Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Those are the native powers—the ones all hunters are born with, regardless of training. If we work at it, we’ve got so much more. It’s almost as if they’re part of our own bodies. I know where unicorns are and how they move just like I know where my own hand is.”

  “Hmm. So now, you never bother to use your other senses? Those ‘native’ ones?”

  I supposed not. In the Cloisters, the buzz of the trophies and the ever-present odor of unicorns had grown so commonplace—too ubiquitous to, say, pinpoint Bonegrinder’s location without tapping in to her thoughts. “My unicorn senses are more general—are they there or aren’t they?—and not nearly as perceptive for the purpose of hunting as the magic I started using once I was attuned.”

  “There are machines,” said Isabeau, “that can calibrate a change in temperature down to the tiniest fraction of a degree.” She took a sip from her cup and grimaced. “But I do not need them to tell me when my coffee has gone cold.”

  And as she gestured to the server, I marveled that Isabeau was the only person I’d spoken to in months who wasn’t the slightest bit impressed by descriptions of my magic.

  “The unicorns in the enclosure,” I said. “Are they … healthy?”

  Isabeau nodded, her expression somber. “You have noticed their rashes, perhaps?”

  Rashes? “Yes, and they seem … hungry.”

  “We feed them plenty,” she replied. “But they are natural predators. It is not the same. We do the best we can for them, but it is impossible to re-create their environment as if they are still in the wild.” She shrugged. “You are familiar with the legend that a unicorn cannot be captured?”

  “Of course.” Bonegrinder was a refutation of that.

  “The real trick, Astrid, is keeping one alive in captivity.”

  Next, we visited the university, where Isabeau showed me the botany building that had been named for her mother and introduced me to the head of the chemistry department, a Middle Eastern man who was so clearly charmed by Isabeau that, for a moment, I thought he was going to offer to tutor me himself.

  Later, as we drove back to the château, I felt my head spinning. This was all happening so fast. Twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been a de facto nun and a high school dropout living in a ruined church made of unicorn bones. Now I had bags and bags of fashionable French clothes, had enrolled in a remedial yet collegelevel chemistry seminar, and was relaxing on the buttery leather seats of a BMW on my way back to my gorgeous suite at a beautiful château in the French countryside.

  I stared out the window at said countryside and stretched my senses out as far as I could, searching for any sign of unicorn. A taste of the monsters now would help me focus. But I felt nothing as we zoomed along.

  One of the things that had so frustrated me—and Phil—at the Cloisters was the way the Bartolis were willing to accept the old ways at face value, even despite our limited knowledge of what exactly those old ways were. Cory truly believed in the idea of family castes: that different unicorn-hunting families were inherently better equipped to handle certain unicorn-hunting tasks. As a Llewelyn, I was supposed to be one of the best hunters there, despite facts to the contrary. And yes, maybe we knew what an actaeon was or who every don of the Cloisters had been back to the Order’s founding, but we had a terrible time understanding even the basics of unicorn behavior, or the smallest part of our training. As it had been a mystery passed down from hunter to hunter, that kind of thing had never been written down in the records. We’d never known that the unicorn-encrusted walls of our nunnery had been built to help attune us, that there was magic in our ancient weapons that outstripped any of the advances and conveniences afforded by modern bows and arrows.

  We didn’t even know about the purifying effects of chamomile. How many nights had I gone to sleep with headaches from the buzz of the trophy wall that no amount of painkillers seemed to dull? I wanted to know what other knowledge about hunters Isabeau and her mother had. The more records we could find from hunters, the more we might understand what the lifestyle we were trying to rebuild and—more—what the magic were really all about.

  The previous hunter at Gordian—the one who’d helped to capture the einhorns—she’d not been trained at the Cloisters. Her abilities were likely only what came naturally to us, unless she’d figured out a way to teach herself.

  Or unless she had some sort of ancient records that taught her. Maybe taught her something even we didn’t know!

  “The guard you had before,” I said. “Did she ever have to kill one of the unicorns?” Prior to attuning our magic, hunting had been a far more difficult and dangerous prospect.

  “We were very fortunate,” Isabeau said. “She had no interest in hunting, which is why she eventually chose to rid herself of her powers. The hunter’s main occupation while here was drawing the unicorns in so she could fit them with electric shock collars.”

  “But that’s so dangerous!” I said. “What if they’d attacked her?”

  Isabeau shrugged, eyes on the road before us. “It is the way it has been done in this country for centuries.” She gave me a quick glance. “Surely you have seen the tapestries.”

  I shook my head.

  “Not even a picture?” She clucked her tongue. “Perhaps we shall have to go to Paris after all. The Musée Cluny has some. But it is the tapestries in New York City that are most instructive.

  They tell a story of the hunt for the unicorn. They say that the virgin sits in a grove and waits for the einhorn to come. It is attracted to her, in the way that all unicorns are, and comes to her, and lays its head in her lap. And then, she slips a collar over its head and leads it into captivity. To her, the unicorn is gentle and calm.”

  “The einhorns didn’t look calm yesterday.”

  “And why do you think that is?” Isabeau smiled at me as we pulled into the drive leading to the château. “You say you were listening in on their thoughts.”

  “As well as I could,” I replied. “I’m not used to that … kind of unicorn, and there were so many at once. They took me by surprise. Their thoughts were … strange to me.”

  “Were you frightened?”

  I ducked my head. “A little.”

  She parked the car in front of the château and stepped out. Gog and Magog came bounding toward her from around the side of the house. I was surprised that Isabeau let them wander around loose, with the unicorns so nearby. Wasn’t a big haunch of Great Pyrénées dog every bit as appetizing as a steak? I watched her greet each dog, ruffling the fur on the necks and scratching them under their chins. For just a moment, I expected Bonegrinder to do the same thing—come running up to me, soliciting a cuddle. But the zhi was back in the Cloisters, avoiding Phil and trying to get the other hunters to spend time with her. I hoped Rosamund would comb her hair. I hoped Ilesha would let her sleep on her bed.

  “So, Astrid,” Isabeau said, handing me several shopping bags, “why do you think that the events in the einhorn enclosure yesterday unfolded as they did?”

  “Because when there are unicorns around, I never miss?”

  She laughed. “I’m not talking about your considerable skills with a dagger. I’m talking about the animals’ behavior.”

  Oh. She wasn’t asking me as a hunter. She was asking me as a scientist. She was asking me to analyze my observations and compare them to the previous observable facts. According to all her evidence about einhorns, which was much more than mine, the presence of a hunter calmed the animals. I wondered if einhorns were like zhi in that respect. After all, I could keep Bonegrinder under control.

  And I could easily compare Bonegrinder’s demeanor to the attitude of the zhi that Cory and I had hunted the day she’d been injured. Those unicorns had been terrified, but they also knew we meant to kill them. Bonegrinder had no such fears.

  “We riled them up, Brandt and I,” I said. “Brandt because he’s not a hunter and he was teasing them, and me because”—I weighed my words—”because they’d never seen a
hunter who was actually a hunter before.” They’d been attracted to me like they were to all women with my birthright, but when they tasted my thoughts—if they did—they saw I was ready to kill them, primed for it. That I’d killed many creatures like them before and thought nothing of it at all.

  “Precisely,” said Isabeau. “If you were sitting quietly, if you weren’t thinking about slitting their throats, they would be as easygoing as one of my dogs. This is the way of the einhorns. It’s one of the reasons we chose them for our captives.” She swung the rest of the bags from the car trunk and shut the door.

  “But I am prepared to kill them,” I said. “To keep the people around here safe. I don’t know if I can turn that off.” I followed her up the drive toward the front door.

  “You’ll have to try,” Isabeau said. “It’s important that you stop thinking like a predator, and start thinking like a prison guard.”

  11

  WHEREIN ASTRID WALKS A NEW PATH

  For a prison guard, I soon found that my duties were extraordinarily light. Every dawn, I made my rounds of the enclosure, checking to see that the fences and the electronic restraints were intact, doing a quick head count of the unicorns. After the unfortunate incident on my first day, there were eighteen left, and I tried to track all of them before heading into breakfast.

  Though back in Italy my experiences had seemed to indicate that most unicorns were active at dawn and dusk, einhorns—or at least the captive ones at Gordian, belied that evidence. I would occasionally find some prowling the edges of their enclosure, but most remained hidden well inside the woods, and when I ventured into the enclosure to check on them, their thoughts tended toward the dreamlike.

  After the early-morning rounds, I had a few tutoring sessions. Isabeau had hired a recent college grad from Connecticut to cover English literature and history classes for Brandt, and told me I was welcome to take advantage of Brandt’s French tutor as well, though he was obviously more advanced than me. To my surprise, I discovered that because of the difference in our curriculum, Brandt and I would only rarely have our classes at the same time. Isabeau presented this as a positive, saying I’d learn much faster in a single-sex, one-on-one environment.

  “Studies have shown that all-female education helps build confidence and promotes learning in young women.”

  I’d crossed my arms, feeling the muscles bulging beneath my new sweater. Given that I could outrun, outshoot, and out-throttle any unicorn, plus had a grade point average well above his, I doubted that my ex-boyfriend posed much of a threat to my confidence.

  Then again, there had been a time I almost slept with him to enhance my social standing. I hardly remembered that girl.

  “You’ll see Brandt plenty, I’m sure,” Isabeau had argued. “Schooltime is for you to learn.”

  I liked my tutor, Lauren. She had super curly hair, spoke German and French, and was taking a year off to earn money before graduate school. She was also fascinated to meet a unicorn hunter.

  “I’ve read about you guys in the news, of course, but—I guess I was expecting something a little more …”

  “Innocent?” I asked. I got that a lot. People expected me to walk around in a white dress and a veil. After all, our position as hunters proclaimed our sexual status more obviously and dramatically than a purity ring.

  “I was going to say ‘comic book superhero.’“

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I said. “The Church didn’t approve our vinyl jumpsuits and capes.”

  “Is it true you usually wear habits?”

  “Recently.” I shrugged. “It’s for image, really. All summer long I wore cargo shorts and T-shirts.”

  “Wild.” Lauren shook her head. “Okay, let’s get to work. I thought since we’re in France, we’d start with the Napoleonic Age… .”

  Before my arrival, the Gordian staff had a habit of feeding the unicorns at noon, so when my morning classes were done, I headed back out to the enclosure to watch the proceedings. Basically, a few staffers carted in some giant sacks of meat and tossed them over the boundary, then ran back behind the fences. I stayed within the enclosure, on the other side of the electric barrier, and waited for the unicorns to approach.

  “Usually they come by now,” one of the staffers said to me. “I think they are still afraid of you.”

  Yet I could feel them yearning for the bags of meat, their longing radiating out from their hiding place within the trees. I watched carefully, but no unicorn emerged from the protection of the woods that first day until I’d left the enclosure and returned to the château.

  In the afternoons, I did homework—an odd concept, considering that my studies took place in the same library where my morning classes had been. I’d never known any homeschooled students back in the states—I wondered if they called it homework.

  If I saw Brandt then, it was a quick glimpse of him playing video games in his room, or bounding down to the kitchen for snacks, or running out the door to his motorcycle, helmet swinging by the strap from his fingers. He’d wave or grin at me, but I never got another invitation to join him, and my kirinstriped helmet lay unused on a cupboard near the side door. He continued to spend the odd night in hotels in Limoges. Either he had a very late night class at the university, or—something else. Every time I asked Isabeau, though, her answers were vague. “Boys shall be boys.”

  I wondered sometimes if he was embarrassed about trying to kiss me, or if Isabeau had warned him to keep his distance. Not that it mattered.

  My favorite was the evening rounds. Though I relished long days spent beyond the reach of the unicorns, a cup of chamomile tea on my desk wafting its cleansing scent through the rooms of the château, there was still something to be said for the magic. As the sun set, I’d wander past the greenhouse, slip inside the einhorn enclosure, and stretch my senses out toward the unicorns. One by one I’d feel them alert to my presence, and the concerns of the day would slip away. Historical facts, scientific figures, new French words—even the old, familiar English ones—all faded before the bright focus of hunter magic.

  I’d glide down the wooded paths, my arms free of weapons, though I kept the alicorn knife in a bag at my side, and take stock of the unicorns. It didn’t take me long to differentiate their thought patterns, and even more, to expect them—whether or not the einhorns saw fit to show their faces.

  Always lurking nearby were three males, young, constantly hungry, split between curiosity and fear. The einhorn I’d killed had been part of their bachelor band. The three that remained trailed me on my walks and, day by day, dared to come closer.

  They were different than the other unicorns I’d known. As silent and graceful as kirin, they floated through the forest, drifting in and out of the patches of fading sunlight like ghosts, pale and ethereal. Blink and you’d miss them—even if you were a hunter.

  Their hair was short, showcasing their bony knees and the ribs beneath their skin. Most had sparse manes running down their heads and necks, starting around the spot where the horn sprouted from their skulls. The manes lay matted at the base of their necks where the electric collars rubbed against their skin. Their wide-set eyes were dark and fathomless, with no irises or pupils that I could see.

  The first to approach me was the tallest, with legs a few inches longer than the others—a few inches longer than even he seemed to know what to do with. Once, when I stood still for a few moments, he came close enough to nose at my bag. As soon as I breathed, he bounded away, but the next evening I brought a package of sausage and waited to see if he’d do it again.

  The sausage produced very quick results. Not only did Stretch return, but he brought along his two friends. One seemed to be suffering from the same skin condition as the einhorn I’d killed, for his fur was spotted with bare, red patches. I examined them closely, for I’d never seen a unicorn’s ultra-regenerative hide be anything but utterly pristine.

  At least until I filled it with arrows.

  This must be the rash Isabea
u had mentioned. Did their regenerative ability weaken in captivity? If so, would they even be useful as a resource for the Remedy?

  Blotchy was accompanied by the third unicorn, a skittish young male for whom even the promise of fresh meat didn’t seem enough to get him to come near me. I tossed a sausage into the brush and he leaped after it, bouncing into the bushes with such enthusiasm and glee that he reminded me of a large, sleek Bonegrinder, and I laughed out loud.

  The einhorns scattered, and though I sat still on the forest floor for another half an hour, none approached me. I wondered how long it took for the hunter before me to capture all of them, or if they were especially cautious around me because I’d first introduced myself by killing one of their own.

  Or maybe they knew I could read their minds and were horrified.

  The following day, instead of Stretch, Blotchy, and Jumps, a new einhorn began trailing me down the unicorn-trampled paths in the wooded enclosure. This one, from the taste of her thoughts, was a female, and she was ravenous. Nothing would have brought her out of hiding except for the scent of the meat I carried. I dropped a bit of sausage behind me and walked on, casting quick, magic-enhanced glances back to see if the einhorn followed.

  She did. She was another young one, barely an adult, who trotted behind me on legs that seemed far too slender for her bloated body. I wondered if she, too, was ill—certain types of malnutrition caused bloat, especially if she was gulping whatever food she could find before another unicorn grabbed it away from her. Alternately, maybe she’d swallowed something she shouldn’t have—a plastic bag, perhaps. Or it could even be a tumor. It was impossible that so many other unicorns in this enclosure looked starved and she was this fat.

  A few pieces of sausages later, and Fats was practically in my lap. At the edge of my consciousness, I could feel the three males poking around, keeping their distance but drawn in by the food. Beyond that, I could feel the other unicorns lying in wait, curious and cautious. On the edges of their minds, I tasted regret and anger. Though their thoughts were not firm and human-shaped like a karkadann’s, I could still snatch images from their minds. Memories and fears that passed, to my consciousness, for fully formed thoughts.