Chapter 48
Maylie
Twelve winters old
ON THE PATH ahead, Esmelie stopped and twirled, kicking up golden leaves.
She had sewn herself a new pinafore from one of their mam’s old dresses.
She was a gifted seamstress and though the fabric was faded and threadbare, Esmelie’s deft stitches had given it new life.
She wore it with such pride that it might as well have been a silk gown.
‘Can you see any firewood?’ Maylie called, trudging closer. They were following a path on the west outskirts of the village, gathering kindling.
Esmelie stopped spinning and staggered with a giggle. ‘I look like Pap when he comes home at night.’ She rolled her eyes skywards and belched.
Maylie forced out a laugh. She generally tried not to think of Pap and she could go whole days without setting eyes on him.
Each morning, she crept past his bedroom door on her way to Tadrie’s cottage, and each evening, she left out a plate of food for him to devour when he returned after nightfall.
The few times she did encounter him face to face in daylight, she would stand very still, stunned into silence, as if she had met a wandering mountain wolf.
In return, he merely glared at her, muttered some profanity, and stumbled off.
‘Did you hear the village tavern has barred him again?’ said Esmelie. ‘It were after they found him face down in Hedrie’s vegetable patch.’
Maylie winced.
‘Won’t stop him though,’ said Esmelie with a shrug. ‘He’ll just go off to Pienzi and drink there. At least we’ll have the cottage to ourselves for a few days.’
Maylie did not want to talk about Pap. ‘Any firewood?’ she asked again.
Esmelie folded her arms and puffed out her cheeks. ‘Why can’t Auntie collect her own firewood?’
‘She’s sick.’
‘She’s always sick.’
It was true. Tadrie had been coughing all summer and Maylie had started to feel worried. She had assumed the brighter, warmer weather would cure her aunt, but if anything, Tadrie was getting worse, her round, rosy cheeks turning grey and thin.
‘Do you like doing everything Auntie says?’
Maylie blinked in surprise. Her sister’s large brown eyes were without their usual twinkle of mischief. She was watching Maylie closely.
‘I’m Auntie’s apprentice.’
‘But is that what you want?’ Esmelie persisted. She stepped closer and added under her breath, ‘What about your Gift, May?’
Maylie and Esmelie did not often talk about the Hidden People.
‘’Tis just the Sight, not a Gift,’ replied Maylie quickly, though her voice wavered slightly. ‘Auntie says it’ll disappear.’
Esmelie did not look convinced. ‘Next time the King’s men come, you could go with them,’ she said.
‘You could leave the mountains.’ She stared off into the distance, her jaw clenched, her voice wistful.
‘I’d go if I had a Gift, the Sight – anything!
I’d start again somewhere else. I’d leave Pap and Auntie and everyone. ’
Maylie tried to push down a simmer of panic; her sister was prone to bold statements. ‘What about me?’
Esmelie leant forward and straightened Maylie’s ribbon. They had both been at a Sanctuary ceremony that morning, wearing their hair in matching braids tied with their precious pink ribbons. ‘I’d take you with me, of course.’
Maylie smiled in relief, but she glanced behind them at the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the mountains, and thought that she could never bring herself to leave.
Occasionally Mountain folk did move away, down into the softer lands of Calestra, trading thin air for gentler pastures.
Some of them sent back letters that they had prospered, but unspoken yet noticeable in their choice of words was the truth that life for Mountain folk in Calestra was hard.
Calestrans deemed them provincial, a people half pitied, remembered chiefly for the grim tradition that clung to them like a stain: the Maiden Sacrifice.
And Maylie suspected that most of the Mountain folk ultimately regretted their choice to leave, because how could they not?
To leave the mountains was to leave a part of yourself behind.
‘Esmelie!’ yelled a voice.
They turned to see a young man striding up the mountainside, short and stocky with dark hair curling into his eyes.
‘Ravie!’ Esmelie squealed.
She ran and leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist, showering him with kisses.
He laughed and raised his eyebrows.
Maylie watched with a queasy, curdled feeling. Ravie was thought to be the handsomest boy in Silicia, but his fine looks only made her nervous.
‘I’m setting traps,’ he said when he finally peeled Esmelie off. ‘I’ve a hankering to get myself a snow-fox paw. Want to come?’
Esmelie nodded, hooking her arm through his and leaning into his side. ‘Do you want to come too, May?’ she called.
Ravie’s frown made it clear he had not intended to extend the invitation, but Maylie shook her head anyway. She did not want to wander behind as they fawned over one another.
‘Auntie needs firewood,’ she replied.
But Esmelie did not appear to be listening. With a promise to return later, she strode away on Ravie’s arm, gazing up at him with bright, adoring eyes, her brown curls bouncing in the breeze.
The queasy, nervous feeling inside Maylie burned stronger.
Their aunt said that Esmelie’s love affair with the Governor’s son would all end in tears and Maylie worried that Tadrie was right.
But there was no use trying to warn her sister; Esmelie could be as stubborn as their pap, though she would never admit it.
Bending with a sigh, Maylie scooped up a gnarly branch and added it to her basket.
She continued along the path, snatching up twigs here and there, before drifting off to better pickings further along the mountainside.
She worked methodically, shuffling through crunchy, copper leaves with her gaze sweeping the ground, and she did not realize how far she had drifted until she felt the prod of a bare branch on her shoulder.
Raising her head, she saw that she stood at the edge of the forest.
Instinctively, she took a step back.
The villagers of Silicia stayed away from the forest. There were parts of the mountains that belonged to the wilderness and folk respected the boundaries. Only the foolish or desperate ventured into the trees.
Maylie had never wandered so close to it before.
She knew she should turn around and return to the path, but curiosity stopped her.
She thought of the creature that sometimes flitted between the leaves, and she lingered longer.
Unlike the other, shadowy Hidden People she saw around the village, this being had always appeared elegant, ethereal and perhaps even a little friendly.
Peering between the dense tree trunks, the gloom of the forest started to take shape.
Maylie saw straggly bushes and fern-covered slopes.
It looked like any other woodland: a tangle of moss, thorns and vines.
A few paces ahead, Maylie saw a fallen tree branch, long and curved, not like the spindly sticks and twigs she had been foraging from the mountainside.
Without thinking, she stepped closer, pushing her way through crackling brown nettles and bracken, wading into the forest.
Beneath the canopy of tall, bare trees, the air was hushed and quiet, but that was all.
No dragon came rushing out to attack her, and no mountain wolf leapt from the darkness.
Maylie picked up the fallen branch and tucked it into her basket with a triumphant grin.
She was about to turn back to the path, when something else caught her eye.
She paused and squinted. Then she grinned again.
Hurrying over the moss-covered ground, she ran to a patch of vegetation that looked like tugwort.
Kneeling, she rubbed the waxy, dark red leaves of the plant between her fingers.
It was tugwort. There were sketches of it in her aunt’s herbology notebooks and its prickly stem was unmistakable.
Tugwort used to grow west of the village by the lake, but Tadrie said she had not seen it for several winters now.
It eased eczema and itchy skin better than anything else.
Maylie grabbed handfuls of the red leaves and shoved as many as she could fit into the pocket of her pinafore.
As she climbed back to her feet, she spotted more plants that she recognized: milk scum, spotted pep and darque.
They were lush and plentiful, not like the scrubby, stunted patches Maylie had to forage from on the outskirts of the village.
She began filling another pocket with darque leaves, wishing she had her aunt’s shears.
While Maylie wiped her hands on her skirt, a quiver of leaves caught her attention. She assumed it was a bird, or perhaps a squirrel or a lovetail, but when she straightened up, she came face to face with a beautiful, terrifying sight.
Hello, child.
Maylie froze, her body turned to stone.
She stared at impossibly fine features etched into bark-like skin. Vines coiled like hair from a head and leaves fanned across two cheeks. The creature appeared half human and half tree, its limbs merging into branches, its ankles disappearing into roots.
It stood just a few paces from Maylie, which was the closest she had been to one of the Hidden People. She knew she ought to be scared, but she felt surprisingly calm.
It is time for us to meet.
Maylie opened her mouth to reply, but the words she wanted to say morphed into sounds and gestures of their own accord.
The response surged up from somewhere deeper than thought, bypassing language and logic.
Her fingers twitched in intricate motions, and her tongue shaped syllables she did not recognize: You have been watching me.
She stopped, shocked.
Her eyes stung as if she had been staring into the summer sun and her head throbbed with pressure.
She did not know how she had replied in the language of the Hidden People.
Her hands at her sides trembled and she stumbled backwards, her pulse drumming in her ears.
She felt suddenly unmoored, as if the ground beneath her no longer followed the laws of the realm she knew.
She shivered, not in fear, but from a sudden awareness that she had crossed a threshold she could not uncross.
You have been avoiding us, said the creature.
I was scared, Maylie replied before she could stop herself. Mountain folk were taught to remain cautious around the Hidden People, never giving too much away, but Maylie felt oddly safe with this creature.
It tilted its head to one side and regarded her with an unblinking green gaze. You have nothing to fear. There are those who will suffer directly, but it will not be you.
This must be the notorious, fickle speech of the Hidden People. Maylie felt so dazed by the fact that she was actually speaking to such a creature that it took a moment for its words to register.
Who will suffer? she asked.
But no answer came.
You have taken things from the forest.
Maylie touched her bulging pockets. It is a few leaves, she replied. Herbs that do not grow anywhere else. I meant no harm.
I know where you can find more.
The corners of the creature’s mouth were half raised in something that could almost be a smile. If Maylie did not know better, she would think it looked welcoming. She wanted to ask it what it was – a tree? A beast? A person? But she sensed such a question was not appropriate.
I would like to see more, she replied instead.
I can guide you through the forest. I can—
A twig snapped near by. Then branches rustled. The jade belly of a lovetail flashed above them as it pounced between trees.
Maylie yelped in surprise, panic thundering through her. She sucked in a steadying breath and told herself there was nothing to fear. It was just a lovetail. With her heart still pounding in her chest, she turned back to the creature.
But it was gone.
Maylie’s head swivelled left and right, her gaze raking through the darkness, but there was nothing there. Only bushes, ferns and tall, silent trees. Maylie bent and gathered one more handful of darque; then she turned and began picking her way back out of the forest.
In a few moments, she emerged into the soft, orange and pink of an autumnal afternoon. She blinked in the sudden brightness, her head heavy and blurred. Looking back over her shoulder at the forest, she could just make out something behind her, a silver shadow flickering in the gloom.
It was the creature again.
Return soon, child, it called.
The hairs on the back of Maylie’s neck prickled. I will, she replied.