The Unicorn Quest

by Kamilla Benko

  But Sophie had promised her.

  Then she heard Dad say, “Sophie, what’s that on your leg?”

  Looking back, she saw him frowning at Sophie.

  “Nothing.” Sophie tugged her skirt lower.

  “It looks like a Band-Aid,” Claire said loudly before she could stop herself. It was as if someone were pulling the sentence out of her, knowing exactly how Claire could get back at her sister for lying to her. “What did you do?”

  Sophie glared at Claire, but it was too late. The damage was done.

  “What?” Mom asked, putting down her notebook. “You’re hurt, Sophie?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom.” Sophie tried to scoot past their mother to the double doors, but Mom put out her hand, barring an escape. Gently, Mom pulled the hem up a little and let out a gasp.

  “Sophie! What happened?”

  Claire could see that a mess of bandages went up Sophie’s leg like a patchwork quilt. What had she done to need all of them? After exploring the chimney, she’d only had one cut above her knee.

  “It’s nothing,” Sophie said, attempting to dodge her mother’s accusing stare.

  “Nothing?” Claire had never heard Mom’s voice so sharp. “You have to be more careful, Sophie! You need to take care of yourself. You know what the doctor said.”

  “I’m done listening to doctors! I’m done listening to you!” Sophie had been dark and moody for days, but something seemed to snap inside her now. Claire watched in horror as her sister stormed at their parents. “I’m thirteen! I can take care of myself!”

  “We’re your family,” Mom said. Her voice was steady, but it sounded thin to Claire’s ears. “We take care of you.”

  “Oh, really?” Sophie crossed her arms. “It doesn’t seem you’ve been doing such a great job of it!”

  The silence was resounding.

  Claire’s stomach sank. She shouldn’t have said anything. She shouldn’t have tried to get Sophie in trouble. Without thinking, she pulled her pencil from her ear and began to nibble at it.

  “Sophia Andrea Martinson,” Mom said quietly, “go to your room.”

  Her sister’s dark eyes met her mother’s, and for a moment, Claire thought that Sophie would argue some more. But finally, she dropped her gaze.

  “Fine,” Sophie muttered under her breath before stomping past Claire and out of the gallery.

  Sophie didn’t come out of her room for the rest of the afternoon, and during dinner, the entire family ate in frosty silence. The only thing that made Claire feel a tiny bit better was the fact that Dad had placed the unicorn sculpture—which, despite its delicate appearance, weighed a lot—on top of the bookcase. It was to keep it out of harm’s way, he had said, but it had the added benefit of making the bookcase too heavy for anyone to scoot it away from the hearth. There was no way Sophie could move it now.

  At least, Claire hoped.

  Later that night, Claire was drifting off to sleep when her door opened with a quiet creak. She sat up straight as she fumbled for her emergency flashlight.

  “Claire?”

  “Sophie? You scared me!”

  “Sorry,” her sister whispered from across the dark room. “Can I come in?”

  Then, without waiting for an answer, Sophie walked over and climbed under the covers beside Claire. She smelled like watermelon shampoo. A summertime smell. They didn’t say anything for a moment, just lay side by side, looking up into the domed darkness of Claire’s canopy, moonlight throwing scattered shadows around the room. She couldn’t remember the last time her sister had crawled into bed with her. She stayed still, hoping the moment would last.

  “Remember that time when we went camping”—Sophie’s voice finally floated to her—“and I convinced you that you could only use the outhouse at night if there were no clouds covering the moon?”

  “I remember,” Claire said. “You said the Toilet Ghoul would attack if the moon wasn’t out.”

  “Ha, yeah! The Toilet Ghoul! That was so funny.”

  “Right, funny,” Claire echoed. She had spent that rainy, cloudy weekend in terror, worried that she might wet her sleeping bag.

  She waited a few seconds to see whether Sophie was going to say anything else. When she didn’t, Claire asked, “What happened earlier?”

  “It’s nothing,” Sophie replied. “It’s just … Mom and Dad frustrate me sometimes, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Claire lied. “I do.”

  Sophie laughed. It wasn’t a mean laugh, but it wasn’t a happy one either. “No you don’t, Clairina. You don’t have to pretend.” Sophie was silent again, and then turned on her side to face Claire. The night-light’s glow glinted off the moonstones in the necklace that still hung around her neck. “Sometimes, I wish I were like you.”

  “Me?” Claire was baffled. “Why?” Sophie was the strong one. Everyone was always saying how brave she was.

  Sophie brushed a piece of hair out of Claire’s eye. “What I said in the hallway—I was wrong. It’s good that you know how to make up stories. They’re better than the real world.”

  Sophie turned onto her other side and snuggled deeper under the covers. Claire quickly tucked the ends of the blanket around her feet before Sophie could hog the entire comforter.

  Claire curled up next to her sister, back to back. For a brief moment, she thought about asking Sophie about the scratches on the gallery floor and the bandages on her leg, but her sister was already breathing deeply. She fell asleep remembering the times she would cling to Sophie’s neck as her sister splashed and swam in the pool, pretending to be a mermaid saving Claire from sharks.

  The cold light of dawn woke Claire, and an even colder certainty wrapped around her heart before she had opened her eyes.

  Something was wrong.

  Something was missing.

  She sat up quickly. Sophie was no longer next to her—Claire was alone.

  Shoving her feet into her slippers, she grabbed her pencil and sweater, and dashed into her sister’s room.

  It was empty, too.

  Claire ran. With each stride, her dread increased, until she thought she would sink into the floor with the weight of her anxiety. Arriving at the double doors of the gallery, she flung them open. The doors hit the walls with a loud thud, drowning out her gasp.

  No matter how many times Claire blinked, she still saw the same thing: the bookcase shoved aside and shards of the beautiful unicorn statue littering the floor, leaving the entrance to the fireplace completely unobstructed.

  And a pair of Sophie-sized footprints leading through the ash to the ladder, until they disappeared from view.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Claire’s footsteps echoed the thump of her heart as she ran through the gallery toward the fireplace.

  I have to save her. The thought raced through her like a pulse. She tossed her sweater over her shoulders and tucked her pencil behind her ear for luck. Then she placed her foot on the first rung of the ladder and began to climb.

  The smoke-tinged air stung her eyes, and her lungs burned from the loose ash that lined the chimney walls, but Claire barely noticed. She kept her face tilted up, ignoring the hum that entered her bones as she searched the darkness for the dime-sized spot of light.

  Be brave. Be brave. Be brave.

  Her fear stretched like a hairband on the brink of snapping. She could only focus on her next step, and then the next.

  A draft brushed against her arms, bringing with it the smell of grass and rain. Light slowly bloomed from a tiny dot to a big, bright circle above her.

  Almost there.

  Confidence surged through her legs. She pumped them harder.

  Finally, Claire reached the top. She cautiously balanced on the last rung. Bracing herself against the wall of the chimney, she stuck her head out of the well—into blinding sunlight.

  Birds called softly to one another, and the distant chatter of a creek tickled her ears. Claire blinked away the dancing spots in front of her eyes
and soon saw cream-colored ruins spiraling into a crystal sky.

  It was real.

  There could be no doubt now. This world through the chimney was an entirely new world, different from what she had left behind.

  The truth—the majesty—of it thundered through her.

  The castle, the sparks, the Shadow Thing, they all existed. They had all happened. There’d never been any bat, like Sophie had claimed.

  Sometimes when Claire had the itch to draw, she felt her fingertips tingling. She had that exact feeling now as she gazed at her surroundings. But this time it was more than just the urge to have a pencil and pad in hand. It was the urge to understand. To know more. What was this place? And why had Sophie lied? And what would the world look like from the top of that crumbling tower? She decided she would climb it, and from there, she might be able to spot her sister.

  Claire pushed down on the well’s ledge and launched herself out. Dropping onto the grass, she felt dew soak through her slippers. In her hurry to find Sophie, she hadn’t changed out of them.

  Putting her pencil in her sweater pocket, Claire followed a path of trampled grass and flowers through the wild garden and toward the broken archways. When she and Sophie had first arrived, at night, the grounds had been gilded in starlight, but now late-afternoon sun poured color onto the forgotten garden.

  Claire’s curiosity blossomed inside her, big and lush as the vibrant flowers that bowed and swayed. Around her, leaves dappled the grass with fairy-sized shadows while remnants of fountains peeked out from among the foliage.

  Of course, she thought. Of course Sophie would come back here. It was too beautiful, too wonderful to stay away.

  But why hadn’t she told Claire the truth?

  Claire thought again of the Shadow Thing that had chased them, its cold breath at her neck. Its skeletal fingers reached out from her memory to stroke her spine.

  “There’s no one here but me,” she said aloud to reassure herself. “Just me and Sophie, and not a horrible mon—oof!”

  The air whooshed out of Claire as something—someone—tackled her from behind.

  She felt a knee land firmly on her lower back, pinning her to the ground. Pain ripped through her shoulders as her arms were yanked behind her. She tried to scream, but her lungs felt trapped by the weight on her back, and what came out was more of a whimper. She kicked.

  “Nett, grab her legs!” a girl’s voice ordered.

  On hearing this, Claire kicked even harder. Finally, her foot connected with something squishy.

  “Ow! Dee god my dose!” a new voice exclaimed. It sounded as if the speaker was pinching his nose.

  The girl spoke again, “Stay back!”

  The world suddenly tilted, and Claire found herself rolled onto her back, looking up into the scowling face of a girl with a heavy auburn braid twisted around her head like a crown. She wore a long red shirt that was cinched with a belt, and leggings.

  Over the girl’s shoulder, Claire could see a boy about her age dressed in a similar outfit, but with a green shirt and loose trousers. He was cupping his hands around his nose.

  Claire coughed, spitting out the soil that coated her mouth from the fall. Something cold and hard suddenly pressed at her throat: the edge of a knife.

  She gasped and clenched her eyes shut. She lay absolutely still, suppressing the next cough.

  “Don’t hurd her!” the boy protested.

  The girl snarled. “If she talks, she won’t be hurt.”

  Claire thought she felt the knife bob a little, and opened her eyes. She noticed her attacker’s hand was trembling. The girl leaned forward, coming so close that Claire could see sweat beading at her hairline and flecks of brown in her amber-colored eyes.

  “Where. Is. She,” the girl growled. It wasn’t a question, but a demand.

  Claire’s heart skipped. “Who?”

  “Sophie.”

  Claire didn’t know what she had expected the girl to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. It was as though they were in a play, but their lines had accidentally been switched. Claire was the one who should be asking about Sophie.

  “How—how do you know my sister?” she stammered.

  The boy frowned. “Dister?”

  “Look.” The girl pointed at Claire’s feet with her chin. “She’s wearing the same kind of slippers Sophie had when we first met her. And if she’s Sophie’s sister, then she must know where Sophie is.” The blade pressed a little harder against Claire’s neck.

  “Yes!” Claire wheezed out. “I mean no! I mean, Sophie is my sister, but I don’t know where she is!”

  The girl shot the boy a triumphant smile. “See? Told you we’d find a lead out here.” She turned her attention back to Claire. “Don’t try to protect her. I know you’re lying.”

  “I’m not!” Claire gasped out. Tears of unfairness, pain, and terror stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I’m trying to find her, too!”

  “Sena, come on,” the boy said. His voice sounded less funny now, and Claire could see that he had let go of his nose, which looked red and swollen. “I think she’s telling the truth.”

  The girl, Sena, studied Claire for a moment, then sighed. She adjusted her weight and moved off Claire’s chest. For the first time, Claire could see what the blade in the girl’s hand actually was: a butter knife.

  “Why are you sneaking around Hilltop Palace?” Sena asked, her voice as cold as the ocean in January. “Who were you speaking to?”

  “Myself.” Claire took a moment to breathe in, letting her ribs stretch to their fullest. Relief filtered through her. “I thought you were the Shadow Thing.”

  Sena frowned. “What shadow thing?”

  “I think she means a wraith,” the boy volunteered, digging in the dirt with his fingers.

  “Wraiths can’t come out into the sunlight,” Sena said casually, as though she were pointing out that the sky is blue, or that chocolate chip cookies are better with milk. She narrowed her eyes. “What did this ‘shadow thing’ look like?”

  Claire felt like she’d swallowed an ice cube, but she tried to explain. “I’m not really sure—it all happened so fast—but it was big and dark and cold. It kind of looked like a skeleton wrapped in shadows.”

  “She’s definitely talking about a wraith.” The boy straightened, and Claire could see a flower bulb now in his hand. Taking a pocketknife from his rucksack, he peeled away some of the bulb’s skin and held the exposed side to his nose. “She doesn’t even know wraiths can’t stand sunlight,” he continued. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  Claire was indignant. She might be tired and confused, but she knew lots of things—she knew the oldest paintings in the world were forty thousand years old and how to draw ears so they didn’t look like they belonged to an alien.

  She opened her mouth to retort, then blinked. The boy had moved the bulb away from his face, and she now saw that his nose no longer looked like a ripe tomato, but was rapidly returning to a color that matched the rest of his light brown face. How was that possible? When Tony Rook fell off the slide in third grade, he’d gotten a black eye that hadn’t gone away for more than a week!

  Claire blinked again. With the boy’s nose shrinking back to a normal size, she could see that he had inquisitive brown eyes framed by brush-bristle lashes. She tried to focus on this detail and how she would draw it, rather than on the utter strangeness of what had just happened. Of everything that was happening …

  “Nett, we can’t let her go,” Sena said, still holding her butter knife toward Claire. “What if she’s working with Sophie?” Claire saw the girl’s jaw twitch. It was a movement Claire knew all too well. Was this knife-wielding girl scared? Of her? That didn’t make sense.

  But then again, nothing made any sense here. Wherever here was.

  “Where am I?” The question exploded out of Claire. “What is this place?”

  “This is Arden, of course,” Nett said, not really paying attention. “We’re less than
a mile outside Greenwood Village.”

  Arden. So the chimney world had a name.

  “But—who are you?” Claire asked, desperate to understand. “How do you know Sophie? Where’s Sophie?”

  “Quiet,” Sena ordered. “I can’t think with all your questions!”

  Nett peered at Claire. “Bringing her to the Hearing Hall isn’t really an option. It’d look so bad if the only Forger in a village of Tillers showed up with Sophie’s sister. We’re trying to find clues that will prove you’re innocent—not make you guiltier!”

  “Hearing Hall? Clues?” Claire asked. “Guilty of what?”

  Sena pressed her free hand to her forehead, as if she were trying to keep millions of thoughts from flying away. “If I bring them someone who knows where Sophie is, maybe the council will stop questioning me.”

  Claire tried again. “Who’s questioning—”

  “Get up,” Sena said, ignoring Nett’s look of protest. She flicked her amber eyes back to Claire. “And don’t take your time about it.”

  Claire kept one eye on the butter knife’s dull edge as she slowly got to her feet. Sena seemed a little too eager to point it in her direction. Claire would go to this Hearing Hall, whatever it was, if it meant that they’d start answering her questions.

  Arden. Greenwood Village. Council. What did it all mean? And more important, what kind of trouble had Sophie gotten herself into?

  Claire tried to brush the dirt off her pajama bottoms, but Sena grabbed her arm roughly. She mentally added her dirty pants to the list of things she’d have to hide from her parents when she got home.

  Her chest tightened.

  If she got home.

  “Rope,” Sena said, and Nett hesitated, but then he crouched down and pulled a vial out from his bulging rucksack. Carefully, he let a drop of something green tumble onto a blade of grass. With his thumb and forefinger, he pinched the blade and gave it a twist. For a moment, he was totally quiet, his excited energy concentrated on the little plant in front of him. Then he began to pull …