Hidden Deep: Book 1 of The Hidden Trilogy (Fantasy) (The HiddenTrilogy) by Patrick Amy

Author:Patrick, Amy [Patrick, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Oxford South Press
Published: 2015-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Who They Are

“Your people call us… Elves.”

An explosion rocked my mind. It was impossible. It was crazy. And I knew it was true. “But… you’re not tiny.”

Lad gave me a gleaming smile. “That’s a very convenient misunderstanding… for us. We can thank the Elven playwright William Shakespeare for that. It’s why he masqueraded as a human in the first place. Before he wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream, most depictions of us were of human-sized beings, which of course, is dangerously accurate. Then Mr. Tolkein came along and got it almost right again. The myths are helpful though—it’s a lot better for us if people are looking for small cookie-making creatures and Snap, Crackle, and Pop.”

“There are a lot of you then—all over the world?”

“Our people live on most every continent, or at least they used to. Human cultures around the world have legends of encounters with our kind. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans told stories of Elves. In Iceland, they call us Huldufólk. In Germany they call us Alb or Álfar.

They referred to us as ælfe in Old English. The Scots call us Ghillie Dhu. The Maylay people of Borneo, southern Thailand, and Sumatra refer to us as Orang Bunian. Their legends are so close to the truth it’s scary. Some Elves there must have been careless.” Lad chuckled.

“Roman mythology called us Iele. The ancient Greeks described us as Nymphs and Dryads and Naiads, depending on where they spotted us. The Japanese know us as Erufu. In Poland, we’ve been called Psotnik. The Irish call us Aes Sídhe. Finnish people know us as Haltija, the Danish word is Elver, it’s Alv in Swedish. Many in Europe refer to us as Fae Folk. The names they gave us go on and on.”

Lad stopped and studied my face, waiting.

My skin was covered entirely in goose bumps. I suddenly understood how people must have felt when they thought they’d seen a ghost—the disconnect between what you believed was possible and what you saw before your eyes was soul-jarring.

“When you lay it all out, it’s obvious people have been running into Elves for centuries all over the world. Now that I think of it, it’s a little hard to understand how people could not know you exist.”

“Some well-placed glamour here and there has helped hide our existence.”

My head snapped back from shock. “Glamour? That’s real?”

“Absolutely—it’s one of our natural defenses. Usually, it’s not necessary, though. Most humans need proof of something to believe it.” Lad grew increasingly animated as he went on. “It’s good that people in modern times are so skeptical. Throughout history when we were accidentally revealed to people, their mass communication was limited to quills and parchment and word-of-mouth. Even so, the stories got around, becoming legends, without the aid of twenty-four hour news channels, smart phone cameras, and the Internet.”

“Wow. I can imagine what would happen if you were to be discovered in this day and age. The news would be all over the world in seconds.”

“That’s why my father’s so adamant about not interacting with humans.

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