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When Thetis had seen five summers their mother decided to take her to the hag in the village down the valley.

It was early summer, the snow sitting like white hair on top of the mountain, the swallows swooping around the huts as they collected mud for their nests.

Nikko could hear his parents arguing as he came in from the goat shed. It was his job to take the nannies up the mountain every day, to nose out grass and brambles between the rocks. It was an easy job, most times, for the nannies were intent on eating during the day, and even took themselves home in the late afternoon when their kids began to call down in the village, leaving him free to bring down a pigeon with his sling, or even a hare sometimes, and watch the eagle climb the sky. Sometimes the wind seemed to sing among the cliffs, and those days he sang along with it, songs without words, for there was no one about him to hear, except the goats, who were more intent on food than singing.

No one in the village had forgotten that morning walk with his sister in his arms. No one had spoken of it. But from that day on, no other boys joined him and his family’s goats when they took their herds up onto the mountain. He could hear their voices sometimes on the distant slopes.
And mothers no longer looked at him speculatively, wondering about betrothal to their daughters.

Thetis was even more a child apart. For Thetis never spoke.

‘The Night Ones have got her tongue.’ His father’s voice was quiet, as though to make sure the neighbours didn’t hear. ‘Lying there in the darkness on the mountain. The Night Ones stole her mind as well.’

Nikko drew back from the goatskin that hung in the doorway. Next to him the fire snapped and sizzled. He could smell the barley bread under the cook stone, as well as the sweet pine smoke and the haunch of deer on the spit. His father’s hunting must have been good today. Thetis should have been outside with their mother, tending the family’s meal. But instead one side of the roast was turning black. Nikko turned the spit automatically as he listened. ‘There is nothing wrong with Thetis’s mind.’ His mother’s voice was a hoarse whisper, like a mouse scrabbling for cheese. ‘She can bake bread already, and grind the barley as well as I can. She helps me with planting too. She is the smartest child in the whole village! She watches everything I do.’

‘She watches, right enough. The child is always watching. It isn’t natural.’

‘It’s natural enough! What can she do but watch? No one talks to her. The children never play with her—’

‘And why should they?’ His father’s voice softened. ‘Take the girl then, if that will make you happy.’

Something tugged on his goatskin tunic. Nikko looked down. Thetis’s eyes were wide and troubled. She glanced at the doorway, then back at him. He bent down
and picked her up. Her clothes were as rough as his, but her skin felt smooth as honey and warm from the sun, and her hair smelled of barley. Their mother must have sent Thetis out to grind the grain in the quirn again, to keep her busy and out of the village’s way.

Thetis held up a crock of flour as though she knew what he was thinking. She put it down on the dusty ground and glanced at the door again, questioningly this time.

She’d heard. Somehow he had to make her smile. A butterfly fluttered past, then landed on a flowering dock plant. He pointed to it. ‘Once upon a time, the butterfly was a butter
sit.
All it could do was sit upon a rock. And then it learned the flying song.’

Thetis looked at him questioningly. He grinned. ‘It goes like this.’ He clapped his hands around her bony body as she clung onto his chest with her thin arms and legs.
Clap clap clap, clap clap clap, clap clap clap…

She tilted her head, and tried to copy the rhythm:
clap clap clap.
Somehow she managed to hold onto him with just her legs.

‘That’s it!’

Nikko grabbed her hands and began to whirl her round and round. ‘See, it works! You can fly too! Up and down you go, just like the butterfly.’

Another child would have shrieked with pleasure. Thetis’s mouth opened, but no sound came. Yet for a moment her face lit up, like the cliffs struck gold by the rising sun.

The voices were quiet inside now. Nikko put Thetis down and took her hand. ‘Come on. Let’s see about our dinner.’

She followed him obediently as he parted the goatskins and led her inside.

They set out before dawn, so early that only the cuckoo was calling. Thetis was silent as always, her brown eyes taking in every detail of the quiet huts as they trod down the track. Their mother carried a bundle of food to eat along the way, and a length of goat-hair cloth she had spun and woven as a gift for the hag. Nikko carried his father’s second-best hunting spear. A boy and a spear would be no match for bandits, but it would be enough to scare away a wolf or even a mountain lion who might think a small child a tempting meal.

Normally the oldest son would have accompanied his mother and sister on a journey like this. But somehow everyone took it for granted that Nikko was Thetis’s protector. Nikko wasn’t sure how he felt about this. Proud, perhaps, stepping out of the village gate with the spear, but uncomfortable too, that once again he was forced to behave differently from the other boys in the village.

Behind them the first of the morning’s smoke was puffing out of the huts’ smoke holes. They crossed the stepping stones over the stream, singing to itself, bright with snow-melt; past the scratchings where the women grew the beans and barley; and then down through grapevines and olive trees, their leaves green-silver in the dawn, with bees nuzzling at the olive blossom.

Thetis smiled and pointed at the flowers on the trees, turning to make sure Nikko looked too and appreciated their beauty. She’s still young enough to find the seasons’
change exciting, thought Nikko, with the wisdom of his nearly eleven summers.

And then the world became trees—pines and juniper—and rock, as they passed the tended lands of the village, into country held by no man, except the High King—land of the animals and gods.

Light spilled across the world as the sun rose. The dew became a cloud of mist, sparkling in the growing sunlight. They walked along the sunlit track until the valley narrowed again, and the trees created a roof of shadow overhead. Nikko held his spear more tightly.

Suddenly Thetis stopped. She pointed up the mountain, into the world of stones and scrub beyond the trees. Nikko caught his breath. A mountain lion lay on a rock, warming itself, gold as the sunlight. He hesitated. A lion’s pelt was valuable. No other boy in the village had ever speared a lion. But all he had ever hit with a spear so far was a goatskin ageing on a branch. Hitting hares with a slingshot was different from spearing a lion. A wounded lion might attack…but it was more than that. The lion looked like the king of the forest, so sure of itself it could sleep in the open.

He felt rather than saw Thetis shake her head. She clutched his hand and tugged. Nikko looked back. Their mother walked on, oblivious. He smiled at Thetis and followed her. Suddenly he found himself humming.

His mother looked up. ‘What’s that?’

‘A song.’

‘I haven’t heard it before. Who taught it to you?’

He wanted to say, ‘The lion. It’s a song about how it feels to be fierce and unafraid, and sit on a rock in the sun.’ But he just shrugged and said, ‘Someone.’

His mother bit her lip and tugged Thetis’s hand again. She was scared, Nikko realised, and not just of going out of their own village lands into strangers’ territory. She was scared of what the hag might say.

He might protect them against a lion. But some things were greater than he could help with.

They kept on walking. The valley grew wider, then widened even more as they went downhill. The track was white with dust, staining their bare feet, though the soil in the patches of barley on either side was red. Why does bare ground seem so much hotter than grass, thought Nikko, almost as hot as rock? The sun rose higher. The dappled shade was a blessing now.

Nikko would have liked to talk. But somehow talking to his mother now would exclude Thetis. Besides, what was there to say?

Another stream rippled in the sunlight, wider than theirs at home, the grass on either side short-cropped by animals. His mother nodded toward it. She sat on the grass while Nikko and Thetis paddled their feet in the water, and ate yesterday’s barley bread, already hard, and soft white goat’s cheese, hot from the sun. The taste of home was comforting, in a land of strangers.

His mother stood and brushed the crumbs from her tunic. They kept on walking.

Nikko could smell cook fires now, and the scent of goats. They rounded another bend in the track, and there was the hag’s village.

It was protected by the same kind of high fence that sheltered their own village—made of saplings and tree trunks bound with goat hide. The gate stood open, and through it they could see wood huts with sloping thatched roofs, just like their own, straggling up the hillside, the same cook fires and barley plots and olive trees. It was strange to see something so familiar but different too, all the things he knew, but in the wrong positions.

Children in ragged goatskins stared and pointed at the strangers, then ran giggling into their huts. The older boys stared without giggling, standing hands on hips as though to say ‘this place is ours’.

Thetis edged closer to their mother, her eyes taking it all in. Their mother lowered her gaze, as was proper for a modest woman, when there might be men not of her family about. Nikko lifted his chin. He was the man. ‘Which is the hag’s house?’ he said loudly, and was glad his voice didn’t tremble.

The nearest boy lifted his fingers in the sign against the evil eye, then gestured toward one of the huts, a little way from the others under the shadow of the mountain.

Nikko nodded his thanks. He began to walk up the slope, his mother and sister behind him.

The hag was sitting on her doorstep, grinding barley in her quirn, though when Nikko looked closer he saw it wasn’t barley grains at all, but green stuff, ground almost to a paste. She looked like any old village woman, or at least one with many sons to provide for her, for her dress was cloth, not goatskin, and she was well fleshed too. But her hut looked too small for a family, and had no goat sheds.

She ignored them, peering down at her quirn, till they were almost on her, then lifted her head and smiled. Nikko saw with a shock that her teeth were long and white. He had never seen an old woman with all her teeth. He gripped his spear. Had she charmed a wolf to take its fangs?

‘And who comes asking for the hag?’ The voice was strong for a crone too.

His mother held her fist to her head in respect. ‘Maronis, wife of Giannis, and my son Nikkoledes and my daughter Thetis, mistress. We humbly ask your aid.’

The hag stood up, showing strong feet splayed with age and work. ‘You are welcome,’ she said formally, as any woman would to a guest. She pushed aside the well-trimmed goatskin door, and led the way inside.

It was cool in the hut, smelling of flowers and the smoked meat and cheeses that hung from the ceiling beam. Nikko stared. The hag was rich, with so much food. A small fire glowed on the hearth, not strong enough to send its smoke through the smoke hole, so it stung his eyes and throat. Wooden stools carved with lion’s heads stood around the walls and a fine bearskin sat on the bed platform. Two big stone pots hunched by the fire and other storage pots were arranged next to the walls.

‘Sit.’ The hag waved her hand. She bent over one of the big pots by the fire and ladled out three cupfuls of something, then took some small loaves out of another pot. ‘Eat,’ she commanded. ‘There are no men in this house to be served first.’

I am nearly a man, thought Nikko, and I eat with Father and Aertes before Mother and Thetis, as is proper. But he wasn’t going to argue with a hag.

He sipped his drink. It tasted of flowers, sweet and fragrant. But the bread…he took another bite. He had never tasted bread as good as this before, sweet with honey and dried grapes. He saw Thetis’s eyes widen. She reached for another loaf, and then looked up at the hag for permission.

‘You like honey cake, do you? Take it, take it.’ The hag stared at Thetis thoughtfully. Thetis stared back as she bit into the cake. She seems quite unafraid, thought Nikko. Suddenly she put the cake down. She pointed to her teeth, then to the hag, her head on one side questioningly.

The hag laughed. ‘Ah, a watcher! I like that. And a questioner! I am a watcher too, girl. You want to know how I keep my teeth? Many would like to know that, but they don’t have the stomach to ask me. Will I tell you the secret?’

Their mother shivered. She seemed about to refuse when Thetis nodded.

The hag laughed again. ‘Do not worry, wife of Giannis. It’s no charm of mists and moonlight.’ She leaned forward. ‘It is snails.’

‘Snails!’ Nikko flushed. He hadn’t meant to speak.

The hag nodded, still gazing at Thetis. ‘Every spring, when there is no milk or cheese and the hunting is bad, when the rest of the village goes hungry, I gather snails down by the stream. I make broth with the meat and I grind the shells to mix with my barley flour. It is something my mother taught me, and her mother taught her. It is a secret anyone could share, if they would ask. Then they could keep their teeth too, even when they are as old as me.’

Could it be as simple as that? thought Nikko. Were all the hag’s charms wisdom that anyone could use?

The hag glanced at Nikko’s mother. ‘And now you want me to make your daughter speak.’

His mother unwrapped the goatskin. ‘I have brought a length of cloth, mistress. It is my best weaving—’

‘I am sure it is.’ The hag spoke absently. Nikko expected her to put on the apron of the Mother, as the headman’s wife did when she made the sacrifice at planting time. But instead she just reached out and lifted Thetis’s chin with two stained fingers and stared into her eyes.

‘Do you know why she does not speak, wife of Giannis?’

Nikko’s mother hesitated. ‘When…when she was born…my husband took her to the mountain. It was a bad winter, mistress, and so little food…’ Her voice stumbled into silence. Nikko wondered if she had ever spoken of her daughter’s birth before.