Chapter 40
“Why do you want to drink the potion? Why do you want your identity revealed, and to whom?” I want to know.
“To myself, to you,” my alter ego tells me.
I narrow my eyes, struggling to understand.
“You need to find the door, remember?” she says.
“Yes, but-” I start.
“What’s your plan for finding it?” she interrupts me.
“Well, I…I don’t really have a well-defined plan,” I fumble.
“If you don’t have a plan, how do you expect to ever find it?” she challenges me.
“Do you have a plan?” I defiantly ask the other me.
“Not now, and that’s why I want to drink this potion,” she replies with flawless logic.
“You need to know who you really are to find the door”, I say, my question phrased as a statement.
“In a sense. We don’t know what behind the door, but we know that whatever it is, it will save the kingdom,” my alter ego explains.
“How do you know?” I inquire.
“There is an ancient book, which father inherited from our ancestors. Grandfather forbade him from reading it till an exceptional circumstance arose,” my alter ego says.
“Which exceptional circumstance?” I want to know.
“Father would recognize the exceptional circumstance when it happened, grandfather said. The book was stored in a safe, and nobody but father knew the code to open it. One night father sought refuge in the library to clear his mind. He noticed the book on the library’s table, right in front of the chair where he usually sat, and he knew the time had come,” she recollects.
Now her head is bowed as she speaks, as if she was recounting these memories to herself.
“And what did the book say about the door?” I ask.
“Right, what did it say? That is a question I cannot fully answer. It said that behind the door lies the way to the eternal life of our father’s kingdom. The rest is undefined,” she replies enigmatically.
“Undefined? How so?” I insist.
“Depending on the reader, the words of the book change,” she tells me.