He sat up, bothered by a sudden feeling of being watched, looked round for Cuthred, realized he had still not returned. He groped once more for the open provision box, hoping food and drink would put better heart into him. More milk, thick cheese and biscuit.
Seemingly sprung from out of the stone, a figure appeared before him. Shef found his mouth hanging open in mid-bite.
Chapter Twenty-two
It took Shef a moment to realize that the figure was a little boy, a young child. Yet he was hardly little. He stood about five feet high, no shorter than Udd the metalworker, and a good deal broader. He could have been a small man. Yet something in the earnest innocence of his stance suggested youth.
And he did not look like any man at all. His arms hung low, his head slanted forward on an impossibly thick neck. Small eyes peered out under heavy eyebrows. He was dressed in—nothing. No, he had on a rough kilt made of some kind of skin. But it almost vanished against his own pelt. The child was covered from head to foot in long gray hair.
His eyes were fixed unmoving on the piece of cheese Shef was in the act of lifting to his mouth. His nostrils flared suddenly as he smelt it, and thin drool began to run from the side of his mouth. Slowly Shef took the cheese from the biscuit he had laid it on and passed it wordlessly to the strange boy.
Who hesitated, not wanting to come closer. Finally he came forward two paces, in a kind of awkward shamble, stretched out a long gray arm, and snatched the cheese from Shef’s hand. He sniffed it, the nostrils flaring again, and then took it into his mouth with one sudden snap. He chewed, eyes closing in a kind of rapture, thin lips pulled back over what seemed to be massive canine teeth. His feet shuffled in an incongruous, involuntary dance of glee.
Finns can’t turn down cheese or milk or butter, so Brand had said. He did not think this creature was a Finn. But maybe it felt the same way about food. Still moving gently, Shef handed over the crock with the remains of Cuthred’s milk in it. Again the careful exploration with the nostrils, the sudden decision and the instant draft. As he—or it—drank, it bent its knees oddly so as to tilt its body back. It could not throw its head back to drink like a proper person, Shef realized.
Finished, it dropped the crock. The noise as it shattered on the stone seemed to startle it, it looked down, looked across at Shef. Then, there was no doubt, it said something, and the something had all the tone of “I’m sorry.” But Shef could understand not a syllable of what it said.
And then it was gone, whisking away down the path for a couple of paces, and then just gone, vanished, gray pelt merging with the gray stone. Shef scrambled to his feet and ran stiffly to the point where it had disappeared, but there was nothing to be seen. It had vanished like his own dream.
One of the Huldu-folk, Shef thought. You have seen one of the Hidden People, the people who live in the mountain. He remembered Brand’s tales of the things that pulled people underwater, the long gray arms stretching out to seize boats. And the tales Cwicca and his gang told, of men caught in the mountains by female trolls and forced to serve them. They had been telling one only the other night: of a great wizard, a wise man, who had made it his task to free some island in the Northlands from the trolls and the Hidden People. He had gone all over the island, saying the words of power and driving the creatures out so they could harm men and women no more. In the end he had had himself lowered down the last cliff on the island to finish the job. But as they let out the rope from above, a voice had come from the cliff itself. “Manling,” it had said, “you must leave some place for even the hidden folk to be.” And with that a gray arm had come from the cliff and plucked the man from his hold and hurled him on to the rocks below. It didn’t make sense, Shef had told them. Who could have heard the words but the man on the rope, the man hurled to his death a moment later? Suddenly the story seemed to make much better sense.