The Secret Country

by PAMELA DEAN

  He turned to lead the mare after the last of the hunting party, and Laura ducked behind a peach tree. She watched them out of sight, and set off to follow the unicorn.

  Once she got out of the immediate area of the hunt, this was easy. The unicorn had left, in the brambly and branch-littered forest, a clean trail of flowers. Laura felt so fierce that she did not even mind stepping on them. Their trampled scent rose about her and made her dizzy. Even in the shade it grew hot, and sweat stung all her scratches.

  It was extremely quiet except for the crackle and thud of her footsteps. All the animals in the forest seemed to have come to the Unicorn Hunt and stayed for the feast. After a time that probably seemed much longer than it was, she came to a real path, brown and beaten. The unicorn’s flowers grew on either side of it, so she followed it.

  She was getting tired, and plodded along with her head down. It had certainly been a long time now. A wind began among the branches, swooped down, and blew a flurry of leaves past Laura, drying the sweat and blowing her hair into her eyes. She swiped it out of the way and looked up.

  “Shan’s mercy!” she said. There was a sudden stillness in the forest, but she was too stunned to mind it.

  All around her it was autumn. She did not know the names of the flowers that still bordered the path, but they were rust- and flame-colored, and so were the trees. The floor of the forest between them was piled with red and yellow and brown. Many trees already held bare black branches against a watery blue sky. The wind came back, a chill puff, and Laura shivered.

  She looked along the brightly bordered path. Ahead, almost on the edge of her vision, rose a green hill topped with a wall or fence; the path led up the hill.

  “Well,” said Laura, “it’s shorter to go on than to go back.” This was something Agatha often said to her and Ellen when they were tired of doing something and wanted to leave it unfinished.

  The path led to an iron gate in a stone wall. The gate was heavy, but it opened outward. After she had tugged it the first few inches it swung wide suddenly, and she fell down the hill. The grass was soggy.

  She trudged back up and went through the gate. Inside, making her blink after the thorny tangle of the forest, was a vast flat green space full of gravestones amid a riot of flowers. Some stones stood up, and some lay flat on the ground. Some were brilliant white, and some were gray, and some were green with moss.

  Laura paused just inside the gate, biting her lip. This did not look like a place for unicorns. But it would be silly to go back without looking around. She trod sturdily across the close green turf. There were no walks here, no trees or bushes. Flowers were planted thick around each gravestone, but otherwise there was only the flat grass. Laura felt as if she were in the middle of a mosaic.

  The first stone she came to had raw earth around it, and its flowers were less thick than those of its neighbors. It must be newer. Laura bent to look at the letters on the stone. She did not even recognize the alphabet, but a shiver crept up her backbone just the same. She turned away, and two rabbits shot across the grass.

  Laura felt better; where there were animals, there might be unicorns. She methodically quartered the whole place, but nothing else moved, and the only marks on the grass were hers. She knew the letters on some of the stones, but the words they spelled made no sense to her.

  Laura stood in the middle of the graveyard and thought. All she could decide was that she had gone the wrong way when she came to the path. She went back out through the gate and hauled at it unsuccessfully for a little while. She barked three knuckles, but she could not push it closed against the slope of the hill. Leaving it open made her feel that she was letting something soggy and unpleasant in from the forest, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  Laura went back through the forest, faster than she had come. The wind was colder. She did not realize until she came to where the trail of flowers met the path how much she had expected it to be summer here. It was still autumn. The path did indeed run on both sides of the flower trail: Laura had turned right the first time, so now she took the other way.

  After a few windings the path settled down beside the stream. Laura threw a few pebbles in, startling a school of silver fish, and tried whistling “The Minstrel Boy.” She still had not remembered why it was so familiar.

  Nothing happened. Laura, with a vague idea of seeing farther, climbed a willow tree. Once there, she sat stolidly. The water mumbled along below her, the yellowing willow leaves hissed and fluttered. But not a bird, not a squirrel, not a rabbit moved or spoke anywhere. The wind died and the air sat like a damp blanket on her head.

  She looked in all directions, but saw no white elusive shapes. She found that she was exasperated, and was pleased not to be afraid. A certain amount of thought produced the conclusion that, if she could not find the unicorns, she would have to make them find her. She had thought that the “Minstrel Boy” tune should do this. But as long as she was whistling . . . she imitated, as best she could, the song of a cardinal, and almost fell out of the tree as something landed pricklingly on her shoulder.

  “Please,” she said to the cardinal, feeling not at all foolish for sitting in a tree in the middle of a wet woods and talking to a bird, “I’m looking for the unicorns.”

  The cardinal rose from her shoulder and flew away. When she started to climb down to follow it, it came back and scolded her severely, so she stayed where she was. The cardinal darted off and returned in a very little time, not with a unicorn, but with Lady Claudia.

  Ruth had said that Shan’s Ring would keep Claudia out of the way for a year and a day, but here she was. Laura found herself more resigned than surprised. It was just like Claudia. Then she scowled. Maybe it was not this fall, but next fall.

  Claudia was collecting plants from the waterside and noticed neither the cardinal nor Laura. Laura was just as happy not to be noticed, but she felt she should trust the cardinal.

  “Good afternoon,” she called, feeling foolish.

  Claudia, with no evidence of surprise, gave Laura a smile that made her feel like a mirror Claudia was looking into, and came gracefully along the stony path. She was not dressed for walking, and wore slippers, not boots, but she seemed perfectly comfortable. Laura, whose hunting clothes were not elegant at their best and had suffered from the hunt and her subsequent ramblings, stopped feeling like an adventurer and began to feel rude and rumpled.

  “Art thou stuck?” Claudia asked her, increasing the feeling.

  “No,” said Laura, “I can see more from up here.” Claudia’s husky and insinuating voice, so strange in the wet and prickly forest, was familiar to her, but she did not know why. Ellen, she remembered, had recognized it, too, at the banquet.

  “What wishest thou to see?” asked Claudia, looking straight up at her and sounding so like a fortune-teller that Laura shivered unexpectedly and again almost fell out of the tree.

  “I was hoping to see a unicorn,” she said.

  Claudia seemed amused. “It is too late in the year, mild autumn though this is,” she said. “They are all gone south for the winter.”

  Laura was both disappointed and appalled. Unicorns should not migrate like robins; they should not have to pay attention to the weather. Claudia’s voice still nagged at her, but she could not place it. I must be going crazy, she thought, I keep recognizing things I can’t remember.

  “Well, I was hoping,” she said.

  Claudia shrugged. “I must be going on before the forest dries more,” she said. Her voice was not as eerie in its familiarity as the tune of “The Minstrel Boy,” but Laura had had enough of it.

  “I’ll just sit here awhile longer,” she said.

  Claudia nodded and went on her way.

  Laura looked up and saw the cardinal a few branches above her, looking smug.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said.

  The cardinal beeped at her.

  She looked down, and there was a unicorn standing in the water and drinking, with no more
noise than the stream made going over the mossy rocks.

  Laura’s first feeling was not relief or pleasure, but an outrage directed at Claudia for lying to her. Then she sat and watched the unicorn. It was browsing in the plants that Claudia had been gathering. The water where it stood was flashing with fish. Rabbits stood up along the banks, five squirrels ran down Laura’s tree, and hundreds of birds sat above her, singing. She looked over the heads of the rabbits and saw two stags standing among the trees. She looked back to the unicorn. Six butterflies shot out of the bushes and made a dance around its horn. Laura stared; it was too late for butterflies.

  The unicorn raised its head. Laura, fearful of losing it, climbed down the tree and walked straight into the chilly water. The unicorn nuzzled her as a horse would; its whiskers were wet. Laura thought perhaps she would think more kindly of horses in the future.

  “Well, Child of Man,” it said.

  “Claudia said you had all gone south.”

  The unicorn snorted. “We are always here,” it said. “Claudia is a tale-weaver. What did you desire of us?”

  “The answer to a riddle,” said Laura. It occurred to her for the first time that she had not invented a rhyme. Well, it was too late now.

  “That must be decided in council,” said the unicorn. “It is not the season for riddles.”

  “Can you take a message to the council, then?”

  “No,” said the unicorn.

  Laura was relieved. She had seen and spoken to the unicorn. It would have been fun to have returned in triumph with the answers to all the riddles the hunt had been too stupid to ask, but that had not been what she wanted most.

  “But I can take you,” said the unicorn.

  Laura was taken aback. But the thought of being left alone in the woods in the wrong season and with only Claudia for company was worse than the thought of riding even a horse, and this ought to be better than riding a horse.

  “All right,” she said.

  The unicorn knelt in the water, and Laura climbed onto its back. It felt like satin, and it was much warmer than the water. She took a double handful of cobwebby mane, wondered how many bones she would break, and said, “I’m ready.”

  The unicorn went in one bound out of the stream and over an enormous stretch of underbrush. Laura’s hair unbraided and tangled itself behind her. The trees went by like a flurry of fallen leaves. The sky streaked to gray. The unicorn stopped, and Laura promptly fell off into a pile of leaves.

  A dozen other unicorns moved away to give Laura room to stand up, but she could not see where she was. They were warm and spicy smelling. The one she had ridden spoke to the others in a most peculiar language. Laura could not help expecting them to sound like horses; they looked more like horses than like anything else. But the one she had spoken to in the lake, and the one at the hunt, and the one she had ridden, all sounded like flutes when they spoke human languages. When they spoke their own, they sounded deeper, but still like some strange horn.

  The others did not answer the one Laura had ridden; when it had finished speaking to them, it said to her in human language, “Speak your riddle, Child of Man.”

  Laura took a breath. It had been hard to think while riding the unicorn, but she had come up with something that sounded formal, if not rhymed.

  “How can a world be and not be? How can a play be a world? How can a sword be a gate?”

  The unicorns moved like a flash of sun on water and made odd noises, like a group of recorders being warmed up.

  “The form is not proper,” the one she had ridden informed her.

  “I haven’t had much practice,” said Laura, at random, and a little sulkily.

  The unicorns became discordant. Laura lay back on the crackling ground and watched the leaves whirling against the clean-washed sky. She breathed in the cinnamon-or-ginger smell of the unicorns and discovered that it was impossible to worry.

  “That is nonsense,” the one she had ridden said. “You have walked out of your own time, you have played the Flute of Cedric, and you have found one of our number outside all feasts and customs.”

  “I didn’t mean to walk out of my own time!” protested Laura. “And I never even heard of the Flute of Cedric, and I asked the cardinal to find me a unicorn.”

  The unicorns became even more discordant, like a very badly played brass band. They moved uneasily, and Laura suddenly found it hard to see them when she looked straight at them.

  “What hast thou seen that thou hast not told?” demanded one of them.

  Laura, who was by now thoroughly bewildered, felt as if she were in the middle of a mystery novel. She had never read one herself, but Ruth had read dozens of them one summer in a rebellion against Shakespeare, and had told the stories to the rest of them. Patrick had said that Shakespeare did it better, which had enraged Ruth. It was true, though, that none of those mystery stories had become parts of the Secret Country.

  Unless, of course, she was in one now. Maybe Ruth, while being mad, had made up a mystery story for the Secret Country without telling anyone. In that case, Laura could not possibly know what she had seen and not told. She sat up thoughtfully. Thinking of things happening to her that had not happened in the game . . .

  “Oh,” she said. “You mean the pictures I see in the swords, and the lamps, and the jewels, and all that?”

  “No doubt,” said the unicorn, dryly. It sounded, despite the airy and inhuman quality of its speech, like Fence. Laura wondered if he often talked to unicorns.

  “Why,” the one she had ridden asked her, “did you see so much and tell nothing?”

  “They don’t listen,” said Laura, quite sulkily.

  The wind stopped, and the leaves fell straight down, showering the unicorns and making Laura sneeze. The unicorns hooted like the musicians at the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, but more melodiously.

  “The seasons listened,” said the one she had ridden. “The path of flowers listened. The cardinal listened. Those others are but men. Wherefore could one such as you not make them listen?”

  “Particularly,” added the other one who had spoken, “to such things as these must be. Why, look you, Child of Man, how the not telling hath turned you awry.”

  “Is that why I’m out of my proper time?”

  “We do not answer why,” said the one she had ridden. “But that is how.”

  “How do I get back, then?”

  “Tell what you have seen.”

  “But how can I unless I get back?”

  “A pretty problem,” said the other one who had spoken. The rest of them made burbling sounds that Laura was sure were chuckles. Being laughed at by unicorns was unnerving. They looked serene, austere, unearthly, and more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. They did not look as if they could laugh. She did not like to think of what kinds of things must make them laugh.

  And it’s not as if they’re laughing because I’m me, or even because I’m a Child of Man, she thought, or they would have done it earlier. They’re laughing at the way things are. I want to go home.

  “Wait,” she said. “If I went to High Castle now and told them then, could I go back? Do I have to go back? Could I stay in the fall?” After all, everything bad should be over by then.

  “Things should be told as they are seen,” said the one she had ridden.

  “But I already didn’t,” said Laura, ready to cry.

  “Tell as close to the occurrence as you may, then.”

  “But you said I couldn’t get back until I did tell them!”

  The unicorns were quite silent.

  “Didn’t you?” said Laura.

  A flurry of wind rustled the drying leaves, and a rabbit streaked into the underbrush. Laura picked up a handful of leaves, stirring up a rich smell that reminded her of Fence. The thought of him was comforting. She looked up at the circle of pale sleek faces and violet eyes. She was not good at puzzles and riddles, but she recognized the quality of this silence. The older children had a certain typ
e of joke that produced this same smug, expectant, and gleeful quiet. Laura thought carefully.

  “You didn’t say I had to tell them before I could go home!” she cried. “You just said I had to tell!”

  This was greeted with a chorus of whistling and piping. They were pleased with her, which was more than Ted and the others had ever been on the rare occasions when she figured out their jokes.

  “If I tell you will you take me back to summer?”

  “If you tell us you will return to summer.”

  “Do I still have to tell people too?”

  “It would be wise,” said the unicorn she had ridden. “Although we might find mirth in your not telling.”

  Laura resolved to tell anyone she could find everything she could remember as soon as she possibly could.

  “Well,” she said, “I have to think.”

  The unicorns murmured, and several of them lay down with the abrupt motion of a cat that wants to play. Laura thought. She was surprised to realize how long they had been in the Secret Country. Finding the sword seemed like something that happened in another year. Of course, from where she was now, it had happened in another year. Laura wondered if she was having trouble remembering through that much time even though she hadn’t lived through it yet. Magic was certainly confusing.

  “Okay,” she said at last, slowly. “The first time the swords lit up, I just saw a lot of faces, and more swords shining, and something like a horse, only . . . I bet it was one of you.”

  “No doubt,” said one who had not spoken before. Laura wondered if Fence had taught them English, or whatever it was she was speaking with them.

  “After that,” said Laura, “at breakfast, the first day, I saw something. In the jewels on Randolph’s dagger. It was that lady in the secret house. She was looking in a mirror, but she wasn’t in the mirror.” She stopped, fearful that she had given too much away, or that the unicorns would want to know why she had said the “first day.” They gave her a grave and attentive silence.

  “It seems like something else happened that day too,” said Laura, “but I can’t think what.” She looked at the unicorn she had ridden. “Can I go back even if I forget?”