The Highglades, above the Vapor

There weren't always dragons in the Valley. But then, there weren’t always humans in the mountains.

When I say “the mountains” children, you must remember that the Highglades, that indeed all of the island nations, were once what we called mountains towering above our homes in the low wide places you have never seen. What you think of as mountains…. Hmph, well, had you seen them in their full height….

But you tire of my prattle. You’re anxious, I know. You want to get on with the test and be done with it. Calm yourselves and let Phaedra finish filling the siphon float. You don’t want that sinking into the Vapor, now, do you? Not if you find yourself to be no Breather.

Oh, such a look, Hella! Forgive me. Let’s not think of that now. Let’s remember that there may be dragons in the Valley, hidden in the Vapor – miles and miles down the Valley, I’m sure, Hella - but where we stand now… why this was their kingdom once. We breathed clear air in our beautiful valleys, watered our crops from pure rushing streams, but we still lived in terror of the dragons. Perhaps their mountain sheep prey ran scarce from time to time, or some fool ventured up to their dens and provoked them. Then... then you might hear but a single flap of those vast leathery wings before they were upon you – burning homes, snatching up... well, let’s say livestock…. Livestock, when you were lucky.

So no, we dared not step foot in these, their high domains. But never forget that it was we who drove them from their homes and into the Vapor! Even as the survivors of the Great Flood huddled scattered and frightened, we learned how to fight them and push them down, down, down so that we could begin again. So that we could survive.

Today more than any other, remember this strength, this tenacity. Remember what it is to be Citizens of the Highglades.

He had actually seen a dragon far off over the Highglades on that fateful day, the last day of the old age. It was 1678 when the sun rose, Year Zero by the time it set. It can be a mercy to not know you live in momentous times, but still… funny to think of it. How he had thought the day already remarkable by merit of that glimpse of a wing trailed by the whip of a spiked tail over a distant crag of the Sentinels.

The boy Clallum squinted into the glow of the morning sun, heart pounding in his chest. What if it appeared again – came soaring over that crest and toward the valley, and he was the one to race fast as the wind to the eastern warning bell and set it ringing and everyone got below in time thanks to him, and then for certain Chendra would fancy him more than Dolph….

But if it was going to reappear it was being very slow about it. He was already going to be late for school. He reluctantly resumed his progress down the path, walking faster now but looking back up toward the Sentinels often, until the tree canopy grew too dense to bother trying. It would be exciting to tell everyone he had seen it, anyway.

Now his mind wandered to visions of the dragon’s shadow passing over him as it swept into the village, all white-hot flames and long talons…. He shook his head sharply. No. Stay in this moment. Like Mother said, don’t borrow tomorrow’s troubles.

As he descended he caught whiffs of gas. Faintly and only when a breeze carried it up, as had often been the case in the months before. There were frequent tremors, and after each one that acrid smell would waft through, sometimes lingering in the low places and setting the people to coughing. The Anderfells down at the low end of the valley had even lost some sheep, and were certain it was from the vapors.

The earthquakes were growing worse. Clallum and his friends had argued that surely school should be cancelled until it was safer, but parents still sent their children off day after day and teachers set desks and tables up in the school’s courtyard, arguing that they would be safe even if the school was shaken down. He and his friends were still not entirely defeated. They had just decided to change tactics and wait until it looked like rain to plead their case again.

He was glancing back up at the sky for rain clouds when it hit. Not building gradually like the earlier tremors, but all at once, the ground bucking so hard he was knocked to his knees and the great grinding and moaning of the earth filling the air and bombarded him with sheer terror.

The spot where he was knocked to the trail was on a rocky rise in a small meadow, right where the forest transitioned to open woodlands, and so it was that as he stood unsteadily on the still lurching ground, that he could see what was happening.

The valley was flooding. Not with water, but with a vast thick blanket of unnaturally yellow-tinged clouds, surging relentlessly upward. It had already enveloped the low valley where the Anderfells, the Besterlys, the Middocks lived and was starting to smother the village proper. Clallum was frozen in fear and uncertainty.

Maps would come to be key to Clallum’s life – to everyone’s survival, in time, as the distance and direction to each high place that might hold food, or other potential human enclaves, or dragons, became pivotal.

You could say this was the first clear map Clallum ever drew. It was drawn in his head, and memory of that map would later always fill him with shame.

On this map the school lay not far below, past where the footpath brought you onto the Highglades Road as it dropped down out of the woodlands, then east and south past the scattered homes and small pastures and gardens of the high western valley, a turn to wrap southward around the church, and straight on across the arched stone bridge over Latimeer Creek. He was almost to the Highglades Road, and could make that run in perhaps 10 minutes. His friends were all there. Hector and Chendra and Erinna and Relston and Dolph and….

But his home was of course behind him. Northwest up the trail, doubling back eastward along Raven’s Ridge to the sunny south-facing bench that held the family farm and home and Mother and Father and the twins, Sami and Sara. At the rate the malevolent cloud was rising, the school would soon be swallowed up. If it did not slow, it would then continue on to swallow his home as well. His head, his heart were torn between racing down to the school – an effort likely futile but perhaps chivalrous – or running back up the path in hopes of warning his family in time for them all to get up to safety. There was also the east bell. But ringing that would likely just send people into their underground shelters, ensuring their doom.

In the end his legs broke rank with both head and heart and followed a more primal instinct. His legs knew his best chance of survival was up the Highglades Road – the straight shot west up the valley into the heights of the surrounding crags. He hardly knew the decision had been made until he had sprinted down the trail and turned up, not down, Highglades Road and found his swiftly pounding feet carrying him up and up that rocky slope, away from the village, away from home, away from the horrible cloud.

Now Clallum sat stooped and gray-bearded, aching in a dozen places from the long walk here, in a dozen more from merely sitting too long on this rock. There was just no appeasing this body now. Move or don’t move, it would find equal cause for complaint.

But all that mattered now was the measure of these young bodies around him – four of them his own great-grandchildren, and ten their classmates. All 9 or 10 years old and looking not at the lovely wildflower meadow in full bloom among the bunchgrasses in this broad bowl all around them, or the sharp tan crags forming a high half crown above, but down at the smothered valley below. The sickly yellow-gray clouds forming a great clotted lake below a broad band of bare earth below the grasses. The Vapor had its own long, slow pulse: higher one year, lower the next, and now a dead zone testified to a recent drop.

And of course they would be thinking of dragons.

“Don’t worry, children. Look – Andul is up there glassing the Valley every moment. Do you see a warning flag?” They looked up to where Andul stood watch on a wide boulder above. His dark skin and hair and mottled tan cloak and breeches hid him well, though his wineberry-dyed tunic fairly glowed on his arms as he raised his spyglass to continue sweeping across the surface of the Vapor. He scanned with relaxed focus and the red flag was indeed slipped through the belt at his side.

“Look how shallow it is here, the gentle slope where you will enter. No dragon would come so far up. Calm yourselves. Come to the moment. All life is now.”

But still, to have dragons starting to move so close again, that worried Clallum. The children had enough to worry about, to have to walk into that realm they had been so fastidiously trained to avoid. To have to draw it into their lungs, in hopes they could withstand the fumes long enough to show promise as a Breather….

That was quite enough to get on with. The fear of a dragon appearing in the mists was quite an unnecessary complication. Phaedra might even miss the signs of a potential Breather if the child was so afraid they could not calm their breath for a fair trial.

That could not be allowed to happen now, not after the disastrous losses of the past year. Not when the Breather Warriors of the hostile kingdoms might be seeking them out. If such an army even existed. He was more skeptical than most, certainly more skeptical than Phaedra. Although who knew more of the outside world now than she?

Hella had gone over to help Phaedra at the fire. The gray siphon float suspended over the flames was inflated to as tall as her now and the girl watched as Phaedra pulled the stays hard to test the lift. Hella took advantage of Phaedra’s focus on her work to stare in a way that was undoubtedly rude, noting the gaunt form under vapor-colored tunic and breeches, pale skin, and sunken eyes. Like most Breathers, her hair was also pale, and short as a boy’s, which Hella now realized must be because it was really too sparse to wear much longer. Hella knew pride was folly, but she liked her own healthy thick black hair and brown skin. She didn’t know all that was done to mold a child with promise into a true Breather, or how much of their sickly appearance came from that process of transformation or simply from time spent breathing the poison itself. Either way, she felt creeping doubts about wanting to be one. It was like you came to be made of Vapor yourself, in time.

Then Phaedra said, “Hey, hold this!” and handed Hella her staff to free her hands to tie the float closed. The child’s eyes widened as she took the weight of the cartographer’s staff and carefully braced the metal-tipped base with her foot, angling it away from the fire to keep the wickedly sharp curved blade on top well clear of the float. The feel of the smooth dark wood was lovely. She touched a thin metal ring encircling the staff and ran a small finger down one of the many etched lines, trying to make some sense of the complicated notches and overlapping curves that somehow assisted the cartographer in taking the measure of things for their mapping.

She didn’t touch the vial bound by a purple string near the top. It might look like a pretty pendant, but Ian said it held poison. That a cartographer would have to drink that if they were about to be captured by enemies, because they knew too much and could give away the location of the Highglades, and the maps they made on their surveys weren’t drawings at all but secret codes for the same reason.

Ian was coming over to help as well, looking somehow older with his sandy hair poking out from under the borrowed mottled cloak so much like Andul’s. Phaedra let him hold the roll of siphon hose as she held the end up high and lashed it carefully along the length of one of the thick cords criss-crossing over the float, then finally triple-tied it to the metal ring at the great balloon’s base. Ian looked over at Hella then gave the tube a strong tug to help test the connection. He knew Hella was going first, and that her life depended on this simple system. Phaedra would let her breathe the fresh air from above until they were well into the Vapor. Then the test would begin.

Great-grandfather Clallum came over as Phaedra hooked the coil of siphon to a clip on her belt and slung the coil of rope tethering the float over her shoulder to wind out around her outstretched arm and through her clenched fist. She was ready. Clallum gently took the staff from Hella and gave it to Ian to take care of.

Clallum took his great-granddaughter’s shoulders, turning her to watch him carefully.

“Hella,” he said. “You know you are strong.” She nodded, but her eyes darted nervously down the slope.

“You know that fail or pass this test, you will find your place as a Citizen of the Highglades.” She nodded.

He whispered, “You know you are my favorite great-grandchild. Don’t tell the others.” She laughed.

“Most importantly, Hella, when is life?”

“All life is now.”

He smiled and clapped her proudly on the shoulders. Hella turned and took Phaedra’s hand.

Hella and Phaedra exchanged a confident nod, and began walking down together toward the Vapor.