by Lou Anders
ALSO BY LOU ANDERS
THE THRONES & BONES SERIES
Frostborn
Nightborn
Skyborn
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2020 by Louis H. Anders III
Cover and interior art copyright © 2020 by Brian Miller
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Crown and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Anders, Lou, author.
Title: Once upon a unicorn / Lou Anders.
Description: First edition. | New York: Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC [2020] | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: A curious, science-minded unicorn and a fiery horse become unlikely allies as they defend their magical home from a pumpkin-headed menace and a fairy of dubious integrity.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057153 (print) | LCCN 2019057154 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1944-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1945-6 (library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-1946-3 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Good and evil—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Unicorns—Fiction. | Fairies—Fiction. | Fantasy.
Classification: LCC PZ7.A518855 On 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.A518855 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23
Ebook ISBN 9781524719463
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Contents
Cover
Also by Lou Anders
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: That’s a Unicorn for You
Chapter 1: Foolish Fire Fumbling
Chapter 2: Curiosity Killed the What, Then?
Chapter 3: Wait! He Can’t Die Now! What Would the Rest of the Book Be About?
Chapter 4: One (Not) Evil Opposite to the Rescue
Chapter 5: What’s That Bridge Doing There?
Chapter 6: And Then Something Pretty Bad Happens
Chapter 7: A Scary Little Aside (Skip This Chapter If You’re Easily Frightened)
Chapter 8: A Fury of Festerlings
Chapter 9: So What Did Curious Do?
Chapter 10: A Night Mare to Remember
Chapter 11: The Silent Stones…or Are They?
Chapter 12: Let’s Play Stomp the Unicorn
Chapter 13: Is This the End? But There Are Still So Many Chapters Left.
Chapter 14: Why Is He Mad?
Chapter 15: Is That a Really Big Swan with a Giant Rose on Top?
Chapter 16: Maybe Things Are Finally Going to Be Okay…
Chapter 17: Or Is Something Not Quite Right Here?
Chapter 18: A Blessing of Unicorns
Chapter 19: Midnight in the Palace
Chapter 20: Curious’s Conundrum
Chapter 21: It’s Probably Time for a Big Secret to Be Revealed
Chapter 22: The Crown of Horns
Chapter 23: The Fairy Queen Shows Her True Colors
Chapter 24: Wartle Gets His Own Chapter
Chapter 25: Curious Comes to the Rescue. He Really Does.
Chapter 26: Crossing the River Restless
Chapter 27: Curious About Midnight
Chapter 28: Silent No More
Chapter 29: Things Get Worse Than Worse
Chapter 30: Things Get Better…for Now
Acknowledgments
About the Author
FOR ALEX
This is a story about a unicorn.
You know what a unicorn is, right?
Horse with a horn on its head. Everyone thinks they’re pretty. And oh so good.
Unicorns are, like, the goodest of good creatures.
Just a big gallon of goodness in the shape of a horse.
With a horn on its head.
A magic horn.
A horn that can heal just about anything.
That’s a unicorn for you.
And this is a story about a unicorn.
But this is also a story about a night mare.
Not a nightmare, silly. Pay attention, you!
No, a night mare.
Mare as in the word for a girl horse. A night mare.
You know what that is, right?
No?
You’ve seen them, though, I imagine.
Those burning horses that breathe red fire. They race through the darkness with their hooves aflame! They strike wicked sparks from the ground at every step. Step! Step! Step! Spark! Spark! Spark!
They’re snorty, and scary, and wild. And they give you the heebie-jeebies.
Because it’s the night mares that cause your nightmares. It happens like this: One runs past you when you’re sleeping. It poisons your dreams, and then you’re crying for mommy.
That’s a night mare.
There’s one of those in our story too.
Pretty scary, huh?
So this is a story about a unicorn and a night mare.
Together.
Because of course they’re going to meet. And that’s going to be a problem for both of them. Unicorns and night mares don’t get along. Not at all. In fact, unicorns and night mares fight whenever they see each other.
Which they do fairly often, because they’re in the same place. Or near enough.
Right now, they all live in a magical realm called the Glistening Isles.
Glistening.
It means the shine of something wet and sparkly.
Where are these isles?
Somewhere west of here. Probably. Or maybe it’s east of there. It doesn’t matter. You can’t get there from here.
Only I know how to get there. And I’m not going to tell you. But I will tell you about it. If you listen.
See, it all started like this.
A long time ago, the unicorns wandered the world. These beautiful, wild creatures lived in the beautiful, wild places. Sometimes you’d see them on the hillside at night. Maybe you were traveling on a lonely road. You’d feel something odd in the air—something tingling, something magical. Then you’d look and there they were. Under the moons. Looking all silvery and gorgeous and good. Like a vision. A spirit. A creature made of magic and myth.
Sometimes the unicorns would appear to young girls, and sometimes they would appear to brave knights, and sometimes, just sometimes, they
would appear in a time of need.
So if you were hurt, a unicorn might appear and heal you. Maybe you slipped and fell in the woods and cut your leg on a sharp stone. Or maybe you were gored by a stag or a rhinoceros or a wombat or something. I don’t know what you get up to. But there you are, all bleedy and weepy, and suddenly you smell that magic. You feel that tingle. And then a unicorn would appear out of nowhere. They’d come trotting up, and their horn would get all golden glowy and when it touched you—presto!—you’d be all better. No more hurt. No more blood. No more ick. Maybe not even a scar.
That’s a unicorn for you. A unicorn could heal just about anything.
Some folks even said a unicorn horn could heal a broken heart. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but one thing is certain. Unicorn horns are powerful stuff. POWERFUL.
But then some greedy people thought, why wait for the unicorns to come trotting up smelling of magic? What if they don’t come? What if they go somewhere else and take their horns with them? What if someone else gets them first? What then, huh?
So they did what people love to do with things that are special and valuable and precious and rare.
They hunted them.
They hunted unicorns to chop off their horns to make magic wands to wave about. They hunted unicorns to lop off their horns and grind them into powder to sprinkle in their oatmeal and salt in their soup to cure their warts and ease their tummies and make the hair grow on their chins or stop it growing on their backs. They wanted the horns to ease their blisters and shrink their corns, to make their noses dry and their farts smell better. Or whatever silly thing they thought it would do.
What of the poor unicorns? They were chased all over the lands until there were fewer and fewer and fewer. And fewer still.
Somebody said that if it didn’t stop soon, why, one day there’d be no unicorns at all. Everybody knew that and said what a shame it would be, but nobody stopped. They just kept right on hunting.
And the number of unicorns in the world got smaller and smaller and smaller.
But then something happened.
They disappeared. Every last one of them.
People looked everywhere, but they were gone. Gone, gone, gone.
No one knew where they went.
Well, almost no one.
You see, a fairy queen—a very powerful, beautiful, and probably mostly good fairy queen—felt sorry for the unicorns. She said, “Come and live with me, where you’ll always be pretty and happy and safe. You can prance and dance about on my perfectly manicured green lawns, and I can look at you all I want, and you can be beautiful all you want. And no one will hunt you for your horn. And I’ll only ride you on special fairy holidays. And there’ll be flowers and marshmallows. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
Well, the unicorns must have thought so, or mostly so, because they all agreed.
So that very day, she brought them to her realm. A hidden place called the Glistening Isles. It was there on the biggest island where she ruled over her court, which was called the Court of Flowers. There was sun and green meadows. And as you might imagine, there were lots and lots of flowers—several of which were very tasty. After she took the unicorns, the queen put a fog around the islands to hide them. Then she charmed the Sea Saw Serpent, that great big beastly bane of boats, telling it to swim circles round and round the islands forever, and to saw any boats that sailed into her waters in two and to eat any sailors who came looking for her unicorns.
Because they were her unicorns now. Make no mistake. They were all hers and no one else’s.
But that’s okay, because she’s a good fairy queen.
Mostly good. Good enough, I suppose.
But on the other side of the big island, the south side, well, if you ever find yourself on the Glistening Isles, which you never will, because you don’t know how to get there, but if you ever do, don’t go to the south side.
That’s the Whisperwood, home to the Court of Thistles, where the Wicked Fairies are.
It’s a place of darkness and thorns, and weeds, and bent twisted trees, and grasping vines, and foul-tasting mushrooms, and cold shadows where the sun never really shines. And Wicked Fairy Creatures. And ghosts, probably. And ghouls, most certainly. And long-legged beasties, it’s a good bet.
Oh, and then there’s Jack o’ the Hunt.
Jack o’ the Hunt. O’. As in “of.”
Jack o’ the Hunt.
Who’s he?
We’ll get to him later. Just remember the name Jack o’ the Hunt.
But the Whisperwood was home to other creatures too. By which I mean the night mares.
Sometime after the queen brought the unicorns to the Glistening Isles, the night mares appeared as well.
It was a mystery how they got there. Did someone bring them? No one really knows where night mares come from. But appear they did. Pop. Pop. Pop. With their snorty nostrils and their flaming feet. Breathing smoke and stirring up bad dreams among the unicorns and the mostly good fairies. And generally being unpleasant.
And the unicorns didn’t like it. Not one bit.
So they made certain that the night mares stayed in the Whisperwood and never left it. Far from the green grass and rolling hills and sunny skies of the Court of Flowers: the best for the unicorns, the rest for them.
Did the night mares like the Whisperwood, with its twisted trees and monstrous Wicked Fairies? And mushrooms and shadows? Nobody ever asked them.
What do you think? Would you enjoy being stuck in the Whisperwood? Never to see the sun or smell the flowers? Eating only thorns and thistles and mushrooms and moss?
Of course you wouldn’t.
You’d say, “Things are going to have to change around here, aren’t they?”
Of course they are. But saying you need a change and actually making a change are two different things. And the one is a lot easier than the other.
So how will things change? How?
And who will change them?
Curious? Well, read the next page.
Something dark moved through the Whisperwood. It was Midnight.
No, I don’t mean it was midnight on the clock. It was actually a few hours before then. And, anyway, clocks weren’t really a thing in these parts.
No, I mean the something dark moving through the woods was Midnight.
Midnight, a young night mare. A yearling nearly two years old. (That’s nearly twelve for a human, just so you know.)
Watch how she walks. See how fearless and bold she moves? There’s no fear in her. Not a drip. Not a drop. Not a snizzle.
Hmmm…
Do you think that she’s maybe being a little foolish as she struts so confidently through the twisted trees and deep shadows?
Well, she is.
And you’d be right if you guessed that she was very brash and stubborn and oh so very assertive for her age.
Too big for her bridle, you might say, if anyone ever bridled a night mare. But they didn’t. The bridle would just burn up.
In Midnight’s case, however, it would probably sizzle, spark, and explode.
Because Midnight’s fire was Wild.
Her fire shot out in all directions when she was excited. Or angry. Or giddy. Or hiccupy. Or just bored.
Like the time she belched and a burst of flame set Old Sooty’s tail on fire. It had been very funny for everyone. Well, not for Old Sooty. Actually, it had only been funny for Midnight. The rest of the herd weren’t exactly what you’d call amused.
Then there was the time she stamped her feet and fried a whole patch of mushrooms to a crisp. No one, not even Midnight, had thought that was very funny. The herd had gone hungry then, because mushrooms are what you eat in the Whisperwood, where no grass grows and no wheat sprouts. Naturally, burning up everyone’s dinner didn’t earn her any love.
In fact, Midnight’s uncontrollable fire was a bit of a problem for the herd, really. They weren’t sure what to do about her. They didn’t have any ideas at all. But that was okay, because Midnight had a Plan. A Plan to fix everything.
“That’s right,” said Midnight. “I have a Plan.”
She was cantering through the Whisperwood as if it wasn’t full of dangerous, ugly, evil Fairy Creatures. She was cantering with purpose and determination.
“I wish you’d tell me what the Plan was,” said her friend Vision. Vision was also a night mare, a little older than Midnight. But Vision wasn’t walking with purpose. Vision wasn’t so much cantering as she was slinking and slunking, as if the woods were full of dangerous, ugly, evil Fairy Creatures. Which they were.
“I can’t tell you the Plan,” said Midnight. “Not yet.”
“Why?” asked Vision.
“Because if I told you,” said Midnight, “you’d try to talk me out of it.”
“That means I wouldn’t like it,” said Vision. “Why won’t I like it? What am I doing out here, Midnight, if I won’t like it?”
“You’re out here,” said Midnight, “because you’re the only one crazy enough to go with me when I am being me.”
“Oh,” said Vision. She was about to say more, but it was true. When Midnight was being Midnight nobody was crazy enough to come along, except maybe Vision. Everyone else would just roll their eyes and maybe stand a little bit away in case anything exploded.
Vision was wondering why she had to always be the one to go with Midnight, when both horses heard something go scuttle, scuttle, scuttle in the darkness to their left.
“We should go back,” said Vision. “We should never have left the Silent Stones at night.”
