The Lost Children of the Moon

”There weren't always dragons in the Valley,” the old lady murmured with a childish giggle as she stared into the flickering flame of her lone lantern.

Val perked up her ears. She liked listening to Yagi's stories, even if the pruned old woman mostly spoke to herself and struggled to keep her train of thought.

“Of course, we didn’t call it the Valley either,” Yagi whispered.

Unable to sleep, Val started moving closer to listen. She looked over to Wulf, making sure he was still sleeping. He would have been upset if he knew she was still awake, but she was only trying to listen so that she could fall asleep.

Val carefully stepped over the other members of the tribe who laid cramped across the cavern floor. Carrying her bedroll and pelt, Val moved to the corner where Yagi was sitting with the lantern. Yagi should have snuffed her lantern out, but no one dared – or had the patience – to tell her what to do.

Yagi didn’t pay her any attention as Val laid down. For Val there was no way of knowing what, if anything, was true about Yagi’s stories. But when she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the Valley as Yagi seemed to remember, it helped take her mind off the cold stone floor beneath.

"We used to run around in the fields, even at dusk," Yagi continued. “We weren’t always afraid of the night.”

”Quiet you old crone!” Vygar shouted. The grizzled man sat near the entrance of the cave. His raspy voice bounced around the enclosed space. ”Nobody wants to hear your crazy stories.”

In the faint light, Wulf was a blur as he bolted from his bedroll, he snatched up his dagger and pressed it against Vygar’s throat. With the sharpened bone against his skin, Vygar looked up to see Wulf staring into his eyes, signaling him to be silent.

Val watched as Wulf glanced over to where Val laid before, and then scanned the small space, until their eyes met. Yagi had already snuffed the lantern, leaving the cave lit only by the faint blue streaks coming from outside. The young hunter pressed his dagger tighter against the lookout’s neck as he glared at the tipped over clay jug laying next to him. Val turned away, she didn’t think Wulf would kill him, but she knew he could.

Val felt a chill down her spine as she realized that Yagi had stopped talking. The elderly woman never seemed to register other people, but now Yagi was quietly staring at the mouth of the cave. Val looked around and noticed the rest of the tribe had fixed their eyes in the same direction. Yagi tilted her head to the side, listening for something.

That’s when Val realized, the moonlarks had gone quiet.

A massive thud rocked the cave from above.

Val held her breath as the whole cave rumbled from what felt like an earthquake. She could see dust falling from the ceiling, stone chips clattered as they hit the cavern floor and for a moment Val feared the ceiling of the cave might collapse.

They could feel each vibration of the creature as it moved around above them. It must be heavy, Val thought. Heavy and hungry. As Val’s eyes locked with Yagi’s, the old woman nodded. It was a confirmation that her worst fear, a dragon, was prowling above them.

The adults started moving around, reaching for makeshift shields, spears and bows. Their anxious movements looked strange to Val, as each step had to be taken with care so as to not make any noise. She watched as a group of men tenderly drew arrows from quivers with trembling hands. They nocked them in a gentle manner, reminiscent of a mother putting her sleeping child to bed.

Val looked over to her friend Tipor. He had begun to unsheathe his dagger, but was shaking so much he wasn’t able to fully pull it out. Val didn’t have a weapon to cling to but even at her young age she knew that knives, spears and arrows would make no difference. She was young, but she could see, the tribe knew they had no chance. They were all scared children like herself, holding onto whatever made them feel safe.

Val briefly forgot how frightened she was as she looked at the pudgy curly-haired boy’s pointless attempt to arm himself. A funny thought entered her mind: this was the closest she had ever been to one, or at least a live one. Even if she knew that most who lay eyes on one end up dead, she secretly had always wanted to see one, hoping they would be smaller in real life than in her head. But from what she had heard of the remains found in the graveyard on Ghent’s Peak, even a talon in daylight usually needed two men to carry it.

Another thump that seemed to come from just above her head snapped her out of the thought. She instinctively put her ginger braid in her mouth and bit down to stop herself from screaming.

A muted growl sent her down towards the floor, pressing her face against the cold earth. She tried her hardest to think of anything but what was searching outside. The movement above paused for a second and Val conjured up an image of a dog stopping to whiff the air. She prayed that the wet hay mixed with ashes strewn across the cave was enough to block their scent.

She looked at Wulf again, he slowly raised his weapon into the ray of moonlight, and as the light touched his bone dagger, it quickly grew. Val already knew it was a full moon that night, but the fact that Wulf’s dagger now looked like a curved longsword – which he had to grab by the hilt with both hands to keep steady – reminded her. It also reminded her that the beast lurking above was likely many times its normal size as well.

Looking towards the exit, her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She noticed that the air outside looked to be shaking, just as when heat rises up from a hot stone in the blazing sun. Val looked down at the smoke forming from her breath and then looked up again. A shadow with horns stretched over the grass just outside the cave and she could swear the horns seemed to be growing.

A snarl rang out, and Val then saw a plume of thick dark smoke coming down from above, hitting the ground and spreading out. As it rolled into the cave, Val saw that Wulf was grabbing on to his weapon with both hands so tightly his knuckles were turning white.

Val closed her eyes but as the steam rolled in through the opening to the cave she caught a whiff of the putrid smell of sulfur and felt her throat dry up. She reopened her eyes and fixed them on the hole leading out of the cave. Leading out to it. Suddenly, the tension was cut by a howl in the distance.

She heard the creature outside stop and jerk its body. As the next howl sounded out, the thumps were replaced by the noise of heavy wings flapping, followed by gusts of wind that seemed to be moving away. A few moments later the howls were cut off by a brief squeal. Then silence again.

A joint sigh of relief spread across the cave. Val looked over to Wulf only to see his silhouette exiting into the moonlight. He wasn’t gone for long before he returned.

“We’re clear,” Wulf said. “You can all go back to sleep.”

“Vygar, you know the rules. Two cups for warmth and that’s it. The next time I catch you drunk I’ll throw you out of the cave” he told the man on lookout. “Go sleep it off and I’ll stay up.”

With a light grumble, Vygar grabbed the bottle and did as he was told. Despite the insult of being reprimanded by a teenager, the seasoned fighter still knew he was in the wrong.

Wulf put his blade – which had shrunk back to a dagger – back in his sheath and walked over to Val.

“Don’t worry little sister, we’re all safe” he whispered as he pulled out her braid from her still clenched teeth.

"Guess we were lucky it's not just flying lizards who like a full moon," he said as he cleaned off the dirt stains on her face.

“I feel sad for the wolf,” Val replied, “it didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to howl at the moon.”

Val could see in his eyes that the idea of feeling sorry rather than lucky at first seemed preposterous to Wulf, but he quickly turned his bewildered look into a rare smirk as he leaned closer and whispered: “Better it than you, little bear.”

He then straightened his back, preparing to stand up.

“You should get some sleep now Valeria. We have to start moving early if we’re gonna catch up with father on the road to Grim's Venture.”

Val had looked forward to the outing for ages, she hadn’t been allowed to come along to the trading post before, and she couldn’t wait for her first chance to see what people from outside the Valley looked like, what clothes they wore or how they talked.

“I can stay up and keep watch with you,” Val replied.

“No, little bear. I need your eyes keen for tomorrow,” he said, dragging the sheep’s pelt over her to tuck her in.

Even though he was still only 19, Wulf’s icy blue eyes were always serious, even when he tried to smile, the freckled girl thought looking up at her brother.

“Do you think you could have stopped it if it tried to get in here Wulf?,” Val wondered.

“Of course I could have. I would have stabbed my dagger in it and killed it in one strike. That is if it hadn’t just ran away when it saw that I was keeping watch,” Wulf said, trying to comfort his sister.

Val knew that was a lie. No one had ever killed a dragon, and who would even try at night. But she appreciated the comforting words and thought that if anyone would be the first to do it, it would probably be her brother.

“Wulf, could I have a dragon dagger some day?,” Val asked as she snuggled under the pelt.

“You know what, the next time I’m at the Peak, I’ll pick out a piece of bone just for you. Maybe even a tooth or a horn if you promise to go to sleep now,” Wulf said, getting up to move back to the entrance.

Val turned over to her side, she didn’t really like to think about Wulf going to the peak, it always just made her scared.

“Wulf?,” she said.

Her brother stopped walking and turned his head to the side.

“Yes, little bear.”

“Is it true that we used to howl at the moon?”

“That’s what the elders say,” Wulf replied.

“Do you think we’ll ever do it again Wulf?”

“I don’t know. Now go to sleep,” he said. He walked to the entrance and sat down with a stern and composed look on his face.

Looking over at Tipor, Val could tell he was already asleep again. How could that boy be so frightened one second only to doze off with a stupid grin on his face the next, Val thought to herself.

As Val closed her eyes, she could hear Yagi starting to speak again, but this time the old woman spoke so quietly that you could only just make out the odd words here and there.

It didn’t really matter to Val, she had heard the stories so often she could fill in the blanks.

The parts about how the tribe used to live before they came were the best ones. When her home wasn’t called the Green Valley or The Fright as the foreigners had named it. If Yagi was to be believed, it used to be called the Glimmering Vale because of how the full moon would reflect on the rivers and lakes at night. Sometimes in the caves, Val would try to paint the Valley at night in her head, carefully placing every rock and patch of high grass in the right place and then trying to illuminate it in the blue light.

It was strange thinking Yagi had once been her own age, so Val just imagined herself in the stories.

She pictured herself running through the grass and playing with her friends without a care in the world even as the sun started to set. Just like Yagi used to say, Val thought of herself hiding in the trees of the orchard as her mother called out to her. But that particular one often made her sad as she realized she couldn’t really remember what her mother sounded like, and the leafless burnt out husks of trees left in the orchard now hardly made for good hiding spots. But then again it was a nice thought just not needing any spots to hide or needing to spend every night in a cold dark cave.

The one story Val never got sick of was the one about the Moon Festival, where all the pots, pans, mirrors, helmets, shields and even swords – anything with even a vaguely reflective surface – would be hung from poles or laid out on the ground to shimmer under the full moon.

Val always imagined sitting huddled next to her father and brother in the moonlight, as the other members of the tribes played music and danced under the stars. Then the whole village would turn their heads up at the sky and howl as loud as they could.

She smiled, thinking she would one day howl as loud she could on a cloudless night under the Moon and firmament. As she started drifting off to sleep, she was glad she would be asleep when Yagi started talking of the dragons’ arrival.

The stories always turned to how the straw buildings would burn with children still inside, how the strongest warriors would be snatched up and eaten in an instant, how limbs would rain down from those being taken up in the air, or even how Yagi would cry out for her mother as she walked through the torched waste left behind. How fierce and massive the beasts were in the day, but how that was nothing compared to the horned behemoths they turned into at night. How members of the Moontribe were now condemned to always live in fear and wouldn’t be allowed into the cloudlands when they passed since they couldn’t pay their tributes to the Moon goddess Mani anymore.

Even though it had been decades since anyone in the tribe had spent a night outside of a cave, or at least lived to tell the tale. Val’s people knew that all divine creatures communed with the Moon goddess in some way. Wolves howled, moonlarks chirped and fireflies thanked Mani for blessing the night by sending her light back to her. That’s why when the dragons came they didn’t just confine the tribe to hiding in caves every night, they robbed them of their divinity.

Dragons are strange creatures, Val thought: hiding in the day and only hunting at night. They grow in the moonlight so they must have Mani’s blessing, but all the same they disgrace her holy light by spilling blood, and why would Mani bless something like that?

It was odd though, even with all the horrors that Yagi recounted almost every night, there was only one detail that Val could never truly get out of her head and would even haunt her dreams.

When Yagi told the story of dragons arriving she would sometimes mention in passing that when the first ones arrived, they weren’t flying in a controlled way like when they hunted.When they first came many of them had deep gashes across their bodies, and some even had cuts in their wings, like something had attacked them.

Val realized Yagi hadn’t gotten to that part yet, but she was already thinking about it. She tried to distract herself by thinking of meeting up with father, and that she would be able to ride on the horse with him. She thought of all the food she would get to taste and strange merchants she would get to see in Grim’s Venture. Maybe father would even buy her one of those flutes from the Western province.

She could feel her head getting heavy and even though Val wasn’t sure Yagi even said it on this particular night, she could hear Yagi’s words echoing in her head as she drifted off to sleep:

“I’ve always wondered, what could hurt a dragon?”