Harvest Read Free Page B

centuries following. The hydden went to extraordinary lengths to stay unseen. Their humbles or homes were
underground or in places humans could not reach. Their settlements were far from those of humans. There the hyddening arts developed to such a degree that a hydden was better than a deer at staying
unseen and faster than a snake to disappear.
    Then, in the nineteenth century, with the human industrial revolution, something extraordinary happened.
    Humans began to create buildings and structures within which, or between which, were spaces which they themselves could not see or easily visit. Sewers, conduits for water, ducts for service
pipes, the undercrofts and footings of buildings, streams and even rivers built over, the interstices of factories where no human ever went.
    These places the enterprising hydden soon colonized, finding it easy to remain unseen. So it was that urban hydden came into being, for the pickings were good from wasteful humans and the
structures sound and often very long term.
    There came a time when scarcely a human city in the world did not have its counterpart in the Hyddenworld.
    One of the oldest of these was Brum in Englalond, always its capital before the Empire sent the Fyrd to occupy and control that ancient land. They turned London into their garrison and sought to
sideline rebellious Brum.
    As human settlements spread and the first villages turned to towns and gradually some of those to cities, the humans lost touch with all that the hydden held dear: the elements of nature, the
movement of the stars, the diurnal rhythms of the seas, even the beginning and ending of the seasons, for Spring starts earlier than most humans realize, and Summer flees before they know it. Then,
too, Autumn is a mystery to them, and when Winter or Samhain begins on the last night of October and November dawns they run shivering to their houses, light artificial fires, escape the dark with
electric light and lose the benefits of the most sacred time of the year, when darkness descends and all things fall still to give space for thought and healing, worship and renewing.
    These things the hydden knew.
    So they were not surprised when the humans so far forgot their once-close companionship with hydden that even when, by some unhappy chance, they were brought face to face with a hydden, alive or
dead, they quite literally could not believe their eyes. If alive they said they must be ‘seeing things’; if dead, then the only explanation was that it was a dwarf, a freak, and
inexplicable.
    But the appearance of bonfires in the open, like the one now at Cleeve, was something else again. The violent earth events of recent months had so far disrupted human life that even the most
elementary of precautions against the humans seeing hydden were being ignored.
    In a world of fear and disarray such as now beset the humans, who among them was going to investigate a fire up in the hills? It might be dangerous to do so. It must certainly be made by humans
up to no good. No, turn the other way, pretend it is not seen, flee to places of greater safety.
    Even so, the Cleeve fire was bigger than they had ever seen before and as the evening wore on Bedwyn Stort spent long minutes staring at it.
    ‘I never thought the day would come so soon in my lifetime,’ he said, ‘when hydden could be so sure that humans would not venture to find them that they would dare light such a
fire as that in the open air.’
    He said this grimly and with little pleasure.
    ‘Which said,’ he continued, ‘I am inclined to wander over and join them to see if I can find someone who knows a privy way to Abbey Mortaine. We should go there soon, while the
way is clear of Fyrd.’
    ‘If it is clear,’ said Jack. ‘But they’re never far away. Maybe one patrol has been sent in the wrong direction but we can’t be sure there won’t be others
round the Abbey.’
    ‘No reason why they should be,’ said Katherine. ‘No one in the