, how do we expect to get it back in a single moment?

She hoped, more than ever, that the Book held answers. Once the voices subsided, she turned to the Throne Hall. It was empty and faintly lit by Ardex’ braziers. She stayed in the shadows, sneaking, breath held, until she—Crocodile!—reached the other side.

Steps sounded above her now: Bella and Eeris had continued their conversation elsewhere. She hoped it wasn’t in Bella’s room.

She found a weird pile of rectangular stones, higher and higher, until they stopped precisely at the second floor. Such weird stones.

Of course it was just a normal staircase, dear reader, but she had never seen one. She had never been outside of her territory. She learned the meaning of vertigo after two steps. Sometimes I long back to simpler times when stairs could amaze an animal so, but I know time only moves forward. Always forward.

She wound the cloth around her head for disguise, though nobody would mistake her for a god. Uncertain, she hopped upstairs. She tested the new floor with her front paw before putting her full weight on it. Those thingelings from the Gosti are nothing compared to this, she thought.

Thumping sounded again, now from multiple sides. Bella and Eeris had a more intense conversation to her left, while someone seemed to trip over something on her right. She flattened herself, onto her bully, and shove forward. Her tail wiggled and she couldn’t stop it.

In the room to her right, somebody—Crocodile!?—climbed through the window. Not a real window, just a hole in the wall about four tree lengths high.

And that room contained a shiny Book, ruffling its own pages.

Ionadanaris raced to it, trying to beat the other burglar. Exactly at the same time, their paws landed on the pages, which instantly froze.

She looked up. Familiar eyes looked at her, in a body that vaguely looked like hers, but was much stronger, bigger and brighter. From the outside you might be able to ignore it, but she felt it clearly on the inside: this was her family.

“You also break in? On the same evening?” They had more in common than she thought!

“Break in? I’m no burglar! You are the criminal and I tried to stop you.”

She felt the eyes of an angry raccoon at her beck. In a reflex, she pulled the Book from the table and hid it deep in the folds of her cloth. Her family member refused to let go and now also hid his head in her cloth.

Two Gosti climbed through the window, hand in hand. That explained how the other one got in.

“Everything alright? Did we catch the—”

“Crocodile!” Ionadanaris yelled when she thought she saw one. It was just a drawing in the book.

“Crocodile!” she yelled again, when a few thick green leaves blew through the window.

The Gosti jumped in Bella’s nick, wild and panicked. “Where? Take it away! Magic them away, Bella! DO YOUR BEST SPELL.”

“CROCODILE!” Ionadanaris squeaked.

Bella’s furious face turned to pity. Eeris surpassed that by giving the two Euchambersia a gentle kiss on their forehead.

“But dears,” the giraffe said tentatively. “No crocodile has been seen here for centuries.”