Kelwas awakened to find the door unlatched and ajar, which led him to find Goldenrod's bed empty. The hollow of where she'd lain - he now wondered if she'd slept at all - as cold as the morning air. His mind wheeled from how she had gotten past him to why she had made him promise to help her and back again, avoiding the grim worry at its center. 

Kissing his mother's cheek, he hurried outside, staff in hand and whistled for Wolf.

Heart growing heavier with each step, Kelwas knew the girl had gone back into the Wildwood. Living on its borders all his life had, instead of inuring him to its many dangers, made him even more wary of them. So, when he found a tangle of blonde hair caught on a low branch a darkness seemed to swoop down to perch on his shoulder. Because he stood under the eaves of the Wildwood, and not those of his home, he murmured a quick plea for Khayme All-Father to watch over him before moving deeper into the ominous quiet of the forest. 

As he made his way back towards the clearing where he'd first met Goldenrod and her raven-hearted brother, he kept expecting to catch glimpses of Wolf moving between the trees like a gray ghost. Nothing but the gloom, gnawing at the edges of his sight, and silence pressing in on him on all sides. 

The path he followed was so narrow, so slight as to be a mere hint of bare earth visible here and there beneath the leaf litter. Kelwas had heard that the trees of the Wildwoods resented even this small reminder of humanity's presence, and through the slow movement of root, of branch, sought to sweep away its tracks. Several times already, Kelwas found himself pausing to glean whether he was still on the path Goldenrod had followed into the forest, or if he was led astray and now lost.

As the day above the treetops lengthened into afternoon, the shadows deepened and true dark gnawed away at even the faint light. Alone, Kelwas staggered to a stop as he allowed himself to feel how heavy that burden weighed on him. For a moment, he shrugged it off and raised his fingers to his mouth for a shrill whistle. The dark forest swallowed it whole, not even spitting back out the meager bones of an echo. 

Only then did he let himself feel afraid.

He feared never finding Goldenrod, who might also be lost in the Wildwood, and despite running off expecting him to fulfill his promise to her. He might never find his way out, and waste away until his skin and bones festooned a tree's roots. His mother - who depended on him for plowing and sowing - could also suffer as death claimed her one mouthful at a time. And what would become of Wolf?

You may think Kelwas foolish for being afraid, for falling - however briefly - into despair. You who would say, I would not have done that or why did he not do this are lucky to be here, listening to a story about the Wildwood and not there, lost and in the dark, surrounded by the silent malice of trees. So, do not be so quick to judge unless you've walked the same paths as he.

You might be forgiven for averting your gaze from Kelwas, so that he could weep without feeling any shame, but a faint light silvered the boles around him. Kelwas hid behind a tree to watch an otherworldly procession drift through the trees. They carried aloft torches that glittered like cold and distant stars, and their voices - high and clear as silvered bells - were raised in song. Behind them, black horses drew a black funeral carriage. An old king, so gaunt with age Kelwas could almost see through him, lay within. His be-ringed hands had been folded over his jeweled robes like a saint in repose.

Kelwas trembled with the effort of holding himself still, of not crashing through the underbrush in the pitch black to become part of the ethereal choir, to join his voice with theirs in song, to no longer feel so bitterly alone and lost, yes he ached for this so much he instead crushed himself against the nearest tree, wrapping his arms around it, feeling the rough bark, hoary with lichen, against his cheek for he had also heard enough of the same tales you no doubt have and knew what happened to travelers lured away from the path.

How long he stayed there, eyes squeezed shut and wishing he could stopper his ears, was not known. When at last he opened his eyes, the forest around him was no longer pitch black. Kelwas wiped at his eyes, gummy with lack of sleep. He was thirsty and his stomach yawned with hunger. Trudging ahead on what he hoped was still the trail, Kelwas knew he needed to find water soon.

A low croak drew his eyes to a raven perched on a branch ahead. Something that Kelwas realized was an old waterskin dangled under the bird's perch as he drew closer. Before he got within reach of the battered skin, the bird was gone in a flurry of wings. Unstoppering the neck, Kelwas sniffed the opening. Not fresh, but the water had not gone stale, either. He sipped a mere mouthful before closing it again. Best to wait and see if that mouthful agreed with his guts before drinking any more. He returned to picking his way through the trees on what he still hoped was the original path.

Without seeing the sun, Kelwas couldn't measure how long before he saw the raven again. 

Again, it perched on a low branch ahead.

At first, Kelwas could not grasp that the pale object it held in its beak was a wedge of cheese. After a moment, his stomach gurgled loud enough to startle the bird and it hopped off to fly to another branch. Kelwas followed, keeping his distance. With a tilt of its head, the raven watched him approach. It blinked, eye going milky, and made a series of small, satisfied noises. When Kelwas drew closer, the bird hopped to another branch, but did not fly away. 

Ah, I know how this one goes, you may say, thinking about the old story. He'll trick the bird into singing with him and kathum kazaad! we all know what happens then. Your memory would be commendable, for that is indeed the way that story goes. However, you would be forgetting how often hunger and thirst do not - as holy men assert - sharpen the wits. Add to this the black mood roosting on Kelwas' shoulder, and you might begin to see the why of his actions. So, when the raven dropped the cheese before flying off, Kelwas could only stare at it before pouncing. He wolfed down half the wedge without bothering to brush it off. The rest, he put into his belt pouch for later.

He once more set out along what he was now more certain was still the path. Heartened by a bit of food in his belly, Kelwas even stopped to whistle again, cocking an ear to listen for Wolf. Again, nothing. Keeping his distance from the Wildwood was an instinct Kelwas couldn't fault. If only he could find Goldenrod before nightfall. As if his thoughts called out to her, Kelwas heard the girl's voice in the distance. 

She seemed to be shouting.

Before he could make sense of what Goldenrod was saying, Kelwas was on his feet and running towards her. Trees already flashing past, he heard her cry out again, this time from slightly more towards his left. He changed direction without thinking, and redoubled his efforts. Kelwas answered by shouting her name, hoping she could hear him. 

"Someone help - I'm hurt!" Her voice seemed to come from yet another direction.

His suspicions up at last, Kelwas trotted to a stop. A slight movement caught his eye, and he peered into the branches overhead. Kelwas did not notice Wolf running through the trees, gray and silent as death. He did not see him until the animal flashed past to jump halfway up the same tree, claws scrabbling at the bark. Wolf growled, ears forward and amber eyes staring at something up in the branches. The sound startled a sleek black raven Kelwas had not seen until then. It flapped in alarm before flying farther up into the canopy. Goldenrod's girlish laughter drifted down towards Kelwas, and he cursed himself for a fool.

As a matter of course, you must already know the reputation ravens share. Thieves. Mimics. Symbols of ill omen. However, they have been known to guide lost travelers and repay kindness with gifts - though what a raven thinks of as valuable is different than what you might expect. Yes, it is true that many of these may be snarled up with our fear of the Rimelanders - for it is one of their symbols - but know this: ravens are a people, and like ourselves they struggle to balance cleverness and cruelty. You may want to know whether these ravens were Goldenrod's transformed brothers, or if they were part of another flock, a mere coincidence. The vast Wildwood was home to more than many creatures, including Grandmother Owl's favored children. Would that sate your curiosity? What if you learned Kelwas had been led nearly to the edge of a crevasse? What a squawk you would raise if the hero died like any peasant might - and without completing his quest. 

Even as he greeted Wolf and praised him and shared a morsel of cheese with him, a cold dread gripped Kelwas. He had not only left the path, but did not know how to find it again before night fell. Before that black mood could swoop down to perch on his shoulder again however, Wolf huffed at him and trotted ahead. He stopped to look back and stare at Kelwas for a moment, then returned his amber gaze towards the trees. He stood with a groan. If he leaned on his staff more than usual, it was because he shouldered his lack of sleep and bone-aching weariness as he came to Wolf's side. Despite this, a small ember flared back to life inside him as he followed his friend. Kelwas shielded that tiny flame even from his own thoughts, because he knew just as well as you that to turn your eye inward and see your own happiness in the moment smothers it. Perhaps Wolf could scent the path through the Wildwood. Kelwas gladly followed.

How fortunate, you may murmur to anyone who will listen and roll your eyes at how much happenstance is threaded through this story. You could be forgiven for expecting heroes to have much more influence in what happens around them. It's what so many of your favorite ballads and songs have led you to believe. After all, isn't the wisdom of Tzoltín's On Wonder Tales say, "the hero of story and song must be an exemplar of someone who yanks their fate out of blind Sirzei's fingers and makes it their own"? But Kelwas never considered himself great, and would have considered it blind arrogance to try and force his will upon what was to be. So it was that he was often as surprised as you might be when odd, and often dangerous things happened. You might find his moments of doubt a weakness when compared against the great heroes of story and song, but perhaps it is wisdom to urge you to ask why that is. Old Tzoltín would undoubtedly gnash his teeth and consider Kelwas beneath him, but consider the old saying: beware the mountain-top filling your sight, lest you stumble on a rock underfoot.

And so, Wolf followed the scent and Kelwas followed Wolf to find Goldenrod at last. She dozed with her legs folded under her, leaning a shoulder against the side of a cliff. Her clean bandages - already spotted with blood - lay draped over the undergrowth, and she cradled her flayed hand, her key-hand. Her cheeks were striped by tears.  A single ray of light shone down, gilding the crown of her head, the curve of her face so that in repose she looked like she belonged on an icon. The cliff face glittered, crystalline blooms all up its length except for a silvered keyhole set into the stone. Its mouth was blooded with use.

But where was Wolf all this time? you may ask, or how was Wolf at last reunited with his pack-mate and trail-kin? For this, you would need to backtrack to that first shrill whistle Kelwas gave at the edge of the Wildwood. Even in sleep, Wolf's ears pricked at the sound and he woke. Wolf had long ago become accustomed to the strangeness of Kelwas' howl, but recognized it as a call to be answered. After he left his den to stand blinking in the sun, he made his way to find out why Kelwas had called for him, skirting any open fields - for as you might imagine, Kelwas' distant neighbors viewed wolves as slavering beasts eager to rip out their throats or steal away their children. By the time Wolf reached the part of the path where you might recall Kelwas had found the tangle of Goldenrod's hair, the scent had grown faint enough his nose accused him of sleeping days and days. Wolf knew this could not be true, for in the manner of his people, he could follow the paths of the moon and sun across the sky and keep an accounting of time passing well enough. The sun that had peeked over the edge of the land when Kelwas awoke him was the same sun beginning its long climb into the sky now. 

Wolf flicked his ears back with unease but allowed himself to be led by scent.

So, he came to a place where the faint, watered down scents of Kelwas and the girl crossed several times. Unable to worry the knot loose at first, Wolf paced back and forth before letting his haunches sink to the ground to rest. Panting, he swiveled his ears this way and that to listen. Perhaps he could catch the scrape of Kelwas' boots over leaves, or the patter of the girl's feet over bare earth. 

The only sounds were those of the Wildwood. Breezes riffled through the treetops but did not penetrate the canopy to sigh over Wolf's fur. A stream burbled over stones in the distance. And one other thing: the flutter of wings as something flew from tree to tree, following Wolf. Unconcerned, he paused to rest, hindquarters wedged between roots. As the heat of the day settled around him, Wolf found himself wandering in and out of sleep. So it happened he was yanked awake by something sharp poking at the base of his tail. Springing to his feet, Wolf caught a glimpse of a raven flapping up into the trees, a tuft of gray hair in its beak.

He leapt, snapping at the bird. Startled, it danced away with its wings outstretched. Cocking its head to fix Wolf with one dark eye, it flew to the safety of a faraway branch. Stalking towards it, his lambent gaze never left the bird's until, threatened, the bird flapped away again - this time even farther. Its low croaks sounded self-satisfied, and with the hank of fur still in its beak, it would have made Wolf loll his tongue with amusement.

So it continued throughout the night: just as Wolf's interest flagged, and he was ready to turn back, a raven swooped down to prod him and the chase was on again. And again, until Wolf was reunited with Kelwas. Was it the same raven, or did others join in the game, you may ask. It is well-observed that ravens, much like crows and magpies and other troublesome birds often flock together, sometimes even working as one to achieve something. It could be that it was merely one, but it could also have been several. You could be excused for thinking it could have been Goldenrod's brothers, who elsewhere were harassing Kelwas, but whether this is or is not correct will again be something you will have to decide on your own. 

Now, with your interest in where Wolf was sated, you can now imagine them finding the girl Goldenrod again. Kelwas murmured her name, then once more. Leaning his staff against the cliffside, he knelt to call her name once more, this time with a gentle hand on her shoulder. A low complaint on her lips, Goldenrod's eyelids fluttered a moment before springing open, with a hunted look about them.

Kelwas felt her tense under his hand, like an asp coiling to strike, then melt in his embrace once she recognized him. She mumbled, I'm sorry over and over into the crook of his arm. Wolf brushed past them, nose to the ground. He stopped at the base of the cliff, snout following the trail of blood up, up, up, past clusters of quartz and amethyst to the edges of the keyhole.

After a while, Goldenrod pushed herself free and with one long breath, she tucked herself back in. All her anger, pain, fear smoothed away, tidy as fresh sheets on a newly made bed. "I should not have made you promise," she said, voice flat. "I know that, now. But I was frightened, and alone, and unsure if I'd be able to find my way back to this place."

Her eyes met Kelwas and a weary smile trembled on her lips. "But I'm glad you're here."

With a glance at the crystals blooming out of the living rock of the cliff and the blooded keyhole, Kelwas asked, "I am also happy to have found you, but where is here?"

"After he cursed my brothers, our father fell ill. To my reckoning, he was hale, and ate and rode and hunted much like he did in days past. However, his sickness was here," Goldenrod tapped a finger to her temple. "Soon enough, he stopped riding. Without my brothers to protect him, he became convinced enemies were everywhere. So, he fled the muddied cobblestones of Khaimestaz to hide himself here - the ancestral hunting hall he knew as a child."

"How long have you been away?"

"That is why I wanted to get back as soon as I could," Goldenrod said. "I have not been by his bedside for several days, by now. With me gone, there is no one else to feed him nor tilt a drinking bowl against paper-dry lips."

Kelwas almost asked Goldenrod why she felt the need to attend to the old lord, her father. The words trembled on his lips. Then, he wondered whether he could have left his mother to her fortunes if she fell ill - curse or no - and let his question dissipate, unasked.

"And - " he glanced at the cliffside, the keyhole " - your brothers?"

"They have another entrance only they can reach," said Goldenrod. "I need your help."

"Help?"

She glanced at the keyhole.

Kelwas noticed her hand clench, pulling her key-hand closer. "Are you certain?"

She said she was, despite her furrowed brow. They stood, and before Kelwas could stop her, Goldenrod slipped her hand into the keyhole. A shudder ran through her as she drove her key-hand home, up to the wrist. She snarled at Kelwas, "now -!" 

Startled, he sprang forward, gripped her forearm, turning it, putting his shoulder into the effort before Goldenrod gave a strangled cry. She swooned against his shoulder, and her sudden weight almost knocked him off balance. He held her until pain no longer clouded her visage. Wolf paced. He stopped to touch his nose to Goldenrod's feet, before his amber gaze met Kelwas' in silent question.

Goldenrod stirred against Kelwas again. Her eyelids fluttered and she came back to herself with a small sound. She tottered forward onto her feet and muttered something.

Disbelieving what his own ears thought they had heard, he stammered out: "What did you say?"

"Again," Goldenrod rasped. "Do it again."

Kelwas went cold. "I - "

"- can't?" Goldenrod finished for him; her smile honed into something that could wound. Her eyes, so dark in the faint light, glittered with false mirth. She straightened, face so haughty that Kelwas could see the queen she might become shining through her filthy and bedragged form like the sun from behind winter clouds, and he felt small before her. "What good are you, then? I was right to doubt whether I needed your guidance, after all. I should not have made you promise to help me. If you had not promised, you would have never felt the need to follow me here, would have parted ways - " A realization dawned on her face, interrupting what she was about to say. Goldenrod barked out a scornful ha! before she murmured to herself, "it is true then." She sounded as well-pleased as you might be if you guessed the next turn in a story. "My nurse warned me that high-born ladies are bound to learn to depend on themselves, no matter how well-meaning their protectors may be."

Goldenrod blinked and the harsh, cold light faded from her. "Go, then. With my leave."

Her offhand dismissal stung, and such disrespect could not go unanswered. It was why of a sudden, Kelwas found himself towering over Goldenrod. He trembled with the effort of telling her no, as if it had taken all his strength to pull that denial up from deep within himself.

"I made you a promise," he said. "And no one can make me break it - not even you."

For the briefest of moments, a canny look flickered over Goldenrod's features. It was the satisfied look a merchant might give when - after counting and recounting - he's able to slide a tally bead into place at last.

"Do what I ask, then," Goldenrod said in a hollow voice. "Before I lose my nerve."

Pinning her arm to her side, Kelwas guided her hand until her bones clicked against the tumblers with a wet sound. A faint wind moaned out of the keyhole, as damp and rancid as a breath. In his embrace, Goldenrod's gasp shrank into a whimper. He leaned to, calling on all Seven Tributaries to avoid snapping the girl's bones. The flaps of her skin, flensed and raw against exposed bone, bled onto the keyplate. The etched scrollwork channeled the blood into rivulets until the keyhole felt warm to the touch, until its edges twitched and lipped at Goldenrod's wrist, and Kelwas snatched his hand away in disgust. 

Thankfully, the tumblers clicked and the door yawned open to show a dusty and ruined hall.