Nada's Escape

16- Origin.

"Once the Huntsmen here were like storybook characters. Good. Brave. Humble. And then it all changed in the sixties. An American Huntsman emigrated here and came to talk to the council. He told them that his ship had their only hope on board. Their one hope for eliminating their enemies from the whole continent. Nuclear weapons. He convinced them to use them, firing one through a portal into the centre of the fey realm. "

The Huntsmen stories always involve some great enemy, a single supernatural beast or more often the elusive population of supernatural beings they simply call fey. Other. They say these fey live in another realm when not terrorising humans, sometimes dubbed the underworld. Between our realm and theirs lies a barrier the Huntsmen speak about with awe: the veil. What an inter-realm veil is supposed to be made of, though, I will never understand.

"As expected the radiation was contained within the veil behind which the fey lived. But it turned out that they had more to worry about than nuclear damage. "

He reaches down into his desk drawer then and slides out a book, turning with practised ease to an illustration of a dying woman. Wicked, hungry flames eat at her belly but her face is past pain. She is pleading at us from the page.

"They always talk about the first woman," he continues solemnly. "She was so beautiful that she could have fit in among the fey. She was six months pregnant the day they bombed the fey city. At first she just felt dizzy. Then her mother came upstairs to check on her and when she brushed the hair off her forehead the roots came right out of her scalp. Her thick dark hair just fell out on the pillows. Then she started to vomit.

"It took her almost a week to die, every moment spent in miserable pain. By that time the soldiers who released the weapon had returned. But they could not help. Even afterwards they were haunted by her last words. 'My baby girl is burning up inside of me. Save her.' "

My eyes lock in horror onto that image on the page. The flames in the woman's belly, wicked, hungry flames. And hidden behind them, its shape just visible, is a barely formed child, face pleading with me.

"She was the first and after her every female pregnancy has been cursed the same. No baby girls have been born for almost fifty years." I can no longer stare at that image. So I gaze horrified at the teacher who stares at book beneath my fingers like we're not there.

"At first they didn't know what it meant or what caused it. Then they realised that it was a curse. The pregnant women and their unborn children were the most tragic victims the fey could think of. It was no consolation that the victims died from radiation sickness. The dose, however it was administered, was lethal.

"So perhaps, they thought, it was connected to the generation who had committed the crime and all they needed to do was wait for the next generation, unblemished by their mistakes. They thought their children would be back to normal if they outbred with ordinary humans.

"No luck there. The first group of humans captured was just ten women, about eighteen, and they too succumbed to the sickness as soon as they had their first girl."

"And fifty years later you're all still that stupid?" I ask in disgust. In some strange way I'm not surprised, only horrified at the truth being stated so blandly. The teacher's face crinkles into a pained half smile of remembrance, pupils murky and dark.

"Like I said, it was madness. The kind of devastating madness that cannot be reasoned with. It became less about the job and more about fixing an impossible curse. Protection of the innocent ceased to matter. Only the bloodline. Some of Huntsmen can't see past their duty however twisted that's become."

I cough. Why is he telling us this? The story only highlights the twisted morals of the Huntsmen: making mistakes and then taking the consequences out on the innocent. I can see why the wardens wouldn't want to tell us this. But why is this teacher? I don't have time to ask further questions because I spot the other girls coming in across the courtyard. The false lessons are about to begin.