Despair?
“Please,” she whispered, her voice nearly smothered in the blindness all around, “show me a way.”
She half-feared to speak the request. Even as she spoke it, she expected her original path to be revealed to her, the path that must lead away from the rose perfume, away from this dark mystery, back to her march and her endless service.
Instead, a light glimmered faintly in the distance. A very small light, just bright enough to illuminate the contours of the tall trees around her. A narrow Faerie path bloomed before her feet.
It led in the same direction as the beckoning scent of roses.
With a glad, gasping whisper of thanks, the lady knight set out at a run. The scabbard of the sword slung over her back bounced with each step, and she put up a hand to touch the hilt of her weapon. She didn’t like to draw it without need, but something told her that she even now pursued something dark and dreadful, though what exactly she couldn’t guess.
The path guided her through territory she did not recognize, through grove after grove of strange trees, all of which watched her with wary curiosity. They had gone very quiet, those trees. They, too, felt the presence of that Darkness invading this part of the Wood, and they feared to draw attention to themselves. Though their boughs extended as far as ever, leaf-clad and full, something about their spirits shrank and receded deep inside their ringed hearts.
The lady knight ignored the trees, intent as she was on following this path. Paths through the Wood Between are not always trustworthy. If she’d learned nothing else during her service, she’d learned that much at least! One must be careful which path one chooses to pursue, for to pick poorly is to end up twisted around and lost in the very depths of the Wood, drawn at last to the center where the Dark Water pools in stagnant anticipation.
But this path, though it led through deep, sulfurous shadow, she believed must be a pure way, provided just for her in her time of need. All around her she half-glimpsed faint, ghostly forms. Whenever she turned to look at them directly, the glimmerings vanished. But so long as she did not try to look at them too closely, she could discern the blooming petals of roses. And the scent of roses only grew more profound.
She was so fixated on watching her footsteps, on taking care not to wander off this narrow way and stumble into the pressing shadows, that she almost failed to notice when she suddenly emerged into a clearing. A most unnatural clearing, as though the trees themselves had only just withdrawn, pressing so hard against one another that their branches bent and some even broke. Thus they awkwardly lined the perimeter of a perfect circle of bright green grass. In the middle of that circle was another circle—this one of glimmering, ghostly roses, which the lady knight even now saw only indistinctly, though she knew what they were.
And in the center of that circle sat a goblin child.
ON THE HUNT
WHERE THE UNICORN PLANTED its unseen footsteps, grass withered and died, flowers wilted and turned to ash, and the soil itself became lifeless dust. Dust in which the imprint of a cloven hoof momentarily appeared before blowing away at the least trace of a breeze.
But roses bloomed before the unicorn, creating a path of ghostly beauty.
The unicorn’s eyes were white with murky clouds. They looked like a blind man’s, and perhaps the unicorn was blind indeed. But it moved with purpose, never once hesitating, never once stumbling. Its nostrils flared as wide as caverns as it inhaled the rose perfume.
Suddenly it stopped. It raised its heavy head, turning sharply, ears pricked with interest. A long, sinuous tail swished lightly, the poisoned barbs on its end slicing through the air.
There . . .
. . . beneath the scent of roses, it smelled . . .
. . . her.
GOBLIN CHILD
THE LADY KNIGHT STOOD transfixed, unable to believe what her eyes saw clearly before her. A goblin. A goblin child!
But surely not. Surely she must be mistaken. She shook her head and even rubbed her eyes, as though somehow she could rub sense and reason back into them. When she looked again, however, that same bizarre image met her disbelieving stare. The grotesque goblin child. Sitting in a circle of roses.
Utterly impossible. And yet utterly real.
Naturally, the lady knight knew that goblin children must exist somewhere. But all Faerie races, goblins included, boast unique methods and practices of childbearing and childrearing. Most do not allow their offspring to be seen by others until they are mostly if not fully grown, leading to rumors that Faeries do not bear children at all but spring up fully formed from ground or sky or tree. Or, in the case of goblins, from stone.
Never once in all of her travels, in all of her studies, in all of the ages she had spent here in the wild and weird Between, had she heard even the faintest rumor of goblin children. Yet there could be no mistaking the creature now reaching out little warped hands to catch at the shimmering roses. There could be no mistaking that ugly, twisted mouth, those jutting teeth which flashed with laughter when the roses vanished and reappeared.
She could not imagine an uglier infant.
The lady knight stood quite still in the shadow of a sheltering tree and watched the child, unwilling to interrupt its play. At first her mind went numb at the sight so that she could hardly think. But then a new thought pressed in upon her, bringing with it a surge of what must be called hope through her heart.
Could this be more proof that the Lost Demesne was near?
Long ago, Arpiar, the realm of goblins, had closed its gates and vanished. Other than a few goblins who were outside of their homeland at the time of its disappearance, not one of its ugly denizens had been seen ever since. Indeed, some people even tried to claim that Arpiar had never existed.
A false claim, and well the lady knew it! But though she had devoted countless days to her quest for the Lost Demesne, she had never come closer than a false rumor’s distance from its invisible gates.
Until now.
It was said that King Vahe of Arpiar had stolen all of the roses out of every garden, summoning them by dark arts into his hidden realm. For what sorcerous purpose, no one knew. But here were roses blooming as ghosts, filling the air with their heavenly perfume! And here was a child as ugly as sin, with skin like stone and eyes like huge white moons.
The lady knight’s heart began to race. She tried to swallow her eagerness, to suppress her mounting excitement.
But in her mind’s eye she saw his face again. The face of one she had not seen since Arpiar was lost. The face of one she would not see again until the goblin kingdom was found.
Suddenly she could not restrain herself a moment longer.
Striding out from the shadows of the trees, she put out a swift hand and caught the ugly child by one thin shoulder. “You there,” she said, her voice trembling with the urgency of the question she would ask, “tell me, are you—”
She did not have a chance to finish. Instead, she found herself lying on her back, staring up at branches and green leaves, the wind completely knocked from her lungs.
At first she couldn’t for the life of her comprehend what had happened. Then, with a groan, she sat up and looked into the strange, white-moon eyes of the child . . . the child who crouched among the ghostly roses, staring at her with teeth bared.
“Did you . . . Did you . . . ?” The lady knight found herself, for once in her life, at a loss for words. Was it possible that this tiny, scrawny urchin had actually knocked her flat off her feet?
But then, how well she knew the unnatural strength of goblins!
Gathering her limbs beneath her, the lady knight made as though to rise. The child crouched a little lower, her overlarge teeth flashing and a growl rumbling in her throat. The knight froze, uncertain how to proceed. Her experience with children was limited enough, and goblin children were an entirely unknown entity. If only Dame Imraldera were here instead, she would know what to do. She had the right gentleness about her, a winning way to which children res
ponded. But gentleness was not the lady knight’s particular gift.
She remained motionless, though her position was uncomfortable and the muscles in her right leg already throbbed with the need to adjust. But the look in the child’s weird eyes kept her still. She wetted her dry lips, but they seemed to dry again almost immediately.
“There, there,” she said, hoping her voice sounded soothing to those pricked, bat-like ears. “I . . . I mean you no harm. I am Dame Bettina, Knight of Farthestshore, Lady of Aiven-That-Was. I have the watch over this part of the Wood Between and—”
The child blinked once, slowly. It wasn’t a particularly menacing gesture, and yet that single movement was enough to cut the knight off mid-sentence. She swallowed hard, her mind racing. The child wasn’t big enough to be truly intimidating. In a battle of strength and skill, the knight knew she would prevail. But she did not like the idea of needing to enforce strength over this little person, however ugly a little person it might be.
She opened her mouth, hoping to try again, hoping to find some approach that would not frighten the child. For a moment she sat there, mouth agape, wordless. Then she said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper, “Those flowers . . . they’re pretty. Are they . . . are they yours?”
The child blinked again, owlishly. To the lady knight’s relief, she broke off her intense stare to look at the flowers around her. She reached out a gnarled hand and touched one of the insubstantial petals, which melted away under her finger in wispy twirls like smoke. “Pretty,” she said, her voice oddly soft and lisping coming through those ugly teeth. “Pretty flower.”
“Yes,” said the lady knight, starting to smile and then thinking better of it. For all she knew, the goblin child might mistake a show of teeth as aggression. “Yes, very pretty. Where did it come from? Do you know?”
The child made no answer. Her ugly forehead mounded with wrinkles as her hairless brows drew together. She glanced this way and that, rising from her crouch, her overlarge hands twisting the front of her threadbare skirts.
“Don’t be afraid,” the lady knight whispered, more to herself than to the child, for she was the frightened one . . . frightened that the goblin child would run off, taking with her whatever secrets she harbored. Slowly the knight extended a hand as though she could somehow catch the little goblin without actually touching her. “Don’t be afraid. Tell me, do you know—”
Before she could finish, the child suddenly dropped to all fours like an animal, long fingers digging into the ground. The lady knight, startled, took a step back, expecting some attack.
And then the Darkness swept over her head.
FALLEN STAR
THE STENCH OF SULFUR and despair filled her nostrils, filled her lungs. The lady knight coughed and choked even as her eyes watered with burning blindness, as if from smoke. But there was no smoke, only deep, deep shadow. She drew her sword, clutching it in both hands as she tried to find her footing. The world felt as though it had turned upside down, so shattering was the terror that burst through her veins with every breath she struggled to take.
Suddenly a flash of light. Light that was hardly light at all, but rather an illumination of deeper darkness.
The lady knight beheld the radiance of a fallen star.
It stood in the center of a nimbus of pulsing shadow-glow. Its shape was like that of a horse, and yet the sheer beauty and terror of this being could not be so easily defined. A great horn protruded from the center of its forehead, a lance-like spike that could pierce through skin and bone, armor and spirit alike. To gaze upon its form was to see what once it had been—glorious beyond all reckoning, shining with song and light—and in that sight, to see as well how far that glory had fallen. In its eyes, the emptiness of a silenced song burned bright as white fire.
The lady knight fell to her knees, her mouth open in a silent scream.
The unicorn turned its head. For a terrible instant, the knight thought it looked for her, and she knew her soul would incinerate under the heat of that dreadful gaze. But its gaze passed over her without interest or acknowledgement. Cavernous nostrils flared, snorting out roiling white smoke which twisted into the shapes of roses before vanishing. And its eyes, so full of loss and horror, fixed instead upon the goblin child.
As though from a great distance, the lady knight watched the scene taking place before her. She saw the unicorn arch its great neck, angling its horn like a jousting lance. She saw the goblin on her hands and knees, so tiny and helpless before the hugeness of that monster, her ugly face lit in the glow of that shimmering dark-light. She saw how the smoke-like roses reached out like binding chains and wrapped vines around the goblin girl’s wrists, insubstantial and yet swiftly solidifying.
The unicorn had found its prey.
Why did it seek this child? What did this being of once-heavenly origins want with this base creature of stone? These questions pounded in the back of the lady knight’s skull, while in the forefront of her mind she felt only terror and, beneath the terror, a faint-hearted, shameful relief that the unicorn’s gaze was not fixed upon her.
Then the wood thrush sang.
The voice of liquid silver, so soft and gentle that it almost escaped her notice entirely, pierced through her terror and struck the lady knight’s heart.
Save the child . . .
To stop and think would mean to remain frozen upon her knees. So the lady knight did not think at all. She tightened her grip upon her sword and, using her own terror as an engine of propulsion, sprang up from her knees and lunged at the unicorn. Her short sword, frail as a daisy’s stem against that pulsing darkness, somehow passed through the unicorn’s shadow nimbus and struck straight for that white, empty eye.
The blade broke.
A voice like the roaring of summer thunder threatened to crack the world in two. Knife-like hooves slashed at the turf, and the gleaming horn scythed through the air. The lady knight fell to the ground, her arms shuddering as though her bones would shatter into a thousand tiny shards. She pressed her face into the dirt, expecting at any moment to feel the unicorn’s horn pierce between her shoulder blades and through her pounding heart.
Instead, a rush of wind swept over her, pulling at her hair and garments. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her hands white-knuckled around the hilt of her broken sword. The smell of sulfur and roses choked her lungs so that she thought she would suffocate. Somewhere far away, she thought she heard a child’s cry.
Then all was still.
A BECKONING SONG
FOLLOW ME.
Follow me.
The lady knight drew a breath. Her lungs burned and her throat felt as though thorns had torn it into shreds from the inside out.
Follow me.
What had happened? The memories whirling inside her head were too strange, too dark, too dreadful to be real. No, they must be the remnants of some vivid nightmare . . .
Follow me.
With a groan, she pushed herself up onto her elbows, her eyes still tightly shut. Every bone in her body vibrated painfully as though on the verge of breaking. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she saw flashes of white fire and burning red orbs like eyes of lava . . .
She saw a goblin child’s ugly face, masked in absolute terror.
The child . . .
The child!
Follow me now.
Unwillingly she opened her eyes and found herself lying on her back, gazing up into the interlaced branches of trees. On the lowest and nearest of those branches perched a small brown bird with a speckled breast. It sang, a voice of sweet silver raining down upon her in gentle drops. Then, spreading its wings, it flew off into the forest.
Follow me!
“It was after her,” the lady knight whispered, understanding seeping slowly but surely into her fear-numbed brain. “The unicorn . . . it was after the girl.”
She didn’t know why. She didn’t need to know.
Though every part of her mortal body told her to lie still, to let
the goblin flee, to let the unicorn pursue, to let both of them vanish from her life altogether, she picked herself up, only to stand and sway on trembling limbs. In her right hand she gripped the hilt of a broken short sword. She stared at it as though it were her own limb cut in two.
Then, with a shrug, she tossed the hilt aside and set off at a staggering run, pursuing the flight of the brown songbird. Pursuing the voice that beckoned so insistently: Follow me! Follow me!
Pursuing the path of the unicorn.
At her feet, ghostly roses bloomed, faded, and withered away to nothing.
THE UNICORN’S PLEA
LITTLE ROSIE WEPT AS she ran. Her short legs could not carry her swiftly, and she stumbled and fell many times in her desperation. Tears coursed down the cracks and crevices of her rock-hard face, and she wiped them away ineffectually.
“Dad! Dad!” she cried.
Where was he? He was always near when she cried for him, no matter what happened! Always ready to pick her up and hold her close, whispering words of comfort in her ear.
But he had gone after Lilybean, leaving her alone . . . and then . . . oh, and then! She had disobeyed him. He’d told her to stay, and she’d wandered off. Would he punish her now for her disobedience? Would he leave her alone in this frightening forest?
“Dad!” she sobbed, and fell again.
Behind her, Darkness pursued. Darkness like the fear that stalked her in the middle of the night when she woke in her small bed and the shadows were so deep and dawn so far away. She may be young . . . she may be ignorant . . . but she understood, as all children understand, that fear of the Dark.