The Sun Comes Late to the Valley

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

The sentence hung in the air between the two women. Sahre felt the weight of it, hanging threateningly at her chest, throbbing with her heartbeat. This was blasphemous; though the meaning of blasphemous had changed a lot in the month she had lain within the stones of this convent.

The candle on the small table popped and the hissing of the spark landing in one of the two heavy teacups filled the silence. Their shadows bounced along the walls in opposition to the stillness they each took pains to maintain.

The older woman, the Prioress, Dahlia, continued, “In fact, there are no dragons in the Valley.” She paused as if turned to stone by some unclear emotion. Sahre knew suddenly that this woman had grown too old and lost sight of Truth. Closing her eyes, Sahre focused on the weight of her body on the straw mat. If there were no dragons, there was nothing to keep the others from following.

The light muted behind her eyelids, someone had blocked the light from the hall. Sahre opened her eyes and saw a gnarled, old woman standing in the doorway, the torchlight refusing to enter the deep crevices of her skin, turning her face into a patchworked leather mask. Old women would always be terrifying. The stories of what old women had wrought settled firmly into the bones of the children in the Valley before they reached half-height.

“Have you told her yet? I wanted to be here when you told her.” This new woman’s voice crackled barely louder than the sounds of her whispered shoes along the stone floor. Bones folded in on themselves as she sat at the foot of the bed with a sigh. Sahre tucked her feet up under herself, sat a bit taller. The old hag chuckled.

Where had these women come from? Their joyous voices and their laughs? How did women act this way?

The Prioress looked sternly at the late arrival. “You should be in bed.”

“I powdered your butt, and I will do as I want.”

“Sahre, this is the Abbess. She has been here for forty years.”

“Forty-two.”

“Forty-two. She is the oldest Sister still walking the halls.”

The woman bent her head as if recognizing the impossible thing the Prioress had just claimed. “You could just call me Ro.”

Sahre touched her heart and bowed her head. “Sahre. I’m honored, Mother.” Disrespect never ended well. It may have been possible to accept the women running through the halls at all hours, some known from youth, learning of the aged women who lived within the towering walls of this abbey, seeing women living lives without a thought of the monster they left behind. But a woman twice Sahre’s age was impossible

“‘Ro,’ dear, just ‘Ro.’” The woman sniffed and deep lines shifted between her eyebrows. White caterpillars sitting in the midline of her face, matching the thin patch of white above her wrinkled lips.

“I have told her already, I thought you would be asleep and it needed to be done,” the Prioress explained. “I don’t think she believes me.”

“Dear, what Dahlia has told you is true. There have never been dragons in the Valley.”

The weeks since Sahre had arrived in this fortress in the hills had been full of smaller surprises. Days of stumbling over rocks with her three bundles secured tightly to the travois dragged behind her.

She had an easy enough time following the trail of the sacrificial offerings walking ahead. Sacrifices she hoped would be enough to sate the beast that lived within this stretch of the Valley. The three women never looked behind them, and never seemed to fear the sounds and heat that approached from all sides.

Easy as the trail was to follow, Sahre was still weak from the loss of blood and sleepless nights. Her eyes could not adjust to the dark of the woods and she had tripped over every rock, each time harder than the last to regain her feet. Trembling with every sound she made, or the sounds of the valuables she dragged behind. Fearing the sharp hearing of the unseen dragon.

“He does not prefer human flesh,” she was told, multiple times, when expressing disbelief that so many had made it through the woods to this paradise. Those sounds in the dark were false, that skin-scorching heat was made up, he didn’t exist?

The two elders waited for Sahre to open her eyes, again. The rustling of their sleeves susurrate in the quiet room as they used the strange shorthand, developed to communicate needs while under vows of silence. Vows they broke for Sahre.

“Dear? We need to hurry. Others have spotted the dust rising from the road,” Dahlia lay her hand on the young woman’s knee. “We must send you on your way if you aren’t to go back. We won’t be able to hide you here.

“I don’t understand. I made it this far. No one knows you are here, they all believe you are eaten by the dragon. By Kagnorn.”

“No, dear, there is no dragon. There has never been a dragon in the Valley. Kagnorn is a story.” The woman repeated again as if that could make the wall in Sahre’s mind open to allow it in. Dahlia put her arm around the younger woman. “The Valley Council has always known there is no dragon. They keep us here to maintain the lie.”

Sahre shook her head. She refused to accept this. She could accept that it preferred deer to human meat, but to go further would require something stronger than the pungent tea on the bedside table. The dragon was a lie? Told by whom?

“I have written it all here, in this book,” the Prioress shifted to pull a faded leather parcel from her pocket and held out a leather-bound journal. A flash of orange symbols on the cover. When Sahre refused to take it, she shoved it into the pack that was sitting at their feet. As it opened Sahre could see apples and lamb jerky, a bit of knitted material.

“Dear, you don’t need to accept it now, it takes a while for those of us who learn it.” Ro looked up at her. “But you do need to move. They will be here by tomorrow, and you’ll need to be in the cover of the woods.” She stood, loudly and slowly, to point out the window to the trees far down the slope on this side of the hills, lit by the light of the waning crescent moon.

“What will you tell them?” She could follow a command, if not the reasoning. Following the command might lead to understanding the reasoning.

“For now, nothing. They know you’ve been recuperating. Later we’ll make it clear we did our best, but you didn’t survive the stress.” As Ro spoke Sahre sobbed for the life she’d be giving up. “Eventually we’ll be forced to tell them the truth. It will be okay. You will return, my dear! But now you must be moving. The sun rises later in the Valley, but it will come eventually. They will be here sooner than you think.”

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. The insane mantra helped Sahre find the energy to dress and shoulder the pack. The cloth had been a pair of warm mittens. The women had also packed a flint and steel starter, an extra pair of boots, two bars of soap, a change of clothes, and six pairs of socks. Sahre could not imagine going through more than one in a year.

The pack sat heavily on her shoulders and she wished for the simple travois she had made to bring her precious bundles here to safety.

The other women had left to track down some candles and parchment. They hadn’t left the space to explain she couldn’t read, but she made sure the book was hidden deep in the safest part of the sack. A new treasure to protect.

The sunlight was beginning to glow over the eastern ridge. The light of early morning was one of the smaller surprises since climbing out of the Valley. This Riven Home the first safe space for encountering newness.

The neophytes stretched in the clearing up the hill led by the idónea, the teacher who would guide them into this new life. Those three women Sahre had followed from her village stood among them indistinguishable in their matching wool cassocks. She had watched them most mornings through the tiny window, as they slowly grew from sobs to a calm quiet, like all those under the vow of secrecy at Riven.

Sahre had learned that the predawn hours were the only time the women were allowed to discuss what they had left behind She wished she could join them, screaming at the heavens as they learned bits and pieces of the truth that could only be imparted here. Not all of it.

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There had never been dragons in the Valley.

Sahre wanted to return and burn the whole Valley to the ground.

Ro and Dahlia returned with rope and candles. They watched her tie a variety of knots before they would continue.

“Follow the hooting of an owl,” the Prioress was all business as she explained the plan. A trio of traders had arrived a few days past and been paid to stay, each night trading messages with mirrors and candles. Such a tiny mirror added to Sahre’s pack, her assertions that she could not understand such a code dismissed: “It’s easy once they teach you the letters, dear, they’ll travel with you long enough.” Sahre still couldn’t manage to admit she would not be able to put such letters together.

The neophytes would remain on this side of the building until long after sun-up. Sahre followed the elder women into the Prioress’ study. Dahlia would add an herb to her tea that was designed to stop the heart. All newcomers first learned how to restart a stopped heart, a necessity with such an aged population. The Abbess would call for help as Sahre slipped out the window to run around the walls as everyone was caught in the commotion.

“I wish I had known about that herb a year ago,” Sahre muttered to herself, but the hearing of the others was attuned after so many years in silence.

“We all do, dear. There’s a reason we’re not allowed to return the villages.” Sahre couldn’t tell which of the two women ahead of her in the halls had responded.

Sahre perched on the ledge, a drop about half her height on the other side.

“When I find him, will I be able to come back here? I don’t want to leave them forever. I want them to know me.” She couldn’t say more without changing her mind, staying to be dragged back to what already felt like her past life.

“Sahre, you will come back here with the wind at your back, but I don’t know how far you’ll travel first,” Dahlia had taken the tea and her voice was strained. “No one will forget you, we will keep your name on their lips.”

Sahre threw the pack out the window and slipped—nearly silently—behind it. In the new light, she could see the shadow of every stone ahead of her. She ran toward the hooting of an owl, where no owl rested.

Running down the hill was hard enough to distract her from what she left behind and the fear that the kind old witch would never wake from her self-imposed slumber.