Just under the palace were five pastures on both sides of the main boulevard, and in each of those manicured and ornately decorated lawns was one cow, and off to one side a guy wearing a white hat and carrying a shovel. Waiting. Now I knew what all the other shovel-carrying guys working the streets of all the towns were trying to advance their way up to.
The guys on horses dismounted at a massive gate made of stone pillars and gold bars. The palace itself was surrounded by a tall stone wall that looked too high to even try to climb.
The stone was highly polished and there looked to be gold lining the top.
The guy in charge pointed us at the gate, but didn’t follow us in. Instead, five other men in white robes with gold trim met us just inside the gate and indicated we should follow. Each carried a golden shovel like a cane, using it to walk. It was clear that a person who worked outside the palace and didn’t have a golden shovel couldn’t get into the palace. Why were we so lucky?
“Would you look at all the gold!” Aahz said, his head whipping back and forth as he tried to take it all in.
“Amazing,” Tananda said, her voice soft and carrying the awe she felt.
I couldn’t say anything. The sight that greeted us inside that gate was beyond anything I had ever imagined. There was nothing but beautiful-trimmed lawns, gold ornaments, strangely shaped shrubs, and guys in white robes and white hats with golden shovels. Maybe a dozen different cows grazed on the beautiful lawns, clearly without a care in the world, all tended by guys in white robes with golden shovels.