MeatCanyon

He cried, and the crowd surged at his words, some faces scared with grief, some faces scarred with grief, others aflame with the thrill of violent justice.

My breath became shallow as Rafe clamped a rough, leathery hand on my shoulder.

There would be no denying him, not in front of such a crowd.

So I nodded.

I was only a child when I first met the Keeper.

chasing my younger sister among the wildflowers and tufts of seagrass at the foot of that looming bleach tower.

The summer air was warm and thick, with the scent of gorse and honeysuckle.

as her laughing came to an abrupt end when my foot caught on a hidden root, sending me tumbling into a mess of green.

The sting in my knee startled out a sharp cry, and my sister's panicked face hovered above me.

Through teary eyes, I saw him approach from forbidden steps.

Tall, with a stiffness to his stride and a kindness in his weathered look.

"'Quite the wound, little lady,' he knelt at my side, producing a clean handkerchief in a rest-attentive ointment."

His large, worn hands were gentle as he cleansed the scrape, and as he worked, humming a foreign tune to himself, he soon coaxed a wobbly smile from my sister and me with peculiar stories.

Tales of shipwrecks, rare seabirds, and midnight flowers from lost islands that only revealed themselves under the lighthouse's beams.

He ended his stories with a warning.

Little girls should know better than to play by the lighthouse.

Even then, I sensed something otherworldly in his manner, as if he belonged to another realm.

But that day, beneath an endless blue sky, he was a quiet and straightforward hero who mended my wound and sent us home with a handful of sweets and a newfound reverence.

Future encounters were always fleeting over the years.

Sometimes, I'd see him drudging through the mist at daybreak, shaped of Howard by an old oil-skinned coat, carrying pails from the shore.