I gasped at the image: Corey resting his head in the woman's lap, fading like mist in sunlight to become—
I stared at Corey and the woman, not daring to shift my gaze. As if by watching them, I could keep that little head from lowering itself to that glittering field.
The woman’s hands nested in her lap. Corey leaned into the fence; it bowed behind him like a hammock.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself to a lunging jog. The bruise throbbed along my hip. I cupped my hands to my mouth and called.
Corey flinched at the sound of his name, but refused to look at me. He stepped closer to the woman and knelt before her. She reached to pull his head into her lap. . . .
I lumbered toward them, tensing against the pain. Three, four yards and I’d be there. Sucking in a deep breath, I shouted, “Corey, get away from her!”
He snapped upright, swinging to look at me. The woman touched his leg. She murmured something. He glared at me, then bent toward her. The woman ran her fingers through his hair—
I grasped him by the arm. The woman pulled her hand back, plucking a lock of his ginger hair.
“Corey,” I said. I dragged him away, reaching out to steady him with my other hand. With a growl, he wrenched away from me and ran toward the buildings. I sagged with relief, then turned on the woman. “Who are you?” I said. “What do you want—?”
She was gone.
I knelt beside the rosemary, parting its branches. “Corey?”
Reaching behind the planter, I patted the landing. I withdrew my dust-covered fingers.
I sat next to the planter. Late afternoon closed around me. “I have a special book for you,” I said, hoping he was within hearing. The shadows deepened. I glanced at my watch. Four fourteen. “It’s about dogs,” I said. If I stayed too late and he refused to come out of hiding, he’d miss his dad. “Corey, I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. “Ms. Vargas took me to the doctor. By the time I got back, you were gone.” I glanced at my watch again. Four-thirty-five. A car pulled up to the curb. I sat up. A teenage couple got out and strolled across the front lawn, arm in arm. “Corey,” I said. “I’m going. I don’t want you to miss your dad.” I pulled the book on Samoyeds from my book bag. “I’ll leave this for you,” I said. “Behind the planter. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I arrived at school early the next morning, to see if Corey had taken the book. A shoe peeped from the planter’s shadow. Puzzled, I squatted beside the rosemary. Corey curled around the planter, his backpack tucked under his head. His mouth hung slack, his eyes were closed. My heart lurched. I reached in and touched him. He murmured, then jerked awake, eyes wide.
I wound my arms around him and pulled him out. I hugged him. The chill of him seeped through my sweater. I smoothed the hair from his face. “Corey, have you been here all night?”
He nodded.
The breath went out of me. “Your father. . . ?”
He looked at me blankly. “Father?”
“My God,” I whispered. I held him tight, rocking him. “What has that woman done?”
I had to look up his father in the phone book. Corey’s emergency card was gone. So was his cumulative file. When Mr. Ferris answered, he had no idea who I was. “There must be some mistake,” he said curtly. “I don’t have a son—”
“But Corey—”
“Corey,” he said. His voice grew wistful. “That was my grandfather’s name.” The curtness returned. “Sorry. Wrong Ferris.” He hung up.
I weighed the receiver in my hand, then set it down. I went into the nurse’s office. Corey huddled under a pile of blankets. I sat next to him. “Hungry?” I said.
He shook his head.
Peggy breezed in, glanced at Corey, yanked open the medicine cabinet. She took out a bottle of lotion. “New student?” she said.
Corey had worked his way to the end of the line by the time I led my students into the classroom. The boy just ahead of him shut the door in his face as if he weren’t there. I opened the door and, taking his hand, led him inside.
When I took roll, his name wasn’t listed. I flipped through the old roll sheets. According to these, he’d never been listed. I wrote him in and marked him “present.”
During independent reading time, I walked over and crouched beside him. “She can’t have you,” I said. “I won’t let her.”
I kept him in during morning recess. I read to him; he stared out the window at the field. I moved my chair so that he had to look at me. “What did she promise you?” I said. “Where is she trying to take you?”
He turned away from me.
I touched his knee. “Corey?”
He slumped in his chair, staring at his desk.
The hair tickled along the back of my neck. On a hunch, I opened his desk. It was empty.
I followed him onto the playground at lunchtime. He ran across the field to the fence. I tried to keep up, but the bruise slowed me down. I gritted my teeth, trying to ignore the pain. He spurted ahead. The woman sat in the corner, waiting, her right hand raised slightly. A glint of gold winked between her fingers.
Corey stumbled to a stop in front of her.
“Leave him alone!” I shouted. “Leave them all alone!”
Neither Corey nor the woman turned.
I tripped, somehow caught myself. I winced, closing my eyes—
The image swept through me like a flash flood: Corey, the boy, the two girls, countless other children, resting their heads in the woman’s lap. One by one they blazed and disappeared like shooting stars, the only trace of them the bright unicorns on the woman’s rainbow skirt—
I forced my eyes open. Corey inched closer to the woman, his shins brushing her knee. The woman plunged the needle in and out of the cloth like a seabird diving through waves. I limped up to her, clenching and unclenching my hands.
Beneath the woman’s needle, the outline of a unicorn was slowly taking shape on a field of blue, stitched in lusterless ginger thread. I searched the constellation of unicorns for the dull, black one, that other boy’s, but couldn’t find it. I finally located it on its field of green—now as bright as all the others.
Then a dull shape caught my eye. I took a step closer. Amid all the sparkling, prancing unicorns stood one small, brown horse on a field of blue.
Me.
I stood beside the rainbow woman. Her needle stitched the blue cloth with my hair, filling in the outline of the tiny unicorn. I knelt, my breath quick and shallow as I waited anxiously for her to finish. I would be someone. I would no longer be forgotten. I would become—
Corey dropped to his knees.
I tried to reel the image back, tried to remember. For Corey’s sake. For mine.
I would become one of those gleaming unicorns that danced in her eyes.
I looked slowly from the woman’s lap.
And trembled, that forgotten longing aching through me. Too frightened to take her in all at once, I started with her hair, that thick, manzanita-red mane that tumbled over her shoulders, then the perfect oval of her chin, the strawberry ripeness of her lips, the gentle slope of her nose. I steeled myself. Her eyes . . .
Her eyes had no color—not even white or black. I gazed into them, knowing what I would find there when my own longing had peeled away the layers of this world: unicorns, tossing their heads, light spiraling down their horns. . . .
I held my breath. They were more beautiful than I remembered. And so many—herds of them, streaking through the woodlands like a meteor shower. My ears rang with the drum of their cloven hooves.
If this is what Corey wanted, to join these magnificent creatures, who was I to stand in his way? I took a step back.
Rage kindled in me. Who had stood in my way?
I froze. Mrs. Rodriguez.
Kneeling beside me, she had forced my head up so that I could no longer see the gold needle pierce the blue cloth. “An illusion, Mary,” she said. “There is so much in the world, so many things to discover and explore and create. Don’t
give up everything for an illusion.”
I fought her, fought her words and the urging of her hands as she forced me to look. . . .
I swallowed, my throat dry and tight. But if this was what Corey wanted, who was I to deny him?
I am no Mrs. Rodriguez.
I am no saint.
The unicorns wheeled and galloped before me, a stampede of light. Then one of the unicorns stopped and faced me.
It yearned toward me, its eyes overflowing with a terrible loneliness. Another unicorn stopped, and another, until at least a dozen stared back at me. The first unicorn’s longing echoed from eye to eye.
Their sadness sickened me. Without looking away, I groped for Corey. My hand clasped his shoulder. I drew him to me, caging him with my elbows and cupping his chin in my hands. I raised his head. “Look, Corey,” I said. “Look into her eyes. If this is what you want, I’ll let you go. But be sure.”
He squirmed. More unicorns stopped to gaze at us.
“I want to be like them!” he said.
“Look hard at them, Corey,” I said, reluctant to fulfill my promise. “See how lonely they are?”
“And is it any different here?” the woman said, her voice as husky as woodsmoke. “You are lonely here, Corey. There you will have others of your kind.”
I wet my lips. “Corey—”
The woman hissed. “Leave us, meddler. You have nothing to offer him.”
“Nothing,” Corey said. But the word trailed with doubt.
My heart pounded. What had Mrs. Rodriguez said? What had finally reached me?
But I couldn’t find the words. Frantic, I lashed out. “What does she have to offer you? An illusion, Corey. A lie. It’s not real. It’s like the Kleenex trick—”
Corey strained against my arms. The unicorns loped away.
“Let him go,” the woman said. “He is mine. You have nothing for him. Absolutely nothing.”
I loosened my grip slowly. My voice cracked. “Maybe I don’t, but this world does. I saw you, Corey. I wanted to be your friend. Other people will, too. And they’ll want to see that Kleenex trick. They’ll want to know what Willy named his new dog.”
The unicorns returned, gazing at me intently.
“They’ll chase leaves,” I said. “They’ll throw balls and shoes over the fence. Your father will pick you up and take you out for ice cream. And I can—I can teach you the penny trick.”
Corey stood still as my arms fell away. The unicorns crept closer—
Their faces changed. Josue peered back at me, and Amanda and Heather. Jason from Peggy’s class last year and Mindy from Kristy’s class two years ago. More. Children I had never known. . . .
I doubled around the ache in my stomach. I had stopped trying and I had failed them, all of them. I had failed Corey.
The woman blinked. Her eyes became colorless once more.
Corey cried out. He grabbed me, burrowing under my arm, his breath hot and damp through my sweater. I clung to him, resting my cheek on his head. His hair smelled of rosemary. My gaze fell to the woman’s hands.
She jerked the needle, snapping the thread. Dull and hornless, the ginger unicorn sank into a fold as she stood. “You’ve promised him much,” she said. “Don’t let him down.”
She vanished.
Corey choked back a sob. His hands twisted the hem of my sweater. I held him with one arm. With my free hand, I fished a Kleenex from my skirt pocket. Footsteps stampeded toward us. I jerked to look. Unicorns. . . ?
Children.
“Ms. Scibilin! Ms. Scibilin!” a chorus of voices shouted. Small hands pulled at us, some patting me, some patting Corey. “What’s wrong with Corey? Is Corey all right? Corey, you okay?”
“He’s fine,” I said.
Corey’s chest shuddered with a deep breath. Tears beaded his lashes. I handed him the Kleenex. He stared at it a minute, then looked up at me. Eagerness and wonder dwelt in those gray eyes. So did Mrs. Rodriguez. So did I.
He held up the Kleenex so that the other children could see it. “Want to see me make it disappear?” he said.
The Highest Justice
Garth Nix
THE girl did not ride the unicorn, because no one ever did. She rode a nervous oat-colored palfrey that had no name, and led the second horse, a blind and almost-deaf ancient who long ago had been called Rinaldo and was now simply Rin. The unicorn sometimes paced next to the palfrey, and sometimes not.
Rin bore the dead Queen on his back, barely noticing her twitches and mumbles and the cloying stench of decaying flesh that seeped out through the honey- and spice-soaked bandages. She was tied to the saddle, but could have snapped those bonds if she had thought to do so. She had become monstrously strong since her death three days before, and the intervention by her daughter that had returned her to a semblance of life.
Not that Princess Jess as a witch or necromancer. She knew no more magic than any other young woman. But she was fifteen years old, a virgin, and she believed the old tale of the kingdom’s founding: that the unicorn who had aided the legendary Queen Jessibelle the First was still alive and would honor the compact made so long ago, to come in the time of the kingdom’s need.
The unicorn’s secret name was Elibet. Jess had called this name to the waxing moon at midnight from the tallest tower of the castle, and had seen something ripple in answer across the surface of the earth’s companion in the sky.
An hour later Elibet was in the tower. She was somewhat like a horse with a horn, if you looked at her full on, albeit one made of white cloud and moonshine. Looked at sideways she was a fiercer thing, of less familiar shape, made of storm clouds and darkness, the horn more prominent and bloody at the tip, like the setting sun. Jess preferred to see a white horse with a silvery horn, and so that is what she saw.
Jess had called the unicorn as her mother gasped out her final breath. The unicorn had come too late to save the Queen, but by then Jess had another plan. The unicorn listened and then by the power of her horn, brought back some part of the Queen to inhabit a body from which life had all too quickly sped.
They had then set forth, to seek the Queen’s poisoner, and mete out justice.
Jess halted her palfrey as they came to a choice of ways. The royal forest was thick and dark in these parts, and the path was no more than a beaten track some dozen paces wide. It forked ahead, into two lesser, narrower paths.
“Which way?” asked Jess, speaking to the unicorn, who had once again mysteriously appeared at her side.
The unicorn pointed her horn at the left-hand path.
“Are you sure—” Jess asked. “No, it’s just that—”
“The other way looks more traveled—”
“No, I’m not losing heart—”
“I know you know—”
“Talking to yourself?” interjected a rough male voice, the only other sound in the forest, for if the unicorn had spoken, no one but Jess had heard her.
The palfrey shied as Jess swung around and reached for her sword. But she was too late, as a dirty bearded ruffian held a rusty pike to her side. He grinned, and raised his eyebrows.
“Here’s a tasty morsel, then,” he leered. “Step down lightly, and no tricks.”
“Elibet!” said Jess indignantly.
The unicorn slid out of the forest behind the outlaw, and lightly pricked him in the back of his torn leather jerkin with her horn. The man’s eyebrows went up still farther and his eyes darted to the left and right.
“Ground your pike,” said Jess. “My friend can strike faster than any man.”
“I give up,” he wheezed, leaning forward as if he might escape the sharp horn. “Ease off on the spear, and take me to the sheriff. I swear—”
“Hunger,” interrupted the Queen. Her voice had changed with her death. It had become gruff and leathery, and significantly less human.
The bandit glanced at the veiled figure under the broad-brimmed pilgrim’s hat.
“What?” he asked hesitantly.
“Hunger,” groaned the Queen. “Hunger.”
She raised her right arm, and the leather cord that bound her to the saddle’s high cantle snapped with a sharp crack. A bandage came loose at her wrist and dropped to the ground in a series of spinning turns, revealing the mottled blue-bruised skin beneath.
“Shoot ’em!” shouted the bandit as he dove under Jess’s horse and scuttled across the path toward the safety of the trees. As he ran, an arrow flew over his head and struck the Queen in the shoulder. Another, coming behind it, went past Jess’s head as she jerked herself forward and down. The third was struck out of the air by a blur of vaguely unicorn-shaped motion. There were no more arrows, but a second later there was a scream from halfway up a broad oak that loomed over the path ahead, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the ground.
Jess drew her sword and kicked her palfrey into a lurching charge. She caught the surviving bandit just before he managed to slip between two thorny bushes, and landed a solid blow on his head with the back of the blade. She hadn’t meant to be merciful, but the sword had turned in her sweaty grasp. He fell under the horse’s feet, and got trampled a little before Jess managed to turn about.
She glanced down to make sure he was at least dazed, but sure of this, spared him no more time. Her mother had broken the bonds on her left arm as well, and was ripping off the veil that hid her face.
“Hunger!” boomed the Queen, loud enough even for poor old deaf Rin to hear. He stopped eating the grass and lifted his head, time-worn nostrils almost smelling something he didn’t like.
“Elibet! Please. . . ,” beseeched Jess. “A little longer—we must be almost there.”
The unicorn stepped out from behind a tree and looked at her. It was the look of a stern teacher about to allow a pupil some small favor.
“One more touch, please, Elibet.”
The unicorn bent her head, paced over to the dead Queen, and touched the woman lightly with her horn, briefly imbuing her with a subtle nimbus of summer sunshine, bright in the shadowed forest. Propelled by that strange light, the arrow in the Queen’s shoulder popped out, the blue-black bruises on her arms faded, and her skin shone, pink and new. She stopped fumbling with the veil, slumped down in her saddle, and let out a relatively delicate and human-sounding snore.