Ascendant

by Diana Peterfreund

  “Are you within range?” I asked back.

  “No, we—” I heard a shouted curse, then the radio went silent. I stared left over the ravine that separated us from the lower part of the trail, wondering what the quickest route was to the other team. Rosamund scanned the landscape, searching for movement.

  “Do you see them?” I cried.

  “No.” She closed her eyes and raised her face into the wind, sending out feelers of magic. I breathed in, hoping to trace the telltale scent of fire and flood, but felt nothing.

  “I hear them!” she shouted. “The chords. Over here!” She took off, sprinting up the path, which wound around a large boulder and headed to the right.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Rosamund, that’s the wrong way!”

  But she kept running, and I followed. After all, who was to say that Melissende and Dorcas hadn’t already passed the ravine? Their path appeared to be flatter. Maybe they were able to make better time than we were.

  Sure enough, on the other side of the boulder the path turned into a series of long switchbacks that Rosamund was blithely ignoring in favor of cutting straight up the mountainside. I panted behind her for a few yards until suddenly I could feel a tingle of unicorn magic. It bloomed inside me and I breathed clear again, my strides lengthening as the world seemed to slow and shrink around me. There were unicorns on this mountain. Several of them.

  Melissende’s voice came over the radio. “It’s coming toward you! Get ready!”

  “I know!” I said. “I can feel it. You guys okay?”

  “Yes.” Now Melissende did sound out of breath. “Oh, it got Dorcas in the arm, but she’ll live. She’s hanging back while her wound closes. I hit it in the flank with an arrow, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed it down any.”

  “Good to know.”

  “I’ll meet you. Are you still on the path?”

  “Sort of. We’re cutting through some switchbacks, still heading up the mountain. I can feel it now.” Threaded through the scent of fire and flood was great terror, a hunger, and something that felt like … loneliness? No, abandonment.

  The switchbacks ended abruptly in a copse of thickly threaded evergreens. I plunged through it in seconds and out the other side, where a boulder field seemed to have provided some shelter from the mountaintop elements for the trees to take root. A maze of rocks and tiny peaks jutted up all around me, making it impossible to make out the entire trail. Rosamund was nowhere to be seen, but it felt as if the unicorn was everywhere at once.

  I ran faster. “Rosamund!” I called. “Arrow on the string!”

  The words whipped away from me on the wind, and then I tripped on a rock and fell, sprawling, the momentum of the magic carrying me several more yards before I stopped.

  That’s when I heard it. An enormous bellow. And then, over the crest of a ravine to the left of the trail came the re’em, growling and snorting, its galloping hooves pounding the earth, kicking up massive clods of dirt and gravel and snow. This unicorn was even larger than the one I’d killed in Rome. It had to weigh at least fifteen hundred pounds. It tossed its wide, oxlike head wildly about, swinging its great ridged horn from one side to the other as it ran. The green shaft of Melissende’s arrow still jutted from its side, and dark red blood ran from the wound in a fanning stream down its dun-colored flank.

  I scrambled to my feet, pulling my bow from my shoulder and an arrow from my quiver. With the stopped-time speed of my hunting magic, I scanned the trail ahead for any sign of Rosamund or Melissende, but could find neither. “Rosamund!” I hissed. She must have ducked out of sight when I tripped.

  I climbed a boulder, the better to catch sight of my quarry. The re’em galloped toward the rock field, bellowing long and loud. I paused, my bow at full draw. I felt more than one unicorn. Several, in fact. Thanks to my practice at doing a head count back at Gordian, I could detect at least three unicorns in the immediate area. Was this unicorn I was about to shoot responsible for the deaths of those hikers, or was it a different one? A more remote, wild area could not possibly be found. Was it possible that Melissende had injured a unicorn who was just trying to escape mankind? It didn’t eat the corpses… .

  In the middle of winter, yet. Food must be scarce up here, and yet the man-eating unicorn had left its kill behind. Why?

  Why else does an animal kill? For food, in defense, to protect its territory … and how could anyone deny that this rugged mountaintop, a home to wolves and bears, was not the perfect territory for a monster?

  I heard the thwang of an arrow, and the re’em stumbled, a second green shaft sticking in its hind leg. Melissende climbed out of the ravine, limping slightly as she ran, and reached for a third arrow. By this time, the re’em was closer to the rock field, quartering toward me. I could hit it right in the heart. If I wanted to.

  You seem to have lost your taste for unicorn hunting… .

  I reached out to the unicorn with the tendrils of my mind, remembering how I’d bent the einhorns to my will. Calm down. Stop your stampede. Maybe there was still some way. Still some other solution. Like that time with Breaker when the fence went down. Maybe I could make it listen.

  The re’em was staggering now, trying its best to run with blood still streaming from both arrow wounds. I didn’t know if it was listening or just dying. I skidded down the side of the boulder, back to the earth, and reached into its mind.

  Fear, despair, sacrifice. There was no chink in this armor of terror, no way to get inside and speak to it.

  Melissende tripped and fell, her bow bouncing out of her hands before she could fire off another shot. This was my last chance. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. I was an arrow, straight and true. I was an arrow, sent to penetrate the mind of the savage unicorn.

  The chord began to ring in my head, the one Rosamund always heard while hunting unicorns. I felt her now, crouched behind a boulder a few yards over. I felt the pinprick of Melissende, halfway across the field. And the unicorn, buzzing, glowing, dying. I felt it crying out, felt it flailing around for the tiny, flickering, oh-so-familiar swirls of the other unicorns. They were gathered nearby. So very, very near … so small … so helpless … so alone …

  Oh my God.

  My eyes shot open as Rosamund jumped out of her hiding place, arrow on the string. She fired into the unicorn, her shot hitting it in the shoulder. I rushed toward them both as the unicorn lowered its head to charge.

  “No!” I screamed, passing by boulder after boulder. “No, wait! She’s a mother! She’s just protecting the babies.”

  The steps of the charging unicorn faltered as I spoke her secret aloud. She raised her head and stared at me with fiery, furious eyes.

  It’s the last thing I remember.

  20

  WHEREIN ASTRID LOSES HER MIND

  Bonegrinder hopped up on my bed. I felt the depression of the mattress beneath each of her little hooves, felt her sniff my face, then shift and settle down on her haunches alongside my right thigh. The ridges of her screw-shaped alicorn pressed against my calf.

  “Morning!” Phil said. There was light on the backs of my eyelids and I squinted.

  “Bright.”

  “Indeed. Comes along with the mornings. How are you feeling today?”

  “Not bad,” I said, opening my eyes and shoving myself up in bed. “Kinda sleepy, though.”

  Phil stopped, her brow furrowing slightly. She carried a tray in her hands. “Wow. Okay. Feel like some eggs this morning?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Sure,” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the word before. She set the tray down on my lap. I looked at the dish as Bone-grinder lifted her head to sniff, then snort at the obvious lack of meat products. There were some scrambled eggs, a lump of what looked like polenta or some other grain mash, and applesauce. But no silverware.

  I looked up. Phil was sitting next to me with a spoon in her hand.

  “Can I have that?”

  Phil blinked, glanced at the
spoon, then at me. “Um, sure.”

  Well, at least now she knew the word. I took the spoon from her and ate my eggs—which, by the way, are not particularly easy to wrangle with a spoon—and then the applesauce. I tried the grain, but it felt bland and sandy in my mouth, so I put the spoon down.

  There was a sound in the hall. Bonegrinder hopped off the bed and went to investigate. I felt my eyelids flutter closed.

  Fire and flood in my nostrils. Bonegrinder was back.

  “Astrid?”

  Man, I was sleepy. I rolled onto my side.

  “Astrid? Can you hear me?” Phil’s voice.

  “I wish I couldn’t,” I said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “What?” I said. “Did your watch break, or did you lose all sense of circadian rhythms?”

  “Circadian,” Phil repeated in a monotone.

  I sat up and peered at her through the dark. “Yes, circadian rhythm. It’s like our bodies’ natural alarm clock.”

  “I know what it is,” she said. “I just—” Her voice caught on a sob, and then she was hugging me so tight I couldn’t breathe. Bonegrinder growled until Phil released me.

  She turned to the unicorn. “You stay, you hear? You stay.” She ran from the room.

  Weird. Bonegrinder curled up next to me, and I fell asleep, my hands buried in her fragrant fur.

  I dreamed.

  “Watch this,” I heard through a fog.

  Sometime later, there was Bonegrinder, nuzzling against the hand I’d left draped over the edge of my bed. I scratched behind her ears until she bleated. “Hey there, Sweets.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Neil’s voice.

  I sat up. “Um, privacy, Neil? This is my bedroom”

  “See what I mean?” Phil said. “We have to leave her here.”

  “Yes, that would be ideal,” I said, and covered my chest with my hands. “Or, you know, at least knock first.”

  I heard Neil blow on his whistle. “Bonegrinder, come.” The zhi trotted away.

  When I woke up the next time, Bonegrinder was sitting on my feet, and Phil was perched near my left hip. “Good morning.” She gave me a nervous smile.

  “Good morning,” I said, sitting up in bed. That’s when I saw the other people in the room. Father Guillermo. A man in a suit. Neil. And Ilesha, holding Bonegrinder’s attention by dangling a piece of bacon in the air.

  “How do you feel this morning?”

  I shrugged. “Fine, why do you ask?”

  “I was just curious.”

  “Okay. So here’s something I’m curious about. Why are all these people in my bedroom?”

  Father Guillermo and the man in the suit gasped.

  Ilesha’s eyes widened, but she was concentrating on Bone-grinder. I could feel her subduing the animal, keeping the zhi in place and calm.

  “That’s a good question, Astrid. Maybe you can figure it out. Do you know this man?” Phil pointed at the guy in the suit.

  I shook my head. “Should I?”

  “This is Dr. Sachetti.”

  “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Signorina.” He nodded.

  “He’s a neurologist,” Phil said.

  A neurologist? My hands clenched the sheets. “Why is he here?” I asked, suddenly very afraid. “Does Cory have a brain tumor?”

  “Astrid,” Father Guillermo asked. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Neil and Phil barging into my bedroom earlier,” I said, giving Neil the stink eye.

  “Before that,” Phil said.

  “You waking me up in the middle of the—”

  “Before that,” she pressed. “Before this bedroom.”

  I stared in turn at all of them. What was going on here? Were they saying I had amnesia or something? How ridiculous. I wished I could have amnesia, and forget all the crap I’d been through. Forget messing up with Giovanni. Forget missing Angel. Forget killing Jumps.

  “The hunt yesterday,” I said, shrugging. “The re’em on the mountainside.”

  Phil burst into tears. Neil came to her and put his hands on both her shoulders.

  “Phil, what’s wrong?” I asked. I leaned forward to cover my hand with hers.

  “That was more than a month ago,” she said, or rather cried. I dropped back against my pillow. “Was I injured?” I asked. “In the attack?”

  Phil nodded miserably. “Why—why didn’t I heal?”

  “The unicorn didn’t gore you, Astrid,” Neil said, when it became clear that Phil had lost the power of speech. “It slammed you into a boulder. It cracked your head open.”

  My hand shot to my scalp, where beneath my fingers I could feel the prickles of shorn hair, and the long, jagged ridge of a scar. My jaw went slack.

  “You were in a coma—” he said. Let me see.

  Ilesha’s face twisted uncomfortably, which only made me more determined. I threw off the sheets, dislodging Bonegrinder, and put my feet on the floor. I was wearing long underwear, but I didn’t care.

  “Astrid, wait—”

  I stood up, though my legs felt weak, and my head felt light.

  Light-headed. There was a funny joke. I wonder how much of my brain got left on the mountainside.

  “A coma,” Neil repeated. “For a week. We didn’t think you’d wake up. But the swelling went down—”

  On the far wall, over the dresser, there was a mirror. And there, standing in the reflection, wearing a set of pink long underwear and a horrified expression, stood Clothilde Llewelyn.

  Not the Clothilde in the tableau in the rotunda, with her porcelain face and long blond hair. No, the real Clothilde. The hunter, the one with the buzz cut and the body ravaged by a lifetime of fighting unicorns. A fresh scar ran from her temple all the way back to the nape of her neck. Dark, bruiselike marks rested above her cheekbones, which stood out like knives against her wan, skeletal face. But that wasn’t all.

  There was something wrong with her eyes. I didn’t know these eyes, these strange alien eyes. They were dark, almost black, with a crescent ring of icy blue shining out from each iris. I blinked, and she did. I reached out to the mirror and our fingers touched. Behind her, Phil stood, tears dripping down her face, and put her hand on Clothilde’s shoulder.

  “Astrid.” I felt her touch and turned.

  “You said a month ago.” To Phil. And then, to Neil: “And you said I was in a coma only for a week.”

  “You’ve been sick,” Neil said carefully.

  “Like, with the flu?” I asked, though it sounded inane even to me.

  Ilesha was biting her lip so hard, I expected to see blood at any moment, though whether she was about to laugh or cry I couldn’t be sure. Bonegrinder sat at the foot of my bed, staring, her tail swishing on the covers. The smell of fire and flood raged through the room.

  “Signorina,” said Dr. Sachetti. “Please to sit down.”

  I whirled on him. “Apparently I’ve been sitting down for a month! Now tell me.”

  He shied away. “It is a very curious thing, a human brain. You do not know at all times what will come back.”

  “After a week,” Phil said through her tears, “you woke up. But, Asteroid, you weren’t you.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands, hoping it would somehow keep my breakfast down.

  “You weren’t you until the other day, with the eggs.”

  I didn’t have amnesia.

  I had brain damage.

  “Hey Astrid,” came Phil’s voice. I was staring at myself in the mirror. I was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of yoga pants I didn’t remember putting on. That happened a lot, I was told.

  “What’s wrong with my eyes?” I asked, sensing the unicorn behind me. It wasn’t Bonegrinder.

  “It’s called heterochromia,” Phil said as I turned. There was a certain weariness in her voice, the kind I’d learned meant that she’d already explained this to me. “It might go away, but either way, it won
’t hurt you. It’s actually not so uncommon after traumatic … head … injuries … or, you know, with some breeds of dogs.”

  I whirled around and she flinched as she got a good look at me. “Breeds of dogs?” I repeated. A strange unicorn hunter stood there, a zhi at her side. This zhi was slightly smaller than Bonegrinder had been when I first met her, with a coat more silver than white. The hunter looked nervous. I couldn’t blame her.

  “Or people!” Phil said. “People have it, too. Alexander the Great.”

  Great, one more thing we had in common. I turned my gaze to the girl. Young, with a short cap of sleek black hair and wary eyes. She wore jeans, a cap-sleeved blouse, and a golden cross around her neck.

  “Who is she?” I grumbled. My eyes were ruined. My brain was ruined. I was ruined.

  “We’re going to try an experiment.”

  I didn’t want to try an experiment. I wanted to go back to bed. I wanted the unicorn to leave so I could bury myself in fog again and forget what had happened to me. The zhi flopped its tail, and I tried to push the magic from my mind.

  “Astrid, this is Wen.”

  Wen waved. Which was kind of funny.

  “Wen is new here, and you haven’t met her yet. She’s from America. Do you remember we tried to get her to join us last fall, right when you left for France?”

  I shrugged. There were lots of hunters we tried to get.

  Phil moved on. “And this is her pet zhi, Flayer.”

  I looked at the zhi. The zhi loved Wen. The zhi loved Wen more than Bonegrinder loved any hunter in the Cloisters. It was beautiful. I hated to see it. I hated that the magic was the only thing that worked in my head. Right now, all I could see was their love. I thought of Angel and wanted to cry. Angel was probably dead by now, and I hadn’t been able to stop it.

  “Astrid.” Phil’s face filled with concern. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m just thinking about the einhorn baby I left at Gordian,” I said. “I should never have left him. I feel awful.”

  Wen’s eyes widened. Apparently, I was scary now that my brain was broken.

  “And the re’em’s babies. Do we know what happened to them?” I asked. “Did Rosamund and Melissende find them?”