Free Christopher Golden - The Veil 01 - The Myth Hunters by The Myth Hunters

possible, so real. Yet he was having difficulty imagining any of it, even in spite of the evidence all around them. He shook his head.
     
     
“Just like that?”
     
     
“Many of the tribes of legend, human and otherwise, have magicians amongst them. The most powerful of them gathered together and wove a spell that took years to complete. With their combined sorcery they created the Veil as a wall to separate our last sanctuaries from the mundane world. It is more and less than a wall, however. It will be easy for you to think of two worlds, layered one upon another, existing side by side, each imperceptible to the citizens of the other.”
     
     
All of this Oliver had gathered previously, at least in a general way, but one thing Frost had said stunned him.
     
     
“ ‘Human and otherwise’? You talked before about the Lost Ones, but I’m having trouble with that. There are humans here?”
     
     
The winter man smiled softly, perhaps a bit condescendingly, as they continued to walk along the bottom of that ridge. “How many humans have mysteriously disappeared over the ages? And not only individuals. How many cities have been emptied of their populations, or perhaps disappeared entirely, down to the last stone? Entire civilizations are considered ‘lost’ by the mundane world.”
     
     
So astonished was he that Oliver barely took note of the change in the topography of the ridge, of the gray-white arches that emerged from the mossy earth. Flittering glints of light caught his gaze and he glanced up to see fireflies darting to and fro in the air above the ridge, and in amongst the trees. He took all of this in but only with a part of his conscious mind. The rest was trying to digest what Frost had said.
     
     
“Are you . . . do you mean the Mayans? The Aztecs?”
     
     
Frost nodded. “And many others. Most of the legendary creatures— the faeries and boggarts and giants— live in the wild still, as is their preference. Humans make up a large part of the population of the Two Kingdoms— Atlanteans most of all. Though with their divergent evolution, some argue the Atlanteans are not really human.”
     
     
That was enough to stop Oliver in his tracks. The winter man went on several steps before realizing he had fallen behind, and turned to face him. A dozen replies came into Oliver’s head, all of them amounting to roughly the same thing— a scowl and some utterance of disbelief. Atlantis? He was supposed to believe that there had once been an Atlantis, and that no one had ever found any conclusive evidence of its existence?
     
     
But that was wrong, wasn’t it? There were plenty of scholars who had theorized the existence and history of Atlantis, as well as its location. It was only that society did not take them seriously. And that was the purpose of the Veil. That was its magic. To keep secrets.
     
     
Oliver let himself fall back against the ridge and stared up at the moonlight streaming through the trees, trying to catch his breath, get his bearings. Exhaustion was a factor, but he knew that it was far more than that. He pressed his eyes tightly closed and wondered if when he opened them he would be staring at the ceiling of his bedroom.
     
     
Don’t be stupid, he thought.
     
     
Then he whispered it aloud to himself.
     
     
He could hear the sounds of this mystical forest and feel the light breeze on his skin. The earth was rough under him but it smelled richly of soil and flora. The feeling of surreality tried to take hold of him again but he shook it off. Doubt was a luxury he could not afford.
     
     
His eyes snapped open and he sat up, glancing around. There was another of those gray-white arches sticking from the ridge only inches from him, and this close, he saw immediately that it was bone. Oliver jumped up and stumbled away from the ridge and then turned to stare at it with new perspective. Its shape took on new meaning in his mind, and those bones . . . he’d thought