A Short Story.
It was over fifty years ago when they lost the Sun. The whirling, faintly glittering Mists rolled over the earth and changed the way of life for everything. The sky lowered and fused with the sea, and everything on the earth entered delirium. The only sign of stars or moon for mortals was the iridescence that pulsed through the clouds in soft colors as the light from the heavens dispersed.
Idiga, the lead hunter for a small pack of coydogs who lived where the high desert met the crags, narrowed her eyes toward the west. Sometimes, before the mist faded from pale blue, to soft violet, and then to black, the world was washed in intense light and the Fire burned in the distance. Tonight the flame licked the swirling shroud like it intended to finally boil everything it touched. The pack stirred little as their vision left them for another heavy night, and Idiga lied amongst the sagebrush and let the dull wind whisper her to sleep.
She awoke to dust blowing urgently across her nose, to a cloud of yellow and gold that hastened her as if to say another morning of opportunity had finally come. High winds meant the gull-like winged things that built their nests on the sharp ledges of the crags would be grounded or they risked being tossed into the abyss. Larger prey, advantaged by poor sightlines in the Mists, was increasingly elusive, so Idiga adapted. She roused the hunting party, all the most lithe and sure-footed of the pack, and led them out into the open desert toward the Edge.
Idiga took a wide stance as she peered over the rocky ledge and smelled the wind for hints of the winged things. She could hear their shrills even as the turbulent air ripped up against the walls of the crag. Calling over two others of the party, she sent the last downwind to descend the rocks and stage himself just above the Line, the boundary that no dog dare go beneath or risk never returning home. After a few moments, the runner below barked sharply and the dogs above heard the winged things scatter. Once the first frightened shadow pierced the veil, Idiga launched forward, tucking her front feet beneath her chin, and dove toward the rocks below. She gaped her jaws and locked her teeth around the creature and continued to fall, extending her feet and letting the ground come to her. Her paws struck the ledge below and she absorbed the hit like a wild cat. Balanced, she shook the animal in her grips until its struggle left it and dropped it to the rocks. The next dog came behind her to retrieve the prize while Idiga immediately shifted her eyes toward the cloud again for the next target. After four more strikes, she climbed back up to the Edge for rest.
Panting, Idiga took a count of the group’s kills and paused. The dog running the Line hadn’t returned yet. She turned and cried out into the shroud, and began to scout the Edge when she heard the missing party mate’s reply. She found him sitting, bleeding from the face. He told her he was struck by a tremendously large flying creature as it stole his catch from his grip. Puzzled, she asked another dog to substitute as a runner and told her injured hunter to rest for the time being.
Idiga breathed in a deep fill of air, again poised on a jutting rock, and peered down into the Mists. She dove off the side toward a shadow directly beneath her, but the agile winged thing narrowly slipped through her open maw as she clipped a rock with her shoulder and slid to a lower ledge. She caught the glimpse of a darting shadow and rapidly turned to coil herself for another jump. Patient, her nose twitched as another one scuttled on the rocks upwind. She watched it for a moment before quietly crouching to the earth and creeping across the sharp face. Just then, a loose stone came rattling down the crag and startled the winged thing into flight.
Instead of jumping at that moment, Idiga waited. A sharp blast of air cut across the wall and spun the squalling winged thing over on itself. She barreled off of her perch furiously and, a second before grabbing the creature’s wingtip, a large white figure struck her in the face with its talons splayed. Idiga tumbled to the rocks on her haunches, and rolled down to another ledge in a spin. And then to the next, and yet to another. She crashed down the walls of rock and soil past the Line, down into the abyss, and pierced the confines of the Mists to a bottom unimagined.
Like an ethereal hand, thick, tall grasses cradled Idiga’s body. She opened her eyes to a warm and gentle wind. The ground smelled damp, yet sweet. The soft blades brushed the battered dog’s wounds and as she slowly regained her senses, they seemed to cool her pain. She found her feet and rose from the thicket, and hobbled out to the sound of rolling water. A crystal brook ran delicately nearby, a spectacle. She walked over and took a drink as two white feathers drifted past her bloodied muzzle.
Idiga’s eyes widened as the cold water rushed her throat. She rose from the stream and whipped her head around, breaking from the assumed dream and remembering every moment of her crash into this world. She made out the faint shadow of the wall, looming through a pale yet bright green fog. Slowly, she moved toward it. She then heard something stir in the grasses, and another pale feather drifted across the ground. As she approached, she was met by a large, disheveled winged thing- a gyrfalcon. It held out its ripped-up wings, dragging them by its sides, leaving a trail of white and bloodied feathers behind. Its icy grey eyes locked intently onto Idiga’s green ones, and they stared each other down for a long, silent moment.
Idiga’s injuries would heal, and here she stood with ample water, a hidden place to recover, and an immediate opportunity for a nearly effortless meal, but she remained still as the falcon began to speak. The swift winged thing had been watching the dog pack’s ingenious hunting style for the cliff gulls and sought to capitalize on their blindness. Idiga was astonished. This winged thing, whose name she learned was Vrail, could see with pristine sharpness though the Mists. Idiga asked the bird about this new landscape, and Vrail described a world of color the dog could not fathom. The valley she had fallen to was traced on either side by enormous bluffs and funneled toward the Sea through the thick Forests. Idiga asked of the Fire, and the bird said, casually, “that is the Sun.”
And so, the two struck a deal. Vrail would not survive flightless, and Idiga would never find her way home in the Mists; they had something higher to offer one another. The gyrfalcon would become the coydog’s sight, with all of its knowledge of the land, and the coydog would become the gyrfalcon’s protector. Idiga crouched to let Vrail pull herself up onto her shoulders, where she would ride for the uncertain journey before them.
The light in the Mists rose and fell in a full spectrum for weeks on end as the pair regained their strength. The vegetation grew dense. Giant ferns sprouted tendrils and wrapped their arms around towering red trees that would periodically glow when the Fire would come. The soft grasses caressed the dog and the falcon as they walked, always leaning delicately forward, as if to show them an invisible path. Idiga had been sustaining them both on a steady diet of rodents, and eventually, large pheasants that would spring from their hiding places as they spooked. Vrail would perch patiently on low branches, and Idiga would catch the fat, vibrantly-plumed winged things in the air like she was dancing. Vrail had begun to pluck the pheasants’ feathers while they fed and placed quills of red, blue, and gold into her wings. She could not yet fly, but her wingspan soon looked full, painted, striking as she filled the gaps.
It was a particularly damp and heavy evening that Idiga decided to travel late. The air was hung in navy and silver as the Forest was irradiated by the Fire. Over the pair’s shoulders, the the light burned white through the Mists, casting long shadows with a depth Idiga had never seen before.
They weren’t aware that not far downwind, a native teenage boy was helping his grandmother collect clay and foliage for her crafts. Their people knew little trouble in the valley, but as the night closed in the boy collected their sacks and urged his grandmother to start heading back home. Suddenly, the Fire lit up the earth around them and an incredible shadow met the boy’s eyes. He pulled at his grandmother’s sleeve and they both stared in bewilderment as a fantastic figure moved slowly toward them- a wolf-like creature, with wings spread out at its sides as if it had just landed and was shaking off the dew.
The old woman and the boy hurried back to their village and shared the incredible sight with everyone who would listen. They were met by those who were mystified, skeptical, and fearful. The village had lived in peace since the Mists had come, but some wondered still- had the boy and the elder mistaken their vision, was trickery afoot in their valley, or had a god descended to the earth? The chief called for an end to speculation, and the boy, along with all of the hunters in the village, were called to assemble.
Idiga and Vrail awoke the next morning to the commotion of black winged things in the trees. They squalled and screeched and shouted, “You must leave, beware, there will be death in the Mists!” The dog and the falcon roused in alarm, and Vrail hustled onto Idiga’s shoulders again as they sought a path away from the riot above their heads.
The squabbling faded as the pair travelled deeper into the Forest, but the urgency had been amplified. On this day, despite the blanket of anonymity that the Mists wrapped so many things in, the Forest felt like it had eyes on them today. Vrail had slowly begun to rebuild her strength to fly by gliding from branch to branch, occasionally working her way up to the canopy to look into its vastness. It was then that Idiga caught a vile smell, and the falcon descended to her guarded perch on her back.
A spear suddenly pierced the shroud from behind them and lodged itself into the brambles. Idiga bolted as the sound of men crashing through the brush closed in, and more blind spears rained from overhead. The coydog weaved in and out of the trees as she ran to disorient the assault.
“Vrail, I need you to find me the wall!” Idiga shouted. Vrail shot through the canopy and quickly found the valley’s rocky boundary. She dove back to Idiga and pulled on the dog’s scruff to steer her to their escape. In mere moments, the pair found the bottom of the wall and Idiga leapt up onto the rocks, quickly scaling them without knocking a stone out of place. Once high enough that the Mists could conceal them, she stopped, exasperated and shaking. Vrail stared out into the woods and watched the men’s silhouettes scour the ground for their trail, but it appeared they had lost it.
“Humans,” Vrail scoffed, “they almost never look up.”
Below, the boy who had first seen the pair’s winged figure the night before scanned the ground. The head hunter approached him and handed him back his spear.
“Have you found something, Andu?” he asked.
Andu rose from his crouched position with feathers of white, blue, red, and gold in his hands and said nothing. The party gathered momentarily and after a brief moment, retreated into the treeline with their weapons.
The pair spent several hours recovering on their desolate ledge until the light in the Mists began to dim again. The Fire cut through the valley in a waltz of pale blue, to yellow, to scarlet, and the warm wind beckoned Idiga down to the grass. Vrail lept from Idiga’s back and glided into the trees below and called to Idiga once she observed the perimeter to be clear. Idiga descended as the shadows of the tree trunks became long and deep again in the brief intensity of the setting Fire. She watched it for a long moment when Vrail came back, and asked the falcon to tell her about the Sun. They travelled deep into the night as Vrail described it and all of the rest of the world she had seen, and that Idiga had not.
Over the course of the next several weeks the pair was trailed by the hunting party. They had learned man’s habits and determined how to evade them efficiently, but Idiga was growing ever more weary as opportunity to eat and sleep became infrequent.
Another morning had come as Idiga and Vrail reached a bend in the valley, where the ancient River had once been diverted and carved a new serpentine path towards the Sea. The undergrowth cleared and Idiga found herself approaching a new wall, and a theater of rocks and broken trees laid before a sleeping fire circle and an incredible swath of images drawn in clay and ash and bone. It was there that the tangible world of beasts flirted with the illusions of man and the coydog and the falcon found themselves staring at a large, winged canid painted upon the rock. It was adorned in white markings and accented by imagery of a golden orb, but its face was hollowed to the bone.
Idiga gazed at the images in silence until Vrail tucked down on her back and warned of an approaching figure in the woods. The pair slipped into the brush just before Andu stepped into the clearing and set his spear and a leather sack on a log. He approached the painting of the dog with the feathers he had picked up from the first pursuit and held them up to its wings.
Idiga slinked low and crept deeper into the woods as the sound of the rest of the hunting party drew near. The pair kept close to the wall, with Vrail scoping its face for climbable points in case the hunters got too close again.
But as Vrail’s strength grew, her flight improving rapidly by the day, Idiga was tiring. Their meager rations over the weeks had been adequate for the falcon but minimal for the dog. She forged ahead through the Mists, but the Mists seemed to finally be infiltrating her mind and washing out her resolve.
“Vrail, I don’t think I am of service to you anymore,” she muttered. “You’ve led me this far, but man will catch up to me soon and you’ll fare better getting far away from here.”
A gentle rain began to fall as Vrail sat quietly upon Idiga’s shoulders. A crack of thunder rolled distantly. While the falcon’s silence grew louder, as too did the shuffling of footsteps on the forest floor. Vrail took off from the dog’s back and beckoned her to follow as quickly as she could. The rain began to come down harder the longer Idiga ran, and the clouds above boomed with pending violence toward the clouds below.
The hunters took pause as the storm intensified, and their leader commanded everyone to fall back to camp. But Andu, young, intent, and unproven, broke from the group, insisting that the rains would wash away the trail of the creature they had been fervently after for weeks. He did not obey when the head hunter ordered him to turn back, and instead struck out into the storm alone with his spear brandished.
Vrail led Idiga toward a corner of the wall where a gap opened wide in the rock and they both could take shelter from the rain. The coydog dropped to the ground, her coat soaked through to the skin, and the falcon sat on her back draping her wings over her friend. Vrail saw the light escaping Idiga’s once-lively eyes with every stroke of thunder that bounced off of the bluffs.
“I won’t rest until I can show you the Sun, ” Vrail said softly. “Please sleep.”
But there, in the bleak, all of their cunning and wit still hadn’t bought their freedom from their stalker. Through the Mists, his cloak heavy with rain, Andu had followed Idiga’s muddy prints straight to his prize. His commitment to the chase had rewarded him with a legendary trophy now just moments away. Idiga’s glowing green eyes were all he could see as he raised his spear over his head, took a bold stride forward, and launched it with all of his power into the crevice.
Just as the spear had left Andu’s hands, Vrail had thrown herself toward him, her decorated wings carrying her like a dart into the storm, her talons reaching as the weapon cut the rain. An extraordinary white flash and sonic blast then struck the spear as it collided with Vrail. The bolt carried through to the sopping earth, busting trees and shattering rock in all directions. The ground current shot through the crevice and the unearthly light stole Andu’s vision. The boy fell to the mud writhing, and the dog’s eyes didn’t open again until hours after the rain had stopped.
Idiga awoke to the crows above her head again. This time though, instead of screaming warnings and threats to her, they tried to shake her from her trance.
“Do you see? Do you see?” the winged things demanded. She stared blankly at the light outside of the rocks for what could have been minutes or hours, but when her memory returned to her, her eyes widened, and she scrambled out of the cage of loose rocks that had fallen around her and into the open air. She spun around aghast as her consciousness was flooded with the convergence of realities that Vrail was gone, their predator was curled up nearby and shivering in his cloak, and the Mists had broken into a curtain of light more intense than Idiga had ever seen. Her eyes welled as they burned from the hot, white orb that looked straight down on her from overhead, and the heat travelled through her face, down through her shoulder and left front leg all now turned snow white from the lightning. She opened her mouth and cried out a desperate, scream-like howl that shook the thick Forest for miles and sent all of the crows scrambling into the air.
Andu’s eyes were also turned white by the strike, and his sight was devoid of all figures. He slumped against a tree with tears streaming from his face, somehow again clutching a handful of colored feathers.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted as Idiga cried out, “I’m so sorry for what I’ve done!” He shuffled around for his bag and dumped its contents onto the ground, but never dropping the quills. The sound grabbed Idiga’s attention away from her overwhelm for a moment and she turned to approach the blind boy with her teeth bared and a deep growl vibrating in her throat. Andu fought to catch his breath as he felt for food rations to toss to the dog, but she paced by everything he threw to her with her eyes acutely fixed on his sorry throat. Then as she came within steps of him, her glare shifted to the feathers in his hands, and the lifeless white winged thing draped delicately in his lap. Idiga closed the gap and as if the human ceased to exist, lowered her head and nuzzled Vrail’s broken body. Andu sat frozen. After several moments passed, he slowly lifted his shaking hand and placed it on Idiga’s head. She didn’t respond. Several more minutes went by and while Idiga said her goodbyes to her friend in silence, Andu awkwardly tied the bundle of feathers into her fur with thin leather string.
As the sun glittered down through the canopy, Idiga was compelled to speak to Andu at length. Hours passed and both of their worlds widened even in the wake of disaster, and as if Vrail herself was nudging Idiga forward, the two struck a deal. The coydog would lead the blind boy back to his village, and the boy would advocate for the coydog’s protection.
To the people of my village, truth was stranger than myth. Idiga was fostered back to health by those amongst us who had been endeared by her shadow and appeased by those who had sought to bring her down. A few of us had spent many sleepless nights listening to Idiga recall her journey and honoring the memory of the one who had spent the rest of her life leading her home.
Before Idiga left our village, my grandmother painted the bold image of a falcon on her white face, a mark that would protect her from ever being hunted by man again. The chief fastened a metal band around the feathers I had tied into her fur so that what remained of Vrail would never be lost.
To this day, nobody has seen Idiga return. But with so many of our children unhappy with that ending, I tell them this:
Idiga made it to the sea at fiery sunrise one morning. She followed the sands around the pillars of rock that marked the end of the valley and ascended to the high plains and forged home to the desert beyond them. With the gift of sight through the Mists, she led her pack to prosperity back here in the valley. Sometimes, when the Sun sets and brings the Fire back through the trees, I think I can somehow still see the silhouette of her looking back at me with wings wide open, grown back from the falcon’s feathers.
I will the machine. 