The Unicorn Hunter

by Che Golden

  ‘Why did he come to you? What did you do?’ he snarled. ‘What did you do?’

  Roisin gasped, outraged. ‘We haven’t done anything!’ she said, before her face clouded over and she turned to look at Maddy. ‘You haven’t, have you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t!’ said Maddy. ‘He turned up in the garden last night and practically kicked the back door in. I put him in the coal shed …’

  Seamus’s eyes rolled back in his head and his voice was a horrified whisper. ‘The holy of holies – in a coal shed …’

  ‘Yes, the coal shed,’ said Maddy. ‘And I came to see you as soon as I could. I have no idea why he’s here, but I’m guessing it’s not good.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said Seamus grimly. ‘The Tuatha de Dannan and the rest of faerie kind have been out looking for him for hours – some have even endured terrible pain to cross over into this world to find his tracks – and you’ve had him locked in a coal shed.’

  ‘Well, what was I supposed to do with him?’ asked Maddy. ‘Ring up the local stables and book him in as a livery? My Invisible Pony?’

  ‘The important question is, where is the mare?’ interrupted Roisin. ‘She hasn’t turned up.’

  Seamus threw himself down in a battered armchair and drew his hand across his tired face, scrubbing at his stubble with his palm. ‘We have no idea, which is a big problem because they would never leave each other’s side. Not willingly. Something has happened.’

  They stared at him and waited for an answer. Outside, the unicorn stallion snuffled at the diamond-pane-effect window.

  ‘Well?’ said Danny, as the silence stretched taut. ‘Where is she?’

  Seamus sighed. ‘Mortally injured and hovering on the brink of death.’

  Maddy gasped.

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked. ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘Do you really think that a unicorn could be struck down and the people of magic would not know it?’ asked Seamus. ‘We all felt it as soon as she was hurt, and as her life force ebbs she pulls us all closer to the abyss.’

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ cried Roisin.

  ‘Is it even possible?’ asked Danny.

  ‘It’s hard to do, but it’s possible, given a powerful enough weapon,’ said Seamus. ‘As to who would want to …’ He shook his head and looked at the floor.

  ‘What abyss?’ asked Maddy. Seamus looked at her. ‘What exactly do you mean that she is pulling us all closer to the abyss?’

  ‘She is balance to her mate and together they are the symbol of the forest, of life in all its forms. She is summer and fertility,’ said Seamus.

  ‘I’m probably being thick but could you spell it out for me?’ asked Maddy.

  Seamus sighed impatiently. ‘The unicorns are a physical manifestation of magic, the very life force of the forest and nature, which is why they exist in Tír na nÓg and the mortal world at the same time,’ he explained. ‘A faerie once made a prophecy as to what would happen should the unicorns die.

  ‘Summer without flowers,

  kine without milk,

  women without modesty,

  men without valour;

  captives without a king,

  woods without mast,

  sea without produce.’

  ‘Famine,’ breathed Roisin, her frightened eyes round.

  Seamus nodded in agreement. ‘Famine. Cold wet summers, long, long winters and a land that sickens until it dies.’ He looked out of the window. ‘It’s started already.’

  ‘“Long, long winters”,’ echoed Maddy. ‘Now, who do we know that would be pleased about that?’

  ‘Liadan,’ said Danny, his voice flat with anger. ‘Who else would benefit but a Winter Queen who never wants her power to end?’

  ‘No!’ said Seamus. ‘She wouldn’t do this. No faerie could do this!’

  ‘She’s insane,’ said Maddy. ‘And the mare dying is exactly what she wants. Think about it – famine, chaos. An eternal winter, here and in Tír na nÓg, for the Winter Queen and her court to reign over. If not her, who?’

  ‘One of you,’ said Seamus. ‘A mortal.’

  Danny snorted. ‘Yeah, right!’

  ‘How could it be one of us?’ Maddy objected. ‘Most mortals can’t even see the unicorns, and the Sighted ones are too scared to go near them. Let’s face it, you have them all pretty much under your thumb – no one says squat to a faerie around here, even if they’re burning the house down around your ears.’

  Seamus let out a roar and banged his fists on the arm of his chair, his fury sending the unicorn squealing and spinning in the front garden. ‘No faerie would commit such a horror – none! Only you mud people could do such a thing.’

  Maddy snapped her mouth shut, her lips thin and white with rage. Mud people. Now she knew what Seamus really thought of mortals. What he really thought of her. His angry words rang in the air as they glared at each other.

  ‘We have to find the mare,’ said Roisin, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. ‘Can we please just find the mare and sort all this out later?’

  ‘That’s easy enough, now that we have the stallion,’ said Seamus. ‘He’ll lead us to her.’ He dug into the pocket of an old waxed jacket slung over the arm of the chair he was sitting on and pulled out a mobile phone. Maddy knew she shouldn’t be surprised, but it was still a bit of a shock to watch an ancient Celtic god struggle to dial numbers with his big meaty fingers.

  ‘Bat, it’s me, Seamus.’ Maddy realized Seamus was talking to her grandfather and an icy trickle of apprehension ran through her. ‘Call everyone you can and get them to meet outside my house. Try not to draw too much attention to yourselves.’

  He snapped the phone shut and fixed her with another glare. ‘Now we’ll get to the bottom of this.’

  He stalked over to a massive, ornate mirror that looked completely out of place in the room and muttered a few unintelligible words as he stared into its surface. It clouded over and then cleared enough for Maddy to see strange faces in the glass mouth silent words at Seamus. She couldn’t get a good look as she tried to peer around Seamus’s bulk, but one of those faces was framed by a sweep of straight hair that was as black as a raven’s wing.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Danny.

  ‘Talking to the other Tuatha,’ said Roisin.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He’s calling them here,’ said Maddy.

  She turned and looked out of the window at the unicorn in the front garden. The stallion stood unnaturally still, staring out into the village. He was waiting.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Maddy had known since the events of the previous year that the village of Blarney and the surrounding countryside were full of people with the Sight, the ability to see the faerie world. But Granda hadn’t been keen to tell her who they were and tonight was her chance to see who made up the net of conspiracy that kept the faeries a secret and allowed their bad deeds to go unpunished. Maddy was still angry that no one had wanted to go after her next-door neighbour, two-year-old Stephen Forest, when he had been abducted by a faerie. Even angrier when she thought of all the children who had been lost over the years that no one had dared to rescue, letting mothers and fathers bring up stunted changelings in their place. Tonight she was going to fix the name and face of every one of the cowardly adults in her mind.

  And there were so many. Some knocked softly on the door and came into the house. A few waited in the street, exchanging small talk, like neighbours who had bumped into each other on an evening stroll, the only thing that betrayed their anxiety their eyes flicking to the house every few seconds. Roisin and Danny drifted over to join Maddy, their faces set and white. She knew they were thinking the same as her. Roisin gripped Maddy’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

  There was the local doctor who had treated her wounds last Halloween when the Winter Queen and her faeries had almost killed Maddy. No wonder no one thought to question how banged up I was when the local GP was covering it all up, thou
ght Maddy. There was Mary O’Brien, who worked in the Blarney Castle shop, the boy who delivered their papers, the butcher … As Maddy stared through the window she could see endless faces of adults who had been nice to her since she had come to live in Blarney, whom she thought of as friends. These adults knew that faeries existed and did nothing when they stole children. How many of them would have just abandoned me, if I had been taken? she wondered. How many would have turned a blind eye to a changeling in my place? Tears of anger and self-pity stung her eyes and she dug her fingernails into her palm as bile rose in her throat. She saw the worried face of her grandfather making his way to the front door and the anger coiled in her stomach.

  Granda knocked on the door and Maddy kept staring out of the window at the rest of the Sighted while Roisin ran to let him in. She heard him mutter a greeting to Seamus and then he came and stood behind her. She could hear him breathing and if she raised her eyes a little she would see his face reflected in the glass in front of her. But she didn’t. She kept her gaze fixed on the people in front, the useless, impotent Sighted, and rolled the taste of her rage around in her mouth, enjoying its battery-acid sting.

  Granda stared at her. ‘I know that look on your face,’ he said after a few minutes. ‘You might as well let it all out.’

  She looked at him then, her stare hard enough to scratch glass as she flicked her green eyes up to meet his.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ she said, the words barely escaping the click of her teeth.

  ‘I do,’ said Granda, looking sad but wary. ‘I always want to know.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Maddy as she swung around to face him, fixing him in place with her glare. ‘I’m just trying to do the maths – twenty adults in this village, twenty, who know full well what the faeries get up to, what horrible things they are capable of, and no one says anything.’

  ‘You know why no one says anything—’ Granda said.

  ‘Yeah, I know, so they don’t end up in the funny farm,’ Maddy interrupted. ‘But what’s been stopping any of this lot from forming a Neighbourhood Faerie Watch group and trying to stop bad things from happening? Do you even talk about this stuff among yourselves?’

  Granda looked at her, his mouth pressing into a thin line as anger and frustration battled it out across his craggy face. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Do you ever?’ asked Maddy, shouldering her way past him, her arms still folded tightly to her chest.

  She walked over to the fake coal fire and gazed sightlessly as the red and yellow light flickered. She slipped her fingers inside her jacket and rubbed the knot of scar tissue that adorned her shoulder. She could feel its puckered, wrinkled lips beneath the cotton of her T-shirt and she shuddered at the memory of the ice that pierced her through. The red-painted lips of the Winter Queen flickered in the electric glow as Maddy remembered her faerie-cruel smile. She could still see that shard of blue-white ice protruding from her shoulder, the way her hot blood cooled as it flowed over the frosty blade. The only thing she could now hear in that room full of people was the sound of her own breath quickening as the panic rose in her belly. She still dreamed she was being pinned to a board like a butterfly while Liadan and her court of nightmarish faeries drove spikes of ice through her joints. The nightmares that woke her screaming and thrashing in sweat-soaked sheets sometimes crept up on her during the day, sinking icy claws into her ribs and exhaling their fevered breath in her ears. Fear and remembered pain chased each other through her now and the teeth of the Winter Queen’s cold gnawed at her chest.

  She jumped as a soft, warm hand clutched her arm and the sounds in the room roared in her ears. Roisin’s pale face peered into hers as Maddy blinked her panic away.

  ‘The stallion is walking away,’ Roisin whispered. ‘We need to follow him.’

  ‘We can’t all go charging down the street at once,’ said Seamus, peering out the window. ‘Let the others walk on ahead and we’ll catch up with them.’

  They waited a few minutes while Seamus switched off the fire and the lights, before slipping out into the dank autumn air. The Sighted were fanned out on either side of the road, walking in groups or alone, laughing and chatting as if out to enjoy an evening walk despite the weather. But they cast glances back over their shoulders at Seamus, and Maddy could see their pale faces and frightened eyes in the glow from the street lights. The unicorn was far ahead, the intense white of his hide gleaming in the cloud-tossed moonlight. As he went, the October wind snatched fire-red and yellow leaves from the trees and spun them around his feet so the tarmac seemed to boil.

  On he led them, through the quiet, sleepy estate and out on to the busy road to Cork city. There was no one about to see where the group of villagers was going, none of the motorists in their cars stopped to ask them where they were headed. Only the Sighted could see the little unicorn walking on with dying leaves entangled in his mane.

  He reached a chain-link fence that separated a scrubby field from the busy main road and walked right through it like a ghost. An overgrown hedgerow dipped low over the neglected soil, the rain swelling into big fat drops as it spilled from twiggy branches. The earth beneath was bare and mucky. A gleam of white that matched the hide of the stallion lay on the ground a few yards ahead in the gloom.

  The fence was old and sagging on its supports, flapping loose and baggy in its frame like forgotten washing. The first of the Sighted to reach it pulled up its aging skirts and ducked underneath. Maddy reached out and clenched the gritty cold of the links in her fist. Before she could pull it up over her head though, Seamus held her back, his fingers digging into her scarred shoulder.

  ‘Mind your tongue tonight, Maddy,’ he growled. ‘This is a bad business and all the courts will be here. Now that the stallion is out in the open they will be drawn to him like a moth to a flame, and when they see how the mare is, they will want answers. You’re about to see the Tuatha de Dannan and the faerie courts in all their glory. Very few mortals can stand for long in their light and not be scorched to a crisp because of an ill-thought word. Don’t be a smart mouth.’

  A smart remark was exactly what came bubbling into Maddy’s mouth, but she closed her lips against it and gave Seamus a curt nod before ducking underneath the fence.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was a sad, pathetic place for such a magical creature to be brought to bay. The unicorns existed in both the faerie and the mortal world at the same time and Maddy fervently prayed that if the mare was aware of what was happening then she thought she was somewhere far more green and pleasant.

  The wet, slimy roadside was littered with sad, weather-faded trash that careless drivers had thrown from their cars. Crisp packets, sodden sweet wrappers and drink cans had been pushed by persistent winds through the fence and they had skipped and danced to the stricken unicorn, resting against her too-still flanks and winding themselves lovingly in her sodden mane. The cruel rain had not let up. Around the mare, the air gave a hiccup and a brief flurry of snow fell about her head. Melting clumps of dirty slush dotted the browned grass around her. Lying among the junk of the mortal world, the mare looked neglected and disrespected. It made Maddy’s throat ache with tears to look at her, who should be covered in flowers and her head laid on a pillow of silk. Roisin could not help herself and began to cry. Maddy could hear the sobs among the Sighted as some knelt in the mud, hands outstretched, not daring to touch the stricken creature. Her nose lay on her knee and her eyes were shut tight. A dart stuck out from her shoulder and black poison was beginning to work its way through her veins, spreading down her leg.

  The stallion nudged at her neck and blew his warm breath against her wet mane. Her eyelids did not even flicker. The stallion raised his head and wailed, a low mournful sound closer to a whale’s cry than a horse’s neigh. It ached and throbbed in the damp air before trailing off into silence.

  There was a clump of trees toward the far end of the field and a light began to glow among their tr
unks as the stallion’s cry broke apart on the sharp autumn breeze.

  Maddy clapped her hand to her cheek as she felt a puff of air kiss it, warm as the desert, carrying the rich, heavy scent of tropical flowers. ‘Can you feel that?!’ exclaimed Danny, as Roisin gasped beside her.

  Granda bent his head down to the three of them. ‘Show no fear, no matter what happens next.’

  The glow grew brighter and the breeze stronger until a warm wind blew over them, smoothing their hair from their faces with balmy fingers. Another golden light joined the glow and together they pulsed toward the group of Sighted. Seamus went and stood close to the unicorns, his shadow antlers stretching huge across the ground.

  Maddy squinted against the glow. There were shapes moving about in it and more shapes gathering beyond it. A bright blue butterfly came swooping toward her, dusting her cheeks with its wings. The golden light grew so bright she gasped and closed her eyes for a moment, spots of red sparking against the lids. When she opened them again, she nearly fell to her knees.

  Walking toward her, at the heart of the pulsing, golden glow, were two couples, arm in arm. The women were blonde and blue-eyed, so alike they could have been twins. One man was dark-haired, the other fair. Warm air rippled out from both couples and butterflies flocked around them. Where one couple trod, the grass turned lush and emerald green, while flowers of every colour sprang from the feet of the other couple and lapped like a perfumed tide around the unicorn and against Maddy’s grubby trainers. A white butterfly landed on the cherry-pink lips of one woman and beat its wings there like a pulse. Behind them, walking silently from the trees, was a host of people who looked similar but lacked the intense light that shone from the arm-linked couples. Pennants fluttered in the air and men and women with the faces of angels sat astride white horses. Smaller, odder shapes could be seen behind them, that capered and tumbled, and there were flickers of wings in the shadows cast by bright faeries.