THE TALE OF MAYLIE
MAYLIE COULD NOT remember a time when she had not seen the shadows. They were as much a part of her reality as the trees, rivers and mountains. They had always been there, lurking and watching.
In her earliest memory, she sat on a fur stretched out behind her aunt’s stone cottage, at the very edge of the Mountain village of Silicia.
The recollection was soft and hazy, and Maylie guessed she must have been around four winters old.
To her right, her aunt, Tadrie, plodded about the herb garden, while on her other side, her sister, Esmelie, skipped back and forth, singing a nursery rhyme, her voice lilting in patterns, her hands clapping a beat.
Maylie held a knitted toy, the fuzzy bumps of the stitches brushing her fingertips, then a dart of movement caught her attention.
She looked up. She saw the dark shapes of trees. And something else.
A flicker in the undergrowth.
It was a shadow. A creature.
Like the stooped animal that lingered at the back of the Sanctuary in Silicia’s main square, and the snarling thing that lived in the lake east of the village.
She understood that these beings were not quite like the livestock and wild animals that Mountain folk lived among every day. They were different.
Maylie watched as the shadow moved between the tree trunks, an impossibly graceful, slight figure. It looked exuberant and joyful. She laughed.
The creature stopped.
It seemed to turn towards her, its wavering shape taking form.
A flash of moss-covered skin and vine-like hair.
Maylie’s pulse thudded loudly in her ears and a bitter taste swamped her mouth.
Words appeared in her head, like intrusive thoughts: Hello, child.
It was a sensation so strange that it was almost painful. Maylie yelped and, suddenly, her aunt was beside her.
Tadrie’s round face frowned and her gaze flicked to the forest and back to her niece. She pursed her lips.
Then there were questions that Maylie could not answer and a lingering sense that she had done wrong. She wanted to tell Tadrie what had happened, but she could not quite explain it in her limited, childish tongue.
It was too complicated. Too strange.
And from that moment onwards, Maylie saw the creatures everywhere.
They scuttled in the corners of villagers’ homes and wandered about parts of the mountainsides.
Sometimes they looked a little like people and sometimes they looked a bit like animals.
Often, they did not realize Maylie was watching them at all.
She had to be careful to look away quickly if she caught their eye; their reactions were unpredictable: sometimes curious, sometimes excited and sometimes angry.
It was not long before Maylie realized what she could see – the Hidden People.
Ancient beasts that were conniving and dangerous.
Maylie sensed that her affinity with such creatures was unusual.
There were plenty of tales told at firesides about encounters with the Hidden People: stories of girls’ minds turned to madness, folk lured into tasting forbidden fruit, and children disappearing up the mountains, never to be seen again.
But Maylie did not need to be told that the Hidden People were not safe – she could see that for herself from the wicked glint in their eyes and the uproar they caused.
They frightened her. And it was a long time before she could bring herself to admit to anyone that she could see them at all.
Finally, in her sixth winter, just before the autumn harvest, Maylie ran sobbing to Esmelie.
She collapsed into her older sister’s arms, crying that the baker’s nephew, Rhomie, was getting a proper beating because the henhouse door stood open and a fox had been inside, wreaking havoc.
Blood, feathers and flesh were everywhere.
‘Calm down, May,’ replied Esmelie. ‘It serves Rhomie right for his mistake. He’s a bully anyway. Poor hens.’
‘But it weren’t him,’ cried Maylie. ‘It were the creature that lives in the common well in the square. I heard it laughing.’
Esmelie paused, her fine features creasing into a frown. ‘What’re you talking about?’
And Maylie could not hide it any longer. She told her sister everything, gulping and grizzling all the while.
As soon as she had finished, Esmelie took her hand and hurried her up the mountainside to their aunt. They burst through the cottage door and Tadrie turned on them with a scowl, chopped herbs laid out on the table before her.
‘What’ve I told you—’ she began, glaring at Esmelie.
But then she saw the state of Maylie. For the next few moments, she listened intently to her niece’s sobbing confession, her expression blank and unreadable.
Then she smiled. ‘You’ve got the Sight, May,’ she said.
‘I thought perhaps you had. All that crying when you were a babe and staring off into the distance.’
Maylie’s tears had turned to hiccups.
‘She has a Gift?’ asked Esmelie. ‘She’ll go off with the King’s men?’
‘No, ’tis just the Sight. She’ll grow out of it in a winter or so. No one’s going anywhere.’
Esmelie looked disappointed, but Maylie did not think she had ever heard anything so wonderful.
‘It’ll go away?’ she gasped.
Tadrie nodded. ‘I had a bit of it too when I were small. ’Tis common with Mountain folk. But keep it to yourself, mind. And certainly don’t tell your pap.’
Maylie barely spoke to her pap so she would not find that difficult.
‘The Sight will fade as you grow,’ continued Tadrie. ‘It’ll be gone by your tenth winter. Besides, ’tis just outlines and shadows. You shouldn’t get yourself all worked up.’
Maylie hesitated. She could see a lot more than outlines and shadows. But before she was able to say as much, Tadrie added, ‘Don’t go seeking out the Hidden People. They’re trouble. If they talk to you, ignore it.’
Maylie thought of the creature in the forest that dashed between the trees.
Sometimes she could feel its green, acorn-like eyes watching her.
And more than once she had heard its call: Hello, child.
Unlike some of the other creatures, it did not seem threatening.
A few times, Maylie had been tempted to answer back.
‘’Tis nothing to worry about, May,’ said Tadrie. ‘It’ll pass.’
Maylie decided to believe her aunt.
From that day onwards, she allowed herself to be consoled and only a small part of her fretted that perhaps it was more serious than her aunt realized.
As the winters passed, when she saw creatures skulking about the village or wandering the mountainside, she tried not to shriek or flinch.
She ignored their dark chatter and pretended not to notice their malicious misdeeds.
One night, she did admit to Esmelie that sometimes words appeared in her head unbidden.
Her sister looked confused. Maylie attempted to explain, but the harder she tried to describe it, the odder it sounded.
Finally, Esmelie squeezed Maylie’s hand and told her not to worry.
‘Auntie says you’ll grow out of it,’ she added. ‘In a few winters, it’ll be gone.’
Maylie prayed that her sister was right.
She spent her girlhood waiting for her Gift to disappear. Longing for it to ebb away. Because there was something else that she had not told anyone. Something worse than the Hidden People.
The people of Silicia were used to the growls and shrieks of dragons – those rumbling, echoing, snarling sounds that were as much a part of the mountains as the gush of streams and the crash of rocks.
But sometimes Maylie did not merely hear the hunting cry of wild, savage creatures.
Occasionally, she heard something else – an ancient tongue speaking words, deep and complex: Flesh. Blood. Death.