They come to me every evening now, this small warm one and the tall one, and they cannot get into their own den. I have watched the ritual for six summers. They stand at the low wooden door, patting themselves all over, turning out their fabric skins, making that rising sound of worry, until one of them lifts a little jangling cluster of metal to the light, and the cluster is what lets them in.
Without it, they are locked out of everything, even the box they arrive in. Fascinating, these creatures who build walls against themselves and then carry the one small tooth that opens them.
I have never needed a key. My door is the same door as my body. Rain comes in where it likes. The wren nests in my elbow without asking, and the door to that is simply my own bark opening.
The tall one dropped the cluster in my roots once, in a bad autumn, and did not come back for three whole winters. I held it for him under the frost. When he returned he was slower, and greyer, and there was no small warm one beside him anymore. He dug through my leaf litter with shaking hands until the metal came up cold, and he stood a long time holding it, not going anywhere, just holding the thing that opens the door.
I did not understand. I understood only that he stayed, that day, longer than he ever had.
They will lose these keys, all of them, the way they lose their names to my bark and their faces to my rings. New small ones will pat their pockets in my shade and be afraid, and find the little tooth, and be let in. I will keep whatever they drop.
I am, after all, the one who never leaves.