Unicorns? Get Real!

by Kathryn Lasky

  And now, as she walked in only her petticoats with the snowshoes and winter gear slung over her shoulder, the temperature was still rising and it was suddenly summer. The Forest of Chimes was yet another one of the odd and slightly magical marvels of the country of Palacyndra that was as unexplainable and perplexing as the fickle seasons that came in no order at all. Lasting sometimes for minutes or days, but rarely longer than weeks, the seasons seemed to be guided by the whimsy of some unknown force.

  At first glance, the Forest of Chimes might appear to be any ordinary forest, but if one were to take a closer look, one would observe that the trees did not have leaves but instead clear glass bells. When the wind stirred, the songs of birds mingled in a lovely symphony with the chimes of the bells. It was a place of enchantment. But on this day, the forest was silent, as there was not the slightest breeze to stir the clappers in the crystal bells.

  Gundersnap found the tree where Berwynna had appeared to them when she had last visited her with Alicia and Kristen. She sat down on the moss to wait and wait and wait. Noon quickly slid into afternoon, and the light of the summer sky began to leak away, replaced by the pale lavender of twilight. Gundersnap grew more nervous with each passing second. She wasn’t worried about being late. That was the other oddity about the Forest of Chimes: time did not behave normally, and although one might think one had been gone for a very long time, one could return and find that only a minute had passed. But what if Berwynna didn’t appear? “G’mutch,” Gundersnap thought. “I wish the old crone would show up.”

  “What did I tell you about calling me a crone!”

  The princess caught her breath. Before her stood the strange old lady in her garb of leaves and moss and spider-webs. An owl perched on one shoulder. “An insult always brings me out!” She paused. “But what brings you out? Upon my brother’s wand! What a sight you are, scampering about in your smallclothes.” She began to cackle madly. “Oh my, if your parents could see you! They’d ask for a tuition refund. And what in the world are those things hanging around your shoulders?”

  “Uh…snowshoes, ma’am. Alicia lent them to me. You see, it was winter when I left,” Gundersnap said in a quavering voice. She took a deep breath and tried to begin. “So…”

  Berwynna merely grunted in response. “So what? So you mean so so? Or sew sew?”

  Gundersnap was becoming more flustered. She’d forgotten how Berwynna often spoke in riddles and tossed words about so that they seemed to take on multiple meanings and become as slippery as a wet frog.

  “What have you come for?” the old woman barked.

  “Information,” Gundersnap blurted out.

  “What kind of information?” The old lady screwed up her face and, squinting her eyes, looked fiercely at Gundersnap.

  “I have a problem, a big problem.” Her eyes began to tear up. I must not cry! I must not cry.

  “Cry if you want. Tears are free.”

  Oh darn! thought Gundersnap. She had also forgotten how Berwynna could sometime read one’s mind, just step into one’s thoughts softly and pick up little fragments and bits and pieces of things.

  “I didn’t think,” Berwynna continued, “that it was a big problem, but a small one, a pony and not a horse.”

  “You know? What should I do? How can I rescue him before he is killed in battle?”

  “Him, just him? Him could be anything. I like to give a problem its proper name.”

  “Menschmik.”

  “Ah yes, your mum had no business taking him off like that.”

  “But what should I do?”

  “Do? Dew?” Suddenly sparkling drops of water appeared to settle on her tangled pile of hair, which resembled more than anything an ill-made bird’s nest.

  Berwynna stepped closer to the squat princess. Gundersnap felt as if the old lady’s oddly colorless eyes were looking straight through her and could see to the bottom of her very soul, could know everything about her, every sadness, every joy, every fear. The owl perching on Berwynna’s shoulder shifted its weight and then, as owls can do, spun its head nearly all the way around. Berwynna cocked her own head to look at the owl.

  “Uthmore here thinks I should give you a bit of a hint.”

  “Oh yes, please do!” Gundersnap pleaded. Berwynna raised up on her tiptoes, looked straight into Gundersnap’s eyes, and began to speak in a singsongy voice that was as creaky as a door on rusty hinges.

  “She thought she saw a horse at first,

  The stitches not quite there,

  And then she looked again and thought,

  A unicorn—beware!

  Your mama said that none exist,

  These fancies of our dreams.

  And yet the stitches left unsewn

  Seem to almost gleam.

  The heart insists, the mind rebels

  And says it can’t be so.

  But listen to your heart I say,

  And sew and sew and sew.”

  The tiny woman took a step closer to Gundersnap and rose up on her tiptoes again. The colorless eyes seemed to spit the fire of the stars. Then Berwynna sank down from her tiptoes, rocked back a bit on her heels, and gave Princess Gundersnap a smug little grin.

  Gundersnap was frustrated.

  “But I don’t give a fig about unicorns.”

  “A fig! A fig!” exclaimed Berwynna, and pulled one from her ear. A wasp swooped out as well and began buzzing madly about. “They love figs, don’t you know. Lay their eggs in them,” Berwynna explained.

  “In your ear?” Gundersnap felt a churning in her stomach.

  “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I am a friend of all creatures. If they find my earwax comfy, why not? I’m a decent sort of a landlady. I evict no one.”

  “But I don’t understand what a unicorn has to do with Menschmik.”

  Berwynna merely shrugged. “How should I know?”

  She’s impossible! thought Gundersnap.

  “Of course I’m impossible,” Berwynna replied. “What fun is there in being possible?”

  “Were you speaking about my mudder in the poem?” Gundersnap asked. “Empress Maria Theresa?”

  “Every kid tries to blame her parents. How unoriginal! So don’t be getting a bee in your bonnet about mothers.” Just then a large bee flew out from a tangle of hair. Gundersnap blinked and suppressed her surprise. I should be used to this by now, she thought. Nevertheless, a bee flying out of someone’s hair and a wasp from her ear were still alarming.

  But the bee and the wasp vanished into the night, and suddenly the edges of Berwynna’s body began to grow blurry and smudged. Her face was fading.

  “She’s dissolving,” Gundersnap whispered to herself. How can she leave me like this?

  “I can, I can.” The words echoed somewhere in her head.

  “But what am I supposed to sew—a horse or a unicorn?!” Gundersnap moaned in despair. “Oh, come back. Please come back!” she wailed.

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  Chapter 6

  A ROYAL MESS

  “Well?” Alicia asked when Gundersnap returned. In fact, less than an hour had passed since she had left, although it had seemed much longer. The princesses were readying themselves for luncheon.

  “Where’s Gortle?”

  “Don’t worry. He’s not entertaining anyone. He and Lady Merry went out for a sleigh ride. Although now that the snow is gone, they’re probably stuck in the mud someplace.”

  “Did you find her? Did you meet her?” Kristen asked impatiently.

  “Yes, I met with Berwynna.” Gundersnap sighed as she spoke.

  “Oh no!” Alicia exclaimed. “Up to her old tricks, was she?”

  “Rather,” Gundersnap replied.

  “What old tricks—magic?” Myrella asked.

  “Not really,” Alicia replied. “Berwynna has this annoying habit of speaking in riddles and never actually answering your question, at least not with whole answers.”

  “So what parts did
she give you, Gundersnap?” Kristen persisted.

  On her way back from the Forest of Chimes, Gundersnap had thought hard about what she would say. She would have a lot of explaining to do, because she had never revealed to Kristen or Alicia what she had seen that last night of the previous session when they had worked on the unfinished tapestry. She had never told them about the dim lines of the figure of what could possibly be a unicorn. She was not sure why she had not told them. Perhaps it was because she did not believe in unicorns. Or was it because her mother did not believe in unicorns? “Fairy tale nonsense” the empress called them. If her mother said something didn’t exist, it didn’t! And her mother was usually right.

  But then again, her mother had been so wrong about Menschmik. She had said that the pony was a gift. That he belonged to Gundersnap alone and that none of the other fourteen—or was it fifteen—brothers and sisters could ride him. Yet it was her mother who had taken her gift away, taken Menschmik into war.

  Could there be some connection between Menschmik and the dim outline she saw in the tapestry? Or could the tapestry, like a cloth version of a crystal ball, foretell what had happened to her pony?

  “Are you going to tell us anything?” Kristen blurted out.

  Gundersnap turned to them. “I’m going to tell you a lot,” she said softly.

  “What?” The three princesses pressed around her.

  “The tapestry is not finished. Not at all. We must go there as soon as possible. I’ll explain on the way.”

  The cool shadows of the portrait gallery stretched across the stone floor. Hanging in this gallery were paintings of all the princesses who had attended Camp Princess and then been crowned as queens, including Princess Alicia’s own mother, Queen of All the Belgravias. Whenever Alicia came into the gallery, she felt as if her mother’s eyes were following her.

  The four princesses walked directly to the portrait of a princess from long ago who they now knew was, in fact, the very same one who had haunted the South Turret for hundreds of years. On the way Gundersnap explained about the dim outline of a unicorn she thought she had seen in the tapestry.

  “So that’s the Ghost Princess, the one who helped your bird to sing, Alicia,” Myrella whispered.

  In the painting this princess wore the typical headgear of the time. A wimplelike coif on her head was wrapped down under her chin, held fast by a coronet, and then over this a full veil fell to her knees. Alicia, Kristen, and Gundersnap were always rather stunned by the old-fashioned garb. And although Myrella had walked through the gallery countless times, she had never really stopped to look at this painting close-up as she was doing now.

  “Oh good heavens, talk about last year’s fashions—try last century!” Myrella gasped.

  “Yes, slightly Middle Ages,” Alicia said as she touched the lower edge of the frame of the painting. Myrella looked on in amazement as the portrait mysteriously swung open to reveal a doorway. The princesses passed through and made their way up the spiraling staircase of a turret that no other campers or staff seemed to know existed.

  When they reached the top, they were in a dimly lit space. On the wall hung the unfinished tapestry. The princesses’ fine needlework from last session stood out against the rest of the tapestry, which was old and faded. It was these stitches in bright colorful thread—made by Alicia, Gundersnap, and Kristen—that brought new life to the tapestry. The picture they had sewn showed a lovely medieval princess standing with a handsome knight in golden armor. At their feet was an empty birdcage. They stood at the edge of the Forest of Chimes and, if one looked very closely, one could see the figure of a very bent little old lady.

  “See, Myrella,” said Alicia. “That’s her—Berwynna, the crone.”

  “But everything looks finished to me, Gundersnap,” Kristen said. “And you’re sure that Berwynna said that we should come here and sew something?”

  “Say the poem again,” Myrella asked. “The sew and sew part.”

  Gundersnap recited:

  “The heart insists, the mind rebels

  And says it can’t be so.

  But listen to your heart I say,

  And sew and sew and sew.”

  “I don’t get it,” Kristen said. “What is it that your heart is insisting upon and your mind rebelling against?”

  Gundersnap bit her lower lip lightly, and her forehead crinkled into a frown. “It’s hard to explain the mind rebelling part. I think it has to do with the unicorn. Empress Mummy taught us that such things were nonsense.”

  “And what about the heart part?” Alicia asked.

  “That’s about Menschmik.” Her eyes filled.

  “But I don’t even see the outline of this unicorn that you say is here. Where?” Kristen asked, leaning forward and squinting her eyes at the tapestry.

  Gundersnap walked up to the tapestry and touched her finger to the worn cloth. “See right here—now is that a horse or a unicorn?”

  The other three princesses came closer and suddenly they saw it. There was something there—definitely.

  “I think…I think…” Alicia began slowly narrowing her eyes as she looked at the outline. “I think it’s a unicorn.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Kristen, “it’s a half horse, half unicorn?”

  “Or a unicorn changing into a horse?” Gundersnap said. She was relieved that at least they saw it.

  They stepped back from the tapestry, looked again, and then stepped up close. This went on for several minutes as the four princesses tried to make a shape of the faint figure that at one moment seemed to be one thing and then the next something else.

  “It looks like a unicorn to me,” said Alicia.

  “No, it looks like a horse,” said Kristen.

  “Maybe,” said Myrella.

  “There can be no maybes!” Gundersnap replied.

  “Oh well, then.” Myrella studied the outline again, then turned to Gundersnap. “A horse?”

  “Not a horse.” Gundersnap sighed. “Not big enough. Just a pony.” She felt a twinge deep within her. Then she squared her shoulders. “Enough of this talk. We won’t know anything until we start to sew.”

  “She’s right,” Alicia said. “Things will become much clearer when we begin stitching.”

  “But what to stitch?” Myrella asked in a small, exasperated voice.

  “Just plunge in,” Alicia said. “Remember that’s what you told us last session when Gundersnap and I were still afraid of the water and didn’t know how to swim. ‘Just plunge in,’ you kept saying.”

  Myrella remembered. Both she and Kristen, coming from water kingdoms of isles and marshes, were excellent swimmers.

  Just as the last time the princesses had sewn on the unfinished tapestry, there was a row of needles already threaded and tucked into the fabric, as if waiting for the princesses to begin. They each took a needle and then Gundersnap, like a general commanding an army, began to issue orders in a style that would have made her mum proud.

  “I’ll take the head,” Gundersnap said. “Alicia, you take the tail.” She pointed to a place on the tapestry.

  “I guess that leaves the legs to me,” said Kristen.

  “No,” Gundersnap said. “You’re tall, Kristen. Myrella’s short. You do the top of the head, the mane, and the ears. And leave the legs and the hooves to Myrella.”

  “Hooves?” Myrella said with disbelief. She squinted at the tapestry. Gundersnap must be seeing a lot more than any of them, she thought.

  They had been stitching for almost an hour when Gundersnap said, “Let’s step back and see vot is vot.”

  The three princesses stepped back and looked at their needlework.

  Alicia scowled. “Something’s wrong.”

  “This doesn’t look like anything,” said Kristen.

  “It’s not a horse. It’s not a unicorn.” Gundersnap sighed. “It’s a mess.”

  “A royal mess,” Alicia muttered.

  “We better go back for now. I must think,” Gundersnap said
wearily.

  The girls made their way down the spiraling staircase out through the secret door, then began walking back through the gallery. They soon heard the clack of feet, and froze in their tracks as they saw the Duchess of Bagglesnort rounding the corner.

  “By Saint Jude,” Alicia whispered. Saint Jude was the patron saint of desperate situations.

  “Hello, Miladies!” the Duchess of Bagglesnort said in an oozy voice. “It’s quiet time, is it not?”

  “Yes, we were reading in the library,” replied Kristen. “About…uh, Saint Claudia…the patron saint of beautiful women.”

  “Oh. Bravo. Yes, my dear. Fascinating, is she not?”

  “Very,” Kristen said, hoping the Snort would not ask any more questions.

  “I myself am on the way to the library to research some of my more illustrious family members. You know I am a direct descendant of Simon the Good, who led a crusade to the Holy Land. So I must hurry off.”

  The princesses breathed a sigh of relief as they watched her wide skirts swish around a corner. “Crusades!” Kristen snarled. “A lousy excuse for war if there ever was one. May a thousand camels relieve themselves on your ancestor’s grave, Duchess!”

  “Kristen!” Alicia exclaimed.

  That evening in the princesses’ salon, gloom had settled in. The princesses were troubled and confused about the mess their stitches had made. No one was more troubled than Gundersnap. Had Berwynna misled her? It hadn’t been this way last time when they had stitched the Ghost Princess. As soon as they had begun sewing, the picture became very clear. Now it was as if their stitches had been scrambled and made no sense. Had something happened to the tapestry? Why was it misbehaving? Was it no longer magical? All these questions ran through her head, and Princess Gundersnap slept not a wink for the entire night.