Valley of the Wind

"There weren't always dragons in the valley."

These are the final words my sister whispered to me.

She seemed so small, her tiny, wretched body drowning in the shapeless hospital gown as she perched on the edge of the industrial-looking bed. It was no place for her, the girl who was once made of wind and song, who danced to music only she could hear beside the river that gurgled through the valley we called home.

She was older than me by five years but watching her drift sideways that day, coming to rest on her pillows, wrapped in institutional blue, all I could see was the bright-eyed child who would hold my hand and promise to show me her magic as we played underneath the house.

"Mama and Daddy don't believe me, but I have powers," she would whisper as we patty-caked mud pies together, tucked between the pile of leftover timber and an old, broken wheelbarrow that had been left to rust and rot in the shadows.

"I've been places. I've seen fairies. I can fly," she'd say nodding frantically.

"No you can't, sissy." I'd reply, though without conviction. Because I would've sworn that she could. There were times I could almost see the wings stretched out behind her, begging to send her soaring off into the cornflower sky that watched over our little home.

Now, of course, I know those insistent ramblings were a sign of the disease seizing her. Her eyes sparkled not with magic but mania. I understood why Mama got so angry the day we did finally clamber up the drainpipe, using window frames as foothold as we crept up, up, up, reaching for the highest point on the house.

"The chimney!" Abby breathed as she grabbed my arm, hoisting me over the gutter. Autumn leaves, still stuck in the half pipe, crunched under my knees as I scrambled over the edge and she bolted up the shingled roof.

"The chimney?"

Up she climbed, until she stood, precariously balancing on her tip toes, walking the edge of the brick structure, arm flung out for balance.

At that moment, Mama walked out of the house, the woven basket full of laundry under her arm.

"Shhhh," my sister whispered shooting me a frantic look. But it was too late. We'd been spotted.

"You girls get down from there right now!" Mama yelled, plonking her basket on the grass, still damp from the morning's dew. "Y'all are going to fall and break your necks."

The next time Abby tried to test her flying abilities, she wasn't so lucky. Although, to be fair she only broke her arm – something our daddy called a miracle, which did nothing to dissuade my sister from the belief that she had been bestowed with some sort of divine power at birth.

The thing was, though, I could've sworn that she really did fly that day – just for a second, before Mama had emerged from the house in time to watch Abby plummet to the earth.

"I can fly, sissy" she breathed, smiling as she lay sprawled on the sodden ground, her mangled arm sitting at a sickening angle that a body shouldn't allow. There were no tears. Just a look of wonderment and total bliss as she stared vacantly into the space beyond my shoulder as I knelt over her and sobbed.

Abby's talk of dragons had started only a few months ago and the doctors couldn't work out why. Her medication hadn't changed; her routine at the Manor had remained the same. She'd moved to the prestigious treatment centre after her 17th birthday and slowly but surely, she'd stopped talking about far off lands and fairy realms, winged creatures and taking flight herself. No-one but me seemed to notice that the light in her eyes was also gradually fading, finally winking out for good days after her 21st birthday.

That was when I'd last seen her, when she'd breathed those seven words looking at something beyond my shoulder, just as she had the day she'd leapt from the roof. I was sure there was nothing but a puce-coloured wall back there, but the glint in her eyes told me she was seeing something I couldn't.

"What are you looking at, Abs?" I'd put a hand on her shoulder, hoping to draw her back into the room, back to me. "What dragons?"

She shook her head, tossing the strands of unwashed hair hanging limply around her face, but didn't say another word. Those shadows under her eyes seemed to deepen every time I came to visit.

I sighed, pressing my fingers to my closed eyes, rubbing my forehead.

"Okay Abs, I gotta go, visiting hours are nearly done," I said, giving her a peck on the cheek where she lay on the bed. So small, so fragile.

"I brought you a new jumper – a turtleneck to keep you warm. I'll just leave it here..." I placed the sweater beside her on the bed, gently running my fingers along its edge, taking comfort in the cashmere's softness.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

And I walked out the door.

***

That was the last time I saw Abby.

The next morning, the Manor staff called.

"She's run away," they declared when we arrived to a flurry of distressed nurses and confused patients. As if my tiny, frail sister could have made it out of her locked room, through the electronic doors sealing the people inside, beyond the enormous wrought-iron gates that guarded the entrance to the gothic-style institution and into the wild, snow-drenched unknown.

She hadn't run. They'd lost her, pure and simple. I realised this as I sat on her bed, my hand resting on the now cold indent her tiny body had made on the sheets. She'd never even untucked them, never crawled under the blanket to get warm...

Warm. The jumper.

The jumper was gone.

On some instinct, I reached for the spot on the bed where I'd placed it, my final gift to my sweet, disturbed sister, running my hand over the woven cotton blanket. My parents were outside the door of her room, trading barbs and yelling at the staff who'd somehow managed to misplace an unwell person in their care.

"How could this happen?" Mama shouted. "She is supposed to be safe here!" Mama never was a crier – anger was easier to come by in times of distress than tears. Daddy just stood by solemnly, eyebrows knit together, lines etched deeply across his forehead. I could see he was trying to figure out what to do.

But there was nothing to do, I realised as I continued to absentmindedly stroke the bed.

Something caught under my fingers, trapped between the blanket and the sheet, I realised – a piece of paper? It was tucked between the layers of fabric, wrapped up in the fold where the bed had been turned down for Abby the night before. I pulled the bed coverings apart to find a scrap of yellow paper, three tiny words scrawled across it in capital letters.

IN THE VALLEY

A leaden feeling began to build in my stomach as I registered Abby's handwriting. The valley. The valley? I flipped the paper over to find a tiny animalistic figure sketched on the note's backside.

A dragon.

I mind flashed back to those times when we were little, under the house. I truly had seen those wings sprawled behind her. I hadn't imagined them. I'd watched her soar that day from the roof – just for a second – before she went crashing down. What if the magic was real? What if she'd slipped into another world, one of those imaginary realms she'd chattered on about for so many years? We'd dismissed them as part of her illness but...

It sounded crazy, I know. Logic told me to shut the idea down. I was overtired, distressed about the disappearance of my sister; I wasn't thinking clearly. This was the least likely reason for her disappearance... and yet I couldn't shake the thought – and a tingling feeling making its way down my arms, joined my a relentless twisting in my stomach as I lay in bed that night mulling over the day's events, told me not to discount it.

My sister hadn't run away. She hadn't been kidnapped, or lured off by a predator. Abby had found a way through to the other side, another world, a different timeline... I didn't know what to call it, wherever it was she went, and I didn't know where to start looking.

But I knew I had to find her.