Chapter 58
Maylie
MAYLIE SAT WITH her head hanging, staring at the rough wooden floorboards beneath her feet.
She could feel Chrisanie’s concerned gaze on her, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.
She had told her tale and she was full of the guilt, pain and remorse that had plagued her for the last eighteen winters. It ran through her blood like poison.
‘I did a terrible thing,’ she whispered. ‘An awful, terrible thing.’
Dawn light glowed soft and bright at the windows. Another day.
Maylie felt hands upon her shoulders. Chrisanie was lifting her, pulling her to him.
‘You shouldn’t have held this secret for so long, May,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have suffered like that.’
Maylie tried to pull away from him. ‘Did you not hear what I said? Did you not hear what I did?’
She looked into her husband’s brown eyes, pale and shining.
‘I won’t pass judgement on you,’ he replied. ‘I weren’t there. But I know you, May. You’re a kind person – a loving mother. It must’ve been so hard.’
Sobs tore at Maylie’s throat. ‘’Tis the hardest thing I’ve ever done,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve thought of her every day since.’
She buried her face in Chrisanie’s shoulder and wept, breathing in his comforting, familiar smell of warm skin and wood chippings.
She cried for the baby that she had left behind and she cried for the girl that she had been – scared, weak and alone, barely able to look after herself, let alone someone else.
‘It happened so fast,’ she whispered. ‘I returned to the shack in the Pits and slept for days. When I’d recovered, I realized what’d happened – I realized that I missed her.
But when I went back to the castle, they wouldn’t let me past the gates.
They said I’d given up my rights. I almost went mad.
You see, I tried to get her back. I promise, I did try. ’
She was desperate for him to understand.
‘It were like losing Esmelie all over again. The grief doubled. There weren’t nothing left for me in Tormale after that so I went to the only place I could think of – to the mountains. I went home.’
The corners of her mouth trembled upwards through her tears.
‘That saved me. I came back to Silicia to find Pap dead and Tadrie’s cottage empty.
He’d tried to sell it, but no one wanted somewhere so close to the forest. It still had my aunt’s things inside, dusty and musty.
I scrubbed it and cleared the garden. Then villagers started knocking at the door, asking for cures – Silicia hadn’t had a healer since Tadrie – so I started mixing tonics and potions.
I wanted to help people. I wanted to do some good after everything that had happened. And then I met you again …’
Maylie could still remember her first sight of Chrisanie as a young man.
Kneeling on churned earth in the herb garden at the back of the cottage, her hands smeared with mud, she had heard footsteps.
Looking up, she had seen a tall, slight figure, the summer sun shining behind him through his dark, fine hair.
‘I’ve come to the Healer for a cure,’ he had said.
Then a shy smile had split his lips as he had added, ‘Hello again, May.’ And despite all the pain and shame inside her, Maylie had smiled back.
‘I’ve told you before I were heartbroken when you left,’ said Chrisanie. ‘Ever since I set eyes on you outside the Governor’s house when we were small, I’ve thought of no one else. I couldn’t believe it when I heard you’d returned.’
Maylie sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘You made me feel like myself again,’ she said.
‘After we got wed, I tried to forget about the past, but I couldn’t.
I were scared when I fell pregnant with Gredie that I’d feel bad again.
I didn’t think I deserved another baby. And it were still hard, of course – do you remember how little Gredie slept? ’
Chrisanie chuckled and nodded.
‘But it were different. I were older for a start, and I had you.’ Maylie took her husband’s hand and squeezed his fingers.
‘Looking back now, I can see that the first baby – my daughter – were unwell. I thought I were doing everything wrong, but now I know it just happens that way sometimes. It were a difficult birth and we were both damaged. Perhaps if I’d just waited a few more days, it would’ve all been different … ’
‘’Tis no use thinking like that, May.’
He was right. Maylie let out a shaky breath.
‘How did we never hear that Esmelie was a Maiden Sacrifice?’ asked Chrisanie.
‘She used a different last name in Tormale – pretending that she and Ravie were wed. They thought the Governor might come after them if they didn’t.
It were Esmelie Drucelli who were the Maiden Sacrifice that spring, not Esmelie Tuchi.
You would’ve heard the name, I imagine, but you wouldn’t have known it were my sister.
Esmelie is a common Mountain name, after all. ’
Chrisanie nodded sadly; then, after a pause, he asked, ‘Who were your child’s pap, May? Why weren’t he there to help you? He left you all on your own.’
A hot rush of shame flooded Maylie’s body. She let go of Chrisanie’s hand.
‘May?’
She knew she must say it. She dug her fingernails into her palms until they stung.
‘Ravie,’ she whispered.
Shock flickered over Chrisanie’s face before he quickly settled his expression.
‘I know,’ Maylie added. ‘’Tis terrible.’
‘How … how did that happen?’
‘I don’t know. It were a mistake after Esmelie were gone. An awful mistake.’
Everything in Maylie recoiled from the memory. Snippets would sometimes flash into her head unbidden if she was alone with a quiet mind, catching her unawares. They sickened her with their vividness. Normally she would try to chase them away with tasks and chores, but now she let them come:
A figure stumbling into the shack at night, reeking of ale, shouting for Esmelie.
Herself, standing, sobbing, shaking her head.
Two hands grasping her shoulders, clutching at her hair, calling her Esmelie.
A mouth pressed against her own.
Fingers untying her dress.
Her pain and sorrow too much to stop what was happening.
A body pressed against her.
Both of them shaking and crying, holding each other. Pretending.
Then the shame.
‘Ravie didn’t know about the baby,’ Maylie added, opening her eyes.
‘He left after it happened and I never saw him again. When I returned to Silicia, the Governor came knocking at my door one evening, wanting to know about his son. He’d heard nothing since we all left.
I told him Ravie had died with Esmelie from a sickness.
I couldn’t bear to tell anyone the truth.
And for all I know, he is dead by now. His drinking were getting worse and worse.
’Tis hard to recover from something like that. ’
Outside, lovetails could be heard chattering to each other at the edge of the forest. Soon the villagers of Silicia would rise for another morning. The night was over.
‘What do you think of me now?’ she whispered.
Chrisanie’s arms wrapped around her once more.
‘I love you, May,’ he said, his lips against her hair. ‘I always will.’
They stood still, holding one another. What had been said and shared settled around them, easing into the shape of a new reality. Then Chrisanie stepped back.
‘So you have a daughter?’
‘Yes.’
She had always known it, of course, but rarely had she ever let herself think of the baby as her own. She felt an ache deep in her chest, a longing to see her child.
‘And she’s the Princess of the Kingdom?’
‘Yes.’
Chrisanie blew out his cheeks and Maylie let out a strangled laugh at the strangeness of it all. Then they both fell quiet.
‘I must go to her,’ said Maylie. ‘Something is wrong.’
She thought of the hamadryad’s words: You lost a child. And you’ll lose another. She had ignored the warning of the Hidden People once. She would not do it again.
‘The creature in the forest told me that the life of my child is in danger,’ she added. ‘I believe it was talking about her – the Princess.’
Chrisanie looked uncertain. ‘You trust what it says? The Hidden People are fickle—’
‘I know that better than most. But I think it were telling the truth. The Hidden People abandoned me when I returned from the mountains; I’d offended them by not heeding their warning and leaving in the first place.
I didn’t care at the time; in many ways it was a relief.
But the hamadryad would have no reason to call to me again unless there really is danger. I think ’tis trying to help me.’
‘A hamadryad?’ said Chrisanie, his voice tripping over the unfamiliar sounds.
‘’Tis what the creature in the forest is called,’ replied Maylie.
‘I found notes in Tadrie’s cottage when I cleared it.
Records about the Hidden People. I learnt that the creature living in Pap’s cellar were a hobgoblin, and the thing in the lake, ’tis called a kelpie.
None of the notes were written in Tadrie’s hand – looks like several different authors over time.
I’m guessing I weren’t the only one in my family with a Gift like this. ’
Maylie thought of the small sheaf of papers tucked behind her herb notebooks on the shelf of their cottage, its edges yellowed and soft.
Sometimes, if she was alone, she would take it out and flick through the pages, trying to count the different handwriting styles, wondering secretly if any of them belonged to her mam.
‘Maybe Tadrie would’ve told me more about it one day if the sickness hadn’t taken her. She was always so adamant that the Sight would go when I grew up – as if she knew something. As if she were scared of it.’
Chrisanie frowned. ‘She were right to be worried. I’m worried too. The Hidden People have tricked you before, May …’
‘I know.’ She took his hands. ‘Do you trust me?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think there’s a real threat – something’s not right, I can feel it – and I owe it to my daughter to try and warn her.’ Maylie took a deep breath, ignoring the squeeze of pain in her chest. ‘I must go to Tormale. I need to leave. Now.’