‘Go to my cottage,’ said Tadrie in a low voice. ‘Use the longer path and stay away from the main square.’ With a hiss of annoyance, she added, ‘I suppose you’ll have to go alone. Who knows where that sister of yours is.’
Esmelie was probably wherever Ravie happened to be. Since last summer, Esmelie had taken to following the Governor’s youngest son around. It was clear she was smitten. Even Pap had noticed. Awaking one morning from a stupor, he had pointed a finger at his eldest daughter and said, ‘Watch yourself. I don’t want to be living with no whore.’ Esmelie had replied that she didn’t ‘want to live with a drunkard, but what could be done about that?’ Which had earned her a beating, though she had told Maylie afterwards that it was worth it.
‘I’ll need to speak with the King’s men,’ said Tadrie, pushing Maylie out of the back door. ‘Then I’ll come home.’
‘Wait!’ Maylie stumbled on to the stone steps. ‘Auntie, won’t someone say something about me to the King’s men? Surely folk must know.’
Tadrie’s jaw clenched.
‘Especially after what happened at the Juillespie’s cottage …’
Last moon, Maylie had visited the sickbed of old Grandpap Basie Juillespie with her aunt. She had been about to administer a tincture when a wafting shadow had caught her eye. Turning, she had screamed in terror at the sight of a red-eyed, keening woman floating across the room. When Maylie had tried haltingly to explain to her aunt what she had seen, Tadrie had sighed and muttered, ‘Must’ve been a banshee.’ Two days later, Basie died.
‘Perhaps some folk suspect, but ’tis none of their business,’ said Tadrie.
Maylie thought of the women’s averted gazes inside the house. They definitely knew something.
‘The King’s men are looking for those with proper magic,’ added Tadrie. ‘They want lasting Gifts.’
‘But I’m eleven winters, Auntie. I should’ve grown out of—’
‘Enough, May!’ Tadrie snapped. ‘Be off with you.’
She slammed the door shut, leaving Maylie standing on the back step in the chilled spring afternoon without a coat.
Maylie hugged her arms around her body and stamped her feet.
Whenever she mentioned the shadows – the Hidden People – a strange look would pass over Tadrie’s face. She insisted that Maylie must ignore them until she grew out of the Sight. ‘’Tis dangerous to speak to such creatures, May,’ she would say, as if Maylie did not know that already. But it was not always so easy. Maylie had not told her aunt that she often left out a cup of milk for the beast that lived in her father’s cellar, or that she sometimes waved at the shadow that liked to watch her from the forest. Not all of the Hidden People seemed wholly bad.
‘Hey!’ called a voice. ‘Are you Maylie?’
Maylie jumped. A skinny boy with brown, wispy hair trudged towards her. She did not recognize him and she frowned.
‘Your aunt sent me,’ he added. ‘I were waiting for my grandmam by our wagon when she came out front to talk to the King’s men. She wants me to walk home with you.’
‘I don’t need anyone to walk me home.’
He looked nervously behind him. ‘The healer were pretty firm about it.’
Maylie sighed. Most of the Silicia children feared the crochety healer who lived close to the dark forest. And they were probably right to; Tadrie was known for her fierce temper. ‘Fine,’ she said.
They set off on a trodden path through the smattering of cottages on the east side of the village. The boy was tall and Maylie had to jog slightly to keep up with his lumbering strides.
‘’Tis one fancy house,’ said the boy, nodding his head behind them. ‘I didn’t go inside, but I counted the windows. Six rooms. Plus two outhouses in the yard and a proper stable.’
Maylie shrugged. ‘’Tis the Governor’s house,’ she replied. The current Governor had been elected four terms in a row and his family had lived in the beautiful house since the first of his five sons was born.
‘The Governor of Pienzi has a normal cottage same as everyone else,’ said the boy. ‘Nothing so grand.’
‘’Tis Pienzi where you’re from?’ asked Maylie. She had assumed that he was a child of the shepherds or goat-herders that lived outside the village on the mountainsides.
‘’Tis right.’
‘Why’re you here?’
The boy kicked at a loose stone that skidded across the grass. ‘I’ve eight brothers,’ he said. ‘Too many children, so I were sent to livewith my grandmam.’ Before Maylie could ask another question, he added, ‘The King’s men are here to find folk with magic …’ He glanced sideways at her.
There was a pause.
