A S H N I T E N
Deep in the Vosfe mountains, a valley lay nestled in shadow. The mountains jutted like black, snowy teeth from the land of Glume and seemed to swallow anyone who dared to step on their sheer slopes. Nevertheless, someone, whose name was forgotten, built a town in the valley and named it Faelock.
Faelock never had any visitors; it was far from any common road and too small and barren to be worthy of trade. Barely anyone knew of the town’s existence, save the few hundred hardy, stubborn inhabitants.
They built their houses out of black ash trees, with tall, shingled roofs to disperse the incessant rain. The valley was endlessly blanketed in gray clouds, which saw it as a place fit to shed their frigid tears.
They survived on bitter bloodberries, lichen, and any mountain goat who had the misfortune of wandering by. Icy, crystal streams gushed down the mountainsides, supplying them with fresh water.
There was also a river, which may have contained fish, but no one ever went close enough to make a footprint on its rocky shore. Two reasons explained the townspeoples’ collective abhorrence of the place. For one, the water was ravenous and wild, likely to tear away a fishing line–or a child–as soon as one touched the frothing torrent.
But more importantly, there was a cave at the water's edge. Inside the cave lived a monster, and its name was Ashniten.
Rumors ran rampant through the homes of Faelock. The stories were greatly exaggerated, of course, but one could never be sure. Cruel parents threatened their children with tales of the creature’s horrific howl, its taste for the flesh of misbehaving little boys and girls.
Ashniten’s description varied from person to person, for they only ever saw it prowling in the darkest hours of the night. They caught glimpses of matted fur, yellow and crooked teeth, bones stretching at leathery skin. They hid behind closed curtains, straining their ears to hear its slow, dragging footsteps. It was the size of a bear, they said, and as ferocious as a rabid wolf.
But the legend had been twisted for hundreds of years. Pieces of the rumors rang with truth, but for different reasons than one might think. As for Ashniten himself, they never glimpsed him long enough to confirm or dispel any of the stories they told. The lives of the townspeople rarely interested him. He was a monster, so he knew that he would always be alone.
Although, that knowledge didn’t stop him from being curious. Under the shroud of a cloudy night, he sometimes crawled out of his cave and left the river’s edge.
A strip of thick forest separated the river from the town, and his footprints made the only winding path across its muddy floor. He followed his trail every time, feeling his way over familiar roots and patches of moss. The bases of nearby trees were worn smooth by the pass of his claws.
When he reached the edge of town, he would stop and listen. His eyes were useless, but his ears never failed him. They could detect moths fluttering through the air, raindrops slipping down the window panes, and even the faint, whispery breaths of people sleeping in their beds.
He liked to wander among their houses, smelling the moss that grew on the roofs and feeling their footprints as if he were walking among them. He imagined how his life would be if he wasn’t such a horrible, disgusting thing. He yearned to feel the sun warm his back, to sleep on a dry bed. To be touched. To be loved.
He hated himself for wishing these things, for they doomed him to a life of misery. The villagers were terrified of him, and they always had been. They blamed him for every fragment of bad luck that infected their lives. Every drop of relentless rain, every chicken that escaped its pen. Every illness that swept through their families and took their children was inflicted by Ashniten’s curse.
Children were especially rare in Faelock, and disease wasn’t the only reason. The cold dampness and lack of sunlight made conditions too harsh for many babies to survive. Most people in the town were old and bitter in their loneliness. The risk of losing a child had been too great for them to overcome, and now it was too late.
One young couple was brave enough to take a chance. When their child was born, the townspeople distanced themselves from the family. Their feelings were tainted by past grief. But after the little girl lived to see her first birthday, they began to have hope again.
Her parents took her waddling around the town, bundled in layers of wool and fur. By her third birthday, Brina had won the love of every bitter heart in Faelock. She had a dozen surrogate grandparents and a plethora of aunts and uncles. Every Midwinter’s Eve, she was showered with sweets and hand-knitted clothing—so much that her parents worried she would be spoiled.
To everyone’s surprise and delight, she was not, like a tulip standing tall even when exposed to endless sun.
At six years old, she began to ask questions.
Certain inquiries were easy to satisfy: why is it always raining? Why can’t she eat dirt? Where did the birds go in the winter?
Others were a little more…complicated: why can’t she play outside at night? Why can’t she play by the river? And, most concerningly, who was Ashniten?
“Not ‘who’,” her father corrected. “What. It is a horrible monster that will gobble you up as soon as it hears you coming.”
The warning, unfortunately, had the opposite effect that her father intended. Brina’s interest in the monster increased tenfold. She decided she had to see it for herself.
One day, while her parents were working in the bakery, she waited until they were busy enough to temporarily forget her existence. Then she snatched a bloodberry scone from the shelf, stuffed it in her pocket, and slipped out the door.
She skipped to the edge of town, pausing to see that no one was following her. No one was, so she followed the path of conveniently placed footprints into the woods.
Down at the river, Ashniten was hunting for beetles on the rocky beach. He felt a drizzle of rain on his back and head. Because it was autumn, the river’s usual roar was reduced to a gurgling gush. That sound was the background of his every thought and action; the only time he was free of it was when he visited Faelock. But he was glad he could hear it, else he might accidentally stumble in and drown. The river was his greatest fear, yet the very thing that kept him alive. All the other water sources in the valley were routed to Faelock, but they couldn’t control the river, so they left it alone.
Except, of course, for the curious little girl who came traipsing through the forest and scared him half to death.
He never needed to listen for footsteps. No human ever came through the forest, and no predators dared to hunt him. When he finally heard the rhythmic thump of feet, the sound wasn’t more than a hundred feet away.
He scrambled over the rocks and into his cave. His heart pounded, and his ears twitched back and forth, searching. At last, they had come for him, with their pitchforks and axes, their stomping boots and poking sticks. He knew he shouldn’t have visited Faelock three times in one moon cycle, but he hadn’t been able to resist. It had been so long since he had encountered a waking human that he had forgotten to be afraid.
Now he huddled in his cave, trying to decide whether to fight or run. To leave would be like jumping off a cliff and trying to find a place to land midair. To fight would only end in death or pain. So he hid, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be found.
It took him a solid two minutes to comprehend the reality of the situation. The crowd of attackers he imagined seemed to only have two small feet. There were no raised voices— only a tiny, lilting hum.
“Ashniten,” sang the shy voice of a human child.
He heard her stop at the entrance of the cave. Could she be a trick, meant to draw him out into the open? He listened for faint breathing or rocks shifting under a silent attacker’s boots in case there were adults hiding outside.
“Ashniten…are you in there?” she called, sending a soft echo through the cave.
The innocent curiosity in her voice pierced him, gripping his heart in a chokehold. At that moment, all he could think about was how this contradicted every story the people of Faelock told about him. You didn’t call a monster by its name, and you didn’t ask it a question as if it were an equal.
Confusion and terror overwhelmed him, so he did the only thing he could think of, which was to spring from his hiding place and bare his ugly teeth. A snarl clawed from his throat, infused with the sting of every name with which they defined him.
The girl gasped, whimpering in fear, and stumbled as she ran away.
When she was gone, he sat on the cave floor, feeling like he had just sacrificed his own soul in exchange for safety. He pictured her running back to Faelock, reinvigorating their withered legends with new life. She had to be immeasurably precious to them, being a child. Perhaps they would be furious enough to send a real mob of attackers, confirming his second worst fear besides drowning in the river.
He moaned in regret, curling up on the cold, muddy floor. His limbs trembled with the aftershocks of terror. The little girl’s voice still echoed in his mind— so shy, so sweet. He feared the entire experience had been an illusion conjured by his mind. Had he finally tipped over the edge of madness?
Apparently not, for she returned the next day.
At first, he only heard her footsteps. She stopped on the other side of the cave wall. This time, instead of hiding, he sat at the back of the cave in a position like a coiled spring, ready to pounce if needed.
“Ashniten?” she called.
He was surprised not to hear a change in her voice. She didn’t seem any more afraid than the day before.
“I brought something for you,” she said.
His ears pricked in suspicion, but all sound was forgotten when a scent more delicious than he had ever imagined drifted to him. It was salty, sweet, and most importantly, warm. Against his better judgment, he shifted onto his front paws, drawn to the smell like a bee to a flower.
The girl took one step around the edge of the cave entrance. “It’s a bloodberry scone. I was going to bring it to you yesterday, but you scared me.”
He inspected her presence. Her feet shifted slightly, and her breathing was more rapid than normal. The possibility of hidden attackers was illogical. They wouldn’t try the same strategy twice when the first attempt had worked so poorly. That meant she was truly alone and no more of a threat to him than a squirrel, or a bird.
He took a deep breath. “Who are you?”
She gasped. “You can speak!”
He couldn’t tell if it was horror or just surprise in her voice.
“Is your name really Ashniten?” she asked.
Ashniten meant ‘river monster’ in their language. The founder of Faelock gave it to him two hundred years ago, throwing it over him like a blanket that became his skin. Whether or not it was his name became irrelevant; it was all he was.
The girl wasn’t perturbed by his lack of an answer. “I’ll just leave this scone on this rock over here for you.”
He heard the soft scrape of the pastry settling on the rock. Its smell alone filled him with a profound desire.
She took three steps back, leaving space for him to claim his gift. Gift? Who would ever give him a gift? Perhaps he had gone mad.
He dragged his paws along the floor, each step betraying his most basic survival instincts. He imagined the taste of the scone on his tongues. He reached out to grab it…and stopped.
“I don’t want it,” he snapped, snatching back his claw.
“Why not?” she asked.
He grit his teeth against the heartbreak in her voice. “Go away. Don’t come back.”
“But aren’t you lonely?”
“I- no! And why do you care?”
She hesitated, digging the toe of her shoe into the sand. “I don’t know…”
He growled in frustration. “Just…leave me alone.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
He exhaled with relief.
“But I’m staying over here,” she said spitefully. “You don’t need this whole beach to yourself. We can share it.”
“What- no!”
She skipped across the beach and sat on the rocks. “Why not?”
He shuffled to the edge of the cave, so he wouldn’t have to listen through the rock walls. In doing so, he came closer to the waiting pastry. “Because… It's mine. I-I’ll attack you!”
She had the audacity to mock him with a laugh. “No, you won’t.”
“I will,” he affirmed. “I’ll eat you!”
“If you wanted to eat me, I would already be eaten!” she argued.
He growled again.
With both of them knowing the truth, the only thing to do was leave her there, so he went about his business.
The beatles usually crawled to the surface of the beach around midday, to absorb the most warmth, so that was when he dug for them. But midday had already passed, and the girl had distracted him for too long. When this circumstance occurred, he resorted to foraging in the woods for mushrooms. It was the riskier option since many varieties were poisonous, but over time he had learned to distinguish the good from the lethal by smell alone.
He followed the outer cave wall into the trees, taking care to stay as far as possible from the girl. It took much effort to bypass the enticing pastry, but to eat it would be consorting with the enemy, so he ignored it as much as he could.
When he felt the ground grow cooler under his paws, he knew he was under the pines. He crept among the roots and mud puddles, feeling and smelling for fungi. Then he heard footsteps behind him and paused with a sigh.
“What are you doing?” the girl asked.
“Searching for mushrooms.”
“Can I help?”
He glared. “I thought you said you were going to leave me alone.”
“Please…” she whined.
He grunted and turned away, which she took as a yes. She skipped into the woods behind him. He flinched at the sound of the stick and leaves crunching under her careless steps.
“I found some!”
He halted, turning in surprise. “What?”
It usually took him at least five minutes to locate a single mushroom. He sniffed, detecting the barest hint of its smell in the air.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“It’s over here!” she said excitedly. “It’s all round and orange and spotty.”
None of her descriptions meant anything to him, but he followed the sound of her voice. When he was close enough to smell it more fully, his heart skipped a beat. “Don’t touch it!”
She jumped, startled. “Why?”
“It’s poisonous,” he stressed.
He snatched a rock from the ground and smashed the mushroom to a pulp. Then he covered it with mud and placed the rock on top. “Every few months a squirrel will try to eat one, and a minute later I hear it choke and die.”
She gasped. “I could have died? That means you saved me!”
He froze, sweat collecting on the back of his neck. “No, I didn’t. I was just…I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
He continued searching, and she hummed along behind him. Soon enough, she found another. This time it was edible. They developed an unintentional system where she would find the plants, and he would verify whether or not they could be considered food. He ate them as they went, consuming about a dozen before he decided he was full enough.
“Do they taste good?” she asked him.
The question struck him as strange. Food, from his perspective, was not good or bad. It simply was. He ate it to live, and without it, he would die. That’s all there was to it. But then he remembered the smell of the scone and realized there was a difference.
“No,” he decided. “They taste bad.”
“Then why do you eat them?”
“Because I have to. They’re the only food I have.” “No, because now you have a scone.”
“I told you I don’t want the scone,” he snarled.
He heard her climbing a nearby tree, her shoes scraping against the bark. He dismissed it as the mindless ventures of a child, trying to ignore her. Then she slipped and landed on the moss with a grunt. He tensed, relaxing only when she stood and brushed the dirt off her hands. “But scones are so much more delicious than mushrooms!”
“Shouldn’t you be getting home? I bet your parents are wondering where you are,” he said.
“Oh right!” she realized. “It’s almost supper time. I have to go now. Bye, Ashniten! See you later!”
She scampered away, leaving him to ponder his thoughts. He sat still, listening to the sound of her humming as it faded into the gloom. The bitter, earthy aftertaste of mushrooms lingered in his mouth.
When she was gone, he was left with the river and the din of familiar loneliness. The crashing rapids seemed twice as loud, as if they were laughing, and he was the joke.
The next day, he found himself listening for the sound of her footsteps as he searched for beatles. Her words echoed in his mind. See you later! How long was the time between later and yesterday?
He scolded himself; he shouldn’t care if she ever came back. She was just an annoying little girl, and he was a monster. He should be trying to scare her away, not waiting in anticipation for her to return.
In spite of that, he felt a flutter of joy when she finally came traipsing through the woods, but he quickly suppressed it.
She stumbled onto the beach, slipping awkwardly on the uneven rocks. “Hello, Ashniten! What are you doing?”
“Looking for beatles,” he mumbled.
It still felt strange to hear his name said out loud and in such a bright, harmless way. He wondered what the girl’s name was, and deliberately decided not to ask.
A few minutes passed. She hummed to herself, and wandered closer to the water’s edge. “Did you eat the scone?”
He hadn’t been able to resist his temptations for long. “Yes.”
Her voice rose in excitement. “Was it good?”
“No.”
That was a lie—it was the best thing he had tasted in his life. But she didn’t need to know that.
The girl crouched on a large rock in the calm, shallow eddy, just feet from where the current swept past in a rushing torrent. He could barely hear her over the waves. “Guess what!”
He located a beatle, and tossed it in his mouth with a crunch. “What?”
“I told mama and papa about you.”
He almost choked on his food. “You did what?”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I told them you were really nice and that you saved me from the mushroom!”
His mouth went dry, and his heart raced. They would come for him now. They were probably on their way at this very moment: searching for his well-trodden trail, running down it, armed with their torches and pitchforks. He knew he shouldn’t have let this go on so long. He never should have let her come back.
Ashniten clambered closer to where she perched on the rocks, but he was careful to avoid the water. He had never touched it before, and he didn’t know what it would do to him. “What else did you tell them?”
She shifted on the rock, and her foot slipped in with a splash. “Oh no, my shoe’s all wet!”
His ears twitched with impatience. “Please, what else did you tell your parents?”
She hopped to another rock, which was slightly closer to the current, oblivious to his desperation. “Um…I told them I gave you a scone…and I told them how you can talk…but they wouldn’t listen. They kept saying you were a gross, horrible monster.”
In the back of his mind, he must have realized how close she was to the rapids. Perhaps if he could’ve seen, he would have been more attentive. But he was consumed with his own fear and paranoia, unable to comprehend the peril she was in. “Anything else? Do they know you’re here now?”
She never had the chance to answer. Many things reached his ears, all in quick succession. Her shoe scraped against the stone. She screamed as she fell, and a fleeting splash broke the water as she was sucked under.
For half a second, he was frozen in shock. Then he felt his paws grip the stones as he launched off the beach. His head emptied of any selfish thoughts, filled with the horrifying image of her body beneath the rapids. The danger of the river no longer mattered. Before he could second guess what he was doing, he dove into the water.
Immediately, the cold shocked what senses he had left. Without his ears, he could only go by touch, and what use was touch when all around him the water swirled like a frenzy of a thousand wasps? He flapped his limbs like wings, searching for the surface, but he couldn’t tell which way was up or down.
The current seemed to gather speed, and he began to panic. Soon his lungs would run out of air, and his strength would wane until he was forced to drift like a piece of wood.
Then, impossibly, his careening arms found something soft and squishy in the darkness. An arm. The girl! He latched on as firmly as he could manage without crushing her. A wave of renewed energy flowed through him. With the last of his strength, he pulled them both to shore.
If not for a particular eddy around a river bend, which he managed to catch before they were swept into a second wave of oblivion, he was certain they would have died. As it was, the calm current gently pushed them to shore. Ashniten dragged the girl’s limp body up onto the sand, and collapsed in a soaking heap of fur.
His ears, nose, and mouth were full of water, and his chest heaved. For a few seconds, all he could do was suck in deep lungfuls of precious air. As soon as he could manage, he turned his attention to the girl. He carefully flipped her on her back, leaning his ear closer to her face. A portion of the tense knot in his chest relaxed; she was breathing.
He found her shoulder and shook it. “Can you hear me? Wake up!”
She groaned faintly.
“Come on,” he pleaded. He shook her again, cursing his stupidity for not asking her name.
He quickly realized she wasn’t waking up, which meant there was only one other choice. He had to take her into Faelock. The very thought filled him with dread, but he swallowed it, like a distasteful mushroom.
The river had deposited them a few hundred yards downstream, to a place he had never walked before. The sand felt slippery and unstable beneath his feet, and the sound of this section of the river was unfamiliar. Despite this, he slipped his paws under the girl and slung her over his back. With one hand, he held her there, and with the other three limbs, he made his way up the shore.
Back in Faelock, Brina’s mother and father had abandoned the bakery for the day. They were going from door to door, asking the same questions and receiving the same answers. No one knew where Brina had gone.
Panic ensued, spreading like wildfire to the farthest edges of town. They crowded in the town square, where Brina’s mother organized groups to search the streams, the bloodberry fields, and the forest. It didn’t take long to search these places and find no trace of Brina; soon enough, someone suggested that Ashniten had taken her.
Of course. What else could have happened?
All of them, save the oldest and the very few youngest, filed down the forest trail. Their footsteps piled on top of each other, flattening the damp foliage like mashing berries into jam. Rain poured from the treetops, dripping down their faces as they called out her name.
When they arrived at the beach, the scene sent shivers of terror down their spines. Their eyes went wide, and a few of them gasped. From what they could see, the monster had the lifeless body of their precious child slung across its bony back.
“It’s killed her!” screamed one of Brina’s uncles.
Ashniten, shaking in fear, delicately laid Brina on the beach and backed away. A few pairs of footsteps rushed to her side. He pictured their weapons and furious, bloodthirsty expressions. He tried to focus on listening, wondering if he had any chance of defending himself, but the river had done something to his eyes. All the way up the beach, they had bothered him. The longer he went, the more they stung, but the sting wasn’t strange. It felt like the pain was burning something away. The only feeling he could equate to it was pulling a thorn out of his paw.
Now that he stood still and the weight of Brina was off his back, the feeling began to intensify. The sensation grew so overwhelming that he had to cover his eyes with his palms. Unable to stand, he fell to the ground, shaking in pain.
The villagers watched in increasing horror.
“What’s it doing?” someone asked.
The stinging intensified, so much that he thought it would never end, or not before he went insane. He could barely contain his hands from ripping his eyes from their sockets if only to end his torment.
Then it abated, like clouds dissolving away to expose the sun.
“Ashniten?”
He recognized Brina’s voice; she was awake and not more than a foot away.
“Brina, get away from it!” her father scolded.
She didn’t listen. The rain stopped falling, and everything went quiet. Even the river seemed to face into the background.
He slowly removed his hands from his face. Light cascaded into his eyes. The black veil, which had obscured his world for as long as he could remember, lifted. And the first thing he saw was Brina.
“Ashniten, are you okay?” she asked.
He stared, transfixed by the glory around him. The brightness lifted him on a cloud. The vibrance of the trees, the rocks, the people. Their eyes pierced into him, and they didn’t look at all like the monsters he imagined. Instead of vicious anger, he saw frowns and hesitance. Instead of weapons, they clutched each other like shields. They didn’t want to hurt him, they just wanted to protect their only child.
And there was Brina. Her brown eyes were shining. Her dark hair dripped on her pale skin. She knelt on the ground near him, hugging herself with shivering little arms. She was so small.
“Your eyes look different,” she said.
He had no doubt that she was right. Everything had changed.
“I can see,” he whispered, scarcely believing his own words.
She smiled, but then her father ran up behind her and scooped her up into his arms, wrapping her in a warm blanket. “Brina, what are you doing? It’s dangerous!”
She pushed away from him, her eyebrows drawing together. “No, he’s not! He saved me from the river!”
Her father's gaze slowly turned to Ashniten. He seemed unwilling to fully look at him as if the sight of a monster was too much for him to bear. “Is this true?”
Ashniten hesitated. The concept alone seemed so improbable. He, a monster, had dived into the river to save a helpless child? Why would he do such a thing? Why would he risk his own miserable life for hers?
Maybe he wasn’t a monster after all.
He pushed himself off the ground, noticing for the first time the shape on his paws, and the soft color of his fur. He sat on his hind legs, rising as tall as he could. He felt whole, and good, and brave.
“Yes,” he said. “I saved her.”
The man blinked, his dark eyebrows drawing together. Something in his eyes changed as if he were seeing the creature in front of him in an entirely new way. For all his life, every mention of Ashniten coated his image in filth and animosity, but this one action proved all of that was untrue.
“I don’t believe it,” he breathed. Tears pooled in his eyes, and he cradled Brina to his chest. “Thank you.”
A warm flower bloomed in Ashniten’s chest, despite the wind chilling his wet fur.
Her father wiped his eyes, and his expression became more serious. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid Brina will not be allowed near the river anymore.”
A lump formed in his throat. He knew he shouldn’t be disappointed, but it still hurt. He swallowed, preparing to solemnly agree. It was a fair decision. It would be irresponsible to allow her down here when the river was such a safety hazard-
“However,” her father continued. “You are welcome in Faelock anytime you want.”
Brina’s mother, a small woman wearing a green bucket hat, hesitantly peaked around her husband’s shoulder. “We’re having baked potatoes at, uh, dinner…tonight. If you would like to come.”
Now Ashniten’s eyes filled with tears. He exhaled with tremendous relief. “I would love to.”
Brina smiled, hugging her father. He stroked her hair fondly, then reached out his hand. The gesture told Ashniten one thing; he was no longer alone.
“I’m Albert,” he said with a smile.
He took his outstretched hand. “I’m Ashniten.”
EVA PHILLIPPI | About the Author
About the Piece:
This aesthetic of this story was inspired the January writing prompt in creative writing club. The plot is inspired by Taylor Swift lyrics and my own experience with loneliness.
About the Author:
I love beautiful words, the outdoors, and tea.
Eva is a sophomore at Wenatchee High School.
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