Nowhere

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. There wasn't always a Valley, come to think of it. Not really.

But that scarcely mattered. After all, countless affairs have come to pass in places that don’t exist. They fade into murmurs. Whispers carried by the wind, or symbols suggested in tree bark; stories woven through constellations, in a twisted fairytale, on an old map. Foreign yet familiar, like the crackle of a fire. They speak of other times, in other worlds. Of the Valley where Aureliana stood, a place that wasn’t at all, and whose inexistence rippled beyond the merely tangible to stun the very threads of reality.

Aureliana stared at the knife in her hand. The blade glistened like thunderstorms. The smooth metal cooled her fingers, seamless. So fluid it should have been imagined, like the space around her.

It’s not right to call it a space.

The Valley didn’t begin, just like it couldn’t end. It simply existed. It floated, in a sense, suspended in the manner of ideas—so different from the way Wintertide mists had been floating around her moments before. Or was it ages before? The Valley doesn’t need time. It doesn’t need anything. Substantially ethereal; forever fleeting. Like a wish. Or a nightmare.

Her heart had been skipping a beat ever since touching the Tree. What an absurd idea; she had been puffing and shrinking her chest for no reason. And how absurd that she felt scared, when time was the very ingredient needed for something to happen. Nothing could happen to her—nothing was happening all around her.

And, yet, there they are: Dragons, staring like alley cats.

A voice enveloped Aureliana’s mind with almost palpable softness. “Welcome, Aureliana. A thousand times, welcome. Once for every sunwheel I have waited for you.”

Aureliana stared at the knife, and her throat worked to utter a single word. “Why?” Her own voice sounded so alien her mouth closed shut. Lips pressed, she stared up, and she could not speak again to ask how on Auldland that stormcloud knife had come to her hand.

The Dragon wore nothing, and her body was sinuous. It was too radiant to be called attractive; a vision too perfect to be spoiled by desire. Divine.

Her curves were a lesson in creative geometry, one elongated ellipse meeting another at the hips, the inner thighs, the breasts. Some of her untraceable ovals changed direction in the most serendipitous places to create new landscapes: a lake in the crease of her collarbone, a galaxy at the turn around her ear, a waterfall from the cusp of her waist. A long mane that reflected shades of fire, bronze, and copper framed the Dragon’s dolomite neck. It shimmered like a forest in the full splendour of the Autumntides, when the wind turns and brushes the leaves with a rippling wave of colour. Beautiful and deadly, like the knife in my hand.

Her fingers tightened around the foreign weapon.

It wasn’t just the image of the Dragon that disconcerted her. Not even the positive emptiness surrounding her. It was the bluster of words trampling each other, running in her direction.

“—both in Auldland and on Earth, Aureliana. The consequences will be for all; each side of the Valley. They’ll watch their world wither and die, helpless, unless you build back the bridge.”

Aureliana looked around, her eyes lost on the Valley that was everywhere. Nowhere. She pushed away the maternal words about bringing justice, and ending suffering. She didn’t want to listen.

The Dragon said other things in her loving, reassuring tone. They all sounded equally terrifying.

Aureliana didn’t care about words. She didn’t care about grandiosities, or about Dragons, and very little about fear. Not any longer, that was. She had never been the bold, daring sort of brave; more the practical kind. The kind who knows, from want of choice, that she would go mad if she didn’t turn fear into something useful, like purpose. And now, even in the Valley, she knew what she wanted. Leave.

“Aureliana,” the Dragon's words resonated between Aureliana’s temples. Too enchanting a voice to ignore forever. “Do it now. Kill her.”

Aureliana gulped, expecting the bitter taste of bile, but her body was too stiff for such theatrics. She brought her gaze to the Tree in front of her.

At its base, a child lay, curled up, breath steady.

The little girl was fast asleep, a thumb in her mouth. Not how Aureliana had imagined such a powerful being. And not how she had imagined her journey would end, killing a sleeping child. The world would be right again if she did. The trees would whisper across both worlds. Magic might even trickle back to Earth. She was not supposed to call it magic. Still, a nice thought. Nice enough to sacrifice a child for it?

She tried to release the knife in her hand, but her fingers, cold like the blade itself, would not respond. “No,” she said. “I can’t do it.”

“You must.” The Dragon's voice sharpened. “If you don’t kill her now, Faenrir will have to force you.”

“Haenrik?” Aureliana stared at the autumn-haired Dragon, and her eyes cleared for a moment. She hated those eyes. They tortured her with honesty. They were the rare sort of eyes that betray with too much candour. Speaking with no words. Regarding no discipline. She had never been able to control their mutiny.

The Dragon studied Aureliana like she could see the spark of rebellion taking flame behind those damned eyes. “Not Haenrik, dear—Faenrir,” she said with a smile of warm swirls.

For all the things I could not give a fig about, mythical heroes top the list with a crown. Aureliana looked down at the Tree. And that child is next.

She cared about her friends. About the promises she had made. This Faenrir should stay in the songs where he belonged. And the child? The child should be someone else’s problem, or perhaps everyone’s problem. Definitely not just mine.

Consequences. What a new, and wild, and frankly unfair notion. No. Aureliana had not crossed both worlds and beyond to take on this burden herself. To clean up the mess of ancient squabbles.

Her restless eyes glanced over the other Dragons in the non-space. They stood in a semicircle behind her, and they still stared at her. All twelve of them. So demanding. And so beautiful. And terrifying. And armed with weapons like the knife in her hand, but much larger. No use trying to sneak past them.

Trembling, she took a step closer to the Tree in front of her. Behind, below, above. Like a cobweb.

And I’m the bug.

“Do it, Aureliana.”

Her eyes fixed on the child, and she stepped closer still, so close she smelled the damp on the tree bark. Then, a threat: “Do not touch the Tree.”

Aureliana nodded. She even smiled a little. Dutiful. Touching the stupid Tree had got her where she was, and now she was trapped, wondering how to undo just about everything she had done since arriving in Auldland. Well, not everything.

A warmth surged inside of her, defying the emptiness. She'd found precious things along the way. Things that almost make it worthwhile having left a life behind, when my troubles were simpler, when my name was shorter.

So what if she was in an impossible place? Her life had been impossible for a while, and she had waded through it like the tough girl she hadn’t known she was. Unskilfully? Very. But alive. That was more than she could say of most she’d crossed on the way. She’d wade through anything if she had to. Rivers and storms. Battles, and manure, and entrails. And, yet, a child? She could escape—again. She was good at escaping. But for how long? She could not keep running from her fate. Running forever.

Or perhaps I can.

The roots of the Tree expanded beneath her feet, stretching through the Valley that was and wasn’t. The bare feet of the child, its heel scarcely bigger than a walnut, twitched. Does it dream, I wonder? The branches above her head spread in the bodiless vastness forever.

How could she get out of a place with no beginning and no end? There was no way out, just as there had been no way in. Still, the Tree is there. If I could just—

A thunder shook Aureliana’s chest. No, not thunder. A voice: “She’s scared, Nimhildr,” a new Dragon said. “She’ll flee, like her grandmother before her.”

“Shut up, Paerkuna. She won’t flee. Will you, dear?” The first Dragon, Nimhildr, addressed Aureliana again, and all the little hairs on her arm bristled at the patience in that sweet voice.

“If you touch the Tree, you’ll be cast out,” a third Dragon, somewhere behind in the semicircle, warned her. Her voice crawled and sizzled. “You’ll be sent back across the Valley, and witness your kinsfolk destroy each other on Earth,” the hag threatened. Aureliana kept her eyes on the sleeping child. So small. “Your friends on this side of the Valley will think you forsook them. That you deserted them. You don’t desire that, do you?”

Caught me there. Aureliana turned to face the Dragons once more. She knew her eyes reflected the thought with infallible accuracy. As for going back across the Valley, back to Earth… She tried to control the avalanche of thoughts gathering speed inside her head, lest those damned eyes give away more information she would rather have kept private. She had made promises she intended to keep above all else. Yes, above fate and murmurs too. Especially above fate and murmurs.

“She’s going to leave, like Aestrid,” the rumbling Dragon repeated. “Spoiled girl. Spoiled family! The lot of them.”

“She won’t,” Nimhildr insisted, tilting her head towards Aureliana with a loving twinkle in her feline eyes. Yellow, like dandelions. “She’s just a little overwhelmed. And we have a bargain, don’t we, child?”

Child? Aureliana’s treacherous eyes trailed off without permission. They examined the Tree of the Valley until they latched on a little branch, sticking out just above the sleeping child’s head. It’s just a twig. Why does it look so familiar?

Her heart jumped when she recognised the shape like a silly, knotted wand, naked without its leather binding. A snicker bubbled inside her chest. Cursed twig.

She glanced down at the place where her belt should have been, looking for her weapon. It wasn’t there. She knew it wasn’t. It had disappeared; simply vanished when she had first touched the Tree. Like it wasn’t allowed in the Valley. With her clothes. With her axe. With everything that wasn’t herself. In their stead, the Dragons’ knife lay in her palm, summoned rather than given.

She had found such discrimination curious at first. Now she understood. This was the moment. This was the beginning. She would doom herself, but she would doom herself with a way out. Or, at the very least, a way forward.

Aureliana peered up, and her eyes flashed with a resolve she could not conceal.

Nimhildr’s eyebrows drew in. “Aureliana?”

She jumped over the condemned child, fingers stretched far apart.

“No!” Nimhildr yelled as Aureliana’s fingertips brushed the lowest branch. None of the Dragons could react in time to intercept her. She was fast. Or perhaps the deities are not so powerful after all.

She felt the shape of the chosen branch around her hand, and smiled. She lifted the knife-bearing hand, and dug the blade into the bark. The Dragons closed in behind her.

Aureliana cut deeper, but the Dragons had stopped.

Beneath Aureliana’s feet, the child stirred. Then, one eye opened. It was dark, and jealous. Not the longing kind of jealousy. The jealousy in the child’s eyes tasted sour and cold. It wanted to take away.

Suddenly, Aureliana feared for all she loved, like it could be torn from her insides by those eyes like claws if she just stared a moment longer.

She dug the knife deeper into the flesh of the tree, feet dangling, and tugged downwards with renewed wildness, conscious that it was an unpardonable act of vandalism.

Her heart beat again, sending ripples through her chest; a deafening flutter within such stillness.

The branch creaked.

As the base ripped from the trunk, Aureliana glanced at the Dragons one last time. A dare. Another heartbeat later, she vanished.

❊❊❊

“Damn her!” Paerkuna thundered.

The knife fell, its unwilling brandisher gone. Halfway through the fall, it dissolved into a spark of lightning.

“She hasn’t crossed through,” Nimhildr laughed. For all the work that stunt would cost her, she had found the young woman’s little show of attitude amusing. “She’s just gone back a bit. It’s a tiny twig.”

At the base of the Tree, the child sat up, blinking. “Was there someone hanging over me just now?”

“No one, dear,” another Dragon rushed to her, olive hair swaying over bare, umber shoulders. “You must have been dreaming.”

Paerkuna leaned closer to Nimhildr, her whisper a rolling bass. “How are we supposed to bring Aureliana back now?”

“Faenrir will have to take care of that. I’ll make sure he knows.”

“We gave up our eternity to get her here, Nimhildr. Our life.”

“Oh, she'll be back,” Nimhildr said. “Even she knows that. There’s no getting away from this. Not forever. She just needed more time.”

“And time is exactly what she just stole from us. Damn her! Her and all of your descendants.”

“Damn them all you want.” Nimhildr shrugged. “They’re already cursed anyway.”

❊❊❊