There once was a small village in the wooded valleys of York not known to many. The trees lined the outskirts of the town, and kept its inhabitants from harm throughout the many years of fighting between the neighboring towns. The townspeople did not know of this violence. They went about their days doing what townspeople did: tending to the farm, sweeping the shop, talking amongst each other, etc.

In this town lived Joel, a young boy who resided in a small cabin at the treeline with his parents and siblings. Joel was known as the greatest climber in the valley; he could scale walls easily and spent his days climbing trees and hopping between them.

One day while perched in a tree, Joel caught a glimpse of a large beast walking over one of the neighboring villages. Where its feet touched, wreckage was left behind. Joel felt his stomach become empty; he knew that there would be trouble in the near future for his village if he did not run for help. Without looking back, Joel ran into town yelling for help.

Down the cobblestone streets Joel ran and got the attention of the townsfolk, demanding them to follow him to the square. Once he had all of the villagers rounded up in one place, he told them what he had seen. The people seemed doubtful; a large white beast crushing houses beneath its feet does sound crazy after all.

Joel tried his best to make the people believe him, but they filed out of the square and went back to what they were doing. They said that there was no such thing as monsters, and that he should stop making up stories for the fun of it.

That night, Joel decided to head out of town and find King Khalid, the king of York, to tell him about the monster. Joel grabbed a loaf of bread and a sack of water and walked over the dark hills towards the castle.

The next day at noon, Joel arrived at the castle to speak with the king, but the guards told him that the king was not there. Joel hung his head sadly on the long walk back home until he heard the sound of trees crunching in a nearby clearing. He climbed into a tree for cover and watched the large being lie down to rest. Its skin was made of cotton and was sewn together with thread. The beast covered its head with its arms and lay on top of a fallen tree.

Joel carefully crept up on the monster. He decided he would ask it why it was destroying villages. He climbed up the branches of the tree over the monster’s head and tapped on its soft forehead. Quickly the beast jumped up and almost flung Joel across the clearing had he not latched onto its arm. It noticed Joel and lifted him up to its face. Its large sewn ears flopped over and tickled Joel's head.

Joel called out and asked why the beast had done the things he did. From deep inside of the monster’s head, a voice called out, telling Joel how he did not want to hurt anybody, he was just trying to find a way home. He revealed to Joel that he was in fact King Khalid, and he had been trapped within the stuffed suit where his vision was impaired. He could not walk anywhere now without breaking things. Joel could hear the king’s muffled cries inside the suit, and asked how he could help. The king replied, saying that in a mountain close by there was a cave of evil seamstresses that had kidnapped him and sewn him into the suit.

King Khalid told Joel that in order to remove the suit, the seamstresses’ magical sewing machine had to be destroyed. But the mountain was completely sealed off. The only thing that had the power to destroy the machine was the enormous suit, which was too soft to break through the mountain.

Joel and King Khalid pondered the solution to this difficult problem. At first they thought to bring all of the king’s army to the mountain to remove the sewing machine, but the seamstresses were powerful and there were many of them.

Then they thought they would have the king run into the side of the mountain to split it in two, but they determined that its rough surface would tear the suit and hurt the king. Then Joel heard the buzzing of bees coming from a nearby beehive.

Joel excitedly jumped up and climbed the tree that held the beehive, scooping out the beeswax from inside when he reached it. Joel worked the beeswax in his hands and rubbed it into the cotton of the king’s suit. When it dried, the beeswax turned the suit into a hard suit of armor. He told the king that now he could crack the mountain with his suit.

The only way to destroy the sewing machine was to run its magical thread through it backwards. The king told Joel grimly that when the time came, he wanted Joel to pull the thread sewing the suit together at the base of his foot and feed it into the bobbin of the sewing machine. Joel asked why the king sounded scared, and King Khalid told Joel that it was because the stuffing inside of the suit was fused with his skin, and he knew there would be a consequence to removing it.

As they walked toward the mountain at dusk, the once white skin of the suit now glistened in the low sun a magnificent amber. Joel held onto the ears of the cotton suit and watched the tiny mountain grow in his vision as they approached it. The king told Joel to hang on tight, as he was about to charge at the side of the mountain..