Behold, the requisite legal material:
Copyright © 2015 by Thea van Diepen
All rights reserved.
This book may not be distributed in any way, shape, or form without written permission from the author. (Except for reviewers, who may quote short passages in their review.)
Cover design: Roberto Calas
Author photo: Katie Leonardo
Editor: EJ Clark of Silver Jay Media
Published by: Thea van Diepen
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9916993-8-4
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9916993-7-7
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance the characters, settings, or events have to real people, places, or events is completely unintentional.
Otherwise, we’d have some crazy uncanny valley *bleep* going on here.
To my Oma and Opa.
You will never read this but, nonetheless:
This is for you.
For everyone on the Puttytribe:
By your presence,
support,
and encouragement,
you have changed my life.
Thank you.
Pider shoved Adren against the wall, hands at either side of her head, pressed so hard against the stone she could see the muscles in his arms straining. She angled her head so as to see out of the alleyway, but Pider shook his head and grunted. He bent his head low over hers.
Even with that smallest of glimpses, Adren had been able to make out the lamplighter on her way through the evening fog and the trail of lights behind her. Adren opened her mouth to ask why they were hiding from the woman, but Pider pressed her mouth closed. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, then again with another swallow. Adren couldn’t make sense of it. There was no need to fear, and yet she could see the tendons in Pider’s neck straining against his skin. He breathed in shallow spurts, and his body shook, though that lessened after his second swallow.
Pider raised his eyebrows, looking directly at Adren, and lessened the pressure of his fingers on her lips. She nodded.
He stepped back, angling his head away from the street.
Adren raised an eyebrow.
Pider lowered his, shaking his head more emphatically than before, then he mimed lifting a hood. At first, Adren narrowed her eyes, confused, but then she remembered. Her hair. She put her hood over her head, taking care to tuck any stray locks back where they wouldn’t be seen.
Hands in his pockets, Pider adopted a casual stance. As the lamplighter lit the streetlight nearest them, Pider’s eyes flicked towards her, his hands lumping into fists beneath the fabric of his pants. His pupils were dilated, more so than Adren had expected even with the darkness of the alley. The lamplighter passed them without a pause in her stride and lit the next lamp. Pider’s shoulders slumped, most of the tension gone from them. They both waited, his head tilted in the lamplighter's direction, eyes anxious. Adren watched him. Why was he so scared?
Before long, Pider checked the street and nodded at Adren. They crossed it, entering the alley on the other side. They continued on their way, walking on the wet cobblestone, the roofs of houses still dripping from that evening’s rain. The air pressed around them, damp not only with the fog, but also the promise of more rain. Pider’s gait had quickened since the crossing, and his back become a little more hunched over. Much as Adren wanted to ask for an explanation, she took nearly two steps for each one of his, and had to work so hard to keep up that she had no breath left to speak.
The alley took a sudden snakelike twist, but Adren kept close to Pider. She had little experience with human communities and so, without his help, would have become lost in only a few moments, especially now that it had become dark. The only problem at this moment was her hood, which narrowed her peripheral vision more than was comfortable, so she lowered it again and let her hair fall ghostlike behind her.
As soon as Adren could make out the light spilling from the next crossing, Pider stopped to open the gate in a high wooden fence. Adren tried to peer through the chinks, but the posts pressed together too tightly and she could not see beyond them. Hinges creaked as Pider opened the gate and beckoned to Adren, his eyes searching the way they had come. She passed through into a small, unkempt yard, the grass like hair in need of a good brushing. Pider walked by her and up to the door. He knocked, four quick beats, then a pause, then two beats. The door opened to reveal a hatchet-faced man. He stood aside to let Pider and Adren enter.
Inside, the house was dimly lit. Adren could make out cracks in the plaster on the walls.
“Shoes,” said the man before he scuttled off. Pider removed his and Adren followed suit, placing hers close to the door on one end of a line of shoes, at least ten pairs in total. She frowned.
“Must be something going on tonight,” Pider said.
“I suppose,” Adren replied. “But so late?”
“Parties go late.” He shrugged.
“Look, Pider, we’re not doing anything wrong, are we? You acted like you were afraid of the lamplighter seeing us.”
“Oh, her. We had a bit of a falling out not too long ago. I’ve been avoiding her… She’s still really angry at me about it all.” His eyebrows drew together in a peculiar way, so quickly that Adren wouldn’t have seen it if she weren’t paying such close attention to his body language, and especially his eyes, which hadn’t left hers since she’d asked her question. Pider was lying to her, no doubt about it, but most likely only to avoid having to tell an embarrassing story. She wondered what had really gone on between him and the lamplighter.
He seemed to notice her hesitation.
“I promise the cure’s here, though. And it’s real. I checked to make sure, after you told me about all the disappointments you’ve had.”
Adren smiled. “You keep telling me. Thank you.”
“So, do we go in?” He indicated the rest of the house.
“Yes.”
Pider led her through to a dark door, though there was too little light at this point to discern more.
“You go in first,” he said. “He’ll be expecting you.”
Adren took a deep breath. After two years of looking, here it was: A cure for madness. And so much closer to home than she had expected, too. She wanted to remember every detail, right down to the feel of her feet against the rough wooden floor. Exhaling, she nodded. Pider opened the door, and she went in.
The door slammed shut behind her, plunging the room into utter blackness. Hands grabbed at her. She tried to fight them, but there seemed to be more than one attacker and, before long, they held her fast.
“We got her,” a male voice called, and Pider entered through the door—which was now to Adren’s right—a lamp in one hand. He placed it on the table near the other end of the room as the hatchet-faced man also entered, pen and paper in hand. Behind him came two more men who stayed by the door. What was going on?
“She’s such a little thing,” said one of the men who held Adren. “You sure you need all of us to keep her still?”
“I am,” said Pider. Adren’s heart pounded louder at the coldness in his voice. He adjusted the lamp so that it burned a little brighter. “Keep your eyes on her. Changelings are tricky creatures. She can turn invisible if you look away.”
“I told you I don’t know what I am,” said Adren, straining against the men’s hold.
“Yes, well, you still can’t deny that ‘the White Changeling’ has a certain ring to it,” commented the hatchet-faced man. Pider wrinkled his nose and glared sideways at the man, who sat down at once and busied himself with straightening his papers.
“I really don’t care what you are,” Pider said. “Where is the unicorn, Adren?”
“Pider, tell me this is a misunderstanding.” She w
anted this not to be real but, if it wasn’t, then it was far more convincing than any nightmare had a right to be. Not that she would call it a nightmare quite yet. Perhaps Pider had simply heard some untruth about her that caused him to distrust her.
Pider snorted and crossed his arms. He gave a half smile. “You don’t expect me to believe that you’d let a mad unicorn just run around where it pleases, do you? Now, where is it?” Beside him, the hatchet-faced man stared at Adren, pen in hand.
“I don’t know.”
“Liar!” He slapped her, causing tears. “Tell me where it is!”
“Why are you—?”
Pider punched her, and everything went black.
When Adren awoke, she was still in the same room, only now she was tied to a chair with thick rope, her arms stiff at her sides. Pider and the hatchet-faced man were still by the table, and the men who had held her stood around and behind her.
She had been kidnapped. Kidnapped that they might find the unicorn and use it. But hadn’t Pider helped her before? Wasn’t he supposed to be trustworthy? Adren hadn’t thought that humans could do such terrible things. And yet, they were doing them to her, and wanted to do more to the unicorn. Part of her realized this coldly, analytically, but another felt only pain.
And then there was the dark part of her mind, the part she could never see into, and something in it was stirring. Another heartbeat? She kept her thoughts away, afraid to find out what might emerge.
“Now that you’ve had some time to think,” Pider said, picking up a heavy wooden staff, “where is the unicorn?”
“I don’t know!”
“You know what we could do with you if you don’t tell us?” He came in close, so close that when he whispered to her, she could feel his breath tickle her cheek.
“People… like that?” Adren wanted to vomit.
“And for you they’ll pay a good deal of money, too.” Pider stroked her cheek with one finger, the brown of his skin in stark contrast to the white of hers. “Exotic little thing that you are.”
Desperate, Adren tried to bite him, but he snapped back his hand too quickly. She felt claustrophobic with so many people in the room. It wasn’t a large room and, with all those men surrounding her… the hairs on the back of her neck rose, and sensation heightened. Each flicker of the lamp, no matter how slight, caught her attention as well as when it had just been lit.
“Where is the unicorn?”
“I don’t know.” There was steel in her words, but its strength wavered. It didn’t matter what he threatened, she couldn’t tell him anything other than the truth, and she would suffer for it.
The dark part of her mind shifted, as whatever stirred inside separated and began to establish itself. It coiled tight against the back of her skull, almost like the rope around her body, but then it loosened and stretched outwards to some unknown location, reaching and reaching until, finally, it opened.
“I’m done being patient with you,” Pider said. He hefted the staff, then slammed it into Adren’s side. Pain filled her, pain and the fear of what else, what worse could happen. Part of it slipped out through that opening in her mind.
“Tell me where the unicorn is!” he yelled.
“I can’t!” said Adren, her voice cracking on the second word. Through the opening came alarm, then understanding, then determination, all threaded through with a wild beat, leaning towards chaos. Something was coming. Not inside, not through that connection in her mind. Whatever it was Adren was connected to, it was coming. Coming for her.
She couldn’t hear what was being said around her, only that there were voices. It was too painful to listen, and too overwhelming to hear. Her emotions and the emotions of this other thing flowed back and forth, a conversation she could barely comprehend, one that her mind felt too small to contain. Barely, she felt the ropes around her fall away, then hands on her arms as she was dragged off. She started shaking, and the determination of the other thing came through even stronger, as did the feeling that it was coming closer and closer.
“Help me,” Adren whispered. “Help me.”
Someone picked her up. She caught a glimpse of the roof, of the sky. There was the creak of the gate. The feel of wood as her head brushed the fence. The sound of shoes against cobblestone.
A piercing scream.
A creature like a deer, but white and with a single horn spiralling out from its forehead. The unicorn charged, wild, and most of the men scattered. A few stood their ground, only to cry out and fall from the flash of hooves and the plunge of the horn. The man holding Adren dropped her. She only had a moment or two to prepare before crashing into the ground, enough for energy to surge through her. Praying to all the saints that none of the men were paying attention, Adren made herself invisible and crawled to the fence. Half-crouched, she pressed herself against it and rocked a little on her heels. She had to get control of herself before she couldn’t hold the invisibility any longer.
Anger and pain flowed through the connection, throb for throb with what Adren could piece together of the unicorn in battle before her. The unicorn. Her dear, mad unicorn. Just this knowledge, small though it was, tamed the chaos around her. It didn’t matter—much as she wanted to know—how long this connection had existed, whether it had been created that day or merely been obscured by the dark, or what the exact nature of this connection was. What mattered was that whatever Adren felt, the unicorn received through the connection. And, based on what had just happened, the unicorn returned it with even greater intensity. If she couldn’t calm her emotions and make sense of her surroundings again… she didn’t want to experience what would happen next.
Adren closed her eyes. Breathed. The unicorn’s rage, its pain, gripped her, clawing at her heart and skin.
But it was not hers.
She had to convince herself of that. She had to experience it as truth. The unicorn’s emotions were those of a foreigner in her country, and could not affect her. They remained separate from her own emotions, separate and disconnected.
It helped, allowing Adren to calm to the point where, if she wanted, she could open her eyes without being overwhelmed. Her senses cleared, returning to something like order, and the tension in her chest, the result of holding onto invisibility for so long, rose to prominence. It would turn to pain soon, and then her grip would start to falter if she did not let go and rest from the exertion. But was she safe? She opened her eyes.
Most of the men had fled, and the few who hadn’t lay in the alleyway. Blood stained the cobblestones, and had spattered on the forelegs and flanks of the unicorn, who stood, breathing heavily, eyes in a frantic search of the surroundings. As soon as Adren let herself become visible again, the unicorn walked over to her and lowered its head so that its forehead was nearly level with hers. She pressed her face against its and stroked it oh-so-gently under its jaw.
“Thou,” she said, slipping into the dialect she was most used to. “I am glad thou’rt here.”
The unicorn’s tension rang through their new connection, sharp and discordant. It was difficult not to return that or worse, but Adren held fast and let herself feel only tenderness. In response, the unicorn relaxed, which Adren could both feel through the connection and see as the unicorn’s taut muscles became soft again. Its eyes closed.
Adren rose to her feet, wincing at the complaints of her legs, uncomfortable from crouching so long. The fence-gate creaked but, when she looked, she could find no one else up and conscious, so she stretched, lulled by the unicorn’s gentle thrum of contentment in the back of her mind. This connection fascinated her. How did it work? What were its limits?
She opened her eyes only to see Pider, knife in hand, about to stab the unicorn. Energy rushed through Adren. As the unicorn shied away, its fear spiking into her mind, she grabbed Pider’s arm. He strained against her, but she forced his arm down, leaving his body open. With a quick in-out, she punched him in the gut. He doubled over, and she twisted, back to him, to wrestle the knife out
of his hand. As soon as she had it, his other arm snaked over her body.
Well, she had a knife. She shifted her hold and stabbed him in the side. Pider cried out, and Adren slipped out of his grasp, leaving the knife in him. Teeth clenched, he reached for the hilt sticking out of his side.
“Don’t!” said Adren. Pider paused. Too quickly for him to react, she pulled out the knife herself. She twisted the blade in his flesh as she did, making the wound larger. “It was keeping you from bleeding.” Sure enough, a red stain spread out on his shirt following the knife’s removal.
They stared at each other a moment, Adren with her knife ready. Pider’s hand hovered over his wound as his eyes flicked up and down this young woman whose head only came to his shoulders. Those shoulders rounded, and he pressed his hand into his side with a grimace, body already turned for flight.
“Listen to me carefully, Pider.” Now the steel in her words didn’t waver. “If you ever try to harm me or the unicorn again, I will kill you myself.”
He ran.
Adren waited until a little after she could no longer see him before she turned to the unicorn and put a hand on its flank. A refrain, its rhythm keeping time with her footsteps, pounded through her head all the way home.
Never again.
Now
Chapter One
They had found her.
Footsteps thudded against the packed dirt of the streets behind Adren as she ran. She made a nimble turn onto the next and wove through and around the pedestrians, the carts, the animals. Behind her, the security officers yelled and fumbled past the obstacles. They knew the town far better than she, but that only gave them a slight advantage: Adren’s stamina and agility more than made up for her lack of navigational skills.
Adren spied an alley ahead. A quick glance behind told her that she still didn’t have enough lead to lose the officers simply by making the turn. It would have to serve only to slow them for now. She ducked in, senses alert to any twists she could use to her advantage and any dead ends she could not.
Hidden in Sealskin Page 1
