Read Online Five: A Maor Novel (Maor series) by Caroline Greyling - Free Book Online

with stained glass windows.
    We get out of the sleek Mercedes and I
follow Nan and Jake, across the neat lawn and around a carefully tended
flowerbed of yellow daffodils. We walk straight past the picturesque chapel to
a second, newer building behind it and as we near the open door, I hear the
quiet murmur of voices.
      When we step through the entryway, the
conversation stops. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust from the sunshine to
the dimly lit interior, and then I see that we’re in a large hall. In the
centre of the room, a handful of metal folding tables are arranged in a
make-shift horse-shoe pattern. There are a handful of people there, maybe
fifteen, standing behind their chairs, watching me. I duck my head
self-consciously and follow Nan and Jake to the three remaining chairs at the
curve of the horse shoe.  
    ‘Ta failte romhat,’ Nan says when she
is standing behind her seat at the head of the group.
    ‘Mo Bann Ri,’ the assembly replies in
unison.
    Nan takes her seat and the rest of us
follow. She turns and says something to the woman beside her.
      Everyone’s attention seems to be on Nan so I
take a quick glance around the group. They look to be a random bunch, varied in
age and gender but I am struck by the sudden realization that, for once, I am
not the shortest person in the room. Everyone here looks to be about my height
– and each one possesses the same fragility that has been my bane in life.  
    ‘Shaylee,’ Nan says, interrupting my
perusal of the party and drawing everyone’s attention back to me. ‘What I am
going to tell you will be unbelievable but I ask you to keep an open mind and
to trust me - to trust us .’ She gestures
around the room. ‘It is time you knew the truth: of who you are and of your
destiny.’
    Nan takes a deep breath and squares
her shoulders in a regal posture.
    ‘We are not as we seem. No one in this
hall is human… and neither are you.’
    She pauses, waiting for a reaction but
I just stare at her. I’ve heard wrong, I’m sure. She didn’t just say what I
think she did – did she ?
    ‘Sorry, what was that?’ I ask,
glancing around the room at the others.
    Nan smiles, as though she knows what
I’m thinking.
    ‘We’re not human,’ she repeats.
    I give a nervous giggle and look
around the horse-shoe again but nobody else is laughing.
    ‘Not human?’ I ask, ‘you’re saying we
are…what? Aliens?’
    ‘No, dear, that’s silly,’ Nan says
with a laugh and somewhere to her right there is a snicker. I start to relax
but she continues: ‘ Our kind was here
long before the human race. This is our planet and we are the original custodians.’
    ‘Our kind? Custodians?’ I whisper,
feeling my shoulders tense up again, ‘What are you talking about, Nan?’
    ‘Custodian is one of the words we use
to describe ourselves,’ Nan says. ‘But there are many others too, by which we are
called: ‘ caomhnoir ’, ‘ daoine maithe’ , ‘ coimeadai ’, and of course, the name we prefer, ‘ Maor ’ which means ‘steward’.’ Nan
gestures toward the door. ‘The humans have another name for us: ‘ Sidhe ’.’
    I glance in the direction of her
gesture, to the world outside where the sun shines brightly and everything is
as it should be, then I turn back to Nan, eyebrows raised in an unspoken
question and she replies:
      ‘It means fairy .’

 
    The hall is silent, strangely void of
the laughter I am expecting.
    Fairy .
    A hundred images race through my mind.
Are these people insane?
What they are talking about exists only in the imaginations of children and
story-tellers. Have all the fairytales done something to Nan’s brain? Is there
something wrong with my brain that’s
causing me to hallucinate? Is this some kind of cult they are trying to drag me
into? My eyes dart toward the door again and I consider making a run for it.
    ‘Shaylee,’ Nan says, in a placatory
tone, ‘I know it sounds like something from a fairytale and you have