Ink drawing: Rosine in her luna-moth form flies high above the clouds, carrying Jill in her arms

ROSINE'S VERSION

The book had wings.

The girl who loved this story ran away to the Misty Valley, and became the Queen of the Elves.

scroll to open the book

A TALE FROM THE VILLAGES

Peekafthe Outcast

Watercolor of Peekaf, a small boy with a floppy pointed cap, spiky white hair, big red eyes and a white scarf, standing on a sunny hillside

WITH PICTURES

This book belongs to
ROSINE

Elves only!!
(Jill can read it too.)

if found, return to
the Misty Valley →

THE TALE OF

Peekaf

THE OUTCAST

as Jill told it to the Black Swordsman,
one morning in the forest

Peekaf, with his pointed cap and red eyes, being laughed at by village children in a cobbled street

“Red-Eyed Peekaf! Pointy-Eared Peekaf!”

Red-Eyed Peekaf

Long ago, in a village at the edge of a forest, there lived a boy named Peekaf. His mother and father loved him very much.

But Peekaf had pointed ears and red eyes, and the village children never let him forget it. Nobody else had eyes like his. Not his father, not his mother, not one soul in the whole village.

“This isn't my home,” Peekaf thought. “These people aren't my real parents.”

Peekaf walking away down a dirt road at sunset with a bundle on a stick, his scarf blowing

He did not look back. Not even once.

II.

Out into the Night

One night, while his mother and father slept, Peekaf tied up a little bundle, wrapped his scarf twice around his neck, and crept out of the house.

He was going to the forbidden forest, where no grown-up dared to walk, to find his real parents and the world where he truly belonged.

Tiny winged elves with red eyes hover around Peekaf in a sunlit forest, pointing at his back

“Where are your wings?”

III.

The Forbidden Forest

Deep among the trees he found them: elves, with red eyes and pointed ears just like his own.

But the elves only laughed. “You're no elf. Where are your wings?”

Then the oldest elf remembered. Long ago, a mother and father had carried their dying baby into the forest and begged the elves to save him. The magic worked, but it left the child a little bit like them. That baby was Peekaf.

Peekaf standing alone at a village gate while strangers walk past without noticing him

Every face was a stranger's face.

IV.

A Hundred Years

Peekaf ran all the way home with tears in his eyes.

He had been in the forest for only a few moments. But in the village, a hundred years had gone by.

The houses were different. The people were different. There was no one left who knew his name, and no mother or father waiting by the door.

Peekaf hugging his knees and crying on a grassy hill at sunset, the village on one side and a dark forest on the other

Between the village and the forest.

The Little Hill

So on a little hill between the village, where he knew no one, and the elf forest, where no human may live, Peekaf the Outcast sat down.

And he cried and cried, until his red eyes were redder still.

The End

stupid ending.
turn the page →

Rosine, in a bonnet and orange dress, and little Jill with pigtails sit by a river; Rosine points at the sky

me & Jill, at the river

I told her I was an elf.
She believed me.

My version:

Peekaf never goes back.
He finds a valley in the mist where children grow wings,
and nobody there ever hits them,
and he stays forever.

— R.

AFTER THE LAST PAGE

The Misty Valley

In Berserk, the tale of Peekaf is a fairy tale inside a fairy tale. It is told in the Conviction Arc, and it explains a girl who wanted it to be true.

Rosine and Jill as children by a river under a bright blue sky

I'm an elf, you know.

ROSINE & JILL

The girl who loved the story

Rosine was the tomboy of Jill's village, four years older and fearless. She spent whole days in the woods and streams catching bugs and collecting treasures, mostly to stay away from her parents' fighting at home.

She told little Jill her own version of Peekaf, and said she was an elf too. Rosine knew elves weren't real. One night she ran away to the elf land said to lie in the Misty Valley, leaving Jill her whole year's collection except one strange stone from the riverbank.

Ink drawing: Rosine lying in tall grass gazes at a tiny winged elf perched on her fingers while Jill kneels beside her

Peekaf…?

THE ONE SHE CALLED PEEKAF

A real elf

Years later Rosine returns as an apostle who calls herself the Queen of the Elves. Her winged “elves” raid the villages, and every one of them used to be a child.

When Puck, a real elf traveling with Guts, says so out loud, she sneers at him as “Peekaf”. That word is why Guts later asks Jill what it means, and why Jill tells him the whole tale.

At the very end, a real elf flutters down beside her in the grass.

Title: Peekaf the Outcast
Also called: Red-Eyed Peekaf, Pointy-Eared Peekaf
First told: Episode 102, “Red-Eyed Peekaf”
Volume: 15 · Conviction Arc
Told by: Jill, to Guts
Loved by: Rosine, who saw herself in it
The moral: The family he went looking for was the one he left behind. By the time he understood, it was a hundred years too late.

Some children run away to find where they belong.

PEEKAF.COM · A FAN SHRINE TO THE MISTY VALLEY

The book had wings.

Peekafthe Outcast

Peekaf

Red-Eyed Peekaf

Out into the Night

The Forbidden Forest

A Hundred Years

The Little Hill

The Misty Valley

The girl who loved the story

A real elf

About the Tale FAN GUIDE