He nodded, then said abruptly, “I’ve seen the other animals.”
“I know.”
Hunter was unsurprised by her quiet comment and merely nodded again. “It’s incredible. I feel as if I’m looking through books, one of history and one of myth. Living books.” He looked down at her to find that she was smiling again, and the sight made his heart perform a peculiar flip inside his chest.
“And the animals went in two by two,” she said softly.
“Yes.” He frowned a little. “There was a story, an ancient story, about the beginnings of…Earth. A great flood, and the animals were saved in mated pairs. Like this valley. A new beginning for everything.”
“For everything,” she agreed.
Silently, they followed a winding path through the woods near the dragon’s lair until they encountered eight calm unicorns standing near what looked like a huge, impenetrable thicket of brambles. And the two-legged newcomers were very nearly run over by a ninth frantically pacing unicorn.
Dodging Crom’s lowered horn, Hunter stared in astonishment for a moment, then burst out laughing. “He’s pacing! He’s actually pacing.”
Siri smiled a little. “It’s his first foal,” she explained. “He’s concerned about Teen.”
“Concerned?” Hunter choked on a final laugh. “He’s pacing the edge of a nervous breakdown!”
Taking a seat on one of a cluster of small boulders, Siri murmured, “Well, stop laughing at him.”
Hunter dodged a second pass of the blindly pacing Crom and hastily made his way to the relative safety of the boulders. Sinking down beside Siri, he inadvertently brushed an arm against the fullness of her breast and heard her soft catch of breath even as he clamped his teeth firmly together. His arm burned, and he stared across at the thicket with a fixed gaze.
Did she have any idea how violently she affected him? She never seemed to notice, although he often found himself shifting uncomfortably like some rutting stripling with his hormones in chaos. He had even awakened once gasping from an erotic dream of Siri—something that hadn’t happened since he was half his present age.
He had never forced himself on a woman, but Hunter was increasingly conscious of pounding temples and the straining ache of his loins, and he knew he was dangerously close to abandoning control.
Hanging on grimly, he cast about in his mind for something casual to say. “Are you really the daughter of a Mermaid?” he asked suddenly.
“I really am.”
“Incredible.”
Siri stole a glance at her human companion, seeing a lean and dangerous face that was as beautiful as a male face could be. The face of an angel. She blinked, frowning. Angel? Where had that thought come from? There was nothing at all angelic about this man. His features were rugged, and if the razor-keen look of rooted obsession had softened somewhat, still she had the uneasy feeling it was only because he now hid that part of himself from her.
The moment of humor at Bundy’s cave aside, he still wore the coolly level, direct gaze of command, and she had seen his first instinctive reaching for a weapon no longer strapped to his hip. He’s a warrior, she reminded herself. He laughed at Death, as only a man who has faced that before could do.
She wondered, briefly, what kind of world had produced such a man. He was so unlike the Huntmen! A peaceful world? He had mentioned a “simple society.” Had his travels since leaving his world taught him a warrior’s skills, or did his simple world still require a rite of passage for its young males? What had he said? That he had learned to fight for his life? He had the indefinable look of command, the almost arrogant air of a man of importance stamped in his carriage, in the tilt of his head.
Siri blinked, startled to realize where her thoughts had gone. Why was she thinking of things outside her experience? Of other worlds and important men? This valley was her world!
For the first time, that thought was a hollow consolation. He had somehow awakened a part of her mind with his ceaseless questions, forcing her to think in a way she never had before.
She sighed without intending to, and nervously looked away when he turned his head and met her stare with a smile. He’s a man! And men betray to get what they want. Gazing toward the glade and the miracle of birth it contained, she saw instead green eyes with a profoundly disturbing heat in their depths. She couldn’t let down her guard, couldn’t allow him to shake the foundation of her life, of all she was—The cards’ prophecy abruptly superimposed its symbolic image over the green eyes in her mind, and Siri bit her lip.
He wanted her, and she knew his need was growing stronger. Sometimes the images in his mind caught her unawares, dimly shocking but exciting as well, arousing her body with a suddenness that stole her breath. He was healed now, strong and powerful, and she was terrified by her growing response to him and his regained strength. Could she fight him if he attempted to take her? Or would her own body betray her?
Forbidden! Outcast!
Her breasts hurt, and Siri unconsciously covered them with her arms, leaning forward to hide from him the evidence of what he was doing to her.
—
“Baby unicorns take their time making an entrance into the world,” Hunter noted as hours passed and the glade remained silent but for the muffled thudding of Crom’s hooves.
His voice recalled her from a distant, worried place, and Siri looked at him. She saw that he was absently scratching Rayne’s itching forehead and knew that neither he nor the young Unicorn was aware of the bonding that was taking place between them. It was little Rayne’s first Summer, and she had not yet learned to fear men; though the instinct to be wary was deeply rooted, the Unicorn was learning to trust one man at least.
Siri knew that wasn’t good, but she felt helpless in the face of it. The danger…
Hunter nodded toward the calmly waiting unicorns. “They’ll remain here as long as it takes?”
“As long as it takes,” she confirmed, clearing her throat quickly of huskiness. “Especially now with the herd so small, the birth of a Unicorn is an event the rest of them truly cherish, because it means a continuation of their ancient bloodlines.”
“Do they know that?” He looked at her curiously. “I mean—are they consciously aware that they’re the only ones left?”
“They know,” she replied very softly. Sasha, his pure coat stained with his life’s blood; Cloud enraged and then grieving when only a horn remained of his son…
Hardly aware that the tiny chin of a baby unicorn rested on his knee, or that he scratched the base of a minute golden horn, Hunter continued to gaze at Siri. “I want to understand why you think they should remain legendary,” he said guardedly, conscious of the wall keeping them apart. “They’re beautiful, enchanting creatures; why should only a handful of men know that they exist? Why should the sight of a unicorn Dance be denied to men?”
Siri linked her arms around her knees and stared broodingly at the herd. “Because if dreams were real, there would be no magic in them.”
Hunter shook his head. “I know they’re real—and it’s still magic to me.”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Would he understand? She had to try. “Unicorns are creatures of dream. And because of that, they’ve been endowed with only the best and most noble of traits. A Unicorn is untainted by the realities of harsh existence. Unicorns are symbols of good luck and prosperity, of wisdom and purity. They live in forgotten valleys and enchanted forests, and drink from crystal pools.
“Don’t you see?” She turned her head to stare at him, willing him to understand. “To a man with no soul, a Unicorn is only a horse with a valuable horn. But to a dreamer, a Unicorn is magic. A dreamer has no need to give flesh to his dream, and a man with no soul has no right to the dreamer’s vision.”
Hunter looked down at Rayne, his thumb gently stroking the living golden horn. “But to know they’re real—”
“—would only turn them into just another of nature’s oddities,” she swiftly interjected, “like
camels, elephants, and giraffes. Creatures with a logical, scientific place in the order of things. There would be no magic about them anymore.”
She tried to think of some analogy that would make the truth clearer to him. Slowly she said, “When men first looked into the skies and saw tongues of fire lighting darkness, they were terrified and awed. For many ages on many worlds, comets and meteors were omens of good luck or bad; some were named gods. Then science explained a natural phenomenon, and the majority of beings never again even looked up at a tongue of fire in the sky. Because it had become a rational phenomenon, a fact. No longer was it a night wonder.
“That can’t happen to the Unicorns. They must remain myth—a vision for dreamers. Their reality would destroy that vision…and them.”
Abruptly Hunter asked, “Which man am I, Siri? A soulless man? Or a dreamer with a vision?”
“I—don’t know.” She looked at him, baffled. “Enough of a dreamer to see the vision…and enough of a soulless man to demand its reality.” She felt suddenly hurt, aching. For him. “The tragedy is that I believe you’d come to hate yourself one day for destroying a dream. And it would be too late then. Myth would be forever dead to you.”
He gazed into her ebony eyes, feeling her certainty tugging at some basic knowledge within himself, some truth he had never faced. And refused to face now. “I set out to discover reality,” he said tautly.
“At what cost?” She could feel the frustration, the anger gnawing at her. “Fantasy is just as vital as reality, don’t you understand that? We need both. And on your world, the people don’t need a myth explained, made ‘fact,’ alive and paraded before them! They need to believe in a dream. If they’ve lost that capacity, nothing will give it back to them, Hunter. Nothing. Because the ability to dream comes from here!” She struck her breast with a clenched fist, her eyes fierce.
Through lips that felt numb, he said, “They need to believe that dreams are real.”
Siri turned her gaze away from his, and her voice was a rasping sound of discouragement. “You just won’t see. Destroy your myths, Hunter, and then see what’s left to dream of.”
“Siri—”
“Did you really go in search of reality? Or did you go in search of your own soul, hoping to discover the soul of a dreamer? Did you really want to find Unicorns? Or did you want only a confirmation of man’s ability to dream?”
Before he could respond, Hunter looked up and saw a proud Teen emerge from the thicket through an opening he hadn’t noticed, a wobbly, hornless foal at her side. He heard an indrawn breath from Siri and was vaguely conscious of holding his own breath, but his entire attention was taken up by the baby tottering about inspecting her relatives.
If Rayne was joyful youth, this new addition to the herd was uncertain infancy, her long legs bending at odd angles and her huge black eyes filled with an eternal puzzlement. She turned her snow-white face this way and that, wary of straying too far from her mother’s side but clearly intrigued by life as Teen led her—in an oddly formal little ceremony—from one of the herd to another, beginning with Cloud and ending with Crom, the father who had finally stopped pacing and now looked at his daughter with something very like terror.
Quietly, responding finally to Siri’s challenge, Hunter said, “I’m not…sure any longer what I wanted.”
Her sigh held the sound of reluctant understanding. “The path to any truth begins with questions, not answers,” she said. “At least now you’re asking yourself questions.”
“And what about you, Siri? Will I ever understand you? You’ve lived your entire life in this valley virtually alone, yet your knowledge spans history and distance. You understand reality, yet speak of myth and impossibilities with reason and certainty. You’ve devoted your very life to a Summer that comes only once in ten Standard years.” He paused, adding almost inaudibly, “You’re a witch, a sorceress, driving me mad—”
“I’m no witch!”
“You are!” His laugh was rough, unsteady. “You’ve bewitched me, maddened me until I can’t think, can’t do anything but love you and hunger for you like some enchanted fool.”
His words caused a part of Siri to close down, to shut itself off from the rest of her. It was the part of her that had ached and worried, the part that Hunter had awakened from a sleep meant to be lifelong. And she was glad that it was, however briefly, locked away and hidden within her. She got to her feet, expressionless. Without a word, she walked over to greet the new arrival to the herd.
“How I love you,” Hunter murmured to himself, watching her among her beloved unicorns.
—
The cabin was quiet. Siri stood before the fire, stirring the beginnings of a stew, and Hunter sat at the table peeling and slicing vegetables with his long hunting knife. They had remained in the glade for hours, and the subject of his feelings toward the unicorns and toward her had not been mentioned again. Now the valley was bathed in the moonlit peace of night, and the two people within the cabin talked warily, as if any misstep would bring about disaster.
Because both knew it would.
They talked carefully until Siri could stand it no longer. She looked at Hunter. “You’re healed now,” she said abruptly, the smooth stiffness of before becoming something jagged. “You can leave the valley.”
His hands stilled, and he looked up at her. “No. I can’t.”
“You have to leave,” she said steadily.
“I can’t, Siri.”
Siri felt the rage of desperation welling up inside her. “You can! You’ve found your damned truth—the Unicorns live! Now go and start a plague of death with your truth!”
“Siri—”
“Go! Leave my valley!”
Hunter cursed softly and began to rise to his feet. With his entire attention focused on the need to remain here and somehow win her heart, he completely forgot about the wicked knife in his hand. It caught his forearm in an instant, cutting a deep and ragged tear in tanned flesh. Scarlet blood immediately splashed onto the table, and Hunter gasped in pain.
Whatever the turmoil of emotions inside her, Siri was instinctively, innately, a healer. Swiftly she leaned across the table and clamped a hand over the bleeding cut, automatically calling on her energies to heal.
Hunter’s first thought was that she was simply halting the flow of blood with pressure, but then the pain in his forearm faded to nothing, and he realized that something else was happening. She removed her hand. Blood no longer spurted. It didn’t drip or smear. It didn’t even stain. Because there was no blood. No blood, no gash in the flesh, not even a dent. Only a faint pink line fading even as he looked at it and being replaced by tingling warmth.
Silently, Siri found a cloth to clean the knife and wipe away the splashes of scarlet on the table.
Hunter stared down at his arm for a long moment. “When I first woke up,” he said slowly, looking at her now, “I was puzzled. No cuts or bruises or broken bones. That fall should have killed me, but it didn’t.” Siri had returned to stirring the stew, and he stared fixedly at her profile. Her beautiful, remote profile. “And you told me that you felt my pain. You’re an empath, a healer!”
Siri said nothing.
“True healers are almost as rare as—as unicorns. It’s the one psi talent there can be no disputing.” He saw then that her face was pale, her eyes oddly dimmed, and a sudden realization brought horror. “Siri, how badly was I injured when you found me?”
She turned slowly toward him, feeling her energies building up once more and remembering against all intention the first days after finding him and the dangerously low level of those energies then. How desperate she had been to save him. And how desperate she was now for him to leave her forever. “You were dying,” she said briefly.
“It takes something out of you when you heal, doesn’t it?” he asked hoarsely. “You give your own life-force. You endangered your life by healing me, didn’t you?”
“I’m a healer,” she said flatly, turning ba
ck to the fire.
“And I was an enemy,” he countered slowly.
Siri didn’t want him to wonder about that, didn’t want him to question her motives. “I’m a healer,” she repeated. “It’s instinct.”
“I owe you my life.” He had said much the same words before, but now he understood just how much he really did owe her.
“Then repay your debt,” she whispered harshly. “Leave my valley!”
“Anything but that. Ask anything else of me, Siri.”
She felt so alone, so terribly afraid. She could ask him never to betray the Unicorns’ existence, but unless he left the valley soon the promise would mean virtually nothing. His very presence here would destroy them all. Was destroying them. She closed her eyes. “Leave. Please. Just leave me in peace.”
Hunter rose from his chair and moved around the table, standing before her and gazing down into shimmering ebony eyes. “I love you,” he said tautly. “I can’t help but love you.”
“You’ll destroy us.” Her voice was still so low that Hunter could barely hear her words.
“I don’t want to destroy. I want to enrich your life, Siri. I want to show you the wonders possible between two people who love.”
“I don’t love you.” She heard her voice as if from a great distance, hollow.
“I think,” he said softly, “that you fell in love with a stranger just as I did. Because there was no other reason to risk your own life in saving an enemy.”
She saw him now for the enemy he truly was. Not just another man after the Unicorns, but a man who could very well destroy the entire herd and herself with it. And somewhere deep inside her, near a heart that had beat only for Unicorns, the conflict that had raged almost without her notice exploded into her consciousness with a force beyond reason.
I love him.
He’ll destroy us all.
Siri had believed that she knew pain in all its forms. She had felt her own, his, the Unicorns’. She had felt minor pain and tearing pain and dying pain. But she had never felt anything like this agony.