"The Raven has quite an eye for talent, doesn't it?" The Goose said to Robert when they were back on the road.

"What are his chances?" Robert asked about Jim Balmer.

"I'd say he's got more than a good chance of winning."

Robert struggled to come to grips with his role in all of this. The Raven's choice of Jim Balmer was a smart, calculated move. Robert couldn't do what Jim Balmer was doing and couldn't imagine himself being as useful to the Goose as Jim Balmer was to the Raven. He saw their chances against the Raven as being very slim, but decided to trust that the Goose's reasons for making the decisions that it had made were well founded.

Robert had been to Iowa once before, during his college days when he had volunteered for a senator's presidential campaign. The senator, a proud socialist from Rhode Island named Doug Dwyer, had had to drop out of the race after receiving only 2% of the vote in the Iowa caucus, but he believed, as did Robert, that his campaign had forced the conversation in the Democratic party in an important direction.

With the roots from the trees having destroyed the roads, Robert had to park the car on the side of the road at the outer edge of the forest and they had to walk the rest of the way with the egg in Robert's backpack. Once inside the forest, it didn't take long for the tree cover to become so thick that you couldn't see sunlight anymore.

"This is incredible," Robert said to the Goose.

"This is nothing, give it a couple more years and the entire continent will be a giant forest. You see, the more the forest grows, the faster it grows."

They walked along what was left of the highway that used to be there for roughly thirty minutes when they encountered a member of the Green Corps who was standing guard on the road. The guard was a young man, late teens or early twenties, who was wearing camouflage military fatigues with an M-16 rifle slung over his neck. The camouflage allowed them to blend in perfectly with the forest and the rifle was a warning that they meant business. These people were true believers, and Robert felt apprehensive about continuing.

"Can I help you sir?" The guard asked Robert.

"I came to visit the forest."

"What's with the Goose?"

"It's my companion animal."

"Keeping the ecosystem here in the forest in balance is our main responsibility, we can't have strange animals coming in here and upsetting it."

"The Goose won't leave my side, I promise."

The guard took a long look at Robert and the Goose while he made up his mind about what to do, eventually reaching for the walkie-talkie on his belt.

"Victor, I've got a tourist here, what do you want me to do?" He radioed.

"Just the one?" Victor radioed back.

"Yeah, some guy, and his pet Goose."

"Does he seem like a threat?"

"No, he looks pretty harmless."

"I'm sending someone to serve as his guide, keep him there and continue manning your post."

A few minutes later another member of the Green Corps arrived, this time a young woman who introduced herself as Jessie and informed Robert that he was to stay close to her at all times, or else. Robert was fairly confident he knew what 'or else' meant and walked a few paces behind her with the Goose, which Jessie eyed with suspicion.

Deep in the forest, alerted to the close proximity of the egg, the goat awakened from its afternoon slumber and began making its way toward the egg. It left its shrine that the Green Corps had built for it at the base of the giant oak and walked until it reached the high wooden fence that the Green Corps had built around there perimeter of the tree to keep the goat concealed. When it reached the wooden fence the goat started ramming into it and crying in panic. The goat was behaving in a way it never had before, and the guards assigned to watch over it didn't know what to do. To stop the goat from hurting itself, the guards opened the gate to let the goat out. The goat walked to the gate, looked up at the guards as if to acknowledge what they were doing for it, and galloped off in the direction of Robert and the Goose.

"So, how long have you been here?" Robert asked Jessie to alleviate the tension that had built up in the silence.

"Just over a year," Jessie answered.

"What brought you here?"

"I was in a dark place in my life, and this place just has a real healing feeling about it, you know?"

Walking through the forest, Robert had to agree. All around them ferns and other forms of underbrush grew high and thick, the trees had beautiful flowering vines wrapped around them, and the only sounds that could be heard were those of the animals that had made the forest their new home.

"Do you guys have some kind of plan for this place or do you just want to protect it?" Robert asked.

"Most of us are happy just being here and helping to protect this place, but Mason, our leader, he's got much bigger plans."

"What kind of plans?"

"He keeps talking about finding a way to harness the power that's fueling the growth here and using it to grow enough food to feed the whole world."

"Is the goat the power that you're talking about?"

In a flash, Jessie spun around and raised her gun to Robert's face.

"Who are you?" She asked with a look of murderous intent on her face.

"He's the Waker, chosen by me to release the guardians from their slumber, one of which is the goat that is responsible for the growth of this forest," the Goose stepped forward and said to her.

"What the fuck?! That thing can talk?!"

"A talking animal shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you with what you've witnessed during your time here," the Goose said.

"Have you come to take the goat away?"

"I'm afraid so, he has a purpose that he needs to fulfill; the forest will be fine, it'll just stop growing."

"It's not just that, without the goat here I don't know if, I don't know..." Jessie said, succumbing to tears.

At that moment the area of forest they were in suddenly became shrouded in mist. They heard the sound of hooves clattering on the ground, and soon the goat was before them, followed closely by the two guards that had followed it from its enclosure.

"Is this the goat?" Robert asked the Goose.

"Yes, it's been drawn here by the egg."

"What do we do?" Robert asked, unnerved by the expectant way in which the goat was looking up at him with its bright blue eyes.

"Get the egg out."

Robert removed his backpack from his shoulders and set it on the ground, watched closely by the goat and by the three rangers, who were stunned silent by what they were witnessing. Robert removed the egg from the bag, cradled it in his hand, got down on one knee and held it out before him. The goat stepped forward and put its snout to the egg. Contact with the egg caused the goat to start glowing white, and while aglow it underwent a transformation that saw it assume the appearance of a regular goat.

"Hello old friend," the Goose said to the goat.

"How long has it been?" The goat asked in a deep, sonorous voice.

"Too long, and, as is always the case, we have much work to do."

"Yes, I can feel it, I have never felt anything quite like it before."

The goat was the Guardian that was most in tune with the natural world and upon regaining full consciousness it was overcome by the horror of what had transpired during its slumber. The knowledge it acquired in its first brief moments of consciousness caused it great despair, requiring the Goose to do what it could to talk it out of its despair.

"There, there, my friend, remember that we are a beacon of hope that cannot be extinguished."

"Why are you the only one who's here to greet me?"

"Because you are the first one to be awakened; we thought that you could be a diplomatic presence when we awakened the others."

"You're certainly going to need it; I'm feeling physically ill, something I've never felt before; I can't imagine how the others are going to react."

The Goose and the goat continued speaking to each other in a language the humans couldn't understand, something ancient sounding, until their conversation was interrupted by Mason, the leader of the Green Corps, who had been alerted to the goat's abnormal behavior by the two guards that he had assigned to watch over it. He had followed them using the trackers embedded in their walkie-talkies and arrived at their location not knowing what he would find, thinking only that no matter what he couldn't lose the goat before he had learned its secrets.

Mason had worked five years earlier as a USAID worker in Africa in Niger Delta region, where severe drought caused by climate change combined with decades of exponential overpopulation had produced a humanitarian disaster the likes of which had never been seen. Millions lived in plastic tents in refugee camps where Malnourishment, dehydration and disease were rife, subsisting on meager food and water rations provided by developed nations. Mason realized soon after arriving at one of the camps that there was no hope for any of these people, that they had all been given a death sentence which sooner or later would be carried out by something or other. He returned to his parents' home in St. Louis after three months in Africa and, unable to come to terms with what he had seen and experienced, was mired in a deep depression, recovery from which seemed remote to impossible. Given the problems afflicting the world, it seemed that only a miracle could save it from the mess that it was in, and Mason believed that the forest was that miracle, belief which turned to certainty when he saw the goat with six tails, golden horns and bright blue eyes. Living in the forest and protecting the goat had given him a sense of purpose and restored his belief that he could do something to change things for the better. When he saw that the goat had lost its deific appearance he felt his spirit draining from his body, believing that because the goats appearance had changed that it had lost its divine power, and that now he would never be able to grow the food necessary to feed and save the world. He slumped to his knees with a look of utter desolation on his face and remained that way until the goat walked over to him.

"Mason." The goat said to him.

Life returned to his face and his body as quickly as it had left. The goat's ability to talk was as wondrous as its previous appearance had been, and if it could talk, then it could tell him its secrets, but Mason had gone through too many emotional swings in too short a space of time to ask his questions.

"I want to thank you, Mason, for everything that you have done for me and for this forest. Your ambitions are admirable, and to reward you for all that you've done I'm going to give you what you need to realize them. Under the roots of the tree that's at the center of the forest you'll find a seed, bury that seed in the ground and anything that you grow on that land will grow in the blink of an eye, just like this forest, so you can take it and use it to grow your crops and feed the world, good luck to you."

The Goose had heard him. Mason had spent years waiting for this moment and now that it was here he became irretrievably overwhelmed by it. He remained down on his knees crying while Robert and the Goose got ready to leave with the goat.

"Are we done here?" Robert asked the Goose.

"Well?" The Goose asked the goat.

"Yes, we are," the goat answered, then turned to Jessie and the two guards that had followed it from its enclosure, "I would like to thank you all as well for all that you have done for me during my time here, and I wish you the best."

Robert, the Goose and the goat turned to leave, they had done what they came to do and it was now time for them to go.

"Wait!" A voice called out from behind them as they were leaving. The voice was Jessie's.

"Take me with you."

"Take you with me where?" Robert asked her.

"Wherever it is you're going, I just want to be close to the goat, please, don't take it away from me."

"Sure, you can come with us," the Goose answered.

The Goose saw the deep despair that being separated from the goat was causing Jessie and the sympathy that the Goose felt for her compelled it to do something to alleviate her despair. Robert felt the same way.

"Yeah, come along, it'll be fun," he said to Jessie.

So Robert and Jessie and the two talking animals returned to Robert's car and got back on the road for the sixteen hour drive back to Queens. Jessie looked like she couldn't have been more than nineteen years old. Robert watched her sitting in the backseat of the car with the goat on her lap while he was driving and wondered what she must have gone through to make her leave home and travel to the forest when she was still just a young teenage girl. It seemed like being close to the goat was helping her more than anything else could, and, while Robert did want to help her, he was also interested in understanding her relationship with the goat, believing that it was important for the pilgrimage that he understand it.