When Kubo awoke, his hands were throbbing. His head was buried in snow, and every part of him was freezing. Somewhere, he could hear a woman calling his name.

“Kubo? Can you hear me, Kubo?” she cried. Kubo turned, staring up at the woman… who wasn’t a woman at all. A monkey stood next to him. She was four feet tall, with a pink face and thick white fur. She stared down at him with narrow brown eyes.

Kubo jumped up, struggling to get away from the creature. But everywhere he turned, there was nothing but white. They were in the middle of a blizzard, the snow coming at them sideways. He could barely hear what she was saying over the sound of the wind.

The monkey stepped forward. “I said your mother is gone. Your village is destroyed. Burned to the ground. We landed here in The Far Lands, but your enemies aren’t far behind. We must search for shelter before your grandfather comes.”

Kubo stumbled backward, unsure what to do. He tripped over his bag and nearly crushed his shamisen. Then, below his feet, he heard a low creaking sound. He wasn’t in a field of snow—he was on a sheet of ice. The monkey spun around, gesturing for him to get on her back.

“We need to go now,” she said. “Come on!”

He turned around, looking at the frozen lake. There was snow in every direction. Where was he supposed to go? What was he supposed to do? He’d never even been outside his village before. Now he was here, in The Far Lands, somewhere he had heard about only in stories.

He climbed on, hoping that she would take him to safety.

The monkey moved easily over the snowy terrain. With her help, Kubo could go twice as fast as he would have on his own. She carried him all day, showing no signs of tiring, and it wasn’t until they reached the edge of a glacier that she stopped to rest.

Kubo glanced at the sky, suddenly realizing hours had passed since he awoke. The monkey stepped forward, gesturing to something beyond the glacier. Part of it was covered with snow, but Kubo could make out just enough to recognize the body of a dead whale.

“Once we’re inside,” the monkey said, “you might be tempted to complain about the odor. Keep in mind—my sense of smell is ten times stronger than yours.” As the sun started to set, the monkey ducked inside the whale’s mouth, waving for Kubo to follow.

The stench was disgusting. Kubo tried to hold his breath as the monkey went to work, tending to a small fire beneath the whale’s blowhole. She cooked some sort of soup in a large conch shell, stirring it with a piece of bone.

“You have questions,” she finally said. “I can tell. You get three.”

“Why only three?” Kubo asked.

“Okay, that was your first question,” the monkey said.

“What?” Kubo snapped. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Who are you?”

The monkey looked up, staring into his eye. Then she sat down and quickly posed exactly like his monkey charm. “You don’t recognize me.… All these years you had to keep me in your pack. Now you know why.”

“But you were a wooden charm!” Kubo cried, confused. “You were so small. I called that charm Mr. Monkey!”

“If I were alive at that point, I might’ve found that insulting,” the monkey said tersely. “Look, your mother used the last of her magic to save you and bring me to life.”

Kubo stared at the ground, thinking of what she said. The last of her magic. Your mother is gone. Your village is destroyed.

They’d been moving all day, and everything had felt scary and new. It was only now, in the quiet of the night, that Kubo began to feel the sadness of what had happened.

“Here, drink,” the monkey said, handing him a clamshell filled with white liquid.

“It smells,” Kubo mumbled. “I don’t want it.”

“I said, drink it,” the monkey repeated, an edge to her voice.

“You’re a mean monkey, aren’t you?” Kubo shot back.

“Yes, I am,” she said, holding up a few fingers. “And that’s three. You’re out of questions now, so just listen. I’m here to protect you, Kubo, and that means you have to do as I say. So if you don’t eat, you’ll be weak. If you’re weak, you’ll be slow. If you’re slow, you’ll die.”

Kubo took the soup, bringing the clamshell to his lips. He slurped away, making a loud, annoying show of it. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, pretending he did it by accident.

“You better start taking this seriously, Kubo!” the monkey said, pacing the length of the whale. “This is real. This is not a story. Those things, your aunts, they never get hungry. They never sleep. They will find you, and if we’re not prepared… they’ll kill me and take your other eye.”

Kubo swallowed the liquid, quiet for a moment. “So… what are we going to do?”

“We’re going to find the armor!” the monkey said. “It’s the only thing that can protect you.”

“So it’s real. It’s really real.…”

The monkey nodded. Kubo looked down, trying to imagine what it would be like to find the armor in real life.

That’s when he spotted the strand of thick black hair on his robe. He plucked it off, examining it in the firelight.

The monkey reached out for the strand of hair, but Kubo backed away.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to keep it.”

“I must’ve pulled it from her head,” Kubo said, remembering reaching for her before the robe lifted him into the air. “I didn’t mean to.”

The monkey pinched the hair between her knees, then braided the length of it, tying the end in a knot. “Your mother was very powerful. She blessed your robes so that when the need was most, they would fly you away. She used the last of that power to bring me to life. This bracelet, her hair; it’s a memory. Memories are powerful things, Kubo. Never lose it.”

She tied the bracelet around Kubo’s wrist. Kubo stared at it, the hair he’d know anywhere, its straight, thick strands so much like his own. It was comforting to have a bit of his mother still with him.

Maybe the monkey was right—maybe it would help him.

“One more question?” Kubo asked.

“Last one,” the monkey said.

“Do you know where it is? The armor?”

The monkey poked at the fire with a whalebone, letting the sparks fly through the air. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t. Now go to sleep.…”

Kubo wrapped his robe around him like a blanket. When he buried his face in it, it smelled a little like home—a mixture of the beach and the smoke from their fires. He breathed in, trying to tell himself that Monkey would protect him. She was there to keep him safe. But as he lay down to sleep, he kept thinking of the Sisters, with their cold, blank stares, descending on his mother before she died.