Mountain Folk

Chapter 1—The Hunters | April 1751 • Daniel thought he spotted wings in the trees. But he couldn’t be sure. He’d been hunting on the rugged mountain since morning. Now it was nearly dusk. He was tired and more than a little hungry. To make matters worse, the fog rising above the little creek he’d been following was getting thicker, swirling around the oaks and pines on the hillside. But Daniel had never before let fog or waning sunlight keep him from bagging game on Neversink Mountain back home in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t about to go back to camp empty-handed.

He knew his mother Sarah would already be at the campfire, boiling beans and preparing spits for roasting whatever he brought back. They had some venison left from previous hunts. No one would go to bed hungry. But quail, partridge, or even pigeon would be a welcome respite from chewing on stringy venison. 

Truly, though, it was now a matter of pride: Daniel, the best hunter in the family, rarely returned without a prize. He usually returned with several.

Sure, hunting was easier in familiar surroundings. Back home, he’d known intimately the hills, valleys, and forests that lay between their farm in Oley and the bustling city of Philadelphia. Now these familiar places were far behind them. Over many months, Daniel and his family had traveled hundreds of miles, following the path of other settlers down through western Virginia to the backcountry of North Carolina. Some days earlier, his father had spotted rocky cliffs thrust improbably high against the horizon. The family had headed for them. Now their camp lay in the shade of the tallest mountain. And Daniel had traipsed up and over it, following the sound of rushing water to a striking waterfall and the little creek beyond.

The place was unfamiliar, yes—but hunting was hunting. Even at 16, Daniel was a master. Everybody said so. Back in Pennsylvania, he’d earned more selling furs and hides in Philadelphia than he had working his father’s fields and forge. He knew from experience that where there was fresh water, there was bound to be game. 

He wasn’t about to be defeated this night, on this mountainside, by a few wisps of fog.

What was that? 

Daniel saw movement in the thicket. He stopped short, placing one moccasin silently next to the other in the soft leaves of the forest floor as he hefted his well-worn hunting rifle and peered into the tangle of low trees and vines. He stayed frozen in place for what seemed like an eternity. Although confident in his ability as a marksman, Daniel didn’t want to risk his game taking flight. With a rifle, it was a whole lot easier to hit a treed bird than one on the wing. Folks typically needed a fowling gun for the latter. 

Daniel listened intently. Presently, his keen ears picked up some rustling in the thicket as well as, confusingly, both the sound of tree branches scraping together behind him and what seemed like footfalls in the fallen leaves much further down the creek. Were there three birds in earshot? Or something else? He slowly, carefully, cocked his rifle.

Then several things happened at once. The thicket suddenly exploded into a mass of shaggy fur, bared teeth, and beastly rage. Behind him, he heard a rustle of branches. And he heard a faint, eerie scream—like nothing he’d ever heard in years of hunting and tracking.

Perhaps that’s why he jerked. Perhaps that’s why his finger yanked the trigger prematurely rather than squeezing it. Perhaps that’s why Daniel Boone missed.

The huge black bear—for, of course, that’s what was charging the young hunter at ferocious speed—wasn’t at all startled by the report of the rifle. Daniel swore, drew his hunting knife, and turned to run. He’d tangled with bears before. There was no chance for him to reload. There was little chance of playing dead and placating the angry beast. And there was little chance of outrunning the bear, particularly since Daniel had been following the creek downhill and would now have to run up a slope. There was, in fact, little chance of surviving the encounter at all. But Daniel Boone was no coward. He’d run as fast as he could and then put up a determined, probably doomed, fight.

As he turned on a heel to begin his flight, he saw wings. He’d have paid them little heed if the wings been attached to what he expected to see, the back of a gamebird. But what Daniel Boone beheld was just about the furthest thing he’d ever expected to see along that creek, in those woods, or anywhere on God’s green earth. He saw a small, lithe, human-like body flying through the air. 

Daniel saw the wings beat and then straighten as the little creature banked toward the rampaging bear. He saw one slender arm holding a bow and another slender arm pulling an arrow back to a faintly whiskered chin. He heard the minuscule bowstring twang.

Fast as lightning, Daniel whirled and saw the bear stiffen, the arrow protruding from its neck. He saw the bowman reloading his weapon and lifting his left wing to bank around the head of the bear, whose jaws were thrown open in pain and rage. And Daniel saw, even before the archer did, a furry paw swinging up with blinding speed. It struck the winged creature with tremendous force, knocking the little man against the trunk of a pine. From there, the bowman fell to the ground, hard.

Even as he witnessed the savage swipe, Daniel was hurtling toward the wounded bear, holding his knife in the reverse grip of his right hand and wielding his rifle as a club in his left. He’d never heard of a man defeating a bear in a hand-to-paw fight. But he didn’t hesitate. The wonder he felt upon seeing a real-life fairy—for that was, surely, what lay senseless or worse before him—did not keep Daniel Boone from acting. The deepest instinct of self-preservation, to kill or be killed, combined with the highest instinct of honor gave speed and strength to his limbs. With his left arm, Daniel dealt the bear a terrific blow with the butt of his gun. Then, with his right, Daniel plunged his knife deep into the breast of the bear, through the shaggy hide, into the savage heart.

How he got close enough to deliver these attacks, Daniel didn’t know. But he’d killed bears before, with his rifle. He knew the look of death. The bear fell forward on its face, wrenching Daniel’s blade from his grasp, and moved no more.

A moment later, Daniel was crouching below the pine tree, gazing in astonishment at the crumpled form of the fairy. The little creature was lying on his stomach, his apparently undamaged wings of yellow-tinged feathers retracted onto his back and glistening in the twilight as if dusted in gold. He wore a cloak of forest green over what appeared to be a leather jerkin and woolen stockings. From a rough belt hung a couple of leather pouches and a blade that bore no small resemblance to Daniel’s own hunting knife, except in its tiny size. Another strap crossed the fairy’s torso from right shoulder to left hip, bearing a quiver of arrows. The bow lay a few inches away. The fairy was about the height of a racoon, Daniel judged.

Unsure what to do, he reached out a hand and carefully turned the fairy on his back. The creature’s face was youthful and handsome, but his delicate features were contorted in an expression of anguish. Fearful the fairy had sustained a mortal blow, Daniel was both surprised and delighted when the little eyelids fluttered open, revealing light-brown eyes. Daniel was even more surprised, if not exactly delighted, to see the fairy’s lips move and to hear a soft voice uttering words he understood.

“You … you blundering human,” the fairy said haltingly, between winces. “Your recklessness almost got us both killed by that fearsome beast.”

Daniel’s concern gave way to annoyance. “I just killed that beast and saved your life, sir,” he pointed out. “You should be more grateful.”

“Grateful?” The fairy coughed and tried to sit up, grimacing. “You did not save me. And because of you, my quarry may have escaped. Thanks to you, my first solo ranging may end in failure. I may not get another chance to become a journeyman for a long time.”

Daniel would have responded in anger, with little of the Christian charity his parents Squire and Sarah Boone had tried to teach him. But his feelings of sympathy and wonder took over. This was a fairy lying before him—a real, flying, talking fairy! It was one of Mother’s bedtime stories come to life. It was impossible, ridiculous. It was happening.

Daniel stroked his chin, smiling quizzically. 

“Maybe I ought to be the one upset about losing my prey, friend,” he said. “I wasn’t hunting bear. I was hunting fowl for supper. Even so, I reckon I would have hit the beast square on the nose and finished him if you hadn’t distracted me with that weird little shout.”

“What shout?” the fairy demanded, his eyes showing sudden enthusiasm. “What did you hear? I was too busy rescuing you to notice. And perhaps your gigantic ears can hear far-off sounds that my normal ears cannot.”

Bemused, Daniel looked at the little man. Normal ears? The fairy’s small ears were elongated and ended in points.

 “I heard what sounded like wings fluttering behind me, and then a strange cry,” Daniel said. “I figured it must have been you. I’ve heard Indian friends utter battle cries before. That wasn’t you?”

“No, of course not,” the fairy responded, shakily getting to his feet.

“Now that you mention it,” Daniel continued, “it seems like the sound came from downhill a ways. I thought I heard something down there, though at the time I thought it was a bird.”

The fairy shook his head. Whether it was to indicate disagreement or regain his senses Daniel couldn’t tell. 

“What you heard was the cry of the beast I have been tracking for a while—for days in your time,” the fairy explained. “I was so close. I almost had it. But then I chose to help you. I may have saved one life at the cost of many more.”

Daniel watched as the fairy moved his hands down to one of the leather pouches hanging from his belt. He rummaged inside it, let out a cry of alarm, and withdrew two small cylinders. Daniel drew closer to examine them.

“It is destroyed!” the fairy wailed. “Now I will never be able to find the beast again.”

Daniel saw that it was a silver-colored musical instrument broken cleanly in two.

“How can that little pipe help you track game?” Daniel asked. 

The fairy glared at him for a moment, then his expression softened. “I suppose there is no harm in telling you,” he said, still rubbing his forehead where his hard fall had raised a welt. “I will not need it to produce simple spellsong, which is all I will need for the likes of you. And now that I have lost my quarry, I might as well tell my troubles to someone. I have been alone on the trail so long that even a conversation with the likes of you would be welcome.”

“Well, that’s mighty generous of you,” Daniel said with a playful smile. “I’ve only been hunting since breakfast but I wouldn’t mind a little company, either, even from the likes of you.”

For an instant, annoyance mingled with frustration on the fairy’s face. Then he caught Daniel’s twinkling eye and let out a snort of merry laughter. “Well said, sir, well said! And well met—my name is Goran. Whom have I the pleasure to meet?”

“I’m Daniel Boone,” said the young hunter, shaking the fairy’s proffered hand. “My family’s camped a little ways from here. We’ve only just arrived in these parts, looking for a good piece of land to settle on. We’re originally from Pennsylvania.”

“Pennsylvania, you say,” said Goran. “I know it well. My Folk stayed there for many of your years, within the shade of a low mountain in a place the humans call Bucks County.”

“Why, that’s not far from where I grew up, in Berks County!” Daniel replied eagerly. “You’re a long way from home, just like I am.”

Goran looked searchingly at Daniel for a moment, then smiled. “You have no idea. Yet, in a way the histories of your people and mine are intertwined. Where humans live, we live. Where you go, we are unlikely to be far behind.”

Now it was Daniel’s turn to gaze meaningfully at the fairy, who still seemed dazed as he rose fully to his feet and returned the broken flute to his pouch. “What do you mean by that? And why do you keep referring to ‘my years’ instead of just years? Do you reckon the passing days differently?”

Goran sighed and looked longingly into the fog. “It is a long story, and more trouble than it is worth for me to tell you. You will never remember it, anyway.”

Daniel pursed his lips. “I may not be as skilled as reading and doing figures as some, but nobody’s ever doubted my memory. That’s one reason I’m pretty good at hunting. It doesn’t take me long to draw a map in my head of where I’ve been. I can recall just about every bird call I’ve ever heard. I can tell one footprint from another. Trust me, friend, my mind’s like a bear trap.”

“Trust me, friend,” Goran repeated the phrase with a chuckle. “After you and I part, that memory trap of yours is going to be empty, at least when it comes to me. I am not such a novice that I need my flute for that.”

The fairy held up a hand as Daniel began to reply. “Hold on, listen to me,” Goran objected. “I said I would explain about the flute. I will tell you what you need to know. If you are such a skilled tracker, perhaps I can still catch up to the beast before it gets away entirely. Perhaps my ranging will not be in vain.”

Daniel Boone had countless questions. He didn’t like to be told no. But the idea of tracking unfamiliar prey intrigued him, while Goran’s implied test of Daniel’s abilities excited him. Holding his tongue, he nodded to the little man.

“Back in my village, I am an apprentice in the Rangers Guild,” the fairy began. “We train for many tasks. We scout. We track game to fill our larders and dining tables. We convey messages across long distances. And when it becomes necessary to deal with humans, we are trained for, too. That is why I know your language.”

“I was wondering about that,” Daniel said. “Does that mean you also know …”

“Please do not interrupt,” Goran interjected. “If there is still a chance to find the beast, it will not last long. Let us proceed while I talk.”

Daniel stooped over the bear, withdrew his knife, and cleaned the blade on the tail of his buckskin shirt. Returning it to its sheath, he picked up his rifle and began walking briskly along the creek. Goran fluttered his wings, gingerly at first, then with deliberate strokes. 

“Another job of the ranger, perhaps the most important of all, is to find and track monsters and other magical creatures that somehow end up beyond our borders — beyond our walls of magecraft and spellsong that protect us from the Blur.”

“The what?” Daniel asked.

“The Blur. It is a word we use to describe your human world,” Goran said. “You see, we Folk are not from this realm, not originally. We experience time differently from the way you do. In our villages, behind our Shimmer walls, time passes at a rate that is normal for us but would seem extremely slow to you. A day in our time is like a score of days in yours. If we stand at the very edge of our domains and look through the magical barriers that protect us, the grass, trees, waters, and creatures of your world look like they are in constant motion. To us, it is a blur.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” Daniel stated plainly.

“To be honest, Daniel, I do not understand it very well myself,” the fairy admitted. “The details are really more the province of mages, not rangers. I do not know how magecraft works, or even how the spellsong used by rangers works. I just know that it does. We spend years—that is our years—learning how to wield the magic of music. We sing spellsong to cloud the senses and conceal ourselves. We use it to find other magical creatures and exchange messages over short distances. And we use it to alter emotions. With the right verse or melody, I can make you feel proud or fearful, joyful or wistful, even bring you to laughter or tears.”

Daniel chuckled softly. “That doesn’t sound so different from what I’ve seen a good fiddle-player or hymn singer do back home. Were they fairy bards, too?”

“That is interesting question,” Goran replied with a knowing smile. “Perhaps they were. As I said, we can use spellsong to influence the moods and perceptions of humans and other weak-minded creatures. You may well have met some of my kind before. But you do not recall them, at least not the way you are seeing me now. Our spellsong alters memory, too.”

Daniel found this explanation hard to grasp. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to grasp it.

“But back to what you need to know,” the fairy said. “For more complicated feats of song magic—for those involving highly resistant targets, for example—our unaided voices can prove inadequate. We use instruments enchanted by our craftsmen to focus and amplify our spellsong.”

“Like your broken flute,” Daniel cut in. “Now I’m beginning to see your trouble. Without it, you can’t use your power to track that magical beast from far off because it doesn’t want to be tracked. It’ll resist you.”

Goran swooped in front of Daniel’s face and hovered. “I can see fortune has been most generous,” he said. “You are not just brave but rather intelligent and perceptive, for a human. So, you will help me complete my mission?”

Daniel stooped and set down his rifle by the creek, plunging both hands into the cool mountain water and cupping them to bring drink to his lips. He stood up, ran a damp hand through his shock of dark, unruly hair, and turned back to the fairy still suspended in midair, his wings beating a graceful, steady rhythm.

“From what you’ve been telling me, I’m not sure how a mere human could be of much service,” Daniel said drily. “I can’t conjure up spells. All I can do is hunt fowl and rabbit and deer and, occasionally, bear. I even killed a cougar once, though I wasn’t rightly hunting it at the time.”

“Fortune truly favors us!” exclaimed the fairy. “That is exactly what I am after—a giant cat!”

“Well, cougars are way bigger than ordinary cats and mighty powerful,” Daniel replied, picking up his gun and resuming his rapid pace. “I wouldn’t want to tangle with one if I didn’t have to. But I’d hardly call them giants.”

“What I have been tracking is not one of your earthly wildcats, Daniel,” Goran said, his expression suddenly grave as he flew alongside Daniel. “It is something far more dangerous. You could not pronounce the name in our tongue, I suspect, but perhaps the English words ‘monster cat’ would do it justice. It is a bit longer than you are tall, powerfully muscled, incredibly fast, with long, sharp teeth. As you may have guessed, it draws on magical forces to enhance its strength and speed. And—this is a bit gruesome—the monster cat does not feed on its kills in a normal way. It bites the neck and … well … it drains the lifeblood from its victims while their hearts still beat.”

Daniel cast a revolted look the fairy’s way but didn’t interrupt his stride. “Why is it that I’ve never heard tell of these ‘monster cats’ before?”

“They are rare,” Goran answered. “But, truly, are you sure you have not heard of them, at least some version of the truth? Have you not heard tales of mysterious feline creatures with magical abilities? Back in what you call the British Isles, where my Folk resided before we journeyed to America, local humans told such stories. The Scots called them the Cait Sith. In Cornwall, where I was born, I often heard human bards sing of a legendary beast, Cath Paluc, that slew 180 people before a hero named King Arthur managed to overcome him. It did not really happen like that, of course.”

“I’m beginning to think that lots of things I thought I knew, or perhaps lots of things that lots of us thought we knew, have not been quite so,” Daniel said with another chuckle. “But if the giant cat we’re talking about is really that fearsome, how do you expect to defeat it? I mean no offense, Goran, but if we’re talking about some kind of giant cougar, it would dwarf the likes of you. Even my trusty rifle and I may be no match for it.”

The fairy shrugged his shoulders in what struck Daniel as a very human expression. “I never had any intention of facing it on my own. Capturing or, if necessary, killing a monster of this size is a job for hunters or even warriors, not of rangers. Our task is to establish a clear location of the quarry and then to use spellsong to send the location back. Teams of Folk stand ready to respond to such calls. They arrive and take care of the beast.”

“What do you need me to do, then?” asked Daniel.

“We Folk have many talents and skills, but as you pointed out, we are comparatively small in your Brobdingnagian world,” the fairy said. 

“Hey, I know that word—you’re read Gulliver’s Travels? That’s one of my favorite books!”

An abridged excerpt from Mountain Folk: Book One of the Folklore Cycle, by John Hood, 2021. Published with permission of the author.