Chapter 3: The Second World
OLIVIA began tending to the potted plants in the restaurant when they returned to Soup Forest from Arthur’s childhood home. She’d given them plenty of water and placed them in shade before they left and that, along with the fact that it was fall, meant the several dozen plants survived without withering to nothing.
“I’m sorry. You must want a drink. Here you go, drink up,” said Olivia as she gave them water from the well and carefully removed any brown leaves. Rob followed her around, watching her as she did, his tail wagging slowly.
Arthur came back with Pete and Pepe around the time she was done watering the plants and had put them all back on the saucers in their respective locations.
Home!
Our own home!
“Welcome home, Pete, Pepe. Did you behave yourselves at Billy’s?” she said to them.
We got bullied!
Bullied and belittled!
“Oh, by one of Billy’s goats? I’m sorry. Please forgive him.”
No forgive bully!
Hate bully.
“Haha!” Olivia laughed.
It seemed the two goats didn’t like the dominant male goat at Billy’s house. And that goat probably didn’t like this new goat couple suddenly entering his herd. Billy might have given Pete and Pepe special treatment while he was caring for them.
“I’m going to go return the carriage,” said Arthur.
“Oh, I appreciate you taking care of that, Arthur, even though you must be tired. See you in a little bit,” said Olivia.
Hate that house!
Hate that goat!
“Oh, don’t say that, you two,” chided Olivia. “We couldn’t exactly leave you here alone. Do you want to eat some grass? It’s grown quite long.”
Grass!
Yummy grass!
Olivia let the two goats out into the backyard, and they went to munch on the tall grass. They ate it all down to the base, resulting in a neat and tidy lawn.
More grass!
Want eat grass!
“All right. I’ll let you outside the fence,” said Olivia, then she kept an eye on them as they ate the grass outside the fencing. In reality, she wanted to get right to cleaning the house, but the two goats had been bullied by that billy goat for ten days. She wanted to make up for that first.
As she did, she heard an animal’s inner voice.
Food come!
“Hm?”
She looked in the direction of the voice and saw a blue-and-white flycatcher watching her from its perch on a branch.
“Oh, hello. I’ll get you something to eat,” she said.
Food! Bugs!
“I don’t have any bugs, but I do have berries. Wait just a moment.”
She hurried into the kitchen, gathered up her jars filled with dried blueberries, wild strawberries, and raspberries, then went into the front garden. There, she shook out plenty of the dried berries with a rattling sound onto the bird feeder.
The flycatcher couldn’t seem to wait until Olivia moved away. It flew to the feeder immediately.
“Eat up,” she said. “I’ll change out the water in the bird bath, too.”
She used well water to rinse the large dish she always left out on top of a large, flat rock in the garden, then filled it to the brim again and put it back on the rock.
Wild birds loved clean water. They could always bathe themselves in the puddles and bogs here and there, but they were at risk of being attacked by foxes and wild cats. But they could feel at ease in the garden, and they seemed happy to drink and bathe there.
Grass! So yum!
Yummy!
Olivia sensed the goats’ thoughts from outside the fence. She went over to them, thinking it was about time she put them back in the barn.
“All right, time to go back in the barn,” she said.
More grass!
No want barn.
“Oh, don’t say that. I want to make Arthur’s dinner.”
Arthur! Mate.
Arthur. Mate.
“I know, I know.”
She smiled awkwardly and put the goats in the barn, opened the windows wide, then went back into the house.
Arthur had driven the carriage the whole time they were traveling. He surely must have been more tired than her since she could just sit there and relax, so she wanted to make him something nice for dinner.
She took some dried, butterflied trout from upstairs along with some onion into the kitchen, then soaked the crackly dried fish in a mixture of half water, half distilled spirits as she cut up the onions. While doing that, she thought of the carrots in the garden. She found they’d grown large when she went to harvest some, their leaves healthy and upright.
The kitchen was beginning to fill with a wonderful aroma by the time Arthur returned from the more than a mile walk home.
“I’m back,” he called. “Something smells good.”
“I’m making dinner with what we have around the house,” said Olivia.
“Can’t wait. I’m pretty sure I’ll live longer by eating your home cooking.”
That was exactly what her grandfather, Jenkins, used to say. Olivia smiled but didn’t say anything.
She stirred the pot while boiling some water to make tea. It was a mint tea mixed with dried catnip leaves and stalks.
As she watched Arthur enjoying his cup of tea, she thought, Grandma and Grandpa may have moved on to God’s garden, but I feel like they’ll stay with me as long as I remember them like this. Are you two watching over me from the other side? I am so happy right now. I hope that helps you be at peace.
Olivia added the trout to the simmering onion and carrot in the pot, setting it on top in large chunks as she waited for it to come to a boil again. Once heated, she put the lid on to wait for the trout to soften as she made biscuits. She planned to use baking soda in them since there wasn’t time to wait for them to rise with yeast.
“Arthur?” she said.
“Yeah?”
“That was my first time being away from this house for ten days like that, but, I realized another fun part of traveling is coming home.”
“Yeah.”
“It seemed there was a blue-and-white flycatcher just waiting for me to come home. It called me ‘food.’”
“Haha! I guess your name is Food, now.”
“Yep. And it looks like Billy took good care of Pete and Pepe.”
“That’s good.”
“But they kept complaining about a billy goat at Billy’s house bullying them.”
“I didn’t see any injuries on them…”
“No. I’m fairly sure when they say they were bullied, all that really happened was the other goat insisted they listen to him. They were new to the herd. It makes sense they’d end up at the bottom of the ladder.”
Arthur chuckled softly as he drank his mint tea. “You see such a serene world,” he said.
Olivia took the softened trout from the pot and carefully deboned it, muttering, “Hot, ooh, hot,” as she did, then stopped at what Arthur said. “You’re right,” she agreed. “I’ve always thought I had to struggle because I’d been born with this ability, but you’re right. I’ve lived my whole life seeing a peaceful world.”
“I only know one world, but you live in two,” he noted.
“I…never thought of it like that. But I do, don’t I? I live my life moving back and forth between two worlds.”
Olivia kept thinking over what Arthur said while they ate dinner, then smiled at Arthur as she bit into a biscuit. “I always thought I was the only one living in a different world, but that’s not true. I stand between two worlds, and I go into both of them. Thank you, Arthur.”
“Why are you thanking me?”
“No reason, really. My grandmother used to always tell me humans do bad things, but they also do good things, too. I’ve really come to understand what she meant after seeing what it’s like living with you.”
“Yeah? This veggie and trout stew is amazing, by the way.”
“The trout bones make a good stock for the stew.”
“Yep. It’s really good.”
Rob had finished his dinner long ago and now slept at their feet, time passing gently and peacefully in Soup Forest.