Again, we were never to know.
But the legend spread, and the Little People preyed upon us as viciously as human beings. They set traps for us; they tried to lure us with music; they did not come in warrior bands; they were sneaks, and they tried to entrance us with spells which they could cast by the powers of their minds. They wanted to make the Taltos. They dreamed of becoming a race of giants, as they called us. And when they caught our women, they coupled with them until they died; and when they caught our men, they were as cruel to them to make them breed as humans.
Over the centuries the mythology grew; the Little People had once been as we were, tall and fair. They had once had our advantages. But demons had made them what they were, cast them out, made them suffer. They were as long-lived as we were. Their monstrous little offspring were born as quickly and as fully developed proportionately as ours were.
But we feared them, we hated them, we did not want to be used by them, and we came to believe the stories that our children could be like them if not given milk, if not loved.
And the truth, whatever it was, if anyone ever knew, was buried in folklore.
In the glen the Little People still hang on; there are few natives of Britain who do not know of them. They go by countless names, lumped with other creatures of myth--the fairies, the Sluagh, the Ganfers, the leprechauns, the elves.
They are dying out now in Donnelaith, for a great many reasons. But they live in other dark, secret places still. They steal human women now and then to breed, but they are no more successful with humans than we are. They long for a witch--a mortal with the extra sense, the type that, with one of them, often conceives or fathers the Taltos. And when they find such creatures, they can be ruthless.
Never believe that they won't hurt you in the glen, or in other glens and remote woods and valleys. They would do it. And they would kill you and burn the fat of your bodies on their torches for the sheer joy of it. But this is not their story.
Another tale can be told of them, by Samuel, perhaps, should he ever be moved to tell it. But then Samuel has a tale all his own of his wanderings away from the Little People, and that would make a better adventure, I think, than their history.
Let me return to the wild Taltos now, the hybrids who carried the human genes. Banding together outside the glen, whenever possible, they exchanged the memories, the tales, and formed their own tiny settlements.
And periodically we went in search of them and brought them home. They bred with us; they gave us offspring; we gave them counsel and knowledge.
And surprisingly enough, they never stayed! They would come to the glen from time to time to rest, but they had to return to the wild world, where they shot arrows at humans, and fled through the forests laughing afterwards, believing themselves to be the very magical creatures, sought for sacrifice, which humans believed them to be.
And the great tragedy, of course, of their desire to wander is that inevitably they carried the secret of the glen to the human world.
Simpletons, that is what we are in a true sense. Simpletons, that we did not see that such a thing would have to happen, that these wild ones, when finally captured, would tell tales of our glen, sometimes to threaten their enemies with the prospect of vengeance from a secret nation, or out of sheer naivete, or, that the tale having been told to other wild Taltos who had never seen us, would be passed on by them.
Can you see what happened? The legend of the glen, of the tall people who gave birth to children who could walk and speak at birth, began to spread. Knowledge of us was general throughout Britain. We fell into legend with the Little People. And with other strange creatures whom humans seldom saw, but would have given anything to capture.
And so the life we'd built in Donnelaith, a life of great stone towers or brochs, from which we hoped someday to successfully defend ourselves against invasions, of the old rituals carefully preserved and carried out, of the memories treasured, and of our values, our belief in love and birth above all things held sacred--that life was in mortal danger from those who would hunt for monsters for any reason, from those who only wanted to "see with their own eyes."
Another development took place. As I said earlier, there were always those born in the glen who wanted to leave. It was deeply impressed upon them that they must remember the way home. They must look at the stars and never forget the various patterns that could guide them home. And this became a part of innate knowledge very rapidly because we deliberately cultivated it, and this cultivation worked. In fact, it worked amazingly well, opening up to us all kinds of new possibilities. We could program into the innate knowledge all manner of practical things. We put it to the test by questioning the offspring. It was quite astonishing. They knew the map of Britain as we knew it and preserved it (highly inaccurate), they knew how to make weapons, they knew the importance of secrecy, they knew the fear and hatred of human beings and how best to avoid them or triumph over them. They knew the Art of the Tongue.
Now, the Art of the Tongue, as we called it, was something we never thought of until the humans came. But it was essentially talking and reasoning with people, which we did with each other all the time. Now, basically we speak among ourselves much, much faster than humans, sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes. It sounds to humans like a whistling or a humming, or even a buzzing. But we can talk more in human rhythm, and we had learned how to speak to humans on their level, that is, to confuse them and entangle them in logic, to fascinate them and to influence them somewhat.
Obviously this Art of the Tongue wasn't saving us from extinction.
But it could save a lone Taltos discovered by a pair of humans in the forest, or a Taltos man taken prisoner by a small human clan with no ties to the warrior people who had invaded the land.
Anyone venturing out must know the Art of the Tongue, of speaking slowly to humans, on their level, and doing it in a convincing way. And inevitably some of those who left decided to settle outside.
They built their brochs, that is, our style of tower, of dry stone without mortar, and lived in wild and isolated places, passing for humans to those new peoples who happened to pass their home.
It was a sort of clan existence that developed defensively, and in scattered locales.
But inevitably these Taltos would reveal their nature to humans, or humans would war on them, or someone would learn of the magical Taltos birth, and again talk of us, talk of the glen, would circulate among hostile men.
I myself, having ever been inventive and forward-looking and refusing to give up, ever--even when the whole lost land was exploding, I did not give up--more or less thought ours was a lost cause. We could, for the present, defend the glen, that was true, when outsiders did occasionally break in on us, but we were essentially trapped!
But the question of those who passed for human, those who lived among human beings, pretending to be an old tribe or clan--that fascinated me. That got me to thinking.... What if we were to do this? What if, instead of shutting human beings out, we slowly let them in, leading them to believe that we were a human tribe too, and we lived in their midst, keeping our birth rituals secret from them?
Meantime great changes in the outside world held a great fascination for us. We wanted to speak to travelers, to learn. And so, finally, we devised a dangerous subterfuge....
Twenty-si
x
"YURI STEFANO HERE. Can I help you?"
"Can you help me! God, it's good to hear your voice," said Michael. "We've been separated less than forty-eight hours, but the Atlantic Ocean is between us!"
"Michael. Thank God you called me. I didn't know where to reach you. You're still with Ash, aren't you?"
"Yes, and we will be for another two days, I think. I'll tell you all about it, but how are things with you?"
"It's over, Michael. It's over. All the evil is gone, and the Talamasca is itself again. This morning I received my first communication from the Elders. We're taking serious measures to see that this sort of interception can never happen again. I have my work cut out for me, writing my reports. The new Superior General has recommended that I rest, but that's impossible."
"But you have to rest some of the time, Yuri. You know you do. We all do."
"I sleep for four hours. Then I get up. I think about what happened. I write. I write for maybe four, five hours. Then I sleep again. At mealtimes they come and get me. They make me go downstairs. It's nice. It's nice to be back with them. But what about you, Michael?"
"Yuri, I love this man. I love Ash the way I loved Aaron. I've been listening to him talk for hours. It's no secret, what he's telling us, of course, but he won't let us record any of it. He says that we should take away only what we naturally remember. Yuri, I don't think this man will ever hurt us or anyone connected with us. I'm sure of it. You know, it's one of those situations. I've put my trust in him. And if he does come to hurt us, for any reason, well, that's going to be what happens."
"I understand. And Rowan? How is she?"
"I think she loves him too. I know she does. But how much and in what way, well, that's her story. I never could speak for Rowan. We're going to stay here, as I said, for another two days, maybe more, then we have to go back down south. We're a little worried about Mona."
"Why?"
"It's nothing terrible. She's run off with her cousin Mary Jane Mayfair--this is a young woman you've not had the pleasure of meeting--and they're a bit too young to be running around without any parental supervision."