"Dreki" by Kathy Hoyle

Marta stares into the fissure, flinching as the heat blisters her cheeks. Her boy, Kristjan, has been missing for eleven days now, ever since the first eruption. 

All across the village, their houses are charred carapaces, resting on the snow like steamed mussel shells. Mothers tell their children, it is only Dreki, a dragon, waking from slumber. A story meant to soothe, but young eyes widen like startled fawns.  

The preacher herds them into the scorched church-house. He beseeches the heavens, Guð blessi okkur. But God does not listen. A fog of sulphur seethes overhead and the livestock withers in the fields, hooves raw with yellowing sores. 

The land is sliced. Lava simmers and rolls from the mountainside, searing welts into the ground. Red blood bursts from hissing pools like Devil’s breath. When they wake the next morning, the preacher has gone, leaving only his bible pages fluttering in the wind.

They group by the ice lake. They cannot cross. The darkness beneath would swallow them whole. The elders say they must go around, travel south to the shore. But these are people of the land, they know only harvest and pelt, not tide and hook. 

That night, they huddle in the empty cattle barn watching Aurora dance above them like an emerald flame. Fyrirboði, they whisper. An omen. 

Dawn breaks. They tether the dogs. 

Those on foot shudder when shadowed wolf-breath howls across the valley. Mothers tell their children, halda í, keep up, keep up! Marta drives the sled onward, tears flecking her face, still keening for her lost boy. Behind them, Dreki rumbles.

When they finally reach the shore - stomachs raw with hunger - a snarling blizzard whips away the last of their hope. 

There is nothing before them. 

Nothing but merciless ocean and a wide, aching sky. 

Kathy’s work is published in litmags such as The Forge, Lunate, Emerge literary journal, The South Florida Poetry Journal and Fictive Dream. She has won The Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Retreat West Flash Award and  The Hammond House Origins Competition. Other stories can be found in a variety of anthologies. She was recently longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 and her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions and The Pushcart Prize. She is a PhD student at The university of Leicester.