They came after that night. I have no doubt whose fault it was. I guess you could call them the Elves. Wherever they came from though, I'm sure that it wasn't our area of the woods.
Our village was poor and uneducated, our people misguided. It had been like this for hundreds of years, according to our elders. It had been hundreds of years since the Great Wars, they said. It was during those wars, they said, that the elves came down from the north and the west and began to conquer the humans. We were their slaves to do with as they pleased, they said. They were cruel and merciless in their quest, they said. For a thousand years they had ruled the land, they said. And they would continue to rule eternally, they said.
I never believed it. The elders were always talking about how evil the elves were, how powerful their magic, how dangerous their grasp. They were always going on about how the younger generation was doomed to a life of poverty and misery, toil and hardship. It would always be the same, they said. Even the weather was controlled by the elves, they said. If the land was good, it was because the elves controlled it, they said. If the land was bad, it was because the elves controlled it, they said. There was no getting away from it, they said.
I never really understood what they were talking about for the longest time. It just seemed like dumb superstition to me, nonsense old people made up. I would always have a hard time believing them. But then I found out the truth.
I was out in the woods, deep in our hunting grounds, when I caught the scent of something strange. It was like nothing I've ever smelled before, nothing I could pin any name to. It was the smell of death, I realized afterward. And it was coming strongly from the north. I had gone that way before, but only very rarely. It was a dangerous place, no humans went there to live, only to gather wood and berries. But it was our territory, so the elders wouldn't complain if I went there. I never did though, even though it was only a few hours walk from where I lived. I never went there, because it was so empty, so deserted. It was like a haunted place. I had sensed this a long time ago, as a child. I don't know what it was about the place, but it just didn't feel normal. It was too quiet there, even when there was a lot of noise elsewhere. It seemed like there was something there, but I never got to see it.
This night, I had gone there though. I was bored, and sick of everything the elders said. I wanted some adventure in my life, even if just for a change. I had watched some people leaving the village very early that morning, going north. They had been leaving for weeks now. That's what usually happened when people left the villages, but I couldn't figure out why they were leaving this time. The last time I had seen them do this, it was because the crops and produce had all spoiled. We had made a killing, selling all that trash to the elves for a decent price. Strangely, though, I had never heard of any people leaving their homes before. It was always the farmers that headed north. And they would always stop by our village while they were leaving. It happened regularly, so we were used to it.
But these people were different. It was clear that they had left in a hurry, and it was clear from the tone of their conversations that something was wrong. I listened in on four or five groups of three. They were just random travellers, going about their day.
"Where are you headed?" asked the man in the far right corner of one group. He had asked this question to a woman standing in the middle of the group.
"Out to the north," she said.
"Why?" said her companion beside her. He looked quite suspicious, the kind of look that said he had something else to say.
The woman looked at him nervously. "We want to start a new life there," she said.
"I've never heard of anyone going to the north," said the first man of the group. "Why are you leaving your home? What about the elves? What about their magic?"
"There's no more magic," said the first woman. "Our people have found out the secret."
"That's impossible," said the first man.
"We have seen it. We have felt it," said the second woman. "There is no more magic."
"Well whatever the reason is, we don't want anything to do with it," said the second man.
"Are you sure about that?" said the first woman. She looked as though she was about to say something. The second man in the group of three looked uneasy.
"Look, you people can go live wherever you want, but I think we should head back to the village immediately. I don't want to be here when the elves get through this place."
"Do you know something?" asked the woman closest to him.
"No," he said. "But our views are probably pretty common. Now if you're all done here, I think we should go back. We don't need to be here when the elves get through.
