Emily's Saga

by Travis Bughi

  Without argument, the banshees were the worst. Emily’s mother often said that banshees were so infamous and strange that foreigners knew and feared them. Death brought the banshees out, and it was death that they sought, roaming the land and wailing while searching for another life to take. The last time a banshee had crossed the Stouts’ farm, Emily’s mother, father, and older brother had gone up to Lucifan—the famous city and the lifeblood of the Great Plains—to sell their extra crops. It had been a good harvest, one of the few, and her parents would not pass up the opportunity to make some extra coin. Extra coin meant the possibility of extra hands or even hooves. The Stouts had a family unicorn that helped them plow the field, but nothing got them ahead of the season like a minotaur. The muscle those beast-men could provide was expensive but worth it. If the Stout family made enough money from selling crops, they could hire one to help plow for the next season.

  So, her parents and Abe had traveled northeast to the market in Lucifan. Emily had been left home to care for Nicholas, because he had been too young at the time to make the journey. Emily had desperately wanted to go, having heard extravagant tales of the city from Abe. She’d dreamed of seeing a huge colossus, the glowing angels, and intimidating ogres. She’d wanted to see what a building made of stone looked like and how tall they could be built. More than that, she’d wanted to see the ocean, for her brother said that the city was actually a harbor, and it was the only place where one could walk down to the water.

  But that time had not been hers. Thus, she stayed to care for Nicholas while Abe went to help their parents. They left early in the morning, just before the first rays of light crept over the horizon. Emily watched them go and then went about her daily chores. She tended to the barn, fetched water, swept, and performed many other tasks that were required for the day. She remembered cutting her hair that day. Emily looked like her mother, from the small feet to the light freckles on her cheeks, and so she chose to groom like her mother. Whenever her wavy, brown hair grew too far past her shoulders, she would cut it back to just below her ears.

  Little did Emily know that, while she’d been cutting her hair, a few miles away, one of the neighbor’s sons had died unexpectedly. One moment he’d been pitching hay, and the next he was down on the ground, the dirt leeching the warmth from his body. His parents hadn’t found him soon enough, and a banshee materialized from his soul. It shrieked and wailed over the corpse, then set out across the plains to kill another. It was drawn to the living at the Stout farm and made it to the edge of their fields when the sun was low in the sky.

  Emily had just finished closing up the barn for the night when she heard the distant shriek carried by the wind to her sensitive ears—a shrill noise, like the tip of a pitchfork scraping metal. Her back stiffened instantly, and she felt a lump swell in her throat. Sudden noise out on the plains was a rare thing. The sound of wind, the rustle of plants, and the creak of the house were constant, but beyond that any other sounds were a cause for worry. She listened again, straining to make sure of what she’d heard.

  In the distance, a low, disembodied wail echoed across the plains. With lightning speed, Emily bolted from the barn and into the house, letting the back door slam against the wall. Inside the kitchen, she found her brother Nicholas, tilting his head to the side and straining to hear something muffled by the wooden walls. Shocked by his sister’s sudden appearance, he took one look at the terror in her eyes and started to cry.

  “Stop!” she said. “Shhh, shhhh. Don’t cry, Nicholas. Come here! Hurry!”

  The banshee was still a ways off, but Emily did her best to keep her voice down. Her mother had never told her how well banshees could hear, but Emily had no desire to find out.

  Nicholas obeyed his older sister and dropped the wooden blocks that were his only toys. He ran into her arms, wiping away his tears. There were only three rooms in the Stouts’ tiny house: the parents’ room, the children’s room, and the kitchen. Seeking comfort and protection, the two siblings headed for their parents’ room. No comforting mother or father waited for them, but they knew of no better place to hide. They huddled in the corner below the window, and Emily held her baby brother close. In the fading light, only the shrieks and wails kept them company.

  It was the longest night of her life. The banshee wandered through their farm, seeking the souls of the living, but did not find either Emily or her brother. Nicholas soiled himself in terror, and Emily promised not to tell anyone. For the briefest moment, she was tempted to look out the window and see what the banshee looked like, but the feeling passed quickly as the next horrid shriek shattered the air. After circling the house, the banshee moved on away from their land in search of another soul. It traveled past the Stout farm and found a wandering gnome. Without pause, the banshee took his life and then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  Emily and Nicholas never moved from their spot. They stayed there the rest of the night and only moved in the morning when the sounds of wind and creaks were once again the only things to be heard. Emily’s parents and older brother returned a couple of days later. They had done well at the market, though not well enough to hire a minotaur. They had purchased another unicorn instead, but the joy of their new purchase was short lived when they found out what had happened while they were away.

  Emily’s father sighed deeply at the tale, and her mother kissed her forehead, telling her how well she’d done.

  “Why do banshees come out of the dead?” Emily asked.

  “I don’t know, sweetie. It only happens on the plains,” she said. “It’s probably because everyone’s so lonely out here that, when they die and aren’t buried quickly, death itself comes looking for a mate.”

  Emily contemplated asking her mother what a banshee looked like, but then decided against it. It was better to let bad events waste away in the past. Perhaps no one knew what banshees looked like except the dead.

  That had been many seasons ago. Fortunately, banshees didn’t arise from mere animals, like thunderbirds or behemoths, and most families knew to bury their dead quickly. To add, there was enough of open space between the Stouts’ farm and its neighbors so that they heard a banshee no more than once a decade. Emily was just now turning sixteen years old, and no one thought it odd she’d only encountered one banshee despite living on the Great Plains her whole life. Abe was especially lucky as he had yet to hear one at all.

  Emily’s brothers were separated from her by two years on either side. Both of them had been born during the harvesting season, but Emily had been born in the spring. Their parents had stopped at three children and never once fantasized about having a fourth.

  “It’s all the help we need and more than enough mouths to feed,” Emily’s mother always said.

  Emily didn’t know her actual birthday. Calendar days were meaningless out on the plains, and families used the crops as a timetable. Emily had been born just before the migration of the behemoths—an omen that she was meant to travel—but her mother told her that omens were created more for entertainment than anything else. Emily secretly wished them to be more. Emily often dreamed of what lay beyond the golden hills surrounding her home and coveted any information she was told by wandering travelers. This season was no different, and Emily celebrated another year with wanderlust in her heart.

  This season was special. Now that she was sixteen, Emily was finally old enough to scout for migrating behemoths with her father. Behemoths were the greatest beasts on the plains, larger than a barn when fully grown. They walked on four short, stubby legs that barely kept their stomachs above the ground and were as wide as a unicorn was long. Each step they took shook the ground and left crushed grass behind. Their large heads stuck out on short necks that hung low at an even height with their stomachs. The only way for a behemoth to see behind it was to turn its body around. A male behemoth had a single, massive horn that sprouted from its nose, and all behemoths had a swishing tail that could collapse a house. Their brownish-green skin was le
athery and thick. It was a natural defense, shielding them even from a gunslinger’s bullet. Their only vulnerabilities were their stomachs and their tiny eyes, which were sunk deeply into their skulls. The stomachs were too close to the ground to be shot, so gunslingers had to be excellent marksmen, otherwise they were out of a job.

  Behemoths traveled once each year, right after the long winter season at the beginning of spring. They spent the majority of their lives near the far western edge of the plains, where the Forest of Angor started and where water was plentiful. When the winter months ended, just before it came time to till the fields and plant the seeds, the behemoths traveled due east towards the opposite edge of the vast plains where the ocean met the cliffs. One could not reach the water from anywhere except Lucifan, because the plains sat high above the sea on great cliffs. Unless you scaled the cliffs, you had to go through Lucifan to reach the ocean.

  But the behemoths did not come to the eastern side of the plains for the ocean. They had a much deeper purpose. There, Emily had been told by her mother, the behemoths mated and left back for home the moment the courting was done. They made the great journey back to the west to the Forest of Angor to give birth.

  Some behemoths died in the process—often the old, the sickly, or the malnourished. Emily didn’t know why those old ones bothered to make the journey at all, but her mother said that it was to cull the weak. All Emily could say for certain was the Great Plains thrived on behemoth deaths. The lucky plains families that found a dead behemoth ate well. The rich ones hired a gunslinger to kill a passing bull and thus ate exceptionally well. The unlucky ones found nothing, or found a carcass already scavenged, and survived off scraps until their new crops grew in. Emily’s family, unfortunately, often fell into the unlucky category.

  But their father promised that this season would be different. He mounted one of their unicorns and rode out daily in search of a dead behemoth. Two years ago, he’d decreed that Abe was old enough to ride out with him, and now Emily would be old enough, too. The only trouble was that the Stouts had only two unicorns, which meant that Emily had to take turns with Abe. On the first day, he’d ridden out with their father, and the two of them had come back with nothing. Now, on the second day, it was Emily’s turn, and she awoke that morning with a burning determination and jittery hands.

  For her, this would change everything.

  Chapter 2

  To say the least, Emily was excited that morning. When her father, Paul, shook her awake, she nearly leapt from her wooden cot.

  “Get dressed,” Paul whispered. “Meet me at the barn.”

  “Yes, Father!” She failed to whisper back.

  Nicholas and Abe stirred in their cots nearby, and Emily covered her mouth in embarrassment. Her father just gave her head a rub, smiled, and left. She heard the backdoor squeak closed as she was tying her shoes.

  She hadn’t left the room yet, and already her heart was racing. The chance to explore the Great Plains and ride unicorns with her father was the most exciting thing she could remember doing in a long time! It was a rare for her to travel beyond her family’s farm, so any such occasion deserved celebration, yet this moment felt special. It felt earned and momentous. Scouting for behemoths meant added responsibility, a sign of her growing and maturing, and she looked forward to proving her merit. She didn’t know what to expect, really, but as she slipped quietly out of the room so as not to disturb her sleeping brothers, she fantasized of extravagant scenes of riding through the plains with her father, chasing herds of behemoths just on the horizon. Maybe they would run into a gunslinger tracking a herd? Maybe she would see the gunslinger shoot! Now that would be something to tell her brothers!

  Once in the kitchen, she sprinted to the table and sat down to eat her breakfast. Her mother, Molly, was already awake and had prepared stale bread and vegetable soup. Paul’s wooden bowl was already licked clean, and Molly gave her daughter a disapproving glance as Emily shoveled her food home, giving as little time for chewing as possible.

  “Than’ co’!” Emily said with a full mouth before bounding outside to the barn, letting the backdoor squeak shut behind her.

  Paul already had both unicorns saddled and was packing away their bread for the day’s ride. He scratched the small beard—a tuft of whiskers that sprung only from the bottom of his chin—while inspecting his work. His eyes flickered in Emily’s direction.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Her stomach churned with anticipation, or perhaps half-chewed food, and she could feel her palms start to sweat.

  “Yes, Father,” she replied with a grin.

  With a day’s provisions packed up, they mounted and set out across the plains in search of migrating behemoths. Emily envisioned the two of them bursting from the barn like knights ready to charge, letting the unicorns kick open the barn door, and then galloping out across the farm. Instead, they moseyed along at a walk with Paul not even bothering to mount until they were clear of the barn. Emily rocked in her saddle, resisting the urge to press the unicorn’s sides and push it into a trot. The single, long horn on the beast’s head waved back and forth.

  The previous day, Paul and Abe had traveled north from the Stout farm. That search had yielded nothing, not even tracks, so now her father traveled west with his daughter in tow. Emily smiled and looked around constantly as the unicorns’ hooves crunched the yellow, waist-high grass. At each hill, Emily stood as straight as she could in her saddle, swiveling her head. They were barely out of sight of their farm, and yet she still twisted to look every which way.

  “Relax, Emily,” her father chuckled.

  “Sorry,” she blushed but could not remove her smile.

  Emily wanted so desperately to find a herd, or even better, to find a fallen behemoth, whether due to age, exhaustion, or a thunderbird’s attack. Her thoughts filled with visions of helping her father pack away the meat, going to get the unicorn-drawn cart, and loading up enough meat to last them all year. Her mouth watered at the memory of behemoth stew, and she smiled at the idea of enjoying a bowl every evening for a month to come. More so, she wished, for once, not to go hungry for another season in a row.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” Paul said. “You just might want to relax a bit, because it’s going to be a long day.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  Emily stopped her wild search and took a few deep breaths. After a moment to calm her nerves, she realized just how excited she was. To be riding on unicorns with her father out into the desolate plains was an exhilarating experience compared to her normal day of shoveling manure, washing clothes, and tending crops. This was an absolute thrill she could not begin to explain in words, and they hadn’t even found anything yet! More than once, she wondered what it would be like to do this every day.

  However, her father had been right. As the hours dragged on, her blood began to slow its pace. They trotted onwards through the never-ending sea of yellow grass—sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—always hiking the tallest hills so as to get a good look ahead. Behemoth herds weren’t necessarily difficult to spot, but the Great Plains were a vast spread of nothingness that could hide even the largest of animals. After a few hours of empty fields and skies, Emily began to think that scouting for behemoths was not the grand adventure she’d thought it was. In fact, the only noticeable thing they reached by midday was a gnomish village.

  Emily didn’t notice it at first, of course. She was following her father down yet another hillside in the middle of nowhere when he called out for seemingly no reason.

  “Hello there, Fred!” Paul yelled.

  Emily jumped in her saddle. Her head snapped forward to see that the hill they were walking on was actually a gnome hovel. A door had been placed in the hillside, and outside sat a gnome, casually smoking a pipe.

  “Eh thar Paul,” the gnome said without removing his pipe. “Though’ you be the Dylans, ‘til I seen yar younglin’.”

  The first thing Emily noted
was that Fred was hairy for a gnome, and that said something, because all gnomes were hairy. They were a short and chubby race with hair everywhere humans had it, just more of it. The tops of their feet were coated with a thin patch of fur, which could be seen at all times because gnomes never wore shoes. Even the female gnomes were known to grow mustaches.

  Beyond the hair, Fred looked to be an older gnome. His skin was wrinkled and dried—a gift from a lifetime on the plains—and his eyes held a perpetual squint. His nose looked too big for his face, but somehow that made him appear more friendly than comical. The gnome was shirtless, leaning against a bed of yellow grass alongside the door to his burrow.

  “You haven’t met my daughter, have you?” Paul commented, waving a hand back to her. “Emily, this is Fred Hoggins. Fred, this is Emily.”

  “Hello, Mr. Hoggins,” Emily nodded.

  “Mornin’,” Fred replied, returning the nod. “How goes the behemoth scoutin’?”’

  “Very well,” Emily grinned widely then paused, “but we haven’t found anything yet.”

  Fred huffed a laugh into his pipe, making puffs of smoke billow out of the bowl. Emily lowered her straw hat to hide her reddening cheeks but left her smile visible. Wise plains families kept good relations with all their neighbors, but gnomes were given an extra special touch. The little villagers were known to be shrewd, only trading with those they trusted and only helping those they trusted even more.

  “Welp,” Fred said, “ya’ can see by da’ grass here, ain’t no behemoth passed this way none either, so I suppose we’re even, younglin’.”

  “I’m glad you mentioned the behemoths,” Paul drew in a long breath. “You mentioned the Dylans, too. I take it they haven’t come this way then, yet, huh?”

  Fred let go a quiet chuckle again and paused in his grinning only to inhale a deep breath through his pipe. When he smiled once more, the tobacco smoke seeped through the cracks between his teeth.