“I wish my handsome prince, my one true love, would find me and save me and take me away from all this,” she said, and she tossed the coin in the air.
The demon stretched out a hand and easily caught the tiny gold disc before it hit the well. His palm, still hot from the comb, melted it, too, into slag. He tossed the thin, swirling, misshapen bit of metal into the snow at her feet.
“Why did you do that?” the princess asked.
“You didn’t want to make that wish,” the demon replied.
“I didn’t?”
“You don’t want any prince who would have you right now,” he said. “Trust me.”
“But I always make that wish,” she said.
“Then I hope he takes his sweet old time finding you,” he said.
“Wishes are magic and wonderful,” said the princess.
“Are they now?” said the demon. “’Skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood...’ How’d that wish work out for you?”
Those blood red lips formed a thin red line, and the princess stomped away from the well. The demon chose to enjoy the silence.
They marched through the forest as before, with a varying menagerie of wild animals keeping pace. The princess was distraught when the demon picked one new friend at random to be their lunch, but once cooked her growling stomach betrayed her and she ate with relish. She apologized to her friends when she finished; they seemed to accept it easier than she had. And so she frolicked with them as the day and miles through the endless forest stretched on. The meadows gave way to hills and then mountains, and at times they had to skirt sheer cliff sides and rocky terrain, but still they walked. The princess had long since shredded and discarded her delicate slippers, her ebony hair was as stringy as the limp ribbons still woven through it, and her golden dress trailed behind her in muddy rags, but she maintained her posture and addressed her wild friends with all the pomp and circumstance of royal courtiers.
They did not stop again until they came to a stream that sliced a deep crevasse through the forest and rushed swift with icemelt water from the mountains. The princess was far ahead of him, singing a harmony with a family of larks and dancing with a fluttering collection of moths and butterflies, so she did not spot the unicorn refreshing himself in the stream until she was almost upon it. The demon noticed at once; he had felt the chill presence of the unicorn emanating from the water, far stronger than icemelt.
The princess stopped her dancing, though the circus around her did not, so she still appeared to be a flurry of movement. She lifted her mud-heavy skirts and curtseyed low to the unicorn across from her, on the opposite bank of the narrowest part of the stream. The unicorn noticed her, lifted his head from the water, and bent a foreleg as it bowed to her in return. Without taking her eyes from the animal, she reached into the silk purse at her belt and withdrew the most beautiful red apple the demon had ever seen.
It occurred to the demon to wonder why the princess had not mentioned the apple during her passionate fit at lunchtime. It did not occur to him to wonder why she was possessed of such a remarkable fruit in a season where similar apples had long rotted into memory. And so he did not stop her when she offered the apple to the unicorn with both hands, and it munched heartily. For a moment they were a mirror of snow white skin and blood red lips, a picture of innocence and perfection.
When the unicorn started to scream, it sounded very much like how the princess had screamed when she’d been attacked by the huntsman. Its cry cut through the oncoming twilight and pierced the heart of any living thing within earshot. Some of the smaller animals in the glen did not survive the terror of that scream. The demon thought it wise not to mention this to the princess.
She was already crying, screaming in fear as the unicorn screamed in pain. She leapt into the icy stream and threw her thin young arms around its slender neck, mindless of its spastic hooves and rolling eyes and blood-frothed mouth. She ceased her cries and began to sing to the beast, a lullaby, in an attempt to calm it.
There was magic in her voice, whether she had willed it there or not. The demon saw several animals curl up in sleep as they heard the song. He yawned twice himself. The unicorn’s thrashing slowed with its heartbeat, and it laid its head in her lap, far less gracefully than the previous unicorn. She rocked it back and forth, back and forth, all the time singing it to sleep. Singing it to death. She held the unicorn until long after it had turned to snow at her feet and the wind had blown its form into tiny drifts around her.
The demon approached her gently this time. He did not want to disturb her, but he also did not want her to freeze to death, so he loosened his fire essence through his iron-shod feet and into the ground, warming the earth around her. The corpse-ice of the unicorn began to melt away.
“I am sorry,” she told him again when the tears were gone. “I killed the unicorn.”
“No matter,” he replied calmly. “Can I get you anything?” He found himself surprised at his concern for her welfare.
She untied the silk purse at her waist and held it out to him. “A drink of water from the stream, please,” she said. “There is a golden cup in my bag.” Her voice was ragged and hoarse with strain and sadness.
The demon snorted. “You humans and your gold.” He was careful with his giant claws so that he only untied the small bag instead of ripping it to shreds. He withdrew the ridiculously ornate cup; like the comb, it, too, burned at his eyes with its sick aura. “Your mother gave you this.” It was not a question.
“Yes,” the princess affirmed. “She gave me the bag to take with me on my journey.”
He cursed himself for his own stupidity and immediately immolated the bag and all its contents at his feet.
“No!” cried the princess, the unicorn now all but forgotten.
“Why would you want any of that?” he asked. “Every bit of it was meant to kill you.”
“It’s all I have,” she said over the blackened mark of singed earth. “It’s all I had to remember her by.”
“You have your memories,” he told her. “Those should be painful enough.”
She stood tall and glared at him, her whole body rigid, her hands in tiny fists at her side. “How many more unicorns are there?”
“One,” he answered.
“How many more demons are there?” she asked.
“One,” he answered again.
“What happened to the others?”
“I killed them.”
She relaxed a little in sympathy. “How could you do that?”
He could just as easily ask her how she could have killed two unicorns, but he thought it wise not to mention it. “We are not meant to be here in your world. Not us; not the unicorns. Our presence makes the spectrum of your world larger. We make the waves taller, the valleys lower. We turn bad into evil and good into divinity. The longer we are here, the more we lose control of our minds. Demons become savage. Unicorns, I imagine, become more ephemeral. Our souls belong in our own worlds, and they return to these worlds after our death.”
“So you hunted down your brethren and killed them for the sake of my world.”
“And to save their souls. They were easy for me to find; evil begets evil. I would not have found the unicorns without your help.”
“And how would you have killed them?”
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “You did that for me.”
The princess exhaled then, deflated, and sat again. She hugged her knees to her chest and looked out over the rushing, icy stream. Apart from the burbling of the water the woods around them were blessedly silent. The demon sat beside her, only close enough to warm the ground beneath her and the air around her.
“Is that why my mother is so evil?” asked the princess. “Because there are demons in the world?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know.”
“I don’t think you are evil.”
“Then you are a silly girl.”
“Are unicorns demons too?”
This was certainly an avenue of thought the demon hadn’t considered. “What makes you say that?”
“They have horns, and hooves, and they are elemental, and they are the polar opposite of you. They are ice where you are fire. You said that demons are all different colors based on their nature. Are there ice demons where you come from?”
“I have not heard tales of any.”
“Perhaps they were exiled from your world. Or you from theirs. Or perhaps we were the ones exiled. We might have all been part of the same world once.”
“That would be a remarkable history,” he said.
“What will happen to you when you die?”
“My soul will be returned to my world and I will tell my tale to the Memory Stone, so that others who might follow this path will know how to act.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“I have to. My continued presence here will only tear your world apart.”
“I know,” she said matter-of-factly. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Thank you,” said the demon. Her declaration both pleased and frustrated him. She was growing too mature too fast. He hoped it didn’t affect her ability to attract the unicorns.
“Shall we go find this last unicorn then?”
The demon stood, offering one large, clawed hand to help the princess to her feet. She took it. “We shall.”
Just beyond the stream was another small mountain, more of a large hill, with a gaping maw before them that appeared to be the entrance to a mine. “Up or down?” the demon asked her. He imagined the unicorn would find them either way.
“I want to see the stars,” was all she said before she started climbing.
They climbed to the summit in the long hours of the early evening. In the spring, the demon suspected this ground was covered in wildflowers. What crunched beneath their feet now was only dirt and dry grasses hiding sharp rocks. The princess stumbled a few times, but she kept on climbing. The demon could not see the blood on her feet, but he could smell it on the wind, and so long as she said nothing, he wondered why he cared.
Once atop the small mountain, the princess skipped and jumped about joyously under the bright heavens. She ran around the summit as if the wildflowers still surrounded her. She spun and spun and threw her head back and held her hands up to the sky to catch the flakes of snow that had started to fall like little stars all around her. And then the stars themselves began to fall from the sky and dance with her. The princess pulled the golden ribbons from her hair and tied them all together in one long strand, and the stars leapt and swirled and twirled the ribbon as she spun it around herself. Her giggles and laughter sounded like bells. The wind around her whooshed and whistled and sounded like whinnying.
And when the whirlwind of flurries took a unicorn’s form, she quickly tied her ribbon around its neck, fashioning it into a crude golden harness. The great white beast bowed his head to her, accepting his defeat, and allowed her to lead him to the demon. With one quick hand, the demon snapped the horn from the unicorn’s head; with the other, he slit its throat, deep and deadly. Without so much as a snort the unicorn burst into a flash blizzard of snow, covering both the demon and the princess in blood and ice.
The demon lifted the unicorn’s frozen horn to his lips, and the heat from his breath melted it quickly down his throat. His stomach clenched and his muscles spasmed; the poison was quick.
There were tears in the princess’s eyes. The demon held a large, warm hand to her small, cold cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I killed the unicorn.”
“I cry not for a beast I never knew. I weep for the beast who was my friend.”
“Where will you go?” he asked, no longer surprised at his concern for her welfare.
“I will find whoever mines this mountain and seek shelter with them.” She was above him now; he did not remember lying down. Her ebony hair curtained her face, erasing the stars from the night. From her neck dangled the melted coin she had almost thrown in the well; she had woven one of her golden ribbons through a hole in the design. He reached out to touch the medallion, but his arm did not obey.
“Perhaps your prince will come,” said the demon.
“In time,” she said. “Perhaps in a very long time, when we are worthy of each other.”
“Very wise,” said the demon.
“Will you tell your Memory Stone about me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I will tell it all about the smart and brave princess I once knew.”
She laughed and fought back the tears that no longer fell. “There is no need to lie.”
He laughed too, but his breath had left him. “And what stories will you tell your world?”
“I have”—she screwed up her beautiful face in an effort to maintain her composure—“I have my memories,” she said. “Those should be painful enough.”
He nodded in reply, but his head would not obey. He fought to keep his eyes on her face, but he suddenly went from looking up at her to looking down upon them both. He watched her as she hugged herself to his chest, then shifted herself around his horns so that she might cradle his head in her lap. She held him until he turned to ash in her arms, until all that was left of him were his iron shoes. He watched her until his corpse-dust flew away on the wind, until his soul was drawn so far away that she was only a golden speck on the dark mountainside, another star in the sky.
He had been wrong. She would make a great queen.
Hero Worship
To: Mister Jack Woodcutter
From: Miss Sonya Vasili
Dear Mister Woodcutter,
My grandmother bade me pen this letter. She says that when someone saves your life, especially a legend such as yourself, the least you can do is write them a proper thank you note. We also mention you in our prayers to the gods every night. Sorry if that sounds a little creepy, but if it weren’t for you, Baba Vasili and I wouldn't have anymore prayers—or anymore nights, for that matter.
“Thank You” doesn't seem a big enough phrase to fit all the meaning I need it to, but as I haven’t been able to think of another, more appropriate gesture in the last few weeks, Baba Vasili handed me the quill and parchment, and here I am. Please forgive as well my utter lack of eloquence, as this is a tradition to which I am not yet accustomed.
And lest this silly little note (if it even finds you on your Grand Wanderings) finish without saying: THANK YOU. Thank you, Mister Jack Woodcutter, again and again. Thank you for my life.
All the best,
Sonya “Red” Vasili
To: Jack Woodcutter
From: S. Vasili
Jack,
I hope this letter finds you as successfully as my previous pitiful note, but even if it doesn’t, that’s all right. The writing of it alone is enough. I can close my eyes and imagine you’re right there in the settee listening to me, the only person in the world who believes me. Yes, Baba Vasili was there, but she is tired of listening. She doesn't want to hear about the nightmares (I see the wolf’s teeth, I feel the brush of his fur, I smell his breath, and I scream for you). She is tired of me jumping at shadows in the forest. The other girls at school have started calling me “Little Red,” as if I am just another silly baby telling tales.
Baba Vasili will not tell the tale because she does not believe in spreading evil out into the universe, so no one believes me. No one will listen. No one will stand beside me. I am alone. I have no one. No one but you. And I don't even have you, as you gallivant off on your adventures. But I will write to you often and share my pain. I know you won’t mind. It eases my heart a little.
I wonder if you dream of the wolf, if he haunts your head with his darkness as he haunts mine.
I wonder if you dream of me.
—Sonya (Red)
Jack—
I miss you. Does that sound stupid? We met during one of the worst moments of my entire life, but I miss you. You shone like the sun, did you know that? Such a bright lig
ht against the darkness of the wolf. Against my darkness.
But of course you know. Everyone knows of your beauty, your confidence, your ability to bear impossible burdens, perform impossible tasks, and beat unbeatable foes. The bards sing your praises from mountain to ocean side. I’m sure you never sleep in a cold bed.
You must think of me sometimes, the in-between moments before sleeping and waking. Do you see me, my wide eyes, my long auburn hair, my pale arms desperately reaching for you as I did in that moment? So very innocent and frightened and powerless in your strong embrace.
Most days, I sit on this hillside and pluck the petals of daisy after daisy. (You love me every time.) I see your eyes in the cloudless sky and your hair in the sunshine. Your chest is the tree trunk supporting me as I lean back against it. I inhale and the breeze is your breath, and in those moments we are together and I know—I know, with all my heart and mind and soul—that you can feel me too.
I miss you, Jack. I miss you.
And I love you.
—Red
My Dearest Jack,
A troubadour came through town last night, singing for his supper. Once his belly was full of Baba Vasili's rabbit stew, he indulged me with hours upon hours of The Adventures of the Illustrious Jack Woodcutter. I never tire of hearing the trials and triumphs of my one true love, however great or small, for I know that one day those songs will hearken your return to my pale young arms and pining heart.
But as the evening drew to a close (and the singer was so far into his cups that I was forced to tie him to the chair), he related to me a silly, bawdy shanty about The Great and Powerful Jack running afoul of a basket of poisoned pastries.
I cannot apologize enough, for I know those pastries could only have been mine. (Did you recognize the basket from that fateful night so long ago? I shed blood, sweat and tears over that basket then; I thought it only fitting to do so again, for you.) I can only think that the messenger crossed paths with a vengeful fairy, or that some of the ingredients spoiled in this unnatural autumn heat we’ve been having. You know that I certainly never meant to harm you in any way!