Juri breached the surface of the icy cold river, eagerly sucking in the restorative autumn air. He wiped the hair from his eyes and dredged up his netted basket to count the catch. Only three, he realized with a tinge of disappointment. Though summer had only just ended, cool winds were blowing into the central mountains and the fish were beginning to settle in deeper waters. Juri was a skilled swimmer and had an excellent hand with magic, but even he could only hold his breath for so long.
“Come on, Juri!” a voice called from the river bank. Though it was the dead of night, Juri could see the other fishermen clearly, their reflective eyes shining in the full moon’s light.
“Jakub’s still down there!” Juri cried back. The water swelled and churned and, as if responding to his name, Jakub surfaced with a giant splash. Juri flinched from the cascade, clutching his precious few fish to his body as he bobbed and rocked on the current. “Be more careful, you bumbling owlbear!” he said sharply.
Jakub shook his head clear of water like a wild animal would, his white hair slapping the sides of his face. “Sorry, Juri,” he said with a goofy grin. “Got five, though.” He held up his basket triumphantly. Juri snorted, refusing to show the contents of his own basket, as the pair swam back to shore.
Reunited with the rest of the team, the fishermen compiled their catch then divided it again into even loads for hauling back home. Juri sullenly noted that he caught the least of everyone that evening.
“Don’t feel bad,” Jakub said amicably as they walked back along the mountain path. “You’re probably just distracted. How long has it been since Sveta left for the birthing den?”
Juri felt a pang of worry at the mention of his mate. “Six nights,” he replied softly. His thoughts wandered off towards Sveta, as they so often did in the days since she had left the Skolka to give birth. All women went into hiding alone in the vulnerable days before delivery. Juri accepted that it was normal, that it was the way things had always been done, but the dark stories of women leaving for the birthing den and never coming home—lost to the mountain forever—still haunted him with each passing day. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost Sveta.
“Don’t worry too much, first one’s always the scariest,” Jakub said.
“Come off it,” Juri replied with a nervous chuckle, shoving his friend’s shoulder. “You’ve only got one yourself!”
“And she’s just the best,” Jakub bragged. “Little Mila looks just like her mother, but she’s got my big personality! She’s such a handful, I might as well be raising two. So say, if you need any advice from an experienced father—”
This time, Juri let out a genuine laugh. “Experienced? Mila hasn’t even seen her second winter. You’re ages too early to be giving advice.”
Jakub’s lips pursed into a sour pout. “Fine then,” he said, sighing dramatically. “You’ll find out soon enough.” They walked in silence for a while, listening to the hollow coos of night birds nesting in the evergreens and the soft crunching of the forest floor beneath their feet. The silver light of the moon lit the fishermen’s path and made their white scales twinkle like scattered starlight on their skin.
Juri’s heart constricted. He had a feeling that tonight was different somehow. “Jakub?”
“Yeah?”
“What is it like. . . when you meet them? Did you feel ready?”
Jakub grinned but Juri was too focused ahead to see. “You’re never ready,” he replied. “It’s unlike anything else you’ll ever know.”
It was nearly dawn when the fishermen arrived back in the Skolka. They wound their way through the clusters of modest huts constructed of wood and hide cemented with ice magic, and headed towards the center of the village where a massive structure towered above the rest. It was the tabor, or school, the oldest of the buildings and the pillar of the village. Juri’s eyes followed its swooping architectural lines where the ancient, blue ice climbed up the reddish trunks of the sacred, centuries-old cornerstone trees.
However, the fishermen were not visiting the tabor. They were there to stash their catch in the neighboring pantry. In the morning, the Teachers who lived in the tabor with the village’s children would take what they needed, leaving the rest for the other adults, who largely consisted of the children’s parents, to pick from. Unlike the other villagers, who only stayed in the Skolka until their children came of age, the Teachers spent their entire lives there, dedicating themselves wholly to raising the generations. One day, Juri’s own children would live within the icy walls of the tabor, just as his mate Sveta had when she was young.
Juri tried to focus on braiding rope to hang the fish, but he couldn’t shake the preoccupation clouding his mind. “I have to get home,” he said suddenly. The others nodded and Jakub placed a supportive hand on Juri’s shoulder. Juri briefly nuzzled Jakub’s hand, said his good nights, and turned down the path towards his and Sveta’s hut. His heart raced and his pace quickened. Tonight was indeed different—he could feel it in the very core of his being, shaping his every move. Juri paused just outside his home. Gripping the edge of the deerskin door, he sucked in some air then ducked inside.
Sitting up on a bed of furs was Sveta. Hearing him enter, she turned to face him and Juri could see that she was holding a bundle to her breast. “Well, come say ‘hello’,” she said with a breathy laugh.
Juri slowly stepped closer, his own breath caught in his throat. The tiny baby turned her head away from Sveta’s breast and Juri looked into his daughter’s eyes for the first time. They were a brilliant blue, as dark as the ice of the tabor, and an exact copy of his own. The top of her head was covered in white fuzz, with four smooth bumps where her horns would eventually grow in. She didn’t cry or make a noise, she only stared at Juri, seemingly as fascinated by him as he was by her.
“Oh Sveta, she’s beautiful,” Juri said, kneeling. His worry instantly melted away as he placed a hand on Sveta’s shoulder and she nuzzled it affectionately. “But you should be sleeping, love,” he added gently.
“I wanted to wait for you,” Sveta murmured, leaning against Juri’s shoulder. “I wanted us to choose a name together.”
Juri pulled and patted the furs so they wrapped comfortably around his nascent family. He intertwined his tail with Sveta’s and nestled back with her in his arms. “I always liked the name ‘Kaja’,” he said.
“Kaja. . .” Sveta repeated breathlessly, letting it linger in the air as if trying it out. “Yes, I think it suits her. . .” She closed her eyes, her sleepless voice fading to a whisper. “Our sweet, little Kaja. . .”
*
*
“Come on out, Kaja,” Sveta said, squatting on the frosty groundcover. “Don’t you want to meet your new classmates?”
Kaja, now five winters old, peeked around her father’s leg, his deerskin skirt balled up in her tight, little fists. Her bottom lip plumped and her brow squished into her chubby cheeks. “No!” she cried defiantly. She buried her face into Juri’s skirt, as if they’d all just go away if she couldn’t actually see them.
“How about your Teacher?”
“No!” came the muffled reply.
“Kaja. . .” Sveta sighed and stood, placing her hands on her hips in exasperation.
“I’m sorry, mentelj,” Juri said, flashing an embarrassed smile at the Teacher who had been patiently waiting as the drama played out.
The Teacher, named Matus, held up a hand and shook his head, a curtain of gray-white hair swaying against his back. “No apologies needed, dreka,” he said.
The endearment brought with it a wave of nostalgia and made Juri feel like a child again, despite the fact that he had seen dozens of winters and had a child of his own. “Kaja!” Juri said as sternly as he could muster, determined to show that he had some semblance of authority. “Come out and say ‘hi’.” He moved his leg forward and back, only for his daughter to cling harder.
“Don’t. . . wanna. . !” Kaja whined, her voice rising and falling with Juri’s movements. Eventually, she let go and fell back onto her bottom. Exposed and thoroughly upset, Kaja stared up at Matus’ imposing figure—with his long, curved horns and scarred tail—and immediately began to cry. Sveta and Juri fought the urge to come to their daughter’s rescue. This was an important moment in her life—in all children’s lives. It was a rite of passage to enter the tabor under the mentorship of a Teacher, and to prevent that from happening would be doing Kaja a greater disservice. Juri held Sveta’s hand and squeezed, his heart breaking at the sound of Kaja’s cries.
“Oh, dreka. . .” Matus said gently as he knelt down on the ground beside her. She flared her tail fins defensively and huffed out a harmless cloud of hoarfrost. Matus only smiled, his soft wrinkles deepening. “Oh ho!” he exclaimed playfully, pretending to cower. “So scary!” Kaja stopped crying, confused by Matus’ reaction. Seeing that he had got her attention, Matus spoke a few words of magic and brought his hand between them. Kaja watched, transfixed, as a tiny owlbear, made of shimmering frost, materialized on Matus’ palm. The owlbear stomped and swayed, and stood on its hindlegs and roared in silence. Then it collapsed back into nothing. Kaja slowly reached her hand out and touched where the magical beast had been. “Do you want to know how to do that?” Matus asked. “I can teach you, if you want.”
Kaja nodded shyly and allowed Matus to help her to her feet.
“We’ll take good care of her,” Matus said to Sveta and Juri, placing a reassuring hand on each of their shoulders.
“We know,” Juri said. “You be good, Kaja. Listen to everything mentelj has to say.”
“When will Kaja see daddy?” she asked timidly.
“Soon, Kaja,” Juri promised. Though children often visited with their birth parents after entering the tabor, the day would eventually come where Kaja thought of Matus and her classmates as her core family. It was the way things had always been done, but it didn’t make it any easier for Juri to let go of his baby girl.
“We love you so much, Kaja,” Sveta said, squeezing Kaja’s little shoulder.
Kaja nuzzled her mother’s hand affectionately. “Bye, mama,” she said with a sniffle. Then she followed Matus into the tabor and the doors of her old life quietly shut behind her.
*
*
Kaja had never seen anything like the tabor, having spent the entirety of her short life within the confines of her parents’ one-room hut. The walls were a pretty, shiny blue and the floor was lined with a patchwork of furs that felt plush and luxurious under Kaja’s bare feet. Sunlight streamed through the needles of the alpine sequoia trees at the cornerstones, filtering through the building’s open roof and glistening across the interior surfaces. Kaja stared up in undisguised wonder, watching as Teachers and older children moved about on the balcony above. She didn’t understand how they could have gotten all the way up there—it looked too high to jump and the slick ice couldn’t be very easy to climb.
Rows of rooms branched out from the main hall, each covered with a hide door creatively engraved by the children who called the room home. “This is our room, okay Kaja?” Matus said warmly, his hand hovering over one of the door flaps. “Are you ready to meet your classmates?” Kaja looked at the designs etched into the door—odd squiggles, an uneven circle, something that might have been an attempt at a fish—and nodded shyly. Matus pulled open the flap and stepped inside.
Four children, all older than Kaja but still the youngest she had seen, were playing on the floor, wrestling, throwing bones and sticks, and talking loudly. When Matus entered they all went silent and perked up, and suddenly Kaja felt four pairs of excited eyes trained directly on her.
“Children, this is Kaja. She is—”
One of the little girls let out an enthusiastic squeal, cutting Matus’ introduction short. Within moments, she had crossed the room and tackled Kaja in an overly-friendly embrace. Kaja, who already had tears welling up from the attention she was getting, began to cry again.
“Mila!” Matus gasped, picking the two girls off the ground. “Kaja is still very little, you need to be gentle with her.”
The girl, Mila, opened her mouth to protest her innocence. “But—”
“No ‘buts’, Mila. And Kaja, dreka, please don’t cling. . .” But by then the other three children had gathered around, which only made Kaja move closer and sob harder.
One of the boys pointed a finger at her. “She’s a crybaby,” he said matter-of-factly. The words stung Kaja and she tried, unsuccessfully, to hold her breath to stop the tears. Matus readied a reprimand but Mila spoke up first.
“Be nice, Feo!” she scolded. She stepped toward Kaja, her head bowed. “Sorry about Feodor. And sorry for hitting you,” she said. “Can we be friends? My name is Mila.”
Kaja wiped her nose on her arm and blinked back the remaining tears. Mila was loud and rash but Kaja could sense a genuine goodness inside her. Maybe they could be friends. “Okay,” Kaja sniffled.
“That’s very nice of you, Mila,” Matus praised, as surprised as he was pleased. “Well, Kaja, you already met Mila and Feodor. This is Jaromil”—he gestured to a lanky boy, who gave her a shy wave—“and Chessa”—the girl, the oldest out of all of them, flashed Kaja a big smile—“Let’s all welcome Kaja to our family.”
“Yes, mentelj!” the children shouted in unison.
“Very good,” Matus said proudly. He looked on as they crowded around Kaja, who tried her best to match their energy even through her lingering apprehension. When she seemed like she was going to cry again, Mila would take it upon herself to make the other children quiet down. Soon, Kaja was clinging to Mila the way she had clung to her father and then Matus.
Chessa wanted to show Kaja where they slept, and Feodor wanted to show her where they ate. But Mila decided that being inside was too boring and they should all take Kaja out to play instead. She rushed past Matus with a rallying cry and the other four children followed without question, their shouts and laughter fading into the distance.
*
*
For Kaja’s first several winters at the tabor, she received no formal teaching. Instead, Matus would bring her and her classmates on supervised excursions, encouraging them to find ways to relate to one another and to the world around them. They would go swimming in the valley and hiking to the tree line to look out across the mountain range. Kaja saw a gleam of wonder in Mila’s eyes whenever they imagined what sorts of lands lay beyond the mountains. Mila was the only one among them who didn’t believe the frightening stories Matus told them of the outside world. Kaja wished she could be as brave.
It was after Kaja’s twentieth winter when Matus began their regular lessons. He taught the children survival skills, geography, language, and magic. Mila was a brilliant student, despite her impatience with Matus’ lectures. Kaja admired the confidence Mila had in facing anything new or different—no matter what it was, Mila never even entertained the idea that she could fail. And, to Kaja, it seemed like she never would.
Kaja herself, on the other hand, struggled to keep up with the others. She had trouble paying attention and frequently found her mind wandering. She mixed up the names of the zmaj clans and couldn’t recall the locations of their ancestral lands. She even still had to carry a blowgun—a weapon that only younglings, who couldn’t properly refine their magic yet, would use. No one made fun of her for it though, not even the older children on the upper floor, because they knew that Mila would be coming for them if they did.
Matus did have some mild concerns about Kaja’s lagging development but even though she wasn’t the most studious nor the greatest with magic, she had a love of art—whether that was etching leather or sculpting snow—and had an unflinching kindness towards others. She comforted new students scared of leaving their parent’s homes for the first time, and was always looking for ways to make her friends happy. And, to Matus, those were equally valuable traits for a young zmaj to have.
Then, when Kaja was thirty winters old, something out of the ordinary happened.
A hunting party left one night and returned to the Skolka injured and shaken. They said they were stalking a lone deer on the mountainside when suddenly a pack of wolves burst out of the foliage. Startled, the party scattered and a couple got hurt in the chaos. Fortunately, the wolves were more interested in the deer than in the hunters, but the incident was cause for alarm: wolves had not been seen on the mountain for as far back as the eldest Teacher at the tabor could remember. After that night, more reports steadily trickled in—several saw the wolves, others saw owlbears. One even claimed they saw a white warg, a fearsome beast who would have had to migrate down from the polar wilds in the north.
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The Teachers came together and made what would prove to be a very unpopular decision: the children would no longer be allowed beyond the village borders. This shocked and frustrated all the children in the tabor no matter their age, but Kaja and her classmates were just beginning to approach the cusp of adolescence and felt the harsh injustice of it all the worst. Feodor and Jaromil lamented canceled fishing trips, Chessa was upset that their first pilgrimage to the sacred glacier, Dusanek, would be delayed. Mila whined and groaned and pleaded with Matus, but their Teacher had to refuse her every time. Kaja didn’t mind the new rule at first but she soon felt bad that her friends were so upset, so she found it in her heart to resent it too.
“It’s not fair!” Mila cried, scooping up a stick and whacking it against a shrub bush as they walked along the outskirts of the Skolka. “We’re finally old enough to go beyond the village by ourselves and they take it away from us!”
“It’s for our own safety,” Chessa replied, echoing Matus’ words to them earlier. Though Chessa was as disappointed by the development as any of them, she reverted to the responsible, level-head she always had been. “What would you do if you came across an owlbear?”
“Owlbear!” Mila rolled her eyes. “They’re just big dummies. You wave your hands, flare your tail, and make some noise and they bolt. My dad says he has to chase them from the river valley every autumn.”
“And your dad is a whole lot bigger than any of us. Do you think an owlbear would be scared of you?”
Mila grumbled and whipped the stick into another bush. Kaja and the boys remained quiet; the arguments between Mila and Chessa were frequent enough that they knew to just stay out of it. “I can handle a stupid owlbear,” Mila muttered. She took several swipes at the air with her stick then tossed it away into the forest. It made a muted thunk as it landed in the snow. Mila looked after it for a moment, then a mischievous smile parted her lips. “What if we just go out to the bluff?”
Chessa shook her head. “No, Mila, we’re not doing that.”
“Come on, Chessa!” Mila groaned. “The bluff isn’t that far and we know the way. We’ll be back before mentelj knows we’re gone.”
“Nuh uh, no.” Chessa crossed her arms stubbornly.
“I don’t think it would be bad,” Jaromil said, surprising everyone with his interjection.
Mila’s face lit up at his words. “See? It’ll be fine. Feo, we can break the ice at the pond and see if we can catch anything. Wouldn’t that be more fun than hanging around here?”
Feodor shifted his weight, his eyes bouncing back and forth between Chessa and Mila. “I don’t know, Mila. . .”
Mila turned away from him and towards Kaja. “Jaja?” she prompted hopefully.
Kaja was torn but when Mila used her special nickname and looked at Kaja with so much promise, she couldn’t possibly say no. “I’m with Mimi and Jaro,” Kaja said softly. Mila squealed and threw her arms around Kaja’s neck in excitement.
“Fine, I give up!” Chessa sighed, her tail whipping in irritation. “We’ll go to the bluff but only for one sun movement. Then we come straight back.”
“Oh, mentelj decided she wants to come after all?” Mila teased.
Chessa turned her nose up. “It’s safer if we stay together. And if something bad happens, I’m not gonna be the one to tell our actual mentelj that I let you dumb dreka go out there alone.” With the matter settled, the children headed out with Mila eagerly taking the lead.
It didn’t take long to reach the bluff, a rocky outcrop overlooking where a meandering mountain stream temporarily pooled into a small pond. Though it was now frozen, the bubbling waterfall there was famous in the Skolka for having some of the coldest, freshest water around. The children had been there many, many times under Matus’ close watch, but it was the first time they were there alone.
Feeling a contagious thrill at breaking the rules, the children settled in to play. Feodor set to work digging through the snow layer on the pond, while Mila and Jaromil chased each other across the frozen surface. Soon, snowballs were being thrown and the ice fishing project fell by the wayside as a full-on snow fight broke out. Even Chessa was beginning to laugh and enjoy herself, dodging a throw by Mila and hitting back with a swift retaliation that left both girls giggling and screaming.
Kaja smiled and bent to scoop up some snow to join in, but a few animal tracks on the edge of the pond—the tiny, delicate pitterings of a mouse framed by the rhythmic prints and nose pokes of a pursuing fox—caught her attention instead. The possibility of finding the animals was much more interesting than the snow fight, so Kaja dropped the handful of snow and began following the winding trail. What if she could see a fox, with its marvelously fluffy tail and adorable pointed face?
But when the tracks led further into the dense woods, Kaja hesitated. She didn’t want to stray too far from the others, and definitely didn’t want to go out of sight. She spent a few moments considering her options, then decided she had to go back to the bluff.
A soft noise snapped Kaja’s gaze back to the trees. A nearby needle shrub rustled and shifted, and Kaja felt her heart pound as an animal emerged from hiding. At first she was elated, thinking she had found her fox. But it didn’t take long for her to recognize that it was much too large—it was actually a lone wolf, unnaturally thin beneath its thick winter coat. It lowered its head and bared its teeth at her.
Kaja ran. She cried incoherently to her friends, who all immediately looked up from their play. Seeing the wolf pursuing her, they panicked and fled, running back up the bluff and towards the safety of the Skolka. Kaja followed them, her legs aching and lungs burning. She reached for the blowgun at her hip, wondering if she should use it. The tiny darts were certainly not enough to fell a wolf, and would probably only serve to further enrage it. Even through the enveloping fear, Kaja felt ashamed that she couldn’t control her magic the way her friends already could.
“Keep going!” Chessa cried as the children bounded up a large snow drift. “Just a little further!” Jaromil crested the top, then Chessa, then Mila and Feodor. Kaja watched as each of them disappeared on the other side. She felt her feet heavy in the snow. How close was the wolf? Was it even still chasing her? She didn’t dare look. Kaja finally reached the top and looked into the eyes of Mila, who had glanced back to make sure she had made it—
—then the ground gave way and the world vanished.
Before Kaja could register what was happening, she was swallowed by the snow. She hit her arm on what she assumed was a rock, then landed at the bottom of a hollow cave. She groaned and picked herself up, staring up at the hole she had left behind. It hadn’t been that far of a fall, but had been a thoroughly unexpected one. Unable to see what was going on above, she listened breathlessly to a disembodied, guttural snarl and several loud thumps of feet or paws running across the surface.
Then Kaja heard Mila scream. Her eyes went wide and her stomach plunged as panicked images of the wolf attacking her friends flashed through her mind. The seconds went by like minutes, and then all went quiet.
“Jaja?” Mila’s familiar voice called. Her face appeared on the other side of the hole and, within moments, she was surrounded by the other three children.
The relief of seeing them washed over Kaja like cold water. “Where’s the wolf?” she asked, still worried.
“It’s gone,” Mila replied. “I yelled at it after you fell and it ran away.” Kaja was wonder-struck. Mimi had faced the wolf to save her?
“Or maybe it just knows not to go near the Skolka,” Feodor chimed in. Mila elbowed him and they began shoving back and forth.
Chessa pushed them both out of the way. “Are you okay, Kaja?” she fretted. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m okay,” Kaja said, letting herself assess where she was for the first time. The cave was small, no bigger than their room back at the tabor, and so low in places that even Kaja had to duck to avoid hitting the icy rock walls. On one side was a dip, layered with fresh snow instead of boulders.
“Should we tell mentelj?” Chessa wondered to the others, the concern plain in her voice.
“N-no!” Mila protested. “Then we’d have to tell him where we were.”
“They’d never let us out of the Skolka ever again,” Jaromil added desperately.
“Well then how do we get Kaja out of there?”
“I think I can dig out,” Kaja reported, giving the fresh snow a few experimental scoops. But her friends weren’t listening so, taking matters into her own hands, she began to burrow and wiggle, pressing the snow up and away and feeling very much like a little mole tunneling through soil. It wasn’t long before her hand burst into empty air and a cool rush of wind pushed back her hair. When she emerged, Chessa and the others were still arguing about what to do to save her.
“Mimi! Everyone!” Kaja waved to get their attention. “Come see!”
“Kaja!” they screamed in surprise. They hopped and skidded down the drift, their voices full of excitement and relief. Mila tackled Kaja into the snow. Kaja laughed and nuzzled their cheeks together.
“You came out of here?” Jaromil asked, peering through the small tunnel. Kaja nodded and, one by one, each of the children crawled through and into the cave.
“Wow, this is amazing!” Feodor gasped once he was inside. “It’s like a secret hideout!”
“Maybe it can be. . .” Mila said thoughtfully. When all eyes turned to her, she continued, “what if this becomes our secret place? It’s away from the Skolka but it’s also safe.” She looked at Chessa specifically. “We can play and talk and hide cool stuff in here.” As Mila painted the picture, the others could see the vision. It was a way they could leave the Skolka without truly breaking the rules. No dangerous beast would be able to fit through the entrance. They would be safe—and that’s what the rule was trying to accomplish anyway, right?
“A place just for us,” Chessa said dreamily. “I like it.”
“This is even better than the bluff. Good find, Jaja.” Mila smiled and placed her hand on Kaja’s shoulder.
Kaja flushed and rubbed her cheek on Mila’s hand. Her friends were happy and she had been the one to provide it—what more could she ever want?
From then on, the children would slip away from the tabor every chance they got in order to visit their secret place. Time passed and the cave became more homey as they decorated it with things like wooden slab seating covered in furs, crudely woven fishing nets, and a set of shiny stones they had collected during a supervised trip to the river. Kaja etched a piece of leather with each of her friends’ likenesses, added herself in the middle, and put it up on the wall. When Mila gushed about Kaja’s talent, Kaja hid her face behind the pouch of tools.
The cave became even more special to the children than their rotating rooms at the tabor. It was a place that was all theirs, a space under their complete control. It was where they laughed, where they fought, where they made up. It was where they could talk about anything, without the worry of anyone else overhearing. They talked about their dreams, their desires, what they wanted to do with their futures. Chessa wanted to be a Teacher, Feodor and Jaromil wanted to be fishermen. Mila had the most dangerous wish: she wanted to see what lay beyond the mountains with her own eyes.
“My dad told me stories about an endless lake filled with poisonous water and impossibly huge fish,” Mila related with a mixture of awe and longing. “Doesn’t that sound amazing? He’s always wanted to go see if it’s real.” She sighed wistfully. “I’d love to see something like that one day. What else is out there?” No one said anything but their silence hung heavy in the air. They all knew the stories the Teachers told of the places beyond the mountains, of the selfish, murderous people who lived there and the unspeakable horrors their greed and lust attracted.
“What about you, Kaja?” Chessa said, trying to steer the conversation away.
Kaja started, not expecting to be called out. “I-I don’t know,” she stammered.
“You don’t know what you want to do when you grow up?”
Kaja blushed, suddenly embarrassed. She had never thought about it. Life outside of the tabor, without her friends and their secret cave, seemed unfathomable. A part of her never wanted it to come to an end.
“You’ll know one day, Jaja,” Mila said sagely, as if she weren’t just a single winter Kaja’s elder. “And if not, then just come with me to see the world!”
The thought of leaving the central mountains frightened Kaja, but she liked the idea of staying by Mila’s side forever. She imagined their adventures, just the two of them, as they explored foreign lands and discovered things that not even mentelj knew about. Kaja didn’t care about seeing the endless lake, but she wanted to be there when Mila saw it, to see her friend’s eyes alight with wonder again and again. All of a sudden, Mila’s dreams became Kaja’s dreams, and she wanted to do anything she could to see those dreams fulfilled.
As long as she was by Mila’s side, Kaja thought that perhaps she could handle anything.
*
*
By Kaja’s thirty-ninth winter, the children began to sense that something was truly wrong. Being some of the oldest students at the tabor, Kaja and her friends were now housed on the upper floor, and the balcony—they would come to learn—made for an excellent hiding place to eavesdrop on whispered conversations among the Teachers below. They spoke of new and strange beasts prowling the valley, eating up much of the fish and animals the Skolka relied on for food. Hunters and fishermen were forced to split up, sometimes even individually, to cover enough ground to collect the food the village needed. One returning hunter even reported seeing a large, striped cat with a pair of long, curved fangs roaming the lowlands, a creature that was completely foreign to them all. The Head Teacher sent messengers to neighboring Skolkas for the first time in many winters, with some reporting back similar experiences and concerns.
The rest never came back at all.
There was even talk of abandoning the Skolka and moving to higher ground, where the beasts would be less likely to follow. However, most were loath to leave the tabor, which had stood for over one thousand winters, and argued that moving would just make the food scarcity worse. There was also the youngest to consider, as they were not yet as tolerant of the cold as the older children and adults. But as time passed, the pressure to leave only mounted.
“If we’re gonna leave the Skolka anyway, why not just go beyond the mountains?” Mila groused. Hugging her knees to her chest, she rocked back and forth impatiently using her tail as a balance.
“But those beasts came from beyond the mountains,” Feodor pointed out. “If they are what’s leaving, imagine what is driving them away.” Kaja frowned as her mind conjured up images of giant wolves, fangs dripping with blood, and serpents the size of rivers.
“We don’t know that,” Mila argued. “That’s the whole problem. We don’t know!”
“But the Teachers said—”
Mila rocked one final time, letting herself fall onto her back, her arms spread wide. “And have any of them actually been there? They’re just telling us stories about stories.” Her eyes shifted away from the cave roof, then she rolled over and got quiet.
Chessa opened her mouth to say something, but she paused, her expression suddenly alert. “What is that?”
The others didn’t know what she was talking about at first, but then they all felt it too. Mila sat up, and everyone exchanged anxious glances as silent dread wrapped around them.
“We should go back,” Chessa said. It was one of the few times her suggestion went unchallenged.
When Kaja and the others arrived back at the tabor, a group of villagers was gathering in front and the Teachers of the youngest students were busy ushering their wards inside, despite the children’s protests. Initially, Chessa was nervous that their absence had been noticed, but it soon became clear that something much more pressing had the adults’ full attention. Kaja stood on her tiptoes and ducked around, but there wasn’t any angle where she could see what was happening at the center of the crowd. She glanced around and spotted her parents, whose swishing tails indicated uncertainty but whose heads were bowed in reverence.
“Dreka!”
Kaja turned towards the familiar voice and saw Matus emerge from the commotion. He waved them over.
“What’s happening, mentelj?” Jaromil asked quietly. No one had told him to be quiet, but it somehow felt correct.
“Mila, stop that jumping,” Matus scolded. “You know better.” Reluctantly, Mila stopped but still fidgeted as she tried in vain to catch a glimpse. Apparently satisfied with the adjustment, Matus turned to the rest of the children. “A Great Elder has come down from above the treeline. You must show him proper respect.” He looked meaningfully at Mila as he said this.
“Yes, mentelj,” she mumbled back.
Kaja was taken aback by the news. Great Elders hardly ever descended below the treeline and certainly never visited a Skolka. What was going on?
Following Matus, the children joined the rest of the villagers. Jaromil, who had grown in the past few winters and now towered above his classmates, sucked in a breath when he laid eyes on the stranger at the center of the gathering. One by one, the others found places to stand where they could watch but, as the shortest among them, Kaja still couldn’t see above all the horns. It was only when Matus gently pulled her to stand in front of him that Kaja finally saw just who had set the entire Skolka on edge.
The Great Elder was the oldest zmaj Kaja had ever seen, with massive, gnarled horns and a thick, serpentine tail. His scales and hair, once shiny and white as snow, were dulled by a yellow-gray tinge. He walked with a hunch, dependent upon the support of a tree branch, the well-worn bark gently rimed beneath his fingers. But for all his physical frailties, he had an aura of commanding power that each and every zmaj in the Skolka instinctively feared.
The Head Teacher approached the visitor. “Great Elder. Welcome.” He said with a bow, his eyes carefully diverted from the Elder’s own.
“Thank you, dreka,” the Elder replied, his deep voice trembling with an energy that bolted through Kaja’s spine. “My name is Bonifac. I am sorry to disturb the Skolka, but the wind carries tales of fell things and the mountains rumble as the balance shifts.”
“Fell things?” the Head Teacher repeated. “You mean the beasts roaming the mountains?”
“Worse,” Bonifac said. Confused murmurs rippled through the Skolka, but Bonifac continued. “An unusual number of Elders missed our pilgrimage to Dusanek this winter, and many Skolkas have gone quiet. Our people are disappearing, but why I do not know. So I asked Dusanek for his advice.” Words of respect came to every zmaj’s lips at the mention of the ancient glacier. Inhabiting the saddle between two mountains directly to the east, legend went that the sacred dragon, Snihl’ad the White, formed it with her icy breath thousands of winters in the past. Bonifac sighed, his shoulders slumping further. “Dusanek could give me no answers, but he instructed me to come here. He told me this is where I will be needed, so it is here where I will stay.”
“Please, Great Elder, take our home,” one young adult offered. “We would be honored.” Her mate nodded in agreement.
“Your offer is kind, dreka, but I would like to be just outside the Skolka,” Bonifac said. “It has been many long winters since I lived below the treeline and I find it crowded, and the climate uncomfortably warm.”
“Great Elder!” Mila cried, unable to contain herself any longer. Matus swung his head in her direction, mortified. “Great Elder! What if our people are leaving because of the beasts? What if they are heading beyond the mountains?”
“Mila!” Matus said, horrified. “I’m sorry, Great Elder,” he hastily apologized. But Bonifac just lifted a hand to silence him.
“Our people have not left the mountains since the days of Snihl’ad the White,” Bonifac said.
“That doesn’t mean we never can though. Great Elder, sir,” Mila added quickly after a look from Matus. “The beasts can’t destroy a whole Skolka, the people would have to leave willingly. And if they aren’t here anymore, where else could they be except over the mountains? What if they’re waiting for us to join them?”
“Oh, dreka. . .” Bonifac murmured warmly, though his smile was sad. “I suppose it’s a possibility.”
“That’s enough,” Matus said firmly, shooing the children back towards the tabor. “Up to the room, it’s time for lessons.” Mila groaned and Feodor stuck out his tongue, but all of them obeyed however reluctantly. “I apologize again, Great Elder.” Matus bowed politely and took his leave.
Bonifac watched them go. He stood in the courtyard until every last villager had gone and he was alone. “There are worse things out there than wolves and owlbears, dreka,” he said quietly. Then he shuffled away towards the border of the Skolka to build his new home.
The moons passed and the people of the Skolka grew used to Bonifac’s looming, yet mysterious, presence in their lives. The winter snows thawed, the mountain bloomed, fawns were born, and the days grew long. And before they knew it, the summer birds were leaving in noisy flocks and the air grew chill again as the sun crested low on the horizon.
It was that autumn when Mila’s father, Jakub, disappeared.