Chapter 1

I am walking down the dirty street, mud spattering over my legs and the tattered hem of my skirt. Humans aren't allowed to use the clean, paved sidewalks. They are only for elves. We are too lowly to use them; we are like dogs, like animals. That's all we're worth – to them.

I pass the great golden gates of the Elvish palace. A new guard is there, lazily watching the street. I can't help but look at his graceful features, his deep green eyes, his beautiful pointed ears… Actually, I only refer to them as 'beautiful' automatically. I am too used to them. I have always known elves, always seen elves staring at me as if I was a piece of dirt to be scrubbed away. I should hate those ears. It's because they have those ears and we don't that we are treated like this. It's just that their ears are always described as something special in the fairy tale books Mama used to read to me and my big sister Ophelia. Before she disappeared…

Suddenly, he turns and looks straight at me. I quickly lower my head, feeling my cheeks redden. I must have imagined it. I must have imagined it! He smiled at me. An elf actually smiled at me! At me, a lowly human… a short-lived, dirty, filthy, poor human! I look up again. He is still watching me, still smiling. Smiling!

"Katarina! Katarina, hurry up!" I glance up quickly. Even from this distance, I can see that Grandmama is wearing her most menacing glare. She is standing in front of our little house, one of the many human shacks dotting the hill at the end of the mud road, her hands on her hips. "I need that water now!"

I quickly run towards the little hill, up between the other rusty hovels and to the tiny house Ophelia, Grandmama and I have always called 'home' although it is nothing compared to the great mansions of the elves.

I put down the pail of water by the door, accidentally spilling some. "Don't waste it, you clumsy girl!" Grandmama cries, quickly pulling the bucket from my hand. "You shouldn't daydream so often! One of these days you'll forget where your place is and get in trouble. Like your good mother, bless her soul." She sighs and turns to go to the tiny corner we call 'kitchen', pulling a flowered handkerchief from her apron pocket and quickly wiping her eyes.

We have always lived in this small, cramped little building that doesn't deserve its name. I can't remember there ever being a time when I could run around and do what I liked, have a proper education like the little elf children and live in a big house with a garden and a dog or cat to play with. I can't remember a time without the elves.

Mama could. She used to tell us of the Old Days, and how she got up very early every morning, ate real bread and drank real white cow milk in a real kitchen, and how she went to school with a big school bus. I sometimes try to imagine what a bus might look like, when I'm scared during the Raids or tired after a day of hard work. Mama once wanted to draw one for us to see, but Ophelia and I told her not to, so that we could have the fun of imagining it for ourselves.

She also told us about how she went to school to learn how to read and write and count, and to learn why the earth is round and goes around the sun, and other such things that I can only dream about now. She told us about the afternoons when she played a game called soccer with her neighbours, and how her brother once broke a window by accident.

I don't know her brother. I don't know my father either. Mama never told us anything about him, and Grandmama never mentions his name. No one in our little settlement on the hill has a father or a brother. There's only women here. I don't know why, or what happened to all the men. Grandmama won't tell us anything. "It's not for your young, innocent ears to hear," she always says when we start asking about such things. "Maybe some day your mother and I will tell you," she used to say. But Mama is gone. One day Grandmama will be gone too. How will we know then?

"Katarina! No daydreaming!" I quickly pick up the scarf I am knitting for our old pneumonia-suffering neighbour, Sylvia. Grandmama looks at me reproachfully for some seconds, then turns back to her work in the kitchen.

I hear her muttering something about how much better girls had been in her times. Well, Grandmama, in your times, there were no elves coming on Raids every few nights. In your times, there wasn't the danger that they would come and take you away, take you to some dreadful place no one wanted to talk about. In your times, there wasn't always the fear that an elf might attack you for such a stupid reason as that you were breathing too loudly. In your times, things were different. But now isn't the Old Days. Now is now, and no one can change that.

The wool between my fingers is rough and dirty. We don't have enough water to clean it. It's terribly stringy because we have to spin it by ourselves. Mama told us that in her days, one could just go to a shop and buy the wool ready to be used. Now we're not even allowed to enter a shop, never mind buy something. We even have to grow our own food. Our vegetable patch is terribly tiny and everyone steps on it anyway, so we have to rely on neighbours to give us some of their crops. Some of the better-off in the village have larger gardens, two or three families even own sheep and chickens for meat. Sometimes they let us use the wool to make clothes that we can later exchange for food. Ophelia and I sometimes spend whole afternoons slowly shearing the sheep with rusty scissors we once found on a rubbish pile somewhere.

It's getting dark outside. My fingers ache from knitting, my arm hurts from carrying the pail of water all the way to the hill from the other side of the city. Our village is just on the border of that city. We're lucky that we're even allowed to walk through it. Usually the elves won't let us near them, afraid that we will transmit diseases.

Grandmama dumps three cracked plates onto the table and calls for us to come. I leave my knitting and sit down on the rusty old oil drum that we call 'chair'. The table is a luxury – most humans don't own one. We were lucky; Mama found it on a rubbish pile one day when I was five years old and brought it back home. That was before the Raid when they took Adelio away. That was before Mama became sad and quiet, before she locked herself in her room for hours and didn't let anyone in. It happened so long ago… yet I still remember it.

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It was evening, and dark outside. They always came when it was dark.

I was in bed, but I couldn't sleep because I could hear their horses as they came towards our village, as they came closer and closer and I knew that it was Raid Night. They had only come to our house once before. They had searched the house for something, or someone. Before they left, they smashed all the dishes Mama and Grandmama had managed to collect together from the rubbish, and they took the pretty stones Ophelia and I had collected earlier in the day and scattered them on the floor.

But this time it was different.

I heard the heavy hammering on our door, heard them shout for us to open. I sat up, wide awake. Mama looked scared, which made me even more frightened than I already was. She was holding Adelio close to her, trying to stop him from crying, trying to hide his wails… he was hardly a year old. She was looking around frantically, I didn't understand why. Then the door was pushed open and they came in, the two tall Elvish Raiders with their green cloaks, their black masks hiding everything but their cruel eyes. Their piercing gaze fell on Adelio.

I can't remember much of what happened next. I only remember Mama crying, Grandmama throwing potatoes at the intruders, Ophelia screaming, me screaming, and Adelio being taken away forever.

I don't know what they did to him. But Mama knew; I noticed it. She knew, but even if I had been brave enough to ask her, she wouldn't have answered me. She would only have said what Grandmama always says: "It's not for your young, innocent ears to hear, Katarina."