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"Ahh, finally!" Savannah spread her arms wide and spun in slow circles but still moved foreword.
"I was gettin' so sick of th' buildings and th' lifeless streets and th' demonic people-I'll bet ye that that place is more dead than the Land o' the Dead itself," she snorted.

"Why, have you actually seen the Land of the Dead?" Shivani asked in surprise.

"No, o' course not, I'm alive, aren't I? Besides, th' Queen says no one can even look over th' wall or they'll be executed."

"Well that's pretty silly, if you ask me," Shivani retorted. "If she executes you, then you'll be in the Land of the Dead anyway! She's practically saying, "Here, my citizens, never glance at this mysterious place or else I will punish you with a full-out tour of it!""
Savannah rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, well, some people just want ter see across for jus' a glance, not live-er, well, they wouldn't be alive-there. That's why everyone's so terrified of dyin'," the thief said very matter-of-fact, as if it was common knowledge.

"What? What's wrong with living there?" Shivani asked.

"What the-ye don't know? How can ye not, I thought ye were a traveler, ye little lier!" Savannah crossed her arms and gave her a scolding look.

"I am, I just never listened when people spoke about politics, that's all!" Shivani protested. "Oh, just tell me, why doesn't anyone want to die? I mean, other than the fact that it must be horribly unpleasant, to stop breathing or suffocate or burn to death or however they die." Savannah gave her one last suspicious look before answering.

"Everyone knows that th' Queen o' the Dead, Queen-" she shuddered and whispered, "Agrona, is th' most horrible tyrant in history. She's supposed ter be a hideous sorceress who uses magic-Spells! I meant Spells!-ter make herself look younger, but she's still ugly. An' she tortures her citizens whenever she gets bored-which is a lot-and uses mag-Spells-to get rid o' their spirit. At least ye know how a mortal time span works?" She added, exasperated. Shivani nodded: That much she'd been taught. A mortal died, wether from old age, an accident, or murder, and then was brought across the Border by Mortem, or Death itself. Then, after staying a corpse for a while, their bodies rotted away until they were a skeleton. When a skeleton's bones were to fragile to hold on any longer, they crumpled apart and all that was left was a spirit. After many, many years, the spirit was withered away into nothing, and no one ever saw it again. But with immortals like herself, they could only die by being killed by another immortal. This was called vanquishment.

Just how Amarantos had vanquished her mother and father, and possibly a sibling.

"So, what you're saying is," Shivani said slowly, "the only reason living mortals choose to stay alive is because the Queen of Life is a better alternative than the Queen of Death?"

"Barely," Savannah snorted. "Th' Queen may be pretty as an apple blossom in spring an' live in a gold-an'-jewels palace, but she's more horrible than th' Duke o' Salutor an' all o' Tacet combined."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Are ye serious?" Savannah asked with an amazed look. "Were ye parents two o' those brainwashed numbskulls who adore th' Queen and insis' she's perfect?"

"No," Shivani said indignantly. "My parents just never bothered to tell me about the Queen. They always told me that, uh, that-"

"-that politics weren't of the interest of children," Archimedes filled in smoothly.

"Y-yes, that's right." If Savannah had looked suspicious before, she looked downright accusing now. But she went on.

"Well...all right. Th' Queen taxes 'er people so much tha' some towns don't even bother with money, they just trade goods because all o' their coins go ter th' Queen. An' she kills th' homeless adults 'cause she wants ter scare everyone else inter doin' what she wants."

"Why not the children?" Even Archimedes had gotten curious about this strange yet horrible tyrant.

"No one knows."

"Well, maybe she isn't all bad," Shivani suggested. "Maybe she sees killing children as evil." Savannah looked straight up at the sky and shook her head.

"Doubt that, I bet it has more ter do with her image as a queen." Shivani sighed.

"So you just straight-up hate her?"

"I 'ave good reason to! She tells everyone tha' the Shifters are monsters an' sends 'er knights out ter kill 'em, she taxes Mum and everyone in Salutor, even old Ms Frances, and she leaves the homeless children ter starve in the streets withou' a second glance!" Savannah didn't seem to be on good terms with the Queen. Shivani didn't press the matter any further.

Savannah seemed to forget about the Queen for a while as she enjoyed the peace of the woods. It was a lovely spring day in late May, with robins calling through the trees, the tiny black eyes of rabbits peeking from bushes and inside logs, and enormous, glossy dark green leaves hanging down in clusters from the tall trees of the woods. The sun was shining, wildflowers bloomed everywhere, and it was easy for Shivani to forget the fact that the only reason she was there was to escape from a murderer. It reminded her of home, where she would be practicing her sorcery this late in the afternoon, and waiting for Juli to come over when she was finished hunting with her pride of lions, so they could race and cast Spells (well-only Shivani would) and play like children she wished she and Juli still were.

"Who aw you?" Fifty-three year old Shivani asked after she'd woken up propped against a tree with four strange creatures sitting near her. She could remember some things...Papa (he was always mean), her big sisters Aggy and Shia (Aggy hated Papa and was always quiet and sad, and Shia hated Aggy and was a little mean) and a horrible pain her back that had made everything go dark. The first creature, a tall green lady made of plants, stood up and smiled at her.

"Hello, child. You may call me Magister." She was the only one who truly seemed like an adult. The other creatures looked juvenile or perhaps like teenagers. A snowy white owl fluttered its wings a little and looked down at her.

"Hello, erm, my name is-" he made a sort of screeching owl noise. Shivani tried to mimic it and sounded like a strangled cat.

"There is no way she can pronounce that, you idiot," a young, darkly colored leopardess snapped. The owl rolled his eyes.

"And somehow that is my fault?" A little cream-colored lioness turned to look at the shadow leopard.

"Well, maybe she could make up names," she suggested.

"Yes, I suppose a toddler can come up with suitable names for us," said the leopard sarcastically. "Honestly, why does Aldrik even bother being near you? You say the first thing that pops to mind and throw a fit whenever anyone accuses you of it." The lioness looked hurt and hid behind a nearby tree.

"Hush, the lot of you," Magister scolded. "The point is that even though this man has told us to vanquish the child, I don't believe murder is the right choice here."

"What do you mean, 'this man'," the owl demanded. "You have known Aldrik far longer than the rest of us, and now suddenly his name is unimportant? What am I to become, 'this owl'? We ought to call you 'this-" The leopard interrupted him.

"Oh, I take back what I said, little lion," she sighed. The lion cub peeked out from behind the tree suspiciously.
"Birdbrain here is so smart he'll lower the entire forest's intelligence-you're just outspoken." The lioness, accepting this form of apology, trotted completely out from behind the tree and sat back in front of Shivani, who had been watching this entire ordeal in silence.

Several decades later, when Shivani was two hundred and thirty years old, (and had long forgotten her original family) or ten and a half in immortal years, a book tumbled down through the treetops and landed with a loud thump on the mossy stones near a creek. Shivani, who had been playing tag with the lion, raced over to see what the noise was.

"A book! Miss Lion, look, there's a book on the rocks!" She scooped it up and sat down to leaf through it, as the lioness scrambled up next to her.

"Hm..." The front cover read World History in bold print.

"Wow, a book on the world's history? That's rare," the lioness remarked.

"No, look at the places they talk about. Egypt, Greece, Rome, England, Europe...these are all countries, but they aren't parts either of the Kingdoms."

"Oh well, then it's a storybook. Come on, Shivani, let's go do something other than look at some old book!" Shivani shook her head and continued looking through the book. She stopped at one page, with pictures of white stone statues of a man in strange robes, and the words 'Ancient Rome' at the top in red.

"Julius Caeser..." She read aloud. "Hm..Juli. That's it! Miss Lion, can I call you Juli? JuliusCaesar?" The little lion trotted back over.

"What did you say?"

"Juli-I'd like to call you JuliusCaesar. Is that a suitable name?" The lion thought this over.

"Hm-all right. You should find names for everyone else too." The lion-now dubbed JuliusCaesar-peered over Shivani's shoulder as she flipped through the pages.

"Isaaaaaaac Newton," Juli said, stretching out the name 'Isaac'. "A scientist, huh? What's a scientist?"

"Who knows?" Shivani shrugged. "Let's show the book to Magister, she'll probably know where it can from." Shivani and JuliusCaesar ran off to find Magister, who was-

A sudden horrible screaming noise interrupted Shivani's recollection of memories. Then several more screams overlapped on top of the first scream, until the grassy hills sounded like a currently-in-use torture chamber. On top of that, an intensely powerful wind nearly knocked her off her feet before another one, heading in the opposite direction, blew her back upright. The winds raged around her, while the screaming never ceased. Shivani thought that this was what insanity must feel like.

Her hands flew up to her ears, as did Savannah's and she yelled,

"What is that noise?!" Savannah shook her head and stumbled around in the winds; she couldn't hear her. Shivani went to unfold her wings and try to fly above the hills, but Savannah grabbed her arm and shook her head violently, making one wind almost snap her head clean off. Everything in Shivani's mind went blank. The screams were so loud she couldn't hear her own thoughts, and anyway, she was too focused on not toppling over and being blown away to think.

Savannah tried to run against the wind, and ended up stumbling back wildly and flailing her arms around, forcing her to pull her hands away from her ears. The winds blew her completely over, and she didn't try to get up again; instead, she covered her ears with her hands and lay on her back with her eyes closed. Shivani let the wind shove her around until she toppled over onto the grass as well. The grass was so long the tips were nearly two feet above the two travelers as they lay on the hill, and the screams were surprisingly quieter. Shivani hesitantly took her hands off her ears, and winced immediately. The screams and shrieks that sounded so horribly human filled her ears again, but they were much quieter now. She could hear her own thoughts. Savannah opened her eyes and, noticing Shivani, uncovered her ears.

Shivani turned her head up, where the tops of the grass was whipping around wildly, and realized something for the first time. Each stem of grass was actually more like a tall, hollow, flexible reed, and each reed had a hole at the top and a thin oval on the side just underneath it, making each reed look like a thin, two-foot-tall whistle. She reached out, still lying on the ground, and yanked one out of the ground. Bits of dirt and stringy roots came up as well, which she dusted off. She turned it around in her hands, and then blew into it. If it made any sound, she couldn't hear it over the other screams and raging winds around her.

Savannah flipped herself over on her stomach, turned so that she was facing the direction in which they were heading, and started crawling forward in the grass. Since she seemed to be making more progress than they had when they were standing, Shivani did the same. They inched forward, actually moving, but crawling on one's stomach for half an hour up a hill while slowly going insane from being in the center of a shriek-fest was very exhausting. Once they finally reached the top of the hill (they could tell by the sudden lack of upward slope in the ground), Savannah pulled her legs together and her arms to her chest, and rolled down the hill. Shivani stopped for a rest, breathing heavily with breathes she couldn't hear, and put her face down to the ground. She wanted to join the voices above in screaming. True, the Shifters and Liza were kind and welcoming, and traveling around Salutor and the woods was wonderful, but this was the reality of her journey. She hadn't left the Forest of Life and Death to go to festivals and have a lovely la-dee-da time, she has left to save the Forest and its creatures, and to convince Amarantos not to vanquish her.

Which was why she had to keep going.

So she curled up into a ball and rolled down the hill after Savannah, who was gladly taking a break and waiting for her, and started crawling up the next hill.
~*~*~*~
After four and a half hours of seemingly endless crawling and rolling, the winds were behind them, the ground was flat, and there wasn't a reed (other than the one Shivani had picked) in sight. Instead, they were surrounded by a dense, rust-colored forest with no grass at all and fungi and moss growing across the bark and roots of ink-black trees. Savannah lay sprawled out on her back, dazed and tired, and Shivani was already half asleep. The silence was delicious, as was the lack of wind. In a silent agreement to not move again for as long as possible, the girls both fell asleep within minutes.

The next morning, after finding a wonderfully scrumptious amount of absolutely nothing for breakfast, the still-weary and now hungry travelers went onward. The forest was so dense they had to break, bend under, jump over, and squeeze through most of the trees and fallen branches.

"So what was that horrible place?" Shivani asked after a while.

"Th' shriekin' hills," Savannah replied with a grimace. "Remember the Shifters' song?"

"Song? What song?" Archimedes asked in bewilderment.

"You weren't there. They sang a song about a wind, and it goes 'deep within th' shriekin' hills, an' past th' Fields o' Light," Savannah croaked. She wasn't one much for singing. "So, on th' bright side, after goin' through that torture, we get ter go ter the Fields o' Light fairly soon."

"And that would be...?" Shivani asked. Savannah stopped at the edge of the forest and pointed out, smiling not even half as brightly as the sight before them.

"That." Shivani and Archimedes both gasped.

"It's beautiful," Shivani exhaled loudly.
~*~*~*~