Beyond the Light of the Valley
by Harrison Kim
I sit by the river with my little gun, that I thought up from a stick. I pick a bowl of blueberries for Mom and Dad. They’ve cared for me in the yellow house as long as I can remember, for twenty-five years, they say and, when I have no direction and can find no purpose, they allow me to cry on my stuffed bear and find peace in the woods and the water.
I set the berries down and poke my little gun into the mud at the edge of the river. “Do Mom and Dad still want me?” I ask as I push.
My parents smile less these days. That could be causing their wrinkles. Dad’s face is as lined as the cliffs above the valley, the cracked heights that circle and push the sun. Mom’s eyes scratch red lines and grow thickness across the white. These eyes did cry, when I first was unable to read or tie my shoes, when I stayed too long within myself and became an only spirit. I never see those eyes cry now.
The mud retreats from my pokes, and I stop; I don’t want to make the mud angry. It could jump back out at me. That’s happened before. The mud squirted up right into my eye. To make the mud happy, I throw my little gun into the river. It floats, because it doesn’t like the water. I let it go for a moment, then wade out and save the wood from being hurt too much.
“Now, my little gun, we shall go and explore the sandbars,” I say.
I walk along the bank, carrying my half-full berry bowl, my bare feet soft on the grass. The grass is used to feet, Mom tells me. “But I cannot tell you everything,” she says. “You must learn to make your own choices.”
Part of me does choose, though. My heels don’t want to tread on the rocks. Those heels are the ones who decide. I follow my feet and watch what lives in the grass. The spiders and the flowers, a tiny waving lichen. A brown form moves under some dead pine branches. Branches don’t move except in the wind, and there’s no wind on the ground. I step closer. The brown form curls round and coils, and I see it’s a snake.
Its forked tongue darts, and its flat head sits on the coils, all striped green and yellow. This is a powerful thing, thick and tight, length all pressed down. Should I try and make the slither skin happy, so it doesn’t hurt me? The tiny little eyes shine hard and grey. Something pulls me, though. I’m scared to see it there, facing and staring. It’s like my life, morning after morning, another day all coiled up and ready to strike. I glare right back at the creature and raise my little gun.
My anger spirit shouts, “This is your place as much as his.”
“All creatures must try to live together,” Mom’s voice calls from my memory, but I don’t listen to her.
I throw my little gun into the air, as high as I can, and it comes down as commanded by the spirit of falling, smacks right on the snake’s skull. The copper-brown head turns blue, just for a second; the color becomes like the sky, and the blue flies right into me, to a place just above and between my eyebrows. The force pushes me back several steps. With that hit, I turn, grab my berry bowl and tear from the meadow as if hit by the little gun myself.
I rush to the river, hold my head under the water, pray that the river will cool the burning blue halo between my eyes. Yes, the water sends icy edges up past my ears. The blue halo settles, yet still hovers just ahead and above my forehead, between myself and my friend, the sun.
I run back to the house, all out of breath, for I am afraid, and I must tell. “I hit a snake with a tree branch,” I say to Mom.
She holds her wet hands up from washing the bedsheets. Her lips have thinned, red lines split them. The skin of her chin sags down.
“The creature may have been too heated,” her mouth says, as she wipes her fingers dry, “and needed water poured over it, to cool it down. Not your stick hitting it, to make it angrier.”
“I felt so hot. I ducked my face in the river,” I tell her. “I have echoes of slither form. Its colour is still in my head.”
“That’s the shock of surprise,” Mom says. She sits down slowly on the wicker chair. “And it, too, shall pass. You will need to stay in the house until it does.”
Dad’s mouth opens. “A legless creature like that never strikes unless it’s frightened.” He frowns at me. “For your own safety, you must let their spirits be.”
All the time I talk to them, the snake head peers out from between my eyes. They don’t seem to see it. Their ancient faces fade and shimmer, shaky, weak and pale. We sit around the table and chew our bean salad and berries.
All these years, I never noticed my parents were changing.
Today I see the world through another window. I am not sure in which direction this window faces.
“Do you think there’s imps in the trees?” I ask, because maybe one of those made me throw my little gun that was once a branch.
“Voices from beyond may tempt,” Mom’s voice answers. “But you have to try to be with us, in the real world.”
“There is spirit in all things,” Dad’s tongue says, “and that spirit wishes to live.” He whittles a face from a block of basswood. I watch his fingers, scarred and bent. “We all wish to live.” He holds up the carving. “This form was in the wood before I started,” he utters. “The spirit came first, but it was not in our world until I carved it.”
“Next time you see a serpent form, just leave it be,” Mom’s lips tell me. “Move your limbs back the way you came, that will take the fear away.”
I can’t agree. Through my blue view, I understand that if I did not go forward in my mind and spirit, if I did not throw that stick, I would be held forever in one place.
My parents are shrinking in their thoughts and in their life. They’ve lived forever in this house built of branches, wood and stone under the shadow of the valley. I’ve lived here as long as I can recall. Many suns went by as I wandered dreaming among the trees and woods, playing with the sticks and splashing in the river, observing every bird and flower.
Dad says I’m now twenty-five years old. Mom says that because of my nature, I will always be with them. “You grew up slowly into our world,” she tells me. “And now you are only half as real as you should be.”
“But, after you go, what will I do?” I ask her. “Where will I stay?”
“We hope you will be ready,” she tells me, “to be alone and carry on.”
I know everything grows towards death. I have seen the trees crack and fall. For Mom and Dad to die... I keep that thought to myself.
I wonder, why do my parents stay within this valley? Why am I never allowed to see what’s on the other side? I stare out the window at the massive red cliffs that rise from the valley edges. I wish I knew the world as simply as Mom and Dad. Everything I do affects something else, nothing happens on its own. I am never by myself, especially today, with this blue snake head in my view.
The head speaks to me inside that colour: “You are responsible for my presence and for all the consequences that will follow.”
“I am ready to face these consequences,” I say right back and out loud.
I lie on my bed of straw and twigs, gazing out the window, where all colours have changed. The heat increases. After a time, I hear something rumbling in the sky: thunder coming from the cliffs. Thunder like it’s burrowing under the rock, then thumping the ground beneath the house.
I rise from my warm yellow blanket with the soft and curly edges and touch my stuffed bear who lies beside me. Everything glows in a dim blue. My tongue licks my dry lips, and I sip some water from the bathroom glass. Finishing, I look up into the mirror and notice my face, all scaly and rough.
Lightning flashes through the outside behind me. I open my mouth and check my teeth which appear sharp and pointy. The noise from the sky falls louder. I turn my head, and the snake inside me turns its head, too. I pat water on my neck, to cool it down, then walk downstairs with stealth, to find out about the crashing. I think of my little gun, somewhere in the woods and wish it was under my arm.
“You have me,” the snake mouth says from within my head. “You are no longer a solo spirit.” My eyes see in the darkness, and my legs slither round the corners of my room. “And you can think up another little gun,” the mouth says.
I feel an urge to to set my limbs free. I rock my head back and forth, possessed by the fiery blue energy. Outside is untrustworthy, because it can change, like wood into a face. But if I don’t move my legs in a purposeful direction, I will never change myself. I must challenge my new spirit. I am not at its mercy. This is what the snake tells me, in its soft, whispery voice.
I focus on the rumbling, louder now. As I descend the stairs, I glance in Mom and Dad’s space, and they are asleep, two humps under the buffalo robe. Should I wake them? No, I do not want to make them sad because I’m leaving.
Even though I’m scared, I have my snake and my stealth as allies. Mom and Dad are settled in their bed and spirit. They are outside of me and older now, and they wish only to live in calmness. Better let them sleep together in their little dream world, while I take off into the real one. They will miss me, but they will have each other.
I open the door to the outer world. The sky rumbles, thunder clouds low, lightning over the hills. I stand at the door, gaze at the blue night and, as I do, the cliffs above the valley crack, a breaking sound across the entire circle wall. These cliffs are where I must go, at the edge of the valley. Beyond this edge, everything’s unknown.
The world changed after I threw my little gun into the air, and it smashed down on the slither fellow’s head. It was all my doing. My responsibility. I carry the actual form and colour of that moment, and that shape and colour draw me towards the thunder cliffs. Their protector rocks absorb the heat of the day, and cold creatures gather against the cooling sides, to stay warm and alive. I think of the rocks and the creatures crowding for heat, coiling and melding into one another.
The blue between my eyes gains intensity as I clamber up around the shale talus. Lightning fires directly into the granite wall above me, and a thunderclap splits the heavens. Is that a crack forming in the rock ahead? They say new life begins this way. I want to know what the spirits of the cliff have birthed within this electricity. A wind pulls me higher, as I start to climb towards that crack.
“Son! Son! Where are you going?”
A cry sounds from behind, from down the slope. I look back to see my father on Camacho, his horse, galloping the side trail along the talus, and his voice calls again “Come back! That is no place for a boy!”
I perceive his arms waving through a burning blue halo, the top of his tattered brown cap, his eyes lifting my way. His spirit wants me back, yet I have a soul of my own, with a snake head guiding. The now-fierce wind sucks me towards the cliff crack, which widens with each thunder crash.
“Son, we love you. You don’t need to climb up there!”
But I know I’ve hurt them for years, because I did not have the spirit that they wanted, the will or wish to take care of the orchard and the farm and most importantly, them.
“He’s always wandering, wandering in his mind,” my Mom’s voice said many times as I overheard from the stairs. “He’s a dreaming boy, caught between our world and the other, and what can we do to stop his restless ways?” And my Dad replied, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” and then I heard them weep.
I do not want to be a stone around their lives anymore. The force within me pulls upward. I almost turn back as I watch my father stop Camacho at the bottom of the cliff and beseech me.
As I continue to climb, his upturned mouth turns to anger. “You fool, all we wanted was to protect you!”
But I’m reaching forward, pulling my body up easily, like I’ve released a weight. The crack is just ahead, widening as another lightning strike hits, and maybe one hits close to Dad and Camacho too, I do not turn my head to see. The only thing I wonder is this: what did it mean when Dad said, “Son, we love you...”
I did not hear him say that ever before. The tone of his voice spoke truth. Should I go back to see if he is alright?
Then his words “You fool” echo through my head. That voice pushes out the question of love. I know now that there’s no reason to return.
I pull myself to the last rocky ledge and peer into the crack of the cliff. I see light far away on the other side.
“This is your direction,” says the snake-head voice that leads me.
I step forward into the crack. Beneath my feet I feel creatures slithering. Yet none squeeze or bite.
“This is the way,” says the voice. “Claim your own land and your own power.”
I twist my head from the cliff wall and make my way through the crack. The blue light leads me along the gap, towards a massive glow in the new direction, that turns everything red like fire or fallen leaves, shimmering from another edge. I feel my new body taking shape from my changed inner self, like the form Dad saw inside the block of wood, which he carved for me to understand.
In one measure, Dad was right. From this moment on, my parents will not be here to protect me. But there will always be the snake.
I touch my face and feel the roughness of my second spirit. Then I move towards the boundary of red beyond the valley.
Copyright © 2026 by Harrison Kim
