Shrouded Meetings

Mist curled through the valley. It was testing, tasting freedom it had not known in long years. Ages ago, or so it seemed, the mist had roamed free through all the land with only the scattered watchfires of frightened peoples to hinder its passage. Such was not the case anymore, and the mist was forced to relish the times when it could flow like silver streams unimpeded through the air.

It crept down from the mountain, almost as though it was afraid of what it might find. As though, at any moment, it might be caught in the glare of light from one of the tall, wooden stakes or through a suddenly opened door.

Neither thing happened, and the Mist — now swelling to a fog with the first dew of evening from the grass — advanced.

A wind that would not have been cold save for the mist and the dark blew through the valley, and the Mist trembled in it but did not disperse. This night was for the Mist and the things that lived in it. Long had the Mist waited, and long it would wait again to come down from the hidden places again.

Different from the usual imitations of its kind, the Mist undulated between the trees and over rocks. It was as old as the mountains and had inhabited this valley long before the beasts and birds who had come long before the humans and those that hunted them.

Now, only on nights where the moon was dark and the lights gone out could the Mist come with unsteady, flowing step from the mountains and see what had been done to its valley. It did not begrudge the humans, as others in its place might have done, but it did not love them. The lights of their fires — now safely contained behind glass — dispersed it and sent it back to the mountains and the hidden valleys. There had been things in the Mist and in the valley once, things that hunted the humans, and thus they were right to fear it.

Again things came in the Mist. Different things. Ancient things. Things that could be understood only by what they were not. These things were not dangerous, however. The danger was long since dead, buried, and forgotten in the valley. Forgotten as the long years wore down human memory, but the Mist remembered when there had been war of human against Thing in the valley. As did those that now walked with the mist around their shoulders like cloaks to look on the human world.

-0- -0- -0-

Among the things, things that had once been plentiful but now were few, stepped one with the highest grace. The Ancient King of the forest held not the Mist’s indifferent curiosity to the humans; the Mist was eternal and would rise in some form so long as there was dew upon grass to give it life. The King was different, he had fought against the spread of the humans with frost and sun, with tooth and claw, with drought and flood, but still they remained and his realm was diminished.

His power ended beyond the furthest trees of the mountain forests. But in the Mist, he could walk as once he had through down the false-rock paths of man.

With a flick of his tail, he passed the first of the great posts that the humans used to drive back the honest night and looked upon it with interested disdain. This thing was against him, though those living in the valley did not remember that anymore. It illumined the hidden places and laid bare that which did not wish to be seen.

The King could no more blame the humans for this than could the Mist, though. Instead, he could only regret what was lost to him and lament the coming of humans to his valley. Such things were as the pattern of the seasons and could not be changed. Just as once the humans had come and driven him to the deeper shadows, so too would they one day depart. Through their will or against it.

The cycle would remain unbroken.

Stepping with delicate grace, the king crossed the first threshold into the human world. Rising slowly, like the dwarf trees on the edge of a mighty forest, the buildings began. Small things, little more than cottages and sheds — but still palaces compared to the caves and huts that had once held humanity in the valley — they stood as testament to the wealth of the world. Where once there had been subsistence, there was plenty. Where once there had been violence, there was peace.

A peace that the King did not understand, but a peace nonetheless, for the absence of conflict in the common life can be called nothing else.

Animals did live with the humans, alongside or parallel; one of the tame ones, a creature close in image to the wolves that were its forebears, barked once at the King. It was not a bark of threat, nor of warning but a greeting. It shattered the still silence of the dark night and the shadowing mist like a trumpet from a castle gate. The animal had never known a world where it had not its current masters, where it had lived in the forest dominion, but even one such as it knew the King when it saw him.

With a regal bow, the King acknowledged his welcome and bestowed a blessing on the not-wolf. It was a loyal beast, and though it politely rejected the King’s silent invitation to dwell in the mountains — for it had a child to whom it was tied — the king respected its loyalty. Such things were rare even in the old days when the mountains were young, and he walked openly with head held high.

There was no fear in the King of the humans on that night. He walked closer to the beating heart of the town, a nexus upon which all its life focused despite the shuttering of its stores and depletion of its peoples. In previous years, even on nights when the magic of the false fires failed, there would have been people in the centre of the town. But where once there were many, now there were few. Even the long guns of humanity could not be feared that night, for they hid in their homes or those of their friends to await the coming of the dawn or the return of their own magic.

Casting his royal eye around, the King saw the town as it would be in ages to come. Trees breaking through the false-rock grew before his eyes as shadows of what would be. Almost like after images, vibrant flowers bloom on vines now climbing through where there would not be windows. The King smiled in his own strange way, enjoying the knowledge that the cycle must continue and one day all will be as it was again.

-0- -0- -0-

Looking through the window, one might have been forgiven for thinking that the world had disappeared. In the street beyond, where Adrian could usually see the houses of his neighbours, there was only the thick, swirling fog. It did not shine because there were no lights to reflect against the water hanging in the air. Instead, it was simply there.

Adrian stood at the window and watched as the fog literally rolled in, visible in the thin light of the sickle moon. It crept down from the mountains, tendrils of white seeming to writhe before it, pulling the mass down through the trees and into the town. The sight was mesmerizing.

When the fog reached the edge of the town, it seemed to hesitate, as though gathering its courage before taking that final step. Adrian watched the tendrils come forward again, almost tasting the outlying buildings before the light evening drew rose to form the main body of the fog and the whole diaphanous mass rolled over the town.

Mist and fog were nothing new; back home on the East Coast, it would rise every night, flowing in from the sea and settling over the town and the trees like a heavy blanket. In the morning, the winds and sun would rise and blow the mist back out over the water leaving only the lingering taste of salt on the air. Here though, in this town, the mist was a different beast. Most mornings, he would watch it rise off the mountains, slowly revealing the forest as though the clouds themselves were drawing back a blanket. But Adrian’s family had moved from the coast to the valley long enough ago for him to know that this was no ordinary fog. The changes could not be explained away by a difference in location.

Nothing was supposed to roll down from the mountain like that.

Decision made with barely a minute to think, he stood and pulled on his hooded rain jacket over a bright blue polar fleece. This fog, this mist, was something new, something that he needed to see firsthand. Boots laced tightly, Adrian walked confidently through the front hall — his parents were asleep, so he avoided reprimand for where he’d donned his boots — and cracked the front door.

Mist curled at the edge of the door and wriggled past the frame. It was almost like it wanted to come in, but as though it were a vampire, it could not cross the threshold. A force kept it back. Not wanting to run any risks, Adrian did not invite the mist in.

The last embers of a dying fire in the living room shone a warm red light against the wall of fog, which reflected it back. If there had been no light, perhaps it would have looked less solid, less opposed to being walked in. The lights of the town were all dark, a rare event, so the wall of fog could only throw the firelight back at him. Beyond the door, in the deep shadows of the night, there would always have been cars or lights lit for reading but not on that night.

A true blackout. And in the middle of the darkness, the mist waited.

Taking a deep breath, Adrian stepped through the door and out into the night.

-0- -0- -0-

The Mist pulled back slightly. Pulled into itself as though it were afraid. No, not afraid… the Mist could not fear because it could not die. It was that it was, a fact unchanging and unchangeable as long as the nights and the rains came to the mountain. But still, something had changed.

If the Mist could be said to think, it thought to itself and wondered at the change. The sensation was not unique in the memory of the Mist, but it was rare, and it had not been known for a very long time. There was a person within it — a human person, not one of the usual denizens of the Mist — and that person could feel wonder. Not only was there wonder, but that wonder was directed at the Mist itself. It had been a very long time since such a thing last happened, and the Mist enjoyed it.

Deciding to show off a little to its human guest, the Mist curled around where it thought the human was. It twisted in on itself, undulating before the stunned, yet not frightened, eyes of the human, drawing yet more wonder. Such a thing was glorious. Usually, when the Mist had contained such a person as this, they were afraid. But then, that had been a very long time ago, and maybe the humans now had forgotten the ancient songs. The Mist remembered the songs, and something like sadness filled it for a moment; the times of the songs had been dark as the night in which it now sat. Humans feared the Mist for what prowled within it.

But such was the case no longer.

Still curious, the Mist billowed before the awestruck human, drawing it further into the night. There were things under the Mist’s enveloping shroud that it wanted the human to see. Wonderful and terrible these things were, unseen by human eyes for generations if not longer. How far would the human go, now that home was lost behind the pearly fog at its back?

Step by cautious step, the Mist guided the human forward. It could not pull back, could not show the path ahead, but it could bring the human safely to the centre. The middle of the town had long been forbidden by the omnipresent light to the Mist and the mountain denizens, and by that distance, sight of them had long been forbidden to humanity.

If it could, the Mist would bring them together.

-0- -0- -0-

There were strange things in this human realm. Curious machines that, by smell, ran on death and decay. They were not evil, though, no more than were the maggots and mushrooms that broke down the dead to make new life. But nor were they a good part of the cycle as were those things. Instead, these enormous boxes, so like the carriages which they replaced in function, were apart. Different and unique.

“I am a car,” was the only response that the ancient king got when he asked what the things were. Invariably the same was every answer from like contraptions. Though there were differences in how they answered, inflection and something that could almost have been called an accent if the king had such a concept. Some were alike, older or younger sounding, and others different, but none truly unique among their fellows.

At a sound far off the in Mist, the king stopped dead and listened with twitching ear. He was not afraid, there was nothing abroad in the night that could do him harm, yet he listened. There were things he would rather not encounter, things that could — while not hurting him per se — cause him discomfort. Then again, if there were humans in the Mist with their long guns and quick tempers…

But he heard nothing and could no more see cleanly through the mist than he could on a purely dark night. A long moment more, he waited, breathing his normal unhurried breaths. If there was danger, surely he would know it, even if the Mist itself might not remember to tell him. It was a strange thing in that way, it knew that reasons were legion for why the king might not want to be in this human settlement, but it could not know why.

Turning his head back to the machine, the king continued his questioning and received only the same answers. Unlike the old days when a horse drew these things, there was no soul to them. A monster of metal and noxious fumes that nonetheless served a purpose. There was that sense in its declaration, not only that it was a car, but that that word was filled with power and purpose. It did not exist for itself but rather had been forged from disparate elements for a singular function. Strange things these humans did.

Around the king, the Mist swirled, and the king raised his head to regard it with interest. The Mist was able to communicate if one was willing to listen, and he was ancient enough to know when it wanted something from him. The coiling of the mist, as though it were comprised of millions of snakes all writing together, focused and centred in one direction. As though he moved through a tunnel that glowed with the subtle light of stars on the tiny beads of water, the king followed the path laid before him.

He knew with a certainty born of long acquaintance that the Mist could not and did not want to harm him and would strive to allow no harm to touch him. Step after cautious step, he pressed on through the denser fog. The Mist was hiding something, in its own strange way and for its own ineffable reasons, from his sight.

Something crunched, shattering the silence. Once again, in the distance now, the not-wolf barked. Just once to tell him that something was near, though it would not tell him more, for the Mist had intentions of its own. Nonetheless, the king thanked it in a silent way he knew the creature would hear; it was a loyal beast after the fashion of its kind, and he knew that were he truly in danger, the not-wolf would tell him without secrecy.

Another crunch, followed by a third. It was almost as though something was taking slow, careful steps through the Mist. A thing that could not see the path feeling its way forward with the wary trust of one who had not yet learned to fear but knows danger is near. Something on two legs without the notable gait of one on four and not a bird.

A gasp made the king’s ears twitch; it was not a sound that any denizen of the mountains made. Had the Mist brought him a human? The Mist itself would not and could not answer. Questions like that were beyond how the king knew to speak to it. But if there was a human…

-0- -0- -0-

Adrian wondered if he had made a terrible mistake. He was still in his town, and he could feel the comforting presence of his mountains — a surprise to realize that he thought of them as his own now — around the valley. But the fog was thick. “Mist,” he thought to call it, though it was too thick now for the term. The proper noun seemed to fit the wall of iridescent vapour that surrounded him.

Mist it would be then, even if his question still burned at the back of his mind. Had he made a mistake? There was no way he could find his way home easily in all this Mist. Even if he turned around now, the path had taken too many twists for him to simply follow his own footsteps back.

Despite the questions and the simmering fear, he knew that he was safe. It was as though the Mist were talking to him in a way he could not hear. It wanted him to follow, of that much he was certain, and it did not mean him harm. Of course, that did not mean he would not come to harm in the Mist — the highway to Hell being paved with good intentions after all — but he felt as safe as ever he did walking the town at night.

Out of the gloom rose the corner of a brick building with all the suddenness of a rock breaching the water before a ship. With a small exclamation, he stopped dead in his tracks. At least he now knew where he was; there on the corner of the building was a tag so old that it had faded into local legend. Whomever ‘gurk’ had been, they were now the namesake of Mrs. Wong’s store as no one in the valley knew it as anything other than ‘gurk’s place.’

If he were besides gurk’s, that meant he was on the very edge of downtown. But why would the Mist have brought him here? What could it possibly want to show him in the middle of his own town? Usually, in stories, the old ones about children in forests, things like the Mist would lure him into the depths of the woods and show him the hidden heart of the mountain or other such fantastical things. But the middle of the town in the valley was… was a disappointment.

Swirling around him with something like earnestness, the Mist was urging him on. It still spiralled over his head and around him, flowing as though he stood in the middle of a fast-flowing river.

Adrian reasoned that he was committed, so he took the next step. Forward, ever forward, that seemed to be what the Mist wanted. It seemed to open a tunnel before him, a nautilus shell of undulating threads of mist flowing towards a distant point. Step by cautious step through the miasma, he followed the path laid before him; all thoughts of turning back now left far behind him.

Something pulled him towards the final destination. It was not the Mist, for it had no power to compel him. It was nothing external to him, drawing him forward against his will, for the motion came from within. Curiously, he strove for the centre of the Mist; whatever it was that it wanted to show him was that which he most wanted to see.

-0- -0- -0-

The Mist swirled above all that had come down from the mountain and those that had risen from the nearer crops, orchards and grasses. It could feel their interest and their curiosity to see this world of humans. They passed by the monuments to human achievements and felt their impermanence. These things were not like trees and grasses and stones; once their keepers departed, they would wither and grow no more.

Some beasts from the mist sat on the roofs of cars. Others swung from the lightless posts that usually kept the dark at bay. Tonight was a dark night, true darkness unbroken by the false fires of the human world and the light of the stars glittered only on the top of the Mist, breaking before it found the ground.

Humans, too, the Mist could feel through windows left carelessly open to it. Unable to enter their homes in part because the fires they had lit to keep it back burned brightly around the tables where the humans gathered. It was a cool night, damp and still but cool, so the Mist gathered around them, covering their homes in a blanket of silence. It could feel their unease as the false fires refused to kindle. It could feel their joy and playful despair as some won and others lost the games they played by candlelight.

With a gasp of surprise, the human whom the Mist guided through its shrouded town stopped and looked with something approaching awe at the corner of a building. In that instant, the human was more akin to the creatures of the mountain than it was to its fellows. It gazed with naked interest and surprise at the meaningful pile of hard-baked clay for a long moment before looking behind.

The Mist swirled around the human, trying to regain its interest and attention. There were things it wanted the human to see, the time was not yet right for it to turn around. Fear and curiosity, unease and adventure, all poured off the human in waves so intense that the creatures who gazed at it with equal feeling shuddered at their passing. This human was something different, brave or foolish enough to enter the Mist and curious enough to continue forward.

It could feel that there was something beyond its sight. Something beyond its feeling and perception. Within the human, a battle raged. Emotion clashed with emotion as it looked behind itself and ahead, trying to decide on its course. The Mist did what it could and swirled, trying to the limit of its skill to convince the human to walk just a little further.

Deeper in the Mist, right at the centre, stood the king. It was not a king to the Mist, though the Mist recognized what it was to others, and it had figured out the Mist’s plan. A feeling emanated from the king, a sense of regal acceptance and command. The king would consent to see and be seen by the human, but it would not move forward itself. The Mist was to bring them together if it could, and though it balked at the idea of being commanded, its desire for this meeting was too great, and it strained against the human’s reticence.

Who knew when such a chance would come to the valley and the mountains again? Who knew…

Tremulously… slowly… the human took first one step. Then another. Step by careful step it came around the edge of the building and strode to the middle of the false-stone path. Guiding carefully now, for it did not want the human to fear what was intended, the Mist guided it to a spot. The spot.

-0- -0- -0-

Now was the time. The King wondered if this course of action was truly wise and if displaying himself in this manner was the correct choice. But he was committed now, and the Mist rarely, if ever, made mistakes. Setting his hooves, the king took a calming breath and crossed the threshold into the unknown.

The human was just ahead of him, easily in charging distance if circumstances grew beyond his ability to control. Far enough away that there was no risk of the human actually touching the king; that had happened once, and the Ancient King still cringed at the memory of the screams.

As he exhaled, he poured his will into the world and shaped light into being. It did not dispel the Mist, such an act was beyond the King’s power, but the light that now flooded the world around him pushed through it.

In the spreading radiance, the King saw the human that had been brought before him. It was a young thing, barely out of its fawnhood, but there was an inner strength to the thing. Though the King could see the human fawn, its eyes were too weak to pierce the Mist yet. Though the Mist undoubtedly knew that human vision could not penetrate it, but what could it do? The Mist did not think as did living things.

With a feat of condescension, the King stepped forward and slightly closed the distance between himself and the human and straining to brighten his light. Around him, the King felt the denizens of the mountains and Mist drawback; they were not yet ready to see and be seen. For now, they would watch only.

Behind him, the lights of trapped gases within once-sand buzzed to life, adding its radiance to the King’s own and finally pushing through the last of the Mist, driving it back slightly. The human drew back at the sudden light breaking through the miasma and staggered under the gaze of the King.

The King inclined his head with pride as the human stood like a stone, radiating awe.

-0- -0- -0-

Adrian stumbled back from the vision that burst from the Mist with a blinding flash. The neon signs over the gas bar that had been old when his parents were born, shone proudly. They drove the Mist back, pushing through with a force that formed the enshrouding fog into a dome around him and the vision before him.

In the radiance of the sign, with an ethereal light gleaming from its enormous antlers, stood a beautiful buck. It gazed at him with imperious glowing eyes that radiated with a power to rival the brilliance of the light from its antlers. His knees threatened to buckle under the buck’s gaze… no, not a buck… whatever this was, it was more than any deer. There were subtle differences in how it stood, in its fur, in its… this was not a buck. It was so much more.

Fighting the desire to kneel before the Ancient King, Adrian met his gaze. Something came from the King, something that resembled being impressed. A fire kindled in Adrian then, the pride of this ancient thing with such tremendous power stoking the flames within him until they blazed hot and fierce. He would earn that respect tenfold. He would work every day to ensure that when, if he met the King again, he would earn that gaze a second time.

With an air of importance, the King turned his head towards the neon lights, breaking eye contact with Adrian. The loss of the connection did not douse the flames, but it did lessen in a soft and quiet resolution. There was something else now, something new from the King as he looked at the lights of the gas bar and the subtle hum of running electricity filled the silence left behind as the Mist continued its retreat from the light.

Reproach and the kind of deep sadness that only comes with incalculable age wafted from the King so powerfully that Adrian could almost taste it. Darkness crawled up the majestic antlers as the King turned away again, turning his back on Adrian and the human world until only the many points of his antlers shone like tiny silver stars.

Before disappearing into the Mist again, the King looked back at Adrian one last time. Emotions that were not his own crashed through him, nearly drowning him with their strength and when the torrent passed. A new resolve blossomed in his chest.

“Thank you,” he said, and the Ancient King bowed his head and then vanished from sight, swallowed by the seemingly solid wall of Mist, leaving Adrian alone on an empty street as, one by one, the streetlights buzzed back to life.

-0- -0- -0-

The Mist did not know what had passed between the Ancient King and the human. It knew that there must have been something and that something must have been special, for it was not normal for things that breathed to have been that still for that long. But whatever it was that they did in their silent dialogue was no concern of the Mist. It simply was, and it would continue to be. That was the way of things.

Slowly, though faster than it had crept down, the Mist pulled back from the human world as their false-fires buzzed back to brilliance. The denizens of the forest and the mountain drew back with it, unwilling to be caught in the harsh lights and eager to return to their safer places. All were eager except the Ancient King. Strange being that, strange and yet familiar. After so long together, there was no other way for the King to be but familiar. Yet they were so different the two of them that the Mist could never know the King even as far as the Mist could be said to know.

Slowly, yet still faster than before, the Mist coiled past the outermost buildings of the human town. It did not slink, nor did it hide. This valley belonged to it as much as it could belong to anything, and the humans were simply here for now. They would leave one day, and the Mist would reclaim its rightful place. There was no need to hurry such things; as long as rain fell and plant grew, the Mist would be in this valley; and the passing of the ages was nothing to it as it slowly undulated back up the skirts of the mountain. Back to the hidden places where it waited for a damp evening.

Maybe in the future, it would be able to go back into the human village again. It might even be able to find that one human again. It knew that such things were unlikely, the lives of humans being so fleeting, but in its own vaporous way, it hoped.

As the King stepped through the first gate, past the first row of trees, he stopped and looked back at the steady glow of the human false-fires. The Mist waited with him, they were old friends after a fashion, and though the Mist could not stay as still as did the King, it could spare a moment to wait.

Pride wafted from the King, though what he was proud of the Mist could not tell and did not try to guess. He waited for a long moment, watching as people stepped from their homes into the too bright night and spoke happily together, his thoughts unknowable. Then turned and bounded back into the dark and the quiet.

Mist curled through the valley. It remembered freedom it had not known in long years, and it thought — in its own strange and thoughtless way — with relish about a time when it would again come down from the mountain and experience whatever was different in the world as it would be then. Would be again, for the Mist was of the valley, and it was not going anywhere.