The Box

Krshmi didn't set out to wreak havoc. But whenever he left his cave on the mountain, panic and destruction trailed behind him like beans from a torn sack. He was pretty sure it wasn’t always like this. He seemed to remember a time when he was much smaller and hardly monstrous at all—not so normal that the people who lived in the valley below welcomed him as one of them, but they didn’t chase him away either. But the older he got, the larger and more monstrous he grew. And he was very old. Now, whenever he went out, children screamed. Mothers quailed. Grown men turned and ran. He could have ruled the world through the fear he inspired. But what he wanted was a quiet, normal sort of life, perhaps a friend to pass the time with. He tried disguises: masks, veils, hats with wide brims, a coat that brushed the ground, walking on his knees. It made no difference. 

In time, his loneliness grew into pain. His pain grew into rage. And his rage grew into madness. He became the thing people expected when they saw him. Then they learned what terrible destruction monsters were capable of.

One day, as Krshmi trampled a village into ruins, a little hunchbacked girl carrying a long, narrow box in her arms limped out from behind a tumble of broken masonry that might once have been a house. She stood in front of him and looked him straight in the eye for a long time, as if waiting for some sign from him. He turned his attention from her to the box. There was something mystical about it. Something otherworldly. It was the kind of box that made him think perhaps he’d seen it before in some other lifetime. Though if he had, the memory was long gone. After a while, Krshmi thought to ask the girl where her mother was, but it had been so long since he last spoke that his words came out more broken than the masonry. 

She took a breath and held the box out to him.

“This is for you,” she said.

He didn’t try to speak again. He just nodded and took it from her. It was intricately carved, very old, and had a tiny brass lock. Where had it come from? How did this small child come to possess it? Was there a key for the lock? When he looked up to ask her these questions, she was gone.

He carried the box to his cave on the mountain. 

It took days to open the lock, because he did not want to damage the box and his monstrous hands were clumsy. But finally, it opened. Inside, he found a yellowed parchment, tightly rolled, and tied with black string. 

It took weeks to open the scroll, because the parchment hadn't been unrolled in ages and tended to crumble and crack. But finally, it lay flat, the corners held down by smooth rocks. It was a map.

It took months to learn to read the script on the map, because it was even older than Krshmi himself. But finally, he understood it. The map claimed to lead to a magical forest with the power to restore youth. Krshmi snorted. He had been around long enough to know something so unlikely could not be found in an ordinary small village, in the ruins of an old house, in the hands of a child.

He put it away and tried to forget about it, but it haunted him. What if it was true? What if there really was a magic rejuvenating forest? If he could be young again, small, and only slightly monstrous, maybe he could have a normal sort of life. He thought of the little hunchbacked girl. Maybe he could even have a friend. 

In time, curiosity and hope got the better of him. He retrieved the map. 

Following such an old, mystical map wasn’t easy. The towns had different names, if they hadn’t disappeared entirely. Rivers had changed their courses, sometimes even entire mountains had washed away. And mystical maps don’t like to give up all their secrets, even if you can read the script. It took a hundred years to find the forest. At times he felt he had been and would forever be moving in circles without end, and nearly gave up hope. But the search gave him something to focus his mind on—a sense of purpose. 

When he finally found the forest, he experienced an emotion that was so unfamiliar he couldn’t remember the name for it. It made him feel even bigger than he was, but not in a monstrous way – more like he was filling up with air and becoming lighter. His feet wanted to move in a way that didn’t trample and destroy, and he let them for a moment. If someone had been there to see it, they could have told him it was “dancing,” but he was alone. He went in among the trees.

The changes were slow.

One day, as he walked along one of the paths he’d worn into the forest floor, he tripped on the hem of his coat, which hadn’t reached past his knees in centuries. Another day, as he tracked a deer into a clearing, he saw that his shadow didn’t completely cast the clearing into darkness but allowed the sun to shine around the edges. And on yet another day, when he looked at his face in a pool of water, his wrinkles and crags were still there, but they were far less wrinkly and craggy than they had been. 

It took a thousand years, but there came a day when he looked almost normal. Not so normal that people would welcome him as one of their own, but they might not chase him away either. He felt a desire to venture back into the world. Surely, so much time had passed that no one would recognize or remember the monster he had been. He might live a quiet, normal sort of life. And perhaps find someone to share it with.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to worry whether anyone remembered him. The world was now terrorized by a new monster, Akhlo. She was more fearsome than he had ever been. She slaughtered people and animals by the thousands, and despoiled the land, the oceans, and even the very air without pause or remorse. Wherever she brought her foot down, not only did she flatten anything that was under it, but nothing would grow there again. At his most monstrous, Krshmi had never done much more than trample villages. If he’d still been a monster, he might have admired her, but he wasn’t, so he kept his head down and searched for a place to live.

He tried a small village, first. But the villagers were so fearful of strangers, they drove him away with pitchforks and clubs. Next, he moved into a ramshackle house at the edge of a prosperous town, but the doors of every business were closed to him. From there, he went to a large city, thinking city dwellers would be more accustomed to seeing different sorts of people. But after so many centuries of solitary life, he was unable to adjust to the clamor and crowds. He was just too different to fit in, no matter what he looked like on the outside.

He crept back to his cave on the mountain, resigned to a lonely existence. After some years, he bumped his head on a low stone at the cave entrance and realized that he was starting to grow monstrous again. Should he go back to the forest? But then he had another thought: If he waited long enough to become truly monstrous again, perhaps he and Akhlo could trample the earth together. But was it even possible to catch up with her? And if he did, would there be anything left to trample?

One day, he woke to the sound of thunder. He looked outside and saw Akhlo’s hulking form approaching across the valley. Fire rained down from a black sky and every house and tree and bush, down to the last blade of grass, was burned to the ground. Krshmi left his cave, carrying the old box in his arms. He approached Akhlo in the field of cinders and ash where she towered over him and looked her straight in the eyes. They were fiery red and so filled with pain and rage and madness that he wanted to run away screaming. But he stood his ground, waiting for sign of … something. For an instant, he thought he saw a flicker of … something. Curiosity? Loneliness? But it vanished. Her attention turned to the ancient box he carried in his arms. He took a breath and held it out.

“This is for you,” he said.

END