The Truth of Things Unseen

The girl was about my age. She was sitting with her back to the Grendlewald, legs out straight in front of her, as though it were the most natural place in the world. Her hair was silvery white, and it floated around her head and shoulders. She wore velvet slippers beneath a blue-grey dress, and though it was cold, she did not shiver.

Her skin shone with a pale, steady light. Her face was so bright I could hardly make out the features, a hint of blue eyes, very wide-set, the suggestion of a nose. Her light cast deep shadows among the ancient carvings that moved as she tilted her head.

Catch a Fae and make a wish. Bind it with salt and seal it with silver. Everyone knows how it works. Some small part of me thought maybe I could wish for Hettie to come alive again. I could bind the Fae girl until she did as I asked, then keep her by me until she showed me where her treasure was hidden. Come down the hill triumphant with a horde of Fae gold, back to the warm house where Hettie would be waiting.

The girl was playing with some sort of golden ball. It hovered around her fingers, spluttering small sparks out onto the forest floor. Gobbets of fire fell on her dress, but they did not burn. With a tiny pop, the orb poofed out of existence. She made an irritated sound and rubbed her hands together.

There was an archway in the rock wall a little way off to the side, barely wide enough for a person. Climbing flowers leaned in towards her like little ghosts.

I crouched in the shadows beyond her circle of radiance, not daring to breathe in case she might hear me and startle. It was undoubtedly a Fae, but it was a girl too, not terrible or fierce, just a girl about my age, sitting by herself, playing with a ball.

I shifted my weight slightly. My foot made the tiniest crunching sound.

She froze, staring out into the darkness, then slowly got to her feet. The golden orb popped into the space between her hands and hovered there. She spoke, a short, bright stream of alien words like metal striking on glass. The light that shone from her face and hands brightened, still steady.

The moment was slipping away. Any minute she would bolt through the arch in the wall and that would be the end of it. Moving as softly as I could, I stepped out into her circle of brightness. She glared at me and hissed, glanced to the side.

I was nearer to her little archway than she was, to reach it, she would have to come towards me, it would be a race, and I was closer. She hissed again, half crouching. I felt the heat of her globe of fire, but it sputtered and went out. She spoke again, another stream of alien syllables. Her stare was from another world.

"I ain’t wanting to catch you," I said. "I’m sorry. You can go if you want. I’ll not stop you."

I moved further away from the door, leaving a way for her. She flashed me a mistrustful look, and there was fire in the depths of her pupils. She took a step towards the door but she did not run.

"Why are you here?" She spoke Mercian now, like me. Her accent was complex and lisping. "Are you not frightened of me?"

"I, I’m sorry," I stammered, but why was I here? How could I fit words around the feeling?

Hettie was dead, and I had no one left to go home to, and it was all my fault, and I had come up here in the darkness seeking something, anything different from the world of black flapping mourners and Hettie's paper-thin hands folded over a still and silent chest, following some vague sense that the world might be bigger than death, that there might be more somewhere, over the next hill, and the next.

Now here was this Fae girl. Something different. Something wild.

I fought the tears that started in my eyes. I struggled against the hot pressure of them in my cheeks. Was I not a man? How shameful that she should see me cry. I covered my face with my sleeve to protect her from my feelings.

"I ain’t crying." I hated the catch in my voice. I wanted to run from her and hide in the darkness, but at the same time, I needed her.

She came closer. Her brightness dazzled me. She rested one hand on my elbow and her touch felt normal and human, just like a regular girl.

“Something sad?” she said, and her voice was music.

"It were Hettie, she were my Aunt, she cared for me. She caught the darkening, and now I ain’t got no one to go home to and no place to be. It were my fault. I’m bad luck, see? I ain't got nothing and I ain’t got no one and it’s all my fault..."

The words jammed in my throat. The door inside me swung open and the pain and the loss rushed up out of me, into my face and my chest, and I could do nothing but crouch on the floor and wail silently, arms wrapped around my head. The pressure of it welled up in great hot waves that hurt with the weight of them, and she was there, kneeling beside me patting me on the shoulder, making little shhhh shhhh noises.

After a while, the pain became less urgent. It settled in my throat as a lump, still there, hard up behind every breath, but it was not my master.

"Are you thirsty?" she asked in her curious accent. It was so matter-of-fact, as though watching me cry had been an everyday event, as though tears were something normal. She pulled an earthenware bottle from her dress and popped off the stopper.

Everyone knows the stories about Fae food, but the tears had dried me out, and more than that, I just didn’t care. She nudged me in the ribs and I took it. It was water with something sweet in it, like honey or nectar. I didn’t want to stop gulping it down. The first swallow caught in my throat and smoothed away the pain. I drank, deep as oceans.

"Thanking you, M'am."

"You’re welcome."

When she said "You’re welcome" it sounded like "sure vilcomb", a hissing between the teeth, with plummy extended vowels that fell over one other on the way out of her mouth.

"What are you?" I asked, feeling foolish as soon as I had said it. What a stupid thing to say, anyone could see what she was, shining by the Grendlewald with the light of the moon in her hair.

"I am a girl of course."

I felt my cheeks reddening and I was glad of the pale light, but still her eyes were heavy on me, and I clenched my fists, willing the embarrassment to fade.

Then she laughed. "I’m sorry, I don’t have many people to talk to. You’re asking me where I have come from?"

I nodded. "You’re from in there right?"

"I am from across the wall."

"Inside the ring of stones?"

"It’s not really an inside. It’s a different sort of inside, if you see what I mean. Like a broken piece of outside on the inside. An outside-inside.”

She paused, watching me warily. I scowled, remembering my own ugly face. She was bright, and I was not. I must look like a monster next to her.

"What are you?" she asked.

I touched my fingers to my cheek. I felt the scars that the wheel had carved on me. The long crease that ran from my lip to my nose, the teeth poking through the hole, the ear that was mostly missing, the ridge that rippled across my cheek. I brushed my face with the hand that was missing the fingers.

"I was in an accident," I said, "when I was young. Luck cursed me, see? We fell, and my parents died, then my Aunt died. Now I'm here. You should probably go before something happens to you too."

"May I touch it?"

I tried not to flinch as she reached out and pressed the place below my nose, feeling my teeth through the gap in my upper lip. Her hand was bright but not blinding. Her fingertips were cold.

"If this happened to one of my brothers, we would hide it with a glamouring."

I looked at her, but her fingers were still pressed to my mouth, so I didn’t reply.

"Like a seeming," she went on. "We’d cover it up, but it would still be there, underneath, and there would be a cost."

"What cost?" I spoke over her fingers, voice muffly, and she laughed and withdrew her hand.

"A very bad cost. Imagine all the happiness you would feel, now turn that around and think of the opposite. Magic isn’t free."

“I saw you making a fire.”

“That wasn’t a real fire. If it turned into a real fire, I would burn too. I couldn't mend your face either, not without breaking something else even worse. You can't make something without breaking something.”

"I don’t think I would like that."

"Don’t worry, I couldn’t do it anyway. It’s quite difficult."

"Thanks anyway."

"You’re welcome." Sure vilcomb.

She was bright and I was broken. I was a fool and I had no words to say to her, nothing interesting at all. My mind was blank, I started to panic. She would go, and I would be alone in the dark, and there was a high cliff over there, and what was there left for me but the alehouse?

"Are you really cursed by Luck?" she said, not seeming to notice my expression.

"Everyone in the village says I am. I make the crops fail and the cows die. Sometimes it rains too much and sometimes it doesn’t rain enough."

"Hmmm," she took my chin between her thumb and forefinger and turned my head from side to side. "You don’t look like bad luck to me. Maybe the cows would have died anyway?”

“I saw Luck on the hill when my parents died.”

“Maybe he kept you safe.”

Ha, safe. My right hand went instinctively to the left, where the fingers had been carved away in the rock slide that had taken my parents and left me alone all those years ago.

“It would have been better had I died. Maybe they wouldn't have died.”

"Sometimes things aren’t what they seem." She frowned at me, "Not what they seem at all."

"Like you?" I said.

She laughed, a beautiful tinkling sound, followed by a kind of a snort that ruined the effect somewhat. "No, I’m just me, very ordinary."

"You’re not ordinary."

"Well, neither are you."

I noticed once again the flowers that covered the wall.

"The flowers are out. Flowers don’t usually bloom in the night time."

"Don’t they? I didn’t know. They’re always there for me." She reached up and cupped a blossom in one hand, but she didn’t pluck it. She let it rest back against the old stones.

I stepped closer to look, but she stiffened and glared at me, no longer smiling.

"Don’t come close to the wall, don’t touch it."

I froze, sensing the change in her. "I ain’t gonna touch it."

"It’s dangerous for you. This is not your place. You’ve heard stories?"

"Aye, I’ve heard stories."

"Good. It’s good that you’ve heard stories. You people should be afraid of us and not come near. The wall will bite you if you touch it. If you climb it, you'll die. If you follow me, you'll die, do you understand?"

She looked up. The moon was dipping low in the sky. "I have to go," she said. "Don’t follow me. Don’t touch the stones or you’ll be blasted to bits." She prowled towards the little archway with a thoughtless grace. Inside was perfectly black.

"Wait," I called after her. "Will I see you again?"

She hesitated by the archway. "No," she said. "You'll never see me again." She started to walk again, but then she paused, just inside the arch. I could see her frowning. "Wait here for me," she said. "I’ll try and come again, when the moon is narrow, but I might not be able to get away. Make sure you’re here, I’ll not come twice."

“Wait,” I yelled, as the door started to close. I wanted to thank her for being something new and different, but I was not clever with words back then and the gate was already almost closed.

Her light filled up the cracks for a moment and then was hidden. I blinked in the sudden darkness and when I could see again, the archway was no longer there. The wall was broken stone once more. Only the blossoms told me that she had been there at all.

Had I known then that I would one day fight her, with knives and shadows and dragonfire, perhaps I would not have waited, but I was a fool back then, with a fool’s heart, and everything I did was folly.