A Monkey's Vow

My fur bristled.

Not from wind. Not from cold. This was the forest’s warning, the prickling hush that crept beneath my skin when something was wrong. And the forest never lied.

The morning had been peaceful until then. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in soft gold, warming my back as I trailed after my princess. She hummed to herself—a sound I never understood but always loved. It meant she was content. Safe. For a little while, the jungle had felt as it should.

Then the feeling changed.

I looked at my princess as she wandered through the undergrowth as though the world existed only to part for her. Leaves whispered against her palms. She was unaware. Unafraid.

My tail curled tight.

Freedom was dangerous for someone like her. Protecting her was not simply my duty; it was the truest thing I knew. And every part of me now screamed that danger was near.

I leapt onto a low branch and scanned the shadows.

A rustle snapped my head to the side. Then another. A flash of color, human color, where no human should have been.

A man crouched low in the brush, breath held, body gathered inward like a predator ready to spring.

My princess was in danger.

I whirled toward her—

And she was gone.

A screech rose in my throat, but I choked it back. Noise would only help him. I hurled myself through the canopy, arms burning as I tore through vines and branches. She was never far. Never out of sight for long.

But now there was nothing.

I searched for her scent as I swung—crushed leaves, warm skin, the faint trace of jasmine oil she sometimes carried from her mother’s room.

Nothing.

Only disturbed earth.

Branches lashed my sides. Bark scraped my palms. The jungle blurred into streaks of green and brown and fractured sky. Every sound struck too hard: the pounding of my heart, the rustle of torn leaves, the startled cry of a bird bursting into flight.

Then a shout split the jungle behind me.

I stopped so sharply the branch beneath me shuddered.

My princess.

I spun and raced toward the sound, letting momentum fling me through the air. Fear burned through every muscle. I could not let harm touch her. Not after everything she had done for me.

I had once been no more than a lost, infant monkey, abandoned to the jungle’s cruelty. Vines had trapped me, leaving me dangling helplessly above the forest floor, too small to escape, too frightened to cry. She had found me there. She had saved me when no one else would.

From that moment on, my life was hers.

I burst into a clearing and stopped.

Two men stood in the open, locked in combat. Magic slammed between them in violent bursts of light, bright enough to sear the eyes. One was the hidden man from the brush. The other I did not know. Fury twisted the first man’s face; strain and fear sharpened the second’s.

Every instinct in me screamed to flee—to climb higher, vanish into leaves, wait for the danger to pass.

But my princess was here.

She had to be.

Beyond the men, the castle walls rose through the trees. Distant, but close enough. If I could get her there, she would be safe.

That was all that mattered.

I searched the clearing, catching every twitch of leaf and movement of shadow. Then I found her.

Across the clearing, half-hidden in the bushes, my princess crouched low. Her face wore the stubborn, reckless look she always had just before doing something foolish.

A lump rose in my throat as I swung toward her.

Too late.

She stood and stepped into the open.

Both men froze.

No.

I launched myself with a screech and landed on her shoulder. Her body was rigid beneath me, the tension in her muscles was like stone. She barely seemed to feel me.

I dropped to the ground and seized her cloak, tugging with all my strength, trying to drag her toward the safety of the castle walls.

She did not move.

Humans never listened when it mattered.

I pulled harder, frantic now.

The stranger lifted something into the air—golden, gleaming, wrong. Magic blazed from it in a burst of terrible light.

I went still.

Then horror tore through me.

The magic flew straight toward her.

No.

I threw myself in front of her, arms spread wide. My fingers knotted in her skirts as the force struck us.

The world became light.

Pressure.

Sound.

My princess screamed, and I would have ripped the world apart to silence that sound—but I was only fur and bone and fear.

The ground vanished beneath us. The air twisted. My stomach lurched as the world spun inside out.

And then the jungle was gone.

No trees.

No leaves.

No steady chorus of birds and insects.

Only towering structures, strange smells, and far too many humans.

The ground beneath us was hard and cold, nothing like the soft earth of home. The air tasted sharp, metallic, thick with smoke and unfamiliar scents. Wheels rattled over stone. Voices bounced in strange patterns, harsh and endless. The noise drove against my skull until it throbbed.

My princess sat dazed upon the ground, her face pinched with pain and confusion. The magic had touched her. I could feel it in the tremor of her breath, in the wrongness clinging to her skin.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

We were far from home. I knew it in the way the wind moved, in the dead hardness of the ground, in the foreign taste of the air.

I pressed my forehead to her knee, trying to steady the frantic beat of my heart. She smelled wrong now—of fear, magic, and something strange I could not name. I chirped softly, willing her to hear me, to look at me the way she always did when she needed courage.

But her eyes were distant.

Lost.

Whatever this place was, whatever waited for us here—

I would not leave my princess.

I would get her home.

No matter how long it took.