Sleeping Player (Project Chrysalis Book 3), John Gold [free e books to read online .TXT] 📗

LJ paid for another two months in the rooms and continued to wait. She’s coming back! He just needed to wait for her.

The tree became a city attraction. Sometimes, elves and druids showed up to pray, and they always asked about the druid with a skill advanced enough to grow such a great tree. Shamans came, too. For them, it was a place of power where they could speak with the spirits. LJ had just one rule for all of them: they weren’t permitted to litter or curse. Any violators were thrown out without a second thought. And nobody dared climb into the tree itself—only LJ had his special spot. The cat started to sense the tree and the life flowing from it.

One quiet winter night, a group of troll shamans came over from outside the wall. The city folk didn’t like them, though LJ didn’t see any difference between them and anyone else. The trolls asked the cat for the right to speak with their spirits in the place of power. He didn’t mind; he was only a guest there himself.

Relationship with the Bruma Mountain trolls: +1000

Current relationship: Respect (9000 to esteem)

Relationship with the troll race: +100

Current relationship: Neutral (900 to respect)

In all the world, there was one place where he was always welcome, and LJ showed his appreciation by giving the tree warmth and the earth his gifts.

***

A month before, a rumor went around Radaam about a mysterious tree in Kurg. They said it was as great as the trees in the elf forests, having already become a weaker place of power. Its keeper and gardener was a young man who walked around in a cat outfit with a fluffy, flowering tail and whiskers drawn on his face. The tree’s crown was supposed to stretch two hundred meters, creating a space underneath that was warm even during winter.

Hannah Quick took her wards to visit the sight—all the kids wanted to see the cat.

It was a three-day journey to get from Denev to Kurg on the good road. They ended up using carriages, with riding pets from the zoo to pull them. The kids loved the trip across the snowbound continent.

Eliza was writing an article about mental disorders, and the keeper definitely sounded like a good candidate. She figured a couple conversations with him would give her valuable material for her article.

She’d been enjoying her work with children over the past few years. Of course, just thinking about some of the mistakes she’d made at the beginning of her career was enough to make her cringe.

As they went, they studied the Kurg guide. Near the tree was a good inn they decided to stay at for a couple of days while the kids enjoyed the sights.

The enormous tree was already visible as they pulled up to the city. Its crown was a hundred and fifty meters high, mushrooming its snowy hat over the city.

When they arrived at the inn and rented their rooms, the kids ran off. They couldn’t wait to see what it was like in an anomalous area. Hannah, in the meantime, decided to ask around and see what she could find out about the cat. A couple of people she talked to recommended that she speak with the innkeeper, and he was only too happy to spill the beans.

“He came here with a girl three months ago. She paid for two rooms for a week and disappeared, telling him to wait here,” the tavern owner said as he gestured her toward a bar stool. “The ‘cat’ sat here for days, only leaving when I promised I’d tell him when the girl gets back. The week passed without a sign of her. The cat gave me enough money for a month, and then did that three more times. In all that time, he hasn’t been in his room once. He just pays for them and lives in his tree.”

“Have there been any other eccentricities in his behavior?”

“He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t leave the vacant lot, and he helps animals. Oh, right! He doesn’t sleep, either. I’ve never seen that before! He stops in twice a day to ask about the girl.”

“He doesn’t get what happened?”

The innkeeper’s face twisted into an expression of sorrow. He felt bad for the cat.

“Loyalty is a quality humans don’t have,” he replied, squinting a little. “The thought doesn’t even cross the guy’s mind that she might have tricked him and run off. He stays there day and night watching the door, waiting for her to come back. That’s all he knows—he was told to wait, so that’s what he’s doing.”

Hannah made a note. What the innkeeper said wasn’t probable, but it could happen in rare cases. Humans are conditioned to doubt other humans; animals aren’t. They just wait and hope their humans will come back for them.

She wondered if he’d turned away from his own identity or lost it due to some kind of trauma.

Next, Hannah decided to go see the cat she’d heard so much about. She stepped out of the tavern onto the snow-covered road, but crossing it was like walking into a completely different world. Warm summer reigned under the cover of the tree. The kids were ripping off their winter clothing to play with each other, while the cat just sat in the branches and watched the door to the tavern. There were quite a few animals there, some rare. A few forest predators even sat peacefully at the edge of the field without attacking anything. The field was bordered with flowers.

When Hannah came over to the cat, he didn’t react in the least. He just kept staring at the tavern door in a dream-like state. Yet the contours of his face were vaguely familiar to her. Hundreds of children had