Then she remembered breakfast. And then she remembered how she didn’t really have an appetite recently, and then she remembered why.
Perhaps the guilt and fear would go away. Perhaps, perhaps –
She pushed it aside, yet again, and prepared herself for a normal day. Today was never destined to be normal however. When Lucerna got in to the kitchen, it was deserted. No lingering scent of toast, no signs of movement, and no Lilian.
Lilian.
After five minutes of searching the house, Lucerna concluded that Lilian was officially absent without leave. Her first and most disturbing thought was that she would have to wash her own socks. Then she had an idea that this might be Lilian’s idea of a rebellion. Well, it would probably be short lived then. Lilian was no hardcore. And she would know about it when she inevitably returned.
Lucerna sighed irritably. Damn Lilian.
Then she thought that maybe she hadn’t even been that intelligent. Maybe she was hiding somewhere nearby. She would go to the stables, where the people who looked after the garden were to be found as well, and ask them to search for the silly girl.
One way or another, this surely couldn’t last long.
***
Quinn’s journey seemed to be lasting very long, mostly due to backache from sitting on a horse for hours at a time. Having to duck under branches, pull brambles out of Daisy’s mane every few minutes and coax the horse through horrible dense patches of shrubbery was wearing and irritating. He began to curse the Unicorn, as though this was all it’s fault. It was only evil, he thought, because it was probably an illusion made up by neurotic creeps like the priestess Lucerna. He shuddered as he remembered her cold, calculating eyes, like a scanner that could see into his brain. Then she had given him a copy of her stupid book, which he had never taken any interest in despite grudgingly turning up to the meetings, as some reading material for the trail.
He thought of the book, then. It was sat safely on the floor at home, serenaded by dirty laundry.
“Where it belongs,” he thought out loud.
The light was leaving the sky again. Quinn would have to stop soon. He pressed Daisy on, patting her and whistling reassuringly. They went through a dense slope of tall pines, across a muddy bank where a tree had fallen and past it’s huge clawing branches. They reached up redundantly in a sprawl of gangly twigs, the vast smooth trunk like the sides of some huge dormant beast.
Quinn steered Daisy past, into the widely spaced beeches beyond. Then he spotted a glimmer of silver – water. So he had found a stream…no, this was far too big to be a stream. Daisy topped the small ridge above, and Quinn could clearly see that this must be the river. All well and good, a river was better than a stream; there was more of it.
Quinn was just about to dismount when a massive butterfly swooped toward Daisy. A butterfly about the size of two slices of bread. It was brilliantly coloured, and Daisy shied in alarm. She bolted, whipping back through the trees, and as Quinn snatched for the reins a branch whacked him in the face and he tumbled from Daisy’s back.
Chapter 4
Leaves.
Yes – they were all over the place.
Quinn wasn’t sure what exactly was hurting; he just knew that many, many things were. Something sticky was interfering with his ability to breathe; he cautiously raised a hand that seemed to be working, to his nose. Blood came away. Had he broken it? He could believe anything with the pain of it. Feeling obligated to take responsibility for his pathetic mishap – a butterfly, for all love – he distorted his face into a reflection of the agony and sat up. The world swam, popped, reeled out of focus, and finally settled on the purpley blue sky of dusk.
“Daisy?” he called out experimentally. He attempted to stand; how much time had passed? Had he been unconscious? He panicked slightly.
“DAISY!” he yelled.
Then someone answered. It wasn’t Daisy.
“Sssshhh…”
Quinn froze.
A something, a light solid fluttering something, was on his bruised shoulder. He turned his head, very apprehensively, and there was the damned butterfly. Quinn knew he was losing it; butterflies did not talk.
“What the bleeding –“
“I said, shush. You will wake undesirable things. I am sorry. Please listen. Are you listening?”
Quinn laughed humourlessly.
“To my own insanity, indeed,” he replied.
“Very well. If that is what you wish to call me…let me inform you. You have arrived in the deep of the forest, where the most wonderful and fearful things dwell. Do not worry: Daisy is safely conversing with the birds in the forest pasture. It is better that you stay alone for now…but you will sleep soundly tonight.”
“Not without my horse I will not. Not without a pillow I will not. And I’m hungry. And thanks for these – these – damages; and why, why in the name of nothing in particular am I talking to a figment of my imagination? Or shouldn’t that be a figment of my concussion?”
“I have said…your horse is detained, as are you. The rest will be taken care of, and I assure you that you are not concussed, and I am not a figment of your imagination.”
“Detained, are we? Detained? And what about this?” Quinn pointed to his bloody nose. “And I don’t know if I can walk. I’ve probably broken everything. IT HURTS!”
The butterfly sighed.
“I said, it will all be taken care of. Your injuries are just another reason you shouldn’t be allowed near a horse for a while. You will undoubtedly hurry away as fast as you can and tear yourself to pieces as you do. You do have to respect the forest, you know. If you don’t it will trip you up. Now please wait here patiently while I get help for you.”
“Help? I don’t need help. I just need to pull myself together and stop hallucinating things.”
The butterfly tutted.
“I am real, thank you very much. Not imaginary. Not a hallucination.”
Quinn suddenly smiled, nodded slowly.
“Ah! Well, you would say that,” he chuckled. “I will entertain you, myself, and we will pretend if you like. Show me then, where are all these five star facilities you talk of?”
***
Lilian felt not so much that she had fear as she was fear. She had ran and ran and ran. She hadn’t really looked where she was going even. Would someone be chasing her? Would Lucerna send someone after her? How long would it take for the priestess to notice? Had she seen Lilian leaving…? Questions circled around Lilian’s mind as she hurried along roads and out into the fields…over the big gravel track leading into the forest…into the forest…her eyes and head ached and itched with lack of sleep, her feet stung with the constant impact of running and sweat slithered on her palms.
She dashed off the main forest trail in to a thicket of brambles and green saplings. The thorns tore at her skin and snagged her clothes but she powered on into the trees for as long as she could bear. She had no idea how much later that she dropped to the ground, her heart pleading at her with screeching thumps to stop.
“Stop,” she actually said to herself. “Stop.”
Her tongue was sore; speaking was challenging. She had got away – escaped – there was no going back. Gradually the sounds of the world came back into focus; Lilian began to see what was in front of her. Then, with a savage voracity she reached into her pockets and began stuffing the food she had brought with her. Her hunger was temporarily insatiable. Then she realized she’d eaten half of her rations and that she really ought to save the rest; when she might next get anything to eat she had no idea. She sat in a stupor, digesting and trying to remember her name.
Lilian. It wasn’t really that she’d forgotten, just that she felt as though she was running from herself as well. She had been the serving girl Lilian, always Lilian in the house of Miss Lucerna, doing her every bidding, Lilian’s whole identity as the housekeeper; not unmentionable - just not worth mentioning.
It was demoralizing.
But worse, it was dehumanizing. What was Lilian? Was Lilian her, or was Lilian this frightened tearaway, her purpose and definition lost in a race to an imaginary finish line? It had been easy while everything she was had been tied into a role that gave her no time to think. Now she had to think. Now she had to think about what on earth she was outside of all that. It was as though her identity had been defined by a reflection in a mirror, and now either the reflection or the original was gone and she wasn’t sure which one had been real all along.
If she was honest, she felt like maybe both had disappeared.
So what was she, or wasn’t she, now?
This is getting way too existential, she thought. There was one practical thing she could do, at least. Find Quinn and tell him he was going to die. It seemed only fair that he should know. Maybe he might have an idea about how to avoid getting killed, in which case she also wouldn’t mind picking up some tips. She didn’t have high hopes of that however. There was no point being optimistic at the moment.
He probably wouldn’t even believe her. Probably thought – or knew! – that she was crazy. And what could either of them, anyone, do now anyway? She thought of Lucerna sending out people to find them, of a price on their heads, of horrible verses from the stupid book to prove that stray non-believers were evil. Maybe she expected them to disappear, and would use their vanishing as support for her claim that Unicorns lured away children. Did they count as children? Certainly Lilian had never felt more at the mercy of scary grown ups than she did now.
***
In the grey murk, Lucerna held the lamp, looking at it’s intricate details. There were the words, carved so delicately into the gleaming brass. So turn water to silver and fire to gold, lies to truth and new to old.
The writing, the writing – she had just noticed, the writing was, in the grooves of each letter, shiny with red. Dark, fresh, salty red…blood. How could a lamp bleed? Lucerna recoiled as she realized that she was the lamp…
And at that moment, out of the mist a shrill whinny echoed eerily. Hoof beats clanged on the metal ground, and Lucerna’s eyes darted around, fearful. Fearful. The light now shone from her, herself and she saw the words were written on her arm, tattooed with somebody else’s blood. The light shone from her – a shadow shone from her, casting light for the creature to see. It sensed her out, and suddenly the Unicorn rushed for her, about to run her through, trample her. And she would be smashed, like glass, like brass, the flickering flame snuffed on cold silver…Lucerna screamed, and woke gasping for air in the dark, alone. The house was empty…it was only another dream.
***
Quinn was happily settled on a pillow of moss and leaves, beautifully woven by birds. In a hammock of bark cords and ferns. Full of toasted roots from the marshmallow flowers. A half moon was visible through the branches, large and surprisingly bright. The air must be clearer here in the forest. A number of big, colourful butterflies surrounded him, sleeping silently on leaves and flowers. The river chattered softly by. He was on the other side of it now: the butterflies had guided him to a ford and he had waded across. This side of the river was a rather different landscape to the other. Creepers snaked down from the trees; glowing blooms like neon trumpets curled from the vines. The forest floor was a dense carpet of turquoise moss and strangely glittering ferns. Quinn was fairly convinced that he had been concussed and this was all a hallucination, but he was quite happy with that; heaven knew what he was really seeing, lying on, or eating, if anything at all, but he was reluctant to interrupt such entertainment and in any case he had no idea how he would.
His only slight concern was the uneasy thought of how big the spiders must be around here if they were on the same scale as the butterflies.
They would have lots of good places to hide in those creepers, too.
Distraction was called for.
Quinn questioned one of the butterflies nearest him what some of the constellations were, and the butterfly explained in great detail – there was Canis Lotus, the faithful hound of healing; here was the caterpillar, and the chrysalis next to it, and above that the great butterfly. And then over there was the bear, and the bear cub, and Serpentinian, the dragon – snake – salamander – depending on your point of view.
Quinn marvelled at his own concussed mind; what miraculous things it supplied! Perhaps reality would be like this forever now. What fun…
***
Why didn’t I bring some matches, for the love of hate? Thought Lilian. She was huddled around a heap of damp sticks, striking a piece of flinty rock repeatedly over the blade of her penknife. It was pitch dark, and she’d been doing this for hours. Finally she gave up, because her knees hurt so badly from kneeling she couldn’t stand it. She lay back on the uneven ground and stared up at the sky. It was chilly. It was usually very warm in Stellaria most of the time, but it was all relative really, and there was something about traipsing through a forest all day that made duvets, pillows and running water seem incredibly underrated.
Lilian was quite shivery and shaky from hunger, having forced herself not to eat all she had left. She snatched another thoroughly unrewarding oatcake from her pocket and nibbled it disconsolately. She supposed she ought to forage for things, but there was no chance of doing that in this light, or lack of it. No: everything would have to wait until tomorrow, and that was hours and hours of slimy blackness away. With no fire, the mosquitoes turned out in full force as well. The dedicated whining teased her incessantly, then the tickly landing on bare skin and she would swipe at the blood sucker before it could add injury to insult and leave her scratching her own flesh off.
Lilian tried to sleep. It quickly became an infamous joke in her isolated biosphere of challenge. After what felt like a day, but was more like twenty minutes, she stood up and crashed off into the undergrowth. Better to just dang walk, than be eaten alive lying on the floor with insomnia to boot.
Twigs, puddles, briars, rabbit holes, roots, her own feet; every conceivable obstacle was only too willing to encourage disaster for Lilian as she fought through the inky shadows. In utter exasperation, she took out her penknife and slashed at all the hateful plant life in front of her, then realized it was pointless: none of it was really out to get her, and attacking stalks didn’t achieve a lot when it came to it.
She collapsed in a hopeless, exhausted bundle and found herself wretching with grievous sobs. All the struggle and terror and herself and Lucerna and the cold sweat and hideous biting things and years of injustice and monotony. Lilian heaved and spat out a mouthful of stomach acid. Taking a deep breath, she brushed away the turmoil on her face with her sleeve and forged on through the trees. In the dark. On her own.
***
Having stayed awake all night, talking to the butterflies and watching the constellations moving, Quinn spent most of the following day asleep. In fact, confusingly, he woke at sunset, leading him to believe that the sun rose in the West in this part of the world. It took not too embarrassingly long for him to realize that the sun was sinking, not rising. A cacophony of birds twittering their evening songs and an owl hooting somewhere; this was dusk, not dawn.
Only now he wasn’t tired.
Quinn rolled out of the hammock and found some leftover marshmallows. Breakfast – while watching the sunset. The orange and scarlet lit the sky with a sweeping dazzle of coppery watercolour; flares of intense yellow-gold scuffed at the edges, like the brush strokes of a mighty painter with a vision of wonder. And the landscape itself could have been the paint palette – the trees dancing in the crimson beams, mixed with blots of purple and pools of green. Quinn was quite mesmerized by the sight, and all at once he was incredibly glad to be here, here rather than anywhere else on the planet.
He felt worried still for Daisy though, and wanted her to be here. If he was under this remarkably complete and brilliant illusion as he suspected – that still wasn’t fading – then he couldn’t really trust the word of an illusory butterfly, could he? His mind went quiet,
and he noticed the sound of the river again. And then another sound…Quinn looked around, but there was nothing there.
“Oy,” he said to one of the butterflies. “Where am I supposed to find this Unicorn? Is it real? Well of course it is. If you lot have conned yourselves into believing you’re real, you will think a Unicorn is as well, I’m sure.”
The butterfly fluttered, made a noise like a butterfly laugh.
“We are as real as anything, which is to say, not very. As real as you, which is – not very. And Unicorns are, naturally, as real as us all – which is not very. The Unicorn will not be found, no. It will find you, if you are real enough to be found.”
Quinn grimaced.
“Bah. You’re just messing with my head now. And you are too big. Butterflies are not supposed to be that big.”
He settled down to watch the last of the light go, the azure roll into indigo, the stars to appear and the moon to rise. Each stage was a miracle; he’d never before rejoiced so much in the turning of the sky’s tide.
“I don’t want to go back,” he said suddenly. Then after a while,
“Will it be like this forever, now?” he asked the butterflies again.
One with bright green wings and purple speckles replied, “It depends on your definition of forever.”
Quinn rolled his eyes. “Do you lot ever give a straight answer?”
The butterfly alighted on a new creeper. “Sometimes…” it said vaguely.
***
Lilian paid no particular attention to the sunset, other than experiencing a sense of foreboding at the thought of the troops of mosquitoes appearing again. How long before the poxy little vampires came carolling to her ears? It seemed only five minutes since the last round of them. Having walked through the night, she had managed to sleep for a few hours on a pile of leaves, or at least close her eyes and have a change of discomfort. On waking up she had found it to be late afternoon and now she was presented with a new set of difficulties. She kept walking despite being very disoriented, and realized that she was desperately thirsty and could think about nothing other than finding water. All at once it became overwhelming; her head swam with giddy nausea and she collapsed on the forest floor and leaned against a tree. The world began to spin, slowly, as though she was on the roof of a train going around in a circle.