Chapter 5: The Villa Visitor and the Hedgehogs
OLIVIA kept going towards the wolves’ den but found herself lost on the way. She asked a wren looking at her from a branch above for directions and it led her by flying from branch to branch. The wren immediately knew who she was talking about because there weren’t many wolves in this forest, and even fewer raising pups.
“Thank you, you were a big help,” said Olivia.
Good weather!
It seemed it wouldn’t rain today.
The father wolf came out of the den as Olivia moved closer. Baby move, he thought.
“Your baby’s doing better? That’s good. I came to check on it. How should we do it?”
I bring baby. The father wolf went back into the den and came out carrying the pup by its scruff.
The pup looked much better. It sniffed excitedly as Olivia moved up to it. “You’re looking energetic. You must not be in pain anymore. But I still think you should take some medicine.”
Gross, gross, no!
“I know, it doesn’t taste nice, but you’ll get better faster if you take it. Your mom will bring you some meat back if you do. You want to eat meat, don’t you?”
Meat!
The word “meat” conjured up images of whole moles and mice in the pup’s mind, as well as chunks of meat from larger animals that its mother chewed up and spit back out for it to eat.
While she was talking to the pup, Olivia slipped her finger into a shot glass she had in her pocket. She’d secretly made up the medicine in advance, and now lifted it up on her middle finger. In the moment the pup was distracted by thoughts of meat, she held the pup by its scruff with one hand and opened its mouth with the other to pop in the medicine and hold its mouth shut.
No! No!
The pup thrashed about, clearly not enjoying the medicine, but reflexively swallowed the little ball of medicine down.
Olivia turned to the parent wolves, who were watching with concern, and said, “I think it’ll be fine, now. Have your pup drink plenty of milk and water. I doubt it’ll eat poison cherries again, but make sure your other pups know to be careful. Well, that’s it from me.”
The wolves weren’t even paying attention to Olivia anymore by the time she was walking away. Their hearts were filled with love for their child. That sort of frank, intense love was blindingly overwhelming.
She walked through the forest, her own heart filled with warmth. While walking, she came upon an area filled with the same poison cherries the pup had eaten. There were ripe ones, which were a bright red, not quite ripe ones, a pale pink, and still hard ones, an astringent green. Berries of all stages were in abundance.
“These will go for a nice price in town,” said Olivia. They made a wonderful pickled side dish that helped prevent indigestion after eating if you sliced them in half and soaked them in water to remove the poison, then pickled them in a sweet vinegar mixture.
Olivia went about picking the berries. The forest’s bounty was an important source of income for her.
As she walked, she used her handkerchief to grab some raspberry branches and snap them off. She could root the cuttings near the fence at home then, as they grew, they would intertwine with the fences and give her the joy of raspberries next year.
When she made it home, she let the goat couple out of the barn.
“Baaa!”
“Baaa!”
They were happy. They started playing, the two of them (Pete, the billy, and Pepe, the nanny) reared on their hind legs and headbutted each other over and over. Their horns cracked together with such a sound that Olivia worried they might hurt each other. It was thanks to this young couple that Olivia didn’t have to worry about weeds growing in the yard.
“Want to eat some grass?” asked Olivia.
Grass!
Yummy grass!
She went into the kitchen and began cooking for lunch. Along with today’s spring vegetable soup, she was going to serve a salad of boiled chicken breast with spring onion and bell pepper, as well as thinly sliced bread toasted with butter and herbs.
The wren had told her the weather was good, meaning it wasn’t going to rain. While she cooked, she planned to wash her sheets and the sheets from the loft in the barn once she was finished with lunch.
The restaurant was busy at lunch. There was a whole family who’d come from one of the villas because they had heard such good things about the restaurant in town.
“Marlais is such a lovely area,” said one of the villa family members. “You have the ocean, the mountains, and a town nearby. There’s an abundance of food. There are even old ruins to see. Most importantly though, the weather is just so pleasant and warm. I love it here. When my husband suggested building a villa here, I thought, isn’t it just a bit too…rural? But I feel at ease now, knowing I still have everything I need here.”
“I’m glad you like the area. I love Marlais,” Olivia replied.
Marlais was a region at the southern end of the Kingdom of Sandwald. The Marlais family had ruled over it for generations, and the family itself had quite the history. The current lord decided to take the area—whose economy had previously relied entirely on fishing and farming—and convince the rich and famous to build villas there, but he hadn’t sold the land itself to them. It was only on loan. It was the only way to get the landowners to agree.
And it turned out those commoners with deep pockets living in the capital city liked the idea of owning a second home like the nobles often did. They must have also been looking for an outlet for their excess riches, because all sorts of wealthy people—merchants, investors, importers—came to build villas in Marlais one after another.
They threw their coin about without care to build homes, hire servants, eat out, and decorate their new villas, bringing more money to the residents of Marlais than they’d ever had before.
Even the Soup Forest saw visitors from the villas every now and then.
Today’s visitors looked out into the garden at the bird feeder and chattered amongst themselves with excitement.
“Mother, look! There’s a beautiful bird there on the bird feeder. I’ve never seen one like it.”
“Oh, you’re right, it is lovely. It’s such a bright blue. I never imagined birds could be that color.”
“It’s a blue-and-white flycatcher,” said Olivia. “They eat insects, but every once in a great while, they come to eat fruit like that. I don’t see too many of them at the bird feeder.”
“A blue-and-white flycatcher? How pretty.”
The family from the villa seemed happy with their seat near the bird feeder and said they’d come again as they left.
After lunch, Olivia washed the laundry and hung it up out back to dry, then raked out the straw from the barn and replaced it with fresh straw. One of the farmers who came to the restaurant regularly would bring her the fresh straw in his wagon. In exchange for a meal, he’d also haul away her old straw, which he’d set to compost and use as fertilizer for his fields.
That evening, there was a steady stream of customers. Olivia had her own dinner of leftover vegetable soup and bread, then folded the laundry, and stepped into the yard before starting to study.
She sensed something coming. Emotions from several creatures. Excitement, pure excitement. They must be small animals. Eventually, a mother hedgehog popped into the garden, her row of tiny baby hedgehogs following behind. Male hedgehogs weren’t involved with raising the young.
Hedgehogs’ favorite foods were worms and grubs, but they’d also eat fruit, bread, and vegetables if they were there.
Olivia scattered the shreds of chicken meat she pulled from the bones she’d used to make the soup broth. Once on the ground, she called to the hedgehogs. “Come and eat!” In her mind, she thought, Go on, go ahead and eat.
Wild animals didn’t understand the words she said, but they could feel the feelings and intentions behind her words. That meant they were very good at telling when she was lying or putting up a front.
The mother and four baby hedgehogs scurried over.
Yummm!
So yum!
Yummy-yum!
The little ones apparently liked the chicken. They chomped and nibbled at it as Olivia watched. The mother must have been quite hungry, too, because she fell on the food with such focus nothing else was in her mind.
“Producing milk must be making you that hungry,” said Olivia.
Meat! Yum!
The mother enjoyed the chicken as well. Once it had all gone, the five hedgehogs disappeared, off to somewhere else. All that was on their minds from the moment they came to the moment they left was a single thought: Yum!
And Olivia found that adorable.
That evening, Olivia sat and read one of the books on medicinal herbs that her grandmother left her. Her great-grandmother had apparently been an expert in the field. Olivia’s grandmother had taught her the basics, but there was so much more to learn left in these books, handwritten by her great-grandmother.
“Rob, it’s my goal to learn every last thing in these books,” Olivia declared.
Rob opened one eye and looked at her, but then went right back to sleep.
That night, a light was still on until late in the Soup Forest. It drew in a moth, which became a late-night meal for the gecko clinging to the glass.