by E L Wilder
They’d been tracking their current quarry for the better part of a week without success, despite Hazel’s growing skill as a spellcaster and Tyler’s growing confidence with his new responsibilities. The beast had eluded them but left plenty of calling card all over the farm between destroyed fencing, decimated garden patches, and stripped apple trees.
They were getting so desperate they were resorting to plain old bribery. A side of grass-fed raw beef and an assortment of organic veggies from the farm’s own gardens were heaped in a sun-lit patch in the middle of the clearing—the rare open meadow in the Tanglewood’s savage undergrowth.
She fished a walkie-talkie out of her bag. The Tanglewood had a way of making certain technologies misbehave, and it was impossible to pick up a cell signal once you stepped into the forest. Walkie-talkies seemed to work, albeit with limited range. “This plan is never going to work,” she said into the device.
The radio squelched once. “Especially if you don’t maintain radio silence,” said Tyler. “It is here.”
She looked past the food pile and into the thick of the Tanglewood on the other side of the clearing, scanning for the beast or Tyler but seeing neither.
The radio hiccupped again. “Incoming.”
She saw a flicker of movement, a flash of silver in the dark of the forest. A moment later the beast emerged from between the trees. If she hadn’t already been holding her breath, the sight would have taken it away.
A unicorn.
It hardly matched the Hallmark version of a unicorn she had grown up believing in. This beast, though distinctly equine, was anything but the rainbow-shooting, sparkle-casting snuggle beasts of pop culture. This unicorn was a behemoth, a massive shadow with an ashy coat, a grizzled mane that was more lion than horse, and eyes that glowed silver and shifted like mercury. Its horn was hardly a regal spire; it looked more like a shard of volcanic glass, wicked and glinting and gnarled.
The unicorn stepped gingerly into the clearing and held still, listening, as if it sensed something was amiss. Was she breathing too loudly? It felt like she was practically panting. But, the unicorn, seemingly satisfied, stepped forward and approached the pile of food.
When it passed into the patch of sunlight, Hazel gasped. The beast’s dark coat and mane flashed tones of iridescent purples and greens, like crow feathers or an oil slick. Hardly a rainbow, but breathtaking all the same.
The beast scanned the clearing once more, and, again satisfied, dipped its head and started to eat, tearing longs strips of meat from the flank.
This was her cue.
Hazel and Tyler had practiced the plan a few times. Everything had gone as smoothly as could be expected for a practice run—better than her sessions with Clancy anyway—but sometimes there was no preparing for the live performance. When she’d done theater work, no matter how well the dress rehearsals had gone, there was no telling what opening-night jitters would do to all that hard work. There would be mistakes. Of that much she could be guaranteed.
With that encouraging thought in mind, Hazel drew a deep breath, stepped out from behind the tree, and walked into the clearing.
The unicorn continued to feast, but by the way its ears suddenly stood to attention, she knew it had taken note of her. Overconfidence will be your downfall this time, she said to herself. She splayed her hands, palms up, in a hopeful sign of peace—and spellcasting readiness.
“It’s okay,” she said soothingly. “I’m not going to hurt you. You look lost. Lonely. We just want to help you find your way back to the Postern. Back home.”
The unicorn finally looked up at her, met her gaze with its quicksilver eyes, and snorted. If she was not mistaken, the snort was thick with derision. As if to underscore the point of how little she mattered, the beast lowered its head and noisily tore off another chunk of meat and gnashed it sloppily as it resumed eye contact with her.
That’s it, she thought, just keep your eyes on me. Maybe if it did, it wouldn’t see Tyler, who had now stepped into the clearing directly behind it. A lasso hung limply in his hands.
The unicorn swished its tail.
The moment seemed to stretch on forever as Tyler picked his way across the clearing, closing ranks with the unicorn.
She made eye contact with Tyler and nodded.
The gesture was not lost on the unicorn. It swung its head in Tyler’s direction and immediately flattened its ears, snorting and pawing the ground.
This is okay, she thought, we’ve planned for this.
She raised her hand and snapped her finger, summoning a small ball of light—a glamour that had become effortless to her. She whistled and held the light up in her palm. Honestly, she had no idea how smart the average unicorn was, but she had noticed in recent weeks that the light captivated, or at least transfixed, most animals. But the unicorn barely gave it a second thought. It reared on Tyler and charged at him. Tyler dove out of the way, barely escaping the unicorn’s thundering hooves as he fell to the ground hard.
Okay, so much for the plan.
No worries though. She had this.
Hazel fished a glue stick tube from her satchel and popped the top off. It was hardly the most inspiring of props, but it was the best thing she could find that morning that had screamed sticky.
She held the glue stick up like a sword. “Hey, sport!” she shouted. The unicorn turned in Hazel’s direction. She strode forward, slashing the air with the glue stick. She thought of the little mouse that had scampered across the sugarhouse floor, scurrying one second and then stock-still the next. At least this time Clancy couldn’t devour her target.
The unicorn lowered its head and charged at her, its horn glinting wickedly as it rushed on. Tyler shouted, “Hazel, no!” but she was only vaguely aware of it.
She was committed to this. She gritted her teeth and slashed the air again. The end of the glue stick started to glow, leaving a clean white streak of light in its wake. But the beast continued its charge. For a moment she thought it might bear down on her, trampling her, but then it slowed, like it was running underwater, and stopped entirely.
The glow at the end of the tube faded and Hazel dropped her arm to her side.
She took a few cautious steps forward until she was almost close enough to touch the beast. Only now did she realize how massive it was.
She turned to Tyler and planted her hands on her hips in triumph. “How’s that for improv?”
But Tyler didn’t seem impressed. In fact, he looked downright horrified. “Hazel, look out!”
She whirled back around. The unicorn had reared up, towering over her, its hooves poised dangerously overhead. Now it was Hazel’s turn to freeze.
Suddenly Tyler was next to her, whipping the lasso to life and twirling it a few times over his head before casting it forward. It looked like a dead-on shot, but the unicorn ducked at the last moment. Instead of encircling the beast’s neck, the lasso snagged its horn.
The unicorn’s reaction was instant. Its eyes rounded in panic and it bolted, heading for the edge of the clearing and the safety of the Tanglewood.
Tyler had seemed to sense the move because he was up and unspooling his coil of rope, diving to brace against a tree trunk.
Hazel immediately saw his folly. “Tyler, no!” she shouted, but it was too late. The rope snapped taut and a sickening crack rang out through the clearing. The line went slack. The unicorn bellowed, silencing every bird in the forest, but it didn’t break pace as it disappeared between the trees.
Tyler rushed to Hazel’s side. “Are you okay?” he asked. His eyes were wide and he was pale. “Are you okay?” he repeated. He grabbed her shoulders, frisked her face like he was looking for missing or broken pieces.
“I’m fine, Tyler,” she said, but she left his hands where they were.
He seemed to understand what she meant, and his eyes went to the rope trailing across the clearing. “Do you think we hurt it?”
Well you certainly didn’t tickle it. Clancy’s words drifted
into her head like a feather on a gentle breeze. She turned to see Clancy poised on a nearby mossy rock, his two tails swatting at mosquitos.
“He can’t hear you, Clancy,” she said.
Tyler followed her gaze. “Oh, the cat.”
I am not a cat.
She ignored Clancy and walked the length of the slackened rope. She found the end, still cinched around a length of horn as long as her forearm. She picked it up delicately, fearing that her touch might cause it to shatter entirely, but it stayed intact. The weight and warmth of it surprised her. She turned back to Tyler and Clancy, holding it up for them to see.
Was that the plan? asked Clancy. It didn’t look like the plan.
“I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Hazel said, almost apologetically. Since coming home, she had learned to trust her own instincts a little bit more, and she would be damned if she was going to stuff them back in a box.
Tyler seemed to intuit the content of the conversation—he was good like that—and jumped in. “She did her best. It could have gone much worse. That—” He pointed at the horn. “—was my fault.”
There was an explosion of noise from the tree line. They all jumped to attention. No doubt the unicorn had returned for vengeance and would use its massive hooves to stomp them into the ground.
Oh no, said Clancy. A sprite.
“A sprite?” she asked.
“Like the soda?” Tyler mused, genuinely perplexed.
But what shot from the forest was something clearly neither unicorn nor soft drink. A dragonfly of ungodly proportions, glinting metallic blue in the sunlight, buzzed around the clearing. On its back rode a diminutive person no bigger than an American Girl Doll, hunched like a jockey and holding a set of reins in its hands.
Tyler groaned. “Not another interloper . . .”
Tell your lover boy this is no interloper. It’s a messenger.
“He’s not my lover boy!” said Hazel perhaps too defensively.
Tyler snapped his head in her direction, eyebrows raised. She blushed fiercely and was grateful when the dragonfly and its rider stopped abruptly, hovering midair in front of them. The rider wore a uniform, a pastel purple suit bedecked with epaulets and festooned with white braids and fringes, like a reject from the Lonely Hearts Club Band.
When he spoke, he sounded like a birthday-party attendee that had sucked on a helium balloon. “We have a delivery for the one called . . .” The rider stopped, drew a rolled parchment from a saddlebag, and checked the tag dangling from it. “Clancy the Cat.”
I am not a cat.
The messenger eyed him incredulously and shrugged. “However you identify, this message is for you.”
“Wait, the messenger can hear you?” Tyler demanded, almost offended at the realization.
Some of us are denser than others, said Clancy to the one person that couldn’t hear him.
The messenger flicked the parchment at them. It grew as it arced through the air and by the time it landed squarely on the ground in front of Clancy, it was roughly the size of a toilet-paper roll.
I don’t have thumbs, complained Clancy. How do you expect me to open this?
The sprite only shrugged, winked, and then said, “You have been served.” Then the dragonfly zipped away, dodging between the trees and headed, Hazel presumed, back toward the Postern. He must have been from Quark.
Mind doing the honors? asked Clancy. Hazel sensed hesitancy in his tone and wondered whether he was worried about the contents.
She slid the tassel off the parchment and unrolled it. She felt a flutter of excitement. For somebody that pontificated on the virtues of forming a partnership, he was stingy with the personal details. When it came down to it, she really knew nothing about Clancy. And this felt, for a moment, like being let in. She started reading aloud. “Clancy. Silas has been murdered. The Council has been notified. Come back. Hurry. Cass.”
Clancy laid down suddenly.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Who’s Silas?” asked Tyler. “Who’s Cass for that matter?”
Hazel shot him a silencing look and, again no dummy, he held up his hands and stepped back.
I have to go back, said Clancy, his words swirling in Hazel’s head drunkenly and evoking emotions that Clancy himself must have been feeling. She caught notes of fear, panic, but most of all staggering grief.
“Back where?” she asked
To Quark. You need to come with me.
The statement caught her flat-footed. Quark. The town just beyond the Postern. Half of her training with Clancy had—at least in her mind—been solely to prepare her to safely step through the veil between the two worlds. To visit Quark.
To step through the Postern had always been forbidden—a privilege promised her upon her magical awakening, when her Knack had manifested itself and not a day sooner. It was something she had wanted since she was old enough to listen to her Gammy regale her with tales of the town, its mystic residents and curious landmarks.
She should have been excited at the prospect of finally getting the chance, but instead felt a sense of terror gush through her like an oil slick. “I’m not ready,” she said. “You said so yourself yesterday.”
Things have changed. You need to be ready.
“I have to help Tyler with this.” She held up the fractured horn. “What if the unicorn is hurt?”
It will grow back. A unicorn’s horn is more antler than horn. Worst-case scenario, you’ve rendered it hornless for the season—and maybe a little more vulnerable for all that.
“Vulnerable?” The word nearly came out as a laugh. The thought of that fierce hulk being considered in any way vulnerable was absurd.
Let’s just say there are a lot of things in the world that would love to get tooth and claw into a hunk of unicorn flesh.
Hazel shuddered. The unicorn had hardly given her the feels, but the thought of something wanting to hunt so extraordinary an animal seemed vile.
“Why me?” she asked. “It’s a town full of magical creatures. What could you possibly need me for? You said yourself I’m more idiot than idiot savant when it comes to magic.”
I don’t have time to explain. If we don’t hurry, we won’t be the first ones on the scene.
“The scene?” The dread swirling in her belly suddenly boiled, threatening to roil in her throat.
There’s been a murder. There’s going to be a scene. And if the Council is involved, that only means they’re going to muck it up. I need your help.
“Clancy, I’m not a detective,” she said. “What happened last month—that was because somebody was murdered here! On the farm! I had to help my sister!”
And if I needed help?
She paused, taking the point in. She was going to Quark. The reality of it slapped her.
“I’ll need to gather a few things.” Her mind was racing now. She would need to get her spellbook. “And I’ll need to get Charlie.”
No Charlie.
“Yes Charlie,” Hazel said firmly. “She’s my partner.” The statement was a little tone-deaf considering her and Clancy’s struggles.
The tip of Clancy’s tails flicked and he growled deep in his throat. Point taken.
“Well,” she stuttered. “She was my partner for solving the Moore murder. If you want me there, I need all of my tools. Charlie is my biggest tool. Wait, that didn’t come out right.”
More right than you can know.
“Hey! You can’t talk about my bestie like that!
Is she your bestie or is she your partner? She can’t be both.
“That’s bull! If you want me to go, Charlie is coming too.”
Fine. Meet me at the Postern. Bring all your tools.
CHAPTER THREE
The East Barn was hardly the picture of the traditional New England barn—that Old MacDonald special of red with white trim. Rather, it rose from the ground like a medieval fortress complete with towers and steep slate roofs where pigeons cooed and starlings yammered. Ov
er the years, the barn had fallen into disrepair, but when Juniper had taken over as manager of Bennett Farms, she’d recognized the building as the true heart of the estate’s agricultural operations and set to work bringing it back to life—and into the twenty-first century.
Spaces that had once served as storage for farming implements and for both Bennett family heirlooms and junk, now housed artisans and entrepreneurs. A former horse stable was now home to a woodworker’s shop, the Carving Artist, marked with a massive wooden statue of a bear on its hind legs. A clothing atelier, Knits of the Roundtable, occupied a former hayloft.
And perhaps the biggest draw, a pub and brewery, Four Score and Twenty Beers Ago, occupied one of the barn’s corner towers. On a sunny July day such as this, the pub served lunch outdoors to townies and tourists alike as they sat in the barn’s courtyard and as kids chased hens and played hide-and-seek. It was there that Hazel spotted Charlie sitting cross-legged in the grass and basking in the sun. She must have been on her lunch break. Perfect!
Hazel rushed toward her but stopped short when she saw Charlie wasn’t alone. A young woman sat in the grass next to her.
Nancy, no doubt.
Charlie had met Nancy at the bakery the week prior, and they’d hit it off immediately. Since then, Hazel had hardly seen much of her friend since, though Hazel was excited for Charlie. With the chaos of trying to bring the farm back under control and Charlie’s new preoccupation, it seemed like their schedules never lined up. Hazel had yet to even meet this new mysterious suitor.
It must have been true that opposites attract. Charlie was the posterchild of effervescence from head to toe. An explosion of tight curls framed her perfect ebony complexion, and she was clad in a fuchsia crop top and Sunday-white short shorts. Nancy, on the other hand, was so pale it was a wonder she didn’t catch fire right there in the midday sun. Perhaps that was why she hid herself in a greyscale pallet that was all wrong for the height of summer—black tights, dark-gray sweater, a backdrop of black hair, with only a slash of red lipstick to break up the monotony. If Charlie were a Jackson Pollock, then Nancy was a scribble of charcoal on a fresh piece of paper.
