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 creaturesskulking 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.
FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE 300TH MAIDEN SACRIFICE
Cressyda
THE MORNING BELLStolled from the Sanctuary’s tower. Thunderous clanging that shuddered through the vast building, rattling the rusty stones and causing the ribbons that hung from its ceiling to quiver. The bells swallowed every other noise: the whispered prayers of priests on the balconies; the scrape of brooms across the tiled floor; and the groaning of the doors as Cressyda slipped inside.
She darted down an aisle, her steps timed with the peals that shook the air, her head bent and shoulders hunched. By the fifth toll, she had opened a narrow door on the right side of the Sanctuary, and by the sixth, she was inside, closing it swiftly behind her.
The small muniments chamber smelt of wax and old leather. Its narrow windows allowed only fractured shards of light, their thin glass quaking with the muffled boom of the bells. Oak shelves climbed the cramped walls, filled with scrolls and records that would not fit in the racks at the back of the Sanctuary. At the centre stood a cluster of lecterns, their wood blackened, and upon them rested books, leatherbound, their clasps greened with age.
