Relocation
Fiction - by Joel Armstrong
Nicholas Ware waited a full two hours, shifting his boots across the dead pine needles, watching the rocky slope below, before he was finally rewarded with a view of the wyvern.
First the great head appeared from the cave mouth, crested with magnificent spikes. Then the lithe neck, tufted with gray-white feathers. Leathery wings unfolding like ship’s sails. A tightly scaled belly, trunk-like legs, wicked talons, its spined tail slithering among the boulders outside the creature’s nest.
Dread was the right word, in all its meanings. Nick understood the visceral terror of the villagers who had hired him, their anger over lost livestock. But the beast was also breathtaking and graceful, completely in command of its territory and yet completely surprising in a landscape punctuated with evergreens and birdsong—that otherwise looked exactly like Nick were back home in Colorado.
The creature stretched its neck to the sun, head swiveling, black eyes scanning. Then, legs and tail poised, it flung its entire weight into the air and took flight, flapping toward the valley.
Nick didn’t have long. He vaulted over a boulder, slid down loose stones and silt to the cave below. Where a wyvern in wilder parts would be hours hunting roe deer or seal, this one wouldn’t take long to pick off a calf from the nearby fields.
Such an attack had been his first sighting of the animal, two days after arriving in Kvalanssen. A massive shadow moving in and out of the clouds, the wyvern had dropped suddenly to sink its claws into an ewe that strayed too far from the farmyard. Her frantic bleating had evaporated in the air, hoisted into the sky and lost to the wind.
The clouds had been too thick to track the beast to its nest that afternoon, and Nicholas knew the wyvern wouldn’t strike again for another day or two. Like a python, gorging itself before coiling up in its den to sleep off its stupor. These keystone predators had extensive territories, and the neighboring towns had suffered similar losses, promised similar rewards for the monster’s carcass—or its relocation, Nick hoped. With such a spread-out area to watch, and with the mountains nearly impassable to the north, he’d spent the better part of two weeks tracking the creature to home.
The noon sun stood close in these hills, sweat trickling down his back, but the cave mouth gave off a cold, sucking breath. Nick’s hand tightened on the haft of his short ax. From careful observation, he was sure the wyvern was solitary, a male without mate or brood. But he had been wrong before: the still-healing laceration from his shoulder to his ear was proof enough of his inattention and arrogance. He assembled a torch from the rags and oil in his rucksack, lit it with flint and steel, and slowly entered the cave.
The stench assaulted him first, a blend of rotting bones and animal filth. Glinting scales lay scattered across the ground next to castings of impressive size— regurgitated masses of sheep’s wool and pig’s hooves. The wyvern had clearly lived here for months, longer than the villagers had reported its attacks. But why it had moved to the region was anyone’s guess. Perhaps a larger male had fought it off its territory. Or it may have accidentally flown across the border from a neighboring world and found itself in an unfamiliar land.
Whatever its past, it would have to move again. That or be killed by frightened villagers.
Nick nudged a papery tangle of shed wyvern skin with his boot. Two years ago he wouldn’t have believed any of this was possible. The only magic he believed in then was Rhino, the mundane and astonishing ability to imagine a respirator or a surgical valve in a three-dimensional space that didn’t actually exist and then to see it built before his eyes.
This instead was the stuff of fairy tales, a bedtime story he might’ve read to Evie.
Yet here he was, standing in a wyvern’s nest.
“Not kill the monster? You can’t be serious.”
Othvar studied Nicholas, one hand on his thick blond beard, a pipe in his other. As mayor of Kvalanssen, he was the unofficial head of the small council that had hired Nick to destroy the wyvern terrorizing the region. Other men and women sitting around the long wooden table carried weight in the neighboring towns, holding purse strings that would help pay the bounty for such a formidable predator. A fire roared in the wide stone fireplace at the far end of the town hall, the air heavy with smoke and beer.
“I’m very serious,” Nick said evenly. “Wyverns aren’t vermin. It won’t come back, provided we move it far enough away. This creature hunted somewhere else for years before it came here, and it will hunt somewhere for years after this.”
“But it’s a danger to people wherever it is,” the man from the town of Fiskthal said, to scattered grunts of approval.
“Hardly,” Nicholas answered, folding his hands tighter on his lap. The objections villagers raised never ceased to frustrate him, as if they were the experts, though they had approached him for his knowledge and professional services. The complaint was common among monster hunters, who often exchanged superstitions actually believed by locals they’d met, from basilisks that could kill with a single glance to dragons that could breathe projectile fire, far beyond the short bursts they really used for posturing and mating rituals. “We’re not talking about a cockatrice or a griffin,” Nick explained. “Humans are too big to be a natural prey, and I’ve never heard of a case where a wyvern attacked without first being threatened. From its strikes, we know it keeps a range of perhaps twenty miles, so there’s more than enough land for it in the mountains to the north without endangering neighboring livestock. It should be hunting mountain goats and badgers anyway.”
“Then what’s to stop it from carrying off my son?” one woman asked. “Our children aren’t any bigger than our ewes.”
“I thought there hadn’t been any attacks on people?” Nicholas turned to Othvar. “Unless the beast is already a mankiller, it likely hasn’t developed the taste for it.” The woman’s frown deepened, and Nick cursed himself for answering such a question with a behavioralist answer. “But of course the wyvern must be removed, and as quickly as possible. That’s why I’m here.”
“Perhaps you could tell us what exactly you’re proposing, Master Ware?” The town’s cattle doctor, a woman named Grethe with braided gray hair, spoke for the first time.
A helpful question. Nicholas nodded his gratitude to her. “The best way to disturb a wyvern’s territory is to destroy its nest. If we burn its refuse from the cave and spread around clothing and other items with human scent, it will look for a new home. To ensure it doesn’t settle in the same territory, however, we’d have to harry it into the mountains. We’d need as many people as we could muster in the fields to drive it north.”
“And that would end the attacks?” Othvar said. “The monster wouldn’t return?”
Nick hesitated. He hadn’t tested the theory, but surely the wyvern wouldn’t miss his regular clashes with farmers desperate to protect their lambs. “As surely as killing the beast would,” he said, meeting the mayor’s gaze.
“Why not kill the damn thing then?” The man from Fiskthal folded his arms.
“Because it will fight back more fiercely the more we threaten it,” Nick spoke firmly. “That’s the nature of things. Chasing the wyvern off is a far safer alternative, for all the townspeople.”
“Killing it is far more certain that it’ll never take one of my calves again!” the man barked, to louder support around the table.
“Believe me, I’ve seen what these creatures can do.” Nick raised his voice, felt a slow churning in his gut. “There’s no wisdom in cornering it and arousing its desperation, if you value your life.”
“But have you seen what we can do? We are not afraid of such monsters. We are men of the north!” He thumped his tankard like a gavel.
Nick stood, palms pressed against the table, arms taut. “You don’t understand.” He reached for the right words but couldn’t find them among his tangled thoughts and memories. If they wouldn’t hear of their own safety, how would they appreciate his concerns for their ecosystem and the balance of animal life? How could he tell them of the wild beauty he saw in the wyvern’s form, the right to be alive and at home reflected in its intelligent eyes? “This isn’t a risk your families need to take.”
“That is a decision we must make for ourselves,” another councilman spoke.
“Then you can find another monster hunter to kill this wyvern for you.” Nick scraped back his chair.
“Peace, Master Ware.” Othvar waved a hand. “We requested your services specifically. Your work came highly recommended by our friends in Stafoya.”
Nick fought the urge to flinch at that town’s name, to snarl that their recommendation could go to hell.
“You’d best determine how highly you hold their opinion then.” He bowed to the table. “I’ll return in the morning for your decision. Good night.”
Several voices rose in argument, but Nicholas didn’t turn back to them. He crossed the hall, threw open the door, and went out into the night.
Nick wrapped his scarf tighter, his breath fogging in the air. Warm firelight spilled from house windows down cobbled streets. He thumbed tobacco into a pipe, struck a match, and drew in the heat with his lips.
The heavy wooden door of the hall groaned behind him, and the cattle doctor came down the stone steps.
“Wait, Master Ware.” Grethe smiled tentatively. “I wanted to thank you for your wise proposal to the council. You’re clearly a man of deep experience in these matters.”
“If only your neighbors thought the same.” Nicholas checked his next words, puffed smoke out through his nose. “They must do what they think best, of course.”
“The loudest voices don’t always hold the best opinions.” She turned away from an icy breeze. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“I’m from Dwolmascoth,” Nick lied. The woman had never heard of America, or Colorado. He’d learned from two years’ experience in the worlds beyond Earth that not telling the truth was simpler.
“Do you have accommodations for the night? It’s not much, but we have a loft in our barn. The straw is clean.”
“I already have a place to stay,” Nick lied again.
The woman looked up at the clear sky. “It’s a cold night. You’ll have to return here in the morning anyway.”
“Yes,” Nick agreed simply, shifting on his feet.
Her eyes traced the laceration down his cheek. “May I?”
He considered, almost said no, decided it couldn’t do any harm. He nodded.
Carefully Grethe reached up, her finger on the cut, turning his face toward the light. Her touch was warm, gentle.
He pulled back. Took his pipe from his mouth and blew smoke.
“I have medicine at home. You’ve cleaned it well, but it’ll scar if not attended to.”
“I’ve had worse,” Nick said.
Grethe waited, but he had nothing he wanted to add.
“I should return to the meeting. I know what course of action I’ll recommend to the council.”
“Thank you for your confidence.”
“I hope to see you again, Master Ware.”
She shook his hand, then opened the hall door and disappeared inside.
Nicholas gazed out into the darkness. She was right. It would be a cold night.
He was a fool.
He needed this commission. Had spent two weeks on the hunt already, and now he might not see a cent for his work. He shouldn’t have lost his temper, should’ve offered his best judgment but accommodated the villagers’ wishes, even if they were unfounded. The customer is always right, as they said back home.
Yet wouldn’t he rather walk away than repeat Stafoya?
Nick threw another branch on the fire and pulled his beaver-lined cloak closer. The firelight danced, chasing the shadows between the pine trees. Their boughs rustled in the wind, the sky above them scattered with a thousand stars. It still felt wrong that he knew these stars better than the ones back home. These were so much brighter, a daily necessity for navigation, the constellations as familiar as a street map. He’d never really paid attention to the stars on Earth, except to marvel at them on the occasional camping trip.
Was it night at home? Was Evie also looking up at the stars, wondering at them? Did the trees and crisp air smell like Christmas there too?
She was eight now, in third grade already. Living in Boulder, unless her mom and stepdad had moved her again. He hadn’t known the last time he saw her, when they went to the park and got ice cream cones, whether or not he was leaving Earth for good. He’d wanted to tell her that he was going away for a long time, that he loved her very much and wished it’d all been different, but that wasn’t a burden to put on six-year-old shoulders.
It had sounded crazy, even to him. A gateway to another world existed? And he was the one to stumble across it, the week he went hiking in the Rockies after the divorce finalized? He was days deep in the mountains, off-trail when he stepped between a pair of old but seemingly ordinary pine trees—and found himself ripped through time and space, stumbling out from a limestone archway on a wide, sandy beach under a different sun. Mind frozen, hands shaking, he made the leap back and forth between Earth and the other place several times before he allowed himself to believe it might be real. But mixed with the wonder and curiosity was a stomach-clenching fear, a choice that could divide his past from his future more decisively than pursuing this or that career, marrying this or that person: living in this or that world.
Sometimes Nick still couldn’t believe it. That many nights he no longer dreamed in English. That those first months of able-bodied, menial labor as a field worker or stable hand had, by a series of coincidences and chance friendships, given way to the dangerous, sporadically lucrative work of monster hunting. That he’d exchanged cubicles and medical engineering for chasing magic, studying and skirmishing with creatures he never could’ve imagined.
He’d told himself, drinking himself stupid in a brewery at the outset of that hiking trip, that he’d have to pick himself up by his bootstraps, reinvent himself. The Nick who slept alone, fantasizing about the woman he thought he’d spend the rest of his life with, who felt more and more anxious and distracted at work, who probably would’ve been labeled depressed by a therapist if he’d gone to one like Tracy suggested—that Nick wouldn’t survive the sadness he had to walk through.
Well, he’d certainly reinvented himself. On the rare occasion he saw himself in a mirror these days, he hardly recognized the man who looked back at him, with his scars, muscles, and untrimmed beard. Not that he missed the world of smartphones and Walmart. The longer he stayed away, the stranger Earth would seem if he ever did return. Never mind that his family probably presumed him dead. And the worlds out here had a challenging simplicity to them, a total escape that tramps living off the grid in Alaska could only dream about.
Yet he still wondered what Evie was doing tonight. Couldn’t help thinking what would’ve been if he hadn’t found the gateway. If Tracy hadn’t cheated on him.
Nick stood, paced around the fire to stretch his legs. That was no way to think. He should be planning how best to drive the wyvern into the mountains. Where he should look next for work if the council decided to dismiss him.
Probably he’d have to kill again. Not all monsters were as unlikely to hurt humans as wyverns.
But he wouldn’t repeat Stafoya. What was in his power not to repeat, at least. It had been his fault he didn’t make sure the monster was alone. He’d observed it enough to know she didn’t have a mate. But she left her den infrequently; he hadn’t searched it thoroughly. He should’ve guessed she was nursing a brood.
The townsmen that night gathered at dusk, wielding torches, passing around brandy, fortifying their courage. The aspiden had been spotted by woodcutters, its den deep in the forest but close enough to the village for stories to grow into fears. They reported no attacks on villagers or livestock, but Nick had needed the money, and agreed to lead the men in their hunt.
The dying sun glowed among the tree branches as they marched to her den, the men singing songs about heroes and dragons. Aspiden couldn’t see well in the dark with their eagle eyes, but before they even reached the cave the villagers were raising hell, banging their axes and pitchforks together. All Nick could hear of the beast was a guttural snarl seething from the back of her lair, a pair of animal eyes reflecting torchlight in the gloom.
The aspiden shrank away from their fire, the scaled hood of her neck flared out, striking out warningly with her venomous beak, her wings outstretched like an angel of death. She was breathtaking, untouchable—but her hatchlings lay blind and wormlike on the ground, their shrieks echoing through the cavern as the men hacked off their necks and stomped their corpses against the stone. Their mother called back with an enraged anguish, flashing sharp, intelligent eyes, the huge feathers of her crest erect.
Nick imagined someone holding Evie at gunpoint, and he couldn’t blame the creature for tearing open the blacksmith’s chest with her beak and throwing a farmer dead against the cave wall with her flailing wings.
The celebration back in town that night was somehow worse. The aspiden’s bloody carcass paraded through the street, its once proud feathers bedraggled. Drunken men cheering and crying, hailing the bravery of their dead neighbors—men who hadn’t needed to die. Music and dancing in the streets, a prepared feast of cakes and meats that would lie spoiled in the pale morning light when the town finally woke up. Before Nick left the next day, he saw the broken glass and wrenched timbers of looting.
He’d survived with only a claw’s red trail down his face, a mark inches away from leaving him blind or dead. That and a purse full of silver he felt sick at the thought of spending.
His finger traced the tender cut on his cheek. It still felt warm to the touch, even exposed to the cold night breeze. A sudden pull on his skin and it’d tear open again.
Perhaps he should’ve allowed Grethe to treat it. He would’ve if he actually thought it infected, wouldn’t he?
Perhaps he needed the scar more. So he’d always remember.
The stench was unbelievable even with a scarf tied around his face, the cave transformed into a scene from hell. Fire blazed among the dung and animal bones, smoke billowing in his eyes, the coughs and disgusted groans of the other townsmen echoing in Nick’s ears.
But deeper than the cacophony, or the sweat soaking through his shirt, dread twisted in Nick’s gut. This had better work, the man from Fiskthal had said to him that morning when they left the village, and Nick had only nodded, hadn’t admitted how urgently he felt the same. He’d waited a full ten minutes after the wyvern left his den for the day’s hunt, holding back the fidgeting townsfolk with glares and silent gestures. They’d wanted to rush the cave immediately, but too much noise too soon, the smell of smoke blowing in the wrong direction, and the wyvern would come right back to fend them from his home. But wait too long and the beast would reappear with his meal while they were still at work. He’d assigned two young men as scouts to follow the wyvern as best they could, but it was cloudy and the creature flew swiftly. They might not have as much forewarning of its return as Nick would like.
The conflagration swelled, scalding air wafting off the flames. Nick choked and squinted, looked around for anyone else still inside the beast’s nest. He grabbed one man by the arm and pushed him toward the cave mouth.
"We have to leave,” he shouted over the blaze. “Now!”
Nick ensured he was the last out, the sooty, wavering gloom of the den bursting into clear daylight. He tore the scarf from his mouth and bent over, gasped for air. Someone pounded him on the back, and his vision spun as he stood up. More villagers worked out here, busy but eerily quiet, overseen by Grethe as they spread cloths doused in vinegar and human piss, building fires to burn old rags. If the wyvern attempted to remake his home here, Nick would give back his payment to the towns without their asking.
He scanned the clouded sky, ears straining, heart clenched.
“That’s enough,” Nick called and waved toward the rocky slope leading up to the nearest trees. “We have to go. Everyone go!”
Townsfolk ran, shouting all at once, eyes down because of the loose, treacherous stones of the hillside. Nick pulled at stragglers gathering tools, urged on those who had been in the cave and were dazed with smoke.
He felt rather than saw the shadow, the heavy deepening of the silence in the skies. Nick almost expected an angry roar, but birds of prey only cried to communicate with their own kind—never while on the hunt.
The wyvern fell from the clouds, wings curled tight around its scaled body, its beak-like snout slicing through the air. Too fast. Nick had misjudged, and already the monster was unfurling, massive talons spreading like sharpened spears.
Nick swore and threw himself against the ground. A deafening shriek. The clap of rock toppling and splitting, human screams, a soft, nauseating thud. Nick was on his feet, his axe in hand, spinning to face the beast mere feet away.
One talon pinned Grethe to the ground, blood trickling down her face, his other claw clutched around a fissured boulder. Wings extended in a thirty-foot display, neck raised as the monster screeched into the air—his chest exposed.
Rage rushed hot through Nick, shame at the needlessness of it all. But he only had a moment to make the choice himself: death or life?
He took a running leap and yelled, his axe swinging.
The wyvern’s head darted down, sharp teeth flashing, as the side and not the blade of Nick’s ax-head smashed into its jaw. Its long neck lurched away, howling agony, and the beast pounced back on nimble feet. Nick rushed to Grethe’s fallen body as the wyvern craned forward, leaning the claws of his wings into the dirt and bellowing his fury. Nick stood his ground with his ax raised, screamed back his claim of the hillside.
The creature’s face turned, yellow eyes examining Nick, then shifting to the smoking ruin of his den. A primal, unmistakable grief in the lowering of his wings. A guttural hiss of unease, that one serious injury could be the end of flight, of hunting, of life.
The beast pushed back on his wings and cried loud enough to shake the air.
Then he catapulted up on his legs and flapped into the sky.
Grethe still hadn’t moved, but there wasn’t time to check her. Nick vaulted forward, waving his arms over his head, shouting over his shoulder.
“Give chase! Spread out. Make yourself as large and loud as you can.”
Frozen at first, then stumbling, the villagers surged down the slope, some with bells or drums, others yelling or singing whatever came to mind. Nicholas ran ahead, trying to keep pace with the wyvern. It stayed beneath the clouds, gliding on unhurried wings, screeching in frustration. A good sign, especially when they would come into the valley and the rest of the townsfolk would emerge from the woods to harry the beast toward the mountains.
But then the wyvern circled, swinging on the wind. Everything in Nick wanted to shout a halt, hold up his ax in warning. The dissonance of music and singing behind him faltered; a hoarse cry of alarm rose.
The wyvern flapped lower, his crested head surveying the smoking cave again, the loud nuisance of the villagers. In an instant he could dive, claws brandished like lightning.
A bitter squawk, then the beast pivoted, lifted higher into the sky on beating wings. Nick didn’t stop running, but the wyvern pulled farther ahead, soaring with determination.
Nick spread his arms out wide, feeling the wind against his face, the lightness of his body on the hillside.
He was flying off to find a new hunting ground.
Nicholas rubbed his hands together to keep off the morning chill. He’d waited almost two hours, the air thinner up here in these craggy mountains, the world slipping into autumn. He couldn’t see it among the pines, their needles evergreen, but the seasons were changing.
And there, at last, his quarry came into sight. Winging through blue skies, visible from miles off, the wyvern was returning home. Nick raised his spyglass: the beast held a reindeer calf in his talons, its white-brown fur streaked with red, its neck hanging heavy with immature antlers. No ewe or sow plucked from a field. A fresh kill from the mountains.
The wyvern’s cry carried in the alpine stillness, proclaiming for all to hear that these were his peaks, this was his kingdom. Circling down to his den, slowing in a flurry of huge wing strokes, he touched the ground. With one talon he held fast to his meal and with the other he shuffled into the cave, swallowed by darkness.
Such a graceful creature, the mayor had said earlier that week, when Nick met him at the town hall to receive his payment. Othvar had looked at him curiously. I didn’t see that before.
Nick hadn’t lingered in Kvalanssen afterward, only stopping long enough to knock at Grethe’s door. She’d worn a splint on her left arm and shoulder, but she assured him she would be all right. I know how to reset a bone. And you know how to face a monster.
She’d told him to visit the next time he was in the area. He’d said that might be a while.
You are going home? she had asked, her eyes shrewd, as if she were speaking of Colorado and not Dwolmascoth.
Nick had shaken his head, smiled bittersweetly. He’d heard reports of a manticore in Marahá and hoped to find a reward out for the beast.
The sun crossed his face as he started down the mountain, catching on the clean white cotton of the bandage bound to his cheek.
It would heal better this way.