by Lou Anders
Curious nodded. Although his reflection was being smug, Curious wasn’t offended. He was gathering facts.
“No power here,” said Curious. “I don’t think you have it either.”
“What are you talking about?” laughed the Mirror Curious. “I have so much power, I even took your shape.”
“No,” said Curious. “I think you’re just as trapped as I am.”
“I’m not trapped,” said the Mirror Curious. “I’m the trap.”
Curious shook his head.
“You’re a distraction, that’s all. The queen placed you in the trap with me so I wouldn’t try to escape. That makes you every bit as much a prisoner here as I am.”
“You’re not right. You’re wrong! Wrong!” said the Mirror Curious. But he was speaking a little bit too loud. “Unlike you, I can leave any time I like.”
“Prove it,” said Curious. “If you aren’t trapped, go open that door.” He gestured at the reflection of the big wooden doors in the glass.
The Mirror Curious took a few steps in that direction. But then he stopped.
“Wait,” he said. “If I go open that door, it will open the one on your side. I’m not about to let you trick me like that so you can slip away.”
“That’s fine,” said Curious. “Because that proves my point. You’re trapped here too.”
“I’m not!”
“I won’t believe until I can see,” said Curious. “We’ll do it this way. I’ll go stand way over there by the dais while you just open and shut the door. It’s too far for me to get to the door in time. Then, when the door is closed, I’ll come back and you can gloat about how wrong I was.”
Curious could see the Mirror Curious was considering it.
“Otherwise, I’ll just call you a liar,” said Curious.
“Fine, we’ll do it,” said his reflection.
“Good,” said Curious.
Curious repositioned the mirror. Then he trotted over to the dais. But when he turned around, his flank bumped the red-stained oak box, and it fell to the ground.
“Oops,” he said. “Clumsy me.” He noticed that the reflection of the oak box in the mirror hadn’t fallen. Just as he had expected.
“Let’s just get this over with,” called his reflection.
“Ready when you are,” said Curious.
The Mirror Curious stretched out a hoof, and pushed one of the two heavy wooden doors. It swung open easily. So did one of the two wooden doors on Curious’s side of the mirror.
“There, you see,” said Mirror Curious. “I’m not trapped.”
“You’re not,” said Curious. “And now, neither am I.”
Curious gave the oak box a shove. It slid across the smoothly polished floor.
Mirror Curious withdrew his hoof, and the door started to close slowly. But on Curious’s side of the mirror, the oak box slid into the door as it swung shut, trapping it open.
“No!” the Mirror Curious shrieked. His door was closed, but Curious’s was open. The reflection looked in panic to where the reflection of the oak box still rested upon its cushion on the dais.
“It only works one way,” Curious reminded him.
The Mirror Curious charged across his room, heading for the oak box. If he could smash it or move it or something, he could affect the one on Curious’s side.
But Curious was running for the door.
It was a race—Curious against Curious.
Fortunately, our Curious reached the door just as Mirror Curious brought a hoof down, smashing the oak box to splinters.
The real oak box exploded too.
Too late.
Curious stretched out a leg and caught the door before it swung shut.
“I’ll get you for this! I’ll get you!” screeched the Mirror Curious.
“I don’t think so,” said Curious. “I’m not trapped anymore. But I’m pretty sure when the queen returns and finds me gone, you will be.”
The Mirror Curious’s expression went from anger to fear, and he looked around his reflected room in a panic.
“Help me,” he said.
“I’ll wish you good luck,” said Curious. “But I’m not staying.” And he trotted out the door.
He was free.
But although he was free, Curious still had a problem. Queen Titania had ridden Midnight through the mirror. He couldn’t follow. To get to the Silent Stones, he’d have to go the long way, across the River Restless.
He thought about how to accomplish this as he made his way through the twisting, honey-colored corridors of the Court of Flowers.
That’s when he bumped into Wartle.
“May the roof above you never fall in and those gathered beneath it never fall out,” said Wartle with a burp.
“What?” said Curious in surprise.
“I said, ‘Hello,’ ” said Wartle.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t. But it’s good to see you. Climb on, we’re in a hurry.”
Wartle swung up onto Curious’s back. Then together they raced from the Court of Flowers. Soon they were back in the Willowood and running as fast as Curious could run.
“Where are we going?” said Wartle.
“We’re looking for Poor Mad Tom,” Curious explained. “He’s got to take us across the river and fast.”
There was, unfortunately, a problem with that plan. When they found Tom, they saw it for themselves.
Poor Tom’s poor raft had been shattered into about two dozen separate planks when it was roughly cast upon the shore by the Swan Boat’s wave. The boy was busy with a hammer and nails rebuilding it. But he had a lot of work still to do.
“She’s not keeping us afloat as she is,” he explained as Curious stared at the wreckage. “Poor Tom is sorry, for you and him, because Tom needs to return to the safety of the river. Though the fairy won’t mess with Tom as long as he has plenty of these about.”
He held up a long iron nail, then set to hammering it into a plank.
Curious remembered how the fairy queen wouldn’t step on Tom’s raft.
“Tom,” he said, “Queen Titania fussed at you for using nails in your raft. Why did she do that?”
Poor Mad Tom grinned.
“The Fair Folk can’t abide the touch of iron,” he said. “It burns their otherworldly flesh like fire and ice together.”
“Iron,” said Curious. He recalled how Jack had recoiled from the two horses when they had sheltered under the covered bridge.
“The horseshoe. It was made of iron too.”
“Aye, it was. Tom caught it when you dropped it. A handy thing it is.” The boy fished in his pocket and withdrew the horseshoe.
Curious had an idea.
No, he had a Plan. Like one of Midnight’s Plans.
He’d have to test it to see if it worked. So it was both a Plan and an Experiment.
“Tom,” he said, “I want you to shoe my hoof with that horseshoe.”
Wartle gasped. And Tom looked shocked.
“It would be a blasphemy to shoe such a wild and noble creature as a unicorn.”
Curious didn’t know much about the world of people that Tom came from, but he knew that horses there had hard lives serving as mounts for their masters.
“Maybe it is a blasphemy,” he said, “but I don’t care. A Scientific Mind isn’t afraid of anything when in pursuit of a noble goal. I need that horseshoe.”
Wartle offered his hands helpfully. But Curious shook his head.
“Thank you, Wartle, but I need to be able to use it myself. I can’t risk you dropping it or having it taken away.”
He lifted his front right hoof and offered it to Tom.
The boy hesitated.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Just do it,” said Curious.
So Poor Mad Tom took his hammer and his nails and the horseshoe made of iron. And he set to work.
“Aren’t you that unicorn we tried to drown?”
“That would be me.”
Curious stood on the banks of the River Restless. He had a nervous puckle clutching the hairs of his mane and an unfamiliar piece of iron nailed to his hoof.
He had run upriver, away from Tom’s raft and closer to the point where he first met Midnight. Having the horseshoe on his foot felt strange. It felt even stranger having shod one foot only. It made his forelegs feel slightly uneven.
Ahead of him, the kelpies were floating in a loose line. Curious saw the water dripping from the icky green seaweed of their manes. They grinned wickedly and gnashed their nasty yellow teeth in anticipation of a good unicorn drowning. Gnash, gnash, gnash, their teeth went.
“Well, we’re going to drown you for real this time if you set one hoof in the river,” said the kelpie who had spoken before.
“One hoof,” said Curious. “Just one? You mean, like this?”
He trotted forward and stuck his right hoof into the rushing water.
Several kelpies lunged at him, and he bolted back.
“What was that for?” asked Wartle.
“I was testing the range of the horseshoe,” said Curious. “They weren’t affected by my dipping it in the water. Now I need to see what direct kelpie contact does.” He smiled to give himself courage. “Are you ready to conduct our Experiment?”
“You’ll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind,” burped Wartle.
“Wartle,” said Curious. “I couldn’t have put that better myself.”
“Neither could I,” said Wartle.
Curious leapt into the water.
Splash.
Wartle screamed, and the kelpies all neighed in delight. They converged on the unicorn. This was going to be fun, they thought.
But they were very wrong.
Curious kicked out at them with his right foot.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much of a fighter and his kicks didn’t have anything like the force that Midnight put into hers.
Fortunately, he didn’t need to be a fighter. The first kelpie his shoed-hoof brushed against hollered in pain. The kelpie swam away, a horseshoe-shaped burn mark seared into its scales. A smell of charred seafood wafted over the river.
Curious kicked again and another kelpie hollered. “Ow, ow, ouch!”
Then something grabbed Curious by the tail and dragged him under.
Down, down, down he went toward the bottom of the river.
Kelpies struck and bit at him all around.
Wartle clung desperately to his mane.
Curious twisted this way and that, dishing out burning horseshoe brands to kelpie after kelpie. They didn’t like it. Not one bit.
So they retreated.
Curious swam with all four legs, pumping as hard as he could.
He broke the surface of the water, sucking air into his lungs.
He had escaped drowning for a second time.
“The greater the hurry, the more obstacles there are,” burped Wartle as Curious climbed out on the southern shore.
“Then we better get on with it,” said Curious.
They charged into the Whisperwood.
Which was every bit as dark and nasty and foreboding as it had been the last time.
“Do you know where we are?” Curious asked Wartle.
“A word to the wise, a stick to the unwise,” the puckle replied.
Wartle clamped his little hands over his mouth.
He pointed to the barest, faintest, thinnest suggestion of a path.
It was hard to see. Very hard to see.
But Curious’s horn started glowing. A soft golden light.
It wasn’t much, but in the darkness of the Whisperwood it was enough.
So Curious and Wartle made their winding way through the forest.
And they almost got to the Silent Stones without incident.
Almost.
Because right when they thought they were going to have an uneventful trip through the most dangerous forest ever, a pair of very long, eerily thin, and disgustingly slimy tendrils plopped down and draped themselves all over Wartle and a good portion of Curious’s neck.
It was like having spaghetti noodles dumped all over you, though neither Wartle nor Curious had ever seen spaghetti. So to them it was just very slimy and gross.
“Ew! Gross!” said Curious.
“Ew! Slimy!” said Wartle.
The noodle things wrapped Wartle up and lifted him into the air. He struggled like a puppet with its strings in a twist.
Curious leapt after his friend.
And a pair of nasty teeth snapped at him.
Two pairs.
In two very nasty heads.
The heads looked like the heads of wild-eyed and very dirty humans, but with wispy gray cobwebs for hair, and sharp and pointed teeth.
And they had no bodies. At least, no bodies apart from the slimy noodle things that descended from where their necks should be. The long, ropey bits looked a little like snakes, a little like worms, and a little like intestines.
Curious thought that there were two of the creatures, but their noodly bodies were all tangled together. Which is how the creatures got their name.
“Tangleheads!” cried Wartle, in full-on puckle panic. He was panicking because he’d seen Tangleheads before. He knew their favorite food was puckle!
Curious bit at the slimy threads snaring his friend. They made him want to gag, but still he bit and tugged.
But Tangleheads are nothing if not tenacious. They started wrapping Curious up too. Soon he was hoisted into the air alongside Wartle.
“What do we do?” yelled Curious.
Wartle felt a big belch of platitudes forming in his belly, but he shoved it down and forced his mouth to obey.
“Untangle! Untangle!” he yelped.
Curious didn’t understand.
Of course, they wanted to get untangled. They were both covered in the nasty noodles.
He pulled a noodle with his teeth.
“No!” screamed Wartle. “Untangle them!”
“I’m trying to!” shouted Curious.
“From each other!”
Oh. Curious began to pull the threads apart.
It was hard, because they kept twisting. But Curious realized he still had his horseshoe. He pressed his foot on different bits of ropey body, chasing it away, and then he started pulling the bits apart.
It took work, but it did work.
Finally the two Tanglehead bodies separated. And when they did, all the noodles let go.
Curious and Wartle fell.
The tendrils recoiled into the heads like the snapping-back tongues of two toads.
Two heads dropped to the ground.
The heads hissed angrily at the unicorn and the puckle.
Then they rolled away like bowling balls and disappeared into the woods.
“We did it,” said Curious.
“Lose an hour in the morning, and you’ll be looking for it all day,” burped Wartle.
“You’re right,” said Curious. “No time to waste.”
And on through the woods they ran.
Before long, they came to the cave of the Slumbering Cindersloth. But as far as Curious could tell, it was still slumbering.
He knew the way from there, but he had no idea how to rescue Midnight, nor what exactly he was rescuing her from.
Curious saw a light through the trees. He heard noises echoing through the woods.
The light was a golden-light. Nearly a unicorn light.
And the noise, the noise was of a hundred tiny feet.
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Suddenly, a half a hundred Wicked Fairy Creatures burst from the woods.
There were bolkers and coblins, dwirts and frownies, glaistigs and gomboblins! They were running straight for Curious and Wartle.
But the Fairy Creatures weren’t coming for them.
They were fleeing!
“Look out!” cried Curious. “It’s a stampede!”
Gwrols, hobthrusts, and kolatoons came pouring from the trees! Nurts, pigganders, and salpucks came bursting from the undergrowth! Spriders, trolicaun, and uckies came leaping from the branches!
They flapped and slithered and crawled and swarmed all around Curious and Wartle. The unicorn and the puckle were jostled and scratched, bumped and jumped. But none of the Wicked Fairy Creatures paid them any attention. They were too busy fleeing. And then, as swiftly as they had appeared, they were gone.
Wartle swayed on his little legs.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said.
He started to fall. But he caught Curious’s horn. The horn’s golden glow pulsed with light. Wartle steadied.
“Better,” said the puckle.
Interesting, thought Curious. Something was making Wartle feel sick. And something was making the Wicked Fairies flee. He hurried on, anxious to find his friend, eager to know the reason.
Now, I imagine you are wondering what Queen Titania has been up to since she dove into the magic mirror. And I certainly hope you are wondering what has happened to our friend Midnight now that she has been transformed into a unicorn.
Well, if you are, you aren’t alone. Because Midnight has been wondering the exact same things.
Midnight wondered if she just looked like a unicorn, or was she a unicorn, you know, on the inside?
Would she have to leave the Curse and go live in the Willowood? Was she expected to be empty-headed and giddy now? Was she supposed to prance and dance and chase butterflies and fart rainbows? Could she fart rainbows?
Was that something you did on purpose or did it just happen?
Jumping through the magic mirror only took a moment. The portal spat them out into the Whisperwood, very near the Hidden Glen. Assuming they hadn’t left the Silent Stones now that she’d broken them, she’d see the Curse very soon. That was really something to wonder about.
The Curse were already mad at her. What would they think now that she wasn’t a night mare anymore?
