I couldn’t say that I loved sleeping on air mattresses, but after working until 1 a.m. unloading the moving truck I passed out so hard, I didn’t realize I was asleep until the sun lit up my face. There was no way to block the sun – my curtains were in some box, somewhere – and I could already smell coffee in the air, so I pushed the rest of my covers off and got up.
I scowled in the direction of the offensive light … then paused in surprise.
Fog covered the bottom half of my window on the outside, so thick I couldn’t see through it. Instead of slowly dissipating on the top like normal, there was a hard cut off, like the surface of a lake. My bedroom was on the upper floor. That meant that the fog was at least twenty feet deep.
“What the…?” I muttered and opened the window, but the fog didn’t spill into my house. It simply rolled and bubbled, like a slow moving river. Carefully, I reached out and poked at it with a finger.
A chill went down my spine and I flinched back. It had nothing to do with the cool, moist touch, but something screamed in the back of my mind – Don’t touch it! Stay away from it! Instinctively I knew that only bad things would happen inside the fog. Goosebumps spread across my body and I slammed the window shut.
Too freaked out to sit still, I padded barefoot down the stairs to the kitchen.
Dad sat at the small kitchen island, scrolling through his work tablet and sipping coffee from a disposable thermal cup. It was still stupid early in the morning and we went to bed freakishly late last night, but he was already dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt. He’d even gone to get basic food essentials.
“Morning, Ria.” He smiled at me and motioned to the boxes of cereal and paper bowls on the counter. “Grab yourself something to eat. There’s milk in the fridge. I was going to wake Micah up in a little bit.”
“Morning,” I muttered and stared out the sliding doors. The fog was just as thick down here, like cotton candy I could cut with a knife.
Dad followed my stare. “Ah, I guess you don’t remember that, huh?”
I looked at him. “No.” But since he didn’t seem disturbed, I took his cue and walked to the kitchen to make a bowl of cereal. Still, I couldn’t seem to quiet my nerves. They jumped and twisted, trying to activate a fight or flight instinct. Didn’t Dad feel that?
“Well, this town is called Mist Haven.” Dad winked and took a sip of his coffee then set aside his tablet. He motioned to the cloudy window. “This happens every time an energy crystal shipment leaves Mist Haven. This thick fog covers all the way from here to Boulder City, and the surrounding mountains. It doesn’t just obscure vision, tracking magic and devices don’t work in it. It’s so no one can find the location of the energy crystal mine which is somewhere in the mountains around here, but no one outside of the Nobles knows where it is.”
Micah gave a loud yawn from the top of the short flight of stairs. “Wrong country, Dad. This is America. There aren’t any nobles – unless you count the strong Hunters.” He came down the stairs like an elephant stomping.
“He’s talking about the Nobles, as in a surname.” I rolled my eyes at him. “The family that owns the only energy crystal mine in the world? When was the last time you paid attention in school?”
When Hunters started to kill the monsters introduced to Earth by the Gates over fifty years ago, they found glowing crystals inside them. Those crystals were like super batteries, full of clean energy. In less than ten years, energy crystals became the main power source in the world. Because monsters were everywhere, that meant that energy crystals were everywhere. It was the Hunters’ jobs to kill the monsters and collect the energy crystals.
All that changed when the Gates closed. The energy crystals inside monsters disappeared overnight. The existing crystals still had energy, but the power wasn’t limitless. Earth wasn’t just going through its second apocalyptic crisis, it also went through another energy crisis.
That changed just over thirty years ago, when the Nobles discovered the only energy crystal mine in the entire world. Normal people like my family used electricity and gas in our normal lives, but the rich, important people used energy crystals. To say the Nobles were ‘rich’ was to put it lightly. They lived somewhere around Mist Haven, but no one knew where exactly.
Micah ignored me – as usual – and gaped out the sliding door. “Whoa! Look at that!” He pulled the door open and jumped out onto the back deck.
“Micah!” My stomach dropped to the ground and I lunged after him. The cool mist wrapped around my body, and sent shivers down my spine again. Adrenaline pumped through my veins, ready to protect my brother from anything and everything. I grabbed his arms and tried to drag him back into the house.
“Ow, Ria!” he yelled and resisted. “What gives?”
Before I could speak, Dad cut me off. “Ria. Let go. There’s nothing dangerous out there.”
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I paused and looked over my shoulder as Dad stepped on the deck with us. “It’s not…” My voice died out because I couldn’t explain it. Something inside me screamed at me to avoid the fog, and keep my people away from it. But I couldn’t feel any danger from it.
Micah pushed off my hands and rubbed his arm where I’d grabbed him, glaring at me. The fog was so thick, even though we were standing next to each other, his features were blurry.
My mouth opened and closed, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m, I’m sorry, Micah. I didn’t mean to hurt you. When you just jumped out, even though you didn’t know what this stuff is, it … scared me.” I motioned to his arm. It didn’t look like there was a bruise, but I did grab him hard. “Are you okay?”
His mouth screwed to the side and he looked away. “I’m not a little pansy, you know. Something like this won’t break me. And someday, I’m going to be a Hunter stronger than you, so deal with it.” He paused and peeked back at me out of the corner of his eyes. “Sorry I scared you, though.”
Dad wrapped an arm around each of us in a big family hug. “Look, I know adjusting to this place will take some work. Ria was right though, Micah. Mist Haven isn’t like Garden City. It’s considerably more dangerous, even with the wall surrounding the town. The monsters outnumber humans a thousand to one, if not more. One of the most important rules out here is: The cooler it looks, the more likely it is to kill you. Okay?”
“Oh.” Micah nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Dad patted his back and pushed him towards the door. “Why don’t you get dressed? The fog will clear up by eight, and then we’re gonna go see your uncle.”
Micah glanced at me, before he hurried inside.
I stood there with Dad’s arm around my shoulders, but couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I knew I was in the wrong, but I just couldn’t control that instinct. I … couldn’t lose another loved one. Not again. It was different from when Grandpa died last year. Although he was still kinda young, he died of natural causes. He wasn’t murdered by a monster in front of me.
Dad pulled me into a full hug. “Have you calmed down now?”
My face rubbed against his shoulder as I nodded. “Yeah. Sorry.”
He took a deep breath. “No, there’s nothing you need to apologize for. I’m the one that’s sorry. I knew it was going to be hard on you. Maybe you should go back to Garden City–”
“No!” I grabbed his arm and looked into his face. “No, I want to stay with you guys. My whole family is here. Even Grandpa’s and, and Mom’s graves are here. I can’t leave.”
I was an adult, there was nothing wrong with me living alone anymore. In fact, most people would say that I should move out. But I couldn’t do that yet. Not until I knew that my people were safe here. Even then, I don’t think I could handle living in an entirely different state.
I rambled on. “It’s okay, really. I won’t freak out again. Promise.”
It’s been years since my last episode, so I thought I’d finally gotten over my PTSD. I should have realized that moving back to the place where it all happened would be another trigger, but I couldn’t let that affect my life forever. If it did, I’d be left behind while my family moved forward. We came to Mist Haven to create a future for me and Micah, the future that was put on pause because of me years ago. I wanted to continue my family’s amazing legacy, not ruin it.
Dad slowly nodded. He knew how important our new lives were, which was why he insisted on moving out here before Micah started middle school. “Okay.”
He waved his arm through the mist, making the water vapor roll and swirl. “There’s nothing to worry about the fog,” he explained, affirming his words with actions. “It’s not caused by a monster or a natural phenomenon. It’s man made and only affects those with malicious intentions.”
He meant to reassure me, but his words didn’t. Even while I got dressed in shorts and a flowered blouse, the words played over and over in my mind. The mist only affected those with malicious intentions. So why did I have such a strong reaction to it? I didn’t have any ‘malicious intentions’ towards it – or any intentions at all. I just wanted nothing to do with it.
Just like Dad said, eight o-clock hit and the fog disappeared like it never existed. I sighed in relief and stared out the window, finally relaxed enough to realize what a great view I had. With the green trees and mountains, it was breathtaking. In fact, because the houses were spaced out with trees between them, nearly every window in our house had a ‘view.’
Dad stood next to a mountain of moving boxes in the front room and motioned to the door. “Come on, come on. Let’s go. I told your uncle we’d be there at eight.”
Micah was nearly bouncing with excitement as he hurried to the car. “How far do we live from the smithy?”
His emotion was infectious, and I was finally able to let go of the nerves that lingered from the fog. Excitement bubbled in me as I hopped in the front seat. It’d been almost a year since I last saw my uncle, and years since I was in his smithy. Although I’d handled his weapons daily for half my life, it was an entirely different experience being in the place they were made.
“It’s like a mile and a half away, right?” I answered, thinking about the Mist Haven map I studied on the internet a couple days ago. “Just on the other side of town.” But it seemed a lot farther than that because of all the trees.
Dad nodded and put the car into drive. “You can bike there when we unearth them from the truck later.”
In no time, we pulled into a dirt parking lot in front of a large building. The thirty foot tall walls were completely black. There were no markings, just a huge open roll-up door and small front door. A tall, wide chimney rose from the right side of the building, emitting lots of clear smoke. The air was thick with the smell of hot metal and oil. A low humming crackle echoed from the roll-up door, although it was too dark inside to see where it was coming from.
As soon as we stepped out of the car, a man walked out of the building. His hair was pale brown and sticking up randomly, as if he just took off a hat. Tired lines collected around his plain forty-something-ish face, but his wide grin and loving gaze was wonderful. His leather pants were scarred with small black smudges and his shirt looked like it had been through a million washes, but what would you expect from a weaponsmith? A tuxedo?
He walked with an age-old limp as he hurried up to us. “My kids are back!” he yelled.
I grinned and threw my arms around him. “I missed you, Uncle Maveric!”
*****