My name is Ashen Drelhart , a fifteen year old orphan who has spent most of his life in an orphanage lying east of the village of Viremont. I don't remember my parents, not particularly. But I do remember the stories they left behind. Or rather, the warnings as the villagers would put it.
They died when I was three. That's what the village elder told me, whispering like someone who does not wish to scare you. He said my parents went into the Duskwilds and didn't come back. Some people say they were stupid. Others say they were curious and the king, he says they choose their fate.
Either way, they're dead and these stories won't change a thing. I've lived my whole life in Viremont, a quiet village pressed between steep mountains and endless forest. We're surrounded by walls on three sides, and the last side opens into a valley, Duskwilds but no one's allowed to go far, to see or even wonder. Duskwilds stretches beyond the trees, into the unknown, the endless and the forbidden. The king, Lord Caelric Valemour sees it that it's not spoken about, thought about or explored. The king is not like the kings in the books of the past, or in the temple's stone stories. He does not wear golden crowns and sit on gem-encrusted thrones. He wears always black wool and iron brooches. Piercing eyes, piercing beard, and piercing tongue. They call him "The Overseer." I call him dangerous.
He explains to us the outside world is corrupted. Explains to us there are monsters at the back of our woods, creatures with scythe-teeth and hot temperaments. That the Duskwilds ate up civilizations. "The world's wickedness ends where our lines begin," he once explained to us during a morning prayer circle. The others nod, they always do. But I don't. Not because I think he is wrong but because I want to know myself, why he says so. That desire to know beats behind my ribs like a pulse every time. It's been there since I was able to walk. I sneak out whenever I can. Past the gate, down the narrow alleyway behind the dusty grain silo, where the guards never even think to look. I've memorized every rock, every root, every seam in the fence. And where I climb up high enough, I reach Watcher's Rise.
Watcher's Rise is only a hill. A flat knuckle of land that sticks up out of the woods, revealing you above the tops of the trees. From there, the whole town of Viremont looks like a nest, rooflines hidden in the scuff of the mountain, the village green rounded around the old water well. Smoke drifts from chimney stacks. Life goes on and beyond all of this is the Duskwilds. A sea of black-green trees rolling into the distance.
My boots drag against the rocks as I make my way to Watcher's Rise, the wind tugging at the edges of my scarf as I ascend. It is colder than it typically is for mid-autumn. The trees haven't yet turned, but the ends are yellowing. I rest at the top, pulling out my sketchbook—just a bundle of parchment pages bound together with string. It's crumpled, warped, and half-filled with drawings. Some of them animals I've seen in the forest. Some imaginary creatures from my nightmares. Lately, though, I've been drawing the Duskwilds. Or what I think lives inside them. They're different in appearance, color. Those I catch a glimpse of before they sprint off. I can only think of them to be wolves but not the little ones that roam along the outskirts of the village. These are bigger, heavier and smarter.
I don't tell that to anyone, of course. They'd call it foolishness and if it gets to the Overseer. I might as well be punished for even thinking about it. I take a deep breath, rubbing my hands together as the breeze sweeps across the grass around me. I pull on my coat, turning to a blank sheet of paper and start sketching. My fingers move automatically as I sketch the line of trees in the distance, the way they bulge and concave like waves. I sketch in the clouds above them, thick and low today. Drawing calms me down. It bridges the gap where many questions dwell. The question of why the king hates Duskwilds. Why the villagers glance twice when I mention it.
I pause, gazing out over toward the village. I can hardly make out the turret of the castle poking above the rooftops. The crimson banner waving in the wind. I imagine Lord Caelric staring out his second-story window, muttering to himself about how boys like me are a threat. A bird screeches overhead, startling me out of my trance. I look up and watch as it glides, it's wings spreading effortlessly wide. I want to feel like flying over the trees, to be able to escape all of this.
The sketch is now nearly finished. I put it below the trees, when I see something move in the Duskwilds. I lean close, my eyes scanning the tress below me for something. Anything.
Exhaling, I lean back. Maybe it's all in my head. I close the book and lie back on the grass, staring at the white sky, it's clouds streaming across it like milk. I let silence wrap itself around me. Sometimes it's sufficient. Sometimes I picture the world bigger than it is, and someday I'll walk directly into it.