Ava hauled our hero through over three miles of darkness before arriving at their lair. She dropped him. He was too out of breath to cry and in too much pain to faint. All he could do was lay there wild-eyed, wheezing and quivering.  

It was a simple cave. There was one room, four stone walls and a low ceiling. But it was also very colorful. Each wall was covered with paintings. Some were of himself and Ava. Others were of trees, flowers or other things he liked. But most of them were pictures of inventions he designed, like new weapons, traps or gliders. Beneath were scattered tools, parts and all the failed attempts to build them. There was a corner in his cave for food and another for wood. Near the front and back entrances were racks of various weapons. The fire pit was in the middle, next to where he slept.

Ava sniffed around the cave and inspected the front entrance to make sure there were no intruders. She went outside, where there was a little terrace that overlooked the great valley. Their cave was on the side of a mountain. All the paths up to the terrace were blocked or booby-trapped and the ice building up at the bottom would make it very difficult for anyone to climb. For now, they were safe. 

Ava descended again and went over to the wood pile. She put a few logs together then brought over some flint. That’s a special kind of rock for lighting fires.

“Here,” she said, handing it to him.

With his one working arm and the very last of his strength, he reached out and struck it against another rock to make a spark. He felt some more of the broken bones in his body shift as he did so, but still didn’t have enough breath to cry out. Instead, he just collapsed again. He wouldn’t be moving anymore that night. 

The spark caught fire. Ava shuffled it closer to him and examined his wounds. It was bad. Very bad. Both his legs were broken in different spots. One arm was broken. He had deep gashes, scrapes and burns. But she didn’t say anything. Then, she went to their food pile and brought over his favorite dish. A big smelly fish with some strawberry jam.

“Eat,” she said coldly. “You’ll need your strength.”

“S-s-strength?” muttered the boy. “F-f-for what?”

“For the pain. I need to straighten you out and clean your wounds. It’s going to hurt.”

Our hero chuckled. Or was he crying? Ava couldn’t tell. It was going to hurt? More pain? What did that even mean? He felt like he was already in as much pain as possible.

“Eat!” Ava insisted, this time with a growl. But our hero refused.

“No!” He looked at her with fury and defiance in his eyes. “Leave me . . . alone.”

Ava glared at him. He glared right back. Then finally, she gave in.

“Fine,” she said. “Well . . . aren’t we grouchy today?” She turned around and put the food back onto the pile. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve always been a picky eater, ever since you were a baby. A spoiled little brat. Always whining and complaining. Nothing was ever good enough for you. Even though I brought you nothing but the best gourmet meals.”

“Oh, please,” groaned the boy. “Gourmet meals? You brought me chewed up worms and slugs! I hated that gruel! Ouch!” 

It hurt to talk, but Ava knew she had to do something to keep his mind off the pain, or he’d faint and never wake up. Even worse, he looked like he wouldn’t have minded. She had to keep him attentive and alert.

“Any wolf cub would have been happy to get such a meal.”

“Well, fine—but I wasn’t a wolf!”

“Indeed. You were a frail, little, ugly weakling—bald and babbling. I was so disappointed. How in the world was I going to turn something so pathetic and useless into a soldier?”

“You could have started by protecting me! I was only a baby. The bugs . . . I remember you sitting there, doing nothing, letting them eat me.”

“You deserved it,” replied Ava. “Served you right for letting them. Besides, you needed to learn. Life is war. And you did learn.” Then Ava’s eyes started to light up and she smiled. “Ah, yes! I still remember it! You made your first tiny little fist. You slammed it into them, one by one. Crushed your enemies! Crawled all around the cave! Destroyed them utterly!” Ava almost had tears in her eyes as she recalled it. “Your first genocide . . . I was so proud . . .”

“You’re . . . insane . . .” answered the boy. He looked away and closed his eyes like he didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“Well,” said Ava. “You say that now. But there is a method to my madness. You have to admit—it came in handy the time the bat attacked you.”

This got his attention again. He looked up at Ava surprised.

“What? The bat? You were there . . . when the bat attacked me?” Ava smiled and nodded at him. “But it almost killed me. You were there? Watching? As that THING tried to eat me alive!?”

Though our hero was only about one year old at the time, he remembered it like it was yesterday. He had exterminated and consumed all the bugs he could find in the cave and felt like he could finally get a good night’s sleep. He found some comfortable mud to lie in. But in the middle of the night, he felt something sniffing and licking behind his ear. He thought it was the big furry creature. That was what he called Ava. But when he reached beside himself to touch the phantom, he felt leathery skin . . . a fuzzy belly . . . and a little crinkly face . . . with two sharp fangs. It squealed at him as it attacked.

“Ahh!” he remembered screaming. “Help! Help!” These were our hero’s first words. “Help! Help! Helllp!” But none answered.

“I can’t believe it,” said the boy. “I thought you were away at the time. You were THERE? And you did NOTHING!?”

“Why would I? I was testing you.”

“A test?”

“Yes. I wanted to see how you’d react when faced with an opponent your own size. Would you curl up into a ball, and let yourself be destroyed—or fight? And I wasn’t disappointed. It had you on your back. You were losing! But then I saw the anger build up. Oh, you had a rage inside you, boy. You grabbed that bat by his two big stupid ears and pushed him off. Then you got on top of him and gave him a taste of his own medicine. You made your little fist again and bashed his brains in with it! And then you ate his brains! Slurped em right up!” Ava made a slurp sound as she told the story, making our hero cringe. “Then you tore him to pieces and found his heart. You ate it whole. It was . . . magnificent. And the bats never bothered you again after that, did they?”

“No.”

“It’s then I knew you had real potential. But there was still one last test.”

“The climb,” the boy muttered, remembering.

“Yes.”

Our hero endured many months in the cave, surrounded by darkness, freezing temperatures and the worst imaginable smells. His baby food was vomit, worms and bugs—all of which made him ill. The air felt poisonous. He was always coughing and his skin was bumpy and itchy from getting bitten. 

Eventually, he started exploring. He felt his way along the cave floor. He found rocks, bones and soon the stone walls of the cave. 

He discovered two special walls as well. One was black and the other was white. The black wall frightened him. It was colder and quieter. He heard bats there—flapping, squeaking and giggling. 

“Join us . . .” they whispered to him.

“Come down and play . . . Tee hee!”

He scurried away and never went near it again.

But the white wall was different. It was warm and pretty. The air nearby was fresher. It sent down all kinds of curious echoes and shadows. Sounds and shapes of things he’d never seen or heard before. It made him curious and want to approach. But it was at the top of a path too steep to climb. Every time he tried, he fell and hurt himself.

“It didn’t occur to you to help at all?” our hero answered as Ava cleaned his wounds. “Agh! Ouch! Ouch!” It was working. The talk was keeping him awake and distracted. But she still needed more time. 

“No, it didn’t,” she continued. “As I said, you needed to learn. There is no ‘help’ out here. You needed to learn to help yourself. And if you couldn’t help yourself—because you were too weak—then you needed to learn to become strong. And you did learn this, too—when the pain eventually became unbearable.”

Our hero remembered it well. Life got even harder for him down there. Much of it was because there weren’t any diapers or bathrooms. As you can imagine, it started smelling very bad very quickly and began attracting swarms of new bugs. They joined forces and waged constant, perpetual war upon him. The only way he survived was to cover himself in thick oozing mud.

This was also when the nightmares started to come. Our hero began having horrifying dreams about being a bat. His face would be crinkly! He’d have pointed ears, leathery skin and fangs! All day long, he’d hang upside down at the black wall, squeaking! He would wake up in a panic and check himself to make sure it wasn’t real. But that was the scariest part of all. He couldn’t check! It was too dark to see. There were no mirrors. He couldn’t even feel his own skin anymore. Maybe it was true. Maybe he was a bat—or becoming one. The thought of it tormented him just as much as their taunting.

“Join us! Join us!”

“It’s fun being a bat! Squeak, squeak!”

He felt like he was starting to go mad. Eventually, he snapped—just as Ava had predicted.

“No!” he cried. This was his second word. He wasn’t going to become one of those things! Nor was he going to become bug food! He had to get to the white wall somehow. He sat up and tore the mud off himself.

“Ah, pain!” sighed Ava, remembering. “Nature’s greatest teacher! Finally, you realized what you needed to do.”

Day and night, our hero crawled as fast as he could around the cave. He crawled back and forth. He crawled in circles. He crawled up on top of things. Even when he skinned his hands and knees and was bleeding all over the floor! It didn’t matter. Nor did it matter how terrible his food tasted anymore. If insects and gruel gave him energy and made him grow, then that’s what he needed to eat. He began stuffing himself with the biggest, juiciest bugs and worms he could find. Even big, hairy spiders! He would throw it all up, of course. But even that didn’t stop him. He’d pool it together with his hands and then slurp it up from the floor! He was that desperate to get strong. And it made Ava very proud to watch.

“That isn’t all I learned,” said the boy, trying not to look as Ava straightened out his bones. “Agh! Ouch!”

“No?”

“No. I learned that the white wall . . . couldn’t have been a wall. It was . . . something else—a door.”

“How did you figure that out? You had never seen it up close yet.”

“I just knew it,” he answered. “It was the only thing that made any sense. Why else would I have been so miserable down there? I had desires for things too—things that weren’t in the cave. Why would they be in me? Why was it that, when I smelled the air from the white wall, my mouth watered? There had to have been food. And if there was food, then it was a place.”

The fateful day finally arrived.

“I remember it was storming,” our hero recalled. Ava remembered it too. It was the first thunderstorm of spring. “I was scared.”

Flashes lit up the cave as if the white wall was angry. Thunder shook the ground like an earthquake. Parts of the ceiling began to crack and crumble. Water poured in like a rushing river, causing a great flood. He had to climb up onto a rock just to keep himself from being washed away—washed down to the black wall where the bats were! The big furry creature got up and began its ascent towards the light, leaving him behind. Now! Now was the time!

Our hero leaped and plunged into the roaring waters. He couldn’t swim. And in some parts, when the water had mixed with the mud, it felt like quicksand pulling him down. But it didn’t stop him. He paddled! He willed himself through, all the way, until he got to the foot of the path. He reached and stretched up with his little arms, just like he’d been practicing, dug his fingers into the mud, and hauled himself up using one arm at a time. 

It didn’t matter that he was sinking or sliding, how blinding the white wall was the closer he got, or that worms were getting in his mouth and bugs in his teeth. It didn’t matter that he lost all of his finger nails from having to dig them into the rocks. He wasn’t going to stay there any longer! He’d either ascend or be buried trying. Anything but that place. Just thinking of it made him angry. It gave him extra strength during the moments when he would have ordinarily given up. Finally, he reached the top! Emerged victorious! Breathing his first breath of fresh air! 

He arrived just as the storm was dispersing and the sun was coming out. The light of it dazzled his senses. He lost his balance and tumbled forth out of the cave entrance onto the grassy terrace.

His eyes were open, but he couldn’t see. The light was blinding. He could feel it burning through his eyeballs and brain. But it wasn’t a bad pain. It was a good kind. The kind of pain like when our foot falls asleep, and then slowly starts to wake up. That’s how his whole head was feeling. And eventually, he did begin to see.

First, he saw the shadows. For he had seen those before in the cave. His eyes were already well-adjusted to them. Then, he saw something new: colors! Greens! Blues! Reds! Next, he saw reflections. He felt a puddle in front of him. He dunked his head in and washed off the mud. He looked at it and saw himself. He wasn’t a bat! He was a—well, he didn’t know. But he wasn’t a bat! And that was very good news. Then, he looked up and saw the whole valley in all its beauty and splendor.

But one thing caught his attention more than anything else. Something bright red and sweet-smelling! It was a big plump strawberry on a little bush. He crawled over and plucked it. He put it in his mouth and bit down, tasting all the sweet juices. Now, his mouth felt like it was waking up! It overwhelmed him and tears of joy began streaming down his face, a feeling he had never felt before. And for the very first time, our hero smiled.

“You are a very odd creature, aren’t you?” said Ava to him then, as she was watching. Those were her first words to him. The boy heard her voice and looked up. So, that’s what the big furry creature looked like. He stared at her in amazement and smiled even bigger, his face covered with red mush. “But you know, this isn’t the end. It is only the beginning. You are destined to become a soldier.” Our hero had no idea what she was talking about at that age. But he liked the sound of her voice. “Enjoy your strawberries, little one. Rejoice. You have earned them.” Then, she walked away to leave him alone more. “Just don’t get too comfortable. Your training starts tomorrow. That’s when the real pain begins.”

Our hero sat there all afternoon, admiring the view. But he wondered where the white door had gone. He looked around for it. Finally, he turned his eyes up. What he saw startled him so much that he dropped his strawberries. There was that burning feeling again! He had to use his hands to block it this time. What was the white door doing up there? Our hero then learned that he’d been mistaken once again. It wasn’t a door. It wasn’t a wall. It was what he would soon come to call “the sun.” And he learned it was a very special thing, too! For not only was it a thing he saw, but the thing by which he saw everything else. It was the giver of light and warmth and strawberries—and therefore the best thing of all. He sat staring at it. Then, the moon—and eventually the stars.  

The boy was so young then. He only remembered bits and pieces. Recalling that triumphant day used to bring him joy. But now it just made him sad. He was back where he started! Weak! Helpless! Half-blind in the dark and in constant pain. 

“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.

“Because,” answered Ava. “You seem to have forgotten.”

She finished cleaning and straightening out his wounds.

“I haven’t forgotten,” said the boy.

“Then why don’t you eat anything? Why do you have that look, like you’ve given up?”

“Because,” he answered. “Even if I do survive, what then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—look around! Look at my life . . .”

“What about it? It’s a good life. A lot better than most have.”

“I know. But that isn’t what I—”

“You chose this life. You wanted to be the guardian. That comes with risks. You knew that ever since you started.”

“It isn’t the fighting I’m talking about. It’s after. I like what I do. It’s just—something’s not right. I don’t have a home.”

“This is your home.”

“No, it isn’t. I’m sure of it.” Our hero looked around. “I’m not happy here.”

“Well, we’ve searched everywhere else for something better.”

“Have we?” our hero asked. “I’m not sure.”

He realized that once he started protecting others, he’d stopped looking. But did they really search everywhere? If he desired it, then maybe—just like the strawberry—that was a sign it was still out there somewhere. His imagination started to run wild thinking about what it might be like. Ava noticed such thoughts started bringing color back to his face. His breathing returned to normal. He looked like his old self again. Maybe, she thought, that would be the key to his surviving.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll make you a deal.” Our hero looked up at her and listened. “You get through this winter alive and, come this spring, we will embark on a journey to find this place you speak of.”

“Really?” The boy’s eyes lit up.

Ava nodded.

“Alright,” he answered, surprised by the suggestion. His mind started racing again.

“Good. Then you can start with this.”

Ava brought over the fish and jam again and dropped it on him. Our hero finally conceded and started eating.

But where would this place be? In what direction? It was nothing but mountains on every side of the valley. If he chose wrongly, they might never find it. He couldn’t help feel a little worried.

“Look,” said Ava. She caught a glimpse of light from the entrance. “The sunset is coming out. Your favorite. Just in time . . .”

Our hero gazed out of the entrance. The storm was passing. A bright golden light peeked through the clouds and over the horizon.

“Where does it go?” he thought dreamily, just as he had that afternoon on the way back from the Life Tree. “Someplace it’s always warm, probably. Someplace it’s comfortable. Someplace where there are lots of strawberries—and who knows what else?” Then, it suddenly occurred to him. “Wait a minute—of course! The sun! Towards the sun! Over that horizon!” That was where his next adventure lay! That was where he would find his home. Or, if he couldn’t, someone who might be able to help him.