Monsters & Mist

by Taylor Fenner

  Lostero was poor both in land and resources and the only thing the Shroudanian king found them useful for was servants in his palace and the households of his people.

  This enslavement continued for a thousand years with Shroudania ruling over Vacantia and Lostero with unyielding power. Generation after generation of Vacantians and Losteroans were born into slavery with little ability to free themselves from their bondage. Some Vacantian women were lucky enough to marry the Shroudanian men who had taken them as lovers but they were never accepted by the people of Shroudania. The children born to Vacantian women and Shroudanian men were looked down upon by the kingdom and forced to enlist in the Shroudanian army to quell any rebellions from the people of their Vacantian ancestry.

  It wasn’t until the one thousandth year of the Shroudanian empire that the former royal family of Vacantia had enough men to form a rebellion against Shroudania. With the help of the children of their lost Vacantian women, Vacantia waged war on Shroudania.

  The war would drag on for ten long years with massive casualties on both sides, but finally Vacantia won independence from Shroudania. Lostero would not be so lucky.

  Chapter 1

  Andromeda

  Vacantia, 47th Day of the Dark Season, Current Empire Year 1000

  They say that eighteen years ago a Mistborn creature would come ashore once a year to steal a newborn child from its’ bed. This tragic event occurred for ten years and then mysteriously stopped without explanation.

  The Mistborn are said to be creatures of water and mist usually taking the form of women with rich dark brown hair and unusually colored eyes, who weep in the night because they can no longer bear children of their own or perhaps they are searching for something lost long ago. In their madness, they steal children from the coastal villages of the kingdom, dragging newborns back to the dark depths they dwell in beneath the great sea’s glossy surface. Never having seen one and chalking them up to myth, Andromeda had never given these Mistborn creatures much thought. She’d always explained away their mournful howls in the night with the whistling of the wind and any claims of sightings as crazy coastal dwellers and drunkards. Until last night when a Mistborn stole her baby nephew.

  Andromeda woke up on her hard bed pallet on the floor of her small hut just before daybreak and ran outside as the horns sounded all over the village alerting the villagers that another child had been taken.

  In all the years since her sister and she had left their mountain top home with their bereaved father to move to this small fishing village on the western coast of Vacantia, Andromeda had never heard the horns sounding in the village. Sure, they had heard stories of children being stolen from their beds further up the coast, but Andromeda’s father had always discounted them as cautionary tales meant to scare away newcomers.

  As Andromeda observed the chaos of the villagers spilling from their homes as a thick early morning mist rolled in from the sea she finally realized those stories weren’t just stories. Men gathered together in the village square with homemade weapons while women gathered their children close and flitted from house to house to check on their friends and neighbors. Each face reflected the same look of wide-eyed terror. In the ten years since the last child had been stolen by the sea the villagers had grown complacent, lulled by a false sense of security in their day to day lives and today that safe little bubble had been burst.

  Andromeda’s bare feet slapped against the hard earthy ground as she jogged through the clogged street to get to the ramshackle hut she’d spent most of her latter childhood and early teenage years in, the hut that her older sister Midge had made her own after she’d married her husband Ezra and settled down. Andromeda’s heart pounded in her chest in time with the slapping of her feet as the hut came into view.

  Out front, Midge stands keening in Ezra’s circular embrace. As Andromeda draws nearer she realizes her sister’s cries are louder and more mournful than anyone else.

  No, she silently beg the gods she’d turned her back on years ago. No, please I beg you. Anyone but her.

  “Midgella,” Andromeda calls her by her full name to garner her attention.

  Midgella turns to Andromeda in slow motion, her jaw slack and her eyes damp and haunted. She looks like the Mistborn women they’ve all heard stories about, broken and mad. As their eyes lock her knees give out and she crumples to the ground at her helpless husband’s feet.

  “Eda,” she wails Andromeda’s nickname as Andromeda sinks to her knees and tries to comfort her. “Eda, they’ve taken him. They’ve taken Wink.”

  “No, it can’t be true,” Andromeda shakes her head in stubborn denial.

  “I woke up to feed him and he was missing from his crib,” Midge’s words are nearly indecipherable in between her sobs. “The room smelled of salt and the sea, it has to have been one of them. The god’s cursed Mistborn.”

  “It will be alright,” Andromeda pats her sister’s back helplessly. “We’ll get Wink back, I promise.”

  “The villagers are gathering a search,” Ezra kneels beside Andromeda and talks to her sister like she’s a trapped animal or perhaps a small, fragile child. “If there are signs of a Taking, they’ll find them.”

  “Why aren’t you going with them?” Midge snaps at him, her violet eyes storm clouds of fury. “Why weren’t you here to protect us? You’re always out drinking!”

  Ezra swallows hard, his mouth opening and closing uselessly like a fish out of water choking on air.

  “I will aid in the search,” Andromeda announces as she pushes a mahogany curl off of Midge’s tearstained face. “Will you be alright? Does Father know?”

  “Father,” Midge echoes faintly as her face pales even lighter. “This will crush him and he is already so ill.”

  “Perhaps you can stay with him,” Andromeda suggests, “keep him calm.”

  Midge nods nimbly as if she’s waking from a trance to finally find a purpose, some small thing to do. She allows Ezra to pull her gently to her feet and follows Andromeda to the hut across town that she shares with their ailing father. Ezra guides her to a seat in front of the fire as Andromeda pops into her room for her aquaswift, the army-issued swords the king’s elite soldiers wield against the monsters of the sea. She’d grabbed it off the back of a merchant’s cart four years ago the summer she turned fourteen.

  It was Andromeda’s dream to join the famous Watierai Warriors, the king’s elite squadron of water soldiers. A dream that seemed farther and farther out of reach with each passing day and each reminder of her past and the peculiarities she has to keep hidden from the rest of the world.

  Andromeda’s sister watches her cross the room with a watery gaze. Andromeda nods briefly in what she hopes is a reassuring manner before slipping back into the morning mist.

  Andromeda has never felt at ease with others, always fearing that she will say or do the wrong thing. She’s never been like Midge, with her charismatic wit and self-confidence that allows her to mingle with others with ease. No, she’s always been the “other one,” the odd daughter. For years Andromeda heard the old women of their old mountaintop village whispering about her strange appearance and even stranger personality on market days and their harsher gossip about her possible parentage. On one occasion Father pulled Andromeda into an alleyway and wiped the tears from her cheeks and told her not to let the old hags get to her. She was his and she was loved more than life itself and that’s all that mattered. To the rest of the world Father was often described as brusque and unwelcoming in personality which gave would-be friends pause before approaching him but to Andromeda he’s always been kind and loving, both friend and father when she needed him. When her mother left and the whispers of the villagers grew Father packed them up and moved them clear across the island to a village on the western coastline. It’s been just Father, Midge and Andromeda ever since and Mother has never been brought up in conversation.

  Though she’s tried to fit in Andromeda still gets the occasional stare from a nosy vill
ager or two and to her detriment she’s inherited bits and pieces of Father’s difficult personality while Midge takes after their mother she’s sure, though Andromeda doesn’t remember Mother enough to say for sure.

  ❖

  Andromeda joins the men of the village in the village square and a few of them spare glances at her before snorting and nodding in her direction to their friends in a what does she think she’s doing manner. Others, some of the older fishermen of the village just tip their chins in acknowledgment. They know Andromeda can hold her own as well as any man. Before Father became ill Andromeda had proven herself to the local militia and been enlisted in the army, one of the few women in Vacantia granted such a privilege. She’s quick on her feet and flawless with weaponry and she could flay most of the men standing in the village square before they had a chance to blink or reach for their homemade weapons.

  The village chancellor clears his throat at the head of the group, “we all know why we have been summoned here at this early hour. A child, one of our own, has been taken by the sea. We need to scour the shore for any signs of the Mistborn witch that stole the child. We can only hope she and the child have not gotten far.”

  A few rowdy men shout and jeer about how they’ll filet the Mistborn witch and cook her for dinner after they catch her but Andromeda hangs back and rolls her eyes. She knows that none of them have ever even seen a Mistborn, let alone battled against them. Unlike the men who have joined the hunt for the sport of it, for the adventure, Andromeda has more important things on her mind than killing the monster. She has to locate Wink and bring him back to Midge healthy and whole. Losing Wink would destroy Midge.

  As one, the rag-tag group of Mistborn hunters pick their way over the rocky shoreline. The inky black rocks are slippery and jagged beneath Andromeda’s feet and they remind her of broken shards of glass.

  The others drift on ahead as she closes her eyes and breathes in the sea air. The sea has always called to Andromeda, invading her dreams and begging her to wade into the frigid depths until the shore is far behind since long before her father moved the family to the coast but she has always resisted the call. Blocking out the scent of the briny sea, Andromeda sharpens her senses to take in anomalies in her surroundings. The sea smells as it always does, salty yet moldy from the moisture in the air with undercurrents of fish swimming beneath the currents. Andromeda wouldn’t begin to know what a Mistborn smells like so she focuses in on the sounds around her. She pushes aside the wheezing breaths of the older hunters and the sound of thirty heartbeats pulsing in an offbeat symphony, past the sounds of the younger hunters grumbling about the rocks beneath their feet and the fog obscuring their view. She listens to the mist and to the sea beyond. The hunters can’t hear the mist inhaling and exhaling its’ stout breaths nor can they sense the drumming of the sea current as it crashes onto the shore. Andromeda can hear them both, can divide the sounds and absorb the little noises that get lost in nature. Other than a school of fish in the sea their surroundings are barren save for the cacophony of the hunters further ahead. If the Mistborn woman came through here, she’s long gone by now.

  Even though Andromeda has never laid eyes on a Mistborn, she can see her now: a sleek slim-bodied woman naked save for her long flowing hair and the netting made of mist and sea threads artfully draped over her curving thighs slipping beneath the sea’s surface with Andromeda’s baby nephew cuddled close to her chest.

  Why did the Mistborn woman chose Wink? What about him was so special that she slipped unseen into Midge’s house to steal him away? Was she that desperate for a child? And why do only Mistborn women steal children?

  Andromeda doesn’t even realize she’s turned away from the hunting party and stepped closer to the sea until she hears the sound of hooves thundering across the rocky shoreline. Through the mist a cluster of soldiers appear, blocking the path of the hunters. The soldiers wear grey trousers and black tunics all bearing the king’s emblem. The king of Vacantia’s seal is distinctive, yet similar to the king of Shroudania’s seal because they both proudly show the twin symbols of Zarouk, the god of creation and his sister Nalley, the land goddess. A starburst for Zarouk sits above a flaming cityscape for Nalley on both emblems, but Vacantia’s emblem shows off burning boats hidden beyond the cityscape while Shroudania’s emblem adds in shooting stars.

  Jumping from rock to rock, Andromeda dashes to catch up with the hunting party and rejoins them just as the soldiers reach them. The leader of the squadron is massive in stature and muscle with shoulder length black hair, a beard to match, and eyes that flash between coal black and lavender. His horse is equally impressive in both size and coloring, gray bodied with flecks of white across his strong flank. The horse tosses his head and snorts as if he’s sizing up the hunting party.

  “What is your business here?” the leader of the squadron demands. His voice, though commanding, is warm and taunting like he’s in on a joke everyone else has somehow missed.

  The Lilt village chancellor bows to the soldiers before him, “Forgive us General, one of the children in our village has been taken. We were searching for the Mistborn that took him.”

  “You didn’t think to call in the Watierai Guard?” The general asks. Andromeda rises to the tips of her toes to get a closer look at him. Despite his toned, muscular body or perhaps in spite of it, the man the chancellor has called General is barely passed boyhood.

  “No sir,” the chancellor responds regretfully. “We didn’t want to bother your fine troops so we thought we could find the child on our own.”

  The General groans and wipes his large hand down his face, “These sort of incidents are what our squadron was created for. How long has the child been missing?”

  “Two or three hours at best,” the chancellor’s voice quivers.

  The General’s nostrils flare and plumes of hot breath mingles with mist. “You’ve cost us valuable time by trying to find the child yourselves. By now the Mistborn that took the child is long gone.” He scans the faces of the hunting party, his lips twisting into a sneer as he takes in their coarse clothing and homemade weapons. His gaze passes over Andromeda then freezes and snaps back for a lingering glance. “Is that the child’s mother?” The General nods in her direction.

  The chancellor jerks his head to where the general is motioning as Andromeda nudges her way through the crowd. Narrowing his eyes angrily he opens his mouth to speak but she cuts him off.

  “The boy that was taken was my nephew,” Andromeda tells the general as she meets his gaze defiantly. She silently dares him to comment on her place among the hunters.

  The general’s hypnotic lavender gaze travels from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, passing slower over Andromeda’s curves before rising back to her face.

  “Are you with the king’s army?” The general asks and the question catches her off guard.

  “Not exactly. I would have been if it were not for my father falling ill,” Andromeda explains slowly. “I had to terminate my commission to tend to him.”

  “And did you turn in your uniform and weaponry?” A predatory gleam sparkles in the young commanding officer’s eyes.

  “I was never issued any,” Andromeda replies as her heart rate speeds up.

  “Is that not an aquaswift?” The general inquires as he points to the weapon sheathed at Andromeda’s hip. “I did not realize they were being publicly traded.”

  The blood in her veins turns to ice and her skin pales. “I found it,” Andromeda explains slowly. “It fell off the back of a caravan traveling through the village four years past. Soldiers haven’t had cause to come back through our village since then so I had no way of returning it to its’ rightful owner.”

  “So you claimed it as your own,” the general concludes with a taunting lilt.

  “Yes,” her voice drops to a whisper.

  “Do you know what the penalty for stealing from the king’s army is?” The general asks. All traces of amusement are gone from his features, rep
laced with a cold indifference.

  “Death,” Andromeda whispers.

  The general motions to the two soldiers flanking him on either side, “Take this girl into custody for transport to the capital. I’m sure the King and Queen will want to hear about this.”

  At the mention of the Queen fiery rage replaces the ice in Andromeda’s veins and she meets the general’s cold gaze with a feral look of her own, “Yes, take me to the Queen.”

  The soldiers grab onto Andromeda’s upper arm on each side and she fights back a smirk as they try to hide winces. She wants to tell them that them touching her feels just as unpleasant to her as it does for them but she refrains. Why give the squadron any more ammunition against her?

  In addition to Andromeda’s other peculiarities, another nail in her native village’s coffin of condemnation against her was her hatred for physical contact. It wasn’t for the reasons that they whispered about, although it is true that Andromeda’s mother never hugged her a day in her life. And though Father struggled to show affection, that wasn’t the reason either. No, Andromeda’s reason for stepping back or standing stiff as a board any time someone tried to hug or console her was simply because being touched doesn’t feel good to her. A simple gesture like a comforting hand on the shoulder instead feels like needles jabbing into her skin and finding crawling bugs beneath the surface of her skin. And the more contact with a person Andromeda has, no matter how many layers of clothing may separate them, the worse the sensation becomes until it feels like her entire body is a tingling, writhing, crawling thing.