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Evan raised his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow with his fingertips. He stared up at the pale blue sky and searched for any sign of rain. There wasn’t a single cloud, just the constant haze that hung like a veil over the valley. He walked to the next row and took a knee by a mound of dirt. Reaching down, he dug out the drip line which had been buried by the silt from the latest flash flood.
“If it’s not enough water, it’s too much water,” Evan muttered to himself.
He scraped the mud off the hose to ensure the line was working and then got up and repeated the process every ten feet. One of his sheep, a dirty, white ewe with a black face, ambled up behind him and nudged him under his armpit.
“Not right now, Stasia,” he told her, “I’ve got to finish before noon, or I’ll bake in this sun.” The ewe nudged him again and let out a soft bleat. “I hear you, but you’re gonna have to wait.” As if she understood, Anastasia wandered back to join the rest of the herd. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Evan chastised himself. “I make twice as much selling wool, yet I spend all my time digging up these weeds and trying to get these fickle plants to grow.”
Evan grew up on the farm, third generation on that same plot of land. He preferred to be called a rancher, though. That’s what he really enjoyed doing. Raising his sheep and cows. Sheering, milking, shoveling manure. Any of that was better than trying to get mother earth to cooperate with him. “If it wasn’t for Liz ….” His voice trailed off before he said anything else. He would never disparage the woman that had shared his life and owned his heart even though she wasn’t around to hear him anymore. She had saved him. Saved him from his past and brought him out here to the valley, far away from the killing fields.
A low rumble, half-absorbed by the ancient mountains that surrounded the valley, made its way across the open plain. “Sounds like thunder,” Evan thought. He scanned the horizon for the source. Towards the East, a small black dot rose into the mid-morning sky. It hung over the patch of land that belonged to his closest neighbors who lived on the other side of the ridge.
“Looks like the Carsens will be getting some rain,” he noted. “Good for them.”
A parliament of ravens, the largest group he had ever seen, flew out of the still rising sun, passed directly over his head, and spun in a large circle above him, blocking out the light for almost a minute.
“Never bring anything but bad luck, them birds. I should take a couple of them out now.” He reached down for his pistol but thought better of it. “What’ll I get? One? Two at most? That’s if I even manage to hit them.” It was times like this he wished he hadn’t sold the shotgun. But desperate times. Liz needed the medicine. And no one would buy his Mosin-Nagent bolt action rifle from him. Told him it was an old piece of junk.
“I can hit the eyes of a coyote from a thousand yards with it. In a cross wind.” He began to mutter to himself. “Old piece of junk. They have no idea what they’re talking about.”
The ravens headed towards the river and made a sharp left when they reached the edge of the forest that grew at the end of the farm. Oak trees that stood tall when Evan’s grandfather was a young boy guarded the beech trees which grew in their shade. The groves were thick on the banks of the Carmel River but thinned out as they scaled the slopes on either side. Halfway up, the pine trees asserted their dominance, and only a few lonely oaks survived amongst them. All types of creatures lived in the great forest, including packs of wolves and the occasional brown bear that coveted an easy meal from off the farm. Evan kept four Kangals to protect his herds. Vicious, ferocious animals. If Cerberus had mortal offspring, it would have been them.
The sun continued to beat down as Evan headed back to the truck, kicking at clods of mud and rocks he found on his way. A couple of cows carried on a casual conversation with Stasia by the passenger side door and strode over to Evan to voice their displeasure. They could smell the bags of feed in the bed of the pickup and demanded their share. Evan ignored them and sat down in the driver’s seat, his feet hanging out the door. As he rested, a shadow passed over the truck and blocked the sun, causing a chill to shudder down his spine. He pulled his feet inside, closed the door, and reached back in the space behind the worn out seat of his beat up pickup to pull out a red, white, and black wool blanket that he hadn’t needed since late February. It was a family heirloom, at least two hundred years old, that his great-great, he couldn’t remember how many, grandfather had bought at a Navajo trading post on his travels around the country. His ancestor had stored it in an old wooden chest and pulled it out on special occasions to show his visitors what he considered his most prized possession. Over the years it had been passed down to the first born male as a legacy, but by now it had lost most of its inherent as well as sentimental value. As Evan wrapped himself in the dusty, ragged threads, he felt the chill dissipate and thought about his own connection to the past. Things had changed. They had changed at a pace that made him feel uncomfortable in a direction that he wished they weren’t going. But what could be done about it? More importantly, what could he do?
“Nothing right now,” he said out loud. He reclined as best he could, leaning his head in the corner where the rear windshield and the side door met. “Just a quick nap. Five minutes, no more,” he promised himself. “I’ve got too much to do.” From his position, Evan could see the cloud, which had formed over the Carsen’s farm, traverse the Northern boundary and pass over where his house stood. “Well, maybe a bit longer. It looks like it’ll rain for awhile.”
Evan fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes. He snored softly and dreamed of sunny days and blue skies, thoughts of simpler, happier times. His dog Zoe. His little sister Cate. Her soft blonde hair flying back and forth as she ran up to hug him. She was six years old in his dreams. She was always six years old just like the last time he saw her. He felt her frail arms wrap around his neck and heard her laugh as he picked her up and swung her around and around. Her eyes were dark emeralds that flashed sparks of light when she smiled. He missed her. Oh how he missed her. But here she was, and his sadness eased for a moment. Evan put her down, and she grabbed his arm and gave it a tug. The expression on her face had changed. Cate whispered something but he couldn’t understand her. She pulled him down and whispered in his ear. Evan still could not make any sense of what she was saying, and he raised himself back up. As he did, a young woman was standing in front of him. She wore a mask that covered her entire face except for her eyes which shone through, green and empty. Clumps of blonde stuck out from between the charcoal hair of the mask. “Save me,” she said. Evan wrinkled his brow in confusion. “Save me,” she repeated, and she pointed to the sky.
He looked up to see a cloud hovering above his truck. It was black. Unnaturally black like the deepest cavern on the darkest night. The light was behind it, fighting to make its way through, but it couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. The cloud shifted shape and took the form of a dragon. Evan imagined a battle taking place in the heavens like the ones he read about in his book of medieval tales when he was a child. He had always wondered what it would be like to be a knight, dressed in shiny metallic purple armor like in that Jimi Hendrix song, fighting the forces that were around him and those which were inside. He ran around the farm dressed up in a magical shirt sewn for him by his mom with a sword and shield cut out of a cardboard box on which he painted his own purple coat of arms. He slew ogres and trolls, which to the casual observer appeared to be sheep and cows, on his mission to save a damsel locked away in a cave by some malevolent, fire-breathing creature. Each time he started his quest, he doubted if he had the courage and the purity of heart to save her, but in the end, he always came out victorious.
As Evan observed the dragon, its jaws opened wide, and black figures spewed from its mouth. Shadows without form that floated and danced in front of Evan’s eyes. Shadows which appeared beautiful, enticing on first glance like they held some splendid secret hidden away in their darkness. A secret that Evan had to learn. He called out to them to come tell him their mystery, but they didn’t answer. So he watched and delighted in the movements of the shadows as they danced their mesmerizing, ethereal ballet. Rolling and twisting but ever beautiful. Evan felt himself caught up in the music of motion and whirled around with the shadows, inebriated by their movements until the dance stopped and his head spun. He collapsed to the ground, content but empty at the same time. He wanted more, needed more, and he cried out to the shadows, begging to be filled. They began to move again but not as before. The shadows jerked and stretched. Blobs of darkness mutated into misshapen bodies without faces, converting into creatures which were neither human nor animal. Wings sprouted from their twisted bodies only to be torn off by a pair of giant, invisible hands, and the shadows fell to the earth screaming in anguish and hate. The dragon opened its mouth again, and a thousand winged horses stampeded out, hastening through the sky to catch the shadows before they hit the ground.