Penbroke in Shiasta

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. Yet, there they were, separating the good from the bad and everything else that was neither. In the valley between Penbroke and Shiasta lay the foundations of what was once a mighty nation. No one knew what lie to the East of Penbroke or to the West of Shiasta, they only knew the fine line that separated them was blurred by the rubble of Zena. The dragons prowled around day and night and not a soul from Shiasta knew what was in Penbroke or beyond any more than any from Penbroke knew what was on the other side of Shiasta. Ironically, those on either side were so focused on where they could not go, they never turned around to see what was behind them. It was as though time stood still at the dragons bidding.

Only the elders remember the day when the fair trade and festivals had ceased. It was a normal day of blue skies and sunshine because in the valley it had never rained. In fact, nothing was ever stormy there before the dragons swooped in bringing destruction and chaos with them. Now, nothing was ever clear. No one knew where they had come from, why they had stayed or why they were so frighteningly angry all of the time. They constantly roared and charged at those who grew close. They didn’t seem to eat or drink. They only roared and stomped. They were also seemingly trapped by an invisible tether. There was the area within that seemed to be free of restrictions, but they never left its boundaries. Like a great geared machine, they were always grinding back and forth trudging with the great despair of a man who had just lost his job and didn’t know how to tell his family.

Every day the tramping pounded away deafeningly from horizon to horizon. An earthquake followed by a tornado might have been quieter. Some of the younger, braver men would try on occasion to break through the lines of the smaller creatures only to find themselves dashed to bits. The dragons would not take one bite as food. In fact, they never seemed to eat anything. Yet, they crushed each foolish one who tried with teeth as sharp as 10 swords and threw them back from where they came. Oddly enough the marks were in patterns that were vaguely familiar despite not a single Penbrokian or Shiasten could identify them. The first few victims were left where they lay for a few days for fear that the responders would also meet their same demise, but they never did. It was like the dragons could not see them.

It was equally strange and quite puzzling that the corpses did not decay either. They did not bleed. Yet, they were crushed and marked. Life was drained away. The first stately man was placed under a glass casket for the elders to watch, to contemplate, to speculate what exactly they were witnessing. Then, there were more. Each laid to rest, undercover. And just like Snow White, one glass casket after another was laid in a neat and tidy row in the field of dreams almost as though they were waiting for the princess to wake them from their slumber with a kiss or a tear. But, no tears were found to refresh the corpse having received many after the dragons had made their deposits for the price of a life ended too soon. The families who remained could only mourn living with the knowledge that destroying and taking life is what dragons do.

Still, there is always one optimist in every circle, in every tale. Fizzy was Penbroke’s eternal optimist who only lived in sunshine and wonderment. Fizzy didn’t think the dragons had to be that way because to look at them, one could only watch in a mesmerized trance. The variety of dragons was shockingly beautiful. Every color imaginable was represented in an iridescent glow casting a strange rainbow across the valley. No goldsmith could set a finer gem than the blues and golds of the middle dragons. The fire opal could hold no ember to the hues of white and pearlescent greens flashing hints of lightning bolt pinks and lavenders. Fizzy once caught the largest of the middle dragons in an appearance of sleep. And he could have almost reached over to give it a loving pat except that the latest victim flew back across the forbidden lines as he thought he might try. Regardless, Fizzy was sure that there was a way to tame the wild dragon heart, to give it the love that would quiet the angry spirit. Assuredly, how could anything so beautiful be so dark beneath the exterior of glamour?

In every chainmail suit of armor, there is a missing link, a weakness. Fizzy was sure that if he could only watch and wait long enough, he would be the one to find a way through. He would be the one who could bring back the valley of harmony filled with the fair trades and festivals he had heard about for so long. His own Uncle had been one of the men who had first tried to cross the line but was now peacefully stored under glass. Fizzy would often catch his mother standing by his side talking to him as though whatever was being said would bring him out of the state he was in. It was her brother, her only brother. She would stand there for hours, sometimes laughing, sometimes sober. She was faithful. She came around like clockwork right after lunch, often staying until dinner. No one seemed to have anything to do or say that was normal any longer with all of the ominous stompings that continued.

Every morning people would get up still hoping for a moment of silence where the birds could be heard once more. Oh, how everyone missed the sounds of the finches, the canaries, and the sweet soothing tones of the morning doves with their quiet coos. And while they were still to be seen, they were no longer heard. Fizzy also missed the sounds of the summer leaves waving at the passersby with their humble hellos handed out by the gentle breezes that only could be felt on the valley floor. The smells of the flowers could be enjoyed, but not the buzzing of bees or the toads down by the swamp's edge. There were so many things that everyone missed. For Fizzy, it was the uncle who was there and not there too. It was Uncle who taught him how to fish for the evening meal and to cook them in his special and almost secret seasonings.

His uncle had been caught bragging quite often about his special treats and refused to give out the one ingredient that made it almost magical. Fizzy didn’t have the heart to tell him that he had known what the secret ingredient had been because he had watched him from the knothole in the wall above the stove one day. He watched him clean the fish they had caught twenty minutes earlier. Fizzy saw the sharp filet knife slice the flesh clean from the bones with the well-practiced hand. He watched him dust the fish in the flour of cattails, sprinkle it with pepper, and then add that one other thing. Fizzy had kept the secret of that one other thing, saving it for a special day when the world needed a surprise. Fizzy had never told anyone what it was and it was such a simple thing and yet it made the entire mouth water just for the thought of one more fish fried by Uncle.

It was Uncle who had made him the next favorite thing he missed, a banana split. The bananas they could still find. They could find the sauces of all sorts to put on top. Why even the cherries on top were found in abundance, but what no one could find was the cream. For all of the dragon noise, every cow had dried up and even the ones who would manage to deliver their young. That calf would soon found to be struggling to survive on the curdled milk of its poor mother. No one had truly realized the price of so much noise, distress, and worry that those angry dragons could cause. Consequences from one set of actions are always far-reaching. Every action indeed has a reaction that travels out beyond the original ring that was cast. The consequence of the dragons had been no milk and no milk meted out a no to a lot of other things. There were other consequences of the dragons too, but there was no more cheese or cream to be found on any table. There were no more custards or butter. Butter! Oh, the sadness of it! No more butter meant that there was no more of those delicious cinnamon delights that mother used to make that she had named monkey bites because everyone ate them like the monkeys ate the bananas the Penbrokians were always seeking to gather.

In the missed of all of the missing, Fizzy almost had a momentary bad day in his lower optimistic day. It quickly passed as his focus went back to the largest of the middle dragons who appeared to be dozing again. Bringing on the feeling that Fizzy had just been caught, the eyes of the dragon snapped open staring right at him with an odd look in his eye. There was no indication that the dragons could see beyond their invisible tether until one poor soul or another would attempt to stray into the boundary with sword and shield drawn. It was then in a split instant the marks would be made leaving the man crushed behind flying through the air floating down almost in a slow-motion descent as life fluttered away. The butterfly of life had been released leaving behind the corpse that did not decay.

For the next several days Fizzy thought about that strange look wondering what it could mean. It was not a look of disdain, anger, or even sorrow as much as it was one of pleading, earning. What could a dragon, the largest of the middle dragons be pleading for that Fizzy could change? Fizzy was the size of two monkeys with the disposition of a dove, gentle and slender in every way filled with boundless energy and enthusiasm. Fizzy was what everyone wished they could be: free to be free with no hindrance of self-consciousness. He had a smile for everyone and everyone had a smile for him even old Mr. Zenith himself, most of the time, sort of. The rubble of Zena was named after his grandmother Zena Zenith who had been the prettiest of all Penbrokians ever. Yet, here her town, her namesake of a town, was left in rubble-strewn so carelessly about the area, barren and wasted with no more resemblance of how beautiful it had once been.

Fizzy had only seen the pictures of Zena’s great beauty, the village that is. Every corner had had a large clay pot of flowers to brighten the day. Even now, if one could close one’s eyes one could almost smell the roses, the lavenders, and the heathers that lined them with the smallest of forget-me-nots and gladiolas reaching for the sun that was always shining because as far as anyone could recall there had never been one storm in the valley ever! It was almost a Camelot of imagination where nothing could be wrong and everything was wonderful. Yet, here we were and there was Fizzy calculating in his mind about the many movements hoping for the proverbial, ‘if one of them could be found to be a pattern, then he was sure there would be a puzzle that he could break.’ Like the bench boxes that used to sit next to the flower pots, people would sit for hours solving the riddle the builder had hid away only to reset them for the next wanderer to approach. But this puzzle of dragons was not that easy or so it seemed.

The bottom dragons were slower and smaller while the top dragons had wings that moved above all of them. It was only the middle dragons that seems to bite. Yet, none of them ever seemed to sleep, drink or eat. Certainly, there must be something Fizzy and everyone else was missing. How could so many different-sized creatures not eat, sleep or drink? Where did their energy come from? How could the valley ever be rid of them if they showed no sign of slowing down or tiring? Even as Fizzy came back, as faithful as his mother was to his Uncle, he knew that he was missing something. That something was quite annoying like the exercise of trying to remember a single word lost or stuck on the tongue that one could not quite find. What was that one thing that Fizzing was missing? Suddenly, he might have an idea of what it could be, but he would have to go back to where his Uncle and he had fished last.

That would be a 5-day trek up the side of Windy Hollow and he didn’t know if he could remember exactly how to get there without his uncle, so it could take him a bit longer. Yet, he knew he had to try. He took one last glimpse of the Middle dragon and walked away uncertain of when he would return. He methodically went home to pick up a few items that he thought he would need. One of which was the secret ingredient that his uncle had used with the fish. Another was his uncle’s hat, his mother’s needle, and his father’s bow. Of course, he also picked up the latest batch of his mother’s toothless monkey bites, toothless because they were missing her special ingredient. While they were still good, they were not as they were when the milk and butter were freely flowing because it was exactly the butter that made them superb. Still, Fizzy thanked his mother in a note that he left telling her he was going up to where he and his uncle had last gone fishing because he had a good idea. Even Fizzy in all of his optimism didn’t know if it would be good enough, but he knew he had to try.

He also knew that he had to go by Mr. Zenith’s house along the way and he was not looking forward to that either today. Mr. Zenith was either in a good mood or a bad mood to one extreme or the other almost every day. Any time he would go by there it would only mean one of two things. One, Mr. Zenith would tell stories until the cows would come home with their curdled or no milk selves or two, he would curse up a storm that didn’t exist in the valley making you wonder if there was a detour to anywhere else. It was just a fact that even Fizzy who had time for everybody had no time at all today and as fortune would have it for some unknown reason Fizzy was able to drift on by without finding Mr. Zenith lurking. Fizzy only had one other thing to get before he left the rubble behind, but could he do it? He didn’t know that either, but he took a sharp left at Mr. Zenith’s house and when to gather it anyway.