Journey of Craters and Mists

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. At least, that’s what people said, mostly grandparents who had heard it from their grandparents who, for all Elisa knew, had heard it from their grandparents. The dragons had arrived when their mountain homes were destroyed by the bombs of the Final World War, pushing generations of humans out of the too-hot Fernando Valley and up into the destroyed hills. It was an upset of the natural order, and yet it had remained for generations.

From the pack’s western outcropping, close to the border of their lands, Elisa looked out over the Valley to the shimmering ocean on the other side. The view was pockmarked by the caves dragons had learned to dig deep into the earth, replicating the mountainous tunnels they’d once thrived in. Long charred stripes crisscrossed the valley floor where dragons had fought with fire and claw for food, mates, and space. Now, as the sun was at her highest, Elisa could see dragons sunning themselves, laying on top of the ruins of the buildings the humans had once occupied.

“They have their area and we have ours,” Tomás said, following Elisa’s gaze.

Her brother was short like Elisa was, like most people were. Never having enough to eat meant every generation seemed to be getting shorter. In her memories, their grandfather Eliseo towered above them, a giant in her young life, taller than her father. He had passed away last winter, and thinking of him still felt like a dagger to Elisa's heart. With Eliseo gone, she and Tomás had only Alma, their blind and frail grandmother, left of their family.

"I think she's still out there," Elisa said, her eyes following the ridge of their hills north to The Crater. It was a forbidden place, The Crater, a hole in the earth where a mountain had once stood, the bottom untold feet deep and shrouded in shadows and poison. Alma said that the very fog that hung around The Crater every morning was toxic with the ancient poison released by the bombs that had landed there. Nothing grew there and animals would die if they got too close, or so the legends went. Elisa and Tomás had never been allowed to get close enough to find out.

On the other side of The Crater, the hills continued, curving west toward the ocean. It was easy to imagine them as they once were, a continuous spine curled like a sleeping animal around the Valley it protected. Elisa's pack, the People of the Mist, as they called themselves, stuck to their hills in the old forest, never venturing beyond them. Year-round, the forest was able to provide adequate shelter and almost enough food, so they never felt a need to leave. But every night, dotted along the hills on the other side of The Crater, Elisa could see the fires of other packs burning. She wondered who those people were, what they looked like, and if they also feared the dragons. She wondered if somewhere among them was her mother, looking back at Wilson's Hill while thinking of Elisa and Tomás.

"Stop it," Tomás warned her, but he sounded tired this time. Usually, he was angrier when she brought up their mother; Sandra was a forbidden topic among the People of the Mist. She had questioned their isolation, had dared to ask out loud if they shouldn't be trying to connect with the unknown packs around them. She had been silenced, moved to the worst shelters as punishment. She hadn't let them make her small though, she had simply quietly prepared and then, one day, left.

I'll be back soon, she had told Tomás and Elisa one morning, in the quiet hours before dawn.

Where are you going? Elisa had asked. Even in her memory, her voice sounded young and small.

Hunting, mi hija, Sandra had said. But Elisa had seen the pack on her back and knew she wasn't going hunting.

That had been nearly a hundred full moons before. Tomás said he didn't care, that he'd lost track, but Elisa had been counting, holding the number close, whispering it to herself in the night.

"I'm going to go find her," she told Tomás quietly.

"Don't be stupid."

"I am," she repeated, still staring out at the hills. In the midday heat, they seemed almost hazy. The distance seemed to shift and stretch as she looked from her feet to the other side of The Crater. How far could it be? Twenty miles?

He huffed air out of his nose, sounding furious. "Tonta. She's not alive. She went hunting alone one morning and got herself killed."

"That's not true," Elisa countered mildly. She knew that Tomás knew it wasn't true. Their father had been banished for not telling the pack leaders what Sandra was planning; they insisted that Sandra's recklessness had put them all in danger. Alma and Eliseo had been elderly but had taken in their grandchildren because the only other option was to let them leave with Mario, sure to die alone in the wild. Mario's body, ravaged by wolves, had been found by hunters just a few days later. But Sandra's never had.

"She's dead. Even if she didn't get killed hunting, she either died trying to get around The Crater or was killed by the dragons. Give up." Elisa knew Tomás was going for stern, but to her he just sounded tired. She wondered if he'd been thinking of Sandra more lately too. He was older, he probably remembered her better.

She glanced at her brother, tracing the frown on his face with her eyes. It was obvious why he was trying to keep the past firmly there: He was drawing close to the age their father had been when he’d married their mother. Tomás’s own marriage would be this winter, to their pack leader’s daughter, and any reminder of Sandra’s scandalous exit could put that in jeopardy, even after their intentions had been announced to the pack.

When Elisa had noticed the attention that Tomás had been paying to Maria last winter, she’d known it was only a matter of time. It was then that she’d begun her own preparations in secret, feeling more and more like Sandra every day.

Elisa didn't say anything, just kept staring from their outcropping to the other hills, wondering how long it would have taken Sandra to get there.

"How are you going to find her alone?" Tomás asked. "Because I'm certainly not coming with you."

Elisa looked sharply at him. "You don’t want to?"

He shrugged, scuffing a toe on the ground. "Someone has to stay here and take care of Abuela."

She knew he was right. Alma couldn't hunt, couldn't cook, could barely drink water without help. One of them would have to stay behind.

Plus, she sensed that despite his aloof attitude about his marriage, he was secretly pleased. While they weren’t completely outcast from the pack, their family had held a precarious position since Sandra left. Tomás marrying the pack leader’s daughter could only mean good things for their family’s future.

Elisa held out her hand, curling her fingers. She closed her eyes and called out silently, her senses spreading to feel every crack in the rock, every drop of dew on the grass. Soon, she felt it, the tiniest droplets of water forming first on her hand and then crawling up her arms, over her face and chest, dropping down to her legs. When she opened her eyes, she had shrouded herself and Tomás in a dense fog. The sun seemed watery and distant now, the Valley floor impossible to see beyond the wall she had created.

"I'll use the mist to travel safely."

"You're going to be a traveling cloud?" Tomás asked sarcastically, though he took in the fog she had created with a smile.

Elisa rolled her eyes. "No, I'll travel in the night and mornings, using the mist to hide my way. I've been practicing. I can hold the morning mists in place, keep them from burning off for extra time."

He arched his eyebrows, silently impressed. All of the Misty People, as he sarcastically called their pack, had an affinity for water. He also said they had an affinity for head colds and weak eyes, but that wasn't the point. Elisa knew she was the strongest in the pack, her power honed by an early discovery and a father determined that she should be powerful if not strong. Others could maybe shift the morning mists for a hunting advantage; Elisa was the only one who could create it from nothing, drawing water from around her even at high noon to create a dense mist.

In the safety of their foggy cocoon, Elisa watched as Tomás’s shoulders dropped with the haughty facade he’d adopted lately. “I wish you wouldn’t go, Hermana. I don’t want to lose you too.”

She smiled sadly. He had lost so much, she knew: Both of their parents, Abuelo Eliseo, another brother she had never known but whom he had adored.

“I’ll be back, Brother, I promise. In time for your wedding.”

“You’re going to leave before then?” He asked, stricken.

“I want to bring Mamá back in time for it.”

He swallowed, looking nervous. “I can’t stop you?”

She considered. Of course he could. He could do what their father hadn’t, turn her into the pack Elders and let her be punished for thinking about breaking the law. “I wish you wouldn’t,” she responded finally.

He nodded. He opened his mouth to say something, but a dull roar sounded from the Valley below. Elisa dropped the mists, the water gathering into a puddle around their feet, though dew remained on Tomás's eyelashes and caught in his shoulder-length hair. Elisa could feel her own hair plastered to her forehead, beginning to curl as soon as the sunlight hit it.

“A dragon fight!” Someone shouted behind them. José and Santos thundered up to them, their giant feet slapping on the rock. They shoved Elisa backward from the edge of the outcropping so they could see better. At a calmer pace, several of the older men of the village followed, eager to see what was happening.

“It’s The Newcomer and Old Red,” Santos said, squinting into the distance. Between their shifting bodies, Elisa could just barely see bursts of flame a few miles away, accompanied by roars that shook the ground they stood on. Once, humans had thought the sound of dragons fighting was earthquakes, but now that it happened in broad daylight they knew better.

Next to Santos, José was already shaking a bag of coins and using charcoal to tally bets on the flat rock they used just for this reason.

“Put my money on Old Red, he never loses a fight,” one old man called, tossing José a bag of ancient coins. José noted the bet with a mark.

“The Newcomer is strong, he’ll be the one to finally beat Old Red,” an even older man said, his voice wheezy.

José cheerfully put the money in the bag, tallying for The Newcomer.

Elisa tried not to roll her eyes too obviously. She wanted to leave but knew she’d be mocked for being too soft if she did. Dragonfighting was one of the only entertainments the People of the Mist had, and not liking it was seen as a weakness. Next to Santos, Tomás tried to look disinterested, but Elisa knew he was itching to make a bet. He wouldn’t though–The Newcomer, a dragon that had appeared in the Valley only last week, was still too much of an unknown quantity.

No one knew for sure, but they thought that The Newcomer was probably a young male, driven from his old home either by a lack of female dragons or a lack of food. He was a stormy gray, his scales glinting in the sunlight. His head was topped by two pewter-colored horns which curled far above his eyes. Distantly, Elisa wondered what color his eyes were; she never wanted to get close enough to find out. When he’d flown over their home, the People of the Mist had panicked, dropping to the ground where they stood and praying loudly for protection from the dragon invasion. He had just glided right over them, landing with an earth-shaking thud a few miles from their hills.

Old Red, on the other hand, was older than every member of Elisa’s pack. He was an enormous, blood-red beast with black horns and claws. The older members whispered that he had once ventured to their hill, investigating them with one enormous golden eye. They had prayed then, too, and he had left them alone.

The crowd watching the fight on the outcropping slowly grew, risking the heat of the sun for a little entertainment.

You must not go out in the sun during midday, Sandra had told Tomás and Elisa dozens of times. It can cook you alive, burning your skin and ending your life.

Elisa squinted up at the sun, shivering despite the brutal heat of it. How long had she been standing outside with Tomás? She knew that after twenty minutes she would burn, a painful experience that took weeks to fully heal. Elders whispered that people from Before–before the Final World War, before the bombs had made the land collapse, before the dragons had invaded the Valley–people had gone about their lives all day long, unafraid of being in the sun for more than fifteen minutes. Elisa wondered how that had been possible. Had that been their power? Or had the world just been safer then, before poison had oozed into everything?

She contemplated using the sun as her excuse to go back into the safety of their shelters, where she could clean or cook or make clothing by ambient light. She didn’t need to, however–the fight ended with another roar and an earthquake caused by a tail thwacked into the ground with frustration.

“Old Red wins!” Santos shouted. The crowd half-cheered and half-booed, mostly with good humor.

The fight was far away, but to Elisa’s eyes it looked like it had been a draw, both dragons retreating and neither gravely injured. But Santos’s grandfather had been betting, and when he bet he always won. She narrowed her eyes, calculating his wins in the last few fights. They’d be the richest family in the pack soon. Maybe if Santos was too sick to call the next one, someone else might have a chance, she mused.

“You look like you’re thinking about pushing Santos off the ledge, so it’s time to go home,” Tomás said quietly, guiding her back by her upper arm.

“He’s a bully,” Elisa whispered furiously.

“Right, so don’t get in his way,” Tomás returned, still keeping a grip on her arm.

Elisa seethed quietly but followed nonetheless. One more reason to leave: Getting away from Santos.

Back in the dim light of their shelter, Alma slept, her white hair fanned out on the pillow around her. Tomás sat on his own bed, scrubbing a hand through his hair.

“When will you leave?” He asked finally.

Elisa took a deep breath. “Tonight,” she decided.

Tomás looked at her sadly. “Dios salve te,” he whispered.

Elisa smiled. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t need God for this.

(Image credit.)