Celandine by Steve Augarde

heared.’
    There was that word again: ‘Gorji’. Fin had used it – and it had scared him.
    They were obviously struggling to understand her, Celandine thought. So much for Miss Bell’s elocution lessons.
    Her knees were really hurting her, and she was desperate to stand up, but thought it safer to remain where she was for a little longer. She made another attempt to communicate, this time speaking slowly, quietly, trying to calm her voice, trying to match their own volume and speed.
    ‘What does “Gorji” mean? What is Gorji?’
    She could tell that this time they had understood. They looked at her in surprise, and then turned expectantly towards Pato, the one with the trident. He was obviously their spokesman.
    His head was tilted to one side as he regarded her, in puzzled silence. ‘’Tis thee,’ he said, at last. ‘
Thee
be Gorji. A ogre. One o’ they gurt giants.’
    ‘A
giant
? I’m not a giant – look!’ Celandine struggled painfully to her feet and immediately regretted her actions – for they began waving their sticks at her once more, hopping from rock to rock and shouting in panic. The whole terrible scene seemed likely to repeat itself, but this time she remained quiet and still, arms folded, until they gradually calmed down.
    She waited, assuring them by her manner that she was not going to make any more sudden moves. Once again they had surrounded her, but their attitude was less threatening than before.
    ‘You see?’ she said. ‘I’m not a giant . . .’ Then she felt ridiculous, because of course they were right. She
was
a giant.
    She was a giant, a great loud and lumbering thing. No wonder they were frightened. No wonder they didn’t know what to do. She looked over to where Fin was sitting, still halfway up the rocky hillside, still ‘shushing’ his finger.
    Her eyes were drawn higher, towards the dense line of trees that topped the hill. A slight movement along the ridge made her look – and then she had to look again. Faces . . . there were faces . . . lots of them . . .
     . . . a host of small dark heads raised above the long summer grass, eyes all staring down at her. Dozens of them.
Dozens
. Babes in arms . . . children raised upon the shoulders of adults, and all of them huddled together, standing on the ridge beneath the belt of trees. Watchful, wary, motionless. A whole tribe of them.
    Celandine felt dizzy all over again, as she gazed up at the silent gathering. A thousand questions battered away at the inside of her aching head, confusion upon confusion. How could all this be happening to her? How could this be? But at last she was beginning to understand the meaning of what it was that she had stumbled upon. This was another world. This was the secret thing that was spoken of in countless stories. This was the world that existed behind that first glimpse she had caught of Fin, so long ago – a world that had been hidden away, maybe for centuries, whispered about and rumoured for all time. And these were its people – the little people. She was looking at the little people.
    So it was all true. The muttered tales of tiny shadows that crept through the ditches at first light, the implements and items of clothing that the fieldworkers mysteriously lost when their backs were turned . . . such things always pointed to ‘the little people’. And the night lines that the local gamekeeper found on his stretch of the river that were later passed around at the inn for all to see – these too were said to be the work of the little people. ‘For who’d carve a fish hook out of a bit o’ bone, when they could be had three-a-penny from Moffat’s?’
    Here they were then, uncovered at last, living in the deserted woods on Howard’s Hill. It was too much to bear, too much to know. The crowd of little figures gazed down upon her, and Celandine realized that they were viewing her as they would view a disaster. She had ruined everything.
    She desperately wanted