“Mommy, who lives at the top of the hill?”
Aiyden sat with his bare feet in the grass as his mother bounced him up and down on her knee. Bees buzzed around them, going about their busywork in the garden of flowers and vegetables that surrounded the lush green grass just outside their small wooden home.
From inside, the two could hear the gentle bubbling of the evening’s supper over a crackling fireplace. A light breeze swept through the house, bringing with it the delicious scents of fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, pork salted liberally, and a generous amount of seasoning traded recently from Old Lady Nanneroth up the road. Her wrinkled, friendly face had beamed, making her eyes squint, and she had offered Aiyden a rare treat as they were leaving. He could still taste the vibrant explosion of strawberries and rosemary that had swept across his tongue like a tidal wave of sweetness.
His mother pondered the question briefly before responding.
“Someone very old and very proud, who wishes to remain unbothered, dear.” She gently brushed a lock of curly raven hair out of Aiyden’s face and smiled. “Don’t go knocking on his door, or he might eat you!”
“E-eat me? Do people do that?”
“Only this one, and only when little children like you bother him!” She wiggled her fingers on Aiyden’s belly and he giggled, before falling off his mother’s leg with a shriek. He tumbled head-over-heels and bumped into something hard. Still upside-down, Aiyden squinted in the late-afternoon sun to look up and up into the chocolate eyes of his father.
“Daddy!” He squirmed around until his little arms could wrap around his father’s leg. A deep, warm laugh from above reached his ears, and his father ruffled his hair gently. His laugh had always reminded him of a hot fire on a cold winter night, and today was no exception. This, in turn, led his youthful mind back to the events of earlier today.
“Daddy you’ll never guess what mommy and I made today!”
“I bet I can!” His father leaned his head back and inhaled deeply. Aiyden mimicked the breath, holding his breath as his father’s much larger lungs continued to pull in air.
“Hmmmm… I smell tomatoes… and mushrooms… and pork, along with some sage, rosemary… and I’ll bet there’s some of those carrots you picked a few days ago in there. Did I get it all?
Aiyden beamed triumphantly. “Nope!” He put his hands on his hips. “You forgot the most importantest ingredient!”
“The most important one? And what might that be?” His father reached an arm out over Aiyden’s head and embraced his wife before sharing a gentle kiss.
“It’s oreg… orgen… ornenago.” Aiyden frowned, and mumbled the word to himself a few times, trying to work it out. His father lifted an eyebrow, a light smile playing across his lips.
“Is it… orega--”
“Oregano!” Aiyden cried jubilantly. His father laughed and extracted himself from his wife’s embrace to ruffle Aiyden’s hair once more.
“Good job, kiddo. Listen, you know how I told you I was going to the next town over for some things?”
Aiyden’s head bobbed. “Yep! And you said that I was the man of the house while you were gone. I was in charge for a whooooooooole tenday! I made sure the house kept running, just like you said! Mommy even taught me to play Shiin while you were gone!”
A shadow crossed across his father’s face as he looked over at Aiyden’s mother. “We talked about this.”
“It was the only way I could get him to settle. It’s just a game, dear, and despite what you think, it won’t make him into a gambling addict all on its own.”
His father sighed. “I suppose so. What’s done is done, at any rate.” He turned his attention back to his son. “Anyway, you’ll never guess who was in town while I was there.”
Aiyden scrunched up his face, making his chubby cheeks puff out as he considered. “Was it… Trevain?
His father shook his head. “No, no one from this town. Someone from far, far away, who travels often.”
Aiyden’s eyes went wide. “Was it The Storyteller?”
His father chuckled and squatted down to eye level. “Going right for the grandiose of ideas now, aren’t we? No, it was not The Storyteller, nor any of his followers. It was Gideon.”
“The traveling inventor?” Aiyden bounced up and down in excitement. “Did he have anything cool? What did he make? Did he visit anywhere cool? Please tell me you got something from him, oh please!”
“I did.” His father smiled patiently, and Aiyden suddenly realized that his father had been holding one hand out of sight the entire time.
“What is it? Lemme see! Did you get another waterstick? What about an ember glass? A puzzlecube? He had those last time they were in town. He said a secret treasure was hidden inside every one!”
He ran around his father, trying to see what he was hiding, but tripped over his own feet and face-planted spectacularly on the grass. There was a moment of quiet, broken only by the quiet bubbling of the pot inside and the buzzing of bees, before Aiyden sprang back up.
“What is it?”
“It’s something better than all of those combined,” his father said quietly, and presented his hand to Aiyden.
Nestled in his weathered palm, cupped by his dark, calloused fingers was a simple wooden box, polished to a sheen so smooth that it reflected light like a mirror. Aiyden brushed his fingers against the top, letting the cool lacquer tickle his fingertips.
“What is it?” he whispered, not even noticing as his mother bent over his head to peer at it herself.
“It’s a very special tool, meant just for you.” He pressed a small button on one side with his thumb, and the box clicked open quietly. The top swiveled upwards on concealed hinges, and Aiyden’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
The interior of the box was lined with a soft red felt, and the bottom of it was padded to hold a gleaming silver butterfly. Its wings were made of paper-thin metal and had been worked into a complicated and intricate filigree. A tight mesh of cogs, gears, and hinges comprised the body, all of it centered around a tiny red stone that glowed like a strangely colored firefly. Above him, Aiyden’s mother gasped. “How much did this cost you?”
“It was a gift for our help last winter.”
“What does it do? Can I touch it?” Aiyden whispered. Would he damage the fragile contraption if his voice was too loud?
“He said that it was a special device designed to take its owner on a grand adventure, and will always lead them on the right path.”
“How does it do that? It’s just a little butterfly.”
Aiyden’s father shrugged. “Gideon is the magical inventor, not me. You can ask when he comes into town next.”
“Can I use it? Right now?” Aiyden looked up at his father and mother pleadingly. The two adults shared a look that Aiyden knew was the mysterious and unobtainable language of his parents: having an entire conversation in the span of a heartbeat. Perhaps they knew some magic after all.
“I suppose you can,” his mother said slowly as her husband cupped Aiyden’s hands around the butterfly box. “But you must be home by sundown for supper.”
“Don’t worry, mommy. I will. The butterfly will make sure of it!”
Aiyden eyed the contraption for a moment before finding a hidden button located on the top of its abdomen. He pressed it.
With a soft click and a gentle whir, the butterfly came to life. The stone glowed a bit brighter and the delicate machinery began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster. The wings began to fold up and down, beating like a real butterfly’s. It suddenly occurred to Aiyden that, with just a simple metal mesh, the wings wouldn’t be able to actually lift the tiny machine into the air, but as he opened his mouth to speak, two thin streams of red energy seemed to flow out of the stone and envelop the filigree of the wings, bathing them in red and coating them entirely. Little wisps of energy drifted off the machine as it lifted into the air, its transformation complete.
Aiyden giggled and bounced giddily as it flapped around his head. “It works! It really works!”
“Well of course it works, Gideon made it, didn’t he?” His father smiled, before raising his eyebrows and pointing past Aiyden. “You’d better go catch it, though. It seems as though it’s found a path for you to follow.”
Aiyden gasped and whirled around, seeing that his little contraption had begun following the path away from their home. “Gotta go on an adventure! I’ll be back! Thank you daddy!”
And then he was gone, gallivanting after the magical machine as it led him on a merry chase.
He waved at Auntie Penelope as he peeled past her house, and paused briefly at the end of the lane. Two excitedly barking mastiffs, Brun and Bran, were defeated with a suitably sized stick to careen after. The apple tree belonging to Georgie, the town baker, was tempting, but the butterfly did not falter, and so neither did he. The grand apple heist would have to wait for another day, it seemed. He smiled at fair-haired Ellein, who sat on a rocking chair in front of her house with a needle and thread, and stuck his tongue out at Crotchety Bennet, who muttered under his breath at him like he always did, and turned up his exceptionally long nose, like he also always did.
The butterfly wound and wove its way through town without rest, and Aiyden, despite his boundless youthful energy, found his cheeks reddened and his chest heaving beneath his shirt as they left the town, heading towards a large, grassy knoll.
The hill was the largest that Aiyden knew of, sweeping up from the gently rolling grasslands around it into a majestic arc, before crashing down the other side, like someone had long ago buried an immense ball beneath the earth. The hill itself was almost completely barren of anything other than short, vibrantly green grass, apart from a tiny wooden cottage at its very zenith. The house was shaded by a maple tree that towered over it, wreathing the roof with its branches like an intricate and leafy crown, and a bit of smoke puffed from a singular chimney.
Aiyden watched, still puffing and panting, as the butterfly began meandering its way up the slope. Frantically, he chased after it. “No, stop! You can’t go up there! He’ll eat you! And me too!”
But the butterfly didn’t heed his words. Aiyden watched in abject horror as the little machine flapped indignantly in through an open window, disappearing into the darkened interior of the home.
Aiyden briefly considered turning on his heel then and there and marching all the way home, but the youthful confidence of a child should never be questioned, and he boldly forged onwards. Before long he found himself at the door to the little home. Inside, he could smell the warm scents of freshly cooked bread, mixed with the heavy scents of smoked meat. He swallowed, wiped his suddenly clammy palms on his pants and pushed aside the dark curiosity of what sort of meat he could be smelling. Lifting a shaky hand to the tall wooden door, he knocked.
After a good long while in child-time, (a whole five or six seconds) Aiyden stepped back, eyeing the tree. The window itself was too high off the ground for him to peek into, but if he could climb the tree, then maybe he could…
Click.
The latch to the door unhooked from the doorframe, and the door began to creak open. Aiyden bit his lip and balled his fists.
The room beyond the door was darker than most of the people in down kept theirs, though he could make out a small fire crackling in a corner. From the darkness, reflecting the bright summer light of the sun, suddenly gleamed twin, slitted, vibrantly yellow eyes.
“H-hello,” Aiyden squeaked, suddenly feeling as tall as a mouse.
Without warning, the eyes descended swiftly and Aiyden suddenly found himself face to face with a lion.
Well, not quite a lion. A long-distant relation of the lion, according to the ringleader of the traveling circus that paid a visit to their village every fall. This was a fellinn. He seemed to have the general form of a lion, with great, furred paws that made hardly a noise as he swept from his front door to crouch before Aiyden. Golden fur, streaked faintly with white, covered him from head-to-toe, and a brown-and-gray tufted tail swished lazily behind him as his wide face, framed by a thick but well-kempt mane, peered at him over delicate half-rim glasses. Unlike a lion, this fellinn stood on two legs, like a human, and his long arms ended in distinctly human-like hands, though unlike Aiyden’s, his more stubby, furred digits were each tipped with a retractable claw. He had soft, pink pads on each fingertip and lining his palms, which Aiyden now realized were cupping a tiny, delicate, mechanical butterfly. It was resting still, its small stone dark.
“Is this yours, perchance?” the fellinn rumbled, a voice as soft as velvet and as deep as thunder.
“Y-yessir.” Aiyden was already calculating how likely he was to be eaten by this person, and whether he should try to make a run for it. Determination prevailed, however, and he managed to stay put.
“It flew in from my window and landed atop my bread. It seems that the winds of fate cannot leave me in peace.” He stood back to his full height, and the sun, beginning its slow descent, cast its rays across his mane, making it into a wreath of fire.
Aiyden was at a loss for words. “Are… are you a king?”
The fellinn blinked slowly, thoughtfully. Then he smiled. “Yes, I suppose I must be. And that must make you my brave butterfly knight, does it not?”
Aiyden looked up to his king and nodded solemnly. “I am! And my loyal butterfly has led me here to… to…”
Aiyden paused, frowning. What was a suitable mission for a butterfly knight to visit his king?
The fellinn glanced over his shoulder pensively before turning back. “...To pick up a most valuable cargo, for which to bring home to his family?”
“Yes! That!” Aiyden puffed out his little chest. “I am here to pick up a vlabluable… val-you-uh-bull cargo!” His king could allot for one small hiccup in pronunciation, suredly.
The fellinn nodded sagely. “Wait here, loyal knight,” and disappeared back into his castle.
Aiyden rocked back and forth on his feet for a moment, admiring the magnificent view of the red-orange sunset dropping behind the rolling sea of grass, but he did not have to wait long. The fellinn tapped him on the shoulder, offering him a parcel wrapped in a simple white cloth. The parcel was warm and smelled of flour and yeast. “I commend this package to my bravest knight, to take home to his family. The trials on your journey will be many, and tribulations shall abound, but I know that your bravery will outshine legends of old, and you shall safely arrive home.”
Aiyden took the priceless package in his small hands, his mouth watering from the smell of it. “And what of my butterfly?”
The fellinn closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. As he did so, he once again opened his eyes. All his attention was now on the small contraption still nestled in his hands. Thin red wisps began to flow from his hands, drifting and winding around the butterfly before flowing into the gem. Eventually, the tiny red gem began to glow once more, and the fellinn smiled, satisfied. The red wisps faded, and he handed it back to Aiyden. “Whenever your companion needs more aura, or you need more quests, you must come find me here, in my grand castle. Now go, young knight. Fly free on the breeze like a butterfly, and may your adventures be glorious!”
And fly, Aiyden did.