The Transfigured Hart

by Jane Yolen

  It pleased him that this time, he, Richard Plante, would be doing this. Not reading about someone else in a book, hiding his fears in silent retreat from the world and its questions. He had the answer, and he was giving it loud and clear.

  As he thought, planned, what he had to do in the dark night ahead, a car flashed past him, the light suddenly blinding. Then the car turned and cruised up beside him.

  Of course, it was Uncle Hugh, phoned by the Fieldings.

  Richard slipped gratefully into the car’s warmth. This was no compromise. He could do nothing until near midnight, when everyone was asleep.

  Uncle Hugh did not speak, not when Richard got into the car, and not later, when Aunt Marcie enfolded him in a hug calculated to drive out his demons.

  For once, Aunt Marcie was silent, too, except for her eyebrows, which worked up and down overtime. But Richard did not start any conversation, though he knew they were waiting for him to do so. Wordlessly, he went upstairs to bed.

  He heard Uncle Hugh say, as he went up the dark stairs alone and totally unafraid, “He didn’t say a thing. You’d think he’d have some explanation. I guess we’ll wait till tomorrow and then we’ll try and get his side of it.” Richard could only guess at Aunt Marcie’s eyebrows as she snorted in return “Young love!” and dialed the phone.

  But none of it touched Richard as he marched up the stairs slowly and deliberately. He paused at the top landing and saluted the ghosts of his mother and father, who he knew must hover somewhere in the house. Then he went into his room, closed the door firmly, and went to bed.

  But not to sleep. No, not to sleep. For many long minutes, Richard waited for his aunt and uncle to go to bed. They would turn in early tonight. Uncle Hugh had never missed an opening of deer season yet, or so was his boast. The creak of the stairs, the shuffling in and out of the bathroom, the slight sighings and whisperings, the click of the closing door, were the signals Richard waited for. And after the noises ceased, he waited some more—twenty times sixty heartbeats—before he got out of bed.

  He got up cautiously in case anyone was still awake. But his every move was ritual. He dressed in his good blue trousers and his blue jacket with the crest on it that Uncle Hugh had brought back from England. He put on his heaviest socks and boots. And for warmth, since he had left his coat at the Fieldings’ house, he tossed his navy blue blanket around his shoulders like a cape. It hung in graceful folds to his ankles. Then he tiptoed down the stairs and out into the night.

  The night was cold and crisp but windless. Richard walked briskly toward the path where he would turn off into the orchard. No cars passed by him as he walked, nor could he hear any of the usual night noises. There was just darkness and silence, heavy, palpable, and real.

  In the daytime, coming down the path, he had often stumbled. But he did not stumble now. He walked with authority. And even the brambles, dried and stiff, did not catch his makeshift cape. He made not a single wrong twist or turn or misstep, and he came at last to the shimmering pool watched only by the moon, which hung like a blind eye in the blue-black socket of sky.

  Fifteen

  Heather leaned her back against the oak door. She looked straight ahead but could see nothing through her tears. No one in the family spoke to her, or if they did, she couldn’t hear them. Snuffling faintly, she went up to her room.

  She lay down on the bed and stared at the bright yellow canopy. When she had been much younger, she had played at being a princess in her room. But now it was as if the sky had fallen and was waiting, old and yellow, to crush her utterly. She turned over on her stomach and put her hands under her head.

  It was then that she discovered she was still clutching the wine-stained dinner napkin. She raised up on her elbows and looked at it thoughtfully. She was still thoughtful when she took off her clothes and climbed into her nightgown. It was long and white, with a shirring of lace and a yellow ribbon woven about the neck and a yellow tie at the waist.

  Slowly she unplaited her braids. Her hair, so long bound, fell over her shoulders in dark shining waves and reached down to the small of her back.

  Heather sat down again on the bed and smoothed the damask napkin on her lap. The red stain in the soft light of her room looked black, but it still had the sickly sweet smell of wine.

  Heather shook her head vigorously, as if to shake off her imaginings, and turned off the light. Then she lay down on the bed, tucked the napkin into her bodice, and remained unmoving in the dark.

  A knock sounded on her door. Her mother came in. “Heather, dear, do you want to talk? Is there anything I can do?”

  Heather willed her voice to calmness, firmness. “No, Mother. I’m all right. Really I am. We’ll talk tomorrow. Please.”

  Mrs. Fielding knew her daughter well enough to leave then. Heather could hear whisperings in the hall. Her father and then the boys cursed Richard for a coward and a fool and asked about her. She knew her mother would make them leave her alone. At least until morning. Even so, that would barely be enough time for what had to be done.

  For Heather knew that she and she alone had to act. And she had to act that night if she were to save the unicorn from the hunters—from her brothers and her father and all the rest. She could not count on Richard; he was a coward and a fool, just as her brothers had said. A coward not to back her up, a fool to think she had let the secret slip on purpose. That she had, indeed, let the secret out was a pain she would have to bear alone. As penance, she would have to save the unicorn alone, too. So she waited out the ticking of her bedroom clock and kept herself awake.

  The clock was barely touching eleven when the silence in the house told her everyone else was asleep. The boys and her father, she knew, always went to bed early the night before Opening Day. They had to rise before dawn. And her mother would be rising with them to fix them breakfast. It was a tradition never broken.

  Heather got up and slipped her feet into boots. She moved silently downstairs, grabbed her heavy school cape from the closet, and was gone before the dog had time for more than a sleepy, growling yawn.

  She did not take Hop out of the barn. He would hate to be disturbed for a night ride. And the heavy clopping of his hooves might alert someone in the house. Though she had to be back before one of the early risers noticed she was gone, silence was no less important than speed.

  She ran down the road, her dark cape floating behind her like bat’s wings, the white gown luminous in the dark. She was lucky that no cars passed as she ran. And when, out of breath and trembling slightly from the cold, she came to the path through the apple orchard, the moon came out from behind a cloud. It was full and bright, and in the shadows it cast, the linen dinner napkin tucked in her bodice glistened both white and black.

  Heather was careful not to make a misstep as she went down the path toward the pool. She stepped on nothing that might crackle or snap. And when she came at last to the clearing where the pool was set like a jewel in a ring, Richard was there before her.

  “You!” they said together. But in the single word was both surprise and forgiveness.

  Richard hesitated, then took the blanket off his shoulders and spread it on the ground under the wild apple tree. They both sat down, hands folded, silent and waiting.

  Sixteen

  And then it came.

  White and gleaming, stepping through fragrant sweet violets, the unicorn came.

  It was high at the shoulder, with a neck both strong and thick. Its face was that of a goat or a deer, like neither and yet like both, with a tassel of white hair for a beard and eyes the color of old gold. Its slim legs ended in cloven hooves that shone silver in the moonlight. Its tail was long and fringed at the tip with hair as soft and fine as silken thread. And where it stepped, flowers sprang up, daisies and lilies and the wild strawberry, and plants that neither Richard nor Heather had seen before but knew at once, the cuckoopint and the columbine and the wild forest rose.

  But it was the horn that caught their gaze. The spirale
d, ivory horn that thrust from the unicorn’s head, that looked both cruel and kind. It was the horn that convinced them both that this could be no dream.

  And so it came, the unicorn, more silent than night yet sweeter than singing. It came around the shimmering pool and knelt in front of the children as they sat breathless on the blanket. It knelt before them, not in humility but in fealty, and placed its head gently, oh so gently, in Heather’s lap.

  At the unicorn’s touch, Heather sighed. And at her sigh, the silent woods around suddenly seemed to burst with the song of birds—thrush, and sparrow, and the rising meadowlark. And from far off, the children heard the unfamiliar jug-jug-jug of a nightingale.

  Suddenly, it was spring and summer in one. Richard looked around and saw that within the enclosure of the green meadow, ringed about with a stone wall, encircled in stone arms, was a season he had never seen before. The glade was dappled with thousands of flowers. He could see, from where he sat, pomegranate and cherry trees, orange and apple, all in full bloom. The smell of them in the air was so strong that he was almost giddy.

  But Heather seemed to notice none of this. She had taken the yellow ribbon from her waist and bound it about the unicorn’s head like a golden halter, over the forehead and around the soft white muzzle. Her fingers moved slowly but surely as she concentrated on the white head that lay on her lap, the horn carefully tucked under her arm. She stroked the unicorn’s gleaming neck with her free hand and crooned over and over, “You beauty, you love, you beauty.” And the beast closed its eyes and shuddered once and then lay very still. She could feel the veins in its silken neck under her hand, pulsing, surging, but the great white head did not move.

  Richard looked over at the beast and the girl, and on his knees he moved across the blanket to them. Hesitantly, he reached his hand out toward the unicorn’s neck. And Heather looked up then and took his hand in hers and placed it on the soft, smooth neck. Richard smiled shyly, then broadly, and Heather smiled back.

  As they sat there, the three, without a word, a sudden harsh note halloed from afar.

  “A horn,” Richard said, drawing his hand away quickly. “Heather, I heard a hunting horn.”

  But she seemed not to hear.

  The horn sounded again, nearer. There was no mistaking its insistent cry.

  “Heather!”

  “Oh, Richard, I hear it. What shall we do?”

  The unicorn opened its eyes, eyes of antique gold. It looked steadily up at Heather, but still it did not move.

  Heather tried to push the heavy head off her lap. “You have to go. You have to. It must be near day. The hunters will kill you. They won’t care that you’re beautiful. They’ll just want your horn. Oh, please. Please.” The last was an anguished cry, but still the unicorn did not move. It was as though it lay under a spell that was too old, too powerful to break.

  “Richard, it won’t move. What can we do? It’ll be killed. It’ll be our fault. Oh, Richard, what have you read about this? Think. Think.”

  Richard thought. He went over lists and lists in his mind. But he did not recall it in any of his reading. And then he remembered the unicorn tapestries Heather had found in her mother’s art books. She had brought the book for them both to see. The unicorn had indeed been killed, slaughtered by men with sharp spears and menacing faces. What could he and Heather do about such evil?

  Heather was leaning over the unicorn’s neck and crying. “Oh, my beauty. Oh, forgive me. I didn’t mean you to be killed. Before I saw you, really saw you, I wanted to tame you. But now I . . . we want to save you.”

  Richard watched her stroke the neck, the head, her hand moving hypnotically over the gleaming white, tangling in the yellow ribbon.

  Suddenly Richard knew. “Heather,” he shouted, “the yellow ribbon! It’s the golden bridle. Take it off. Take it off!”

  Heather looked at the ribbon and in that moment understood. She ripped it from the unicorn’s neck. “Go!” she said. “Be free.” The ribbon caught on the spiraled horn.

  The minute the ribbon was off its neck, the unicorn got up heavily from its knees. It flung its head abruptly backward and the golden band flew through the air.

  The ribbon landed in the middle of the pool and was sucked downward into the water with a horrible sound. The birds rose up mourning from the trees as, in a clatter of hooves, the unicorn circled the pool once, leaped over the stone wall, and disappeared.

  In an instant it was November again, brown, sere, and cold.

  And the pool was no longer crystal and shimmering but a dank, brackish bog the color of rotted logs.

  Seventeen

  The horn sounded again, only this time it was clearly a car horn. Loud, insistent, it split the air over and over as the sun rose, shaded in fog, over the far mountains.

  “It’s day,” said Richard heavily. “Opening Day.”

  “But it’s all right,” said Heather, soothingly. “The unicorn is gone. It’s gone forever.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know because I believe. Even without much practice, I believe.” Heather put out her hand to Richard, and he took it. Then they curled together for warmth and fell asleep in the dawn.

  They were found two hours later, still sleeping, by Brian and Ian, who signaled with three shots fired in the air. They had to be shaken awake, for somehow the gunfire did not disturb them. Wrapping themselves in cape and blanket, Heather and Richard stumbled groggily to their feet and followed the boys out to the road. The boys were rough with them, as if to punish them for the scare they had inflicted on the family and for the fact that they had ruined Opening Day.

  When they got to the road, there was a long row of cars waiting, for hunters and police had joined in the search.

  “Mom was worried and checked on you about midnight,” Brian explained. “And when you were gone, she called Mrs. Plante.”

  Ian interrupted. “And when your aunt found out you were gone as well,” he said to Richard, “that’s when we really got worried and called the police.”

  Dylan added, “Well, you can imagine the scene.”

  Heather and Richard could, indeed, imagine the scene. But they didn’t speak. They just looked at each other, smiles hidden behind serious faces.

  Mrs. Fielding came over and enfolded them at once. “It was silly to run away,” she said to them both. “What happened at the table was nothing.”

  She smelled of talcum and early-morning coffee, and she seemed both angry and relieved. Richard breathed deeply, and for the first time since they had been found, spoke. “It wasn’t ‘nothing,’ Mrs. Fielding. It was actually the beginning of something.”

  Mrs. Fielding did not answer. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. Or perhaps she was afraid to ask what he meant, since they had been found sleeping together in the woods, Heather in her nightgown. But she was silent and just gathered them both in again, as she gathered all the arguments at her house, without judgment.

  Heather allowed herself to be gathered in for a moment. Her chin went down on her chest, and the napkin tucked in her bodice tickled. She pulled it out and stared at it for a moment. It was no longer stained. It was white and fresh and gleaming.

  “Look, Richard, look!” she cried, holding it up to his face. As it came close to him, Richard could smell the sweet scent of crushed violets, and faintly imprinted on the linen napkin he saw a pattern of swirls as if something spiral had lain there.

  He sucked in his breath, and Heather tucked the napkin back into her gown, and without a word more they all went home.

  There were explanations, of course. For a swamp doesn’t appear and children disappear without them. But none of the explanations mattered to Richard and Heather. And they, alone, offered none in the general clamor that followed their midnight transfiguration. For indeed, how could they explain about the unicorn? It was, after all, a mythical beast. Or the shimmering pool that had become a bog? Or the wine-stained table napkin now gleaming and white as the unicorn itself? They could think
of no explanations that anyone would believe, and so they smiled and gave none.

  But they kept the napkin safe, first in one drawer and then another, to remind them both, as if they needed reminding, of that moment in time when autumn became summer and now became then and what was logical and what was magical became one.

  Eighteen

  It was just dawn. The sun rose, shrouded in fog, and fog covered the valley.

  The white hart ran swiftly and purposefully out of the woods. In the distance, he could hear guns and the occasional bleat of a car horn.

  He came to a wide macadam road which smelled sharply of men and machines and was covered with a rolling mist. He hesitated a moment, then clattered onto the hard surface.

  The deer traveled east, toward the sun that burned behind its mask of fog. He ran for several miles, passed only by a single slow-moving car, but in the white fog he was almost invisible.

  Suddenly, he plunged into the brush on the opposite side of the road, turned around for just a moment, and sniffed the air. His ears twitched forward and back. Then he moved into the low briars and disappeared.

  The woods on this side of the road covered thousands of acres and were part of a protected reserve.