It is winter, the time of the wolf wind, which tears at the throat of the encampment as a real wolf tears at the throat of a deer. And now a ravaging, deadly fever has struck the Clan.  Among those stricken is Elki, the four-week-old sister of Gar and Asta, fifteen-year-old twins.  Even now she lies gravely ill in the tent of the healer.

In a desperate effort to save their sister, Gar and Asta approach the witch Rahela, hoping she will have a spell that can cure Elki.  Rahela informs them she doesn't have a cure for the fever.  However, she tells them, she has learned that "every sickness has a cure.  But the cure may itself be dangerous to find, or may demand great sacrifice.  Often it is impossible to find at all, or impossible to win."

Using her scrying bowl, Rahela shows them where they must go—to the Court of the Summer King.  She tells the children that's where they may be able to win the cure—the most powerful, magical thing known in the Mother's World, the horn of a unicorn.  With it not only would Elki be cured, but the entire clan. But, she warns, Asta must first win the unicorn's trust.  To take even a fragment of a unicorn's horn without its consent would kill it.

She wraps a long silver thread with a needle of polished ivory dangling at the tip around Asta's finger. The needle hangs limply from the thread, pointing towards the ground.  She tells them it's a "true diviner".  When the needle moves, they are to follow; it will lead them to the Court of the Summer King.

The next morning finds Gar and Asta near the river, some distance from the encampment.  Their morning has been spent in futile attempts to make the needle show them the proper way.  It was not working.  Finally, it trembled.  Stirred.  Twitched.  And, in a slow steady revolution, the needle began to seek.  When it stopped moving, it pointed north.  Filled with fascination, fear and hope, Asta and Gar walk north, following the needle's guide.  They've lost track of how far they've traveled, with Gar occasionally muttering something about turning back before it was too late.

"ait! Oh, Gar—look!"

He looked. The needle, suspended on its thread, spun and spun, until the thread was wrapped tight as yarn on a spindle. Then it unwrapped, spinning in the opposite direction, until the thread was smooth as silk again and the needle was pointing at a massive old oak, half-shattered by a lightning blast that had split the trunk nearly in two.  A huge charred cleft marred the frost-rimmed trunk.

"Asta—."

She didn't listen.  She merely followed the line of the needle to the charred cleft.  Putting out a hand to touch it, she touched nothingness instead.

Nothingness.

And it swallowed her whole, leaving emptiness in her place.

Asta tumbled out of the Mother's harshest season into Her gentlest.  In place of snow there was grass, lush, thick grass, green as the World's summer cloak.  The warm bright face of the Mother's sun touched all the World with gold.  Asta, still clutching the silver thread, stared speechlessly at a world that was so much like her own, and realized it was her own. Only the seasons had altered.

"Summer," she breathed aloud, and then from behind her she heard Gar's garbled outcry as he tumbled out of the cleft.

"Asta . . . Asta—"

"I know," she said sternly.  "Hush, Gar—we are in the Court of the Summer King."

"That's nonsense—"  But Gar was silenced because before them stood the proof: a unicorn in the flesh.

Not the Summer King himself, whom Asta had seen in the bowl.  Much younger, smaller, with his pride intact but less pronounced.  Mostly, he seemed curious.  Long-lashed, amber-honey eyes peered quizzically from under a pale gold forelock that fell between two erect, cream-colored ears tufted impishly at the tips, and dusted with only the faintest sheen of brilliant gold.  The soft rose-gold muzzle quivered a moment.  Whiskers shimmered, tipped with droplets of sun-gilded dew.  Nostrils expanded widely, inhaled noisily, then snorted, as if in surprise.

"The horn." Gar said intently.

It was smaller than Asta had expected.  Its fragile root was hidden within silky layers of shining forelock, and suddenly she realized the silver thread she held wasn't thread at all, but a strand of hair from the mane or tail of a unicorn.  The horn matched the young unicorn's wide-spaced, astonished eyes—amber and honey and gold.  It twisted from root to tip in a lazy, symmetrical spiral.

"If I grab his head"—Gar began—"you can grab the horn—"

"No."  Asta's tone was final.  Slowly, carefully, so as not to frighten the unicorn, she put away the diviner.  Then, hands outstretched, she took a step toward the colt.

He eyed her curiously, showing no fear.  Delicate amber hooves barely depressed the flowers and grass beneath the tree.  He was not a horse, and certainly not a riding animal, but with enough similarities that Asta longed to stroke his velvet muzzle, to tangle her hands in his shining mane, to feel the sleek, glossy back beneath her as she galloped across the meadows of the Court of the Summer King.

"The horn." Gar hissed distinctly.

Asta felt warm, soft breath as the unicorn cradled his muzzle in her palms.  She smelled the scent of flowers and the tang of spice in the air, a clean, fresh scent unlike any she had known.  She felt the vibration of the colt's exhalations against her fingers and saw the winding spiral of the glossy horn as it jutted from his brow, parting the shining forelock that swept down to brush her wrists with a subtle seductiveness.

Eyes half-shut, the unicorn rested his jaw upon her shoulder.

It would be so easy, she knew.  One twist, one snap! of the fragile horn—

"Do it now." Gar whispered.

But Asta knew she could not.

"For Elki," Gar urged.  "For Elki and the clan!"

Asta cupped her palms against the colt's neck and stroked the glossy cream-pale hair, as Rahela had stroked her cat.  There was warmth in the flesh beneath the hair, and life and strength and health.  She tangled fingers in his mane and knew her soul was tangled as well, trapped within the web of unicorn magic.

Whose trust was won, she wondered?  The unicorn's or her own?

"Asta!" Gar hissed.  "Get the horn and let's go—"

For Elki—Asta bit her bottom lip.  Just grab it and twist—  Inwardly, she shuddered.  "No."  She said it mostly to the colt, whose head was not so much higher than her own.  "I can't."

"But you have to . . . "  Gar's voice was insistent.  "Not for me, not for you—for Elki.  For the clan.  It's what we came to do."

"I know, I know."  Asta shut her eyes and buried her face in the silk of the unicorn's mane.  "But surely the Mother wouldn't want me to kill one of her children merely to save another."

And abruptly, even as Asta finished speaking, the unicorn shed his shape and became a woman instead.

The Mother's smile was the light of the World.  Her eyes and nails were of gold, the yellow-gold of a summer sun, and her gown was spun of spider silk and delicate, gilt-bright flowers.  The hair flowing down her back was amber and honey and gold.

Gar fell to his knees.  Asta stood locked in silence.

"Rahela chose well," the Mother said, and her voice was the song of a summer rain, cool and soft and sweet.

Gar trembled.  "But—it was for Elki.  Our sister.  She's only a baby, only a little one . . . we had to do something—"  He rubbed gloved hands nervously on his fur-lined leathers. "She's just a baby—"

"I know," the Mother said.  "I know all things.  I know that even now the winter wolf howls on the hilltops, singing his song of death.  But you are here, not there, and so there is something to be done before I send you back."

"Must you?"  Asta looked at the bright vale of summer-glow, the Court of the Summer King.  "Even if I wanted to stay here?"

The Mother shook her head and her radiance increased.  "All my children have their places.  You are out of yours.  If the World is to turn again, you must go back before the day is done."

Asta drew in a breath.  "We came for the unicorn's horn."

"But you did not take it."

"No."  Asta looked at the ground.  "I couldn't."

The Mother's laughter was the lilt of a meadowlark's song.  And then it stopped.  "You still may," she said.  "I will give you a choice, because that is the way I made the World.  There are choices in everything."  Her hand was on Asta's head, smoothing bark-brown hair.  Gold nails shed dancing sparks of brass-bright sunlight.  "I consent to the sacrifice.  Take the horn.  Go back to your clan.  Save Elki and the others.  You will never know fever again."

"Or?"  Asta asked.

"Or go back with nothing and take the chance that Elki will survive."

Gar scrambled to his feet.  "Asta—do it.  Take the horn, just to be sure."

"With your consent . . ."  Asta looked into the Mother's blinding eyes.  "What is the price, if I do?"

The hand fell away from her head and took the sunlight with it.  "Never to know summer again."

Asta stared.  "Never?"

"No."  The Mother shrugged.  "But winter need not be deadly.  Your clan would learn to survive."

"Asta," Gar began.

"It is your choice," the Mother told Asta.  "You must decide."

Outraged, Asta shook her head.  "I can't.  How can you expect me to save Elki and the others, but only so they must learn what it is to live forever in winter?  Mother, I think you are too cruel."

"Too cruel, too kind.  Mothers must often be so, when dealing with their children."  Behind the woman, unicorns gamboled in the vale.  The Summer King with his golden horn was ablaze in brilliant sunlight.  "You must decide, Asta."

Asta shut her eyes.  Behind her lids she could still see the unicorns, horns agleam in the sunlight.  So alive in the summer warmth.

She opened her eyes.  "Send us back," Asta said.  "Mother, send us back.  Even for Elki, I can't sentence the others to summerless lives,  In the end it would kill us all.  In spirit, if not in body."

The Mother smiled.  Her hair was a summer sunset; her eyes the dawn of the coming day.  "Rahela chose well indeed."

"So," Gar said curtly, "we go home with nothing."

Asta held her silence, knowing he was weary and worried and frightened of what they would find when they went back, just as she herself was.  Resolutely she turned to look at the Mother, only to fall back a step.  "Gar—look!"

It was the young unicorn yet again, honey-gold eyes agleam as he stepped daintily through grass and flowers to set his head against Asta's shoulder.  He rubbed, grunting, and Asta braced herself on spread legs before he could knock her down.  Head bowed, the colt rubbed repeatedly, knocking the horn gently against the top of her shoulder, until the root itself crumbled away in a shower of powdered gold.

Asta caught the horn as it fell.  It was warm and smooth to the touch, so silky, with its perfectly symmetrical spiral.  In shock, she stared at it in her hands, and then she looked at the colt.

He seemed almost to sigh, as if glad to be rid of the burden.  He shook his head and the forelock parted, just enough to expose the nub of a newborn horn.  The horn of an adult.  Its tip was purest gold.

Gar's laugh was a short bark of sound.  "So all of it was meaningless, all that nonsense about choices . . . the Mother tricked you, Asta!  Don't you see?  A unicorn is no different from a deer.  It shed its horn, Asta, like a puppy shedding milk-teeth."

"Meaningless?"  She shook her head.  "I don't think so.  He gave it to us, Gar.  He consented for us to have it, not the Mother for him.  We won the unicorn's trust, and so we won the horn.  Just as Rahela said."

For the last time Asta tangled her hands in his silken mane, still clutching the gleaming horn, and set her face against his neck.  She breathed in the tangy spice of his scent, gloried in the texture of his coat, was touched by the magnitude of his trust.  And then, in silence, she thanked him, and turned back again to the tree.

Gar's frown indicated the depth of his worry for her, and his bafflement.

Asta blink tears away.  "Don't you see, Gar?  There are choices in everything . . . things that can be freely given, but can't be taken without a price.  Without a sacrifice."

"Asta—"

"Come on, Gar," she said gently, "lets go home.  Let's go home to Elki.  When summer comes, we can teach her how to swim."

And with the horn clutched in her hand, Asta slipped back through the tree into the world she knew again, where the winter wolf howled on the hilltops, impatient for summer to come.

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