I nodded very quickly. The girl seemed entirely magical to me already. I fell onto her and gave her a tight hug, too tight, I fear, because she very quickly unwrapped my hands from around her neck. She looked a little spooked, but I was desperate for her to like me.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“It’s bad luck to tell a strange creature your name.” The girl laughed, but she seemed just the slightest bit uneasy.
“I’m not a strange creature!”
My answer pleased her. “Isn’t that exactly what a strange creature would say?” she said, half-teasing, half-serious. “But thank you, all the same. I will leave offerings to you.”
“Offerings?”
“What would you like? Milk and bread? Honey cakes?”
If she was offering me supper, I could not object. “I like all of those. Can I have them now?”
She flashed her teeth, against her better judgment, it seemed. “No, I don’t have them with me.”
“Do you live close by? I could come to your house.”
Her smile dimmed, and she gathered her lamb into her arms. “No, let me bring them to you. I should go, before it gets dark. My mother will worry.”
“Mine, too,” I said with sudden realization. For some reason, that made her grin again, as if it was funny to think that I had a mother. Beside me, the unicorn knelt down for me. It was time to go, it seemed.
“If you see the hunter,” I said, “be careful, please.”
She laughed again, and I felt embarrassed. The unicorn turned and set into a fast walk through the dark trees. I felt the wind rise suddenly. The bushes and branches blurred around me, and I wound my fingers tightly into the unicorn’s mane. I closed my eyes and felt the air grow hot with the golden-green light of a summer afternoon. When I opened them, I saw a clearing through the trees. And there it was, the pony cart.
“Ma,” I shouted, “I’m back.”
The unicorn trotted a few steps out of the trees but stayed in the shadows. This time, I dismounted without hurting myself. I kissed the unicorn’s shoulder. “Thank you,” I said, before bolting away. I had learned that Ma did not like me to dawdle around.
I ran to the pony cart where I found not just Ma, but Victor and Julian. I stopped short. There was a box of Ma’s things outside the pony cart, but Ma was sitting on the pony cart’s steps, straight-backed and with her arms crossed.
“Ma?” I said. When she saw me, she leapt down and embraced me. It was a fierce, almost painful hug. It was less pleasant than the mysterious girl’s had seemed, but I loved Ma more. Over her shoulder, I saw Julian shoot Victor an expression of pure relief. Victor looked stern and expressionless.
“I told you she’d come back,” Ma said. “Elizabeth, where have you been? It’s been hours!”
“Then you won’t come with us?” Victor said.
“How could I?”
Victor heaved a short, irritated breath. “Very well. Come along, Julian. We’re not wanted here.”
Ma did not correct him, though she made me curtsy to my uncle and cousin. As I spread my shift as far as it would go, Julian caught sight of the unicorn hairs woven around my wrist.
“What are those?” he said.
But I had grown suspicious within the space of an afternoon. “They’re nothing,” I said.
He shrugged, gave the laziest bow possible, and they rode off into the gloaming.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Little Life
The next morning, I did not understand Ma’s anger. She took me to the creek and made me scrub my face and my hands. Then she sat me down on the steps of the pony cart and plaited my hair very tightly. It was only after I was dressed to her satisfaction in shirt, skirt and apron, that she started to gather twigs for the morning fire.
“Ma, I’m hungered,” I said.
And she said nothing, just continued to build the pyramid of sticks.
“Ma, I’m hungered,” I repeated, in the manner of the village children.
“You are hungry,” she answered, as she struck sparks with her flint stones.
“That’s what I said!”
She turned to look at me with narrowed eyes. “No. You said you were hungered. That is peasant talk.”
“Pa talked like that.”
“You don’t belong to him. Not anymore. You are my daughter.”
If I were older, I would have understood. Instead, I was furious at her. “Don’t talk about Pa like that!”
Her thin lips twisted. “You’re not the one to give orders, my dear. Go pick some firewood and cool your temper.”
I stomped off, but my anger evaporated when I saw who was waiting for me. My doe-unicorn had been watching us from the side of the forest. She stepped carefully, so she could avoid the path of the campfire smoke as the breeze shifted.
I put out my hand to her. “Thank you. For yesterday.”
The doe-unicorn turned her big head to the side so that she could measure the weight of my gesture with an azure eye.
Between deliveries of firewood, I tried to tempt her with the various parts of my breakfast: an apple, a bowl of oat porridge, a wizened carrot. She did not want any of them. Instead, she waited for me to come back empty-handed. Then, she led me into the trees, where another doe and dappled fawn watched me from the shadows. Whereas my doe-unicorn had a long, fierce horn, the mother had a mere bud peeping from her forelock, still covered in velvet, like the emergent antlers of young deer. The gangly fawn’s forehead was bare, but it was recognizable as a unicorn because of its cloven hooves and the elegant curves of its muzzle.
I stepped forward eagerly. The mother-doe turned away, trotted a few steps and then looked behind to see if I was following. I jogged along behind them, hopping over fallen logs and trying not to trip on roots. In the forest, the air smelled new and the stippled sunlight made the grey unicorns almost invisible.
Suddenly, the mother-doe stopped and circled around. Tired after the run, the fawn dipped its head under its mother’s belly and suckled from her teat. The mother-doe pawed the loam with her cloven hoof and shook her head.
My doe-unicorn nudged me hard between the shoulder blades. I approached slowly. There, where the mother-doe had scraped the fallen leaves, I saw the ivory spiral of a horn. Alicorn. The mother-doe was giving me hers. She must have shed her alicorn when her fawn was born and regrown it afterwards. I picked it up and thanked them. The mother-doe blinked slowly, as if to say it didn’t matter. I suppose she hadn’t any use for a shed horn. But I did.
I ran back home with the horn in my outstretched arms, my anger at Ma forgotten.
“Ma, look!” I crowed. Ma frowned as she looked up from stirring our lunch (barley soup, for a change), but her irritation vanished when she saw what I carried.
She embraced me and kissed my temple. “What a clever girl you are!”
I settled into her body, then looked at the pot. “Is lunch ready? I’m fashed!”
She tweaked my braid a little harder than was necessary. “You are famished, Elizabeth. The women in our family are never fashed or hungered.”
A week later, Nicholas Helder brought us a box from the village. Mrs. Helder brought us a fat pigeon pie and jam tarts. Though I had not seen anyone in the forest since Julian and Victor’s visit, the memory of the hunter was still fresh in my mind. I thought that Mrs. Helder must have gossiped about what I had found and that her stories must have sent the hunter my way. As we watched as Nicholas helped Ma pry the box open, I kept my eyes on Ma. I did not meet Mrs. Helder’s smile.
When the nails in the packing crate gave way with a creak, we found a letter in fluid, curling script lying on top of packing straw. Ma read it aloud:
“Dear Sister. Please consider this your portion of the inheritance. Mother is still alive, but she does not wish you to embarrass the family dignity by returning after her
death. Upon much solemn meditation, I have taken the liberty of sending a few additional items for the child. If she can be educated to the appropriate level, the family may once more extend the hand of kindness.”
Inside, nestled in the straw, was a set of glass flasks, glass rods, iron stands, a mortar and pestle, and a set of heavy clay cups that Ma said were crucibles. There was also a small chest filled with even smaller drawers that opened to reveal dried herbs, pebbly bits of fragrant resin, vials of desiccated beetles. Underneath all of this was a set of leather-bound books, embossed with a coat of armour—a rose and three feathers—with crackling pages of vellum, rather than linen paper. Ma’s nose wrinkled as she read. “A Ladies Legacie to her Daughters, The Schoole of Good Manners…he must have raided our nursery. Solemn meditation, indeed! The History of the Kings of Gersa…that’ll be for your schooling, too, Elizabeth. Ah, this looks better…The Almanack of Four-Footed Beastes. And here we are. The Herbarium and Bestiary of Camilla Alacoque.” She looked up at me and smiled thinly. It seemed that these glass flasks and books, as much as my alicorn, were what she had been waiting for.
But before she could set to work, the Helders insisted on sharing their food with us. When Mrs. Helder held out a slice of pigeon pie, I crossed my arms and would not look at her.
“Behave, Elizabeth!” said Ma, in frosty disbelief. The mark of a good parent, I remembered Victor saying, is the character of the child. I was shaming her…but it was Mrs. Helder who ought to feel sorry.
“Why, Elizabeth, what’s happened?” Mrs. Helder reached out and touched my arm, very gently.
I jerked away from her. “You told people about the unicorn, didn’t you?”
“Upon my soul, I swear I have not! What’s happened?”
I glanced at Mrs. Helder and saw incomprehension on her face. She had not told? But then, how? I told them about the hunter. “He knew my name,” I said. “He said I was the one who found unicorns.”
Mrs. Helder’s rosy cheeks paled. “I swear,” she repeated, “I never told a soul. Could it be he saw you that first night?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “At least the girl was nice.”
“What girl?” Mrs. Helder said slowly.
When I described her, the last of Mrs. Helder’s smile faded. I wasn’t sure why. “I liked her lamb. And she said she would give me honey cakes. And it was almost winter there,” I added.
“Elizabeth, you aren’t making this up?” Ma said abruptly.
“No, what would I make up?” The girl had looked completely ordinary. Curly dark hair. Dark eyes.
“Well…well, she looks just like you.”
I giggled at the thought. “No…She was almost grown up!”
“It may be,” Mrs. Helder said, “that she took the form she thought you might trust most. She might have seen you from afar and taken your shape.”
My mouth hung open at the thought. “Was she Old Folk?” I asked. “An elf-lady? A ghost?”
Mrs. Helder pursed her lips. “Perhaps. She might have tried to lure you. You might have been in great danger. She might have wanted to steal your body. There’re stories of changelings, you see? Sometimes people wander in, and when they come out, they’re never quite the same. Oh, their faces are the same, but there’s something, as if behind the eyes, that’s changed. As if another creature is living there.”
No. That didn’t sound at all like the girl I had met. “But she was mostly worried about the lamb! She didn’t want me to get too near her!”
“Elizabeth, you must be careful.”
Nicholas Helder harrumphed, and we all turned to him. “Mam, look at you, taken in by a child’s stories.”
“It’s not a story! It happened!”
“Did it? And did you tell your mother?”
I looked quickly at Ma, whose mouth was a prim, straight line. She had been too angry at Victor for me to say anything, and after, when I found the alicorn, I had only wanted her to be happy. But somehow, I didn’t think this explanation would convince Nicholas. “I didn’t want to scare her,” I said, quietly.
“See, Mam? She’s telling you because she knows she can spook you!”
I couldn’t say anything to defend myself. I hunched my shoulders and looked down. Mrs. Helder gave my arm a pat. “See what you’ve done, Nicholas? You’ve hurt her feelings. I believe you, kitten, not to worry. Just be watchful when you wander, understand?”
But Mrs. Helder’s words only made me determined to go back. If I had seen an elf-girl and a ghost and unicorns, I might find Pa, too.
Wanting to find Pa was an ambition I struggled to fulfil. Ma kept a close eye on me, at first. In the afternoons and evenings, I had lessons from A Ladies Legacie to her Daughters and the other books Victor sent us, and Ma never ceased to correct my speech. I didn’t mind my lessons because Ma also taught me to write up what I learned about the forest plants. In the mornings, after we tended the garden, I went exploring or foraging for mushrooms and herbs and tried to find the unicorns. Occasionally, I would stumble upon an old piece of alicorn hiding here or there in the loam and pick it up.
Sometimes, I caught glimpses of the hunter, middle-aged and sharpening a spear, or an old man pottering around a bark hut. I learned to avoid those parts of the forest. Or else I’d find a unicorn along the way to the hunter’s haunts, and they’d lead me to something interesting or useful—a cluster of restharrow or henbane, a patch of wild strawberries. I could not find Pa, and I stopped looking for him. As I grew older, I also thought less about the girl with the lamb, whom I never saw again.
The unicorns, my silent strangers, set the pace of my new life. Where they went, I followed. When I was a bit older, I began to wander, carrying a bag with flint and tinder, an oilskin sheet and blanket and some provisions of fat, dried meat and oats in case of overnight excursions. I was always searching for newly shed horns because we discovered that fresher horns healed wounds more swiftly. After the winter solstice, the older bucks’ horns dropped off. Then, in the early summer, the does shed their horns before they dropped their fawns so that they could nuzzle them without hurting their young. The does and fawns grew their horns slowly throughout the summer. By the next spring, the yearlings’ first horns would grow in. Day by day, the yearlings’ growing alicorn pushed them further from fawnhood; many were chased away after accidentally pricking their mothers’ sides in a vain attempt to reach the teat. That was when their lives as adults began.
I found the alicorn and Ma experimented with it, with her crucibles and flasks. Mostly, she made an ointment out of it. Rub it into a cut—it would scab within minutes and soon the scab would dry and flake off. If the cut was small, the ointment would leave no scar behind. Rub it into a wrenched shoulder—the muscle loosened and ceased to ache. When we visited the village to sell the ointment, though, we did not mention unicorns. My first brush with the hunter—ghost or not—had been enough. We did not want poachers, and Ma wished to keep the recipe secret. We kept our prices low, but we kept ourselves safe.
It was several years before I saw anything strange in the forest.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Hunter
I was sixteen by then and distracted by the task of raising Sida, my unicorn fawn.
By the time Sida arrived, we lived in a rough log house, and a mule grazed next to the pony cart, waiting for Ma’s next trip to Wealdton’s market day or further up to Bartlieu Fair and beyond, where she could command a higher price. Except for the Helders, we lived very much alone. Ma had not discouraged the rumours that she might be a witch—a white witch who cast a shadow of variable grey. As for me? Well, Ma’s manner of talking might win her respect, but it won me no friends. I was both uppity and a witch’s brat; only the local girls’ and boys’ fear of Ma kept me safe. So, when Sida tottered out of the forest in early spring, I was glad to have an excuse to stay home.
Sida had come to me escor
ted by a yearling doe. Not her mother, I saw by the doe’s tight, milkless teats and her quick retreat into the undergrowth. Where the mother had gone was impossible to say. Probably dead, though the yearling doe never led me to a body. Unicorns, I have noticed, maintain a distance, so that we have only what they choose to give us.
But Sida was different, because she was so little. She was frail, and her skin was loose on her bones. She would not suckle on our nanny goat, but if I dipped a rag in a bucket, she would accept the milk from me. When the first critical phase of keeping her alive had passed, Sida followed me around the garden and the house. I liked to keep my hand on her head, between her ears, as I went from bed to kitchen, from kitchen to garden. We walked in step with each other.
That day, I held Sida in my lap, with her spindly legs nearly reaching the ground. I held her tight to my chest because Ma was going to leave me later that morning for a trading journey. Again.
She needed to go—she needed to sell, so we could thrive—but I was upset. So, on impulse, I picked a fight once the pony cart was packed and she was putting on what she called her “costume.”
“A certain reputation is good for business, Elizabeth,” she explained as she hooked silver bangles into her earlobes, “and I will look my part.” She leaned toward the mirror to examine the thin lines that had recently appeared across her forehead and at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“Can you bring me some earrings, too?” I asked. Sida slid out of my lap and gamboled over to the cold fireplace. I let her go, knowing she’d come back soon.
The lines on Ma’s face deepened as she frowned before responding. “These earrings, Elizabeth, are for my part of the business. You don’t need them. Earrings are not what other people need to see on you.” Sida began nosing around in last night’s ashes.
“I don’t need to be seen at all. You don’t want me to see anything, either. I never go anywhere. You make me read books about the wonders of the world, but you won’t let me go look at it,” I said bitterly.
The Changeling of Fenlen Forest Page 3
