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down, Mira ran from the stable, arms pumping as she fled her brother’s laughter.
She ignored the snorts and hoof stomping from the stalls either side of her.
Dark ringlets escaped the ribbon at the back of her head and bounced onto her
face, pricking her eyes and sticking to her wet cheeks. She swiped at them
with a grubby hand and reaching the open door, ran across the yard towards the
training meadow and the wood beyond.
The summer grass was soft on her bare
feet; normally she would savor the sensation of the warm, silky blades between
her toes. Not today. She wanted to keep running and never come back; she hated
Cornelius.
Her father’s voice floated across the
air to her.
“Mira? Little one? What’s wrong?”
She lifted her head and looked at
him. He stood in the centre of the field with the black stallion he was
training for a Lord three counties over.
“Little one?” Her father called
again. She wanted to go to him, fling herself in his arms and sob against his
scarred chest, but she had already been called a baby once today, she would not
give her brother the satisfaction of repeating the accusation. So she continued
toward the woods, leaving her father and the stallion behind her.
At the edge of the forest she
hesitated. She had grown up here, alongside these trees, but she was
essentially a creature of the sunshine, and the mottled greens and browns that
made up the mossy shadows unnerved her. Still crying, she shook herself and
plunged into the cool obscurity. As the silence wrapped itself around her, she
began to slow, her sobs subsiding to a sniffle.
At ten she was a small girl, her
features round and chubby, with long ringlets and large eyes, dark as onyx. Puberty would no doubt transform her into the curved beauty her features
promised, but for now she was still a child. As her brother insisted on
reminding her.
“I’m not a baby,” she said to the
shadows and winced at the petulance she could hear in her voice. She was no
longer running, but dawdling through the shrubbery toward the sound of the brook
she could hear on the other side. Branches and prickles grabbed at the soft
leather of her wide riding trousers; leaf litter crunched beneath her bare
feet. She didn’t notice when the loose ribbon slithered from her hair to float
in a lazy arc to the ground behind her. Nor did she pay attention to the
movement further back in the trees.
“I’ll show Cornelius. I’ll be the
best care—” As a wave of cold air washed over her, the words chilled on her
tongue. Dread rose in her throat and she looked around in panic. There was
nothing to see, nothing to hear.
“Forest folk?” she wondered, chewing
her lip. Surely that was the answer. Nomads who roamed the woods, living off
berries and leaves and what they could steal from farms and stables. Picking up
her pace, she hurried through the trees.
She was closer than she had realized
to the stream and when she felt the sun on her face and the dead, crackling
leaves give way to warm, spongy moss, she relaxed and smiled. Blackberry
bushes, drooping under the weight of large, ripe to bursting berries, replaced
the trees. Without thinking, the little girl reached out and picked two
berries, closing her eyes with pleasure as they exploded on her tongue. She could see the water now, silver where the sunlight bounced off it, its
gurgling sound cheerful and infectious. As she walked she noticed another
sound. A quiet droning that she took a moment to recognize as buzzing. She
frowned. A swarm of bees? There were no beekeepers for at least two counties
and they were keeping their swarms close by, since the mites had found their way
into the hives. She picked another handful of berries, then wiped her hands on
her tunic, leaving a smear of purple juice on the tan fabric. Later, her mother
would mistake it for blood, and faint. For now, Mira didn’t notice it.
The blackberry bushes began to thin
out as she got closer to the water, giving way to wild flowers and butterflies. The occasional fat bumblebee bounced against her legs, but there were certainly
not enough of the drowsy insects to account for the intense hum that grew louder
with each step she took.
She was almost upon it before she saw
it, and her black eyes widened in horror. Most of the animal’s head was gone,
and huge chunks had been eaten from its side. It was a mare—or at least it
had been—the dregs of a puddle of milk lay on the ground beneath the spent
udder. The buzzing was a thick, black cloud of flies that had settled in the
wounds; their bloated mass made the blackberries churn in her stomach. She
wanted to turn away, to run away, but found she could not. The need to see, to
know, outweighed her urge to run for her father.
It wasn’t one of their animals. She
could see no shoes on the hooves and no hand woven halter. All their animals
had a halter, her mother made them by the fire in the winter. These thoughts
bounced around as she stood looking at the remains of the mare, searching to
understand something that was on the outskirts of her mind. Something she
couldn’t put her finger on. Something so obvious in its simplicity that she was
missing it. The mare’s blood, dazzling scarlet on the milky skin hypnotized her
and she stood, unblinking, staring at the pale, torn flesh, trying to block out
the thick, nauseating, buzz of the flies. Unbidden, the image of her father
with the stallion floated through her mind. Cernunnos. He was a magnificent
creature. Much larger than most stallions, his black coat glossy with sweat in
the heat of the day; the horn rising from his forehead, glimmering gold. Hot
gold. Glistening black. She frowned. Shiny black And with that, her
mind grabbed what her eyes were seeing.
“It’s
an Opal,” she whispered. Opals were thought to be extinct, or so rare it
came to the same. Her father spoke of them, but as far as she knew, even
he hadn’t seen one since his childhood, over forty summers ago.
Opals
had once been the choice of Royalty—their horns were a gleaming white with
strands of gold and blue visible in the sun, but it was their coats that made
them so prized. For Opal Unicorns had coats that were just that—opalescent—creamy white with shivers of pink or blue or gold dependent on
their movement and the light around them. They had gentle natures, were
intelligent and able to be trained with ease. They had been a symbol of
wealth and position until poaching and interbreeding had decimated their
numbers; leaving behind a growing legend of their powers and beauty. It
was said that they would lay their heads in the lap of a pure maiden—a legend
that had become distorted and now many townspeople believed it held true for all
unicorns.
Mira dropped to her knees and with
trembling fingers touched the remains of the once beautiful animal. The skin
was still warm, soft and silky as the stories had promised. Tears ran down her
face but no longer for Cornelius and his oily smugness. This had been a
beautiful creature and something had killed it. Something vicious. Before she
could process this last, from the blackberry bushes on her left came a sound.
She spun around, heart pounding in her ears. The sound came again, fainter this
time. A mewling, like that of a lost kitten. Mira, however, had been around
Unicorns all her life, and recognized it for what it was. The gruesome corpse
forgotten, she ran to the bushes. She pulled them apart, ignoring the sharp
thorns that abused her skin. Her mouth dropped open in pure wonder at the
vision the bushes revealed.
The foal was only about two months
old, his horn still not fully formed. Nothing more than a nub really, a bump on
his head. But his coat was already breathtaking in it’s purity. Cooing under
her breath, she leaned forward and stroked the creature. It was the size of a
small fawn, certainly smaller than an average unicorn foal, but Mira had seen
smaller. When it didn’t appear to be frightened by her touch, she gathered it
into her arms and backed out of the bushes. In the sunlight, the baby animal’s
coat became a rainbow of pastel colours. Mira gasped as they shimmered and
danced.
“You poor thing. Your mother must
have been grazing and you had to see her d—” Without warning, terror began to
form in her belly, growing up and out until it broke over her. Something had
been in the woods before. Something big. Something frightening. When she had
touched the Opal’s corpse it had been warm. If she, Mira, was still here when
the thing in the woods returned…..
Clutching her find to her chest, she
turned and fled, running alongside the river. It would take longer to get home,
but the woods tapered off in a mile or so, and she would be able to return home
along the road. She could not go back in the woods—the creature she had heard,
had felt in it’s icy entirety, might still be there. Still hungry.
By the time she got home, the shadows
were lengthening. Her parents would be worried, she knew. She took some
consolation in the fact that she had with her an Opal Unicorn. She took even
more consolation that perhaps her parents had chastised Cornelius for his
behavior. She rubbed her cheek against the foal’s head and hugged it tighter.
The animal mewled and nibbled at her tunic.
She was halfway across the yard when
the front door opened and parents and brother ran toward her yelling her name
and tripping over themselves to get to her.
“Mira! Where have you been? I’ve
been so worried.” This was her mother, her voice tremulous and frightened.
“Yes, Miss Bratty Pants, where hav—” Before Cornelius could finish, their father held up his hand for silence.
“Well, child? Where have you been?
And what do you have with you?”
Without warning, her strength left
her and she dropped to her knees. She turned her face up to her father and
sobbed.
“Oh Papa, look at him, he’s so little
and he’s hungry and he’s frightened. Something killed the mother. Something
really big, Papa. It ate her head and her horn. Shimmer was in the blackberry
bushes and I was too scared to come back through the woods because I felt it in
there, Papa, and it was terrible, it was terrible. Please, Papa, please we have
to protect Shimmer or that thing will come back for him.” The words tumbled out
of her mouth, not stopping even when her mother, catching sight of the
blackberry stain on her tunic, misunderstood and fainted.
“Shimmer?” Mira’s father took her in
his arms and held her a moment. “It will be alright, little one— but what is
this Shimmer you have here?”
“He’s
an Opal—his mother was too. She must have been beautiful.” She
struggled to control the sobs that were rising again in her throat. As if
offering up a precious jewel, she held her arms out to her father so he could
see what she held. On cue the unicorn turned to look at the trainer, whose
eyes had widened to the size of platters.
“Shimmer.”
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