Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 37: Rose
For the rest of her long life, Rose would never forget the man with the scarred face and kind eyes who rescued them from the bad place.
She sat at the top of the cliff now, her whole body shaking with the shivers. The other kids were scattered around them on the hard ground just staring at the gray sky like they couldn’t quite believe it was real.
Rose couldn’t quite believe it either.
She closed her eyes and saw it all again. Every second of it seared into her memory that she knew would never fade, no matter if she lived to be a hundred and ten.
The cave had been so cold. She’d been counting the kids again after they took the little boy in blue pants, it became a compulsion the counting. She was scared they’d take Izzy or Junie or Sam; maybe when she was asleep like that had taken the little boy in the blue pants. Like somehow the number might change if she didn’t keep track.
Sam had gone rigid beside her. His head had turned toward the entrance, his whole body alert in that way that meant danger.
Then Rose felt it too. Something coming through the dark.
She’d pulled Izzy and Junie closer, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might break right through her ribs.They were coming to take somebody else.
Then the scarred man stepped into the fungus light.
Rose had thought he was a monster at first. He was covered in blood. Splatter on his face and clothes. He moved wrong to, smooth and quiet, like he was gliding instead of walking. His eyes were pure black, and for one terrible moment, Rose had been sure they were all going to die.
Sam had jumped up, ready to fight even though he was just a kid with a knife against whatever this thing was.
But then the man had raised his hands. “Easy, kid. I’m here to help.”
His voice had been gentle. Normal. Nothing like the voices of the orcs or the bad man.
Rose had made herself stand up, made herself be brave even though she was a scared as she ever been. She’d put her hand on Sam’s shoulder, felt him trembling with readiness to attack, to protect them all.
“Sam, don’t talk,” she’d said. “I’m Rose. Who’re you?”
And he’d looked at her, not through her or past her like most adults did. “Hi Rose. I’m Lan. Right now, I’m the guy getting you guys out of here.”
Out of here.
Rose had felt those words hit like a physical thing. Hope. Terrible, dangerous hope.
She could tell the little ones had believed him right away. They hadn’t been around long enough to know adults hardly ever meant what they said. So she had watched him carefully, looking for the lie, for the trick. Adults always had an angle. They always wanted something.
But then he’d turned to her and said, “Okay, Rose, you’re the boss.”
You’re the boss.
For some reason that convinced her.
“Gather everyone up,” he’d told her. “Have them line up single file and put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them.”
And she had done it. She’d organized them because that’s what she did, what she’d always done. Sam had helped, moving silently among the children, getting everyone in order with the efficiency of someone who’d done this before, who’d learned to move fast and obey when survival depended on it.
They’d lined up: fourteen kids, (she’d had counted again) even the fairy tale kids, hands on shoulders. Sam was in front with Izzy and Junie in the middle then Rose with the elf girl’s small fingers digging into her shoulder from behind. A long chain of kids. Like a play ground choo-choo train.
He’d gone in the other little room in the back and came back with the woman named Niamh. She looked mad and glad at the same time.
The man had given them instructions—squeeze shoulders to signal, don’t let go, don’t scream no matter what they saw—and then he’d led them into the dark.
Rose opened her eyes now, staring at the grey sky, and felt her throat tighten at the memory.
The darkness had been horrible. Like being swallowed.
But the man’s voice had kept coming from ahead of them, steady and calm. “That’s it, nice and easy. You’re doing great.”
She stepped on something soft and squishy in the dark. She hadn’t looked down. Hadn’t wanted to know. Her imagination had supplied plenty of horrible answers—guts, bodies, bugs, worse things—but she’d kept walking because stopping would have been worse.
The passage had gotten so narrow they’d had to turn sideways. Rose had felt stone scraping both her arms, felt the weight of a mountain pressing down on her from above. Her chest had gotten tight, her breathing fast and shallow.
She hated tight places always had since the time that one mommy had locked her into a closet for two days. The darkness had been crushing her, suffocating her, and she’d been sure—absolutely sure—she was going to die there, like something already dead and buried.
“Just a little farther,” the man’s warm voice came. “You’re almost through. You’re being so brave.”
Brave. Rose hadn’t felt brave. She’d felt scared. really scared. But she’d kept moving anyway because Izzy and Junie were depending on her, and they needed her to be strong.
That was the rule.
And then there’d been light. Not much—just that eerie green glow from the cave wall—but after the complete darkness, it had felt like being born.
“Almost there. I can see the entrance.”
Someone behind Rose had started crying. Her own tears had been streaming down her face, but just kept walking, kept moving, kept holding on.
And then—
Fresh air.
Rose sucked in a breath now, sitting on the clifftop, remembering that moment. The way the air had hit her face. Real air. Outside air. Not the dead, wet, rotten smell of the cave. She’d never realized before how air could taste, could feel like a living thing brushing against your skin.
They’d stumbled out into the gray light, and Rose had turned around immediately, counting. Had to count. Had to make sure.
One, two, three, four...
Fourteen.
All of them. Every single one.
They began the long scary climb to the top.
“Don’t look down,” she kept saying to the others and herself. “Don’t look down.”
Then the climb was over, they were out. That’s when Rose’s legs had given out. She’d sat down hard on the rocky ground, with Sam collapsing beside her, that’s when she started to shake and shiver. All the scaredness she’d been holding back, it had all come flooding out at once.
Izzy and Junie had crawled into her lap, and they’d cried together, and Rose hadn’t cared that she was supposed to be the strong one.
She looked around. They were in a small clearing, bounded on all sides by thick banks of fog that seemed to press in like walls. The gray light was dim and flat, making it hard to tell if it was morning or afternoon or somewhere in between. And at the center of the clearing—
Rose’s breath caught.
Three old women sat around a campfire. They were the ugliest people Rose had ever seen. They wore black—black robes or dresses or maybe just black rags; it was hard to tell—and their skin was gray and wrinkled like old leather left out in the rain. One of them had a face that was covered in terrible scars. The all had thick warty skin and small beady eyes.
They weren’t human.
Rose had heard the pretty blond haired girl who had been waiting for them when they got out of the cave talking to the Niamh woman in a low voice. “ ... the troll women. Lan said they’ll help us get back.”
Troll women.
Rose’s stomach twisted. Trolls. The same things that had been guarding them in the cave. Were these women like those things?
The troll women stared at the children with expressions Rose couldn’t read. Not quite hostile. Not quite friendly. Just ... watching. Weighing. Like they were deciding something.
Rose pulled Izzy and Junie closer. Sam had gone rigid again. Around them, the other children huddled together, their earlier joy and relief fading into fear and confusion.
“It’s okay,” Rose whispered, even though she didn’t know if it was. “We’re okay.”
But worry was creeping in replacing the gladness. They were out of the cave, yes. But what happened next? Where were they? Who were these troll women? Niamh seemed nice enough, but Rose had learned not to trust nice. Nice didn’t mean safe. Nice didn’t mean they’d get to stay together.
What if these women were taking them somewhere worse? What if they got separated? What if—
A movement caught Rose’s eye.
She turned her head and stared.
Out of the thick bank of fog that bounded the clearing, of all things, a dog came trotting.
Rose blinked. A dog. A normal, regular dog, padding into this nightmare clearing like it was the most natural thing in the world.
It was a golden retriever—yellow-gold and shaggy, with its tongue lolling out one side of its mouth. It looked friendly. Normal. Like something from the regular world, the world before the bad man and the cave and the monsters.
The dog stopped at the edge of the clearing and seemed to take them all in. Its head turned, scanning across the fourteen children, across Wraith and the little elf girl with two different colored eye and Wraith, across the troll women by their fire. Like it was counting.
Then it trotted over to the troll women and sat down beside them, calm as anything.
Rose felt like she was losing her mind. What was happening? Why was there a normal dog here with the troll women? Why was everything so weird?
“What—” Junie started to say something, but Rose squeezed her hand tight to be quiet, and she stopped.
The lady named Nimah and the woman called Wraith and the little girl with two different colored eye were standing apart from everyone else, staring back at the cave entrance with that sad look on their faces. The little girl holding Wraith’s hand and crying. Rose had realized—with a sinking feeling in her stomach—the man had gone back into the bad place.
They were waiting for the man to come back up.
Rose’s chest tightened. He’d gone back...
“He’s coming back, right?” Junie asked in a small voice. “The man who saved us. He’s coming back?”
Rose didn’t know. She wanted to say yes, wanted to promise, but she’d made too many promises she couldn’t keep. “I don’t know,” she whispered instead.
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