I have several versions of the beginning of this story. This is the second chapter of the most complete version.

My story takes place on an island called Pulau that has been colonized by a people loosely referred to as "Contientals". In the previous chapter, the heroine (for lack of a better word) was chosen to be in what could very well be the last unicorn hunt before the animal's final exstinction.

If you are interested in betaing my writing, please contact me at:  . Also, feel free to send me your comments. I have received absolutely no comments so far on my writing on the this site, I have no idea why. Speculation would be conterproductive so I am just going to say PLEASE comment, even if it only to say, "I'm very busy; I only read your first sentence", etc.

Thanks! 

It began to rain in earnest the day they departed, turning the crude island roads into muddy rivulets and making the journey almost impossibly slow. The porters swore stolidly as they slipped and stumbled up the mountain, often stopping to rest, shift the loads, and complain. On such occasions, the men would disembark, Etovices giving orders to the servants and securing the luggage, and Ateaurtes standing on the highest point of the path, grinning, his hands crammed into his breeches and the rain running down his face. Lanthiad satisfied herself with opening the door of her litter, resting her feet on the narrow runner, and leaning her head out as far as she could manage. The rainfall was a welcome relief. Steam rose from her shoulders and the blush washed from her cheeks. She felt her heart lighten. She smiled at the vexed servants, she grinned at the view from the mountain of the fields and forests below, and she laughed silently at Ateaurtes’ hat, which had lost all its shape in the rainfall and flopped about his ears.

Since Bartinauntes’ estate was the Continental settlement nearest to the hunting ground, the parties would converge there and use it as the starting point. Bartinauntes had no objection, since he was to be one of the half a dozen planters who were to participate in the hunt. It was necessary to set their estates in order before they could have an adventure, so the hunt was delayed until four days after the maiden was chosen, exactly two weeks after the unicorn was seen. Etovices had joined the party only because he was Lanthiad’s guardian, leaving Kiles behind to tend his estate.

The hunting party arrived shortly before sundown at Bartinauntes’ estate in the North Country. The estate was situated in a small, irregularly shaped clearing abutting a massive, narrow plateau, and was arranged unusually, with the main house on a slight rise in the center, and the storehouses, worker’s houses and rice fields gathered haphazardly about it, like a village. Surrounding it all was a dense forest, out of which towered more plateaus, draped with precariously angled trees and shrubs. It was formidable and strangely lovely, gray-green in thick, low-lying rain clouds.

In front of Bartinauntes’ house was a riddle of planks, balanced between driven stakes and creating wobbly, dangerously narrow avenues above the flooded yard. The servants didn’t bother with the niceties of the avenues, having trekked half way up the island in worse conditions. Nevertheless, the luggage was heavy and the litters precious and cumbersome, making it slow work.

Lanthiad looked askance at the unconventional system; she was not naturally graceful, and it had been a compassionate act on Kiles’ part that he chaperoned her ascent along the steep, crude steps of her uncle’s fields to the main house whenever she ventured out.  Etovices had initially forbidden her wanderings, claiming she was too delicate, but had withdrawn his reservations when he saw she was looked after.  Although Etovices himself was now present, as well as Ateaurtes, they were busy supervising the servants and took their time about seeing her inside. At last, she grew impatient and gingerly stepped out onto the nearest plank, gripping the small eave of the litter to steady herself. The plank wobbled, but she held firm. Encouraged by this small success, she took a step forward and slipped directly into the murky water.

Ateaurtes cut a quick path through the pool and heaved her sputtering, struggling form upright.

He laughed and held her firmly by the waist until she found the beginnings of a tenuous balance.

Lanthiad coughed, shoved her fallen hair out of her face and looked vaguely about. “Where’s my hat?”

Still chuckling, Ateaurtes scooped it up out of the cloudy water and presented it to her with mock formality.  She stared at the sodden, muddy thing in his hand, temporarily at a loss, then snatched it from his fingers and trudged toward the main house, refusing to look at him. Her waterlogged skirts dragged heavily in her wake, severely hampering her progress. It was only through luck and tenacity that she reached the relative safety of the veranda without tumbling into the water again.

 “Out in the fields, you say? Well, what has to be done, has to be done.  He did tell you to expect us, though? The hunting party?” Etovices was saying to Bartinauntes’ household servants, two women and three men. They were well trained and barely even glanced at Lanthiad’s shameful state.

The servants bowed, and the elder of the house women gave a silent signal to the men to assist the party’s servants in unloading their luggage.  The housemen hastened down the steps, deftly navigating the plank avenue. Etovices took off his hat and began to absently wring it out over the railing. Lanthiad looked down at her own hat forlornly—wringing it out would have been just the final abuse it needed to consign it to complete ruin.

“It’s a beautiful country,” Etovices said conversationally. He was accustomed to behaving casually with servants, a habit that Lanthiad and Ateaurtes’ father had found grievance with.

“How will they know their place if he constantly corrupts their training?” he had groused. “It’s better that he went to that heathen island, where he cannot tell my butler to have a drink, too.” Their father had a long memory and a strict sense of propriety, and since Etovices had left the Continent when Ateaurtes was still in curls, several years prior to Lanthiad’s birth, they had both been inoculated with a reserve that Etovices had found priggish on more than one occasion.

“Lanthiad,” he said, turning to her and putting his hat back on, “Why don’t you go with Bumi here? I’m certain you could use a rest. You look like you’ve been drowned.” He said the last with a note of surprise. He motioned Lanthiad to the elder house woman, ostensibly transferring responsibility. “I’ll see your bags find you.” The words came out absently, as if he found it difficult to be confounded and speak naturally at the same time. He watched his niece follow the house woman inside, his expression circumspect.

The house woman led Lanthiad to a room on the west side of the house, still tightly shuttered against the day’s rainfall. The sunlight poured through the louvers, striping all within.  Lanthiad stood dumbly in the middle of the room, dripping. The room was not so different from her own, being about the same size and similarly equipped with a mixture of Continental and island-made furniture. The dressing table was plainer, with a small, squarish silver mirror, and the bed had crisp white linen and posts with finials carved to resemble soulnut flowers. A brass lamp was suspended from a chain in the center of the room. The pitcher and wash basin in the corner were white porcelain, painted with tiny blue fishermen in odd, blue covered boats, whereas the set at her uncle’s depicted some kind of picnic. 

She thought: When I am an old woman looking back upon my time on the Island, I’ll confuse every room I saw with another until they are all merged into an image of a single room, which itself probably never existed. And it will be covered in soulnut trees.

It seemed that everywhere she looked something alluded to the soulnut trees. They were featured in the paintings on the walls, carved into the furniture, and embossed on her uncle’s writing paper. They were the main theme of filigree above the verandas and the weave of the Pulauni women’s clothes. Bĕrbijidiri, they called the trees. Kiles had taught her the Pulauni name the day before they departed, when he gave her a Pulauni good-luck charm to take with her on the hunt. It had taken her by surprise; the only things Kiles had ever given her before had been stories. The charm was large, and rather heavy, composed of about a dozen walnut-sized wood beads strung on a red silk ribbon and scored with geometric figures. If she tied the long ends together, it made a cumbersome necklace.

“I would be gratified if you would wear it. The Pulauni place great value on its ability to bring good fortune,” he’d said, looking at her as if he dared her to deny it. “Warriors wear them.”

Lanthiad had debated whether it could be considered a love token. The only male outside of her family who had ever given her anything was the cook’s boy, when she was seven, and that had been a toy top. By the end of the week, he’d asked for it back. Now here she had been with another wooden object with ambiguous meaning. She’d sighed, promising Kiles that she would, and herself that she would keep it a secret from her brother and uncle. If it were a love token, they would not approve, least of all because it was not a gold lavaliere.

“I’m certainly not a warrior,” she had commented, feeling the heft of the Pulauni charm in her hand.

“It doesn’t care.”

A servant placed her carpetbag just inside the door, startling her from her thoughts. He bowed and disappeared before she could thank him. Left alone again, she closed the door and undressed, hanging her wet garments to dry as she went. She opened her bag and sighed; the rain had soaked everything through. When the house woman returned, she found Lanthiad sitting on the bed in her chemise, the few possessions she had brought along spread out on the bed to dry.  Her clothing dangled off every surface like bizarre, albino creepers.

“Marita?”

Lanthiad looked up at Bumi, the Pulauni house woman. She was an older woman, quite handsome, dressed traditionally, but in shockingly bright colors even for a Pulauni: teal on purple, with gold stitching at the hem. Her black hair was pulled back tightly from her broad forehead and gathered into a bun at he base of her neck. Silver jewelry covered every available limb. She cautiously touched a pair of bloomers hanging from the lip of the dressing table drawer and looked at the empty carpetbag.

“All?”

Lanthiad nodded.

Bumi eyed the draped room again, and sighed. “I am sorry for you, Marita.” Her dark eyes focused on the thick, woven hair hoop in Lanthiad’s hands, puzzled. “What is that strange thing?”

Lanthiad glanced down, and put the hoop on her head. She grinned.

“It’s for my hair.” She lifted her tangled wet locks up over the hoop and bunched them together on top of her head. Bumi was unimpressed. Lanthiad let her hair fall and set the hoop aside, saying, “It’s supposed to make me beautiful.”

“Does it?”

Lanthiad looked up at the Pulauni woman’s face, surprised at her candor.

“Not particularly; it just makes me taller,” she admitted, and they exchanged a wry grin.

Bumi turned to leave. “I will find you clothes, Marita.”

Shortly before supper, the men were informed that Lanthiad was going to eat in her room and would not be joining them. The only women’s clothing available in Bartinauntes’ house was Pulauni and she wasn’t fit to be seen. Ateaurtes asked Bumi to show him to Lanthiad’s door and immediately began to cajole her out.

 “Come on, Lani,” she heard him say through the door, “It may not be that bad. Let me see.”

“No. You’ll only make fun of me,” she replied. “Besides, it’s not decent.”

“How can it not be decent if half the island wears them? Come on. I won’t tease.”

“Half the island also goes naked, Ateaurtes. I’d hardly say they’re my standard.”

“They’re children, Lani. I don’t think that counts. You used to run around like that, yourself. I remember.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to do it now,” she retorted, uncertain whether to be irked or amused.

“She did give you the whole dress, didn’t she?”

“Yes...” she replied uncertainly.

“Both the top and bottom?”

“Yes. And you’re teasing me already. I’m definitely not going to come out only to have you tease me all evening.”

“So you’ll come out if I promise not to tease you?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. Listen: I promise I won’t tease you all evening.”

“You won’t tease me at all,” she corrected.

“Very well. I won’t tease you at all.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Now come out.”

Ateaurtes listened to his sister’s light footsteps as she crossed the room to the door. She slid it open a crack and peered out at him.

“Well?” He hooked his thumbs in his hip pockets and stepped back. “Come on out.”

Lanthiad glowered at him, took a quick look down either end of the corridor, and slid the door open. She was in what Bumi considered to be one of her better dresses, three pieces and expensive, suitable for a special guest. The most striking thing about it was its color: a vivid blue, green and yellow that pronounced, rather than distracted from her red hair. The dress was patterned to represent flowers and birds, rather realistically, and they danced and swooped over the fabric in an almost dizzying manner. Bumi had helped her into it, so it was properly wrapped. It was sleeveless, the body of the dress being a single piece of fabric, falling straight and narrow to her ankles with an artful pleating to one side. A second length of fabric, in which the original pattern of the dress had its colors reversed, defined the waist. Lanthiad was holding the third piece around her shoulders like a shawl, fully concealing her shoulders.  Her hair was still damp and had been arranged into a neat, low bun.

She took one look at Ateaurtes’ expression and started to close the door again.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, sticking his foot in the door. “You said you’d come out.”

“I didn’t actually say it!” she protested, struggling to close the door.

“Argh!” Ateaurtes rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Very well. You let me assume. But you still have to come out.” He pushed back the door and Lanthiad scowled at him, her arms crossed.

“I suppose now you’re going to drag me out there.”

“No. I want you to walk out. You look fine. There’s nothing to tease. Come on.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You look fine. Father would be proud. Now come to supper.”

The corner of Lanthiad’s mouth twitched: she knew her father would have disowned her if she had appeared dressed like she was in the breakfast room, much less to supper with outsiders. It would have been the scandal of the neighborhood. “The colonel’s daughter gallivants around like a savage!” the gossips would exclaim. But that was on the Continent, among Elsthar society, and she was rapidly learning that Pulau had slightly different rules to master.

Ateaurtes followed her down the corridor, intending to block any retreat.

The men rose from the table when Lanthiad made her entrance, Pades and Etovices lagging slightly behind the others. Lanthiad was hard put to maintain her composure as she and the men surveyed each other, each trying their best to pretend nothing was amiss. Lanthiad was especially mortified to see Dr. Lauventhal was among the company; she had forgotten that he lived on Bartinauntes’ estate and would naturally have been invited to any social event.  His expression was more convincing than the studied neutrality of the others, almost as if he really saw nothing unusual in a young lady coming to a dinner party wrapped in what most Continentals considered little more than outrageously tacky curtains.

The first to speak was Bartinauntes, whose position as host demanded that he be the courteous one. “I’m glad you could join us. I believe you know everyone. Won’t you please have a seat?” 

Bartinauntes’ small speech broke the spell of silence that had seized the rest of the party. They commented on the weather, the poor roads, and the laziness of their porters as Lanthiad settled into her place between Ateaurtes and Etovices at the table. She dared not meet anyone’s eyes, and swore silently to herself that she would get back at Ateaurtes for talking her into coming out. To seal her oath, she gave her brother a kick in the shin, just hard enough to not be ignored.

Ateaurtes started, recovered, and smiled smugly at her. “Relax,” he whispered, opening his napkin and spreading it out on his lap. Lanthiad followed suit, making a quick jab at his thigh while her hand was down.

“Bugs?” Pades inquired blandly.

Ateaurtes straightened the tablecloth and set his wineglass upright. “Uh, no. Just caught my hand on the tablecloth. Please excuse me.”

“Do you have a bug problem, here in the North Country?” a man called Fathras asked Bartinauntes. His estate lay near the port, practically in the mangrove swamp.

Bartinauntes blinked. “Bugs? No. Nothing unusual.”

Pades snorted. “You’re fortunate. I had a terrible bug infestation last rainy season. I couldn’t sit down for a meal for more than fifteen minutes without one crawling up my leg. One, it was as big as my thumb.” He held up his hand, thumb out, to illustrate.

Fathras, a wiry lowland farmer, shook his head sadly.

“What? You think I’m exaggerating, Fathras?” Pades asked defensively.

The lowland farmer shook his head again. “No, no. Not at all. It’s just that at my estate, that wouldn’t hardly be worth consideration.”

“True enough. I’ve seen what comes out of that swamp,” Etovices commented, grimacing. “Insects the size of a man’s hand.”

“Really?” Ateaurtes asked, suddenly interested.

“It’s true,” Fathras said, meeting the young man’s eyes. “I lost a perfectly good ratter to one, once.” He looked at Etovices. “Pure bred, imported from the Continent. Used to spend all night guarding holes, wouldn’t even come away to eat until she’d caught a rodent. Turned out to be the undoing of her, in the end.”

“I understand you are a student of the natural sciences,” Dr. Lauventhal commented casually to Ateaurtes.

It was a mark of Dr. Lauventhal’s consequence that the table grew momentarily sober. Lanthiad forgot her discomfort in favor of observing the clear, steady gaze the doctor settled upon her brother.  He gripped his cane contemplatively as he spoke. Did he ever put it down? she wondered. He really didn’t look very ancient to her eyes: sixty, seventy, maybe. His bearing was erect, and while his face was lined and thin, his complexion was healthy.

“Yes, at Aumsthartaum.”

“Ah,” the doctor said, leaning back in his chair. “I was very saddened to hear what happened at Aumsthartaum. Who would’ve imagined that the Front would have been pushed that far west? I trust you graduated before it was closed?”

Ateaurtes frowned. “I’m afraid not. I was sent home before I was able to deliver my dissertation.”

“Ah, that was unfortunate. If you weren’t already fully occupied, I would ask you to show it to me sometime.”

“Actually,” Bartinauntes interjected, “We may all have more time than we had reckoned upon.  I know these rains, and it may be several days before it’ll be prudent to depart.”

“Won’t every day we linger reduce our chances of finding the unicorn?” Fathras inquired anxiously.

“Only in the sense that they’re evasive creatures. The mountain breeds, like this one, don’t actually migrate,” Pades said.

“We don’t know it’s a mountain breed,” Ateaurtes protested. “We don’t even know if it’s a genuine unicorn yet.”

“It is,” Bartinauntes said unexpectedly.

“What makes you say that? You didn’t speak up about its authenticity before,” Pades said, turning a critical eye on his host.

“I wasn’t sure then,” he replied mildly. “I only heard about it three days ago, so I couldn’t possibly have brought it up at Etovices’. Apparently, the natives have been seeing a unicorn in the North Country every fifty years or so.”

“The natives!” Silvasthar interjected, indignant. “They see spirits! Worship trees! Twice a year, they all go insane, dancing and singing all night and thinking they can fly if they hold onto the tail feather of a pheasant! How can we believe them if they say they see unicorns?” 

Dr. Lauventhal chuckled, startling everyone. Silvasthar blanched, uncertain whether the doctor was laughing at him or the natives he had described.

Bartinauntes tore his eyes from the old doctor’s amused face and continued his defense. “I have it from a reliable source.”

Silvasthar grunted skeptically. “What? That woman?”

Bartinauntes ignored him. “The sightings have rarely coincided with the festivals. And it sounds like the same creature. Black, with a red horn. And while I know they’ve probably all heard the description—after all, we had a couple porters along that day, and I can’t imagine them not telling—the tale seems pretty consistent.”

“What tale is that?” Etovices asked.

“Some legend about an old ruler who used to settle disputes on the island. When the royal court couldn’t decide a case, they’d send for a unicorn, and the beast would be able to tell just by looking in the man’s eyes whether he was guilty or innocent.”

“That old tale!” Fathras exclaimed, slapping his palms on his thighs, amused. “Why, even I know that one. It was in the, what, fifth century? Some kind of suzerain from the mainland? King Sinbank?”

“Simbarincik,” Dr. Lauventhal said, scrupulously pronouncing each syllable. “He ruled the Ashay Empire for forty years following the plagues of 398, during the Upheaval. On the Continent he was known as Emperor Sinisthrivanthes, Shinbahyin Ano Latichin in Mran.”

“Mran!” Etovices hissed. “Even then, they were greedily clamoring for territory.”

“I didn’t know Mran could reach that far during the Upheaval,” Ateaurtes said thoughtfully.

“Well, yes, they could. It was the Continent that had suffered the most during the plagues; guilds weren’t burnt in Mran. The Ashay Empire reached as far as the Twong Islands, fifty leagues from here, although most of their monuments haven’t survived.”

Lanthiad stopped eating, stunned. Pulau and Twong both lay in the Monchinik Sea, an obscure body of water in the sub-tropics, so called because it lay over the Monchin Ridge, a submarine mountain range that supported over a hundred islands, some of them remarkably large. It took a month to reach from the Continent, and possibly longer from Mran. It had only been in the last eighty years that the Continentals had managed to gain a foothold on Pulau, and Lanthiad had falsely conceived of the Monchinik Sea as being a vast, virtually impenetrable wilderness where time had yet to find a purchase—the Edge of the World.  But this wasn’t so. Why hadn’t I read more history? she thought, irritated with herself. She had thought that she was safely tucked away from the realities of the war, when in actuality, she was sitting in former Mranin territory! Centuries ago, the Mranin Empire had managed to paddle a conquering force all the way to the southern islands. What could they do now that they had steamboats?

“Is something the matter?” Pades asked Lanthiad solicitously. “Did you feel a bug?”

The diners looked at Lanthiad. She had frozen in the middle of a motion, her fork suspended ridiculously in front of her. She wondered how long had she been holding that position and slowly lowered the offending utensil, careful to not let it clatter. 

“There shouldn’t be any insects. I’ve had that seen to,” Bartinauntes protested, darting an affronted look at Pades. “Is the food satisfactory?”

She nodded dumbly, seemingly staring at her fork. In actuality, she was watching the Mranin soldiers swarm over the beaches in her mind, their pointed steel helmets glinting like silver in the moonlight.

 “I know it’s a long journey to the North Country, especially for a young lady,” he said, concerned at her peculiar behavior.

“Yes, I think it’s been a long day,” Etovices said. He looked apologetically at the other men. “If you’ll please excuse us, we’ll just see her to her room.” He and Ateaurtes pushed back their chairs in preparation for standing.

“No,” Lanthiad said, abruptly coming back to herself and rising. She adjusted the length of cloth around her shoulders and pushed Ateaurtes’ hands away. “I can see myself to my room. Thank you, anyway.” She inclined her head toward the dinner party, her eyes averted.  “Good night.”

Lanthiad turned away from the table, knowing the men were anxiously watching her. She walked out of the room carefully, every step deliberately laid to conceal how badly shaken she actually was. Once inside her bedroom, she closed the door securely, sat on an empty corner of the bed and let the Pulauni shawl fall from her shoulders. Her damp wardrobe hovered about her in the darkness like sleepy ghosts.

Lanthiad couldn’t remember how many times she had been sent to bed. Her father was particularly fond of dismissing her in that manner, although it was usually because she was disagreeing with him over something or other. She had always argued with him. Well, once she had given up any hope of pleasing him, that is. The colonel respected a sharp mind and a strong will in a person-- two traits he felt to be absolutely inappropriate in a daughter. Lanthiad had adopted them as her starting point with him before she was old enough to make such distinctions, and she had stubbornly refused to let it go, even after her mistake became evident to her. In that way, she had taken after her father much more than Ateaurtes ever could.

The colonel had been a difficult, distant man. He’d come from an old Elsthar family, eminently proud and respectable. As a younger son, he was expected to make his own fortune, so he joined the army and at an obscure, rural outpost, he met a country girl whose genuine, untamed ways had captivated him. He married her and brought her to the ancestral home, where he promptly set about molding her into the perfect society wife. She died when Lanthiad was four. Her father never spoke of her mother, and he had stopped communication with her family shortly after her death, so all Lanthiad that knew about her for years was what Ateaurtes told her and what the servants said when they thought she couldn’t hear. The bits and pieces she had gleaned figured together into a terrifying picture: her mother was a witch, she was fey. The Colonel had never really loved her; she had bewitched him, twisting him to her will. One could see it in his eyes. She would have burned everyone in their beds if she had not died before she could think of it. Everyone knew that was what fey creatures did. They sucked the strength from the good people around them and twisted it into something evil. Women were simply too weak to handle power—it made them insane.

Ateaurtes was five years her senior, and had been the only one to show Lanthiad a picture of their mother. It was a worn gelatin print their father thought he had hidden securely in his library, inside a dusty volume of sixteenth century poetry. Looking out at Lanthiad from its creased surface was a pretty young woman with hair curly to the point of impertinence, just like her own. The face was unfamiliar, yet it wore the same expression she had always thought belonged to Ateaurtes alone. Lanthiad had searched the print occasionally for a likeness to herself, but if there had been one, it was too obscure for a young girl to see while anxiously skulking through her father’s room in the middle of the night.

When Lanthiad was ten years old she was finally bold enough to ask Ateaurtes what he remembered. What terrible thing had she done that no one would talk about her? Was she executed as a murderess? Did she steal newborn babes and eat them, like Nanny said the fey woman in her village had? How exactly did she die?

Ateaurtes had looked up from his lessons and said, “She faded away. She just became paler and paler, sleeping more and more, until one day, the maid went to see if she was awake for tea and found she’d disappeared.”

“Did she run away?”

“No, Lani. If she’d run away, Father would’ve found her, but he never did. There was nothing to find-- I saw. Just a hollow gown in the bed, as if she’d turned to smoke. Now let me be.”

The colonel had joined his wife, vanishing on the far eastern battlefields without a trace, like so many soldiers in the middle years of the war. Ateaurtes was already home from university when the official notice had come. He wrote to a faded address he found among their father’s papers, and within two months they had settled their affairs and boarded a ship bound for the Monchinik Sea, far away from everything.

Lanthiad knew Ateaurtes watched her, searching for signs that she, too, would turn into a mere reflection, wavering and vanishing with the shifting of the light, leaving just a memory.

*    *    *    *    *    *

The night was filled with unicorns. Black, white and gray in the moonlight, spotted and striped, with straight horns, curved horns, and twisted horns, large as draft horses and as small as calves -- they all came down from the myth-clouded peaks and gathered below Lanthiad’s bedroom window.

Lanthiad knew they were there and opened her window. Her room was on the second floor, above the cook’s garden. She stared at the ghostly shapes below, grazing contentedly among the basil and thyme, trodding on the mint and disrupting the neat white pebble borders; the cook would become apoplectic if she knew the damage they were doing to her cherished garden. Lanthiad threw her shawl over her shoulders and leaned out over the dew-covered windowsill.

“Shoo!” she whispered anxiously, trying to wave them away. She was afraid to raise her voice lest she wake the entire household. “Get!” 

The unicorns stoutly ignored her. They didn’t even twitch an ear. A short, barrel-bellied fellow was blithely rubbing his side against the rosemary bush, partially crushing it.

Lanthiad cracked open her bedroom door and listened, but all she heard were the hollow thumps of hooves outside. She closed her door very, very slowly, praying to the gods that it did not creak. Hiking up her long nightdress, she tiptoed stealthfully past the other bedchambers. She paused at the head of the servant’s stairs, her heart hammering, and listened again for movement within the house. The old house creaked and groaned, and still she was the only one who had noticed anything odd. Amazed at her luck, Lanthiad descended the narrow servant’s stairs and opened the kitchen door.

All was as it should be; moonlight picked out the shape of the heavy table, the neatly ordered shelves and the wide white sink. The dark mass of the stove huddled low and smoldering against the wall like a sleeping dragon. Lanthiad’s eyes darted to the closed door of the servant’s quarters. No one was stirring there either, and they were right beside the garden. Her eye caught the gleam of a horn through the window above the sink.

She scurried across the kitchen, narrowly avoiding a chair, and flung open the back door.  She stood on the threshold, her breath coming in quick, short gasps that floated away through the frosty air like clouds. The unicorn nearest her looked at her blandly, a hunk of sweet marjoram dangling from the corner of its mouth, root and all. Lanthiad clutched her shawl tightly about her. Her panic was rising exponentially as she took in the extent of the damage to the garden. There was no way it would be overlooked, but perhaps it could still be explained away. A pack of dogs, maybe? Would the cook believe that?

“Get!” she hissed. “Go away! Stop that!”

A tiny unicorn, coming only as high as her waist, attempted to push past her into the house. She blocked its path and closed the door quickly. “Get out of the garden! Get!” She pushed the nearest unicorn and glanced up at the house nervously. All was dark. She tried to drive the beasts toward the general direction of the garden gate, shoving them and ordering them one moment and pulling and pleading with them the next. If they moved, it was only a pace or two out of her way. She soon found herself in the middle of the herd, her route back to the house blocked and the unicorns insensately devouring and trampling the cook’s garden. She could see a pale streak of white beneath their hooves that was her shawl.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she moaned, and felt many tiny, sharp claws run across her bare feet. “Eh!” she exclaimed, startled. She flailed, jumped out of bed, and lifted the coverlet to see what had been under it. Not finding anything, she pulled it off the bed, gave it a violent shake, and was immediately rewarded with a small green something that flew into the air, tail spinning. She gasped and hopped back, dropping the coverlet. The green something landed on the floor with a slapping sound and disappeared beneath the bed.

There was a light tapping at her door.

“Marita? Is something wrong?” Bumi slid the door slightly open and peeked in. “I hear you cry out.”

Lanthiad blinked at her, somewhat disoriented. She had slept in the Pulauni dress, which was now badly rumpled, and most of her hair had come loose to curl wildly about her head and face. 

Bumi stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing her full repertoire of jewelry and a dress that dazzled sleep-filled eyes: pale blue with gold embroidery, figured in orange with what might be flowers. “Was it a bad dream?”

“No,” Lanthiad said. “I think it was some kind of lizard…” She went down on her knees and looked under the bed. The house woman knelt beside her with a jangle and also looked. “Do you see it?”

“No, Marita. It may be frightened.”

“I wish Atea was here. I don’t think he has a lizard,” Lanthiad murmured to herself. “Wait! There it is! Do you see it?” She stretched out on the floor and reached her hand slowly under the bed, poised for attack, but it was too quick for her; her hand slapped down on bare wood. The lizard darted by Bumi’s feet, startling her and throwing her off balance. Lanthiad made hasty grab for it, causing Bumi to fall back with a small cry. The house woman caught herself with her hands, and the lizard made for the washbasin via the route straight over Lanthiad’s legs.

“Ah! Get it!” she exclaimed, scrambling awkwardly from under the bed and “Ow!” bumping her head against it in her haste. She grabbed the edge of the bed for support, grimacing, her hand rubbing her forehead. Bumi helped her to stand.

“Are you hurt?”

“Which way did it go?”

The house woman pointed to the washbasin. Lanthiad hurried over to it, examined each side of it briefly. She lifted her skirt and dropped to her knees.

“Why would your brother wish a lizard?” Bumi asked, picking the coverlet off the floor. She looked at Lanthiad, who had her head level with the space below the stand’s bottom shelf.

“There it is!” Lanthiad whispered excitedly, signaling to her to come closer. “It’s under the stand.”

Bumi knelt and looked at the washstand apprehensively.

“You watch that side, and I’ll try to get it over here. Don’t let it escape.”

Lanthiad carefully moved into position, her eye fixed resolutely on her prey. She edged her hand toward the cornered lizard with infinite slowness. It held perfectly still, its tiny black eyes watching her every move. “Come on,” she whispered. “Hold still. Stay…stay. I got it!” She raised her closed hand triumphantly and grinned as she met the Pulauni woman’s eyes. 

“Why does your brother wish a lizard?” Bumi asked again.

“For his collection,” Lanthiad replied, rising. She cupped her hands together for a better hold on the squirming reptile. “Is there something I can put this in? A jar or something?”

The house woman led her to the kitchen, which was little more than a large covered walkway between the main house and the servant’s quarters. Woven reed mats, secured on lengths of wood, were hung from floor to ceiling to keep out the persistent rain. There was no real furniture, everything being stored on shelves and pegs on either side of the doors.

Lanthiad stood uncertainly by the doorway, the lizard securely in hand. She had awakened before anyone else. The servants were quietly going about their morning rituals, sweeping the floors and toasting the day’s tea. They passed through the kitchen, casting curious looks at her. An old woman with white-streaked hair was tending the cooking the fire, and beside her was a small child in Pulauni clothing, his fine, nut-brown hair trimmed pageboy style. He stared openly at Lanthiad, his thumb in his mouth. Bumi said something to the old woman Lanthiad didn’t understand and rummaged through the shelves for an appropriate lizard receptacle. The old Pulauni woman grunted and looked at Lanthiad suspiciously. Bumi found a glass jar and held it for Lanthiad as the lizard was unceremoniously ushered into it.

“Why does he collect lizards?” Bumi asked, her brows furrowed.

Lanthiad watched the green lizard’s frantic attempts to climb the slick walls of the jar, her hand pressed firmly over the opening. “He studies nature, forms of life,” she said.

“For this, he needs lizards?”

Lanthiad looked at the house woman. “He’s categorizing them, and to do that, he has to catch an example of each and examine it.” She felt the old woman scrutinizing her disapprovingly and wished she had made an effort toward smoothing her hair. The little boy continued to stare, wide-eyed.

“Why?”

“Well, he wants to know why they are made the way they are, how they work. Why they behave the way they do.”

“Why doesn’t he ask them?”

“Huh? How—” she faltered. Could Ateaurtes just ask the animals? No, that was absurd; nobody could talk to animals. If Ateaurtes could do that, he wouldn’t be collecting them, he would be teaching others to talk to animals.

The old woman grumbled something to Bumi in the North Country language, triggering a brief argument wherein the old woman loudly insisted and Bumi indignantly refused. The child paid them no attention. Lanthiad was beginning to feel uncomfortable with his stare. He had probably never seen a redhead before, much less a Continental woman. Bartinauntes was not known for his socializing. His estate was so remote he rarely entertained guests or came to town for anything other than business once or twice a year, lingering for a couple of days to attend the odd dinner or party. Lanthiad had only met him because he came from the same region as Etovices and sometimes made a point of calling upon him. Bartinauntes was considered to be an attractive, likeable man, with a comfortable income from his estate. Oknas had once tried to match him up with her daughter, Leciad. She knew her daughter was one of the loveliest girls on the island: her skin was honey-colored, without freckles, and her eyes were deep blue. Combined with a regal bearing and years of carefully selected Continental tutors, she should have conquered any man her parents chose for her. Yet, Bartinauntes had been oblivious to her charms.

“I’ll never understand it!” Oknas had declared confidentially to Lanthiad one day. “My Leciad is a pearl. She can play the harp, and sing so sweetly, it always brings me to tears! And that man had the nerve to overlook her! The man is a stone, an absolute rock! It almost broke her poor heart. But it was all for the best, in the end. I told her, ‘Did you really want to live in the North Country with all those savages, away from your dear mother?’ I would much rather see her closer to town, with some nice, educated young man who knows how a Continental lady should be treated; someone who’s civilized and hasn’t been corrupted.” Lanthiad knew Oknas meant her brother, and so did he.

“The girl is insipid,” Ateaurtes had complained. “Signal me when they’re gone.”

The Pulauni child took his finger out of his mouth and said distinctly, “Pawang!”

Shocked, the two women dropped their argument and looked from the child, to Lanthiad, and back again.

“What does ‘pawang’ mean?” Lanthiad asked. She was certain the little boy had been speaking to her.

The Pulauni women exchanged looks. Bumi glanced at the child, and said, “he does not mean it; he is just a child. Would you like breakfast? It could be ready shortly.”

The old woman protested angrily, grabbing the house woman’s hem and shaking it agitatedly. Bumi pushed the bony hand away and replied curtly. She turned back to Lanthiad. The old woman frowned and shouted, “No unicorn! Bad luck! Marita, you understand? No unicorn!” The old woman waved the stick she had been stirring the fire with at her.

“I don’t understand.” She looked at the house woman’s face, hoping to see some kind of illumination there. Bumi’s expression was somewhere between anger and mortification.

“No unicorn!”

“What is she talking about? Isn’t there a unicorn?”

“There is, but she doesn’t want the hunt,” Bumi explained, frowning, and said something to the old woman in Pulauni. The old woman responded vociferously. Her stick changed directions and shook at the house woman. Lanthiad took a step toward the door to the main house.

“I’ll take breakfast in my room,” she said, clutching the lizard jar to her breast. 

“Very well, Marita,” Bumi replied, her face strained. Lanthiad could hear the old Pulauni woman carrying on all the way down the corridor to her room. For a change, she was glad that she could not understand much Pulauni. She tied a handkerchief over the mouth of the jar, sighed and looked at herself in the dresser mirror, then sighed again. She picked up her hairbrush and walked to the window. Through the slats of the shutters she could see that the rain was falling steadily, but without the force it had exhibited the day before, making it more of a shower than a storm. There was very little wind, and wide eaves of the house were sufficient to keep the rain away from its walls. She opened the shutters and examined the view.

Between Bartinauntes’ house and the nearest building the yard was a deserted, green pool of water, dotted here and there with palm trees.  It rippled like the sea with rainfall. A couple Pulauni men were wading through it to make repairs to the makeshift walkways, their skirts tucked up into their waistbands and their legs muddied to their knees. Beyond the yard were a couple raised storehouses, whitewashed like her uncle’s, and one or two Pulauni houses with roofs of plain, wide split boards. Their verandas were small and unpainted, but their posts were carved into what Lanthiad thought might be representations of standing people.

She settled down to the tedious process of untangling her hair while she puzzled over what the old woman had said to her. She had never heard of anyone objecting to a unicorn hunt. As a little girl, pretending to hunt unicorns was as popular as tea parties. She even had an illustrated reader about hunting unicorns, just like everyone else. It was understood that like waltzing at a ball, the question was: ‘When will it happen, how well will I perform, and who will be watching?’ not ‘Is it right for me to go at all?’ It was an object of daydreams, sleepless nights and much fevered planning to most young girls.

Of course, the reality did not meet expectations. Lanthiad was a seasoned wallflower; whole balls had waltzed by her like summer breezes without anyone outside her family asking for a dance, and being designated as the maiden felt more like a trick than an honor. She knew Ateaurtes did not dare choose one of the Island girls; his favor, meant in earnest or not, would have been construed as a preliminary to an offer of marriage. While Ateaurtes was fond enough of women, he had yet to meet any one who embodied all the traits he required in a partner and was unlikely to settle for anything less. He often used his filial duties as a barrier, claiming on more than one occasion that he could not possibly be spared; he had to dance with his sister.

A large, dirty yellow dog loped through the shallow water, its wet muzzle and curved tail raised. It passed behind the workmen and made straight for the building near the main house, a small white house with a high wooden roof like the Pulauni homes. As the dog climbed the steps to the veranda, its gait changed, and Lanthiad had the distinct impression as it disappeared that it was limping. She was considering this when the Pulauni workmen’s repairs brought them close enough to the main house to notice Lanthiad sitting in the window. She heard them say something, and seeing that she was aware of them, they began to grin at her. They were not much older than she was.

She blushed and quickly pulled the shutters closed, forgetting about the yellow dog for the time being. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

 Ateaurtes was delighted with the lizard. He dropped a small spider into the jar and watched the reptile greedily snap it up. “I wish I had brought my field kit,” he sighed, reluctantly setting the jar on his dressing table. He was sitting on his bed in his shirtsleeves. “There were half a dozen lizards on my ceiling this morning, but I couldn’t reach them or make them come down. I think I’ll have to discuss with Bartinauntes the possibility of returning sometime to gather more specimens; I’ve never seen so many lizards.”

He picked up his water-damaged hat and made a vain attempt to bend its misshapen brim into its former glory. Frowning, he held it out to Lanthiad, who was standing in the doorway of his room, sporting her Continental clothing once again. She took the hat with a small smile and casually examined the extent of the warping.

“Have you breakfasted?” Ateaurtes asked, standing.

“I ate in my room,” she replied, pushing on the crown of the hat gingerly. “You should get a straw hat like Bartinauntes’. There isn’t a hatter in town who could fix this.”

“You can’t find hats like this in town,” Ateaurtes complained. “Just cheap ready-mades.”

Lanthiad met her brother’s eyes, grinning. “Nevertheless.”

He made a sound low in his throat and tried to take the hat back, but Lanthiad smiled and wouldn’t give it to him. He put on his jacket and adjusted his cuffs. “Do you want to come with me to Dr. Lauventhal’s this afternoon?”

“Dr. Lauventhal’s?” Lanthiad repeated dumbly, surprised.

“He invited me over for tea this afternoon.”

Lanthiad tried to grasp what he was saying but found it difficult. One didn’t just go to tea with an alumnus of Bon. Certainly, one might have tea with him, because an alumnus was always invited, but that was the point: an alumnus was entertained, he didn’t entertain.

“I only wish I had brought my dissertation. As it is, I can only discuss it. But one can’t foresee everything, I suppose,” he said. He closed the journal that lay open on his dresser and put it in a drawer. “Do you want to come or not?”

“I—” she began. Perhaps this kind of thing was commonplace for a student; they did, after all, live side by side with the alumni at university. However, even if this were so, why would they tolerate the presence of someone’s little sister?

“I know what you’re going to say. I already asked if I could bring you, and he didn’t object.”

“What?”

“Well?”

“I—well, I—” she stammered, growing red. Did she want to go? And if she didn’t, when would she ever have another opportunity?

The doctor lived in Bartinauntes’ guesthouse with a servant he had brought with him from Bon. Lanthiad had expected a lean manservant with the strong jaw and pale, angular features for which Bon was notorious, so after treading the treacherous planking that lead up to the little house she was surprised to be met by a short, small-boned Deilapi man. In deference to the climate, his clothing was light-colored, deviating very little otherwise from that of a typical Continental servant. His eyes were slate-gray, contrasting strikingly with deep brown of his skin, and his thick, coal black was hair cropped short and combed fastidiously back from his forehead.

“His family has been in my service since the Peruipish War,” Dr. Lauventhal explained when the manservant left the room. Upon entering, Ateaurtes had automatically hung his mended, temperamental hat upon a nearby peg. Lanthiad fell in behind him like a shadow, hoping to go just as unnoticed. Nevertheless, the doctor’s keen eyes flicked to her, pinning her as well in that half-second as her brother would a beetle to a tray. “I rescued his great-grandfather from an awkward situation when he was just a boy,” continued Dr. Lauventhal, gesturing them both towards a small tea table. “According to Deilapi law, he was then a kind of slave-servant to me. Everything was in chaos, and I would have liked to deposit him somewhere suitable, but he seemed to think it wisest to remain with me. His eldest son became my manservant when he came of age, and his son after him, until finally, we have Tisheg here.” As if upon cue, the Deilapi servant re-entered, and mutely placed a generously filled tea tray on the table.

The Peruipish War had ended a full hundred years before Lanthiad was born, after nearly twenty years of warfare. The sheer number of casualties and the extent of the battlefield—four million lives lost, across nearly two thousand miles of the sub-Continent-- had set it down in history as the worst war mankind had ever seen, and ever would. Lanthiad didn’t doubt that the Deilapi boy had chosen to stay with the then-young doctor; it was revealed in the years following the war that in the confusion a sect opposing the Deilapi had managed to massacre dozens of villages in secret.

The doctor’s manservant again retired and Dr. Lauventhal poured the tea.

“What became of the younger sons?” Ateaurtes asked.

“They were set up in trades,” the doctor replied. “Have you been to Deilap?”

The two men fell in to a discussion of foreign parts seen and passed through, leaving Lanthiad at leisure to take in her surroundings. The guesthouse was laid out like a typical Pulauni home-- I-shaped, with a large, central common space, two or three small rooms on either end, and verandas in back and front—but it was clearly constructed with a Continental inhabitant in mind. The spit-plank flooring was carefully leveled, the common room walls were whitewashed, and the exterior’s decorative carving was subdued to the point of virtual invisibility. The general character of the guesthouse had not been much changed by Dr. Lauventhal’s presence. It was all typically Continental Islander, from the dark, polished wood bureaus and winged wicker chairs to the delicate, rose-painted porcelain tea set. The commonplaceness of it disturbed Lanthiad. Where was the cupboard that hid the great jars of anemic oddities, suspended in alcohol for all eternity? Where were the bubbling alembics? The chemicals and strange, acerbic scents? The large, brightly colored birds in man-sized iron cages, speaking in riddles?

The doctor himself was much more congenial than he had been previously, more voluble. True, Lanthiad could not understand half of what the doctor and her brother were saying to each other; the complicated jargon and scholastic references they tossed about were beyond her. She could only plumb the emotional depth of their expressions and tones. They were amused; they were pressing for information tactfully; they were grave about a remembered tragedy, or excited about an old project. The doctor could very well have been somebody’s accountant great-uncle, visiting for the holidays and discussing the ins and outs of bookkeeping with a junior clerk. She caught herself yawning once or twice, but hid it deftly, thinking it would be rude to seem openly bored or disappointed. The two men were very polite to her, pausing in their discussions occasionally to speak to her and keep her supplied in tea and cakes, but Lanthiad’s initial discomfort, combined with a growing disillusionment, left her somewhat reticent. Her brother was too engrossed in the pleasure of the doctor’s company to notice, and they grew very easy with her silence, leaving her out of the conversation for extended periods of time.

Maybe Dr. Lauventhal’s professional paraphernalia was stowed away from prying eyes? Lanthiad discreetly eyed a closed, glazed-front cabinet on the opposite wall. She monitored the manservant’s movements through the guesthouse, hoping he might open a door and give her a forbidden glimpse of the next room, but the Deilapi merely paced relentlessly between the tea table and the kitchen. This in itself was inadequate entertainment, so she filled the time with cake and tea until she had to lean back thoughtfully in her chair like a seasick sailor who hopes that holding perfectly still will somehow influence the world around him.

Later, Lanthiad sympathized with how a glove must feel when it is left behind in some odd or unexpected place, fallen behind a chest, or dropped in street traffic, for when she woke she found herself completely mislaid. She was in a tiny room, reclining on a rattan lounge, her head resting on a small cushion. The walls were gray with shadow and the rain drummed a solemn, hollow tattoo upon the roof. She supposed she must have fallen asleep, although she could not remember having done so. Nodding off at tea was something small children did, not young ladies. She was both embarrassed and vexed. She lay still a moment, listening for movement, voices, any sign that she was not alone, but there was just the persistent rap of the rain on the wooden roof.  The room had two double doors, both closed. Lanthiad eased one of them open and peeked out.

Dr. Lauventhal’s common room was empty. The tea things were cleared away, and the veranda doors wide open. A broad, fuzzy beam of light spilled across the dark wood floorboards. No lamps were lit, leaving most of the room in semi-darkness. The pools swelling over the lawn reflected a tangerine and pink sky on their dappled surfaces. Creeping yellow roses bounced and heaved in the downpour, tenaciously clinging to the eaves and railing of the veranda. It seemed to Lanthiad that it was not just she who had been abandoned, but the entire house, as if it was a ship that had broken mooring in the night and drifted away.

Where had Ateaurtes gone? Surely he wouldn’t just leave her? Had he and the doctor gone to the main house for dinner or wandered away to do some spontaneous specimen collecting? Her brother was certainly guilty of such behavior in the past. Standing in the middle of the room, she listened again for voices. Rain tended to drown sound; warped it and washed it down and away like water-soluble ink. It was a matter of finding the original shape behind the storm, its outline, shadow. It helps to know what to look for, of course, because listening hard isn’t enough. It has to be to the right thing, or near it, otherwise it will get confused with something else. The creepers creaked. The water splashed against the veranda steps. A dog in the distance howled. Something light and metal ticked, like a clock.

Lanthiad noticed a light out of the corner of her eye. As she turned her head it vanished, the ticking stopping a fraction a second later, like the last, awkward clap of a dying applause.  It came from the general direction of the cabinet Lanthiad had been scrutinizing earlier. It was a squat affair with stubby, claw-footed legs and a curved, belly-like front. It rather resembled a lion, if a lion had two doors tastefully glazed and latched in its middle, and a blue-enameled vase for a head. Lanthiad stepped over to the cabinet, listened again for a moment. She heard nothing new from within or without the guesthouse. She tried the latch. It was unlocked, which was disappointing. If she had really seen a glow coming from the cabinet it must be something unusual inside. It would be too valuable to leave just sitting in there, readily available to the first comer. She glanced at her disheveled reflection in the cabinet door, patted her hair a little in a futile attempt to tame it, and looked inside the cabinet.

What she saw made her catch her breath. It was a mechanism of some kind, about a foot and half high and ten inches wide, all silver and glass. In its center was a large bell jar containing a series of pinwheels suspended along a glass rod. The tiny pinwheel sails were made of the same kind of material as the hair-thin arms that attached them to the rod, finely woven and fragile-looking, like ice crystals. A half dozen silver-lidded hatches and gauges with crystal faces were grouped around the mechanism’s base, along with some kind of arm that looked like the long stem of a smoking pipe. Dense, intertwined geometric shapes were etched over the entire surface of the silver, reminding Lanthiad oddly of Dr. Lauventhal’s’ cane.

“Do you like it?” the doctor asked.

Lanthiad started guiltily from the cabinet, her face flushing. The doctor was standing near her in the doorway of the veranda, leaning casually on the cane, a pipe in his free hand. He had been sitting outside smoking. His eyes glittered, a reassuring smile appearing in his snowy beard.

Lanthiad hesitated, uncertain whether she had made the doctor angry or not. When no rebuke came, she relaxed slightly and nodded. “What is it?”

Dr. Lauventhal stepped closer and reached out a thin hand to open the cabinet doors further. The delicate pinwheels in the device began to spin rapidly, a pinpoint of light forming where their arms touched the glass rod. It flashed on and off with a sharp, thin snap: the source of what Lanthiad had thought was a clock-like tick. “A sentimental souvenir,” the old doctor said, stepping back to the doorway to allow Lanthiad a closer look. “A thaumatosprectrometer, the cornerstone of my career. I invented it, oh, long ago.”

Lanthiad touched the base of the meter lightly, the pinwheels still spinning. The gauges bobbed and the tiny motes of light turned from a white to a faint, milky blue.

 “What is it used for?” she asked.

“It measures thaumatic radiance.”

Lanthiad glanced up at the doctor. “You mean… magic?” She whispered the last word quickly, like a profanity.

“Yes. That’s the essence of it, really. Quite a simple idea, but difficult to implement. There are only a few in existence. This is my second; the first was broken.”

“How long does it take to make one?”

“This one took fifty-three years, but then it was a copy, which sped it up quite a bit. Prototypes always take the longest, you know.”

Sometimes Lanthiad found Ateaurtes late at night, bent over his work, barely sparing a glance to either side for anything else, no time for procrastination, no eyes for other possibilities, no interest in or patience for asking questions that might stall or detour his course. She thought it might be a lonely life, if one bothered to notice. She pictured Dr. Lauventhal now similarly, and time pulled away like a wave retracting from a beach, revealing the things that hid beneath: a young man with a pale, haggard face from long hours of research in dim, poorly ventilated rooms among dusty old tomes, his chemical-stained hands manipulating and sculpting metal and glass with mathematical precision, growing old. It all happened quicker than the blink of an eye. Time came rolling back, turning in on itself as it returned to its natural place, subsuming the person the doctor had been beneath centuries.

Lanthiad felt shaken. She was unsure what had just occurred, but she certain that it was something. It was as if a window had opened out of a blank wall, and then vanished as if it had never been, only the wall was Dr. Lauventhal.

“Two,” Dr. Lauventhal breathed. “How can there be two?”

With considerable reluctance, he pulled his eyes away from Lanthiad to examine the magic meter.

The mechanism was emitting a steady hum; the pinwheels shining brightly and spinning so rapidly that they made ring of blue light in the air. The hum began to fracture, breaking into distinct snaps. The wheels slowed and the needles of the gauges dropped. Lanthiad looked at the doctor. He was gripping the knob of the cane tightly in both hands. After the snapping of the meter returned to its previous level the old doctor looked at Lanthiad as if he was seeing her for the first time and was quite astonished by it.

“What did you see?” the doctor demanded.

Lanthiad took a step back, startled.

“Come now, I know you saw something,” he pressed. “How old are you?”

“I—“ Lanthiad stammered, confused. “I’m not yet eighteen,”

“And all these years you’ve been where? Elsthar?”

“No. I mean, yes. My family is from Elsthar,” she replied.

“But not all your family?”

“No. My mother was from Maur l’Koth.”

Dr. Lauventhal fell silent, his gray brows furrowed in contemplation.

“Why are you asking me all this? Where did Ateaurtes go?” Lanthiad cried, bewildered. “Why was your magic meter behaving like that? Why won’t you tell me?”

“You’re good with languages, I trust?” he asked, ignoring her questions.

“Reasonably so. Why?”

“How many do you speak?”

“Three. Why do you ask? ”

“Read?”

“Ten. What do you want from me?”

“What do you make of this?” the doctor said, pressing the cane suddenly into her hands. She nearly dropped it.

“I-- I--” she stammered, gawping at the heavy cane, not knowing what to say, what to do. What did he want? What was the right thing to say? The doctor’s Deilapi servant still hadn’t emerged to turn on the lamps and it was quite difficult to see. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Take a good look,” Dr. Lauventhal suggested, and a light came on. Lanthiad glanced up and saw a luminous orb hovering above their heads.  She gasped. Ateaurtes had told her about the orbs, but she had never seen one in person before. The halls and corridors of the university at Aumsthartaum were lit by the same kind of orb, floating above brass mounts. Anyone could turn them off and on, without using any real skill. There had always been a lot of talk about using them in Crown and municipal buildings. Optimists believed that they would eventually enter into all levels and creed of society as a standard item. Lanthiad stared at the doctor’s orb. She couldn’t see how it could ever become commonplace. It emitted a peculiar, thin light, and hummed slightly, like a jar of bees.

Lanthiad looked at the cane in her hands, panicking. Its wood was dark and oily looking as if thousands of hands had run over its surface, like the banisters in old buildings, yet the designs were very crisp, clear. They resembled the designs etched on the meter. She held the cane level and turned it slowly in her hands. Not designs, she realized, but inscriptions. She couldn’t find the beginning, end, or even the individual characters of the writing, but she was certain that was what they had to be. She could feel it. Maybe she was just looking at it wrong. She held the cane vertical and squinted at it. No, this was worse. The inscriptions were very dense, and looking at it this way was making her eyes go bleary. She blinked several times, her eyes watering.  She lowered the cane and rubbed her eyes. Dr. Lauventhal was standing very still, patiently waiting. Lanthiad looked again at the cane, but it was useless. She couldn’t find the start of the inscriptions, and doubted now that that’s what they really were.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, timidly holding the cane out to the doctor. “I-- I just don’t know.”

“You can’t read it?”

“I—I’m not sure it’s writing. I mean, I thought at first it was, but… I’m just not sure.”

He took the cane, regarding her with a satisfied expression. “I understand,” he said mildly.

“It’s splendid cane, though,” she commented and glanced nervously at the orb floating over them.

He gazed thoughtfully down at the chaotic patterns that covered the cane. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is. Take it almost everywhere with me…”

“I think—I think I’ll be getting back to the house,” she said, backing toward the other veranda door, “The rain seems to be letting up.” She turned and hurried out the door and down the steps, not bothering to listen to Dr. Lauventhal’s parting words. Ateaurtes was crossing the yard at an easy pace, wearing his troublesome hat. She intended to pass him without a pause but he stayed her with a hand.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, concerned.

“No. Everything’s fine,” she replied curtly, thinking only of reaching the privacy of her room, or rather, the guest bedroom Bartinauntes’ staff had given her. She pulled free and disappeared into the main house, Ateaurtes staring after her in confusion. 

*    *    *    *    *    *

Lanthiad was alone in her room, her perfect wedding cake dress gritty and washed with mud up to her knees. Twice in twenty-four hours the dress had been ruined. Twice the paper-thin fabric and spider web lace would have to be coaxed and ground free of the pernicious island silt, dried and pressed along every seam and delicate fold. Tears of frustration poured freely down Lanthiad’s flushed face. She cast her eyes about the room for the native costume the house woman, Bumi, had leant her the evening before, and was grateful to find it lying over the foot of the bed where she had left it. That was one less complication.

She undressed, washed her feet and calves, and wiped her boots with the wet cloth, a futile effort.  The mud merely smeared around and wedged into the seams.  Lanthiad tried to remember how the Pulauni dress was meant to be pleated, put it on, and lay back on the bed, not quite sure she didn’t have it on backwards somehow. She snuffled, wiping her reddening eyes on a handkerchief, and stared at the ceiling. Nothing was going well. She should have stayed at her uncle’s estate, let Ateaurtes find another maiden among the local populace. She didn’t want to be the maiden, but those girls did. It was in their eyes, like hunger or envy, for they were not so different from the men. They wanted to be singled out as exceptional, whether it is for a virtue real or imagined, and failing that, they wanted to have an adventure. To feel that being alive and in the world was extraordinary, however fleeting the sensation. Lanthiad was not free of these desires herself, and knew them when she met them in others, yet the hunt did not stir romance in her soul.

Perhaps she lacked the enthusiasm required to get entirely caught up in the fantasy. The unicorn had been the symbol of nobility since the Upheaval, when King Timestes made his legendary journey from town to town, purifying the wells and curing the diseased with the horn of a bull unicorn. Lanthiad and Ateaurtes had reenacted the legend many times as children, Ateaurtes the tall, strong shepherd who would be king, Lanthiad as innocent dairymaid. Lanthiad wore a ring of flowering weeds in her hair, and Ateaurtes had a stick that could be alternately a shepherd’s crook or a sword with which to pierce the unicorn’s heart after Lanthiad lulled it into submission. This was always after a long chase, which wound through the house, up the stairs, under tables, into the attic and down again by an ever-changing route that led inevitably to exile in the back yard by the exasperated cook. The cook’s boy invariably portrayed the sorcerer in exchange for being allowed to be the unicorn later and lead the chase that his mother so despised.

Lanthiad was never satisfied with the game. The cook’s boy was a poor sorcerer. Did the real sorcerer slump up to Timestes with an old tablecloth pulled haphazardly over one shoulder, say, “It’s over there if you want it,” and shove the enchanted sword at him indifferently? Lanthiad didn’t think so. It sounded like he was telling Timestes where he could take a chamber pot, rather than radically altering the course of a disease-ravaged land in a single encounter. Lanthiad thought she could do much better, but the boys would never let her try, saying that girls weren’t sorcerers, and besides, if she wasn’t the maiden, who would be? Certainly not one of them. So she had had to give in, at least when she played with others. Alone, she would pose for hours at a time in front of her standing mirror, reciting metered verse she had composed for the occasion, and offer her mysteriously draped reflection the enchanted sword (one of Ateaurtes’ toy soldiers, held by a wooden leg). This went on for over a year, until one night, after a particularly emotional line that involved her asking her reflection if it would take up the sword of Rhom and slay the unicorn to save its people, the reflection raised its hand to receive it.  From then on the game lost most of its appeal, and the mirror remained covered until the servants finally conceded to removing it from her bedroom.

Lanthiad never told anyone what happened that night with the mirror, not even Ateaurtes. That she became quiet and thoughtful was regarded as being only proper. She was, after all, nearly a young lady and should begin to comport herself suitably. The actual source of her seemingly demure behavior was not a growing awareness of her womanhood, but of her aptitude for magic. For the first couple months, she walked around like one haunted, waiting and watching for the next bizarre occurrence to leap out at her. She avoided the main stairs because of the large gilt-edged mirrors that hung in the entryway at the bottom of the steps, and took instead to the servant’s stairs.  She covertly watched her family and servants, seeking any clue in their expressions that betrayed that they knew, listening to their conversations in fear that they were talking about her feyness. Nighttime was the worst, for she would lay awake in bed, imagining hidden portent in the sounds that surfaced when the city slept. The cry of the night train was a banshee foretelling her premature death. The snaps and groans of the house settling became the brittle joints of witches in the attic, plotting her abduction, and the rattle of the wind against her windowpane was the frustrated thrashings of a spirit-monster who wanted to curl up its slimy, cold body around her bare feet and thereby suck all her life away. The nursemaid would come in and find her cold and stiff as a board, the window ajar, and no clue as to how it happened.

But when nothing persisted in happening, Lanthiad started wondering why. Ateaurtes was gone most of the year at school, so when he returned in the spring, he found his little sister to be an exceeding vain creature; she was always lingering in front of a mirror, her eyes wide and searching. She was no longer someone hunted, but someone who was looking for something they had lost. Ateaurtes’ native magical abilities manifested in his fourteenth year, and his school was diligent about developing them, sending him away on his holidays with half a dozen books to read by the next semester. Under the pretense of boredom, Lanthiad began a program of borrowing his penny novels. Finding no resistance from Ateaurtes if the novels were returned in good time and condition, she made tentative attempts at his more advanced material. If he questioned her choices, she would say something like, “I like the pictures.” She suspected this was not an adequate explanation, but Ateaurtes never questioned her further about it. He had been lending her his old textbooks for close to two years when he finally hinted that he was not being fooled. She was slipping out of his room with a dog-eared copy of The Fundamentals of Applied Biological Permittivity, 2^nd edition, when he said:

“If you’re caught with that, I know nothing about it.”

Lanthiad had paused in the doorway, alarmed. Ateaurtes was seventeen, three months away from taking his university entry exams, stooped over his cluttered desk. He finished the line he was writing and looked at her, his face a portrait of mock innocence. “I’m very busy with my studies and I really can’t be troubled about everyday concerns. I only know to change my collar because the servants tell me to, and I sometimes leave books lying about. If it’s not here, well, then, I’m sure someone found it somewhere and was simply going to return it to me at their earliest convenience.”

He grinned slyly and returned to his work. Lanthiad stared at him for a moment, absorbing the meaning of his words, then left. Ateaurtes was accepted at Aumsthartaum that fall, and when he came home during the holidays, he forgot his books under her pillow, on the seat of her favorite bench in the garden, at the breakfast table when Lanthiad was the last of their small family to leave.

Even with Ateaurtes’ complicity, performing magic was like divining for water in a desert with a stick and a prayer. It was not impossible, just highly improbable, and if she despaired of ever striking upon something viable, she remembered how her mirror-reflection had reached out as if it really could emerge from the glass to grasp Ateaurtes’ toy soldier. It proved to her that she was not wasting her time. Occasionally Ateaurtes tried to show her a trick or two, but it never amounted to more than tears and arguments. Their latent skills were different, and Ateaurtes method was pedantic, having spent so many years under the influence of boarding schools and strict tutors. Lanthiad was dedicated, but she had never been exposed to regimented learning. She had not been sent away to school, and while she had shared many of the same tutors with her brother, and was considered a good pupil, she had not been their primary charge. Ateaurtes eventually conceded that he was helpless to teach her himself and left her to her own devices. Neither Lanthiad nor Ateaurtes considered finding her a mentor some other way.  Women were not allowed in the university except during ceremonies or events where the relatives of the students were expected to attend, and even then they were carefully monitored so that they did not wander outside of the designated areas. And who, coming from this kind of institution, would even tolerate the suggestion that they should adopt a female pupil?

Lanthiad’s best spells were domestic. If she was to study for months to successfully perform a single spell, she wanted tangible results, not an abstraction. She could mop a house in under a half-hour, and launder all the linen in two, without getting lye on her hands. Dresses were more complicated, taking about three hours. Somehow, Dr. Lauventhal had caught on to her. Was it the remolding of Ateaurtes’ hat that gave her away, or when she dried her dress? How could he know? Could he sense when someone was working magic? It was a staggering idea, like knowing when people were dreaming, and what about, without focusing on any particular person. It had to be the device, the magic-meter. Did it tell him about her? It must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have shown her the cane.

It used to be, before the universities, that pupils were chosen individually. The tests were usually arranged through family or business connections, although some teachers actively sought out talent, granting people from obscure places and poor backgrounds a chance to find their true calling. Independent tests were now extremely rare, and generally conducted by eccentric, conservative old men who disapproved of the university system’s modern ways. Dr. Lauventhal was not one of these men, yet the world wasn’t as it used to be. The universities were closing, one by one, as the battlefield encroached upon their districts. Old masters and pupils alike were in turmoil, in some cases painfully relocating a lifetime of research and habits. Both Lanthiad and Ateaurtes had known when they first saw the cane that it was not an ordinary stick: it was a product of another kind of craftsmanship. When Dr. Lauventhal showed it to Lanthiad, it was a test. 

Lanthiad thought she had accepted the role fate had assigned her, and with aplomb, but that was an illusion. She had been buoyed by a hidden hope that, despite how improbable, there was still an opportunity in the future for her to become something more than a fumbling amateur.

The opportunity had come when she had least expected it.

And she had failed.

Had she been trying too hard, and therefore missed something vital? Or was she simply not talented enough, and would never be able to read the cane, no matter how long she was given, or how much she concentrated? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she had failed to perform a magical task. Ateaurtes could cast a partial animation spell on his stuffed birds, making them seem alive; they would shift on their perches, and twitch their feathers, watching over his room phlegmatically with shiny glass eyes.  Lanthiad had tried the spell once on a pet turtle that had died, but all it would do was keen peculiarly, so she had given it up as hopeless. Most of the spells that Ateaurtes excelled at were like that for her, while there were only a couple she was good at that he could not execute. He said she had not yet found her forte. Reading foreign languages was always easy for her, but she had not suspected that that had anything to do with magic. Dr. Lauventhal seemed to think otherwise. Yet, if languages were Lanthiad’s strength, why had she not been able to decipher the cane? She had thought initially that she had it, but then it evaporated, leaving her without even an idea of a single word or character, like it had never been. It had slipped between her fingers, and she had been helpless to anything about it. If this was her real strength, then her powers were very weak, indeed.

Lanthiad didn’t work the spell to clean her dress. The thought of performing such a task made her feel like a minor character in an epic play, someone whose only purpose was to maintain the action for others, a prop. Like King Timestes’ sorcerer. Nobody even remembered his name.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Lanthiad didn’t hear the first light rapping on her door. The second, a little later, caused her to stir slightly, but it wasn’t until the third-- when the owner of the rapping became so bold as to crack the door open a little-- that she woke and mumbled a reply. A fourth rapping did not come, nor a fifth, but she didn’t notice anyway. She was asleep again before the door had closed.

She woke in the middle of the night with a terrible thirst. She drank the remaining water from her washbasin pitcher, and finding it not quite satisfying, resolved to sneak down to the kitchen like she sometimes did at her uncle Etovices’ house. His servants lived in the compound outside the walled garden, so there was never any danger of encountering anyone during her nocturnal excursions, save her family, whose habits she knew well. Lanthiad was already outside the kitchen door when she remembered that Bartinauntes’ kitchen adjoined the servant’s quarters, but it was too late: she had been seen.

“I thought you might wake,” Bumi whispered, and stood. She was alone in the kitchen except for the small child that Lanthiad had seen on the previous morning, who was asleep on a mat near one wall. A large hanging brass lamp was lit, the cook fire no more than a low smolder, having begun its decline hours before. The house woman was wearing the usual plethora of silver jewelry, glittering as she moved, the lamplight picking out the metal embroidery of her dress, the bangles on her arms and wrists, the rings on her toes and fingers. Her dark hair was unbound and hung over her bare shoulders like satin.  Her black eyes took in the Pulauni dress Lanthiad was wearing and she smiled. “You like it? It is yours. My gefina wanted this dress, but I said no. You are lucky.” The Pulauni woman laughed quietly, lightly.

Lanthiad looked down at the dress she had slept in for two consecutive nights. It was severely wrinkled, and definitely skewed out of alignment, much like her hair, which had come undone. Like the house woman, Lanthiad was barefoot. She self-consciously smoothed the native dress and pushed her unkempt hair behind her ears, where she hoped it would stay.

“You are hungry?” Bumi asked, gesturing for her to enter.

“Uh, yes,” Lanthiad whispered, stepping quietly inside.  “I didn’t think anyone would be here.” She gingerly sat on the mat where Bumi indicated, a mere arm’s reach from the sleeping child. “I certainly hope you weren’t waiting up for me,” Lanthiad added.

Bumi was already busying herself, uncovering several bowls on the shelves where the leftovers from dinner had been stowed. She moved a small woven reed mat across the kitchen to rest in front of Lanthiad and began placing the bowls neatly atop it as if it were a table. “I would be awake anyway,” she said, indicating the sleeping child with a motion of her chin. She placed the last item on the mat and pulled up another mat for herself across from Lanthiad, reaching across its edge to stroke a loose strand of hair from the child’s face.  “Thimodi would cry if he wakes and is alone, so I must wait for him to be moved.”

Lanthiad doubted very much that anything short of an earthquake would wake the little boy. He was sprawled limply across the mat like a hound in the narrow shadow of the noonday sun. She wondered if that was how she looked when she had nodded off at the doctor’s tea table, and blushed. Fortunately, the lighting concealed her embarrassment from the house servant, preventing a possibly awkward explanation.

Lanthiad examined the state of the leftovers. There was coconut soup, in which floated bits of anonymous vegetables; the ubiquitous, stuffed, steamed buns; part of a roast pheasant and some kind of pickled, tart root, and rice. Lanthiad picked up a bun and, out of habit, carefully broke it open. One never knew what might be inside, and it was best to look before eating. It was rice and fish, which seemed safe enough, although she doubted that hungry as she was it really mattered. She would have eaten a tree frog, provided it was prepared well.

“What does ‘gefina’ mean?” she asked the Pulauni house woman between mouthfuls.

“Gefina? It is…there is no Elsthar word for it, Marita,” Bumi shrugged helplessly. “A gefina is someone who was a sister, do you understand?”

Lanthiad shook her head. Either someone was or wasn’t a sister, unless she was adopted. People weren’t unadopted on Pulau, were they? It seemed very strange that the natives would disown people so much that they had a word for it. Bumi was frowning, thinking.

“Bartinauntes said Puteh do not have gefina,” she said, using the Pulauni word for the Continentals. “I would not want to be Puteh. No Puteh woman is free. Everyone is a…” She paused to hunt for the appropriate word. Lanthiad had stopped eating, frankly stunned by what Bumi was saying. Pulauni servants never referred to their masters by name without an honorific: Marita, for Miss, and Encik, for Sir. Even though Bartinauntes’ estate was ordered differently than most, this was not an area where there was an exception; she had distinctly heard the housemen addressing him as Encik. And along with this disrespectful familiarity was Bumi’s shocking statement about Continental women. She thought Lanthiad was a slave!

“…prisoner,” the house woman finished. “No one can leave. Bartinauntes said this is not bad, but I disagree. I pity you. I worry about Thimodi. It is a terrible burden. Bartinauntes’ family is big, and no one has taken care of them, it has all been left to Bartinauntes. They are far away, but I leave api anyway. Maybe they visit. Who am I to say they do not?”

Bumi pointed at a small shrine on a shelf near the ceiling. Lanthiad had not noticed it before, although that was hardly surprising-- one would have to lean a ladder against the wall to reach it. Kiles had told her about the shrines the Pulauni kept in their homes for the spirits of their ancestors. They believed they had to appease the wandering spirits who did not have a proper burial, otherwise they would cause mischief and calamity among the living. Bumi was leaving a special rice alcohol the natives fermented for festivals, api, considered by some to be exceptionally fine and virulent, for Bartinauntes’ ancestors. Did she believe Continentals also had malign spirits haunting them? Why would she go to such measures for her master? And why would it matter to the little boy?

Lanthiad took a better look Thimodi, Bumi’s child. The light in the kitchen was poor, so Lanthiad had to think back to the previous morning when she had first seen the child. To Lanthiad he had appeared like any other native child: round face with high cheekbones, the folds of his upper eyelids nearly touching near the edge his eyelashes. His straight hair was cut in the usual severe style of Pulauni children. But Lanthiad clearly remembered his hair being brown, not black, and looking closely at the little boy, she noticed the sharpness of his nose and chin, the particular lankiness of his form, as if he had been made of dough and stretched to the desired height.

Thimodi. Thimodaes, a Continental name.

This was Bartinauntes’ child.

The reason for Bartinauntes’ resistance to Oknas’s attempts to match him with her daughter was suddenly quite clear. Whether Bartinauntes had found Leciad an appealing subject or not, he could not have possibly courted her without revealing the existence of the child. The island was too small and prone to gossip to prevent the intelligence from reaching her. No respectable woman would ever consent to live with her husband’s mistress under foot, and removing of the mother and child from her notice was only possible by banishing them from the island altogether, a condition a normal Pulauni would never agree to; the Pulauni sense of identity was tied so inexorably to the land and the trees of their ancestors that a Pulauni venturing off the island was given a funeral and mourned as dead. If Bartinauntes did not wish to remain a bachelor, he would have no choice but to select a bride from the lower circles of Continental society. Marriage between Continentals and pagans was not allowed; Bartinauntes would never find a priest willing to bind him to an unbeliever. It was not unheard of for Continentals to marry converts, but it was severely frowned upon; Bartinauntes would be scorned by polite society, which on the island was bound so tightly with every other aspect of life that his estate would not survive.  That he presently flourished was an astonishing testament to how well he hid his private affairs from the other Continentals. 

“Do you think the spirits can cross the water?” Bumi asked.

Lanthiad turned back to the Pulauni woman. She imagined Bartinauntes’ outraged ancestors crossing the wide sea, growing angrier with every mile they were forced to lay between themselves and their homeland. She had not seriously considered the question of ghosts before, and sincerely hoped that they were just the products of overactive imaginations.

“It is difficult to be certain,” Bumi continued. “I leave plenty of api; if they come, they will remember it is hard to be living people, and realize his family did not know they did wrong. Even they did not look after those before them. If they do not take pity on us, maybe they will drink too much and sleep. Maybe when they wake, they will reconsider.”

Bumi smiled mischievously, and Lanthiad recalled her initial impression of the house woman— Bartinauntes’ mistress? — when she first saw her standing in the kitchen. Like a princess in some fantastic tale of faraway lands, she sparkled in the lamplight, graceful and lovely. She had needed only the jewelry and clothes someone like Bartinauntes could lavish on a woman to complete the picture.

Another thought occurred to Lanthiad, something that should have been as obvious to her all along as Thimodi’s Continental hair:

“You’re waiting for Bartinauntes?”

“Yes.”

Any minute now, her host would come in to take his son to bed and to… what? Lanthiad didn’t want to know. Whatever his intentions, it would be very uncomfortable for him to find her here at such a time. “Thank you very much for the food,” she said, suddenly desperate to leave. She wanted to run all the way back to her room and pretend the night had not happened, that the past day had not happened, but she didn’t want to offend the house woman—

The mistress—

Bumi, whoever she was.

 “I ought to be going.” She rose slowly, straightened her dress, and brushed her hair out of her face, getting a finger tangled in the process. “Good night,” she said, extracting the finger.

“Good night, Marita,” Bumi replied, smiling.

Lanthiad returned a small, clumsy smile, and turned to go.

“Marita, I hope you do not have any tsiny.”

Lanthiad paused and looked back at the Pulauni woman. Her handsome face had become serious. “The unicorn does not like tsiny. Maybe your spirits are restless. You cannot leave your family like a Pulauni woman. Look after them, and maybe you will have no tsiny. Your heart must be at ease.”

Lanthiad nodded, not knowing what to say. She returned to her room, climbed into bed and pulled the thin coverlet over her face, as if such a feeble concealment would make everything pass her by.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Despite Dr. Lauventhal’s warning, Lanthiad did not wake on the morning of the hunt expecting to die. She did feel vaguely nauseous and dispirited, symptoms that could be partially accounted for by the extreme early hour of her rising, and by the overall excitement surrounding the hunt. Traditionally, the Maiden spent the three days and nights before the hunt observing a cleansing and purification ritual that would absolve her of noncorporal sins such as Vanity and Pride, which maidens were particularly susceptible to. Lanthiad was not especially devout, but even if she had been, the ritual could not be performed at Bartinauntes’ estate; there were neither the facilities nor the time, since the day of the hunt could not be known in advance, dependent as it was on the weather.  Lanthiad satisfied herself instead with nearly a week of anxiety, migrating aimlessly through the cool, shadowy interior of the house from veranda to veranda, often looking out over the waterlogged landscape toward the forested plateaus like it was a pictograph she was struggling to decipher. She lay awake in bed most of the night listening to the rain. Every day, it slackened a little more, until it was finally nothing but the idle dripping of the eaves, a signal as sure as a trumpet call.

The men were in front of the main house trying to placate a crowd of Pulauni when Lanthiad emerged. At least half of the population of Bartinauntes’ estate was in the yard, men and women of all ages, many with their children in their arms or running underfoot. Bartinauntes and the other Continental men were grouped in front of the haphazard assembly, some of them deep in debate with the more vociferous of the Pulauni. An old woman with a face like a dried apple had parted from the crowd, and was hovering around the hunting party like a fly, muttering to herself and gesturing erratically. Ateaurtes had been lingering on the fringe of the group, listening, when he noticed Lanthiad hesitating on the veranda, parasol in hand. He walked over to her quickly and offered her his arm.

“What is this all about?” she asked, bewildered.

“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” Ateaurtes said, smiling, and led her across the muddy yard to an open sedan chair. Two porters stood beside it, watching the crowd with interest. Ateaurtes settled her into the chair and said, pointing at the keepsake Kiles had given her:

 “Whatever in the world is that thing?”

Lanthiad had secured the ends of her veil around her neck with particular care, hoping no one would notice the odd, dark necklace she was wearing beneath it. She touched it apprehensively, then unwound the veil to offer him a better view of her charm. She knew behaving secretively would only stir Ateaurtes’ curiosity more. The other men were still arguing with the crowd and hadn’t taken note of her arrival yet.

In her most offhand manner she said, “Kiles thought it would be good luck.”

Ateaurtes squinted. “I suppose so; it certainly has no ornamental value. What kind of nuts are those?”

Lanthiad frowned and glanced down at the crude charm. She had only looked at it briefly since Kiles had given it to her, more in an attitude of wistfulness than clinical examination, and while she was well aware of its lack of refinement, she had not realized that it was not composed of wooden beads, but some kind of nut disguised by clever markings about peace and rest. Not quite the sentiments she expected a good luck charm to bear, but perhaps luck was interpreted differently by the Pulauni, who held a very conservative viewpoint toward life. Kiles had once told Lanthiad of a Continental farmer who had tried unsuccessfully to modernize farming techniques on his estate by introducing plow horses. The Pulauni had refused them outright, claiming that discarding the old ways would offend their ancestors and that continuity was the surest guarantee of success.

“Bĕrbijidiri,” one of porters muttered, peering incredulously at Lanthiad’s charm. Hearing him, the other porter followed his gaze.

Ateaurtes hadn’t heard the porter. “Soulnut,” Lanthiad translated, trying to remain undaunted.

“Rather an odd thing to make into a charm,” Ateaurtes said. He didn’t know the significance of the soulnut in Pulauni culture, having not been privy to her talks with Kiles on island lore. He and Kiles were of a similar age, but Ateaurtes viewed Kiles merely as his uncle’s head employee, deserving of a certain amount of respect and cordiality during their frequent encounters and trustworthy enough to serve as a stand-in guardian to his sister, nothing more. If he had been friends with Kiles he might have adopted pieces of the Pulauni mode of dress, too. As it was, Ateaurtes was wearing the loose-fitting brown jacket he usually used on expeditions over a linen shirt, waistcoat and trousers.  A leather side bag and rifle were slung casually over one shoulder. The feather in his hatband shone in the sunlight, and a bright green cloth, somewhat larger than a handkerchief, replaced his collar and tie. The color was no doubt chosen out of a desire to match the feather. Lanthiad had seen the outfit before, yet something about it wasn’t right.

“Where’s your fob?” she asked.

Ateaurtes glanced down at his waistcoat and absently felt his pockets, coming up with only a large silver watch, which he immediately clicked open and examined. “I don’t know; I can’t find it,” he said. He tucked his watch back into his pocket, not meeting her eyes.

“You lost it?” Lanthiad asked, astonished. She had made that fob herself, only the year before, and had been quite proud of it. It had taken her weeks.

“Misplaced it. It probably just fell under the bed. No doubt it’ll reappear,” he said.

Lanthiad opened her mouth to say something scathing, but Ateaurtes was saved by the approach of the rest of the hunting party, which had finally noticed her arrival. The crowd had grown still and silently watched the men break away from them and cross the yard to the sedan chair. Bartinauntes was the only member of the party who was not notably relieved at her presence.  He kept glancing at the crowd, puzzled. The shriveled old woman followed them, still muttering and gesturing. For a few minutes they were occupied in making the commonplace enquiries into Lanthiad’s health and comfort, pointedly ignoring the transition the old woman had made from merely gesturing to sporadically spraying them with some kind of dried, crumpled leaves she was pulling from a pouch. The crowd made no protest as the hunting party collected their gear and departed; they mutely stepped aside, except for the old woman. She shadowed them doggedly through the compound, across the rice fields a small, bent figure trailing along in the rear. At the edge of the forest she stopped and turned back, her supply of dead leaves exhausted, but her dog continued on, weaving in and out of the underbrush to either side of the trail. It seemed vaguely familiar, but then so many of the island dogs looked alike.   

“What did all those people want?” Lanthiad asked Etovices as he strolled along beside her sedan chair. The path into the highlands of the forest had not yet grown so constricted that they had to walk single file. The main bulk of the party was ahead of the chair, with Bartinauntes and the other men who had originally seen the unicorn in the lead. Ateaurtes was lagging at the rear with the supply porters, evidently unwilling to continue his conversation with Lanthiad about his dedication as a brother.

“Nothing, really. Just being a nuisance,” Etovices replied. Like Ateaurtes, he had exchanged a formal collar for something more utilitarian, and carried a rifle and leather pack.

“They don’t want the unicorn caught, do they?”

Etovices looked sharply at her, surprised. “What makes you say that?”

“Something one of Bartinauntes’ house servants said to me.”

Etovices had a naturally ruddy complexion; it flushed a shade deeper, and he said angrily, “She shouldn’t be talking to you like that; Bartinauntes swore she’d stay in her place. I’m going to have to speak to him about this.”

Lanthiad was alarmed by her uncle’s reaction. Did the others have encounters with the old kitchen woman, too? She wondered if she should have told someone about it sooner, but that would have required explaining how she had come to be in the kitchen in the first place. Even if she was comfortable with telling her uncle she chased lizards, she didn’t want to risk him asking the questions that would naturally follow: Did you go to the kitchen again after that? If you did, why? And what happened then? Had you been to the kitchen before? Lanthiad paled at the thought of deciding between lying outright about Bartinauntes’ mistress, or telling Etovices the whole thing in detail and thereby exposing Bartinauntes’ secret to public ridicule.

Etovices, seeing how uncharacteristically pale Lanthiad had become, composed himself and patted her hand reassuringly, saying, “Dear girl, don’t be alarmed. I’m not cross with you. You certainly have enough to think about without my foolish outbursts.”

Etovices’ mistaking Lanthiad’s moral dilemma for meekness only troubled her more.

“We’ll probably be stopping for a rest before long; there’s no real hurry,” he said, making an effort to change the subject. “Even with this much daylight we won’t be reaching the unicorn’s territory until tomorrow afternoon. The terrain deeper in is absolutely impossible after dark.”

No one knew exactly when the route they were following had been made, or where exactly it began or ended. The islands were full of mysterious paths believed to have been roads built in ancient times by Mran’s earliest incarnation, the Ashay Empire. There was no guessing their original extent, since many had been obscured or destroyed altogether by the passage of time, but there was no doubt that they had required a level of organization and technology to construct that was completely foreign to modern islanders. Bartinauntes pointed out the signs when they paused to rest for the second time: the unusual levelness of the path, the unnaturally even rock face along the east side, both clear evidence of intensive excavation. The sun was high and bright above the dense forest canopy, dappling the damp, thick humus that carpeted the earth with patches of light like a broken mirror. Lanthiad looked at the boggy path and the short cliff that ran along one side of it, wondering if she would have noticed anything peculiar if Bartinauntes had not directed her attention to them.  They no more resembled the relics of a powerful ancient empire to her than the large hillocks outside of Elsthar looked like fortifications, yet that was exactly what they had been. The stones had been scavenged to form foundations elsewhere, and the Ashay highway had been neglected, overgrown, washed away by landslides and floods.

The old woman’s dog had kept up with the hunting party, an invisible rustling in the bushes. As the trees grew taller and the undergrowth less dense, its thin, curling tail would appear, rocking in time with its trot. Lanthiad thought she was the only person aware of the dog, an assumption aided by the porters’ unusual taciturnity, but then it came into full view: a large, yellow dog with the narrow limbs and the bat-like, pointed ears of all native dogs. Only this one limped slightly, as if on an old injury it had long since learned to move around.

“Pawang,” the lead porter whispered, startling her. He watched the yellow dog disappear back into the underbrush, a faint smile on his lips. Lanthiad felt as if a part of her had been waiting the past week just to hear the word again; she leaned forward in the chair and stared at the bushes where the dog had vanished. There were many dialects on Pulau; ‘pawang’ could have been the North Country word for ‘dog’, but the reverent tone in which the porter had said it didn’t fit. It was something else, but what? Lanthiad tried to ask the porter, but he didn’t understand Elsthar. She considered waiting for Etovices to return, then dismissed the idea. Etovices was always extremely reluctant to discuss native culture with her, as if he believed Continental ladies were not supposed to know it existed.

What was freely discussed with her was the hunt.  Ateaurtes and Pades had reassured her repeatedly that a unicorn was no more dangerous than any other horned animal. Unicorns tended to avoid injuring women, no matter how disreputable they might be, and a solitary unicorn, living without the protection of a herd, will only attempt to gore a pursuer if cornered. Very few hunters had been wounded this way, unicorns being more inclined to escape at the first opportunity than make a stand. They were notoriously elusive animals, leaving no hoof prints and shying at the least unfamiliar noise. What they ingested was mere speculation, and if they excreted anything, no one had found it. That unicorns existed at all was only proven by seeing one, for whether seen straight on or out of the corner of the eye, confusing a unicorn for an ordinary beast was akin to confusing the sun with the stars. If Ateaurtes had been a member of the surveying party that encountered the unicorn, he would have asserted its authenticity with the same stubborn, unthinking conviction Pades had, even though it was witnessed at some distance. That he wanted to verify it by bringing it in was just another example of how difficult he could be. Did he think he was going to uncover all its secrets by dissecting it like one of his toads or insects? Would he mount it on the wall, or on a pedestal, rearing in the air? He couldn’t even find it on his own. The only people that had ever discovered a unicorn at close proximity were girls. In the age of King Timestes, milkmaids and shepherdesses were tripping over unicorns everywhere they went, as if the unicorns couldn’t resist following them to secluded spots for a tête-à-tête. Without a Maiden, the men were simply wandering in the forest.

By early afternoon the path had become too narrow and encroached by trees and rocks to accommodate the sedan chair. Nobody had expected to be able to carry Lanthiad the entire way, and Bartinauntes had prepared for this eventuality by bringing along a large, heavy oilcloth. He ordered the chair covered and secured atop a couple small boulders with rope and stones to keep it out of the damp.

The abandoning of the sedan chair was a mixed blessing in Lanthiad’s opinion. Riding was difficult for prolonged periods, even with a cushion and adequate foot space; her body ached from sitting still for hours and bracing against the rocking and jarring of the chair. The initial pleasantry of the escape was short-lived, however. Her walking shoes dealt poorly with the path, neither affording sufficient traction on the rockier parts nor proving to be waterproof in the marshy areas. This difficultly, coupled with the frequent, brief rests she needed to regain her strength, nearly doubled the length of time it would have taken the men to reach the shelter.

The shelter had been erected a month before by the surveying party that spotted the unicorn. It was squarish, with a high, thatched roof, and no walls. The floorboards were rough bamboo, raised eight or nine feet off the ground. Part of the thatching had been blown away during the week’s storm. A tree log with notched footholds leaned against the edge of the platform, evidently the main access point. Ateaurtes and Silvasthar had to lift Lanthiad into the shelter. She shook her skirts, hoping to dislodge some of the leaf mould her hem had collected, and gazed down over the edge, wondering how she would get down and up again in the middle of the night if she needed to relieve herself. She wouldn’t, she realized. She’d rather wait.

“We’re almost there,” Ateaurtes enthused breathlessly, pulling off an encrusted boot. He knocked it against the edge of the platform, spraying mud and leaves about. Lanthiad stepped away from him, not wishing to become any dirtier than she could avoid. He grinned, a wide swath of mud smeared across one cheek. It had been there since mid-morning. “Pades says that just over the next crest, about an hour from here, the path starts to descend into the gully they were in when they saw it.”

They would be going into the gully? Lanthiad had an excellent view of several gullies during the trek; the last was about a hundred yards below, coursing with the yellowish, opaque water that had run down from the highlands. The path leading down into it could only be worse than anything they had encountered yet, and as for being in the gully, or crossing it, they didn’t bring a boat, which meant someone was going to risk crossing the river by tethered raft and erect a bridge. Bridges in Pulau were usually two lengths of rope or bamboo, one to walk on and one for balance.  There was no way she could walk across one of those. They would have to build a raft, and lead it across the river from a line attached to the bridge. The current would be too strong for it otherwise. If someone slipped--

“Would you like some tea?” Pades asked. He had already removed his coat, revealing the considerable sweat stains that covered his back and underarms. His gingery mustache was ruffled, sticking straight out at Lanthiad like boar bristle.

“Tea?”

Lanthiad had had seven cups of tea since the outset of the hunt. Every time it was offered to her it was like a lifeline, the last tenuous thread leading her back to civilization. She wished they had brought a metal tub so that she could immerse herself in it and forget about her obligation to the hunt. Tea was very good for the complexion.

 “Yes. Tea,” Pades replied, giving her a look that said, Women are not fit for serious expeditions. “The fire has just been lit.”

The shelter became reasonably comfortable once the porters had cleared any fallen debris from the platform and performed a hasty patching on the thatch. Supper was an indifferent affair, more of a mechanical motion than a culinary experience. The shelter platform was divided into three sections, with the porters on the opposite end from Lanthiad’s tent and the Continental men between. A small pan of warm water was prepared for Lanthiad’s use. She took it inside the tent and washed her hands and face as well as she could. She dared not remove her stockings, for once the sun had set the insects became quite persistent, and the tent was far from immune to their onslaught. Her veil provided somewhat limited protection. The smokiness of the air near the cooking fire was the most effective deterrent for the insects, a subject of many internal debates among the party. The cooking fire was mounted on the only stones small enough to move in the immediate vicinity, and the ground around the shelter was so boggy that camp chairs, if sat upon, sunk into the earth and canted awkwardly, unseating their occupant. On the platform, one could only hope for a strong breeze.

Lanthiad lay on her cot and examined her hands. A small oil lamp hung from the ridgepole of the tent, a yellow luminescence. Her hands were scraped and her fingernails torn from scrabbling against the trees and rocks that lined the route to the shelter. The occasional insect bite showed like a tiny white hill over her knuckles and wrists. She was glad she had not worn lace cuffs; they would have been damaged beyond repair by now. She had very little hope for the state of her stockings or shoes. They would most likely have to be discarded when she returned to her uncle’s estate, if not earlier. It would take several weeks for a new pair of walking shoes to be made in town, and she would have to wear her evening slippers in the interim, even though they were too delicate for out of doors. That would be the end of her walks for some time, if not indefinitely. Who knew what her situation would actually be after the hunt? Maidens usually married promptly after catching a unicorn, as if their state of grace couldn’t last the season.

Lanthiad had wondered if her uncle had taken this into consideration when he allowed her to be the Maiden. Marriages were extremely scarce among the wealthier classes since the escalation of the war; there were too many unmarried women and too few men. Even before the war, when her father’s position was considered prosperous, Lanthiad had not been coveted and courted. Unless Etovices was willing to endow her with a sizable dowry, it was likely she would be remaining with him for many years to come. The distinction of having been the Maiden in what was probably one of the last unicorn hunts would definitely turn matters to her favor. Ateaurtes may have also realized the consequences, but Lanthiad was more inclined to think that his selection of her was based on his desire to see the hunt through with as little complication as possible. Another young lady might not have handled the journey into the highlands of the North Country with as much calm as Lanthiad; she might have complained the entire way, or sought to enhance any drama she came across for entertainment. She might have made demands on Ateaurtes beyond filial devotion or begun intrigues with members of the hunting party.    

If the intention was to find a match for Lanthiad, where did they think an offer was going to come from? The islands were not cosmopolitan; the majority of the population was native, with a small governing body of Continental planters and merchants. The people that chose to come to the islands were bankrupt nobles and youngest sons, looking to change their fortune, or third-rate professionals seeking a market without competitors. Of course, Etovices would seek Lanthiad’s courtiers among their own class, the landowning population; he was already acquainted with many of the planters and ranchers, and those he did not know he could be introduced to. Lanthiad had seen very few estates outside of her uncle’s, but she had been given to understand that most had substantial main houses, suitable for Continental ladies. No doubt they had walled gardens like Etovices’, with climbing roses and soulnut trees. Would they have foremen who were willing to look after her as well as hundreds of workers? Would they tell her stories?

Lanthiad touched the soulnut charm through the thin fabric of the veil. She had thought about Kiles and his gift often during the journey. The charm was for warriors, yet it was inscribed with passive sentiments. Was it really for good luck? Often, the porters looked at her covertly, apprehensive either about the incongruity of a young Continental lady wearing a Pulauni charm or something yet to be discovered. They hardly spoke at all. Lanthiad thought it was a deliberate silence, as if there was something on their mind that they were forbidden to talk about. What would they tell her, if they could? What was the Pulauni crowd saying that Etovices wouldn’t tell her about? If the Pulauni didn’t want the unicorn captured, why did they become as mute and tractable as her porters shortly after her arrival? Was it the soulnut charm? And why was the old crazy woman impervious to it?

There was a muffled rap on the heavy canvas door of the tent, followed by Ateaurtes’ voice.

“Come in,” Lanthiad said, sitting up on the cot and adjusting her veil.

Ateaurtes stuck his head through the flap and said, “I need to borrow your lamp. One of the porters thought he saw something.” 

“A cat?”

He stepped into the tent to untie the lamp. “Hard to say. Could be a boar or a deer. We need to take a closer look.”

“Won’t it just go away if left alone?” she asked. It was unlikely to be the yellow dog; she hadn’t seen it for some time. It may have gone back to the estate.  The wild cats on Pulau were as heavy as men, if not more, and the boars, while certainly not as massive as the wild cats, were known in particular for their savage and often fatal attacks

“Unlikely. It’s probably displaced by the flooding of the gullies. We’ve been hearing fights all evening.”

Nights on Pulau were often filled with strange sounds: nocturnal monkeys, birds, cats, crying out their territory, calling for mates, squawking in anger or fright. Lanthiad had also heard the distant cries, like women screaming, but had ignored them. Was what made those sounds now approaching the shelter?

“You don’t think it will come any nearer, do you?”

“I don’t know. It might smell our food or just be curious. Either way, without the steps it would find it difficult to get onto the platform.”

Lanthiad didn’t like the direction the conversation was going.

Ateaurtes paused in the doorway of the tent. “It’ll be all right, Lani,” he said, attempting a reassuring smile. “For now, stay in the tent.” He dropped the flap and was gone, leaving her in darkness.

The dark had not promised so many ambivalent things since Lanthiad was a child. It surrounded her like a womb, a barrier between her and her fears, while it also hid them from her sight. The suspicion that had always nagged her as child, lying in bed with the blankets pulled up over her head, was that whatever shared the darkness with her could somehow still sense her presence, and would find her by the sound of her breathing.

Lanthiad held very still, listening to the movement outside. She heard hissed instructions, in Pulauni and Elsthar: hurrying feet and the creak of the bamboo platform. A bird screeched, and then the frogs stopped.

Silence.

The night had never been that silent, not in Elsthar, not on the trip to the island, when there was only the ship, the sea, and an endless bowl of black overhead, salted with stars. She dared not take a breath for fear it would be the only sound. Am I really going to die tonight? she wondered desperately, then ruefully: I couldn’t say I wasn’t warned.

Someone shouted; a shot cracked nearby, echoed across the gully like thunder. Running, more shouts. A thump shook the floor. Heavy footfall, coming straight for the tent. The flap flew back and Lanthiad yelped, backing toward the rear wall.

“The unicorn!” the figure in the doorway panted, catching its breath. “It’s come! The flood must have pushed it back; we’re not in its territory yet. Come on! Let’s go!”

“Now?” Lanthiad cried, astounded. “But I—”

Ateaurtes didn’t listen. He pulled her out of the tent, nearly knocking her hat off with the door flap. The men were on the ground, mere shadows against the silvery grays of the forest. Lanthiad thought she heard Pades voice rising above the tumult, hoarsely shouting in Pulau. Another gunshot ricocheted into the night. Ateaurtes rushed down the log ladder and turned to look up at Lanthiad, his arms raised.

“Jump!”

Lanthiad stared down at her brother, incredulous. Her shoes were in the tent, her displaced veil and hat nearly choking her. “You’re crazy!” she protested. The platform ended several feet above Ateaurtes’ head.

“Come on, Lani! Jump! I’ll catch you!”

“Can’t this wait until morning?” she pleaded. The high voice of Pades’ opponent rose to a crescendo, swearing in tones that transcended language. Several men disappeared into the forest, rifles in hand.

“It’ll be across the river by morning; the level’s going down!”

Lanthiad didn’t need to be told twice. She went to the edge of the platform and jumped. Ateaurtes caught her, lost his balance, and tumbled them both over backwards. Lanthiad scrambled to her feet, her hat dangling from her neck by the ends of its veil. She pulled it off and swiped at patch of damp leaves stuck in her hair. “Are you all right?” she panted.

“Fine,” Ateaurtes said. He picked up his hat and stood. “Come on!” He took her arm again and pulled her over to the cluster where Pades had had his argument.

“Cowards!” he was yelling, still incensed.

“They’re just porters, Pades,” Bartinauntes reasoned.

“I never saw such spinelessness!”

“I’ve got her!” Ateaurtes announced.

“Good,” Etovices said. “It’s headed northeast. We’ve already sent a couple men around to hem it in on the north. Bartinauntes, Silvasthar and I are going east to try to catch up with it and turn it around. Pades and Fathras will stay here with you and Lanthiad.”

“I’m going to stay. Fathras, you go in my place,” Bartinauntes said.

Fathras grunted, not caring either way. Etovices looked hard at Bartinauntes a moment, then said to Ateaurtes, “Stick to the usual protocol. We’ll be back soon.” He looked at Lanthiad. “Don’t be afraid; the gentlemen will look after you.”

“Back soon,” Silvasthar grunted in farewell, and the three men hurried into the forest.

“We better get you into position,” Pades said, turning back to Lanthiad.

“Where?”

“Over by the fire will do,” he said, gesturing to the pile of stones in front of the shelter. The fire had been neglected in the excitement and had caved in a bit. “It’s better this way; we’ll be able to see it coming.” He prodded the fire with a stick, collapsing it more.

“Where did the porters go?” Lanthiad asked. They had had at least a dozen porters, and they were nowhere to be seen.

“Bloody cowards,” Pades muttered bitterly. He raised a finger angrily at the sky, his voice strangled with emotion. “They went up the trees. Can you believe that? Like monkeys. I think they were planning to do it all along.”

Lanthiad wondered if that was why the porters were so quiet during the journey. Did they know they were going to abandon the Continentals as soon as there was trouble?

“They never said they would do otherwise,” Bartinauntes said calmly.

“You agree with them, don’t you? That’s why you stayed behind rather than chase the unicorn,” Pades said.

“I promised I wouldn’t pursue. I gave my word.”

“How convenient for you,” Pades spat.

Bartinauntes glanced at Lanthiad. He adjusted his ammunition and cocked his rifle open for reloading. “I’m going to take that boulder over there,” he said, pointing casually with his rifle. He clamped a bullet between his thin lips and shoved the other into a chamber as he walked away. “Try not to scare it away with your shouting.” He smiled around the bullet at Pades and disappeared behind a massive boulder twenty feet from the shelter.

“Bloody jackass,” Pades murmured. He looked at Ateaurtes. Lanthiad brushed some more debris from her dress, certain that it was going to be ruined before the night was through. “That woman’s got him right where she wants him: swaddled and diapered. He won’t do anything without her say so.”

Ateaurtes cleared his throat and tipped his head toward Lanthiad. Pades glanced at Lanthiad and said in a much more subdued tone, “Well, yes. Yes.” He shouldered his rifle. “I suppose I’ll take that clump of trees on the north side.”  He walked away.

“I better find a spot. It could be a while before they get the unicorn to turn back, but I’d rather not take the chance,” Ateaurtes said. While they had been standing by the fire there had been an occasional shot ringing out in the distance.  Steering shots, Lanthiad knew, aimed to intimidate, not injure. Ateaurtes wanted to capture it alive. To do so, Lanthiad had to subdue it, a feat that couldn’t be accomplished with men too nearby. Ateaurtes and the others were going to hide a discreet distance away, waiting for the right moment to close in. Lanthiad wondered how high the Pulauni men where in the trees overhead: ten feet? Twenty? Were they at the very tops, trying to close their eyes and ears to the night’s activities?

Lanthiad would have followed them if she knew how.

“Remember: make eye contact, and no sudden movements,” he said. “Everything will be fine.”

She watched her brother slip away into the darkness and leaned against the rocks, careful to keep her dress away from the embers of the dying fire. It was smoking heavily, which was fortunate; she wasn’t quite certain where she had thrown her veil, and her stockings were already so riddled with holes and runs that they were useless against an insect invasion. She was fairly certain no one could see her distinctly, so she sureptiously removed her stockings. The mud enveloping her bare feet made her feel shockingly primeval, as if she was alone at the beginning of time. The trees were great granite pillars, their leafy canopy a broken dome, each gap laced in moonlight. The frogs chirped, and a night bird cleared its throat. She wondered what it would have been like to meet a unicorn before they became sport, when the encounter had nothing to do with one’s social agenda or responsibilities. Was that how a Pulauni met a unicorn? Or did they have a different agenda, like the sage Gambarkan, asking the unicorn about the spirit world? Bumi had seemed to know something about unicorns, but Lanthiad had been unable to glean anything from her advice; she had no inkling what ‘tsiny’ was, or why a unicorn should dislike it. She suspected that like ‘gefina’, ‘tsiny’ was a word that defined something that didn’t exist in Continental society. How could one even begin to avoid something that was unknown? Mysteries were of absolutely no use to Lanthiad in her present situation, though she did have a bountiful supply of them at her disposal.

For instance, was she the only person who didn’t know about Bartinauntes’ mistress before arriving at his estate? If everyone knew about Bumi, how common was this sort of thing?

The night grew quiet. Lanthiad’s eyes drew instinctively toward the cause: a pair of disembodied eyes, glinting in the moonlight. Every horror that had ever haunted her childhood was suddenly recalled, as if her mind were struggling frantically to match those eyes to something recognizable, no matter how frightening. She wished it wouldn’t; it was supposed to be a unicorn, had to be a unicorn.

And then, without making a sound, the eyes crept closer, passing through the underbrush like a ghost, finding a body in the process; a massive, black body, just like Ateaurtes had described, but there was no sun to reflect off its glossy surface, only moonlight, writhing and flickering like fire over the unicorn’s hide from its broad, heavy head to its long, curling tail. The horn was curved and smooth, sloping up from its wide forehead, the tip bright red, as if with blood.  It’s eyes were small and dead yellow like a raven’s, cruel as only an elemental force could be, never knowing love or rage, just that what was, was what had to be. Unicorns knew the most terrible kind of honesty.

Lanthiad suddenly knew that what she was doing was wrong. She shouldn’t have been chosen as the Maiden. She couldn’t look into the those eyes and just see a beast; she saw eternity, swelling and billowing around her, she nothing more than a small creature, living and dying in the blink of its eye. She was less than the distorted fingerprint of the Ashay highway, twisted and forgotten as it rambled over the island’s face, for she would not last a lifetime. Like her mother before her, she would erode and fade away, leaving no trace.

She took a breath, and slowly rising to her feet, she turned and ran.

She ran, heedless of the cries that rose up in the night, of the cracking of gunfire. The ground was soft and slippery, sucking at her feet, the underbrush surprisingly sharp. Her fine lawn dress caught on the brush and brambles, tearing like spider webs, too fragile to hold her back. Night birds, startled at her approach, dove into the sky, their wings snapping like sails in the wind. Small, furtive shadows dashed out of her path, scurrying up trees and rattling bushes. And still she ran, not knowing the right way to go, or even if there was one. She knew now why her mother had faded away. Her magic had eaten her, swallowed her whole, discontented with living a lie. She had not found the strength to break away, since what tethered her had been her love.

The land became steep; the trees leaning back against the earth like spectators on a grandstand. She slid, catching at the pale tree trunks, crying aloud for all she knew; she heard nothing but the pounding in her ears. Then, quite unexpectedly, the canopy broke open, revealing the stars. Below her stretched the gully, a jagged, glutted wound.  She grabbed at a boulder for support, pulled herself to her feet and peered over the edge.

She had run toward the path that descended into the gully, but she wouldn’t be able to climb into it at this point; it was still at least a hundred feet straight down. She would have to either find that path or circle around back to the shelter. They both seemed too far. Everything was too far.

She turned away from the gully, pushing her hair out of her face.

That was when she saw it, close by, its nostrils flaring from the effort of pursuit, its slender hooves surely and silently picking out a route to her with dreaded efficiency. Her hand went to her throat, accidentally touching the soulnut charm, and she thought, Will my soul be at rest? 

The unicorn lowered its horn, its mane crackling around its head like wildfire.

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