Zantheus heard himself say the words, and turned quickly to face Leukos. The boy he with the fiery hair and the fiery eyes, ever writing, turned to face him also, manuscript cradled in his hand. He looked for the words.

“Leukos, thank you for guiding me all this way to Qereth,” Zantheus said.

He had still been retaining some resentment towards him, but now, at their parting, it became irrelevant.

“That’s alright, Zantheus,” said Leukos. “It hasn’t always been easy, and it’s taken us a very long time, but it’s been worth it. I’m in a different place now from when we started out. I shall miss you.”

“I shall miss you too,” said Zantheus, and he was surprised to hear himself speaking the truth. He was also surprised to find himself clasping Leukos’s manuscript arm in a gesture of farewell.

Now, Tromo. He faced the boy. The boy with wide curious brown eyes and mousey brown hair, his expression so much older than his years should permit. “Tromo, you have been a faithful companion since the day we met.” As Tromo looked up at Zantheus, his eyes seemed to grow bigger than ever. He was fighting back tears. “I hope that you find your family. Take care of yourself.” Tromo put his arms in the air for a hug. Zantheus could not withhold one from him. He knelt down and pressed him to his chest. He remembered diving into the sea to save him not so long ago, after escaping from a battle on a ship. He had been through a lot with the boy. He stood up again.

The moment he had been putting off for so long happened. They looked into each others’ eyes.

“Anthē...goodbye.”

Following the precedent set by Tromo, Zantheus and Anthē embraced, rather lamely, for the first time.

“Goodbye, Anthē.”

“Goodbye, Zantheus,” said Anthē. There was a note in her voice that he could not quite grasp, but there was no time to dwell on it. He had turned and was walking out of the glass doors. He felt very odd, like he was watching himself. Why did he feel like this? Now he was a good number of paces down the street. He stopped. Something was left. He still had something left to do –but what?

“Zantheus!”

He turned and saw Anthē running down the street towards him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Zantheus, do you have to leave?”

“Yes, Anthē, I have to go. I have to climb Awmeer again and find out what happened to me last time. I have to find out whether Enlightenment really exists.”

“I know...I know that...” said Anthē. She was standing very close to him. “But...can you just stay with us a little while longer? Maybe a day?”

“I am sorry, Anthē...” Zantheus was not pleased with his own answer. And neither was Anthē. Silence. Then he said “I tell you what, once I have completed my task I will come back and visit you. The Order will not be happy but...I do not mind…” Was he really saying this? Yes. Yes he was. Maybe the rules changed once you became Enlightened.

“Really? You’d come back, for me?” Anthē asked. She had moved towards him slightly.

“Well, yes, I mean…you are special to me…” said Zantheus.

“You really mean that?” said Anthē. She was very close to him now.

“Yes, Anthē. You are my friend.”

“Just a friend?”

They kissed, and a garden was blooming in their hearts. Anthē tasted sweet and alive to Zantheus, but almost the second he realised what was happening, he pulled back.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

This was not the right thing to say. Anthē, who had been experiencing a whole kaleidoscope of emotions, nearly laughed out loud. Then she felt as though she had been pierced by an arrow of sorrow. Then she became angry.

“Well that is just typical!” She fumed. “Just typical of you, Zantheus! You can’t enjoy just one moment with me, not even one moment! You only ever think about yourself and your stupid rules, and that stupid mountain! You don’t care about anyone else in the world, do you? It’s just you you you! It’s all about your goal, your mountain, your journey! Well I’m sick of it, Zantheus! You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met!” She was really going for it now, and not entirely sure of everything she was saying. Though much of it was true, she was being very selective with the truth. “Well I don’t care any more! You can go off to your mountain or sanctuary or whatever it is and get lost, I don’t want you in my life any more! Get out of here!”

Zantheus was confused and hurt by these words, so he did the same thing he had been doing these past three months. He turned round and carried on walking. Just as he had done when he had left the inn, he acted without thinking, letting his legs carry him, still in shock. Anthē stood and watched him go, still pulsing with anger. He had done what she had told him to do. But she was not sure that she had wanted him to do it. She was confused as well. Had she meant to say those things? She didn’t know. When Zantheus was no longer in sight, she went back to the inn.

“Is everything alright?” asked Leukos.

“Yes,” she lied. She was not going to think about it.

“Shall I have you shown up now?” asked the woman at the desk.

“Oh...yes,” said Anthē. She had gone numb. Her mind could not quite accept what had just happened. They followed the servant-boy who was called in to show them up to their rooms, at the top of the fancy building on the seventh floor. They were shown that their keys fitted in their doors. She and Tromo had their room with a double-bed and a smaller bed for a child. Leukos had his single room. They were well furnished, with a small table and chairs in each, bedside tables with candles, and windows that looked out onto the street. It was all very accommodating and satisfactory. The servant-boy left them. Unusually, Leukos did not choose to hide himself away alone in his room straight away but came in to talk to Anthē and Tromo instead. Anthē’s mind was still elsewhere, but they managed to chat about their plans as she sat on her bed, Leukos sat and wrote at the table and Tromo stood by the window, watching the city below like a hawk.

When Leukos breached the issue at hand and asked “So, Anthē, what’s your plan?” she was just about able to absent-mindedly sketch a vague outline of what she was now going to do with herself. She would try and find a job, and work up some money to pay Leukos back, and then with luck she could move into an apartment somewhere, probably somewhere more southward by the looks of things. At the same time, she hoped to start looking for Tromo’s relatives, and asked Leukos if he knew of any places she should start, and meanwhile she would also look to see if there was a school he could go to during the day. Really, though, all this was meaningless. She had lost the one person she really wanted to do all of this with, he had turned and walked away from her just as she had commanded him to do. Would he come back? Would he return as he had said he would, for her?

She hid these thoughts in her heart as she said “And Leukos, what will you do?”

Leukos spoke with remarkable directness for once, instead of expressing himself through mysterious riddles.

“I must be moving on soon. I have enjoyed my time with you, but I need to leave. I do not know where I am going, but I know that I am going. Soon I will have finished my book. Maybe I will be able to make some money from it.”

Anthē thought of her meeting with Sophia. She was tempted to bring it up with Leukos, but she kept it to herself, for the moment. “Well, thank you for guiding us for all of this time,” she said.

They continued chatting aimlessly for a while. Tromo would not be drawn away from the window. He remained there stood in front of it, watching the streets.

Eventually they went downstairs for dinner, in a very full dining room on the first floor. They ate now in silence. Anthē was in a kind of daze, her mind not really there with her body, but not knowing where it actually was either. She could not tell if she was in mourning, or still angry, or just exhausted. Her actions became like a kind of list, a series of tasks which she performed like a machine, with no real enthusiasm for any of them. She went through the motions, spooning the excellently prepared dish into her mouth, not tasting it at all. When the meal was finished, she traipsed up the stairs back to her room. She bid goodnight to Leukos. She sat with Tromo in front of the window and watched the light outside turn orange, then blue, then black. She tucked Tromo into his little bed. She got into her double bed.

It was only as Anthē lay there weeping in the darkness that she realised how totally alone she felt, utterly isolated and abandoned, the only person in the world, a world devoid of meaning and joy. She felt the body of a small orphan boy curl up next to her. Tromo, unable to sleep too, had climbed into the double bed for comfort. Anthē remembered the first night the three of them had spent together. She wished there was a stubborn knight sleeping on the floor next to them now. She knew Tromo felt the same thing. She stroked his hair with one of her hands.

“It’s ok, Tromo,” she whispered. “Tell you what,” she almost flinched as she heard herself say the same words Zantheus had said to her earlier, an expression he had learned from her, “I’ll tell you a story. A good happy story to help you get to sleep.”