“I did not,” he began. “Because – you can’t.”
Lucerna frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t kill a unicorn.”
“Because?”
“Unless you think somebody can kill light itself, then you can’t believe anyone can kill a unicorn.”
Lucerna was very still, looking down at the ground.
“Enough,” she said resentfully. “I will not be ridiculed by a little boy. It is true. Children should be seen but not heard.” Or listened to, she thought.
And with that she swept angrily away; bitter, upset, and slightly mortified.
As she went, Quinn called, “Hey. Are you still going to kill me?”
Lucerna turned at the gateway and said scathingly, “I’ll leave that to your parents.”
Quinn felt a dose of paranoia take effect.
***
Lilian was so cold she didn’t understand why she hadn’t died of hypothermia. Every muscle and tendon ached and jangled with pain. She had attempted several times to pull away some of the debris that prevented her from escaping, but didn’t dare move any more in case it pulled the whole thing down…
After a while she had simply sat in an alcove above the water, which had made it two feet high up the unstable walls of the building, and waited their for the sun to rise so she could get the tiny bit of light back and see something. It was so black since the moon had moved that Lilian couldn’t even tell which way she was facing anymore. Claustrophobia sickened her and she was half asleep and too awake to rest. There was nothing very restful about being here. Vague things drifted through her mind; lightning…there had been lightning…that’s why there were burnt things around the place…thank goodness she’d taken those little mice out of the bathroom in Lucerna’s house before she’d burnt it down…she’d burnt it down…would there be anything left? Would anyone try to get her out of here? Did they even know she was in here? What had happened outside in the intervening time?...had the unicorn even been real?...everything seemed very surreal now…a rock rattled above somewhere and the dark seemed to become even denser. A stone must have lodged itself over the tiny gap that had allowed the last vestiges of light in. Lilian was scared to breathe.
Gradually the night passed, unbelievably slowly, and Lilian drifted through dreams and delirium and panicked minutes of extreme alertness, mixed up and layered into an experience of constant unknown fear.
“Why did this all have to happen?” she said into the emptiness. The smallness of her voice frightened her. And there was no reply.
“What if I never go home?” she thought out loud a while later. “What if I somehow lose myself in all this mess? What if I was nothing all along?”
She supposed it was miraculous that she hadn’t simply been crushed or knocked out by the falling blocks of the Hall. That didn’t really help her to get out, though. What if I can’t get out? She didn’t want to say that, even in a whisper, because that would somehow make it too real.
I have always lived in fantasyland, she considered regretfully. I thought there would always be something that would happen, that would change everything, that I could do this, that I could…and that’s why I’m here now, because I was stupid enough to think I was clever. I trusted too much. Lucerna was right. I’m just too stupid.
She had closed her eyes while she was thinking about all of this; and when she opened them, she noticed something strange.
She could see.
It had got infinitesimally lighter. Which she didn’t understand, because how could it get lighter if there was no space for light to get through? And there certainly wasn’t anymore.
Oh, she thought, it’s me.
The light was that weird glow that she could see before. Faintly blue. It slowly spread around, on to the stones, until she could see the cracks between each piece…and just how trapped she was.
“What is this?” she said to herself. Then she noticed an itch on her arm, the same thing she’d had last time the glowing had appeared when she’d first come back from the forest. She reached into her sleeve, expecting it to be one of those impossible-to-find seeds or twigs that had managed to lodge themselves deep into the fabric of your clothes. Instead, she pulled out a feather. Somewhat crumpled, now, but with a very slight blue tinge; a pigeon feather. As she grasped it the glowing light intensified. She laughed in wonder at the bizarre phenomenon. How could a feather make this happen? Then she realized – it must be from the unicorn. She remembered now; the bird that had flown in front of her, and she had picked up the single feather that it had dropped…
“Unicorn?” she spoke into the faint blueness. She felt as though her eyes were so accustomed to the darkness that if she ever did see daylight again, they might just dissolve or something.
“Unicorn, please help me, help me now…if you’re real…please…”
Nothing happened.
Lilian barely dared to move, but she crawled around frantically in the small space left to her, now determined to find a way out. There had to be. There had to be.
And then she heard a sound.
Hoof beats.
Or was it her heartbeat?
No, it was hoof beats.
They were outside.
“Help! HELP!” she shouted. It echoed around her, her voice chased her cruelly. The sound was fading away, fading…they hadn’t heard her…it wasn’t a unicorn…just someone moving their pony between paddocks.
Could anybody even hear her from in this rubble?
Then the sound returned.
Paused. Stopped.
Lilian wondered who it was. Then she didn’t care.
“I’m trapped, please help me out!” she shouted again.
Then she heard footsteps, and then pieces of stone moving. Heart in mouth, she froze. Why her heart couldn’t stay where it was damn well supposed to be, she didn’t know, but she felt that it was an unnecessary discomfort that it could have spared her, on top of everything else.
Out of nowhere, a smudge of light appeared. Lilian was terrified that all this shifting around of blocks would bring the whole lot crashing down, but she was silent as she waited. With a crunchy sort of wrenching sound, splintered pinewood broke away and what Lilian now recognized as the door of the Hall was heaved open by some unknown force.
Once Lilian realized that her eyes were not actually going to dissolve because of the relatively brilliant light after all, and had just about got accustomed to it, she could see that the unknown force was Quinn.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or whether she should be worried. What side had Quinn taken? Maybe he had Lucerna with him? Or even all the rest of them too? Perhaps this had all been planned, as a trap that they could pretend to rescue her and instead –
“What the feck are you doing in all that?” Quinn said.
It occurred to Lilian that the door was now…above her. In the ceiling, essentially. That seemed weird.
Lilian was now in such hysteria that there was no way she could reply seriously. She wriggled out into the space, stood up and said painfully, “seeing what it’s like to be a bat, hanging upside down in the dark. What the feck are you doing out there?”
“Seeing what it’s like to be a human, commuting to some boring place to earn money,” Quinn informed. “But never mind that. Here,” he held out a hand to pull her up. “Let me return your favour.”
Lilian hesitated, not sure if she trusted this at all. She scrambled on to a pile of lumber to see if she could climb out herself, but there was no way. Defeated, she reached up and grabbed Quinn’s hand.
“You’ll have to jump,” he said. Lilian jumped, and Quinn grabbed her other shoulder and hauled her clear of the collapsed building. She stumbled shakily on to the stony surface and blinked, and coughed, and blinked, and still couldn’t get used to the dazzling sun and fresh air. She squinted and saw that she was sitting on the front wall of the Hall – the whole thing had fallen in, and by some twist of extreme luck
or clever architecture there had been a reasonable gap left between the floor and the walls.
Having marvelled at the impossibility of surviving this at all, Lilian marvelled at the stunning beauty of everything around. The sun glittering bronze rays into the hazy air, and the sky full of sharply contrasting clouds, and trees, and the light bouncing off of a puddle, sparkly dots on the surface of it, and a brisk sweep of freshening breeze running through Daisy’s mane.
In a moment, Lilian had a sense of great repulsion to the stagnant rocky pit she had been in for so long. She wanted to get away from it, from all of it, from this place, this town…away…
“Let’s go,” Lilian staggered to her feet and Quinn automatically followed her.
Then he enquired, “Where are you going?” taking Daisy’s bridle again to lead the horse.
“Just…away from here,” Lilian replied, feeling more unsteady and jittery by the second.
“Hold Daisy’s shoulder,” Quinn said. “You look like you’re going to pass out.”
Lilian obeyed, and they walked along a little way, to a patch of grass in front of a gate that led to a fallow field. Lilian sat down hurriedly in the grass, feeling sickly.
Quinn tied Daisy’s bridle loosely to the gatepost and she grazed contentedly. He dug out a bottle of water and gave it to Lilian. “You’ll feel better if you have some water,” he said. The dark circles around Lilian’s eyes were no longer fake, and they were spectacular. If she’d wanted to convince anyone that she was a panda, she would have had a good chance.
As she drank the water, she realized how dehydrated she was and wondered why she hadn’t noticed before. Some of the sick feeling eased away and she began to appreciate the colours of her surroundings again.
Quinn leaned against the gate and observed Lilian.
“So,” he began awkwardly, “I just wanted to – I mean, I never meant – I shouldn’t have said…I suppose, the thing is…the thing is –“ he sighed. “I was hungry,” he finished. Then he thought it wasn’t completely clear that it was an apology, so he added, “It won’t happen again.”
Lilian was quietly amused. “You’ll never get hungry again? I doubt it.”
Quinn laughed. “Well played,” he replied. “No, really, I was horrible to you for pathetic reasons and I’m not making any excuses for it.”
“Whatever, no worries. I can’t exactly get mad at you after you’ve pulled me out of that pit.”
“Well, I did after you pulled me out of the river. Like I say, no excuses.”
“Are you ill or what?”
“What?”
“What’s changed since you ran off in the forest?”
Quinn was stung by this remark, but realized that that was because it was true. “Well, my horse got lame, and…stuff happened and…I don’t know. I learnt my lesson.” he decided to move on to more interesting subjects. “Lucerna came around my house this morning,” he said.
Lilian stared. “Why? What did she say?
“She thought I’d told you to mess everything up for her or something. I said I had nothing to do with you. But I meant to ask you…did you set her house on fire?”
Lilian looked away. “Yes,” she admitted. “Is that bad?”
“No!” Quinn exclaimed. “It’s brilliant!” he said it so genuinely that Lilian found herself laughing, and Quinn was laughing, and they laughed until they nearly cried because everything had been so insane and ridiculous.
At last Lilian asked, “So what are you doing now? Where were you really going? You didn’t go this way to find me under a pile of rubble.”
“Well, I got tired of being spied on and told to be an accountant. So I told them I had written to some person in Clementia who will take me on as an apprentice doing spreadsheets or something. I haven’t written to anyone really, I made it up. I’ll probably find someone who wants some help in their stables instead.”
Lilian nodded vaguely, then questioned, “Sorry, who are spying on you and telling you to be an accountant?”
“Oh, the voices in my head,” joked Quinn. “No, my parents.”
Lilian nodded again. “Clementia?” she added.
“Yeah. It’s next door.”
“By a few thousand miles, I suppose.”
“I don’t think I’ll need to go that far, there’s bound to be some opportunity before then. What are you going to do? You don’t have anywhere to work now, do you? Do you have anywhere to live, of your own?”
“No,” Lilian sighed slowly. “To all of those.”
There was a pause, and Daisy’s chewing filled the silence.
Then Lilian said, “I’d like to go back to Felixia. I don’t want to stay here.”
“Where’s Felixia?” Quinn wanted to know.
“It’s…actually, I don’t know where it is. I mean, it’s an island in the middle of the ocean. I used to live there, until Lucerna found a career for me…when I was thirteen. There was a ship, and I was kept in the sail locker all the way, and then we were at this unrecognizable port, and then Lucerna hired this cart and I had to sit in the back with everything she’d collected on her trip while she rode back to the house on horseback with her friend, Tessinika…we went most of the way in the dark. I have no idea how I would get back. I didn’t see anything on the way. And it’s been…five years since then. Crap, five years of my life, wasted.”
Quinn listened to this story with increasing fascination. He’d had no idea that anybody in the whole of Stellaria could have any history that wasn’t just as shockingly boring as everyone else’s.
Then an idea occurred to him.
“Wait,” he said, delving into the saddle pack. He brought out the pathetic map that Lucerna had provided him with and spread it out. Lilian refrained from snatching it off him.
“A map?” she enthused.
“Yes,” Quinn replied, examining it closely.
“Can I see?” Lilian added impatiently.
Quinn scanned the page. “It’s not very good,” he said absentmindedly. He sat down and put the map flat on the ground. Lilian scrambled to see it. She was slightly disappointed.
“Is this even to scale? Miles to an inch?”
Quinn laughed humourlessly. “You’ll be lucky – more like guesswork at a pinch.”
“Well I could always just –“
“Here,” Quinn interrupted. “This is the forest. This is the town. That’s the beginning of the forest path, which means that, if I can do geography at all, there is a port on the other side of the forest. Over that sea is Felixia. It’s that island isn’t it? The big island out of that group of small ones?”
“Yes, that’s right!” Lilian said excitedly. “Only – it was really cold getting here on the ship, and then it warmed up again. It took about, oh, I don’t know, five weeks. That sea isn’t that big, is it?”
“Like, how cold?”
“Like, ice cold.”
“Perhaps you went round a different way?”
“But you’re sure that’s right?”
“Fairly sure.”
Lilian’s eagerness left her. “But it’s pointless anyway. I’ll never get there. I literally have nothing. And I’d have to walk, all the way. It’s just not going to happen…I have no idea where I’m going to go or what I’m going to do. What do people do with their lives? I guess I’ll have to become a housekeeper for somebody else around here. Though to be honest I’d almost rather die.”
“Don’t do that. I went to all that trouble to pull you out remember?”
Lilian shook her head. “Why is someone being nice to me? This must be a trick or something. Or you have some other weird reason why you’re helping me and I ought to be running away right now.”
Quinn laughed. “Am I being nice? I thought I was just being normal. Does helping somebody out who helped me before count as weird? Does this even count as helping somebody?”
Lilian was very wary of everyone, but especially people who tried to help her. Help, she decided, u
sually was expected to be repaid and more later. Then she thought, well, it’s my life. I’m not a victim. I can choose my destiny. How stupid and dramatic that sounds.
At that moment there was a clattering noise and Lilian glanced up in terror, because she recognized the sound of Lucerna’s horse. And it turned out that it was Lucerna’s horse. And it was all by itself, trotting along the street with a chewed rope hanging from its bridle.
Lilian realized instantly what must have happened – the horse had been tied up and left outside the barn near the Hall, like he always was when Lucerna held a meeting. Only this time she had forgotten about him in the mess of what had taken place afterwards. Lilian got to her feet without really planning to and walked over. The horse flinched away and Lilian stopped and made clicky noises in the hope of persuading him to go to her. She faintly remembered hearing a distressed whinnying the night before, as she’d ran…
“Hey,” Quinn said to Lilian. “Give him this.” He tossed an apple to her.
Lilian caught it and held it out to Lucerna’s horse. Very few horses could resist an apple. He sniffed, and slowly nodded over to meet her. Lilian fed him the apple and grabbed the reins of the bridle, scooped them over his head and held them to lead the horse as she’d seen Quinn do with Daisy.
“Have you worked with horses before?” Quinn enquired.
“No,” Lilian said. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve always liked them, though. He’s beautiful isn’t he? He’s called Capricorn. I’ve always thought he doesn’t go with Lucerna at all.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Quinn agreed. “He’s a lovely horse. About fifteen hands, same size as Daisy, but she’s a lighter build.” It was just the sort of unintelligible thing Lilian had expected someone to say who knew about all things equestrian.
Capricorn was a glossy black, and now that he’d got over his confusion, he seemed to rather like Lilian. Perhaps he recognized her from the many times she’d turned up at the livery yard to order him to be sent over for Lucerna.
Quinn looked thoughtful. “Well, there you go. Now you won’t have to walk.”
Lilian frowned, then her eyes widened as she realized what he meant. “But I can’t do that! I said, I haven’t got a clue. I’ve never had anything to do with horses, much as I’d have liked to.”