Flight of Eden

Chapter One

In all my years of life at Aikendal, I'd never once ventured to the outskirts of the forest that surrounded our village. I'd never felt the need to. We had everything we needed at the village. Plenty of water from the river, food from the farms, fresh game from the animals in the forest. We learned since we were young to not stray far from the sight, a rule I always obeyed. It wasn't so much my desire to follow rules, but more the stories they told us about what lived beyond the forest. Tales of huge, haunting creatures with slimy skin and jagged teeth that hunted in the night. I wasn't sure if they were real, but I didn't want to risk it. My younger brother, on the other hand, was far too curious for his own wellbeing.

Ever since he was old enough to talk, he asked me about Valdara, the world beyond the forest. I didn't have anything to tell him, and I told him as much, but he never let it go. He wanted to go on grand adventures and see more of Valdara than what our forest had to offer. I always thought his big ideas were that of a fourteen year old boy and that he'd grow out of it eventually. I certainly never expected him to act on his delusions of adventure.

That morning when I went to wake him and found his bed empty, I knew immediately he'd gone out to explore. It was only after I'd searched and called out for him in the nearby forest for over an hour that I began to grow worried. He usually stayed at least within earshot, and the fact that he wasn't responding meant he was either injured or deeper into the forest.

The chief of Aikendal scoffed at my concern, and immediately rejected my request to have some of the hunters go search for him. I should've known better than to expect him to help. My husband, Andreas, had gone missing only two years earlier, and no one ever did anything to try and find him. We presumed him dead after a week and held a small service, and that was that.

Hugo's mother had died giving birth to him, and my own mother died when I was six, long before Hugo arrived. Our father was far too drunk to know what was going on, let alone offer any help. So after two days passed, and my brother was still not home, I knew I needed to go looking for him myself. The chief had forbidden me to go looking, but I wasn't worried about what the chief thought of me.

Which is how I found myself at the edge of the forest, shivering in my thin jacket and cursing my little brother for getting lost out here. The trees began to thin out as I neared the end of the forest, until eventually there wasn't a tree in sight. Just miles and miles of barren land, with occasional dried up bushes and little bundles of plants that never had the water to grow. I had never realized how much protection the trees offered from the frigid northern winds until standing in the middle of an empty wasteland where the wind could roam freely.

"Where would Hugo have gone..." I muttered to myself as I scanned the horizon. It all looked the same to me, but I knew something would have stood out to him. I'd searched the entire forest, and he was nowhere to be found, which meant he had to have ventured further. I just had to figure out which direction he went.

Movement in my peripheral caught my attention and had me jumping to face what I was sure would be some dangerous creature. When I saw it was just weeds blowing in the wind, I let out a breath. I was about to turn away when something just beyond the bundle of weeds caught my attention.

The base of the large mountain range protecting one side of our village was about fifty yards away, and dug into the base of the rocks was what looked like a small cave. Normally, the river separated us from the base of the mountain, but out here the river had dried up. Not only killing any plant and animal life around, but making it a lot easier for critters, or teenage boys, to get into mountain caves.

I was taking off towards the cave before I could second guess myself. I knew that's the direction Hugo would've gone, and although exploring an unknown cave was the last thing I wanted to do, I had to look for my brother. The back of my mind replayed the stories we were told as kids, about the monsters that lived out here. I could only hope this cave didn't belong to one of them.