TALES OF ARILLAND.
ALETHEA KONTIS.
For the Brute Squad.
"If you did not indulge in fantasies, how else would you know if you were living an interesting life?"
-Grumble, Enchanted.
THE UNICORN HUNTER.
The demon was waiting for her when the huntsman brought her into the forest. He knew exactly who she was and where she"d be and when she"d come and how she smelled and what she ate and the size of her slippers and the sound of her voice and exactly how far her chest rose and fell when she drew in a breath. From the tiniest needle on the smallest tree to the oldest dragon in the mountains, the denizens of the forest had been whispering about her for weeks now: the poor, beautiful young princess whose horrible jealous mother was sending to her death. The whole of nature waited with bated breath for her arrival, wondering at what adventures might arise from this terrible occasion. There hadn"t been this much drama in the Wood since the last time his brethren had crossed the storm-tossed threshold into this accursed world.
He killed a doe while he was waiting, in part because the princess would eventually want for sustenance, but mostly because the idiot creature was too distracted by all the excitement to have the sense to stay away from him.
He knew the moment she entered the forest, for everything in it smiled at once and sighed, like a chorus of tinkling bells. The cold winter sun broke through the gray clouds and bare branches to kiss her alabaster cheek in reverence. The gold thread in her dress and golden ribbons in her ebony hair caught the light and danced like fire. She was young for her height, slender as the willows, and as yet untouched by the first blush of womanhood.
Perfect.
The four winds, dizzy and drunk with happiness at her arrival, caught up the dead leaves of the forest floor and spun them in a frenzy of dried applause. The ecstasy was short-lived, however, and the forest caught up a collective gasp when the huntsman tore the sleeve of her dress, scratched the pristine flesh of her arm, and forced her to the ground.
It wasn"t supposed to happen this way. But there were demons in the world now, making the evils that men do far easier to reach. So the Memory Stone had taught the demon and his brethren, and so he knew what he must do to correct the situation.
He had hoped not to make his presence known so soon, but he needed her purity intact, and if he waited much longer all his efforts would be for naught. Her scream ripped through the now-still air. The ice pansies at his feet wept in terror. In a few long strides he crossed the clearing and kicked the huntsman with an ironclad foot, lifting his body off that of the princess and sending him sprawling in the dirt.
"I was ordered to kill the child," the huntsman said after spitting out a mouthful of teeth and blood. "What use is the rest to you, beast?"
"None of your concern," said the demon. "You have new orders now. Be gone from this place."
The huntsman came to his knees, withdrawing both a knife from his belt and a box from his cloak. "Not without claiming what"s mine," he said. "I"m to return to the palace with her heart."
The demon went back to the body of the doe and sliced open her chest with one sharp claw. He plucked the tiny heart from the cavity and dropped it at the huntsman"s feet. "Be glad it"s not your own," said the demon.
The huntsman nodded. He snapped the heart up into the box and limped away from the demon as fast as his legs could manage.
"Oh great and honorable beast," the young princess addressed him without looking directly at him. Her voice shook and hiccuped with tears. "Thank you for saving my life. My kingdom owes you a great debt."
"The same kingdom that just sentenced you to death? I doubt they"d sing my praises at the moment." She might have been a princess and the most perfect human female form this world had ever seen, but she was still a young girl and far sillier than she looked. He"d forgotten how closely ignorance walked in the footsteps of innocence. The memory was less amusing than it was annoying. "You, however, owe me your life, and that life I will take. So stop your sniveling and get on with you. We have work to do."
"Work, my lord?"
He snorted at the address. As if her ridiculous feudal society would function longer than five minutes in his world. He felt the compulsion to explain, but knew the words would be wasted. "That"s right, work. Are you at all familiar with the term?"
"I"ve heard of it," she said in earnest.
"Excellent. Your highness"-a ridiculous honorific as he was roughly nine feet tall, before the horns, and the top of her head came to just above his navel-"you are going to help me catch a unicorn." Actually there were three unicorns, and he intended to kill them once he caught them, but the demon felt it wise to omit these details.
"Oh, that does sound lovely," she smiled. "I accept."
Yes, indeed. Stupid as the day was long. Just as he"d suspected. He waited what seemed like ages for her to compose herself. She finally stood, adjusted the torn sleeve of her gown, collected the small silken purse she"d brought with her, and squared her shoulders. "I am ready," she announced.
"Fantastic," said the demon. "Let"s go."
The demon kept a steady pace through the trees, through bushes and over streams, straight to the Heart of the Wood. The Heart was the oldest part of the forest, where the trees had forgotten more than the world would remember, where magic ran wild. There were no paths there, for only a handful of human feet had sullied those hills and valleys in the last few centuries. The Heart was where the demon had first appeared in this world. He a.s.sumed they would also find the unicorns there.
The demon looked back over his shoulder periodically to make sure the princess was still following, and slowed his pace accordingly. Every time he looked back, the forest had given the princess something else. There were flowers in her hair, she wore an ermine as a neck ruff, and the shoulder of her dress was now firmly anch.o.r.ed with what looked like cobwebs and a vine of some sort. She sang or hummed or whistled as they walked. She even skipped sometimes. And every time he turned back she smiled at him warily with those full, cupid"s-bow, blood-red lips. He tried not to turn back very often.
He tried not to stop very often either, but her feet were small and her legs were short, and there was no help for it. Every time he stopped, the princess asked him a barrage of silly questions that had no doubt occurred to her while singing or humming or whistling and were now burning to be answered.
"Do you live in the mountains with the dragons?"
"I am from a different world, a world very unlike this one."
"How did you come here?"
How to explain using the fewest words? "The same way the unicorns did. There is a place, deep in your Wood here, where our worlds meet. The storms there are sometimes so powerful that they rip a doorway between the worlds. One creature gets pulled from my world and one from the unicorn world, and we end up here."
"How do you know all this?"
"The Memory Stone tells us so," he said. "The spirits of our demon brethren past are drawn home to the Memory Stone. It is how they share their knowledge with us."
"Do all the demons have big horns and black-red skin where you come from?"
"Most have horns. Size and skin colors vary by nature."
"Why do you wear iron boots? Are your feet like a horse"s?"
"A little, yes. And I am a being of fire, so cloth or leather would do me little good."
"Why don"t you wear any clothing?"
He was glad his loincloth had remained intact to avoid further such questions. "I am a being of fire. I do not feel cold the way you do. Plus, a creature who can kill anything with his bare hands has no need to be modest."
"Why didn"t you just kill me?"
Not that it hadn"t crossed his mind. "Because I need a living innocent to lure a unicorn. I"ve had little success with dead ones."
"Have you seen a unicorn?"
"Once, briefly." One had arrived at the same time he had. Such was the balance.
"What are unicorns like?"
"Like giant white puppies of happiness."
"Do you think the unicorns will like me?"
"They will think you are the best thing they have ever seen." Like everyone else, it seems.
"Do you like me?"
"Only when you"re quiet."
"Why are we capturing a unicorn?"
"Because it"s the only way I know to get home." Again, he thought it wise to omit the rest.
"Do you have a family back home? Do you miss them?"
"I do need you alive, but you don"t need your tongue." This answer was enough to curb her examination until the next time they stopped. It wasn"t a planned rest, but the girl collapsed on the crumbling stones at the foot of an ancient well. It was as good a place as any. A bear cub snuggled up to the princess"s back and a warren of rabbits cozied up to her front, keeping her warm. The demon thought it a bit ridiculous that nature here should fawn all over a little girl just because she was beautiful and a princess. He felt bad for any poor ugly pauper girl who stumbled into the forest unawares. She"d be that bear cub"s breakfast for sure.
Every time they stopped there was always one animal or another in the princess"s lap. The demon noted their bravery. In all his time in the forest, he had never before had the pleasure of any beast"s company; they sensed what he was and stayed far away. The more intelligent creatures still did, but it seemed some of their children were young enough to tempt fate.
Turning the tables, he asked her one question before her heavy eyes escorted her into sleep. "Why aren"t you afraid of me?"
"Should I be?" she asked.
"I"m a demon," he said. "I could drink your blood to warm my feet and grind your bones to make my bread."
"But you won"t," she said. "You need me to capture a unicorn."
"I could burn all your clothes so that you might freeze. I could spit in your face and you would lose your beauty in a heartbeat."
"Will you?" she asked.
"Perhaps, if you make me mad," he said.
"Then I will endeavor not to anger you." She yawned. "We have tales, old stories from long ago of benevolent beasts who were really kind souls, or princes in disguise."
"I am no prince," he said.
"Pity," she mumbled. "I could use a prince." And with that, she slept.
Perhaps the queen was not mad, and in sending her daughter away she had done her kingdom a favor. This child, though a rare beauty, was too happy and silly and gullible and kind. Her subjects would riot and her advisors would rob the coffers bare and her castle walls would be breached within a fortnight. She would make a terrible queen.
Even still, he could not imagine sending his own daughter, or any child, to her death. And he was a demon.
He leaned back against the stones of the well, safer from his body heat than a tree, and closed his own eyes in relief. This world was so cold-not to his skin, but to his heart-and it wasn"t just the winter season having washed all the colors with the stark dullness of mud and snow. What little fire existed in this world was buried far underground, so far that being away from it tore at his mind, trying to free the madness there that would be all too happy to escape. His brethren had succ.u.mbed to that madness. Eventually, so would he. Even now he could taste the princess"s pulse beneath her skin, imagine his claws marring her perfect flesh, smell the fear of the wild animals who dared accompany her. He wanted to destroy the forest around him, dead limb from dead limb, and set it ablaze so that there might be color and warmth filling this world, if only briefly.
If he did not destroy the unicorns soon, their presence would tip the balance too far. It would cause another storm and rip another of his brethren from his world. He needed to kill those unicorns now, all of them, the first two for his brethren and the last one so that he could escape this prison and end the dreaded cycle...for as long as Chaos would let it be ended.
He woke and realized he"d fallen asleep. The stones beneath him had melted away into the dead earth. On the far side of the well the princess sat, quietly singing and gently combing the hair of the latest beast in her lap with a jeweled comb. Of course the princess had taken a jeweled comb into the woods. Then again, she hadn"t expected to survive this long.
The animal in her lap seemed to be an albino fawn or a large goat, and then the demon realized that what looked like an ice shelf behind them was actually an icicle protruding from the animal"s forehead. The first unicorn. The demon would have laughed if he hadn"t been afraid of scaring the beast away. There the princess sat, shimmering like magic, her skin darker than the unicorn"s by a mere blush, the curtain of her ebony hair like a waterfall of shadow between them. From her blood red lips came a nonsense song about flying dishes and talking pigs. A rainbow of feathers fluttered in the trees around her; a congregation of birds had flocked just to hear her sing, and the unicorn was mesmerized. Its eyes were closed and it suffered the princess"s combing without complaint, completely still.
Too still.
The demon crossed over to the princess in a few steps that shook the ground and caused the myriad inhabitants in the bushes to explode into the air. The unicorn did not move. The demon reached down with a large hand, the skin of it as red as her lips, the claws as dark as her hair. She stopped singing when that hand came into view, and she stopped combing, but the unicorn"s head in her lap held her trapped.
The demon swept back the unicorn"s silken white mane with a claw; a few stray hairs stung his skin. The perfect flesh beneath the mane was crisscrossed with layers and layers of angry red lines.
The princess looked confused. The demon gently took the jeweled comb from her hand. Its aura of bile taunted him. "Poison," he said. He melted the trinket into slag with the heat of his palm and tossed the little golden ball of it into the well where it could do no more harm. "Did your mother give that to you?"
The princess nodded silently. One big, fat, shimmering icedrop of a tear slid down her cheek and fell onto the unicorn. Into the unicorn. Another tear fell, and another, deeper into the unicorn"s flesh as it turned to snow in the princess"s arms. When she realized what was happening she jerked, startled, and the shape of the unicorn crumbled to cold lumps of nothing in her lap. She lifted her arms slowly, reverently, and the rising sun made the rime on her forearms sparkle. Dazed, she raised a shining finger to the tongue that waited between her blood red lips. The demon slapped her hand away. He pulled her up by the wrists and began dusting and melting every bit of corpse-ice on her that he could see.
"Stupid girl," he muttered.
"What would have happened," she asked when she found her voice, "if I had tasted the unicorn?"
"You would have screamed with delight because it would have been the most delicious thing you"ve ever put in your mouth. But after unicorn, all other food to cross your lips would taste foul. You would wander the world for the rest of your life, starving, forever trying to taste something, anything, that comes close to that divine perfection."
"Oh," she said, and clasped her traitorous fingers behind her back. "Thank you," she added, but sounded unsure.
"Come," said the demon. "We should leave this place. Other unicorns will sense that one of their brethren has died here and they will not come near it."
"I"m sorry," was all she said.
"Why?"
"I did not let you capture the unicorn. I killed it."
"No matter," said the demon. "There are others. Let"s go."
The princess was navigating the melted stones of the well in her thin, inadequate slippers, when something occurred to her. She brightened and reached for her tiny clutch, pulled a small object from it and held it tightly in her hands. She squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched up her face, as if in pain. The demon held his breath, waiting for a magic spell or another bout of weeping to burst from her. Though possibly more trouble, he hoped for the former.
"I wish my handsome prince, my one true love, would find me and save me and take me away from all this," she said, and she tossed the coin in the air.
The demon stretched out a hand and easily caught the tiny gold disc before it hit the well. His palm, still hot from the comb, melted it, too, into slag. He tossed the thin, swirling, misshapen bit of metal into the snow at her feet.
"Why did you do that?" the princess asked.
"You didn"t want to make that wish," the demon replied.
"I didn"t?"
"You don"t want any prince who would have you right now," he said. "Trust me."
"But I always make that wish," she said.
"Then I hope he takes his sweet old time finding you," he said.
"Wishes are magic and wonderful," said the princess.