The guardian of the mountains

   In a very far off land lay the town of Var. It had a small number of houses and was located in the middle of a trade route, which explained its existence. The people of Var were used to foreigners passing through, sometimes without even saying a word and other times staying for days, enjoying the beer the people of the region had learned to make. What was most particular about Var was that most of the time it was covered by a dense fog. No one knew why that was. Some believe in the folk tale that the town had being built by the devil on top of a fissure in the ground that lead directly to his lair in the center of the planet. Others, more scientific minds if you will, thought the fog was related to the mountain chain that passed close to Var, a chain that was largely unexplored and that housed a couple of volcanoes.

 In Var lived various types of people. But one of the most interesting ones was Gerta. She was one of the various women that were in charge of washing the linen and the clothing of other people and were paid for this. Gerta liked her job because it required her to leave town and go to a nearby river to wash by hand. There, all the ladies would reunite and talk, sing and discuss various subjects in the peace and quiet of the outskirts of the town. But Gerta would rather listen most of the times. She found herself to be not all that interesting and very clumsy when speaking.

 There was a subject, however, that she didn’t like to discuss: children. The other women talked about their girls and their boys and what they did or had learned or said at home but Gerta couldn’t do any of that, even if she had been interested in speaking out loud. That was because Gerta, who had turned forty years old recently, had never had any children and the possibilities of that happening were just getting more and more slim.

 You see, Gerta was a big lady in all the physical sense and men had never appreciated her silences, which could last for days. They thought she was dumb and simple and would only trust her with their clothes and nothing more. Sometimes she thought about this, when the other women started discussing their married lives and their duties as mothers, but to be honest most of the time Gerta was busy dreaming.

 What did she dreamt about? Simple. She would think of a prince from a faraway land that would fall in love with her and would take her on his horse to travel the world and live in adventure and romance for the rest of her days. Every time she saw a foreigner or a caravan of merchants crossing Var, she would stare at them one by one and not move until all of them had passed through town. She saw their clothing, the way they behave, and knew that she wanted to one day leave Var forever and not comeback to her simple ways of being a washerwoman.

 After washing the clothes, Gerta would normally help her father, her mother had been dead for some years, in their small crop. The ground around town had turned arid in recent years, many said because of the foreign horses, so the land that people could use to grow food was always shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. Gerta would plow the land; pick up the carrots and potatoes and clean lettuces and various medicinal plants that his father had used for years in the making of medicine for his small pharmacy.

 It was a renowned store, where people from every corner of the world came to buy remedies for their illnesses and pains. His father was well known but the amount of medicine he could do had been declining steadily for the last few years. He was growing old and almost blind so he had taught Gerta how to manage the store and how to process the medicines. The truth was that he would have preferred to have a son or at least one more child that was a male but that hadn’t happened. So he taught everything he knew to Gerta and told her the store was one of the pillars of Var and that she couldn’t let it crumble. She needed to form a family to keep it alive, long after his death.

 One day his father felt especially ill and lay in bed. The store had to be closed, as there were no medicines to sell. Many ingredients had not been harvested but Gerta knew where to find them so she entrusted her father to a doctor and left town for the mountains. His father had been there for many years, since he was a naughty kid, picking up plants and roots. She took a book with her where her father had drawn all the plants needed to make medicine so it would be easier for her to spot everything.

 The think god also covered the mountains and by midday, Gerta knew she was lost. She tried to find her way back to the main path but she had definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere and now there was no way to go back. She was feeling desperate when suddenly she realized she had been climbing the mountain. The fog was disappearing and the soil had turned black, covered with rocks. She found her first root and then another and so on for hours. She would put them all in a basket she had brought and grabbed everything she could, as she had no idea when she would be coming back.

 But suddenly the ground shook and Gerta screamed, afraid for her life. It seemed like an earthquake but it wasn’t. And she knew it wasn’t because the ground moved and she fell and, before hitting her head, she saw a shape beyond the now light fog and the clouds. She woke up several hours later, already at night. What was amazing was that she was at entrance of a cave, looking out to the starry night. Somehow, she had walked to the cave’s entrance after falling or someone had brought her here. It didn’t matter as she needed to go back home soon or her dad would worry. She stood up and then realized her basket had disappeared.

 It wasn’t in the cave or in the outside of it. That was frustrating as Gerta had been especially happy about finding all of those roots and plants so fast and in all the same place. She was now tired and dirty and felt bad that her trip had been useless. She started walking out of the cave but from the sky fell an enormous figure and just some meters in front of her a gigantic head with bright yellow eyes and a long snout with warm nostrils at the end. She was looking straight at the face of a dragon and the dragon was looking at her.

 Her reaction would have been to scream or run or both but Gerta couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t move or react in any way and was afraid she had been frozen in the spot. A few clouds in the night sky moved, revealing the moon and, in turn, revealing the true size of the creature. Now, Gerta did scream. It was pitch black, covered in scales and with a body capable of destroying a whole town in just a few movements. She had no idea if he could breath fire but that wasn’t something she was interested in finding out. She wanted to go back home but couldn’t.

 To make her shut up, the monster talked and that was even worse. Gerta screamed like mad but the monster then kicked the ground to make her stop. Apparently getting it, Gerta shut up and the monster greeted her, telling her he had been the one to put her in the cave. He had done it because wolves came out at night and would have eaten her alive if she had stayed in mid part of the mountain. However, it had been him that had caused her to fall. After all, she had been walking on him.

 The dragon explained to a shaking Gerta that the roots and plants were part of the mountain and that he had been entrusted with the care of all the mountain chain. Gerta had heard the legends of merchants encountering dragons but everyone thought it was a just a tale for children. The monster said he forgave Gerta for her intrusion only because he knew her father with whom he had made a deal: he would let Gerta’s father take roots and plants if he made the dragon a potion for his sore throat. That way they lived in peace.

 Then Gerta, with a weak voice, explained she had come because her father was ill and he was already very old. She promised to make his potion too if he let her go with the roots and plants as she had told her father the store would not die with him. The dragon thought of this and then looked straight to Gerta’s eyes. She felt dizzy, as if he was able to read her mind. He then said he didn’t need the medicine anymore but that he was thankful anyway. So he would grant her a wish in honor of her father and the gratitude he felt towards him. He would let her, and only her and her family, pick up the goods from the mountains.

 Gerta told him she didn’t know what to wish for but the dragon told her the wish had already been granted, so she could go home now. Gerta didn’t understand. At least not after a few months when she realized she was pregnant. The dragon had given her the gift of a family, to keep on with the store but mostly to make her happy and make Gerta realize her true potential as a human being. From that day on, she thanked the dragon by praying at the foot of the mountain with her child, who grew up to be a great man.

Castle by the cliff

On the tallest hill of the entire region, there used to be a castle. If tales were to be believed, one could see the ocean from the westernmost watchtower. Visiting nowadays was disheartening, to say the least: only the walls remained, in some parts even less than that. One could see were the rooms used to be, the primary water source and even the most important person’s chamber.

That last one was the duke. There was no king here, at least not for a very large radius. In these mountains, only the duke ruled over the peasants, back then. Today, it was still a remote region although some roads crossed the former forests and even got close to many of the old fortifications.

Back then, there were only two towns in the region: one just outside the castle and another down the hill, close to a thin river that passed through there. Today, the river can only be seen in the spring or in the fall. It source freezes in winter and gets dry in the summer.

The duke, according to historians, was benevolent and all his sons and daughters kept the region peaceful. They built watchtowers all over the forest, creating a perimeter around their lands but many saw it as unnecessary: there was nothing coming in and the only people that left were merchants and they always came back.

If one goes by the books, there were two hundred years of peace and isolation, were the folk of the region would just mind for themselves and take care of their land in their own way.

But one day, without them knowing it, the king that ruled the country died. To be precise, he was murdered and his brother, a bloodthirsty devil, sat on the throne. From then on, every single region would slowly fall into his sphere of influence, that consisted of troops being sent to sack every town of its most prized possessions and then asking them for all their crops when time was right.

So during the next fifty years, region-by-region, land-by-land, the soldiers of the Dark King (as he was known) invaded mercilessly. So one day, they followed the one road that, back then, linked the castle in the rock with the rest of the kingdom.

At first, no one really noticed anything strange, besides a few uncommon deaths in the forest but that was not really that uncommon: wolfs roamed the wood in the search for meat and many people were sure their numbers were rising, so the town had already begun a plan to kill some of them or at least to push them away from the areas they frequently visited.

It was in the winter when a girl named Ariana finally realized that what was killing the countrymen were not wolfs but humans, soldiers in gray armor. She managed to escape without them noticing her near the edge of the woods. Crying, she told her mother about what she had seen and they, in return, went to the duke and told him that vicious deeds were being done in the forest, far more vile than anyone would have imagined.

The girl herself told the duke, a peaceful man, that she had seen soldier wearing gray, eating by a fire near the edge of the forest, inside their lands. She had been there picking raspberries for a dessert but she had dropped them all when she saw what they were doing: As it happens, the soldiers were not by the fire to keep warm, they were there eating, cooking their meal. And when the girl saw what they were eating, she couldn’t scream, not even breather. She confessed to have been paralyzed for a few seconds, before she managed to escape.

The soldiers in gray, the color of greed, were eating a human child. Even more disgusting, they were eating one of the girl’s friends. This made the duke realize that those soldiers had already entered the region and were probably waiting to be given the order to attack, to invade their territory.

The duke summoned all his advisors and the strongest and fittest men and women from the two towns. Every single person that knew how to use a weapon or how to defend him or herself, was now essential for the survival of their territory.

It was ordered that all people that couldn’t battle, elderly or very young, pregnant or just not strong enough to battle, had to stay inside the castle, in a special room overlooking the cliff. The rest of the people would prepare themselves for the fighting, which wouldn’t be taking long.

A week later, the grey soldiers finally attacked. First, they aimed for the town by the river. They took it rather fast, with no casualties from either side. Any way, there were only a few persons guarding it, mounting bombs and traps. The duke had decided that the river town, as it was only made of a handful of houses, could be left behind to better defend the upper town and, if it came to that, the castle.

Anyway, the bombs and traps left in some of the houses worked beautifully and many grey soldiers had to pull back as they weren’t fit for battle anymore. But disabling a dozen wasn’t enough. Between the river town and the castle town, there was a small plain with scattered trees. And when the grey soldiers army stepped into it, the people of the region finally saw what they were up against.

They were at least a thousand soldiers, creating a tight formation on the plain. Some had horses but most of them came by foot. All of them wore helmets, to conceal their identities, to make them even more fierce and despicable.

The people of the mountain were hidden among the many houses and little streets of the castle town. From inside the castle, no one could see anything, so they wouldn’t know if their loved ones died or got taken. Only if they won they would ever see them or their bodies again.

For a whole day, the grey soldiers just stood there, waiting, picking the best time to attack. The duke thought that they might decide to attack at night or early the next day, as they were skilled soldiers and knew how to attack when their enemies were mostly weak.

Indeed, the attack came covered by clouds that reduced the amount of light in the mountains. They raided houses and wholes streets, screeching horribly and laughing with a deep and awful voice. The people of the town lived up to the expectations and begin attacking from the rooftops and the sewers, from the trees an even standing in the middle of a street.

In the first few hours, many people of the mountains were killed, without mercy or a single second of doubt. But when the sun started to shine, they recovered quickly, killing several soldiers with arrows, stones and swords. For such a peaceful people, some of them were very skilled with metal.

Some of them even created a melted mixture of metals that they poured on top of a large groups of greys trying to penetrate the castle. The screams of pain were heard by the men and women waiting inside, waiting for their deaths or for the end of the struggle.

But it did not seem to end. Soldiers and townsfolk kept on fighting, maybe slower and with far less agility but insisting on their actions, on what each thought was right.

Then, from inside the castle, came yelling and screaming and cheering. The ones outside had no idea what happened. At least not until they saw it too: the day was bright clear so anyone could see it. There were five big vessels on the shore and people from inside were already heading towards the castle. In a matter of time, they would arrive to the battlefield.

The duke, a wise man, seeing his land in distress, had decided to use an old way of communication to contact some ancient allies of this land. Passed down by generations of his family, there was a ring, made somewhere beyond the sea. The duke took it and put in in a tiny bag, which he tied to the leg of a hawk. The bird left they day before the grey soldiers attacked the river town and now, their allies had responded.

That alliance had been forged centuries ago but it was visibly still alive. The troops from the sea help destroy the grey army and defend the castle. With the duke, they organized a greater alliance to liberate the rest of the kingdom and bring peace back to the known lands.

Eventually, no one really knows how, the dark king was defeated and everything came back to normal.

Several years after, the castle fell into disuse when there were no more descendants to sit inside it. Now the place is in ruins and the people from the town try to get tourists to visit the castle in order to tell them the legend of their lands and the magic of these mountains.

The woods

No one dared take the road through the woods. Although much shorter than the others, people tried to avoid it if possible. It had been built almost a century ago but it was only widely used for a couple of years before the wood grew darker and thicker and much more dangerous.

So an alternative road, by the side of the mountain, was built to avoid the forest. That road had a lot of curves, cliffs, and almost doubled the other one in length. It wasn't uncommon that, on a harsh winter or on rainy days, the door got blocked by mud and rocks falling from the mountain. The two towns would then be disconnected and all trade or travels between the two had to be postponed.

On one of those bad days, Sammy, a young woman looking forward visiting her family in the other town, got with her car to the mountain road but soon realized it had been blocked by big boulders. She went back home and , sadly, sat by the television set and thought of her family.

It was going to be a surprise visit but now it couldn't be done. Although... She went to her studio and grabbed a map of the region. The map marked the mountain road as a primary road. Meanwhile, the one in the woods had only a few segments drawn as people had no idea of its current state.

Sammy knew the road wasn't good for cars, only for small vehicles, motorcycles or pedestrians. But none dared enter the woods. What she noticed was that if she got out in the middle of the day, she could get across the woods in less than 3 hours. The journey normally took seven hours and that was not an option now.

So the next day she decided to dress properly for a hard walk and got to the point where the woods started. It wasn't strange no one was around as she begin, walking by the old road, covered in dead leaves and puddles of mud.

With her she only had a backpack with clothes and food, her cellphone and the map folded inside. That was it. She wore hiking boots and a thick jacket and thermal pants. It had stopped raining in the morning but she knew she had to walk fast in order to get there soon.

The first hour was incredible easy. The road was plain and almost no rocks or trees where lying across it. She could almost imagine the old carriages and horses going through the woods.
However, the place was really creepy. She knew it was around midday, but the son could almost not be seen. The foliage was thick and the trees had grown in all sorts of shapes. Almost no flowers grew there and she heard no animals in the vicinity.

When half of the walking was done, she realized the road ended and two different paths began from there. At that point she got her map out and spread it on the ground. It was hard to make a choice but she thought the best option was the clearer path, the one in the left. The map seemed to confirm it. So she began to walk again.

After just a half hour, she was walking through trees. The path had finished a few steps ago and now she only saw thin trees with big treetops. She felt lost but knew that the only option was walking in a straight line. The forest had to end at some point and it was likely the town was not far from there.

But when she started walking a cracking sound stopped her. She gazed around but so nothing. As she but one foot in front of the other, the cracking sound came back. And again and again. So she turned around.

Nothing. She decided to walk faster. After a few minutes she arrived in a clearing and there was a cottage there, the kind a lumberjack makes. Now Sammy was petrified. No one had gone to the woods in almost a hundred years so why was there a house in the middle of it?

She was very curious about it but decided not to investigate further. She continued to walk but now she heard as if someone tap a window. She turned and so no one there.

Now she was almost running. Sammy was not an athlete so her feet where killing her already but she knew she had no time to waste.

After a while, the trees began to feel more and more separated and she could see the sun, pale and cold but bright enough to make her feel safe. She decided the town could not be very far so she walked with a smile towards the edge of the forest but then rain started falling. As if someone was pouring buckets and buckets of it.

Then the cracking sound again and, in the middle of the downpour, Sammy felt someone touched her shoulder. She screamed and ran for her life. She only stopped when she felt the day had gotten brighter.

She removed the hoodie of her jacket and realized the rain had stopped and that she had arrived at her destination. She could see the tree line. Sammy was on a hill and from there one could see the town. She smiled but then she heard a laugh and turned instinctively.

There, by the nearest tree, there was a small boy. He only smiled and waved at her. And Sammy waved at him. He turned his back to her and she did the same and each one parted.

Sammy got to her family's house but did not share the story with them. She invented some lie and kept the strange smile of the kid in the woods for herself.

The Crossing

My family was very tired, they couldn't walk any more. We all helped putting up a bit tent beneath a rocky formation, in order to spend the night there. We had walked over twenty kilometres today and that was a lot for some of us.

Grandma was the most tired. Mom had to massage her legs for her to be able to sleep. Dad and I agreed to carry grandma on our backs if it was necessary.

Dad, mom, my sister, her husband and I decided to check the map on our mobile device, as grandma and my niece slept in a corner of the tent. According to the map, we were only a few kilometers from the border that passed over the highest peak. If we passed it, we would be safe, at least for a couple more months.

The war had suddenly erupted and, even if we recognized it or not, it was our fault. Many of us helped that mad man with our votes and now he was the only ruler. Many had been killed and he had decided to cleanse the nation of people he deemed "dangerous".

And that's what we, apparently, were. We didn't even now why but we realized it when the police raided our home and wanted to arrest us. They actually took grandpa and, in part, that was the real pain grandma was suffering. They were my father's parents. My mother's parents had been killed in the first wave of the war, as they lived in another city.

We escaped thanks to my sister's husband, a former member of the military, and now we were all on the run, trying to get to the border over the mountains. We couldn't afford any other way of escape as boats and planes had been forbidden, except for those used by the armed forces.

I turned off my phone fast. We had four phones but used only one at a time in order to preserve the batteries. The communications were cut off but somehow some of the apps still work, such as the map.

We slept on the ground, covering ourselves with a few blankets my sister's husband had stolen from the barracks. They were really warm and cozy blankets and we were all grateful for them. Still, I couldn't get any sleep, thinking of the next day. Without a doubt, it would be a very important day: we would cross the most dangerous part of the mountain and then get to a country that no one knew if it would be welcoming.

I woke everyone up at the first light of the following day. Grandma complained and my little niece was happy as some snow had fallen overnight.

We tore down our tent, we put it on the biggest backpack and started walking. Snow made our ascent mucho more slow than I had imagined. We had to pull out the blankets and cover ourselves with them as our clothes were not made for cold weather.

We didn't stop for lunch: we ate in motion, being very careful with the food as it wasn't necessary to lure animals or anyone to our position.

Sunset arrived and I checked my phone: if we walked fifteen more minutes, we would pass the border. I told everyone and insisted on walking in the dark if it was necessary: we were too close to stop now.

What I didn't expect was for the wind to be so strong and chilly, freezing our faces and bodies to the bone. Grandma fainted and we had to stop. After putting up the tent and putting the elderly woman inside, I checked my phone again. With the last remaining battery power, I could see the border was only 700 hundred meters away. The phone died. When I told the news to the others they seemed relieved and we agreed to wake up early to walk to the border and then down the mountain.

There was apparently a town nearby and that was their goal. We knew many people had fled to the neighboring nation and that it might be problem to get in as such, but that was a problem for tomorrow. Now we felt a bit more at ease and and I even slept a couple of hours before been awoken by a rumble, a horrible sound in the distance.

All the family woke up and, although we did not day, we were scared. We packed up again and started walking. The wind had calmed down and the sky seemed cloudless.

After some minutes, we finally arrived at the top, to the border. My mom gave me her phone so I could locate the town. As it was very early still and the sky wasn't properly lit, we may have seen the town from there.

A horrible sound again. But now it was a rumble but something like an engine... an airplane. We all stared at the sky and saw the shadow of a large aircraft. The first light of the day let us see what was happening: in the valley below was the town we were looking for. And the airplane was heading there but not with refugees or food. They were bombing.

We hadn't seen lights because it had been cut off. From our vantage point, we could see at least five more planes descending into the valley and drop dozens maybe hundreds of bombs. The city was on fire.

From our tiny spot in the mountain we were witnesses of an invasion, the first of many. Our future was now even bleaker.