I am six years old…

I don’t realize it yet, but this is the first memory I’ll retain of my life, a memory I’ll return to so often I couldn’t possibly forget it. It’s the first time I’ve ever truly been scared.

The adults are quiet, so I’m quiet, staring up at the darkening sky just as they are. It’s always been cold on the mountain, but this night feels colder than any other, perhaps because we’re all so still.

With each passing second, I feel my boots sinking deeper and deeper into the thick blanket of snow beneath them. The cold seeps through the leather, sending a damp chill to my toes and creating a tingling sensation which spreads rapidly across my entire body. I pull my furs tighter around me, hoping their warmth will soothe both the chill and the unease rattling my insides, but they don’t.

Something waits in the darkness, something unnatural, something that doesn’t belong on this mountain, something that speaks in strange voices and is the reason we’re all so still now.

“Was it him that sent it?” my grandfather whispers above me. “Did he see her?”

“I don’t know,” my mother answers in a similar hushed tone. Her voice trembles in a way I’ve never heard it before, and I have to look up just to be sure it was her who spoke.

The tribe says if I ever need a mirror, I need only look at my mother. She and I share the same features—the same gray eyes, the same pink tint across our cheeks, and the same yellow hair, though hers is finer and always pulled back into braids. I’m still much smaller, but whenever I see myself in her, I feel bigger than the biggest bear on this mountain.

Right now, however, I don’t see the strength I know so well. Beneath the wind-blown strands of golden hair that have escaped her braids to smack her furrowed brow, her eyes are wet with what appear to be tears, and this seems impossible since my mother’s eyes are never wet. I can see her heavy breathing in the clouds around each of her exhales and in the way the leathers on her chest move rapidly up and down. She seems afraid, and this torments me because it’s so unfamiliar.

Our tribe is made up of warriors, and my mother is the toughest among us. Aside from me, she’s the youngest, and she serves as fighter, hunter, and provider to us all. I know she fears nothing, and yet she looks so very afraid. They all do.

And that’s my fault.

I’m not allowed past the trees.

The frigid air bites into the fingers of my ungloved hand and I curl it into a fist, the sting reminding me of my foolish pursuit of the thing that’d called for me, of my need to touch its peculiar dark fur with my bare hand, of the way the sunlight shone upon that fur outside the trees, making it appear like glittery smoke, and of my family’s horrified faces as they found me kneeling in the clearing, ready to touch it. I think they’ll be angry with me when they’re no longer scared of whatever’s in the sky, and I think maybe that scares me most of all. I’ve never made my family angry before, and I’m not sure what will happen next.

My neck aches the longer I stare upward, but I don’t know where else to look. Do I want to see whatever is up there? I don’t think I could stand it to look away. This is not the usual Anaheran threat we hide from. There’s something much bigger out there tonight—something I think I might’ve angered when I failed to place my hand on its peculiar fur.

My throat is tight with regret for allowing such a creature to coax me out of the trees, but I dare not cry. Warriors don’t cry—that’s what my mother always tells me—and I am my mother’s warrior. For all the desire I have to fall apart, I choke the tears down and stand taller. Crying won’t change what I’ve done.

“If it came from Julian,” my grandmother says, gripping my mother’s shoulder tightly, “if he saw her, you know what we have to do.”

My mother shakes her head, still desperately searching for movement in the sky. “No. It’s not time for that yet. I can take her somewhere else; we can hide until we know for certain.”

“Vic,” my grandmother clucks. Her tone is gentle, but her eyes are hard where she inspects my mother’s face, “you know as well as I do what she is. Waiting will only make it harder. She’ll be safer with them. They can prepare her better than we can.”

Are they talking about me, I wonder? Are they going to send me away because I left the trees? Who are the ‘they’ she refers to, and what am I to them? Are they the ones who sent the smoky creature? Are they the ones we are looking for in the sky? And if so, does that mean they are Anahera? This doesn’t seem right since I’ve been taught to hide from the Anahera all my life, so with a stiffened spine, I stare up at my mother once more in search of clarity and strength I might cling to.

“We don’t know yet what she needs to prepare for,” she insists, blinking the moisture from her eyes. I watch her throat move, and I wait for her to look down at me; I wait for her to show me she doesn’t hate me for what I’ve done; I wait for some sign she won’t send me away.

‘Please, look at me,’ I think. ‘I promise I’ll be a good warrior, just like I’ve always been, and I’ll never leave the trees again, I swear. Please don’t let them send me away.’

However much I long for her to glance in my direction, her focus remains on the sky, her breath still coming in heavy wisps of blue-tinted fog. “The only place she is safe is here,” she tells my grandmother, “where they can’t feel her. That’s why we brought her here, and that’s why they guard us. We don’t know if that trap was from Julian or a Valerex. Ranlyn will stop whoever it is. He has to.”

Julian… Valerex… Ranlyn… I know these names—I’ve heard them countless times throughout my short life—but I’ve never known who they belong to or what they mean to me. No one ever speaks them directly to me or offers any clarity when I ask for it. What do those names have to do with that smoky creature I nearly laid my hand upon? Am I in danger? Is that why I’m not allowed past the trees? Who is guarding us and why? I want to ask these questions, but I know no one will give me an answer. They never do. I think maybe it’s because I’m a child and they don’t think I’ll understand. I can’t wait to be bigger so they will tell me more.

“Vic,” my grandmother whispers, “if it’s not Ranlyn that comes back—”

“Hush,” my mother hisses, shaking herself free of my grandmother’s grip on her shoulder. “It will be him. It has to be.”

Raising her chin and straightening her shoulders as she always does when she’s finished speaking, she turns away, and my grandparents fall silent on either side of her. We stand there together for what feels like forever, becoming increasingly stiff as the sky above remains empty and the nighttime temperatures plummet. Inside that silence, my mind drifts into a sort of frozen haze, time passing with little notice until I hear my name called in the same voice I’d heard the strange creature use earlier.

“Emlyn…” 

In the light, that voice had seemed bright and jovial, but in the sudden darkness that’s enveloped us, it has taken on a whole different shape. It’s an odd and unwelcome sound now, like a child and a man and the roar of a beast all melded into a song-like tone that brushes ever so faintly against my hearing.

I quickly cover both ears. I don’t ever want to hear that call again. It’s the reason my family stands in the dark, the reason my mother’s eyes are wet and my fingers are cold, and maybe the reason they’ll send me away.

“Emlyn…” it sings, its voice sharp despite my palms pressed tightly into my ears to mute it. “I have come so close to finding what I’ve searched for all these centuries. Oh, my little pearl… I think you know precisely where it hides. It’s so very, very close. Is it not? Next time, we will be closer.”

I hate that voice and I hear it like it’s inside me, pacing the walls of my skull. And that scares me more than anything ever has. 

Can it see me, I wonder?

Can it feel my thoughts?

What if the thing my mother is afraid of is not in the sky, but right here inside my head? And what if I’m the only one who can hear it? Does that mean I’m the only one who can protect us from it?

Unsure where it is or what it can and cannot see, I become as still as the snow. I let my vision blur, let that frozen haze recapture me as I imagine myself atop a tree—the tallest tree there is. When I refocus my eyes, I become convinced I’m looking down, not at snow, but at grass—bright, happy grass—in a world far far away from my mountain.

‘This is where I am’, I tell myself—tell that eerie voice—over and over, until I can feel the jagged bark of the branch digging into my legs, until I can feel the hint of warm, moist air caressing my cheeks, and until I can smell the scents of pine and fish from a creek that flows gently beneath me. I become so still that I’m certain I only exist in this beautiful place, and whatever the thing is that called to me is now staring at an empty patch of snow where I once was.

‘This is where I am,’ I press into whatever space is between us, remaining perfectly motionless in my tree while I stare up at a star-filled sky—a sky, I realize, that is completely absent of the threat that’d made my entire family frozen… absent of all the usual threats that loom over my tribe.

I’m safe in this tree—in this world—safer than I’ve ever been before. I don’t know how I know this, but I know it more than I’ve ever known anything else, and so I stay right where I am. I bask in my sudden sense of security. I stay for so long that I drift into a  new sort of mindlessness. Unlike the frozen haze of fear, this one is warm—as if someone had wrapped me in a thousand pelts and I am at peace to sleep for all of infinity without worrying I’ve lost any time at all.

Weightless and well in my tree, I don’t remember what happens next—how I’ve ended up here in my bed as consciousness finds me. I don’t recall leaving that magical place or returning to my body. I don’t remember if anything ever appeared in the sky. But lying here, fear seeps quietly back in, and I am too afraid of attracting that haunting voice to us to even consider asking about it. It’s gone now, but if I speak of it—if I think of it—I might give it the clues it needs to find us once more, and I will not put my tribe at risk ever again.

I listen to my family’s muffled voices beyond my closed door as I wait for one of them to come in and ask me why I went out to the clearing. I am unsure how I will answer without mentioning the voice I’m certain is still far far away, searching for a tree.

“We were lucky today,” my grandfather says, “but we won’t always be. She’s getting older, Victoria, and so are we. Look at us. We cannot keep her hidden forever, nor can we care for her as we lose the ability to care for ourselves. What will you have her do? Live her whole life on this mountain and only know the company of the old and the dying? Until she is the only one left alive? And who will care for her then? You know what I went through out there. I cannot stand by and let them make the same of her. We have to send her away, where she’ll be safe, where she can be prepared.”

My mother’s voice has returned to its stern tenor, and it’s comforting in response to my grandfather’s suggestion. “We will do no such thing!” she shouts, loud enough that the logs which separate us seem to vibrate with its echo. “You don’t know what I went through! This isn’t like the Human Republic you faced, Father. She isn’t safe with them—Guardian or otherwise. I saw what they did with the sanctum when Julian took it over, and it doesn’t have anything to do with this virus! If she leaves this mountain, they’ll find a way to take her. I don’t know what it is Julian’s up to, but I know it’s not right. I felt it when we were there before. And I would rather she knows only this mountain than whatever chains he would put her in there. I’ll prepare her for a life where she can survive on her own, so if the change never happens, she can live in peace.”

“And if the change comes?” he asks.

My mother is close to my door, and I pull the blanket up near my chin as I brace for her disappointment.

“Then,” my mother replies, “and only then, Aidan can have her. She’s safe for now and that’s the best we can hope for. Goodnight.”

Aidan. This name is new and unfamiliar. I silently mouth it, twisting its shape around on my tongue as if I might taste some clue as to its origin. I wonder if it belongs to that smoky thing. Or maybe something much darker. Whoever it belongs to, I refuse to let him ‘have me’. Somewhere in my subconscious, the name becomes that of my enemy, one I don’t have time to sort out before the door opens and my mother’s silhouette fills its frame.

I have more than a name and a smoky creature to fear this night. I have disobeyed my mother—our strongest warrior—and surely I should be far more afraid of whatever ramifications I’m about to face than anything else in this whole world.

If I were the warrior I wish to be, I would immediately stand from the bed and face her, but I don’t. Instead, I close my eyes and pretend to sleep. I don’t know why I do this, but I think I’m afraid to see her face—afraid to see how angry she must be with me—so I shrink further and further away, cowardly as I know it is to do. Before I know it, I’m in my tree once more, looking up at a sky full of the biggest stars that ever shone.

My mother is nothing like the smoky creature though, and she can’t be tricked so easily. She knows exactly where I am, and she knows I’m not asleep. Despite all those bright stars I’m intent on staring at in my warmer world, I feel the weight of her gaze beyond them on the mountain. I know it’s heavy with sorrow and I’m ashamed to have made her feel it. I should open my eyes and face it, but I don’t.

She stands there looking down at me for a long while before the mattress dips beneath my spine, and I feel her crawl under the blankets to lie across from me. She doesn’t scold me, nor does she touch me, but instead, she rolls away to face the wall, and I feel the lack of both equally.

Nothing will ever be the same after today; I know that even if I don’t know why.

I want to tell her I’m sorry. I want to reach for her and feel her wrap me in her arms, but I don’t. I remain silent and so does she.

We’re quiet for so long that I begin to fall asleep when I hear her whisper, “If you are old enough to chase after an animal, then you are old enough to kill one. Tomorrow, Emlyn, you will go on my hunt with me, and you will learn, as I have learned, the way a hunter sees its prey so you will never put yourself in a position to be prey again.”