Cressyda turned away, the soft murmur of the maid’s chatter barely registering. Fingers brushed and pinned her hair, then lightly dusted powder across her cheeks, but she hardly noticed. When the peach gown was drawn over her shoulders and cinched at the waist, she still did not stir. Her thoughts circled endlessly, replaying Samsel’s words over and over again, the truth of them sinking into her bones.
At last, the maid curtseyed and shuffled from the room. The latch clicked shut behind her into a stretch of silence.
Cressyda staggered a step, then another, until she reached the window. She clutched at the frame and stared out at the distant outline of the mountains. They rose in a jagged sweep against the paling sky, their peaks veiled in mist. Gloom pooled in their folds, while ridges glimmered where light caught upon stone. They seemed both immovable and alive, vast sentinels that watched over the city, older than the very Kingdom of Calestra itself. Cressyda had looked upon them her whole life and not known that they were part of her heritage, her home. For so long she had wondered where she had come from and who she was, yet the answer had been there all along.
She had Mountain blood. She had the Sight. She was one of the Mountain folk.
If that was true, then she had been born from those with Mountain blood. Her mother might be one of them. Or her father. Perhaps both.
An image unfurled of a young, sweet-looking woman wearing a cloche, her voice soft and breathy. It rose so vividly that for one dizzying instant it felt real. Longing choked Cressyda’s throat and made her chest ache. She had wondered about that woman for so long, imagining what her mother looked like, who she was and where she had gone. Finally, here was a glimmer of truth. For the first time in winters, Cressyda knew something about her past.
She had Mountain blood. She had the Sight.
It was not much, but it was a beginning.
Part Two
THE MAIDEN SACRIFICE
THE TALE OF MAYLIE
MAYLIE COULD NOTremember 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.
