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The Unicorn Quest

Page 16

by Kamilla Benko


  “A forest,” she croaked. “But the forest looked weird. The trees were too still and everything was the same color—a rusty-brown red.”

  Sena and Nett looked at each other and Thorn let out a soft whistle. “The Petrified Forest.”

  Claire’s eyes snapped open. “You know where they are? How do we get there?”

  “Claire.” Nett looked at her solemnly. “No one goes to the Petrified Forest. It’s a forest that was turned to stone during the Guild War. It makes Tillers sick to be there, and Spinners and Forgers avoid the cursed place at all costs. Gemmers might go, I don’t know, but they almost never leave their mountaintop.”

  “But they were at the edge of the forest. I could see an open plain just beyond the trees,” Claire protested.

  “The Sorrowful Plains?” Thorn’s voice cut in. “You saw the Sorrowful Plains?”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t know. Wait, isn’t that where Queen Estelle went to save the last unicorn?”

  Nett and Sena exchanged a look.

  “It is,” Nett said. “And it has to be the Sorrowful Plains. If you could see it from the Petrified Forest, there’s no other place it could be. But remember, Sena isn’t a trained Forger, so the mirror may not be that accurate.”

  “What do you mean?” Claire asked.

  “I mean,” Nett said, “whatever you saw in the mirror could have happened yesterday, or it might happen tomorrow. It’s always hard to get it exactly right, even if the Forger has training.”

  “But if Malchain already caught up to her, there’s no way we’ll get there in time,” Sena said, her voice hard and low. “The Sorrowful Plains are days away.”

  “Not necessarily,” Thorn said. He ran his fingers through his blond hair. “My grandmother was a Tiller Trader in her younger years, and she told me that Fyrton’s Mount Rouge contains many secret passages, including one that leads straight through the mountain and directly into the Petrified Forest.”

  “A secret passage?” Sena asked, distrust written all over her face.

  Thorn nodded. “The silver mines,” he said. “They’re abandoned now, but I’ve heard other people say, too, that the longest passage will still take you all the way to the Petrified Forest.”

  Underground mines. That meant more dark. More uncertainty. Claire nervously tapped her finger against her pencil. But if that was the quickest way to get to Sophie, she’d do it.

  “Can you take me there?” Claire asked, taking a step forward.

  Thorn smiled at her. “Yes. We need to leave right away.”

  Sena opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “I don’t think it’s a good—”

  “But it’s an idea,” Claire pointed out. “You don’t have to come with me, but now that I have a clue of where Sophie is, I’m not going to just give up.”

  “I’m ready,” Nett said, picking up his pack. “Sena?”

  But Sena was already walking away from him and over to a barrel of swords. She wrapped her hand around different hilts.

  “What are you doing?” Nett asked.

  “Hang on.” Sena pulled out a small sword. The hilt was plain, except for gold wires melted into a Forger’s hammer on the pommel. Sena swished the blade through the air in a figure eight. “She fits perfectly. If we’re going into the mines, we better be prepared.”

  And for the first time since Claire had met her, Sena truly grinned. The difference was so startling that Claire didn’t think she’d recognize her if she saw her in a crowd.

  Sena quickly buckled the sword around her waist and threw a few coins on Scythe’s table.

  “You’re paying that horrible man?” Nett asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Sena said. “I’m done being a thief. And Fireblood deserves a clean start.”

  “Fireblood?” Claire asked.

  “My sword,” she said, patting the hilt. “Let’s go.”

  They were a little way up the mountain when the sun rose in its full glory, dripping scarlet and orange onto the earth below. Sena and Nett marched in front, while Claire lagged behind with Thorn, who was carefully leading his horse along the rocky path.

  Thorn murmured something.

  “Sorry?” Claire asked. She was only half-awake, which meant she was actually mostly asleep.

  “I was just thinking how the sunrise makes the sky look like it’s on fire,” Thorn said. “It reminds me of a poem Grand used to like:

  The end can be found

  Where fire meets water

  At the edge of day and night.

  “That’s from The Queen and The Unicorn, right?” Claire asked, surprised. “Was your grand a Royalist?”

  “You know about the Royalists?” Thorn asked, equally surprised. “Yeah, she was one. She didn’t talk about them that much, but whenever there was a blue moon—the second full moon in one month—she’d disappear for a few days, saying she had Royalist business to attend to. They’re a pretty quiet group. How did you hear about them?”

  “I learned about them on the narrowboat,” Claire said. “I think that maybe they—” She was going to say that Anvil Malchain might be a Royalist, and that maybe the Royalists were organizing, up to something secret and bad, something that her sister was trying to stop. But what if he didn’t believe her? Or was offended? Or worse, what if he told Greenwood Village before she knew how to clear Sophie’s name …

  “Maybe, what?” Thorn prompted.

  Claire squinted at the bluing sky. “Do you think the poem means anything or is it just a bunch of pretty words?”

  “Grand thought it meant something,” Thorn said. He clucked, and the horse’s head jerked up from the scrubby grass he’d been sniffing. “She said she became a Tiller Trader so that she could travel and maybe one day find a place where fire meets water. She believed a secret, all-powerful unicorn artifact—the Unicorn Treasure—that could wake the queen would be hidden there.”

  “What kind of artifact?”

  Thorn shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if Grand knew what it was.”

  “Do you believe in the story?” Claire asked, curious.

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know what I think. I will say one thing—I like the idea of a queen coming back to restore Arden to the old ways, to the way it was before the war. To make magic thrive again.”

  Once more, Claire thought about how the Tillers of Greenwood treated Thorn, how they called him lackie. It made sense that he would want to believe in the poem’s promise.

  Looking over at Claire, Thorn smiled. “That’s what’s so nice about Sophie. She doesn’t let her lack of magic get in the way of having adventures.”

  No, Claire thought. She certainly doesn’t. And finally, a puzzle piece fell into place.

  “So that’s why you really came after us,” Claire said. “Because you realized you could actually help, even if you didn’t have magic?”

  Thorn looked at her in surprise. “You’re pretty smart for your age, you know that?”

  “I’m eleven,” Claire said automatically, but she was pleased.

  Falling into a friendly quiet, they continued to walk for what felt like hours until Nett called back to them, “Thorn, is this the entrance?”

  In front of them in the earth was the dark mouth of a mine shaft. The opening was about six feet wide, but it was much too dark to be able to tell how far down it went. A boulder stood next to it. Drilled into the stone was a metal loop, through which a chain was threaded and connected to a wide wooden platform. The other end of the chain was wrapped around a large spool with a handle.

  Claire hoped she was wrong, but the whole contraption did look an awful lot like a very old, very dangerous elevator.

  Sena went over to examine the pulley. “It’s not magic,” she said. “Someone will need to stay behind and pull it back up. If no one does, it’ll be obvious to the inspectors where we disappeared to.”

  Claire looked at her toes. There was no way she would be the one staying behind, but she hated t
he thought of going on without Sena, Nett, or Thorn. The more people there were to rescue Sophie, the better she felt.

  “I’ll do it,” Thorn volunteered. “I’ll pull it back up after you. It makes the most sense,” he added when Claire opened her mouth. “It’s dangerous for Sena to stay—what if someone recognizes her? And Nett is trained with magic. I’m not adding anything.”

  Claire felt a little guilty. Poor Thorn, always wanting to be a hero, but always being left behind. She knew how that felt.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “Follow the trail of moonmilk. Where the rock shimmers white, you’ll definitely be able to breathe. Where there’s no moonmilk … it could be a sign that the air is becoming too thin.”

  Claire didn’t understand, but Nett and Sena nodded.

  “Go,” Thorn said, walking over to the handle.

  Reluctantly, Claire stepped onto the platform, and Sena and Nett followed. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could pretend that the platform was solid ground. But that was going to take a lot of imagination.

  “Are there wraiths in the mines?” Claire asked timidly.

  “Maybe,” Nett said softly. “But we have the marimo. And Sena’s sword. Besides there are worse things dow—”

  “All set?” Thorn interrupted.

  “We should hold hands, I think,” Sena said, reaching for Nett’s and Claire’s. “It’ll keep us from slipping off the edge.”

  Thorn began to turn the handle. The chains creaked, and the platform lowered a few inches.

  “Remember—follow where the moonmilk flows! Don’t stray,” Thorn warned as the top of Claire’s head became level with the ground. “Good luck!”

  “Thank you!” Claire called up.

  Though Thorn’s face had turned red with the effort, he still managed a grin for her. “Anytime, Clairina. We’ll see each other in Greenwood soon!”

  And Claire, who should have been annoyed at this boy for using Sophie’s nickname for her, was surprised to discover she didn’t feel bothered at all.

  They dropped farther into the dark. Claire thought she heard Thorn add something else, but now they were too far away to make out his words.

  Trying to push out the growing darkness, she focused on the shiny spot of Thorn’s blond hair hovering over the opening above. But sooner than she thought possible, Thorn became a dot, blurring into the sky. Still, Claire told herself, as long as she could make out the bright blue of sky, all would be well.

  Farther and farther they dropped, until the shrinking circle of light looked like a tiny sun in a ring of blackness.

  As long as she could just see light, it would be okay, she told herself.

  And then that, too, disappeared.

  CHAPTER

  21

  The mines. Claire pulled out her pencil and held it in a death grip. But the platform tapped the ground more gently than she expected. In fact, she wasn’t even sure they had reached the bottom until Nett took out the marimo. A quiet light appeared around it, its brightness only a glimmer of what it had been the night they snuck into Thorn’s stables.

  Nett looked at his little plant in dismay. “I’m not sure it’ll be able to get us all the way through. It needs time to soak in more sun.”

  With a loud creak, the platform began to lift off the ground. Thorn was pulling it back.

  “Hurry!” Sena said, and they hopped off the platform onto the floor of the mine. With less weight, the platform rose much more quickly than it had descended.

  “If we don’t find the tunnel how are we going to get back up?” Claire asked.

  There was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to find the way,” Nett said forcefully.

  “What did Thorn mean when he said to follow moonmilk?” Claire asked.

  “Moonmilk is a kind of living stone,” Nett said. “It’s found in caves, and the little creatures that live within it produce enough breathable air so that it’s safe to walk underground as long as you’re next to it.”

  “Here’s some,” Sena said, pointing. Claire followed Sena’s finger to see a wash of white against the red of mountain rock. The substance was lumpy, like snowballs strung together and hung in a garland.

  Nett pushed his palm against it. “Ugh.” He made a face. “It feels like eyeballs.”

  “Nett!” Sena admonished.

  “What? It does!”

  “Never mind,” she said quickly. “There’s the tunnel we need to take.”

  The mines weren’t as bad as Claire had feared. Their path seemed obvious. There were other tunnels, many in fact, but only one glowed with moonmilk. Most of the other passageways had been boarded up or had caved in, but here and there, Claire spotted caverns that had been carved into amphitheaters, or a brush of dye on stone that seemed to indicate gowned figures, snarling dogs, and bloody spears—brief glimpses into Arden’s past, she guessed.

  Down and down they went, passing pockmarked walls and abandoned pickaxes. Claire’s ears popped. And then they popped again. As the three continued through the dark, Claire noticed that metal beams no longer supported the tunnels. They had passed through the mines and were now walking through natural corridors of the earth. And though she knew that she was deeper underground than she had ever been before … Claire wasn’t afraid.

  Maybe it was because she was sandwiched comfortably between Nett and Sena, who had her sword, Fireblood, at the ready. Or maybe it was the cool air that seemed to hum a quiet lullaby around her.

  Claire let her fingers drift over the rock, skimming the time-smoothed curves as though she were trailing her hand into the lake as Dad rowed their boat. Her fingertips tingled.

  Adjusting her rucksack, she gave her hand a hard shake. The tingling didn’t stop. If anything, it intensified. Now it seemed as though the soft hum she’d heard in the air had actually been inside her bones.

  “Do you guys feel funny?” Claire asked.

  “Funny how?” Sena asked from behind.

  “Like your hands are about to fall asleep?”

  “Nope,” Sena said.

  Claire kept walking. She remembered feeling a slight tingling in her fingers when she’d climbed the chimney, too. In fact, she’d felt more than that—a reverberation that she thought would shake her apart. But this feeling was more gentle, soothing even.

  Nett stopped. “Oh no.”

  Claire’s heart leaped in her throat. “What’s wrong?”

  “This.” He held up the marimo, and Claire peered around him. They had come to a fork. One path was made of the sandy-red rock that had been common in the higher chambers, and the second was gray. In the gray, she spotted the spiraling imprint of a long-ago sea creature.

  But there was no moonmilk to be seen in either one.

  “Slug soot,” Sena said. “Slug soot, slug soot, slug soot!”

  “We could go back—” Nett suggested.

  Sena whirled on him. “And do what? Thorn’s probably left by now—there’s no way to get back up!”

  Nett jutted his round chin forward. “But if we keep going, there’s no way to know where we’ll end up! We might end up in a tunnel with no air! Claire, what are you doing?”

  Claire had brushed by Nett and was standing in the sand-colored tunnel. She wasn’t sure what was happening but a sudden warmth—happiness, maybe, or excitement—zipped through her veins, feeding the hum. It was similar to the triumphant rush of letting go of her bike’s handlebars for the first time. Or when she’d won the school-wide drawing contest.

  And that’s when Claire knew what the hum was. Not happiness or excitement, but exhilaration. She felt a surge of rightness.

  “We need to go this way,” she said.

  “Why?” Sena asked. “What makes you so sure?”

  Claire didn’t know herself, but she wasn’t going to admit that.

  “My mom always says to trust your gut,” Claire said, hoping they wouldn’t question her too much. “And I think my gut
is telling us we need to go left.”

  Sena let out an exasperated sigh. “So that’s what it’s come to? Guts?”

  Claire snuck a glance at Nett. He was staring down at his toes, scuffing a triangle into the dirt. The dust of travel dulled his clothes, and his bundled energy seemed to have dissipated. Was he feeling all right?

  As though he had read her thoughts, he looked up and gave her, if not a full smile, at least a shadow of one. “Guts are guts,” he said. “And Claire’s are as good as any. Let’s go left.”

  After a moment, Sena nodded. “All right. Give Claire the marimo.”

  They resumed walking, Claire in the lead. If only Sophie could see her now. She’d know that her little sister was up for any Experience—and had even had some without her.

  The passageway twisted and turned. Sometimes, it grew so narrow that Sena took Fireblood off her hip to stop the scabbard from scratching against rock. Other times, it was wide enough that the marimo’s light only served as a reminder of how little they could actually see. The hum in Claire’s bones lessened, and she no longer felt the gentle tug that had drawn her left instead of right.

  She had been so sure that this was the way out, but with each passing step, Claire felt her newfound confidence fade. She wished Mom and Dad were here to tell her what to do.

  “Nett!” Sena’s voice cut through the air. “If you don’t keep moving right now, I’m going to—”

  “I found something.” Nett was studying the cave wall, nose almost brushing the rock.

  Claire backtracked to them. “What did you find?”

  Nett held his hand out for the marimo, and Claire placed the feathery plant in his palm. Its captured sunlight spilled over the rock.

  “See there?” With the tip of his finger, Nett touched a fuzzy red dot on the wall. “It’s … well, it feels like a plant, but it’s … strange.” He looked up, and Claire saw that there was a gray tinge to his usually brown skin. Claire suddenly wondered if people, like flowers, would wilt without sunlight.

  “Let’s keep going,” Claire said. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

  Nett stood up, swaying slightly.

  “Hey, Sena?” Claire said. “We’re going to need a little help.”

 

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