Chapter One of Shepherds of the Vale:

Backyards Like Blank Pages

Summer snow whipped against the old house. Heavy winds shuddered the shutters and rattled the rain gutters. Even the wooden floorboards, beneath Gale Stoneking’s feet, hummed. She flipped to a blank page in her sketchbook, as fresh as new snow. The possibilities of this page promised something grand. Maybe she’d draw a sweeping meadow with high grass hiding a small little city nestled between the green blades. She could draw an old forest with tall trees, towering and thick from centuries of growing, untouched by ax or hand. She put pencil to paper over and again, but she couldn’t shake this nagging feeling. Her ever-punctual father hadn’t returned from work.

Her mother parted the curtains to peer out the window. The woods in the backyard glistened under heavy snowfall. The woodpile held up its own weight in fresh powder, and somewhere in the yard, the snow buried a discarded bicycle. With the unexpected blizzard throwing off the summer flow, even the branches, still full of leaves, sagged toward the ground.

Her mother dialed the phone with no luck. She huffed and punched in a new number. Using her, more formal, answering-machine-voice, she said, “I can’t get a hold of Burl. I’ve left him several messages in his usual hangouts, but he’s not there.”

Gale placed her sketchpad on her lap while on the checkered sofa. She’d tried to hone her skill by using people as models, but she’d failed miserably to capture any sense of realism. Instead of claiming defeat, she decided her family just didn’t sketch well.

Her mother’s features, for instance: long, razor straight orange hair; pale skin; and soft blue eyes. Gale struggled to capture the softness of her eyes. No matter how hard she tired, her mother always wore a hardened glare in the portraits. Not just the eyes, though, her earlobes became increasingly difficult to capture because they came to a slight point on the top of them. Though thankfully, she adored turtleneck sweaters. Gale didn’t have to worry about getting the right length of her mother’s neck—which was a bit longer than most other mothers’ necks. Her head geometry just didn’t sketch right. Standing with her bare feet on the tan shag carpet, her mother craned her long neck and peered out the window like an anxious orange flamingo.

Constantly, her mother glanced at the ring on her right hand. Depressing the skin on her pointer finger, the glossy wooden ring had a band of tiny carved images circled around. Sticking out from the ring, a small wooden weathervane with directional points sat on the top of her finger. From an extension above the north, east, south, and west symbols, a miniature feathered arrow sat on an axis like real weathervanes where it would turn based on which way the wind blew. Her mother watched this ring as if the arrow would change direction.

On the wall, the Illustrated Birds of North America clock struck screech-owl, and hooting announced the hour. A chain reaction of clock chimes bounced from one side of the room to the other. The fireplace mantle acted as the foundation for a small suburb of miniature houses, and the cuckoo clocktower mechanically tweeted while producing a wooden bird from a small window. Miniature figurines appeared to walk the icy streets of the replica village to go about their tiny day. On the same wall as a barrage of family photos, another clock sang a small clinking melody. Next to the front door stood the grandfather clock. The eldest of the timepieces, by a wide measurement of tics, emitted deep and tired sounding gongs a good thirty seconds behind the other clocks. The age and beauty of the object eased any negativity about its tardiness.

When the phone rang, Gale’s mother answered before the first ring ended. “Hello? This is Colleen Stoneking. Who’s this?”

Gale flipped the pages of her sketchbook past images of quiet forests and rolling fields. She arrived at another portrait, and she compared the image to the model sitting across from her. Unfortunately, Gale found it additionally difficult to sketch her older brother, Drew. He just had a goofy face. Sure, they shared the same pale skin and orange hair as their mother, but they inherited the curlier version of their hair from their father. Her brother was thirteen. His silver wire-frame eyeglasses sat high on his nose, and his short curly orange hair parted slightly on the side. Every time Gale sketched him, he always looked like a smashed pumpkin with glasses. Though, she chalked this up to lack of skill and, also, lack of respect for his image. It just couldn’t be helped.

He pressed a finger to his dimpled chin, trying to look sophisticated. He lounged reading The Wee Free Men on an armchair under the light of a lit lamp on the side table.

“Oh, Polendina. I didn’t recognize your voice,” her mother said while watching the weathervane on her finger. “Pawns, are you sure? I’m not seeing anything.”

Gale refused to sketch herself. She stretched her lanky frame against the coarse texture of the couch. Though only a year younger than Drew, she was already taller. Her legs and arms grew way more than the rest of her body, and she wished, almost every night, the rest of her body would get in line. She moved her curly locks of orange hair away from her eyes to fully examine her sketch pad at Drew’s poor pencil-recreation. Wrinkling her sun-freckled nose, she, being her own worst critic, ripped the page from her pad, balled it up, and tossed it wildly.

The paper crashed onto her sleeping grandfather, Grandpa Burly, who dozed in a tattered recliner. Paying no mind to the new weight of the paper ball, his gut lifted and lowered the discarded drawing to the rhythm of his snoring. His crown of salt and peppered hair matched his thick mustache. His tall, slender frame wedged into his well-worn spot in his large chair.

A matching, but smaller and far less worn, recliner next to him remained empty. A hole around the top of it had been patched in a blue, flannel square. Furniture, like all things, retained memory. This chair recalled the very ounce of weight and accurate degree of slouch of the woman who was, during her lifetime, lovingly known as “Grandma.”

The wind thrashed against the window, and the house shifted and settled on its old frame. Cold nights like these were best warmed in the company of family. The fire helped in its soothing crackle as the flames licked and charred the logs. Heat and odor of smoke poured from the hearth and circulated about the room.

A shiver ran up Gale’s spine. A nervous feeling washed over her, like the one someone gets before a big thunderstorm. Like danger lurked somewhere close by. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. A worry crawled up her throat, and she tried multiple times to swallow it back down. Hardening into a stone, the feeling sank into her stomach. She looked to her brother for guidance. When she tried to get his attention, he merely grunted back at her. He exhibited the kind of tact and empathy of a swarm of bees.

“Be vigilant,” Gale’s mother said. “I’m currently keeping an eye on something else.” Glancing out the window, again, she ran her hands through her mane of ginger hair.

Gale set her sketchbook aside as her mother sat down next to her on the couch, and the woman motioned for Drew. He begrudgingly flopped beside her. She wiped a few tears from her cheeks, cleared her throat, and said, “How about a story?”

“Something wrong?” Gale asked, detecting some strain in her mother’s voice.

“The raid of the great goblin library? The pixies who snitched the jailer’s key?” Their mother rambled off her adventuresome stories the children had heard on a thousand different bedtimes. The fairytales often revolved around fantastical creatures she referred to as “the fae.”

Drew said in a groan, “We’re too old for those stories.”

Her mother cleared her throat and forced a smile. She nervously played with her necklaces—one being a silver ornamental bell and the other an old-fashioned key. Gale studied her mother’s face with a hard stare. “I like the one about Saro.”

“Yes, yes.” Her mother clapped her hands. “Pixies are my favorite, too.”

Drew remained silent. He marked the page in his book with a playing card, the joker, but his attention appeared to slip elsewhere.

Her mother recited, from memory, the story as a poem:

Hidden in the forest by our home,

the pixies scatter, flee, and roam.

Free from human eyes and law—

they build cities of nests, both big and tall.

Their skin looks like mossy bark

and glows blue or green in day or dark.

You might catch a glimpse as they hum by,

but that faint whispering isn’t from a firefly.

Her mother told the story with grand hand gestures and a whimsical tone. She paused, cleared her throat, and continued:

There’s the young pixie, the kind-hearted Saro.

Who’s nimble and quick as a goblin’s arrow.

Off with a message, she zips with a zag.

She twirls and whirls between the antlers of a stag.

Along rivers babbling over mud and stone,

past boulders and past sycamores, very well grown—

she storms the skies, a streak in the clouds,

high above the bustle of city crowds.

Down to a meadow and in through a crack

she entered the home of the great dwarven brewer, Cormac.

She landed on the silver shoulder of a green-bearded fellow,

and loud and clear, the pixie did bellow:

“Cormac! Cormac! Send back a smack

of elixir of your fixer to heal the pack—

a pup has grown ill and need of your service

this tired-eyed dog is making us nervous!”

  “I thought they whispered,” Drew interrupted.

  She gave her son a withering glare cutting off his rising smirk.

With a flash, the dwarf bolted to his wall of potions

and moved his hands in fast, wild motions

to stir and to swish a white glimmering drink

in a pot that steamed and began to stink.

In a small glass dropper, he stoppered with a cork,

the pixie heaved it and flew off like a stork,

and it dangled off a string, as she muscled to the sky,

with a hope in her heart the pup would get by.

As dusk grew dark, she pulled with all her weight,

and she grew tired and winded in a wilted state.

She spotted the mother pacing at the mouth of her cave,

and Saro swooped down with a swoosh and quick save.

She landed with a silver-filled dropper,

and let the potion fall in the ill pup’s mouth proper.

Mother neared with concern in her eyes

as the pup’s tail began to wag to her surprise!

“I like that part,” Gale said in a yawn, and she put her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“O, thank you, kind pixie, with all of my heart,

the wish for you to know before you depart

my child’s life is precious in every single way,

and it’s good to take care all that we may.”

And Saro, so tired, floated back to her tree,

and into her bed of leaves, she slept carefree.

Gale’s eyelids grew heavy and her head bobbled. Her mom rubbed her back and pressed her off to bed. Stopping halfway at the doorway, Gale turned. “I love you.”

“Promise?” Her mother blinked away a few stray tears. In the slightest of movement, the arrow on the ring’s weathervane turned.

“Promise,” Gale said while trying to see if the ring would move again or if it were a trick of the light. Nothing happened.

Drew sat back down in the armchair, but with his book cracked open in his hands. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’ll be home soon, I’m sure. He must be out with some friends.”

As Gale walked up the steps, the feeling in her stomach hardened. She recognized the voice. Oh yes, the dismissive voice parents use to tell their children something to try to make them feel safe in a world full of uncertainty. If only it had made her feel safer. Gale turned toward the front door, hoping her father would walk in—good and tired from a day at the mines. His black hair would be gross from sweat, and his shoulders would be slouched. He’d smile as he’d look up at her on the stairs.

The door didn’t open.

The phone rang as Gale shuffled up the rest of the steps, and her mother answered quickly.

“B-Burl? Oh, Wade. Have you heard from Burl?” The voice of her mother faded away as Gale closed her bedroom door.

She curled under a woolen blanket in her bed. On a shelf, stuffed monsters with big hair and sharp claws swarmed around a plush boy wearing a wolf suit and a crown. Piled clothes on the floor hid the blue shag carpet, and a poster of her father’s favorite movie, Labyrinth, decorated the wall. This was her father’s old room, after all. Some lean times brought the Stonekings to live in Grandpa Burly’s house, but Gale didn’t mind. It was nice they all lived here as a cozy family, even if Drew made her life way harder than it needed to be.

Crunching snow sounded from outside. She rushed to the window to try to see her father in the backyard, but it was only her mother. She wore her hiking books and heavy coat. In her right hand, she held a walking stick. A small blue light flickered on the top of the stick like a tiny lantern. Her mother made her way into the woods behind their home.

The day couldn’t have been any weirder. A summer snow was rare here, even up high in the Appalachian Mountains. Her father always checked in. Now, her mother wandered off in the woods at night? These sorts of things would panic just about anyone, but for Gale—anxiety overload. She paced her room for the better part of an hour, bouncing around as if caught in a windstorm.

Flashes caught her eye. Out the window, thick snow clouds wrapped along the sky like a clutching hand. Bright bursts of blue light flared from somewhere inside the wall of clouds, and lightning arced from within the raging storm. A massive shadow, with a whipping tail and flapping wings, pulsed inside the cloud like a monstrous beating heart.

  Down below, wind brushed along the backyard sending swaths of snow tumbling along. In the dim porch light, something stirred between the thick trunks of trees. For a brief second, several frozen white figures of glistening ice stood tall. Suits of crystal-like armor, with sparkling swords of icicle, faced the house as if on watch. Gale smushed her face up to the window to make sure she truly saw these hulking figures of armor with icy shields and helmets. Wind rushed the window, whiting out everything in view with heavy snow, and the whole house rattled in response.

“OK. OK.” She flung herself in bed. She must be too tired because none of it made sense. Snow clouds, sure. Lightning, OK. A dragon in the sky? No. No way. Icy suits of armor? Her imagination must’ve been on overdrive, for sure. She blinked rapidly to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and when she peeked outside again, with her eyes barely over the windowsill, no suits of armor or cloud dragon could be seen. Just the heavy, heavy snow. She took several long breaths and huddled down in bed.

To ease her mind, she listened to music through her earbuds and stared at the plastic, glow-in-the-dark constellations on the ceiling. Trying to thinking about anything else than the blizzard, she recalled Saro, the lonely pixie, resting after a long day of adventuring and accomplishment. This drew her focus, calmed her breathing, and brought her to a relaxed state. Yes, a world where pixies flit about helping others with their magic and kindness—this was a world she could picture. She pretended her own bed as a pile of leaves. She imagined her own life full of adventure. She wished someday these things would come true, but that was the dark trick of wishes—they often came with a price.

***

When neither of her parents were home in the morning, Gale flung open all the doors and checked all the rooms about seven times. Their house sat at the end of the road where the town met the woods. From the front door, the backyards of their neighboring homes held white snow like blank pages. Whatever stories these peaceful yards would later tell would be so different to her own.