There's a saying here, "Never trust the innocent." Old enough that the elders nod at it's wisdom and the young don't know it's meaning. It's part of a lesson often taught and seldom learned. Mine is but one of the examples.
~NEVER ENTRUST THE INNOCENT WITH SECRETS~
I was raised by my grandparents. We were a happy family, they were good, solid people. When I was up past my bedtime, I would hear them whisper. Stories, worries, small things from the day I never new, because the language...
Later, when I felt poetic, I would say it was like a song you've almost forgotten. You hear the melody, it moves you, but the words stay just out of reach. No one else spoke like they would at night. I told them it was beautiful, that I wanted to learn. "Never speak of this," I was told, "Not for outsiders", they said, "When you're older."
We are marked by our childhoods, I grew up to love languages. I never learned my grandparents secret one, they would tell me it was nothing. Nonsense words between an old married couple. I pressed one afternoon, about to leave for college.
"I'm sorry granddaughter, those words weren't for you," my grandmother said. "A relic from our youth. Leave it be, it doesn't exist anymore."
~THEY LACK THE GUILE TO KNOW TO KEEP THEM~
I studied hard, became a linguist by trade as well as calling. I found a job, I visited home often, and we never spoke of it again. But always I searched for my Grandparent's language, such things cannot truly die can they? I found snippets. Snatches of verse, the cadence of words; I was lead eventually, perhaps inevitably, to the Schwarzwald, the old Black Forest.
I found a Professor Böse at the university who was quite helpful. We found an old dialect that struck my memories like a gong. I was so delighted, look at this thing I could show the people who raised me so well. Perhaps we could even find others who could speak their childhood language with them!
~SECRETS INNOCENT TOLD, SUMMON ILL WINDS~
I returned home, triumphant, eager to please them. As I entered they were at the table, talking in the language I had found. I still couldn't understand them, but they were worried about something. Deathly so. They asked me who I had been speaking to, what I had said. Somehow they knew. Honestly I thought they were overreacting, if mysteriously prescient.
My grandfather froze in the middle of questioning me about the Professor, "Something's here." He stood, cautious at first, as if listening, then rushed to the front of the house, ripping a painting off the wall and pressing his hand in it's place, murmuring quickly.
The daylight vanished from the windows and the room began to glow, strange patterns lit the walls. "5 minutes," he said, "no more, probably less. Will it be enough?"
Over my shoulder I heard someone far to young to be my grandmother reply, "It will have to be. Go."
As my grandfather started scrambling through cabinet drawers I turned to see something, tall. Willowy, easily 7 feet, green skinned, and dark, yellow eyes wearing the stern expression my grandmother had when I was naughty.
"Follow your grandfather. Questions later. Please move left a bit."
Startled I shifted over as the floorboards flowed away, underneath was an chest that looked older than the house, and possibly more expensive. I was shooed towards my grandfather by the... tree... as it went to retrieve the chest.
Grandfather had been busy. In a clear space on the wall he had drawn with chalk, intricately, lines and whorls and shapes that might be words. He looked back and smiled reassuringly, "Don't worry about her, this is what she's good at."
He took my hand as the chalk thickened, the wall separating from what was now quite clearly a door. I had just enough time to notice he was now shorter than me and oddly grey as he threw open the door and tossed me through.
I landed on a mountain.
Looking back I saw him grab a bag before hurrying after me. He stopped on the threshold and turned.
Past him I saw my grandmother, holding a sword and shield ready. Grandfather had paused, hand on the doorknob. She glanced over and shouted for us to leave.
Suddenly the room was flooded with daylight as the glow from the walls faded. I heard glass breaking as she turned back to the front of the house.
The door slammed shut, and disintegrated.
"Soe granddaughter."
My head snapped right. The thing I still thought of as grandfather sighed and shouldering his bag turned to walk, as best I could tell, toward somewhere not here. Beckoning me to follow.
"Wa'," he said, looking younger than I'd ever seen him, and sounding much, much older, "dae ye know o' th' Fae."