The Valley of Misfits

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley, but ever since we brought them here, we’d endured nothing but trouble from everybody except the dragons themselves.

As I stared down at the latest knight who had charged headlong into the Valley, I shook my head and slipped the wooden sword back into my belt. “Do you know how irritating it is that we keep telling you that we don’t need rescuing, but you keep coming anyway?”

“Fear not, fair maiden!” The knight managed to get a whole sentence out despite the concussion I’d given him.

“Alys,” I grunted. “My name is Alys, not fair maiden.”

“Then do not worry, Fair Maiden Alys!” The knight pushed his greasy hair out of his face. “The dragons have addled the little brains that nature gave you, but it is not your fault that you were born a woman, and I will save you nonetheless!”

“You know you’re still on the ground, right?” I sighed. “I don’t expect you can do much saving from down there.”

The knight staggered to his feet and reached for his sword, only to realize that it was still on the ground behind him.

“But the dragons!” the knight protested. “They will destroy your village! They will scorch this Valley!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” I slipped past him and picked up his heavy sword before he could. “Once they’re done here, they’ll be on to the next valley, and then the next one, and then after that, the royal palace will be the next target, and we can’t have the monarchy going up in flames, can we?”

“One might almost think you were one of the Subversives, based on the way you’re talking,” the knight said, and suddenly he seemed much more in control of his senses, much less the bumbling fool and much more a royal enforcer.

I kept my tone light when I replied: “Is it the way that I’m talking that makes you think that, or just the fact that I’m talking at all? You know, what with my little woman brains and all.”

“Return my sword,” the knight ordered. “I will leave your valley in peace, but not without my sword.”

“Will you come back?” I tightened my grip on the hilt and wondered how bad exactly it would be to run this fool-who-was-not-a-fool through with his own blade. “They always leave, but then they always come back.”

“We cannot suffer a dragon to live,” the knight muttered, as if he was repeating an old proverb but couldn’t remember the rest of it.

“The dragons have suffered enough,” I told him. “You can have your sword back, if that’s what it takes to get rid of you. But please, forget about this place, and I’ll return the favor and do my best to forget you.”

The knight placed his thumb in the middle of his forehead in the sign to ward off evil, and his lips began to murmur a prayer that I couldn’t quite hear over the ragged panting of the man’s breath.

Every time.

It was like clockwork with these knights. The king sent his knights out to slaughter the dragons that had been spotted in my valley, and the villagers promptly fought off the knights as well as we could without killing them and risking more royal wrath rained down upon our heads.

Today’s watch had fallen to me. As much as I wanted to run this man through so he could never come back, I had known from my first blow against him that I wouldn’t. I was fairly certain that I could, but I’d never actually killed a man before, and the king was much more likely to take offense to that than he was to a funny bunch of feisty villagers who occasionally sent his knights back all cowed into submission with nothing more than a bunch of wooden swords and sharpened pitchforks.

Even if those knights usually lied.

As I watched the man retreat, his sword dragging along the ground behind him like a limp tail hanging down between his legs, I would have bet anything that he was one of those who would lie to the court.

At least he hadn’t actually seen a dragon today. That might buy us a little time before the next round of adventurers came to investigate the rumors, especially if this latest questing fool lied and bragged about the mighty dragon that he had slain and all the villagers who had flocked to him in gratitude.

Plenty of knights had lied before.

Plenty would lie again.

Eventually, of course, our dragons would take a break from helping us plow our fields and haul our lumber. At some point, they would want to do more than roll around in the muddy swamps for pleasure, and they’d take to the skies to stretch their wings and feel alive again. Then without fail, someone from a neighboring valley would spot them soaring overhead. They’d send word to the next valley, who would send word to the next valley, and as soon as the king heard that the dragons were back, he would send his knights back to try and exterminate the dragons once and for all.

So far, we’d gotten lucky.

The real knights, the knights who could have posed a threat, they had stayed away until now. They knew how dangerous a dragon could be when provoked, more so when a whole valley of dragons was involved. After all, they’d been the ones who nearly drove the dragons into extinction in the first place. But lately, they’d seemed content to let the younger malcontents run off and try to get themselves killed in their stead.

But after I watched the latest knight climb onto his horse and ride off into the sunset with what was left of his dignity, I realized my hands were clammy with cold and sweat, and it wasn’t much of a puzzle as to why. Before I could figure out what to do about it or how to tell the rest of the villagers to prepare, I felt a scaly head nudge against my elbow.

“Hey there, boy,” I said as I looked up at Rinco.

My dragon’s green scales had deep scars that would never go away, as much as I had tried to heal them with every salve known in the Valley. They were from a lifetime of trying to keep himself from being exterminated with the rest of his species, but at least he’d found a home here with the few other dragons that we’d been able to rehome and rehab after they were all driven out from their mountain caves in the south.

Rinco snorted and nudged my arm again. His breath was hot on my skin, and my clammy hands were grateful for the warmth. It helped ground me against the evening wind that raked its fingers through my long hair, and it helped steel my stomach against my fears of what the morning might bring.

“He was different, Rinco,” I murmured and leaned my head against my dragon’s scaly cheek.

Rinco snorted again, but it sounded like straight-up laughter this time.

“Oh gods no, not like that,” I groaned. “I thought he was one of the usual, but then he mentioned the Subversives.”

“Talking to your dragon again, are you?”

I glanced back to see Mariah striding up behind me with her bow slung carelessly across one shoulder. She must have spent the afternoon deep in the woods since her dark hair was still tinged with green along the tips, and that only happened when the half-dryad ran around in the moss-covered forest for at least an hour.

“I can’t help it if Rinco is the best company in the village,” I teased.

“Very funny.” Mariah’s laugh sounded like leaves rustling in the wind. “You’re not wrong, though. He really is the best company.”

Rinco twitched his head back and forth in agreement and gave another snort that told me he was very pleased with himself.

“The watch told me they just spotted the latest knight leaving the valley,” Mariah said. “Did you have any trouble with him?”

“I think he might have been a royal enforcer,” I admitted.

“That’s impossible,” Mariah said immediately. “He would have killed you.”

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered.

Mariah’s fingers grazed the back of my hand. “I don’t mean to insult your skills, Alys. Everyone knows you’re one of the best fighters in the village, but a royal enforcer? They’re on an entirely different level from the usual knights that come out here.”

“Trust me, I know,” I sighed. “I hope I’m wrong, but when he mentioned the Subversives, it’s like… I don’t know. It’s like his whole demeanor shifted.”

“Did he think you were one of them?” Mariah demanded.

“It’s possible,” I said. “And it’s not like he would be wrong.”

“Don’t say that, someone might actually hear you!” the half-dryad hissed as she glanced around us, but Rinco was the only one who could hear us, and he was too happy munching on a patch of daffodils to pay much attention to what we were saying.

“Mariah, come on.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “If I can’t talk about it with you, then--”

“No,” my friend cut me off firmly. “No, I don’t want to hear about it. That knight was not a royal enforcer, and more of them won’t be coming from the palace. It’ll be the same way that it’s been for the last year. They’ll come, we’ll drive them off, they’ll leave us in peace, and then they’ll come back again and pretend like they actually care about rescuing us. That’s it, end of story.”

“We have to talk about it,” I murmured.

“No, we don’t.” Mariah patted Rinco’s head. “Just because you don’t care much about your own life doesn’t mean that I feel the same way. Someone has to look out for you, even if it’s despite yourself.”

“I care plenty about my own--”

“Then prove it!” Mariah thundered, and the ground trembled slightly beneath the half-dryad’s feet.

Her fingers grazed the back of my hand again before she patted Rinco one final time and then headed back toward the closest row of houses.

It was easy to forget how powerful Mariah was until I went and pissed her off about something stupid. She scared the other villagers sometimes, and I couldn’t exactly blame them. Then again, this whole Valley was filled with the unwanted, the misfits, the slightly scary (even when they didn’t mean to be) type of folks.

Half-dryads, half-elves, half-dwarves, all the halfies really who didn’t seem to fit into the mold that either side prescribed for them. Half-mages, too, though there weren’t many of us, and even fewer of us who were Subversives.

It was why the dragons fit in so well here.

It was why all any of us wanted was just to be left alone.

For a solid week, there was no sign of movement from the eastern end of the valley. They never came from the west since only swamps and ghouls could be found in that direction, but the village kept watch night and day on the eastern entrance to the valley. No knights showed up, no messengers were sent, and for that one blissful week, I hoped the sinking feeling in my gut had been wrong. I kept telling myself that Mariah was right, that there were no royal enforcers coming to hunt down the Subversives along with the dragons, that I was just as safe here as Rinco.

Nothing good can last forever, though.

On the morning of the eighth day, I saw a new knight ride into the valley, alone but with all the confidence of an entire army at their back. I slid down the ladder from my watchtower and strode out to meet them, and they actually slowed their horse to a stop and hopped down like they had only come to take tea instead of to destroy our friends and livelihood.

Then the knight took off their helmet, and I knew nothing would ever be the same again.

This was not another unwashed, unkempt, greasy-haired, high-minded, accidentally or even purposefully sexist knight.

This was a goddess in knight clothing.

Waves of glossy blonde hair tumbled down from where her helmet had pinned them back, and dark brown eyes the color of shadows in the forest studied me in amusement. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the cold air, and her cheekbones were high enough that she could have been an elf. But since her ears had the normal rounded shape of a human’s, I wondered if maybe she was part avenging angel instead of part elf. That was the only reason I could think of why her lips were somehow just as glossy as her hair but just as pink as her flushed cheeks.

And it was definitely the only reason I could think as to why my tongue seemed suddenly stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“Let me guess,” the blonde avenging angel said with a smirk. “You’re the first to greet me, and you have the red hair of, oh how did he put it? The red hair of a devil and eyes that glow grey like the lights in the swamp? You must be Alys.”

“Alys,” I repeated dumbly. “Wait, did you say my eyes are like swamp lights?”

“I don’t know how he meant it,” the blonde knight said with a shrug. “But I certainly mean it as a compliment.”

“And you are?” My fingers itched to hold my wooden sword in my hand, but this woman was so beautiful and so confident, and maybe I could just convince her to leave instead of having to fight her because by the gods, how did she smell like actual sunlight on flowers?

“I’m Vashti,” the angel-knight said with a smile that made my knees go weak. “And I’m here to rescue you.”