I tried to warn you when you were a child
I told you not to get lost in the wild
The Yawning Grave, Lord Huron
Keith Yorak Knight only meant to explore the small creek near his pa's shack. He had wanted to play with the tadpoles and pull apart moss, but his father was exhausted from an overnight shift and fell asleep almost as soon as he walked in the door. As he tucked a blanket over his pa, Keith decided he was old enough and brave enough to go out on his own, just for a little bit. He had put on his yellow rubber boots and closed the door quietly on his way out.
The creek is not very far, but Keith's father never let him venture off alone. Looking up through the trees, sunlight filters through the leaves to warm his face as Keith steps over gnarled roots and wet foliage. Without his father, the world seems bigger than before.
On every other tree is a line of twine tied around the trunk, to lead the way. Keith follows the threaded path until he hears the gently curling waters, and smiles to himself. Maybe his dad will be proud of him. The thought brings a skip to his step as he reaches the creek and draws out a small mason jar from his tiny coat. He will need proof he was here.
Keith spends the afternoon stomping in the water and turning over rocks, looking for something to bring back home. The tadpoles are small and squirm out of his stubby fingers. Bugs hop or fly away before he can get close enough to them. Keith once fancies a bird on the ground, before discovering that it is dead and decomposing, with bones sticking out and ants marching in line to feast.
The little boy is about to give up on bringing anything meaningful to his father and just settle on a mushroom, when he spots movement out of the corner of his eye. Over by a slight waterfall, no taller than his knees, lies a salamander on a small boulder. It lets the water gently wash over it, keeping its spotted skin nice and moist.
Keith's eyes practically sparkle in excitement. Carefully, without looking away, Keith bends down and gathers some sticks and leaves to put in the mason jar, before filling it up halfway with fresh creek water. Pa will be so proud of Keith. Maybe he will even let Keith keep it as a pet. Keith had always wanted a pet. Sometimes he heard wolves howling outside and asked his father if he could go outside and make friends with one, but his pa patiently told him no every time. Wolves were wild animals, and belonged in the wild.
So are salamanders, but they are much smaller than wolves, and Keith rather thinks his mason jar would make it a lovely home.
He creeps closer to the salamander. The creature does not move. Keith wonders if it is asleep.
Only when he reaches out does the salamander react. With its stubby, slimy legs it jumps into action, wriggling away from the curious child. Keith leaps after it, slapping his hand where the salamander was moments before. The creature writhes into the crack of two boulders, and Keith races after it, splashing about in the water. Keith reaches in as far as he can into the crevice and—yes! His little hand wraps around the salamander, and he draws it out for a closer look. The salamander flails wildly in his grip but Keith holds on tight, perhaps too tight, for it looks like it is struggling to breathe. Thinking quickly, Keith drops the salamander into the mason jar and twists the lid shut tight.
The salamander swims around in circles, looking for a way out. Keith holds up the jar and grins.
Won't his pa be so impressed!
The thought barely finishes before Keith looks up and notices the light through the trees is a dusky orange. It is late. But how did it get so late? Keith swears it was morning not too long ago.
Either way, he needs to go back home. Clutching the mason jar close to his chest, Keith meanders his way out of the creek and looks for the first set of twined trees.
He finds one, and even two. Keith hums to himself as he brushes a hand along the bark of the trunks. The salamander sways to and fro in the water from his steps.
It is getting dark far too fast. Keith can't see the next tree tied with twine. He stops in place. His pa told him to stay put if he ever got lost.
But how will his pa find him out here?
Keith heads on.
Trees. A fallen over log. A stump, smattered with white mushrooms. A small pond, glistening with the light of the moon.
Keith doesn't recognise any of it!
An owl hoots from above. Crickets chirp. Frogs croak. A twig snaps somewhere in the distance. Is something coming to get him?
With a whimper, Keith runs. He passes by more of the same looking trees, yellow boots crunching the foliage, and he ducks below low hanging branches. The salamander can do nothing but hang on for the ride. Keith clutches the mason jar tight to his chest.
The moon peeks through the branches, but it is nowhere near enough light for Keith to see on his own. He makes his way around an outcropping of rocks, and then…
The trees seem to disperse all at once. One moment he is in the thick of the copse, barely able to take a step without brushing against bark, and the next he draws out into a wide open space.
Keith finds himself in a meadow.
The moon shines brighter than ever, illuminating the soft green grass swaying like the waves of the ocean. Flowers dot in patches, their petals fluttering in the wind. The bees are asleep, and in their place are hundreds of fireflies flickering about. The air is quiet here. Keith feels a slow calm as he hesitantly steps out from the woods. Then he spots something.
In the middle of the meadow is a hill, so steep it towers above all of the trees surrounding it. Keith has to crane his neck to see the top. The grassy slope is peppered with rocks and rotting logs, boulders big enough to climb onto.
Hope rises in Keith's chest. Maybe, if he makes it to the top of the hill, he will be able to see his home!
Emboldened, Keith runs out into the meadow and begins his ascent. He holds the mason jar with one arm while the other balances himself as he scampers up the deep slope. Once or twice he slips on a muddy patch, dirtying his knees, but he gets up and keeps going with determination. His little lungs pant with exertion. The salamander sloshes around in the jar.
When he's about halfway up the hill, his right leg gets caught in a hole. Keith trips, dropping the jar. He grabs for it before it can roll away. After gathering his bearings, Keith pulls at his leg. Nothing. He pulls again. He can feel it breaking free from root and dirt, so Keith kicks and wriggles as strongly as he can, and after a few long panicked moments his leg breaks free. Keith falls over with relief, sporting angry red scratches along his leg to show for it.
It's only when he's finally free that he notices something weird about this hole. He creeps closer, taking care not to touch the edge, and feels warm air gently blowing on his face. It carries the scent of a feast. Roasted meats, cooked vegetables, and even sugary pastries. As if that wasn't strange enough, Keith also picks up music coming from below.
A pounding drum, the lilt of flutes, voices singing, the stomping of feet.
It's coming from the hole.
Eyes wide, Keith leans over the edge. He doesn't see the salamander looking through the jar with a lucid stare, its tiny hands on the glass.
Something rumbles.
The hole suddenly expands, opening like a mouth, with vines and rocks instead of teeth.
Keith tries to escape, but he cannot.
He falls in.
He tumbles, tumbles, tumbles down.
Roots and leaves scratch at his face. Dirt slides with his legs. The salamander spins round and round inside the jar.
Keith is too frightened to scream. He clutches at the mason jar, desperate just to hold onto something, and his little body rolls in its plummet. His stomach somersaults with a sickening pace. He feels like he falls for hours.
Suddenly he bursts out of the chute, spilling onto the floor of a large room. Dirt trickles down from the hole in the ceiling and onto his clothes. Head spinning, Keith gathers to his feet on shaky legs. He scans his surroundings, mouth hanging open as he takes in the scenery.
He stands inside a large kitchen. Open hearths roast pigs and clay ovens line against the walls, flames licking inside. Dried herbs hang over tables where an assortment of people chop vegetables or grind spices in mortars and pestles. Pots, pans, ladles, and all kinds of instruments decorate the walls. A pile of wine barrels sits in a corner.
Keith watches, spellbound. He's in a kitchen, but he's still inside the hill. The walls are made of tightly packed dirt, and roots dangle from the ceiling. The air is warm and stuffy from the trapped heat, ventilated only by a few small holes in the walls.
One such hole of which Keith just fell through.
A woman stirs a cauldron full of broth and various grotesque parts. Her apron is stained from preparing foods, and her face is red and glowing from the heat. Keith steps forward, a question on his lips, when the woman straightens and walks away, and Keith nearly drops his mason jar in shock.
The woman has legs like a goat! In place of shoes there are black hooves, and a stumpy gray tail whips back and forth from beneath her apron.
Keith barely has time to process this before another creature passes by, this one with a single large eye in the center of their face. A man with green skin and mandibles in place of a mouth draws out a soufflé from one of the clay ovens. A tiny girl, no bigger than Keith's head, flutters amongst the crowd with wings like a butterfly, sprinkling pinches of flour over dough. She giggles before tossing a fistful over the head of one of the workers, a boy skinnier than any skeleton with too many fingers.
Suddenly, a voice booms.
"DISGRACEFUL WRETCH!"
Keith jumps.
A large fat woman with horns of an ibex sprouting out of golden curling hair stomps up to Keith, a dough roller clutched in her fist. She waves it angrily at him.
"What do you think you're doing in my kitchen? Are you the one who has been stealing my tarts?"
Keith is too terrified to speak. He clutches the mason jar with the salamander tight to his chest.
"Speak, you slimy toad! Or shall I take your tongue right out of your mouth, since you're so keen to let it go unused?" The woman seethes, then gives pause. "Wait a minute…"
She sniffs the air.
Her black eyes narrow.
"A human? There's a human in my kitchen?"
She bares her teeth. Her sharp, sharp teeth.
Keith runs.
He flees through the legs of workers and beneath tables. The monster woman cries in outrage, but he doesn't dare look back. He stumbles over a crate of apples, sending them rolling across the floor, before scrambling to his feet and sprinting on. No one else seems to notice his presence; they are all far too busy with their work. Keith runs past plates of succulent venison with blackberry sauce; roast quail in rhubarb; raw dove hearts stabbed with toothpicks; extremely fresh snails tossed in pink salt; baked yams with cinnamon and butter; honey and lavender bread; juicy fruit tarts tucked in warm flaky crusts; rich, nutty walnuts dipped in chocolates; and a pastry tower as high as the eye can see.
They are all lined up in a row, and at the very end is a ginormous ornate golden double door. A burly monster with thorns for a smile pushes out a cart filled with fruits—pomegranates and nectarines and peaches and star fruits—and Keith slips behind, avoiding getting kicked by legs thick as tree trunks.
As soon as he clears the threshold, he resumes running as fast as he can.
He's greeted with a blast of music. Whimsical and flighty, a band plays before a grand hall of party-goers. More people who are far too strange to be people dance in circles, their leaf dresses fluttering and bare feet pounding the dirt floor.
For a brief moment, Keith has the strange urge to dance with them.
The thought is broken by the thunderous roar of the monster woman, and Keith jumps. He dashes on.
Keith flies between kicking legs and crawls underneath tables. He drops the mason jar once, making it crack, but grabs it again. His heart pounds in his ears. He hears comments as he passes by.
"… our king… long since wanted… territory…"
"… great battle… celebrate…"
"Perhaps… promotion…"
"… champion… remains undefeated…"
Keith grows more panicked the longer he runs, unable to find a way out. The only ventilation holes are in the top of the ceiling. There are no other doors. No windows. Not even a ladder.
He turns his head to look for the monster woman when he collides into someone's legs. He falls back hard on his rump to the cold dirt floor. Shaking, Keith glances up to find a man staring down at him. His silver eyes are cold, and something sprouts from above his eyebrows, curling over his head. Keith realizes they are horns. His ears are pointed sharp. He's dressed in armor like the kind in story books, a purple so deep it's almost black, and with thorns jutting out at every joint. An angry looking symbol punctuates his chest piece.
But the strangest sight of all is the iron band across his face. The thin metal clasps tight over his skin, smithed to fit perfectly over the bridge of his nose. His skin is scarred and pink around it.
Keith doesn't like the metal band. He wants to get far away from it.
"There you are, piece of dying flesh!"
The monster woman grabs Keith by the hair and pulls him up to his feet. Keith winces, jerking away.
"Utherd! What is the meaning of this? Why are you out of your station?" A man with purple skin and furry ears, wearing the same armor as the man with the iron band, appears from the crowd. His one eye narrows at the woman.
"M-my Lord Sendak," the woman gasps. She releases Keith's hair to bow to the man. "Forgive me. I found this human in my kitchen, and needed to rid our grand halls of this pest."
Lord Sendak's eyebrows raise. "A human? That's impossible; our druids set charms around the perimeter that only allows Unseelie to pass."
"Which makes this party dreadfully boring, I must say," drawls a passing creature, a cat-faced being with horns of a ram. "For what is a revel without a human or two to have fun with? Who will we make dance until they bleed? Stuff Faerie fruit down their greedy gullets? Lull them to sleep for seven years?"
The cat pauses, sensing Lord Sendak's glare. "My apologies," they say. Then, "is that a human?"
"Did someone say human?" asks a woman with rabbit's ears.
"Oh, is there a human here? How delightful!" says a voice belonging to someone Keith cannot see.
"A human! Oakweed, Bris, come look!"
A vein in Lord Sendak's forehead throbs. "Macidus will hear about this," he growls, before turning sharply away with his cape fluttering behind him. "Do with the thing what you will."
A crowd gathers around Keith, all strange beings cooing and hemming and hawing. The man with the iron band doesn't move from his spot.
"Adorable rat, oh, Mama, won't you let me keep him?" says a girl with blue skin and gills on her neck.
"Don't be silly, Brine, we will suck the fluids from his liver," says a woman with scales.
"If you get his liver, then I want his eyes!" calls out a skinny man with flaxseed hair. "Will you look at the color? I've never seen such beauty."
"I want to gnaw the marrow from his bone."
"Do you see that flawless peachy skin? Far too good for a human to have. Oh, my tanner hasn't been used in so long; he would make such a lovely addition to my throw rug!"
"I want his eyelashes!"
"I still say we keep him as a pet!" the blue girl says with a pout.
"Look!" A claw swipes Keith's mason jar from his hands. "It seeks to capture one of our very own!"
Keith reaches for the jar, but the monster holds it out of his reach. The salamander shivers in its prison.
"Wait a minute, I know this one," says a creature with an alligator face. It grabs the mason jar with scaly hands. "Firelips, you sneaky scoundrel! That glamour may fool some, but not me!" With a wave of his hand, the very air around the salamander seems to ripple and shimmer. Then, in place of the salamander, is a red lizard, eyes wide in fear.
"Escaping your debts by fleeing court, eh? Well no more. I shall take payment with what you hold most dear!" With a laugh, the alligator twists open the mason jar, and raises the rim to his lips.
The lizard blasts a plume of fire from its mouth in defense, but it cannot stop the inevitable. With a gulp, the lizard disappears into the alligator's mouth.
Keith can't take it anymore.
He starts to cry.
It starts as little hiccoughs, his chest feeling too small for his lungs. His eyes burn, and tears fall down his cheeks. He wants to curl up into a little ball. He wants to explode. He wants out. Out. Out. OUT.
He wails, the sound ripping from his deepest agony.
The creatures around him step back, some of them covering their ears with their hands.
"Oh, now I remember what I hate about little children," says the cat with horns.
Keith can't speak around the stone in his throat. He just cries, and cries, and cries. His clothes itch. His yellow boots are too tight for his feet. He wants to kick them off. He wants to kick anything.
"Someone quiet that thing!" moans the blue girl.
Someone places a gentle hand on the top of his head. Fingers skate through his hair. The person murmurs something, and it's like the blanket of distress slips away to the floor. The fog dissipates. Keith can breathe again.
He looks up with a sniffle. The silver eyes of the iron banded knight meet his own.
"I will take this child," the knight says, his voice deep and smooth like the stone of a river.
The crowd makes sounds of protest.
"But I saw him first!"
"I already called his eyes!"
"The Champion will just eat him whole!"
"Silence," the knight—the Champion—hisses. His glare pierces through every member of the gathering. "I am the first one this child touched."
"Firelips notwithstanding, apparently," mutters a creature.
"And I am the one who calmed the human," the Champion continues. "Therefore I have the rightful claim to do with this child whatever I wish."
The crowd groans at the loss.
"He's not going to leave anything for us," a monster whines.
"The King grants him far too many freedoms for a prisoner, methinks," says another.
"That iron band is not enough of a cage," the former agrees.
The Champion ignores these quips in favor of scooping Keith up into his hold. Supporting Keith with one arm, he turns away, leaving the crowd to wallow in their complaints.
Keith holds onto the Champion's breastplate, staring at the man. For some reason, he is not afraid. He feels calm. Safe.
The Champion doesn't look at him, only makes his way through the bustling party without a word. Many attendants stop and stare. Keith ignores them. The band continues on playing, the dancers go on dancing, and the gluttonous stuff their faces.
After a while the Champion breaks free of the crowd, and heads toward a spot in the dirt wall framed by a stone arch. He doesn't stop or slow down, even as he draws closer. Keith wants to warn him, but the words don't come. Just before they run into the wall, Keith flinches, and hides his face against the Champion's neck.
His skin prickles with a strange energy, and then he feels a cool wind brushing his hair.
Keith opens his eyes.
They are outside.
Gaping, he looks up at the bright stars, then to the hill behind them. His grip on the knight's breastplate tightens. The Champion says nothing, only continues carrying him on through the woods.
The critters seem to quiet in the face of his return. Keith hears not a cricket, nor an owl, or even a fox breaking twigs. The moon shines bright through the trees. Keith thinks he recognizes one of the thick trunks.
After a long time, the Champion breaks his silence.
"You are awfully quiet for a human child," he says. "What are you called?"
Keith stares at him contemplatively. He wants to ask if the man is really going to eat him, like the others said. Instead, he answers.
"Keith," he says, voice rough from disuse. "Keith Yorak Knight—,"
A hand slaps over Keith's mouth. "Never," the knight hisses, "speak your full name around the Folk again! Do you understand me, foolish one?"
Keith blinks with wide eyes, and nods.
The Champion sighs, and withdraws his hand. "You are a lucky one indeed. You can trust that I would never use your name for nefarious purposes." Then after a moment his brow furrows. "'Yorak,' … what a queer name for a human," he muses.
Keith doesn't respond to that. Instead he asks, "What's your name?"
The Champion sighs through his nose. His skin burns from the iron. "I am called Shiro," he says.
"Shroe," Keith says.
He shakes his head. "Shi-Ro," he repeats.
"Shi, ro."
"Very good."
"Are you going to eat me?"
The Champion, Shiro, surprises Keith with a laugh. It jostles Keith's place on his arm. "No, little one. I am not going to eat you."
Keith smiles.
Shiro carries Keith through the forest for a long time, past creeks and logs and badger holes. Keith doesn't know how Shiro knows where to go, but he doesn't ask.
Eventually they break through a clearing, and Keith immediately knows where they are. His pa's shack is nearby. He looks at Shiro with bright eyes.
"One question, Keith," says Shiro, his silver eyes serious. "Do you like oatmeal?"
Keith tilts his head at the weird question, but nods.
"Then be sure to carry some in your pocket from now on."
He doesn't explain anymore, just shifts Keith in his arm and sets him back down to stand on his own. Keith arches his neck to gaze up at the man who saved his life.
"I love you," Keith says.
Shiro surprises him again by barking out a laugh, this one louder than before. He crouches down on one knee and ruffles Keith's hair.
"Gratitude," he says. "The love of a human is a precious thing. Now go," he nods to the side, "someone is waiting for you."
Keith turns to where Shiro gestured, and sees his shack. Standing alone and run down in the middle of the woods, it looks like utter paradise to Keith. With a gasp, Keith darts off. He bursts through the gate of the fence, arms held out wide. "Pa!" he shouts.
His father comes out of the front door, already crying, as he scoops up his son desperately in his arms. He nuzzles into Keith's neck, getting his shirt wet with tears. Keith hugs back, wailing.
After a tearful reunion, when his father finally picks him up to go inside, Keith glances out into the woods.
No one is there.