“Looks like claws.”
Nimue nodded.
The memory squirmed in the back of her mind. She could still smell the onions in her father’s hair as she slept between her parents. It was the safest, warmest spot in her entire world, or had been until that night, when it all began: the visions, the visits, the spells and the terror, when that sickly sweet voice called her by name: “Nimue.”
“I was five years old,” Nimue began as she looked into the flames.
“Nimue,” the voice had whispered again. She climbed out of bed and walked outside their wooden hut.
“Hello?” she called out to the night air. The village had been so quiet. She remembered her bare feet padding on the dirt and her stomach humming like a fiddle string as the voice said again, “Nimue, why won’t you come?”
Nimue had asked, “Where are you?” The moon shone so brightly that night it lit a path through the village, past the Chief’s Hall and into the Iron Wood.
Unlike most of the children, Nimue had never feared the woods at night. Her mother was the Arch Druid of the village and her father, Jonah, a respected healer, so from a very young age they had taught Nimue about the Hidden. She knew they were very small and hid inside of things, like the dew on a leaf or the bark of a tree. And when they did show themselves, they were invisible to all but a few with special eyes. Lenore could sing songs that teased the Hidden into the light, the way soft strokes made sparks on a cat’s back. Nimue had never been given a reason to fear the Hidden. No one had ever told her that just as the Hidden could find her and speak with her, there were other things, darker, more terrible things, that could find her and speak with her too. At five years old Nimue considered the Hidden her friends, though friends she had never quite met. Which was why the voice intrigued her. It was warm. It wanted to play.
Nimue crossed the tree line and felt the pine needles under her bare feet. The hum in her stomach pulled her softly toward the voice.
Where are you, Nimue?
I’m coming. Be patient. I can’t find you. Nimue walked the moonlit path until she reached the dens, a rise of tilting rock slabs that glowed like a pile of gravestones under the moon. Even at her age, she knew the dens were off-limits.
“Why are you in there?” she asked. There was a pause.
“I need your help,” was the soft reply.
Nimue climbed onto the rocks that formed the dens, careful not to slash her bare feet on the very sharp edges.
“I’m here,” she said.
“I’m hiding from you.”
Nimue peered into a crevice between two large rock sheets, where the moon shone on a patch of dirt floor some ten feet below. She had always been a very good climber, and her small fingers found grooves in the rock that allowed her into the hole with relative ease. But there she was engulfed in a curtain of blackness that the moonlight could not reach.
“Hello?”
“I’m here, sweet thing,” the voice had said from the darkness. “Come closer.”
The hum in her stomach thrummed painfully as it pulled her toward the darkness. She realized that whatever was inside that darkness had made her come, had somehow drawn her there.
“You have your mother’s eyes,” it whispered.
Then a hint of black fur swayed into the moonlight, suggesting a creature inside the shadows in the shape of a bear standing on all fours. But it was bigger than a bear. It was bigger than anything she had ever seen. Its shoulders squeezed between the walls of the cave. Claws longer than Nimue’s arms slid into the light, and piggish eyes gleamed yellow in a face that looked slashed from a thousand maulings. Loose, bloody jowls hung from its smiling jaws, and patches of flesh were torn out of its long, thick snout.
Nimue screamed for her mother with her mind. The Demon Bear lumbered into the light, whispering, “Only the seed of Lenore can sate my terrible hunger.”
Nimue turned and slapped her hands against the wall, searching for handholds. Before she could climb, she felt the tips of three swords pin her to the wall. The claws dragged down her back. Nimue howled. They burned where they cut. She dared to look over her shoulder and watched the Demon Bear tasting her blood, like a child sneaking cream from the froth of a milk bucket. Then it giggled at her. Nimue’s bloody nightdress clung to her legs and back.
And then she heard her mother’s voice in her mind, urgent but composed. Call to the Hidden, Nimue.
I don’t know how! she had thought back to her mother. Help me!
I won’t reach you in time.
This shook Nimue into action. She closed her eyes and reached out. She reached out her thoughts to every rock, leaf, and branch, every grub, raven, and fox. She screamed to the Hidden with her thoughts, as the Demon Bear tasted her scent on the air, then dipped its head low, brushing the dirt with its bloody snout. Nimue could smell its rancid stench of death. The Demon Bear’s jaws unhinged and stretched to swallow her whole.
She kept calling to the Hidden.
The crevasse wall trembled under her palms and the hum in her stomach rose to a high pitch. The Demon Bear snorted and looked about as the cave bucked violently and dust filled the air. Nimue had heard a crack directly overhead. She looked up and saw a large slab of rock tilt forward from the pile. It fell, like the blade of a guillotine, so quickly there was no time to react. Nimue shut her eyes as she heard the wet, crunching impact. A terrible wailing filled the crevasse on a gust of hot wind before exploding into a thousand different screams.
After several seconds, Nimue finally found the courage to open her eyes. She remembered staring at the mighty slab standing upright before her. Its sharp edge had bisected the Demon Bear’s skull.
Nimue looked into the fire. “Nothing was ever the same after that. The scars never healed, which many in my clan took to mean I was cursed. Even my father’s eyes turned cold. He no longer held me. After that night I began to have visions, and sometimes they were so strong I would”—Nimue glanced over at Arthur, who was listening intently—“forget what happened. The spells embarrassed my father. They frightened him. He made me drink sour remedies, thinking they would cleanse me of evil spirits. All they did was make me sick. So he pulled away. Started drinking more wine. His moods became dark and violent.”
“What about your mother?” Arthur’s voice startled Nimue, but his tone was gentle and without judgment.
“She thought I was special. But I hated her lessons. We fought all the time.” Nimue chuckled dryly, then went silent. She felt shame rising up inside of her, and her eyes brimmed with tears. She turned away from Arthur so he would not see. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
Arthur opened his mouth to say something but clearly thought better of it. One of the logs on the fire snapped. They sat in silence.
Until screams cut the night.
Wailing. Harsh voices, carrying through the trees.
Nimue stood up and quickly stamped out the campfire, cloaking them in darkness. It was hard to tell how close the voices were. Another round of pitiful screams pierced the quiet. A lull. Then a rise of fierce cries, panicked howls for survival. The sound was dreadfully familiar.
They heard the ring of swords. Then, slowly, one by one the screams went silent. Nimue squeezed her fists against her eyes to fight her rage. They heard a single begging voice and then . . . nothing.