Written by Salie Davis

Dedicated to my firstborn.

There is a place called Ambersland across a mystic sea. It once was a forgotten kingdom, and in it lives a magic tree. Ambersland received its name from a maiden living there, who had the colour of the amber sun, burning in her hair.
Once upon a time in this kingdom there lived an evil king. His only claim to power was in his magic ring. This king had a garden, none more beautiful in all the land. The garden was tended by a husbandman and his daughter’s gentle hand. This girl’s heart was full of love and care. She gathered fallen flowers to sell in the village square. That which was not sold from the fallen blooms, she pressed with love and made into sweet perfumes. Yet she would not adorn herself with the riches she would earn. Instead, she built a schoolhouse so all children could learn.

When this ruler learned that his flowers were sold to bring knowledge of good, he had the schoolhouse torn down and burned as his firewood. He then forbade the husbandman to grow the flowers that did bloom. The maiden had none to sell or make into sweet perfume.
So this young maid took the fallen fruit from the overloaded trees, the fruit the King did not eat, she used to make jams and jellies. What she could not sell she would give to the poor and would buy good books that she left at their doors. When the king discovered his fallen fruit bought books to teach integrity, he had his henchmen gather all literature and books of morality, every scrap of paper he burned within the fireplace of his great hall and commanded of his husbandman that every tree of fruit must fall.

Now this king sought a queen for the purpose of an heir. Of all in the kingdom, one maiden was most fair. This blue-eyed girl was the very same, that made the flowers and fruit trees bloom. Amberosity was her name. However, she did not wish to marry one whose heart held no devotion. So, with the power of his magic ring, the king conjured up a potion. She would not give this sovereign a son to carry on his evil rule, so he cast a spell upon her in a manner cold and cruel.

The king doomed this maiden to live alone, in silence for eternity, trapped within his garden in the form of a magic tree. With leaves of amber gold, and berries of sapphire blue, a single tree from that day forward in his lonely garden grew.
Now, Amberosity was dearly loved by the people of the land, although they were sore afraid of this monarch’s evil hand. They knew that his power lay in his magic ring. They rose in anger against this evil king. As the battle ensued, many lives were lost, including that of the evil king, but justice was worth the cost.

The father of the maiden took from the king the ring of magic, and he searched the ruined kingdom, for someone to make the spell less tragic. Yet not a person could be found that was able to break the curse, nor any in the kingdom could make it less adverse. Fifty years and more passed in a blink of an eye. Most everyone left the kingdom as time passed by. Only a fair few stayed amongst the ruins, now scarred, for the sake of the husbandman in the garden standing guard.
The father tended the garden until he was very old. He died one lonely winter in the bitter wind and cold. They buried him in the garden beside the magic tree. There they also buried the magic ring, in the kingdom across the sea. Then they locked the gates of the garden and the abandoned castle door, decreeing that no human should enter there, forever more.

The land became barren, and the villagers left the kingdom. Amberosity lost hope of ever gaining her freedom. What was worse than the curse of being a tree, was the thought of silence for eternity.
However, as time elapsed, the roots of the tree, grew through the magic ring, and Amberosity, feeling the power held within the ring, for the first time in a hundred years heard something; the beating of wings as if from a fowl; over the garden wall came flying an owl.
“Hoo!” said the owl.
“Hello!” said the tree.
“Who are you?” said the owl “and how is it you understand me?”
“My name,” said the tree “is Amberosity. I was cursed by an evil king and the power of his magic ring. The king was killed, and the ring was buried beneath my root. Its magic causes me to understand your hoot.

I have been alone here for one hundred years. All spent in silence for a tree does not have ears. Now I can hear and talk as well. Will you not rest in my shade and talk with me a spell?”
Said the owl, “Who am I, such a kind request to deny? If you will share your berries of sapphire blue, I may choose to stay with you.”
“How wonderful to meet you, my name is Hoover Grey. For the casual greeting, I will call you Amber, if I may?”
“You may,” said Amber gracefully “If I may call you Hoover, and you may nest within my tree.”
Amber and Hoover became very best friends. Their conversations went on without end.

They talked of long ago, before Amber in this form was doomed, and of how the flowers of the garden for her alone bloomed.
Hoover Grey talked on at length of all the sights he had seen. He flew across the mystic sea in search of his life’s dream. He was an educated owl. He once tutored a boy who was to be King, but of all the luxury he once knew he lacked the most priceless thing. He searched for nothing less than love, and not just any but the purest of. He was getting old. He had lived more than one hundred years, in service to a wizard, now with a flowing white beard.
“How is it,” Amber asked one day “That you have lived so long, Hoover Grey?”
“Well, my dear Amber,” Said Hoover, “It is not hard when you’re in service to a kind wizard.

When he was a boy and I was a chick, I fell from my nest because I was sick. He nursed me to health, and when I was well, he enchanted me with his very first spell.
As we grew old together, we noticed emptiness within our hearts. We shared love in friendship, but the love of a bride drew us apart.” The owl told the magic tree of his far away home, and how his friend’s matrimony caused him to feel alone.
He was happy for Rhellen, that was his friend’s name, but when Tianna came into their lives, things were not the same. “Rhellen was enchanted by this woman’s kiss, then the bliss of a child’s cry, but there was jealousy in Tianna’s heart leaving no room for I. So, I flew away to find a love kinder to call my own. It would now seem in you I have found my dream and home.”

Amber was flattered by Hoover’s proclamation, but her heart was saddened by this unfortunate situation. Hoover’s friendship was as true as a friendship could be, but how could he be doomed to this lonely garden and she, a tree?
Hoover sensed his friend was sad and pressed to ask her “Why?”
Not wanting to state the truth she conjured up a lie.
“I am tired of these barren walls. I want to see the world outside.
I want to see a flower bloom; I want to hear the roaring tide.”
Hoover’s heart sank. It seemed such a simple thing to ask, but even for an educated owl, it seemed a monumental task.
“If I lose every feather in physical distress, I’ll tear down that wall for Amber’s happiness.”

Hoover’s thoughts were pure and true, but there was little he could do. Hoover paced the garden wall thinking, how do I make it fall.
“It would take a year, or two to peck and scratch just one stone through. Oh, how will I fall, this pile of stone?” Then Hoover spied the milestone.
“Of course, if I but peck the cornerstone shall crumble. The source, that single speck, and with that the wall shall tumble!”
Without a word to Amber or another moment idle spent Hoover started scratching and pecking with his head bent. He laboured many weeks, days, and hours, without a thought of rest until his fervour spent and fatigued, he returned to his nest.

In his dreams, Hoover thought of a love lost and wept and his tears fell like a river as he slept. The air became chill, and ice formed in the night. Then with a shake, Hoover awoke with a fright. The earth seemed to quake as out of his nest Hoover tumbled.
The sun was shining bright, through the wall that had crumbled. Amber was still deep in a depressed sleep as Hoover, with day dawning, took flight. He found the keystone cracked by icy tears that had filled the crevice in the night.
Amber awoke to a scene of the sea and the sun glistening upon its rumbling tide, and a field of blooming blossoms, serene beyond the still tumbling wall outside.

With a voice of great joy, “Hoover,” Amber cried with tears in her eyes, “see what I have spied! Oh, what have you done? It is a sight to make my sore heart soar. My dearly beloved one, it brings tears to my eyes once more! Oh My! I can see with my eye, a human eye and not by the sight of mind, and I can hear with a human ear and not one of the magic kind. Once I heard the call of a bird because of the ring around my root,
That hoot became a word. Hoover! I now have a foot. The ring lies broken in my hand…” but Hoover was not to be seen. Amber did not understand.
“Hoover!” Amber continued to call. “Now I am free. You broke the spell,” but Hoover, Amber did not see: “when the wall you caused to fell.”

Amber continued, now nervously. “The falling stones caused the earth to shake.” Now Amber spoke to herself, “The ring around my root did break;”
Although the spell was broken and she was free, for her friend of many years her heart was in misery. She called out his name, but the sound again and again by the roaring tide was drowned.
“Hoover, Hoover Grey!” she called as she searched the kingdom-wide, but not a bird was seen neither in the skies nor across the mystic tide. “Must from this kingdom I leave? To forget the love, I once knew.
The answer I demand! Oh, how can this be true?”

Hoover could not be found because he did not rest in the remnants of a tree, the shell that held his nest, and once his beloved Amberosity. That tree was now dead, its leaves quickly falling to the earth, yellow and red. Hoover cried upon return, “The cost of true love is torment! To have lost my love true, Amberosity, I lament!” He continued in misery.
“Oh, why did I fly across this mystic sea? For the death of this tree, I grieve! It will be the death of me!” Hoover’s heart burst! “From the moment of my birth, surely, I was cursed!” If only that young prince of wizardry had not found me fallen ill from that tree and cured me with a spell to live long and well. I would not have lived so long, as to have found love, and from love be gone!”

Beneath the tree that now was dead, tired from many tears, rest a maiden’s head. Assuming the fallen stones had killed their love. As Amberosity knelt beside her father’s grave beneath the tree that once was her cage, she remembered the many years she spent in silence alone, and how a kind owl had made this prison a home. “If I could be a tree once more if only to see my beloved friend, I would be one for an eternity, for without his love my life will end. As she wept at the base of the tree, and as he wept above, these two, both touched by magical spells, think they lost the magic of their love.
The wind blew the last amber leaf from the tree, as it turned brown, and blew a grey feather that was loosed from a wing, which fell also to the ground.

As one looked down to see the last leaf of autumn fall, and in death concede, another looked up to locate the one whose feather had been freed. Hoover cried! “Not a pile of leaves I see there, but amber sun upon amber hair! The one I had feared had died. Oh, could this be, could this be my one true love, Amberosity?”
“What is this I have found, A feather of grey? What is this I hear, this new day? An Owls hoot? Could it be I pray, the call of my true love, my Hoover Grey?”

Hoover flew down to tell of his felicity, to see Amber in human form alive and free. Although she heard Hoover’s hoots and listened attentively, by his actions, not his words Amber understood his glee.
Hoover said “Hoo! hoot! hoo! hoot! hoo!” and Amber looked perplexed. What should she do? Amber spoke softly of her gratitude, but her speech was not heard. Only jumbled sounds and not words. Both grew silent for a moment. A moment of joy, and yet lament. Hope was renewed in the morning light. For the following night there is the day, yet the following day there is night.
Realizing between them that the ring must be mended, or the gift of understanding between them be ended, Hoover swooped down and took the ring in his talons. Without a word, Amber knew he was off to see Rhellen.

Across the mystic sea, Hoover flew far, far away. He left Amberosity, in hopes to see her again, someday. To a home he once knew, and believed he would know no more, to an old friend he flew, hoping on friendship to implore.
What would Tiana say, what would her jealous heart do? Would she listen to Hoover Grey? All this Amber feared as Hoover flew.
Time went on and the seasons passed winter, then spring, another summer at last. Every beat of a bird’s wing sent Amber running to the castle’s door, and every hoot of a night owl, sent her scurrying across the floor.
The autumn breeze blew once more, Amberosity often thought of Hoover Grey. Years passed on, yet every night she could only imagine where he was the prior day.

To his childhood home there lie many miles of flight. He arrived home at last one cold winter’s night. With ice on his wings and a chill in his breast, frozen in his talons the ring, he collapsed in his childhood nest. Hoover woke up with Tianna smiling down. There were tears in her eyes when he expected a frown. “Hoover,” Tianna said, “I am so happy you finally came home. I am sorry my harsh words caused you to be gone.”
Hoover felt relieved, but thought only of the ring, that he found suspiciously from his talon was missing. Then Rhellen entered the room, and beside him walked his son. A young boy now stood where once a baby, to his mother had clung. Rhellen looked confused, both joy and anguish in his eyes. In his hand, he held the ring now mended, much to Hoover’s surprise.

“Thank you for mending the ring dear friend. Now let me be on my way. I must return to my true love, that I have not seen in too, too many days.”
“Wait! My dear Hoover, for I, must make a clean breast. First, of where you came by this ring, of you I must press.” Hoover only thought of being on his way, but being weak and weary, he told all there was to say, of the kingdom, and the evil king beyond the mystic sea, of the curse, his love, the ring, the tree, and Amberosity. Now Rhellen understood all but did not seem relieved. Now it was his time to talk and tell how he deceived.

“Hoover, you did not fall from your mother’s nest. I was just a boy, but I must confess. I was to tutor a babe that was born to be king, but I wanted to play and did a most selfish thing.
I took a fledgling from a tree I fell and brought it to the babe to cast a spell. I thought to have a helper on which I could rely, but in my youth, the spell went awry. I stole from the man who was then king, a book of spells and his magic ring, but instead of giving wisdom to a bird, I transformed the bird into a child. As well as the child, the child that was you, into a bird! I did not know what to do. To keep my error, my folly, hidden away, I returned the ring, and no one has known it to this day.

The boy that you tutored as an educated bird, was the fledgling, the evil king of which you spoke, and I have heard, but I must enlighten you on one final thing. Only one spell in any given moment can be undone by the power of this ring. As the rightful king in human form, you will return, by placing in your talon this band, but Amberosity will return to her tree when as King you stand. We will return with you across the mystic sea to help rebuild your kingdom with Amberosity.
Hoover grey returned as king, and rebuilt the garden for Amberosity, dusk till dawn, with the help of Rhellen and his family.

Amberosity tended the garden. She sold sweet perfume, and she made jam and jelly from the fallen fruit, at high noon. With this, she fed the poor and built a school to teach good works. All the people of the land loved her and learned virtue from her books. She was the Queen of Ambersland, and an Owl was always perched near. King Hoover held court at midnight, in the garden, so Amber could hear.
Queen Amberosity and King Hoover, At last, had found true love. Not just any kind, but the purest of; to love beyond hardship, for the sake of each, and the benefit of all, to love and to teach. The kingdom grew and flourished across the mystic sea, and was by the garden nourished, the garden tended by Amberosity. Together they ruled, although forever apart. Together they loved and were together in heart.

here lived an evil king. His only claim to

power was in his magic ring. This king had a garden, none more beautiful in all
the land. The garden was tended by a husbandman and his daughter’s gentle hand.
This girl’s heart was full of love and care. She gathered fallen flowers to
sell in the village square. That which was not sold from the fallen blooms, she
pressed with love and made into sweet perfumes. Yet she would not adorn herself
with the riches she would earn. Instead, she built a schoolhouse so all
children could learn.

When this ruler learned that his flowers were sold to bring knowledge of
good, he had the schoolhouse torn down and burned as his firewood. He then
forbade the husbandman to grow the flowers that did bloom. The maiden had none
to sell or make into sweet perfume.

So this young maid took the fallen fruit from the overloaded trees. The
fruit the King did not eat, to make jams and jellies. What she could not sell
she would give to the poor and would buy good books that she left at their
doors. When the king discovered his fallen fruit bought books to teach
integrity, he had his henchmen gather all literature and books of morality,
every scrap of paper he burned within the fireplace of his great hall and
commanded of his husbandman that every tree of fruit must fall.

Now this king sought a queen for the purpose of an heir. Of all in the
kingdom, one maiden was most fair. This blue-eyed girl was the very same, that
made the flowers and fruit trees bloom. Amberosity was her name. However, she
did not wish to marry one whose heart held no devotion. So, with the power of
his magic ring, the king conjured up a potion. She would not give this sovereign
a son to carry on his evil rule, so he cast a spell upon her in a manner cold
and cruel.

The king doomed this maiden to live alone, in silence for eternity, trapped
within his garden in the form of a magic tree. With leaves of amber gold, and
berries of sapphire blue, a single tree from that day forward in his lonely
garden grew.

Now, Amberosity was dearly loved by the people of the land, although they
were sore afraid of this monarch’s evil hand. They knew that his power lay in
his magic ring. They rose in anger against this evil king. As the battle ensued,
many lives were lost, including that of the evil king, but justice was worth
the cost.

The father of the maiden took from the king the ring of magic, and he
searched the ruined kingdom, for someone to make the spell less tragic. Yet not
a person could be found that was able to break the curse, nor any in the
kingdom could make it less adverse. Fifty years and more passed in a blink of
an eye. Most everyone left the kingdom as time passed by. Only a fair few
stayed amongst the ruins, now scarred, for the sake of the husbandman in the
garden standing guard.

The father tended the garden until he was very old. He died one lonely
winter in the bitter wind and cold. They buried him in the garden beside the
magic tree. There they also buried the magic ring, in the kingdom across the
sea. Then they locked the gates of the garden and the abandoned castle door,
decreeing that no human should enter there, forever more.

The land became barren, and the villagers left the kingdom. Amberosity lost
hope of ever gaining her freedom. What was worse than the curse of being a
tree, was the thought of silence for eternity.

However, as time elapsed, the roots of the tree, grew through the magic
ring, and Amberosity, feeling the power held within the ring, for the first
time in a hundred years heard something; the beating of wings as if from a
fowl; over the garden wall came flying an owl.

“Hoo!” said the owl.

“Hello!” said the tree.

“Who are you?” said the owl “and how is it you understand me?”

“My name,” said the tree “is Amberosity. I was cursed by an evil king and
the power of his magic ring. The king was killed, and the ring was buried beneath
my root. Its magic causes me to understand your hoot. I have been alone here
for one hundred years. All spent in silence for a tree does not have ears. Now
I can hear and talk as well. Will you not rest in my shade and talk with me a
spell?”

Said the owl, “Who am I, such a kind request to deny? If you will share your
berries of sapphire blue, I may choose to stay with you.”

“How wonderful to meet you, my name is Hoover Grey. For the casual greeting I
will call you Amber, if I may?”

“You may,” said Amber gracefully “If I may call you Hoover, and you may nest
within my tree.”

Amber and Hoover became very best friends. Their conversations went on
without ends. They talked of long ago, before Amber in this form was doomed,
and of how the flowers of the garden for her alone bloomed.

Hoover Grey talked on at length of all the sights he had seen. He flew
across the mystic sea in search of his life’s dream. He was an educated owl. He
once tutored a boy who was to be King, but of all the luxury he once knew he
lacked the most priceless thing. He searched for nothing less than love, and
not just any but the purest of. He was getting old. He had lived more than one
hundred years, in service to a wizard, now with a flowing white beard.

“How is it,” Amber asked one day “That you have lived so long, Hoover Grey?”

“Well, my dear Amber,” Said Hoover, “It is not hard when you’re in service
to a kind wizard. When he was a boy and I was a chick, I fell from my nest
because I was sick. He nursed me to health, and when I was well, he enchanted
me with his very first spell.

As we grew old together, we noticed emptiness within our hearts. We shared
love in friendship, but the love of a bride drew us apart.” The owl told the
magic tree of his far away home, and how his friend’s matrimony caused him to
feel alone.

He was happy for Rhellen, that was his friend’s name, but when Tianna came
into their lives, things were not the same. “Rhellen was enchanted by this
woman’s kiss, then the bliss of a child’s cry, but there was jealousy in Tianna’s
heart leaving no room for I. So, I flew away to find a love kinder to call
my own. It would now seem in you I’ve found my dream and home.”

Amber was flattered by Hoover’s proclamation, but her heart was saddened by
this unfortunate situation. Hoover’s friendship was as true as a friendship
could be, but how could he be doomed to this lonely garden and she, a tree?

Hoover sensed his friend was sad and pressed to ask her “Why?”

Not wanting to state the truth she conjured up a lie.

“I am tired of these barren walls. I want to see the world outside.

I want to see a flower bloom; I want to hear the roaring tide.”

Hoover’s heart sank It seemed such a simple thing to ask, but even for an
educated owl, it seemed a monumental task.

“If I lose every feather in physical distress, I’ll tear down that wall for
Amber’s happiness.” Hoover’s thoughts were pure and true, but there was little
he could do. Hoover paced the garden wall thinking about how to make it fall.

“It would take a year or two to peck and scratch just one stone through. Oh,
how will I fall from this pile of stone?” Then Hoover spied the milestone.

“Of course, if I but peck the cornerstone shall crumble. The source, that
single speck, and with that the wall shall tumble!”

Without a word to Amber or another moment Idle spent Hoover started
scratching and pecking with his head bent. He laboured many weeks, days, and hours,
without a thought of rest until his fervour spent and fatigued, he returned to
his nest. In his dreams, Hoover thought of a love lost and wept and his tears fell
like a river as he slept. The air became chill, and ice formed in the night. Then
with a shake, Hoover awoke with a fright. The earth seemed to quake as out of
his nest Hoover tumbled.

The sun was shining brightly through the wall that had crumbled. Amber was
still deep in a depressed sleep as Hoover, with day dawning, took flight. He
found the keystone cracked by icy tears that had filled the crevice in the night.

Amber awoke to a scene of the sea and the sun glistening upon its rumbling
tide and a field of blooming blossoms, serene beyond the still tumbling wall
outside.

With a voice of great joy, “Hoover,” Amber cried with tears in her eyes,
“see what I have spied! Oh, what have you done? It is a sight to make my sore
heart soar. My dearly beloved one, it brings tears to my eyes once more! Oh My!
I can see with my eye, a human eye, and not by the sight of mind and I can hear with
a human ear and not one of the magic kind. Once I heard the call of a bird
because of the ring around my root,

That hoot became a word. Hoover! I now have a foot. The ring lies broken in
my hand…” but Hoover was not to be seen. Amber did not understand.

“Hoover!” Amber continued to call. “Now I am free. You broke the spell,” but
Hoover, Amber did not see: “when the wall you caused to fell.”

Amber continued, now nervously. “The falling stones caused the earth to
shake.” Now Amber spoke to herself, “The ring around my root did break;”

Although the spell was broken and she was free, for her friend of many years
her heart was in misery. She called out his name, but the sound again and again
by the roaring tide was drowned.

“Hoover, Hoover Grey!” she called as she searched the kingdom-wide, but not
a bird was seen neither in the skies nor across the mystic tide. “Must from
this kingdom I leave? To forget the love, I once knew.

The answer I demand! Oh, how can this be true?”

Hoover could not be found because he did not rest in the remnants of a tree,
the shell that held his nest, and once his beloved Amberosity. That tree was
now dead, its leaves quickly falling to the earth, yellow and red. Hoover cried
upon return, “The cost of true love is torment! To have lost my love true,
Amberosity, I lament!” He continued in misery.

“Oh, why did I fly across this mystic sea? For the death of this tree, I
grieve! It will be the death of me!” Hoover’s heart burst! “From the moment
of my birth, surely, I was cursed!” If only that young prince of wizardry had
not found me fallen ill from that tree and cured me with a spell to live long
and well. I would not have lived so long, as to have found love, and from love
be gone!”

Beneath the tree that now was dead, tired from many tears, rest a maiden’s
head. Assuming the fallen stones had killed their love. As Amberosity knelt
beside her father’s grave beneath the tree that once was her cage, she
remembered the many years she spent in silence alone, and how a kind owl had
made this prison a home. “If I could be a tree once more if only to see my
beloved friend, I would be one for an eternity, for without his love my life
will end. As she wept at the base of the tree, and as he wept above, these two
touched by magical spells, they thought they lost the magic of their love.

The wind blew the last amber leaf from the tree, as it turned brown, and
blew a grey feather, loosed from a wing, which fell also to the ground.

As one looked down to see the last leaf of autumn fall, and in death
concede, another looked up to locate the one whose feather had been freed.
Hoover cried! “Not a pile of leaves I see there, but amber sun upon amber hair!
The one I had feared had died. Oh, could this be, could this be my one true love,
Amberosity?”

“What is this I have found, A feather of grey? What is this I hear, this new
day? An Owls hoot? Could it be I pray, the call of my true love, my Hoover
Grey?”

Hoover flew down to tell of his felicity, to see Amber in human form alive
and free. Although she heard Hoover’s hoots and listened attentively, by his
actions, not his words Amber understood his glee.

Hoover said “Hoo! hoot! hoo! hoot! hooo!” and Amber looked perplexed. What
should she do? Amber spoke softly of her gratitude, but her speech was not
heard. Only jumbled sounds and not words. Both grew silent for a moment. A
moment of joy, and yet lament. Hope was renewed in the morning light. For
following night there is the day, yet following the day there is night.

Realizing between them that the ring must be mended, or the gift of
understanding between them be ended, Hoover swooped down and took the ring in
his talon. Without a word, Amber knew he was off to see Rhellen. Across the
mystic sea, Hoover flew far, far away. He left Amberosity, in hopes to see
her again, someday. To a home he once knew, and believed he would know no more,
to an old friend he flew, hoping on friendship to implore.

What would Tiana say, what would her jealous heart do? Would she listen to
Hoover Grey? All this Amber feared as Hoover flew.

Time went on and the seasons passed winter, then spring, another summer at
last. Every beat of a bird’s wing sent Amber running to the castle’s door, and
every hoot of a night owl, sent her scurrying across the floor.

The autumn breeze blew once more, Amberosity often thought of Hoover Grey.
Years passed on, yet every night she could only imagine where he was the prior
day.

To his childhood home there lie many miles of flight. He arrived home at
last one cold winter’s night. With ice on his wings and a chill in his breast,
frozen in his talon the ring, he collapsed in his childhood nest. Hoover woke
up with Tianna smiling down. There were tears in her eyes when he expected a
frown. “Hoover,” Tianna said, “I am so happy you are finally home. I am sorry my
harsh words caused you to be gone.”

Hoover felt relieved, but thought only of the ring, that he found
suspiciously from his talon was missing. Then Rhellen entered the room, and
beside him walked his son. A young boy now stood where once a baby, to his
mother had clung. Rhellen looked confused, both joy and anguish in his eyes. In
his hand, he held the ring now mended, much to Hoover’s surprise.

“Thank you for mending the ring dear friend. Now let me be on my way. I must
return to my true love, that I have not seen in too, too many days.”

“Wait! My dear Hoover, for I, must make a clean breast. First, of where you
came by this ring, of you I must press.” Hoover only thought of being on his
way, but being weak and weary, he told all there was to say, of the kingdom,
and the evil king beyond the mystic sea, of the curse, his love, the ring, the
tree, and Amberosity. Now Rhellen understood all but did not seem relieved. Now
it was his time to talk and tell how he deceived.

“Hoover, you did not come from an owl’s nest. I was just a boy, but I must
confess. I was to tutor a babe that was born to be king, but I wanted to play
and did a most selfish thing.

I took a fledgling from a tree I fell and brought it to the babe to cast a
spell. I thought to have a helper on which I could rely, but in my youth, the
spell went awry. I stole from the man who was then king, a book of spells and
his magic ring, but instead of giving wisdom to a bird, I transformed the bird
into a child. As well as the child, the child that was you, into a bird! I did
not know what to do. To keep my error, my folly, hidden away, I returned the ring,
and no one has known it to this day.

The king that you tutored as an educated bird, was the fledgling, the evil
king of which you spoke, and I have heard, but I must enlighten you on one
final thing. Only one spell in any given moment can be undone by the power of
this ring. As the rightful king in human form, you will return, by placing in
your talon this band, but Amberosity will return to her tree when as King you
stand. We will return with you across the mystic sea to help rebuild your
kingdom with Amberosity.

Hoover grey returned as king and rebuilt the garden for Amberosity, dusk
till dawn, with the help of Rhellen and his family.

Amberosity tended the garden. She sold sweet perfume, and she made jam and
jelly from the fallen fruit, at high noon. With this, she fed the poor and
built a school to teach good works. All the people of the land loved her and
learned virtue from her books. She was the Queen of Ambersland, and an Owl was
always perched near. King Hoover held court at midnight, in the garden, so
Amber could hear.

Queen Amberosity and King Hoover, At last, had found true love. Not just any
kind, but the purest of; to love beyond hardship, for the sake of each, and the
benefit of all, to love and to teach. The kingdom grew and flourished across
the mystic sea, and was by the garden nourished, the garden tended by
Amberosity. Together they ruled, although forever apart. Together they loved
and were together in heart.