“Well you seemed to get on okay with that unicorn.”
Lilian opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“I’ll teach you about horses,” said Quinn. “That’s one thing I can guarantee.”
“Really? Seriously?” Lilian began to wonder if she was still under all the debris and had slipped into some fleeting dream or hallucination. How could so many things go so well within an hour or so?
“Sure,” Quinn replied. “Easy.”
Lilian ran her hand through Capricorn’s mane.
“You’re literally the only reasonable person in the entirety of Stellaria,” Lilian stated honestly.
“I don’t know about reasonable,” Quinn considered. “As mad as you, maybe. But who’s mad really? I mean, all those bunch, believing all that stuff…don’t they have brains? Any of them?”
Lilian smiled reflectively. “Oh, you can have a brain and believe all that stuff. It’s just you can’t have a soul.”
Quinn realized then that he was talking to somebody who should never have been a housekeeper all that time. Not that anybody should have to be so underappreciated. He got to his feet and untied Daisy.
“Enough grass, you,” he said to the horse. “You’ll burst.”
“Why don’t you go to Felixia, too?” Lilian said suddenly.
Quinn thought of all the reasons why he shouldn’t; of the money he should earn doing some respectable something, of the possibility of diving right into a really dumb situation; of the high likelihood of getting lost; how successful the last foray into the forest had been.
“They’ll say all kinds of stupid gossipy things about us, that aren’t even true,” he said at last.
Lilian shrugged. “They’re all mad.”
Quinn laughed. “Really, I think I shouldn’t,” he added sensibly.
“Okay,” said Lilian. “How about we both go back just to the river, before the butterflies, and in the meantime I can look at the map and you can tell me how to look after this horse. Then you can take the map and go wherever you’re going, because you’ll get lost without it and I won’t, and I’ll go on to Felixia. Deal?”
Quinn was about to agree and then looked slightly miffed. “Did you just say I’ll get lost and you won’t?”
Lilian nodded seriously. “Yes. It’s true. I can read maps and I can remember them. I bet you can only do half of that.”
Quinn wanted to refute this and then realized she might be right.
“You’re lucky I’m such a reasonable person,” he said. “But okay, deal. Back to the forest then?”
Lilian smiled with a smile that made Quinn feel slightly inadequate.
“Cool,” she said. “And maybe we can find another unicorn…”
Epilogue
“How dare you have got it so wrong. I blame it on your incompetence, your spineless stupidity and small-minded thoughtless actions…”
Lucerna snarled vitriol at what remained of her followers. The four former dream counsellors and Crowther sat in Crowther’s living room, the bronze shield gleaming tauntingly upon the wall. One of the dream counsellors tentatively spoke in a few moments where Lucerna paused her insults, or perhaps ran out of them.
“Priestess, we always had a disclaimer that not all our interpretations could possibly be completely accurate. Dreams are of course difficult to define and can have many meanings. It is in part the responsibility of the original dreamer to decide how much – faith – they put in such imagery, and whether they ought act on it at all.”
Silently enraged, Lucerna took this in with delayed disquiet.
At last, covering her uncertainty with authoritative calm, she gave them all a strained almost-smile and replied “Very well. f that is how it is to be. We must rise from the ruins of this incident and move on to greater things. Enough of these petty discussions. I intend to leave Stellaria. Those who wish to join me will continue to be rewarded with plentiful gold. If you do not wish to, I do not expect to see you again after tomorrow. Stay out of my sight.”
Crowther’s house was large, though not spacious enough for Lucerna’s liking. He had five spare rooms, the most generous of which Lucerna had been given until such time as she arranged somewhere new to live. Everything about this situation was irksome to Lucerna; apart from the indignity of being a guest rather than an owner of a house, Crowther’s housekeeper reminded her slightly of Lilian and made Lucerna paranoid. The difference was that this one evidently really was stupid, thought Lucerna, because the girl was clearly trying very hard to appear intelligent. Somehow this was deeply depressing.
That night Lucerna went uneasily to sleep, having explained that further plans would be discussed on the morrow. She wondered if anybody would be left to discuss anything with or whether they would all abandon her. And she recalled the old dream in every detail…so vivid…how those apparently impossible symbolisms had manifested themselves in real life…the grey smoke fog and the water, the sky reflected in it, the tide flooding in, the flames above…the lamp…the blood…and what if it had been misinterpreted? Maybe none of that had needed to happen…or it had been a warning of what was to come, to be avoided…she was frightened and confused. But she was also dead tired, and before long, with a little help from a very small amount of vodka, Lucerna drifted into sleep.
Unfortunately vodka didn’t seem to have the same effect as wine.
Through a glimmer of soft sunlight and blossom, Lucerna could hear laughing. She watched as though peering into a bubble, or a photograph that had come iridescently alive; from a distance, yet very closely.
A woman with a great long braid of unnaturally cherry-scarlet hair was smiling down at a little girl. The woman held both the girl’s hands and picked her up, whirling her around in a circle and placing her gently back on to the flower-filled meadow ground. The girl giggled happily, refused to let go of the woman’s hand. Then they ran away across the beautiful cliff-top meadow, danced and skipped from Lucerna’s view toward the sea, the fresh breeze bringing a scent of gorse flowers and ocean salt…and something indefinable that reminded Lucerna of adventures to unknown lands, maybe jasmine…or lotus lilies…
Lucerna felt desperate as the scene was swept from her grasp, as though she’d been left behind or not given what she’d been promised.
Then something so bright appeared that she couldn’t even look at it. Too brilliant, too…voices layered over each other and the dazzling light and sound maddened her as she tried to isolate phrases and colours…she was dragged back into indifferent night-time with one question in her mind. Who was that? Who was that? I know who the woman was, who was the girl? Then it became clear to her: the answer was obvious. Tessinika’s daughter.
♯♯♯
Thanks for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to check out my blog so you can see lots of other fantasy extras and be the first to hear of the release of part two!
www.dragonsliketoast.blogspot.com
Skye Garcia
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