by Susan Dexter
The sky shifted steadily from rose to lavender to deep blue. When the blue had become violet, the brightest of the stars showed themselves. If he took a bearing on one of them, Tristan thought he could try walking straight away from the hillock.
He could not muster will enough to climb to his feet, much less walk boldly. Tristan was worn out. His feet were soaked and swollen. His hips hurt. His knees ached. He was hours past being merely hungry. There was not an ounce of hope left in his heart, and all the stars looked alike to him. They’d be useless as guides. Tristan didn’t care. He could not imagine that he would ever care.
A breeze circled about. It came, and it went, mysterious and unseen in the way of wind. But whenever it arrived, a faint chittering arrived with it. The sound was always just too faint for Tristan’s ears to be sure of it. Frogs sang, loud, shrill, but this was something different. It seemed familiar. Tristan could not hold the thought. Like the wind, it teased and slipped away before he could grasp it.
Thomas placed a soft paw on his knee. You’d better set the wards again, the cat suggested. His eyes gleamed silver.
Tristan did not stir. If he heard, he gave no sign of it. His eyes were open, but empty as a sleepwalker’s.
Are you dreaming? Thomas patted insistently at the knee. The cloth over it had been patched, more than once. Weren’t those things bad enough last night, when they couldn’t actually get close?
Tristan stared dully into the night. Thomas leaned into the boy’s line of sight. No reaction. When he moved, Tristan’s green eyes didn’t follow him. Indeed, they scarcely blinked.
Thomas considered. He deliberately extended his claws. Needle-sharp tips pierced cloth, skin—and finally Tristan’s shell of misery.
“Hey!” Tristan’s eyes and mouth went wide.
Thomas gave him a bland look. The wards? the cat asked again.
Tristan scrubbed his face with his fingers. The wards. Yes. He ought to set the wards. It was important. He couldn’t remember why, but it was. He got up clumsily. His eyes were sore. His head ached. His feet were huge and full of red-hot pins. Double-pointed pins.
You’ll feel better with the wards in force, Thomas told him.
The cat paced alongside Tristan every step of the circuit around their bit of dry ground, including the twisty tree and the wide-eyed unicorn. Thomas made certain he laid the spells down exactly as he should. He was harder to satisfy than Blais ever had been, Tristan thought. He insisted that everything be done just so—as if he knew anything about it. He made Tristan repeat one difficult passage three times.
Lines of silver glowed on the ground. They wove a web in the air. The mark of the final hand-pass interlaced with the traces of the first, while Tristan spoke the final words. The air chimed like a crystal bell. Tristan rubbed his eyes again.
What’s the matter? Thomas sniffed at the silver lines, which were slowly fading. There was no urgency in his manner now. He was entirely at ease.
“I feel strange. Like I’m dreaming and can’t wake.” Tristan shifted his fingers to the back of his neck. His head throbbed, but his thoughts came clearer, little by little.
The misty shapes were back. They flitted restlessly on the far side of the circle of wards. Tristan scowled at them, then turned his head away. He felt better if he didn’t look.
He picked Thomas up and laid his cheek against the long soft fur. “I don’t think I’d have set the wards in time, if you hadn’t made me do it.” He shivered, realizing how close the danger had been. Those things outside…wouldn’t have stayed outside. “I don’t think I’d have set them at all.”
You wouldn’t have, Thomas agreed, purring against his ear. They didn’t want you to. He rubbed his head on Tristan’s chin.
“Everything here is a trap. I forgot that.”
You’re welcome. The cat’s head butted Tristan’s jaw, softly. Are you all right now?
Tristan sighed. “I’m so tired. I’d fall asleep standing up, only I’m too hungry! And I have no reason to think I can get us out of here tomorrow—or in a month of tomorrows. But if you mean the bog-haunts, yes. They won’t trick me again. And thank you,” he added.
Don’t mention it. I’m sure they’d be amusing to hunt, but I don’t much want those things in here either. Whatever they are.
“Tricksters,” Tristan said. He wouldn’t give them more power than that. “Bog-haunts like to play pranks. Get you lost, lead you in circles. I don’t really need them for that, do I?”
If you want to sleep, I’ll stand guard.
Tristan searched the sky. “If the moon comes up bright, I could…there are paths you can only see by moonlight. Like the writing in Blais’ books. I think I remember a spell that might help.”
Something’s wrong with the moon, Thomas said abruptly. It’s been dark too long.
Lore claimed that the eyes of cats mirrored the moon’s phases. Tristan knew that wasn’t strictly true. But was there some affinity, all the same? Like to like? That was a fundamental principle of magic. What did Thomas know? What had he seen? Tristan felt a chill of foreboding. He couldn’t chase the worry down to a logical cause, but he no longer felt sleepy.
The unicorn was watching the circling shapes too. When one came especially near, the creature tensed as if for flight. There was nowhere for it to run. If it crossed—and broke—the wards, it would be chased. Chased, and hunted till it died.
“Don’t,” Tristan advised softly. Maybe the unicorn had thought it was stabbing one of the tricksters, when it got its horn trapped. The bog-haunts would think that fine sport.
The unicorn tossed its head and looked at the sky. The shadows chattered, cheated of their victim—at least for that moment.
Thomas was right about the moon. Tristan discovered the tarnished circle of it in the sky—still low, but risen well clear of the horizon. It looked so odd without its shine. Incomplete. Unnatural.
There was no reason for the moon to be dark so long. Even when the old moon yielded to the slim crescent of the new, it merely vanished for a night or two. It didn’t fade. None of Blais’ books had ever said a word about a moon being veiled without dust or cloud or eclipse being involved.
Eclipse. Was that the answer? The moon looked as if it had never emerged from the eclipse’s shadow. But Tristan had never heard of such a thing happening. To achieve it by means of a spell would require a very powerful magic indeed. Keeping the moon dark for so many nights was an awesome undertaking. What wizard had that kind of power? And what wizard would waste it so? What use was a dimmed moon?
It didn’t consign the world to darkness. The bog wasn’t especially dark without the moon. Particularly the magic-ringed area around the drowned trees. If Tristan hadn’t chanced to spot the dim shape in the sky, he’d have assumed that all was perfectly well with the moon. The unicorn’s silver hide shed a light that softly washed every nearby object. The horn was brighter still—almost too bright to look at without squinting.
Timidly, Tristan put out his hand. The unicorn did not flinch away from him. He ran his fingers down the crest of the long neck, from the ears to the shoulder. The unicorn’s coat was soft and slippery as water—only warm, not cool. The feel of it invited another touch, and that touch another, and another. The unicorn appeared to enjoy the attention. A cat would have been purring. The unicorn made no sound, but it arched its neck beneath Tristan’s fingers.
Without warning, it flung its head back. The tip of the horn traced an arc across the scattered stars. Tristan stepped back, startled. The unicorn’s throat swelled. It gave a low cry. The sound came at Tristan through every inch of his skin, as well as his ears. It pierced the soles of his feet as he stood on them.
He didn’t think he could listen to another such cry. He’d stop his ears with his fingers, or with mud. His heart would shatter if he heard that sound again. Fortunately, the proud head dipped after the single call. The unicorn turned its back upon the moon and upon the stars.
Tristan resumed stroking. Maybe he
could gentle the sorrow out of it. He would reassure it, soothe it. The unicorn folded its slender legs and sank down. Tristan sat right beside it on the damp earth.
“I’ll call you Moonshine,” he said. “That’s what you look as if you’re made of. And once we’re out of this bog, it won’t be so bad. You’ll like the meadows, and the orchard’s always nice. Do you like apples? It’s hard not to like apples.” He leaned back against the silver shoulder. His eyelids drooped. Tristan dragged them up for a moment.
“I don’t know whether Blais will let you sleep in the cottage. I don’t know if you’ll even want to. But it’s nice in the winter. Sometimes the snow’s halfway up the windows, but it’s always warm, inside. Blais has spells to keep out the cold, and the old apple trees make the sweetest firewood. You can see pictures in the flames, and the smoke smells just like spring…”
Tristan drifted off into a tangle of memories. Moonlight shining on a silver field of snow. Moonbeams dancing over a sea of white apple blossoms, their billows like the sea’s, only sweetly fragrant too. Unicorns smelled of flowers, Tristan realized. Maybe that was what they ate, blossoms. Like flowers, they made the air around them sweet. He breathed in the unicorn’s scent, warm and cool both at once. Not quite a rose, nor yet a lily. Just a hint of cardamom…
Gentle as flowers. Yet unicorns were fearsome beasts too. Lions dared not stand against them. The merest paring from a unicorn’s horn was an unfailing cure for any sort of poison and most sicknesses. A living unicorn was a thousand-fold more magical. And this unicorn belonged to him. Tristan could scarcely believe it—but here he was touching the unicorn, so the wonder must be true. He felt the unicorn sigh. He smelled violets and ripe apples and cinnamon.
What a wizard he could be, with a unicorn lending its magic to his own! There’d be no spell he could not master, no sorcery he could not command. His fame would spread far beyond little Dunehollow. Folk would journey for many leagues to buy spells and charms from him. Soon they’d be paying him with rubies and sapphires rather than shaved coins and salted fish. He could buy Blais a robe of red silk, Tristan decided. With stars and moons worked all over it in threads of gold, spangles of silver.
He wouldn’t need chickens any longer. He and Blais could breakfast on peacock’s eggs, if they chose. Actually, he wouldn’t need the bees either. Tristan examined the idea sleepily. If he didn’t need the bees, then he should let them go. For some reason, that was important.
Of course! The bees could guide him out of the bog. Water would not slow or baffle them. Bees owned the air. Bees flew away from their hives each day and easily returned. Bees were never lost.
If he let the bees go, he could follow them.
Swarm on the Wing
The sun was an orange blotch on the misty edge of the world. All the world that could be seen, at least. Tristan undid the leather thong that secured the bag around the skep. Not a single bee emerged. The air was still cool. The bees were sleepy.
Tristan touched a drop of honey to the tip of his tongue. He poured the rest out in front of the skep. Then he waited.
In an hour, the sun had warmed the air and the bees awoke. One crawled over the lip of the sack, combing her fur with a leg while she walked on the other five. She brushed her antennae, like a drowsy boy rubbing his eyes. Tristan bespoke her. It was time, he said, for the swarm to send out its scouts.
Where flowerzzzzz? The bee asked at once, excited.
“Ahead,” Tristan told her, feeling wretched. The swarm had believed his promises. “I’m sorry. I don’t know any other way to get out of here.”
No flowerzzzzz? The antennae flopped in confusion.
“Out there.” Tristan gestured broadly with one hand. “Plenty of flowers. And if you want, I’ll still take you with me, any that choose to come. But I can’t get out of this bog. The last honey you ate won’t last much longer. You must send the scouts out now, to find a new home.”
Yezzzz. The bee combed a leg over her wings, her empty pollen baskets. Scoutzzzzzz. She hurried back into the sack.
The scouts soon appeared. The bees sipped honey and flew off, each taking a slightly different direction. Tristan made no attempt to track any of them. Right now, the bees were every bit as lost as he was. He must wait until a scout returned with news of a hive-site. When the entire swarm departed, he’d follow. The dark cloud of the flying swarm should be easy to keep track of. It was the best chance any of them had to get out of the bog.
Even swarming bees would not fly at night. That wasn’t safe for the queen. The scouts must return no later than sun-high, in order to escort her to a new home. Anything farther away than that was too far. And just as well—Tristan would need light too, if he was to follow the bee-cloud. If it left too late in the day, he might find himself stranded in an even worse spot. If there was a lake out there, and if the bees flew across it—well, he couldn’t do likewise. Nor could the unicorn.
Tristan watched the cloudless sky. His jaw was tense. His mouth was dry as dust—probably the only completely dry thing for leagues around. Thomas sat beside him, feigning nonchalance. The twitching tip of the cat’s tail gave his true mood away.
The skep hummed, constant and low. The bees were impatient also.
Suddenly the humming increased in pitch till it became a purr. Tristan turned his head quickly. A bee was perched on the sack. Headfirst, she entered. Tristan got to his feet. He picked up the unicorn’s tether.
The sack buzzed. It rumbled. The bees inside were highly agitated. But not a one left the skep. The scout’s report must somehow have been lacking.
Other scouts winged in. One, then two. Half a dozen all at once. The skep rocked, as thousands of wings rustled within it. There was a heartbeat of absolute silence. Then, a roar.
Bees poured from the sack like smoke. They rose into the air. On and on they came, one tiny body after another. Hundreds, then thousands of them. The swarm cloud danced in the air, clustering about the queen. Marching order attained, it moved off with obvious purpose and no time wasted.
Tristan scrambled to follow. He snatched up Thomas with one hand and tugged at the unicorn’s tether with the other. The empty skep was left where it sat. He splashed quickly down into the bog, slashing a way through the ward-circle as he went.
The unicorn hung back, reluctant to abandon the spot where it had twice been safe. Tristan pulled urgently at the cord. Already the swarm was distant. It looked little bigger than the palm of his hand. If it got to be a smaller speck than that, he’d lose sight of it, easily. He pulled. The linen thread snapped. The unicorn moved not a single step.
“I’m not leaving you!” Tristan shouted at it. “This is your chance to get out of here! Don’t you understand? You have to trust me. The bees can lead us out.”
He didn’t really blame the unicorn for objecting. How was this any different from the day before, when they’d walked through mud and water and biting insects—and in the end been back just where they’d started? But if he couldn’t make the beast move, they had no chance.
Quickly, Tristan unwound the skep’s straw coil. A last sleepy bee flew out, buzzing. Tristan’s fingers sketched a spell of binding over the coil. The magic would hold whatever he put the straw rope around—if it worked.
No time to doubt himself. Tristan dropped the rope over the unicorn’s head. It settled about the base of the unicorn’s neck, like a collar of pale gold. Tristan tugged. The rope tightened, the smallest bit. The unicorn took a startled step forward. The spell he’d used was a Binding, with more than a hint of a Compulsion worked in as well. Tristan’s instincts had been sure. The unicorn was his to command. Quickly, he searched the sky for the cloud of bees. The unicorn took one stiff step after another, following him.
The swarm was alarmingly distant. It was almost impossible to find against the sky. Had there been other clouds, Tristan thought he could not have done it. But the sky was empty, and he spied the bees at last. Tristan set off. The unicorn walked without protest at his hee
ls.
Water, mud, reeds all around. Endless empty sky above. For Tristan, the day was too much a copy of the one before. It felt like a nightmare. He wanted to wake, home in his own bed. He could not, of course.
The smudge of the swarm moved just at the edge of his sight. Tristan followed the bees, on and on. He splashed, he stumbled. He sought the driest ground, avoided the worst muck, held the straightest course he could. Always, he kept his eyes on the swarm-cloud.
At last he could no longer make it out. The sun sank red at his back. The sky ahead was dim and bleak. Darkness was coming on. But Tristan’s tired feet were trying to tell him something important. The ground beneath his soggy boots had changed—it was firmer. Tristan took more false turns among half-seen tussocks of marsh grass. Suddenly he noticed a dim, dark mass ahead of him. Trees. The forest! Well, some forest. They were out of the bog.
There was no sign of the swarm. Tristan hoped the bees had reached safety. The trees would grant them refuge for the night. If need be they could hang in a damp clump from a branch, their bodies making living walls. Come dawn, they’d claim their new home, in whatever place their scouts had found for it.
Tristan wished them many flowers and all the nectar they could gather. They’d been more than patient. He felt he’d let them down, unable to take them to the haven he’d described so glowingly.
Now the stars overhead could be of some use to him. Tristan considered them and set off through the trees. He wasn’t sure of his exact location, but in a general way he no longer felt lost. He was within a day’s walk of the cottage—at worst two days’ walk. Perhaps three. The important thing was, he could step wherever he wished. He might bump into a tree, but he wouldn’t drown unless he fell into a river.
Tristan kept on through the wood so long as he could put one foot ahead of the other. Thomas bounded before him, delightedly stalking mice. Evidently frogs were boring prey, for all their high-jumping.
