The Runner

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Petal wasn’t sure if she had actually heard it from one of the gaunt, pale faces lining the tunnel or if she’d just thought it. Everything was happening so fast, she couldn’t even tell.

The Elders holding her elbows swept her onward with relentless, long strides. She almost had to run to keep her moccasins under her. Ahead of them, the gates of The Warren were yanked open, brilliant daylight forcing her to look away into the garishly lit crowd - the sad or hopeful or horrified faces of people she’d known her whole life. Not one of whom was going to try and save her.

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, though, that was true. But when there were, the stories were the same: bright green with gold stripes. Never less than three, sometimes as many as eight. Young adults, the Elders guessed, because they were all about the same size and they’d grown rapidly over the last year. Hatched from the same nest, most likely.

The Valley, surrounded by high mountains with only one clear path in or out, had proven a safe, verdant enclave to ten generations of folk and three times as many villages. A history, a culture, a whole world… turned into a slaughterhouse pen.

The heavy iron gates thundered shut behind her. The clunk of the lock bars slammed down an ending to the whole, strange morning and announced the beginning of her new life. Or maybe just its last verse.

She clawed her greasy, dark hair back from her face with the few fingers that she didn’t need to hold the map and got her bearings.

Petal hadn’t seen any of this for the better part of a year now. To her left, the North Peak ’s snowcap brightened to blinding, as it always had.

“From up there,” her father would tell her, “you can see the whole world.”

“Have you been up there?” she’d ask.

“Don’t need to. My whole world’s right here,” he’d say, throwing arms around her and her mother with a rascally smile, then rubbing his stubbly chin on Petal’s face to make her squeal and squirm to get away.

In front of her, the sun rose, as always, and its light was just reaching the… she stared at the ashy gray river and the enormous, black stain that had once been the Valley floor. Spikes of ruined tree poked out of a haze of morning fog and drifting black smoke. It didn’t look like a single living tree - or anything else - was down there. The whole winding valley was a foreboding pit, promising only the very worst to anyone foolish enough to descend into it.

But that’s where she was headed. To her right, the lone pathway down Mohilder, their mountain, lazily swept back and forth through scorched tree skeletons towards the village of the same name. Or what had been the village. Word was, nothing was left of it but part of one stone wall. Nobody could even be sure what structure it had been.

Once the dragons had gone from snatching sheep and then cows at night to human children in broad daylight, volunteers set out to kill the beasts. When they, themselves, were killed more often than not, the Council of Villages met and declared a lockdown. The villages all took different approaches - some just stayed inside, watching the skies through shutters and no lights at night. Others built cellars for families to sleep in. Mohilder was a mining town and the whole lot of them had moved into the iron mine along with impressive stockpiles of food and supplies. The dining and smelting operations were stopped and only a few of the air shafts were left open.

Hunting parties, as many as ten or fifteen men, went out to kill the dragons, to overwhelm them finally so they could all return to normal as soon as possible. Life in the mine had felt like an adventure then - like they were simply having a sleepover down the road from home. This was when “The Warren” had gained popularity as a new name for the live-in mine. It had been her mother’s idea. This was back when her mother was speaking.

Sometimes, the hunting parties would return having found nothing (save the wanton destruction) and a tenuous hope would hang over them. Maybe the monsters had moved on? The Elders insisted that they would have to be out of sight for two full weeks before lockdown would be lifted. Scouts ventured out to watch the skies, but it was only ever a matter of three to five days before the dragons were spotted again. Their hunting ground was clearly wider than the Valley itself, but they were still very much a part of it.

More often, though, half the hunting party would be missing when they shuffled or crawled back in. Petal’s father had survived with a party, but it had changed him. He refused to ever go out there again, which wasn’t uncommon, but he’d wake up screaming, sometimes yelling the names of men who had died in front of him. And then one day, he was just gone.

Those were her mother’s last words to her: “He’s just gone.” And she hadn’t spoken since. She forced herself up in the morning to drag through her days, staring at nothing as though the life had drained from her. As though she didn’t still have Petal to look after. Wherever her father was, Petal wished daily that he would come back so she could tell him how mad she was at him and so that her mother would come back to her as well.

As winter approached, the dirt and soot stains on everyone's clothes and skin began to linger, as if they were all slowly being absorbed by the earth they'd buried themselves in. The supplies began to dwindle faster than anyone expected. Rationing hadn’t been seriously entertained as everyone had assumed that the Hunters would take care of the dragons and the lockdown would be a story they told the next crop of children. As Elder Council meetings became more heated affairs, however, Volunteers were requested to go to the neighboring villages- to beg for help if there was any and, if not, to scavenge.

Few of them returned. Those who did were either lucky enough to have not seen the dragons and are back with laden packs or, in one case, a wagon full of food, or told horrific tales of the dragons as clever monsters, hunting them day and night, finding them in places they were sure they’d been hidden. No one ever mentioned finding any other people, however. And none ever agreed to go out a second time.

Someone had to, though, so the Elders instituted a lottery. Everyone fourteen and older was included and they would be called Runners, now, for reasons they never specified. Talk of fighting the dragons was popular among the boys, so the name change struck Petal and her friends as a reminder that there was another, more sensible option.

The very first lottery was a public affair and the very first Runner was a scrawny boy named Milchen. When his name was read aloud, his mother had grabbed him and tried to run. When the Guard stopped her, she latched onto Milchen and screamed “not my son.” Then the mob descended on her.

She screamed and cursed and, ultimately, was pried loose finger-by-finger by other parents. They would all face this one day. Neither she nor her child were immune when the rest of them would not be.

When two weeks passed without Milchen’s return, his mother killed the High Elder with a skinning knife. The lottery was thereafter held in secret by the Elders and the Guards’ sudden isolation of a family was often the giveaway clue as to who had been chosen. The family was released as soon as the gates were shut behind the Runner. Her own mother would be released now that she was outside, though Petal doubted she’d even make her way to the gates.

Damn it, she’d only been fourteen for a month. Just this morning, she’d argued with her mother over the thin porridge they were sharing for breakfast. Her mother had simply gotten up from the table and gone back to bed. Trying to talk to her mother about it was pointless.

And it was just minutes ago (wasn’t it?) that Petal had been giggling with her friends Iris and Sylia under a staircase, laughing about some boy who was… she couldn’t even remember. Everything else disappeared when the Guards rounded the corner and came straight at her. One snatched her up while others pushed into the nearby den she shared with her mother. Petal was tossed over the man’s shoulder and carried away at a run, her friends frozen in shock, and maybe some relief, as they shrank behind her.

By the time she’d been put down in the Elders Chamber, she was a blubbering mess. The Elders made weak, hurried attempts to calm her, but after a moment, one Elder apologized, said “It’s best these things are handled quickly,” and pressed her chest against the heavy wooden Council table. Can’t sob if you can’t catch your breath. The others closed around her, forced her head to turn towards a map of The Valley and spoke urgently. Most of the villages on this end were either picked clean (a blue line slashed through the map here) or were places no one had returned from and were considered too dangerous to even try. These were marked with a big, red “X.” There was a pretty even mix of both on the map. Only one village remained, in fact. One well removed from the cluster of others by the river.

Valke’s Foot sat near the lone pass over the Sawbeak Mountains, which led South into an endless wilderness. The Elders had urged her to consider heading into it if she found nothing to bring back. She might stand a better chance out there, they said. That was assuming she made it to Valke’s Foot in the first place.

And, with that, they’d slapped that map into one of her hands, a cold, hard bread roll into the other and swept her out of the chamber. Still in her dingy brown shift, they’d escorted her up the big tunnel, past the people of The Warren who had gotten word of a new Runner and came to gawk, well-wish or pray after her. Everyone except her mother.

They let go of her with one last push across the gates’ threshold. By the time she stopped herself and looked back, the iron gates were almost closed, the Elders’ stern, but hopeful faces filling the gap as it vanished.

She could’t decide if that bit about heading into the wilderness was a trick or a terrifying possibility. What if some of those who had been lost had simply chosen not to come back? Maybe that was the reason they were called Runners now.

She blinked at the ruins of the Valley floor and realized she’d been standing there, her back just arm’s length from the gates, for some time. Under no cover whatsoever.

She gasped and looked to the sky, but saw nothing dragon-like. Some great scavenger birds soared high up. A breeze rustled the dry, bare branches bristling the mountainside below her. It was a peaceful moment. So peaceful, she caught a breath she hadn’t realized she’d lost.

A huge, hideous shriek went up from somewhere and bounced off the valley walls, seeming to come from the land itself with the mountains the jagged teeth of Death’s very jaws.

There may not always be dragons in the Valley, but there were now.

And she was alone with them.

An icy cold shiver wracked her whole body and once again she was moving so quickly that her feet barely stayed under her.