Years went by where it was just me exploring all the little village on the coast had to offer. Before I settled into my preferred look, June had this idea that if she put me in a white sun dress and wove flowers into my already short hair, she could make me more ladylike but each time I came back with the flowers lost and holes torn in the dress, she came closer and closer to giving up on that dream. Pretty soon, I was in more enduring leather breeches and off-white shirts that didn’t show dirt as well as the pure white dresses did. It wasn’t a large sacrifice for her, but I think she secretly dreamed of having a daughter that could treat like a daughter and not… well, me.

I talked with the kids in the village and even played with them a few times, but none of them would go with me to the hollows, I didn’t want to show them my little hideout anyway. We’d play but their games were all the same. It was always some variation of the same pretend. It was either knights versus dragons or knights and princesses or kings and queens or some stupid game based on a fantasy about how the nobles go on big adventures and save the day. I hated them because I knew there were no brave adventurers and the only monsters to fight were inside other people.

Every time it was the same cast of characters. Luke, the son of a ship captain who was left ashore with his mom by a dad who would never return to port again, always played the heroic knight or brave knight-king who would inevitably save Jani, the daughter of a baker whose only notable quality was that she was pretty. She was pretty looking and pretty dumb which somehow made her perfect to be the princess or the queen. Killian and Talbet were the twins, both big for their age, and were often cast as the knights dedicated to helping the brave Sir Luke in his noble quest. The handmaiden, and occasionally another princess, was played by a girl I knew as Chris. Christinia was her actual name but Chris seemed more familiar. Guess who played the monster.

Each time I dared myself to go play with the village kids, I’d end up as the dragon or the troll or the “hideous beast from the deep .” I didn’t mind being the dragon. Dragons were fierce and strong. They could also breathe fire and fly. The best part was that, at least for a little while, I got the chance to hang out with Chris and Jani before Luke and his knights would find us and fight me to rescue the princesses. Jani would get upset because I would stop pretending to be the monster until Luke showed up. She wanted to be terrorized because “that’s what monsters are supposed to do to princesses”. No, monsters take princesses away from their families so they never see them again. Chris didn’t mind. We used to make fun of Jani because she had all these stupid ideas of what a princess is supposed to be. We knew better.

Me being a monster was a lot like Jani pretending to be a princess. I could only guess how they acted and what it was they wanted. I just went off of how Luke insisted a monster should act. He said they were mean to people and hurt them and stole princesses but whenever I asked him why they did all those things, he simply said, “cause they’re monsters.” I was supposed to kidnap the fair maidens, be mean to them, fight the hero, and then die to the hero. I got that last one wrong the first time I played. I tried to fight the hero and win. I ended up getting in a lot of trouble for putting Luke and his brave knights on their asses with bruises that wouldn’t go down for weeks. I went easy on them too.

It was June who taught me how to hold back when there are no real threats. “They can call you a monster until they run out of breath, but only you can decide whether or not to become one.” The kids told me I had to be the monster because there were no other parts to play and because I could do stuff like climb a tree really fast and jump down without getting hurt. I could also break their bones if I squeezed hard enough but I didn’t want to scare off the only kids my age willing to play with me. So, whenever I was feeling friendly enough or missed the company of others, I would grin and bare it to play a part of Luke and Jani’s stupid fantasies about what they thought being heroes was.

It did make me think about what I thought a hero was. Even at the age of ten, I didn’t think a hero was someone who rode into battle to fight monsters. Fighting a monster to save a beautiful princess is not a hard decision to make, especially if you have the best armor and swords and a group of equally well-armed soldiers with you to help you slay that monster. Real heroes, in my mind, were the ones that make the hard decisions; the ones that chose to take the big risks. A hero was someone who, at the age of ten picks up a sword and fights through full grown men in armor to save his sister. A hero was someone who stayed up all night working on clocks and winches and plows so an entire village of people didn’t starve to death because the crops couldn’t be tended. A hero was someone who went out on a worn and beaten boat in the middle of torrential rain to provide food for those people. A hero was someone who took in a little girl with no family and nothing to inherit and raised them as their own daughter even when, day after day, she didn’t show them nearly as much respect as they deserved. The difference between those kids and I was that my heroes were real.

There came a day I remember unknowingly playing a game where the outcome would shape who I was forever. It started out innocently enough where I decided to go see what the village kids were doing rather than journey down to the Hollows by myself. I had spent the last three weeks mapping out a good portion of the cave system but I still had no idea how far the tunnels went or what was lurking within them that kept making such a terrible noise. After convincing myself that the caves weren’t going anywhere, I made my way to the east part of the village, where the other kids normally hung out.

I arrived at the edge of Sonata where I heard them playing behind the stable. I could hear Luke and Jani shouting to each other before I even rounded the corner. Nobody was playing anything. It seemed they were arguing about what to play. Luke wanted to play Knights and Dragons but he couldn’t convince anyone to play the dragon. He was insisting that Chris be the dragon but Jani insisted that Chris had to be a handmaiden. Jani also said that because they didn’t have anyone to play the dragon that they should just play Castle instead, which is a game where they just pretend to be royals living in a castle. It was a step up from Knights and Dragons in that it would elevate Jani’s rank to Queen and Luke would, of course, be her King. She even wanted Chris to be her daughter instead.

As soon as I approached to greet them, their arguing ended and I knew that the matter was settled. No need to argue about what do without a dragon anymore now that a dragon has suddenly appeared. “Mel!” Luke called to me like we had been friends forever, “thank creators you’re here. Just in time too, cause we need someone to do something very important. How would you like to play the dragon for Knights and Dragons?” Even knowing what the question was going to be didn’t make me resent it any less.

“I don’t want to be the dragon,” I told him flatly.

He wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You have to be the dragon. No one else can be.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and scrunched my face until it was an annoyed glare. “Jani can be the dragon.”

He looked at me like I had just told him I was going to grow wings and fly away. “Jani can’t be the dragon, she’s the princess.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him about changing Jani’s role, because, frankly, I had zero interest in being a stupid princess. “One of the twins can be the dragon then and I’ll be a knight or squire or something.”

That didn’t seem to be possible either. Luke gave a firm shake of his head, crossing his arms over as well. “You can’t be a knight, you’re a girl.”

That irritated me even more. June was a fisher. I could be a stupid knight. “You remember I kicked your ass once before, right?” Reminding him of his embarrassment didn’t help my cause.

“I beat you way more times when you were playing the dragon than you beat me!” he shouted, fully delusional at this point.

I let my arms drop, but my hands remained balled into fists. I came stomping towards him at the same time he came stomping to meet me. The difference was in each step. My stomping left small dents in the ground where his only left what little common sense he had behind in a confrontation with a girl who had nearly broken his bones the last time they went at it. Inches from each other’s faces, each word scorched with heat. “I let you win,” I reminded him, “so I didn’t have to hear you cry again.” That last part was probably petty and unnecessary but I wanted to make him hurt without actually laying a hand on him. Some part of me was hoping he’d back down if I reminded him that when it wasn’t pretend, I came out on top every time.

“Mommy says I shouldn’t hit girls but you’re not really a girl so I will hit you if I have to.” That was his attempt at a threat. It lost all merit when he first referred to his mom as “mommy”. Everything beyond that just brought my blood to a boil. I honestly didn’t care about being accused of being a boy but it was the idea behind the statement. It was more of that ignorant way of thinking; that you should treat girls delicately because they are pretty. That meant that either he thought that since I wasn’t delicate, I wasn’t pretty or that because I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t delicate.

“You can hit a girl if a girl hits you first,” I informed him. Then I gave him permission to take a swing after I thrust my arms out to his shoulders, giving him a hard shove. I wasn’t holding back this time and the shove was enough to send him tumbling backward, ass over head until he landed on his face. I saw his fingers dig into the dirt as he started to get back up. Jani screamed at us, “stop it!” as if that would make us see reason. I must not have been too far past reason because Chris came behind me and asked me to let it go and I almost turned and left it behind me. What stopped me was Luke scraping to his feet and throwing a fist full of dirt at my face. The grit got into my eyes and stung, robbing me of my vision and causing me to stagger while I tried to rub the dirt away with my palms.

He rushed me, putting the full force of his body into me and taking me off me feet. After tacking me to the ground, my eyes still watering, I watched him wind his fist back and ready to strike me. He was straddling my waist and the look in his eyes held an unbridled rage. I swear I could see him crying as he started beating down on me, alternating his fists one after another. He went straight for the head, hitting me two or three times before I was able to get my hands up and start blocking his punches. The pounding he gave me made my head throb and the world pounded with it but I was made of tougher stuff than he was and I knew I could take the beating for a while if I chose to.

Instead, I managed to grip one of his fists, clenching tightly. I could feel the joints of his knuckles pop the more I put pressure on them and he put his other hand around my wrist, trying desperately to pry his left hand free. Jani was still screaming at us and I think Chris was pleading with me to let him go. I yanked Luke’s arm in towards me, the force causing him to whip forward and as he did, I thrust my forehead up to meet his. There was a very loud crack and he went limp from the headbutt. I let go of his hand and pushed him off me.

I licked my lips to find a coppery taste on the tip of my tongue. I put my fingers to my lips and came away with blood. I didn’t have to look at Luke to know that it was his. I did look though and I saw a small river of it trickling from what was most likely a broken nose. My head started to pound with a sudden rebuff of pain that was just a background noise before. I got up off the ground with two sounds filling my ears. One was a strange ringing and the other was Jani trying to get Luke back to consciousness. I didn’t really feel the same worry that Jani was feeling until I heard Chris ask, “did you kill him?” Did I?

I turned to face them and found Jani crying over his body while Luke was showing increasing signs of life that were going completely unnoticed by his ‘princess’. Chris and I watched them from a few feet away, knowing that if I came near him, it would end up making things worse. Then I’d have an emotionally unstable Jani to fight off. Luke was already starting to stir and even before then, he was visibly breathing, just through his mouth. His nose was a little bit out of commission.

I wasn’t really sure what to do at that point. That’s when I heard Chris suggest “you need to get out of here” and then offer “I’ll come with you”. I didn’t have to be told twice. I agreed and we slipped off while Jani was caught up in the emotionally overwhelming scene of her preteen paramour slowly coming back from the supposed dead.

We moved to the front of one the buildings and then ducked behind the back of another. “They’re gonna find us,” she pointed out. She was right again. We had to disappear for an hour or two until everything blew over. They would never forgive me but at least if I gave them time to cool off, hopefully the punishment I was to face would be less as severe. As far as the physical part of the confrontation went, I did start that, but part of me hoped that I could convince the grown-ups that it was his fault for provoking me. It was an unrealistic idea, but it made me feel better to imagine them seeing my side.

“I’ve got just the place,” I said in a hushed voice and motioned for Chris to follow me. We ran mostly unseen to the edge of the town where I took her past the farmlands towards the coast. She stopped as we got past the onion field. I gave her a questioning look as she explained that she wasn’t allowed to go past the fields by herself. I remembered that her mom was the village physician and her dad helped run the tiny clinic. It turns out that since neither of them had a reason to leave the comfortable nest of Sonata, Chris had never been outside of the village herself. More to that, her parents saw all the dangers lurking outside the village through the injuries of the patients they saw and decided it was too much of a risk to let Chris even past the crops.

It took a long minute or two to convince her that she’d be safe with me and luckily, she had seen a few of my feats of strength. What really convinced her was finding a creative way to explain the situation. “Luke was being mean. I fought him off and then took you away from him. That makes Luke the monster, me the knight, and you are the princess.” I saw that freckled face smile beneath disheveled locks of brown hair and I knew by the look in her amber eyes that I had won her over and she was willing to disobey her parents to run away with me. I started believing my own words. I started believing I was the hero.

She let me take her hand in mine to I lead her past the border of where she was allowed to go and down the partially hidden path that I always took to get to the beach. She almost lost her sandals a few times and once her sun dress got caught on a thorn-laden bush but we managed to make it down the coast after about fifteen minutes. I found she was surprisingly light for being the same age as me whenever I had to lift her up and help her get over the many rocks that served as a path to the Hollows.

When we got to the Hollows, she started to have second thoughts. I couldn’t blame her not wanting to just wander into the mouth of a cave with such a scary name, especially when she hadn’t even left the limits of the village before then. I had to go in ahead of her to show that it was safe and even then she was still a little reluctant. I ended up holding her hand again and leading the way once more just to assure her she was going to be safe. I was okay with that.

I watched as her face lit up with fascination the moment we rounded that corner to the display of glowshrooms. For a lingering moment, she stood mesmerized by the sign like she was standing in the middle of the night sky, surrounded be constellations. I had seen the display many times before but it held a new sense of enjoyment for me because I got to see the wonder that I had first played out in the face of another. I watched her slowly turn to look at the magic of the cave and I understood the happiness that came from bringing joy to another person’s heart. She said they looked like big fireflies, glowing as they rest and I genuinely laughed. I thought I didn’t know how.

She also pointed out how deceivingly warm the inside of the cave was. I was going to share my opinion about dragons and such but then thought it would be better not to scare her off after how much trouble I had to go through in order to get her to come into the Hollows in the first place. When we reached the dip, I slid down ahead of her and waited at the bottom of the incline for her to come sliding down as well. She cautiously tried to do what I did the first time and crawl down, but backwards instead of face-up like me. When she lost her traction, she let out a shriek and came down much faster than she intended. I darted forward and opened my arms just in time to receive her. I fell backwards while wrapping her up in my embrace, taking the impact of her fall while I landed on my back.

It knocked the wind out of me but it didn’t take that long to recover. I let her go and she managed to get back up to her feet. Even in the near dark, I could see the smile on her face and hear the excitement in her tone as she said, “Thank you, brave sir Mel.” She was enjoying her little act of rebellion for the adventure it was turning out to be. I think I enjoyed seeing her happy more. I guided her to the large open area where the shelter could be found. She looked as curious about it as I was and knelt down to poke around inside it. “Did you make this?” she first asked, voice echoing off the cave walls and playing in stereo. When I shook my head, she then asked, “who left this here?”

I shrugged. In the countless times I’ve been back to this spot and in all the different ways I’ve explored this system of tunnels, I’ve yet to find out who put this shelter here and why it was abandoned. I was starting to suspect that it hadn’t been entirely abandoned as I thought it was. A few times I found the fire pit in front of the tent smoldering as if someone had just left. “I’ve been here a bunch of times but I’ve never found out who made this tent or this fire pit. I think they might still be around.”

She started to feel nervous again, backing away from the tent and looking around anxiously as if whatever it was that set up this shelter was still lurking in the caves and waiting for curious children to leave themselves defenseless. I moved over to her and reached out, taking her hand in my own and holding it to comfort her. “I’ll protect you,“ I assured her, feeling like the brave knight again. I understood why Luke always wanted to be the hero. It put a feeling in me that felt warmer than the inner cave, part of it pride for having someone depending on me and part of it security for feeling that someone I cared about would be safe because I was sure I had complete control over the situation. She even went as far as to smile back at me and call me “my hero”.

I remembered how the game of knights and dragons always ended. When the dragon was slain and the princess had been rescued from certain doom, the knight would be rewarded with a kiss from said princess. That seemed like the next step. So, facing her, my head darted forward and, as quickly as I could, I struck by pecking my lips to hers. Everything inside me compelled me to do so and the split second I had made contact, my nerves were on fire and my body felt more alive than I could remember. It was Chris’ reaction that froze me over once more.

She recoiled and turned the full force of those wide, honey-yellow eyes on me. “Wh-what was that for?” she stuttered, her tone vibrating with shock.

At first, I didn’t know how to respond. My mind had already made up how this was going to play out and now it was all turning out wrong. “I’m the knight.” As if that would explain everything. “The princess kisses the knight when she gets rescued.”

She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth as if she was trying to wipe away something unclean that I had left on her. “You can’t be a knight, you’re a girl.” That was the part that stung the most. Being rejected was one thing. No one wanted to feel rejected. To leap from the cliff expecting to fly and hitting cold, hard ground; that destroys people. Saying that any dreams I could have about being the hero will never come true simply because of what I was unmade me altogether. It made me question the point of even trying. A darkness came to swallow me and it was set loose by a child who had been convinced with every other child in the village that a girl cannot be anything but a burden to other people.

I snapped out of it when I heard a thunderous growl rise from one of the tunnels. It resonated off the walls and rolled through each of the other tunnels, confusing where it originated from. I saw Chris start to panic. She had already wrenched her hand free from mine and now she didn’t know what to do. “Stay here,” I insisted, “I’ll protect you.” It seemed that light inside me refused to die. Even at my lowest, I will always come to the aid of those I care about, even if they are repulsed by me.

Chris didn’t believe me. “You can’t,” she said finally before scrambling towards the cave on two feet. I went to chase after her but the monstrous noise became deafeningly loud and I could sense that whatever it was had become a lot closer like it was waiting just beyond the veil of darkness hiding the entrance of one tunnel. I turned to face it. If I couldn’t escort her out, I would at least cover her retreat. Lower and more cautious, the growl threatened me and I could see a set of glowing eyes peering at me from the tunnel almost directly behind the tent. I took a few, shaky steps towards it, fighting for even the smallest amount of courage. Its eyes looked as if they were level with my head but much larger and spread apart. They had a yellow gloom to them and I could only imagine they belonged to something large but low to the ground.

I looked over my shoulder to see that Chris had clawed her way up the hill and was half running and half stumbling out of the cave. I felt relief that she made it out but now I didn’t know if I even had a chance to follow. I felt my heart race and my body tighten, robbing me of the ability to do anything. The only option I had left was to stand and wait for it to emerge and eat me in one bite. (That and to not pass out before it came.) I at least wanted to see what was going to kill me before it did.

There was a long moment where heavy breathing was all I could hear. It was impossible to tell if it was my own breathing, the creature’s, or both of us. We locked eyes and waited for one of us to make a move. I couldn’t even get my legs to work, so it wasn’t going to be me. Then, strangely, one of the eyes began to move higher than the other. More than that, as one eye moved higher, the other began to lower until one was above my head and the other was level with my chest. I had forgotten all about my shock and the next thing I knew, I was blurting out “what are you?” for the whole cave to hear.

Both of the glowing orbs that had been staring at me suddenly dropped, lowering all the way to the cave floor. Once they had settled onto the ground, they shifted in color, going to something between a yellow and a green tint. Then I heard the sound of something moving towards me but the glowing eyes stayed still. That’s when the thing that had been stalking me stepped out from the shadows to finally reveal itself.

It wasn’t a great beast or a terrible dragon. It was a woman. She was tall and waiflike. Her skin had a majestic glow to it even as it blended in with the darkness. Her hair was also dark but more silken than June’s. Her eyes smoldered with secrets churning behind a prison of the bluest blue I had ever seen. “You’re beautiful,” I spouted stupidly. Her smile lit up the cave better than the glowshrooms ever could.

Her voice rolled with some strange accent that gave some flair to her smooth voice. “Thank you, child,” said that melodic voice. “I’m sorry for what happened to your friend. Normally you come here alone.”

“Who are you?” was my first question. “How long have you been watching me?” was my second.

“For a while now,” she admitted, vaguely. “You are not like the others. You can be so much more than what this little village has to offer. They call me Jezebelle, and while that is an insult in this ignorant part of the world, I think it is a beautiful thing to call someone. Tell me, what is your name?”

“Mel,” I said sheepishly, then corrected with, “Melody.”

She smiled that pretty smile of hers, offering out a slender hand as an introduction. “That is also a beautiful name.”

I put my hand in hers, and it felt comfortingly warm. My mom was a queen and I never wanted to be a queen like her. June was a fisher and I never wanted to be a fisher either. Jezebelle, however, was someone I would aspire to be and what she would teach me would become part of who I am for the rest of my life.