by Lou Anders
She turned to the Curse.
“No one is to stomp my daughter,” she said. And when there were mutterings and grumblings, fire flared from Sabledusk’s mane and she said, “NO ONE!”
“But,” Sabledusk added, “that does not mean she won’t be punished. I hereby proclaim that Midnight is banished.”
Banished.
Alone in the Whisperwood.
Forever.
This was worse than being stomped.
“No,” said Midnight. “No!”
“I am sorry, child, but you leave me no choice. And as for the unicorn, the unicorn we will stomp.”
“Wait? What?” said Curious.
“Oh, now, wait a moment,” said Midnight. “This really isn’t necessary. I promise you.”
“It’s very necessary,” said Sabledusk. “He has seen the Hidden Glen. He’s seen the Stomp. And anyway, the Curse is angry and they want to stomp someone. So better a unicorn than my daughter.”
The night mares all came forward in an angry rush.
Curious fell back. He retreated until he was against the fallen center stone. Then he had nowhere else to go.
Things didn’t look good.
“Wait!” cried Midnight, and she leapt in front of Curious.
Sabledusk stared at her daughter.
“You put yourself in our way?”
“No! I mean maybe. I mean yes.”
Sabledusk’s mane blazed in yellow fire.
“Very well,” she roared. “Then you and he can—”
But we won’t get to know what she would have said next, because just then someone new entered the glen. Someone who didn’t belong there either. Someone who, I’m sorry to say, always spoke in rhymes….
“Oh, what a mess, I do confess
I never thought to see
A horse with horn look so forlorn
’midst fiery black ponies.”
Jack o’ the Hunt was inside the Silent Stones, where no Wicked Fairy had ever stood before.
But he wasn’t standing. Oh, no, he was riding.
On a new night mare that had never been seen before.
And although there was only one Jack, and there were a great many fierce and fiery horses, all the night mares backed away and snorted nervously when he approached.
Yes, all those fearsome night mares were afraid of Jack. There was just something about the pumpkin-headed fairy that spooked them right down deep in the core of their being.
From the bottoms of their hooves to the tops of their heads.
Maybe especially the tops of their heads.
Sabledusk was the first to master her fear. She was leader of the Curse, after all.
“What is your business here, Jack?” she said.
The big pumpkin head smiled and the eyes stretched wide in the shell. He gestured around the glen.
“Your stones I see have lost their power.
They’ve wilted like a dying flower.
And as the rocks have lost their shine,
I come tonight to take what’s mine!”
Midnight and Curious looked at one another. Was Jack after Midnight? Or Curious?
Or was he after something else?
Jack o’ the Hunt came closer and closer.
And closer still.
The poor new night mare carrying Jack o’ the Hunt looked absolutely terrified.
She tried to buck and toss him off. But a ropey pumpkin vine twined through her mouth like a bit and bridle. Jack gave it a savage tug, and the night mare had to ride where he commanded.
As he rode, the candle shining in his head cast beams of light that swept back and forth across the glen.
Jack’s lights were so mesmerizing that it was hard to look anywhere but at the big orange gourd. He was hypnotic. He had everyone’s attention.
Almost.
Curious, even afraid, was still curious.
Curious couldn’t help but look everywhere.
At Jack, sure. But also at the ground. At the stones. Even at the new night mare.
Curious saw that she was young, maybe just about his age or a little older. And her flaming red eyes were wide open in fear.
You’d be afraid too if Pumpkin Jack rode on your back.
So even though she was a Creature of Wickedness, Curious felt sorry for her. Because even though his Scientific Mind often got in the way, Curious also had a heart.
Then he noticed something more.
The new night mare had a weird marking on her forehead. It was pale and star-shaped. It reminded him of something. Or someone.
Curious noticed two other things.
Remember how the wispy wood wink had twitched itself right out of Midnight’s ear? Well, it hadn’t gotten very far. Still in the Absorbing Orb, it lay in a patch of grass right beside one of the stones. Its blue glow was mostly hidden in the tall grass.
And the other thing Curious noticed?
Wartle, of course!
Had you forgotten about him? Most folks do. But Curious hadn’t forgotten him. And Wartle hadn’t forgotten Curious. Poor little Wartle was a Fairy Creature too. He didn’t like the singing of the Silent Stones any more than the wispy wood wink had. So when the stones were singing, Wartle had ducked through a tiny fairy door set in a rather large mushroom and escaped into Elsewhither. But he didn’t want to desert his friend Curious. So he had opened the door just a crack, peeking through from the other side to see what he could do to help. Which, sadly, wasn’t much.
Jack o’ the Hunt looked down at Midnight and Curious from atop this terrified new night mare.
“Although I thought you rather weak,
You found your way across the creek.
But now of fear you both do reek,
So you shall give me what I seek!”
With a squelchy, vegetable-y sound, pumpkin vines sprouted up from the ground. Their leaves curled like long green fingers, and they reached for Midnight and Curious.
“Wait,” said the ever-curious Curious. “What do you mean what you seek? What are you looking for?”
Jack waved his fingers in their tattered gloves. His nasty vines leapt forward, striking out like snakes.
But before Midnight and Curious could be trapped, Sabledusk threw herself into the path of the oncoming plants.
Did you think she wouldn’t? Oh, Sabledusk might be disappointed in Midnight, but throwing yourself in the way of nasty pumpkin vines was just something you did for your daughter, if you had one.
The vines struck Sabledusk and not Midnight and not Curious. Jack roared in frustration, and he made complicated flappy motions with his hands. But the vines were already roping around and around Sabledusk, who was fast disappearing in a growing mass of leafy green.
“Mother!” shouted Midnight.
From out of this green lump, Sabledusk’s fiery eye found Midnight.
“Run!” she shouted. Then her eye was covered in the coiling pumpkin tendrils and she disappeared from view.
Midnight was horrified.
But Curious shoved his shoulder into hers.
“Run means run,” he said. “Now, it means! Run, run!”
Midnight ran.
And Curious with her.
And Wartle realized he’d have to do something if he didn’t want to be left behind. He darted from his little fairy door, and he scampered across the glen.
“Winky,” he cried as he ran.
The puckle scooped up the Absorbing Orb, and then, with a great jump, he leapt onto Curious’s back.
Away they charged, racing through the Whisperwood. Which was no safe place to be at night but safer than staying with a pumpkin named Jack.
Midnight jumped fallen logs and Curious ducked low limbs. And Wartle clung to Curious
’s mane and yelled “Yippeeeee!” and “Walla, walla, whoa!” Branches tore at their flanks. Rocks tripped up their hooves. Strange voices cried from the shadows.
Dark things crept among the trees. They flapped overhead. They slithered underfoot. And any other night, they would have been deadly dangerous to our two horses.
But tonight Midnight and Curious didn’t have time to stop and be threatened. Because Jack o’ the Hunt was hunting them.
And when the dark things saw who was after the two horses, they crept aside and flapped away and slithered off. Because not one of them was brave enough to get in Pumpkin Jack’s way.
Jack on the hunt was a terrible thing.
The red light of the new night mare glowed through the trees, blending with the beams of Jack’s candle. The hollow horrid laughing of a pumpkin shell that shouldn’t be able to laugh at all echoed through the night.
“Where are we going?” Curious asked.
“Where we were always going,” replied Midnight.
Before Curious could complain about this answer, pumpkin vines made a grab for him, and he had to jump and twist and duck.
Jack o’ the Hunt never seemed to tire. That evil Wicked Fairy didn’t care how the night mare felt at all. He would ride her until she dropped or burned up in flame.
But then Midnight and Curious broke from the Whisperwood into the open. They were coming again to a bank of the River Restless. That was no good. Because they still couldn’t cross the river, not with kelpies swimming in it, angry at them already. They would be trapped between woods and water with nowhere to go.
Nowhere!
Jack was almost upon them.
Then Curious saw a big flat wooden thing moored to the bank of the river. And just as he saw it, Midnight yelled out, “Wake up! Wake up! Poor Mad Tom, we have need of you. Awake and shove off!”
A figure arose from where it had been sleeping on the wooden thing. It peered at the night mare and the unicorn and the laughing, snarling pumpkin that chased them.
Quick as a flash the figure began to busy itself. Curious saw that the wooden thing was a big flat raft, and the figure was something he’d never expected to see in the Glistening Isles. Not unicorn, not night mare, not fairy.
The figure was a human being!
Curious had never seen a human before. He had only heard stories about them, passed down from unicorn to unicorn.
Midnight reached the edge of the river and leapt into the air. Her hooves traced arcs of flame in the sky. She landed with a thud upon the raft.
And Curious followed after her. With a blue arc from the light of a wispy wood wink and a thud of his own and a “Wheeeee!” from Wartle.
Poor Mad Tom teetered and tottered as the force of two horses set the raft to bobbing on the waters. But taking a long pole, he shoved off, and the raft began to slide from the shore and into the current.
Jack o’ the Hunt reared his night mare to a halt at the edge of the River Restless. He shook his fists in rage. He waved his vines in anger. He shouted:
“Drat and darn and fiddle de fum,
Where’d this rafty guy come from?”
But Jack could not enter the water. He stood on the shore glaring angrily with hate-filled holes-for-eyes as the river swept Curious and Midnight and Wartle and Winky away and away.
Poor Mad Tom poled downstream, far away from Jack. And the two horses watched until the lights of Jack’s eyes disappeared altogether. And then and only then did they turn to Poor Mad Tom.
Curious was very curious.
“You’re a human,” he said in amazement.
“Quite right,” said the boy, nodding. “Poor Mad Tom is human. Or mostly so.”
He looked at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time.
This made Wartle nervous, because up until this point he’d had the monopoly on hands. So he waved his own digits frantically to remind Curious of their value.
“Are you a young human?” asked Curious. He thought Tom looked about two in horse terms, which you know would place him around twelve for a human, but he wasn’t sure.
“Is Poor Mad Tom young?” asked Poor Mad Tom. “He was young once. Long, long ago. How long he couldn’t say. Poor Mad Tom feels as though he has been young forever.”
Well, that was weird. Curious whispered out the side of his mouth to Midnight. “Why does he talk like that?” he asked Midnight. “Why does he call himself Tom? Can’t he say ‘I’ and ‘me’? Or is that how humans talk?”
“No,” replied Midnight. “He talks like that because he’s mad.”
“When I get mad, I don’t talk like that,” said Curious. “I don’t walk around saying ‘Curious is angry. Grrrr, Curious.’ ”
“Not mad mad,” explained Midnight. “Mad as in crazy.”
“Oh,” said Curious. He stepped a pace back from Tom.
Poor Mad Tom laughed.
“Don’t fear Poor Mad Tom,” said the boy. “Tom hurts no living thing. But especially Tom will not hurt a unicorn. Not one who was plucked from the world and brought here just as Tom was.”
“You were brought here?” asked Curious.
“Aye,” said Tom. “Once Tom was a wee little lad with a mum and a da. But Tom liked to wander in woods. Too far from home Tom wandered. And that’s when he saw her. And she saw Tom. She was so beautiful. And Tom was a pretty lad in his way. Or pretty enough. She took Tom, off to her palace, to be her servant and her jester, her pet and her toy.”
“Do you mean you were abducted?” asked Curious. “Who took you?”
“She of all the flowers. It was the fairy queen that took Tom all those years ago,” said Tom.
“What? No!” said Curious, who couldn’t believe such a thing. “Not the fairy queen. You must mean some other queen, some queen of the Wicked Fairies.”
“No, Tom means the queen of the Court of Flowers. Tom knows it well. Many a long year he spent there too, until finally she had used up all the fun in him. Then she was bored with Tom, and what was left of Tom she cast out.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Curious. “The fairy queen is a good queen. She saved the unicorns. She doesn’t abduct children. And she doesn’t throw them out of her palace. Why would she?”
Poor Mad Tom shrugged.
“She was older than Tom then. Perhaps now that she’s younger than Tom she’s not so interested.”
Older first, then younger than Tom? This didn’t make any sense to Midnight, and probably not to you. But Midnight knew Tom, and she was used to the weird things he said from time to time. The look she gave Curious said, “See, I told you he was crazy, but he’s saving us.”
But the look was wasted because Curious wasn’t paying attention to Midnight.
“No, no, no,” he said. “You must be mistaken, Tom. The fairy queen saved all the unicorns. She’s a good queen. She has marshmallow parties, and she protects us from human hunters and Wicked Fairies.”
“Tom knows what Tom knows,” said Tom. “And the Fair Folk are only good when it suits them. And the goodest they can be isn’t really good, not good enough.”
“No,” said Curious. “I have a Scientific Mind. If the fairy queen is good, then she couldn’t have done these things. So you must have met another fairy queen, who wasn’t good. Not my fairy queen, who only does good things.”
Tom regarded Curious with sad eyes.
“Tom thinks your friend is as mad as Tom. Perhaps more so,” he said to Midnight. “At least Tom sees what’s in front of him.”
“He’s not my friend,” Midnight replied, just as Curious said, “I’m not mad.”
Tom didn’t look convinced.
“Then why do you wear a horseshoe on your head?” he asked.
“A horseshoe?” asked Curious. “Is that what this thing is?”
But then Wart
le yelled, “Fishy, fishy, fishy!” and leapt from Curious’s back.
Everyone turned to see what had caught his attention.
It was, as you might have guessed, a fish.
But a really large fish. And a special fish.
It was swimming alongside the raft. Then it stuck its head out of the water and it spoke.
That’s right. The fish spoke.
“Faraway cows have long horns,” it cried.
“What?” said Curious and Midnight together, as they had never seen a talking fish.
“A good start is half the work,” said another fish, swimming up with a splash beside the first.
“If you’re looking for a friend without a fault, you will be without a friend forever,” said a third.
“Don’t mind them,” said Poor Mad Tom. “These are the Salmon of Wisdom. It’s said eating them will make one wise, but they are terrible hard to catch.”
Terrible hard to catch they might be, but that didn’t deter our puckle. Wartle liked fish, whether they talked or not. He reached into the water and made a grab.
The fish leapt away.
“A kind word never broke a tooth!” it yelped as it leapt.
Wartle jumped after it. And he would have landed in the river, too, had Curious not chomped his little red jerkin with its shiny black buttons in his teeth.
Wartle struggled over the water.
“Fishy, fishy, fish!” he cried.
But the Salmon of Wisdom were swimming away.
One glanced back and offered a final bit of advice.
“He who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas,” the fish said.
Then they were gone.
It was just as well, because something nasty was taking their place in the water.
Two somethings, actually. With a third terrible something on their backs.
Yes, the kelpies had returned. And they were making a beeline—or I suppose I should say they were making a kelpie-line—straight toward Poor Mad Tom’s raft.
But they weren’t any happier about it than our two horses were. Because the kelpies didn’t have a choice.
No, they were bitted and bridled just like the new mysterious night mare had been. Ropey pumpkin vines twined around them like green reins, held in the dusty fists of two tattered gloves.
