The Keepers

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There weren’t always ships in the Sea, either, but no one bothered much about that. Ships were useful, and if they drifted in from beyond the Edge, no one was going to complain. Even the battered ones could provide materials or kindling. Some were in good enough shape to sail. The rest simply crowded together over the years, catching and linking and moving as one on the gentle waters. Some said that the floating Village of Rusenflyte created itself, and the villagers came later. Just where some of those villagers came from—well, perhaps there weren’t always humans in the Fae Realm, either. But, neither were there always ships in the Sea. Nor, apparently, dragons in the Valley.

* * *

Shryn caressed the plain, young face with webbed fingers. It lacked the glow of life, and yet breath there was. She checked for broken bones and found two among the lacerations and bruises. Shreds of rope had dug into the flesh where the young woman had clearly tied herself to the boat in hopes of salvation. Fragments of its splintered remains had been floating with her when they discovered her body in the gentle waves outside their boats.

“You are safe,” Shryn whispered to the woman, her words flowing like the cool stream that ran through her veins.

“Warm her!” Kaito cried as he shoved his bulk between the shells and webbing and scales of the fae crowd. “If she is human, she must be warmed.” His deep-set eyes, usually so thin, now opened wide in the sandy face. Each panting breath sent a quiver through the long, matted locks of hair that hung down his back like black ropes. He swallowed, and his voice returned to the quiet tone for which he was known. “We die in such cold waters. We must be warm and dry.”

Shryn gave him a single nod.

In a swift movement, he tied his hair in a knot then knelt to scoop up the lifeless figure. Shryn cradled the broken wrist as the youth stood. His feet knew well how to balance upon the wet boards, even with such helpless weight in his arms.

“Bring her to my boat,” Shryn said. “It is closer.”

The crowd walked and slithered, padded and flapped their way along the narrow paths that undulated between the boats that formed the outskirts of the Village. Shryn was quick to prepare a space on the hanging bed, and she sent Kaito for blankets from his own dwelling. She could hear his heavy sprint rocking the other boats as he passed, displacing water in violent sloshes at their wooden sides.

Shryn waved her webbing at the jumble of faces in the doorway. “Shush out, the lot of you. No need for your goggling eyes here.”

“Will it get better?” a frog-limbed girl asked, popping her head up on the other side of the bed. Her round, yellow eyes stared with fascination as she gnawed on a strand of green hair.

“She will,” Shryn said, flowing to the child’s side and picking her up. “Opportunity is beneficent, which bids me to hope that she has been found in time, for surely something must come of this moment so perfectly met. Now, you must go.”

By the time Kaito returned with a sack of every piece of cloth he must have ever owned, Shryn had gotten a fire going and was preparing to set the bones. When night seeped into the sky, the young woman was bundled and fully dry. The instant Kaito lifted a bowl of seaweed stew to his lips, the comforting lap of waves was shredded by a guttural moan from the stirring bed.

“Shh, shh,” Shryn soothed the woman as Kaito spluttered behind her.

The youth came to her side, drips of stew in the scruff at his chin. He gave a residual cough and thumped his chest a time or two, but the woman flinched with every beat. He held still, small mouth pinched as if holding his breath could provide the stillness requisite for her comfort. The woman stirred, pale lips stretching in a grimace as her moan turned to a groan, then mounted to a scream. Shryn caressed her cheek and hair, but the woman thrashed, tearing herself away from the touch and dangerously jerking the bed upon its ropes.

The fae rounded on Kaito and grabbed his large, warm hands. She yanked him forward, and placed his palms, callouses and all, on either side of the woman’s battered face.

Kaito’s thick brows knotted in fear, his limbs tensing to withdraw, but Shryn rubbed the vast expanse of his back. She could not soothe the woman with her warmthless hands, but she could ease Kaito. She could reassure the boy that had grown up without the warmth of his own kind. She could encourage the adopted son of her friend, some years hence gone.

“You are safe,” said the boy, now a man, his voice cracking as tears found their way through his reluctant beard. “You are found. You are safe. You are found.” His thumbs stroked those pale cheeks as his muscles eased, and so did hers. She eased and eased, sinking softly into the blankets until she could ease no more.

They buried her the next day. Atop the Cliff, where the air was vast and the waves could not reach, Kaito and the turtle lads lowered her into the soil. It felt strange to follow in the custom of land fae, but Shryn knew it was right. The woman had been a creature of the Air, while they were subjects of the Sea.

As the sky shifted to the gray of twilight, she knocked on Kaito’s door, but no answer came. She opened it, but his boat was empty. “Foolish,” she chided herself, and began the long flow uphill to the Cliff. She found a silhouette like a boulder with thick grasses down one side, and knew she had found him. Even huddled with arms around his knees, Kaito seemed massive.

“It only ever wanted the boat,” he said as Shryn splashed down beside him in the grass. “She was incidental.”

“What is it that wanted the boat?”

“The thing that brought it here. Whatever-it-is that made the Village.”

“Ah, then also whatever-it-is that brought you to us.”

“But not on purpose.”

Shryn could not deny that. The small boy had come to them in a vessel that floated into Rusenflyte’s jumble of ships. He had been wedged so tightly in a linen cupboard that he had been found unscathed. Screaming, but unscathed.

“The intention of your arrival may have been lacking,” Shryn said carefully, “but your father’s intention of raising you was unwaveringly strong. He chose to love you.”

Kaito nodded with enough vigor to defeat any thought to the contrary. “That he did. And I—if ever so brief—chose to love that woman.” Abruptly, he sat up straight. “Not like that,” he added in a sudden tone of boyish denial.

Shryn wished she could see his face properly in the dark. It always amused her the way his complexion could change from the freckled warmth of the sands upon the beach to the deep glow of the sky before twilight. “I believe she knew your heart,” she said as if his embarrassment had never surfaced. “She knew she was not alone.”

Kaito lowered his chin to his knees and nodded, ropes of hair rustling against his shirt.

Into the depths of night, they sat. The soft slushing of surf below them, the warbling whistle of wind above. Then, in and through those both, at the very edge of hearing, echoed a haunting howl.

Shryn inhaled deeply, calming her waters. “You were very young when you came to us,” she said, fingering the hair that streamed like water over her shoulders, “so, perhaps you do not remember.”

Kaito shifted toward her, attention fixed upon the words that would come.

“Perhaps you do not remember,” she continued, “but you spoke of something as you pointed to the motifs on many of the boats.” On the prows of many a ship in the Village, or carved into the masts of others, wondrous beasts reigned and danced. With manes like flame and scales like shells, branching antlers and curling tongues, they bit their own tails in magnificent, unending swirls. “You knew those strange creatures,” she went on. “You called them by a name you spoke as surely as your own. You recognized them and knew without a doubt that they existed. Do you remember that, Kaito?”

His dark brows lowered with his eyes. “I don’t know. Only barely. Maybe”

“You called them Keepers,” said Shryn. “You said…you said that it was because of such a one that you were here.”

Kaito rubbed a hand over his face, unable to cover the dismissive scrape of a laugh at the back of his throat. Yet, it wasn’t to her. It was the disbelief that such forgotten babblings could have come from his own mouth. In a moment, he grew solemn again. Hopeful. “You don’t believe, then, that I simply made it up?”

Shryn touched his broad arm. He was so grown from that small child who spoke in fantasies while he, himself, was nearly fantastical as well. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Perhaps there is such a creature in the place where you and the ships are from. Long ago, there were ancient tales of the Lords of Sea and Lords of Air. They were children’s tales of outlandish whims that served a higher purpose, a noble cause. Perhaps your Keepers are only such a tale, or perhaps they are whispers of truths riddled in rhymes.” She caught up the swift rush of her words and took a wavering breath. The scents of salt and grass filled her. “What I do know, Kaito, is that opportunity is beneficent. We found that woman before she breathed her last, and thereby her final moments could be eased by your presence, by your touch. Likewise, perhaps her presence in your life, no matter how fleeting, is a moment of beneficence, as well. A moment that could touch you. A moment to bring something to you that you did not have before.”

Kaito turned his face toward the vastness of the Sea. Once more, the wind carried that vague, unreal howl in its wisps. A trick of sound, an echo of wind and waves and voices from the Village…and yet, all was dark, all was quiet, all was still.

Shryn trickled her fingers over the angles of stones and the prickles of grass. The Cliff was not the only place of land. Valley and Mountain, Hills and Plains—she knew a vast realm existed within the confines of the Edge. “I believe,” she said, “that there are many things in this world that have not always been. Boats and ships—everything from out there—they are not alone in the way they drip, one by one, into existence.”

“Is it really a drip?”

“How do you mean?”

Kaito shook his head as if rattling his thoughts into order. “If there really are Lords of Sea and Lords of Air, then each new thing brought here would be chosen—it wouldn’t just be an accident. It wouldn’t be incidental.” His voice hardened with the word, and he subsided into momentary silence. “What else has come?” he went on, at last, bending his head to look at her.

“Oh, if rumors are true, not all are like our boats.” A shiver swished Shryn’s waters. “Terrible things in the Valley, one tale claimed. Terrible beasts of scales and feathers and claws and fangs. Terrible, terrible lizards that are unlike anything we here—”

“Creatures of the Air,” Kaito breathed, a quiet focus in his voice. “I am a creature of the Air. A Keeper here would not seek me or my kind to find and keep and bring to safety. If one were to want us—if one were to pick us….”

Shryn remained by his side as his musings drifted inward. She had only spoken the little she knew, the little that had been reminded to her when the woman had appeared. It had been long since she had wondered. Perhaps such an opportunity was a beneficence to herself, as well. Tonight, she had thought of things far away, even if she would never seek them.

Eventually, Kaito heaved himself to his feet and offered his hand to Shryn. She took it. Together, they walked down the steep, winding path. Shryn leaned on Kaito’s arm to keep from slipping all the way down without him, and the large youth held on to her as if he himself would collapse without this simple contact. At her boat, the blue light of the lantern illuminated his features. In a way this shy boy had rarely done before, he let his black eyes look into hers. They were earnest and sad. And yet, they also glinted with something new—a swirl of thoughts and ideas and wonderings. A seeking.

“Thank you,” he said.

Shryn gave a single nod, sweet and painful as a farewell.

In the morning, Kaito was gone.