“This time we follow Willow’s tracks — however many of them there are — until we find her!” Ben declared resolutely.
“Ifwe find her,” Abernathy muttered.
But no one heard him and off they went again.
Discovery
The heat of the midday sun settled down across the forests of the Melchor in a suffocating blanket and turned its cooling shadows tepid and dank. Morning breezes died away and the air grew thick and still. Insects hummed their toneless songs, leaves hung limp from their branches, and the warm-blooded life of the woodland lay patient and quiet. There was a slowing of time and purpose.
Willow paused at the base of a giant white oak, the weight of the spun gold bridle tugging relentlessly downward on her shoulders where it lay draped across them. A bright sheen of sweat coated the pale green skin of her face and hands, and her lips parted slightly as she worked harder to catch her breath. She had been walking since sunrise, following the black unicorn as it came and went in wisps of dream and shadow, trailing after as if she were a stray bit of dust drawn on in the wake of its passing. She had traveled the whole of the Melchor about Mirwouk half-a-dozen times over, crossing and recrossing her trail time after time, a senseless journey of whim and chance. She was west of Mirwouk now, scarcely a mile from the aged fortress, but she was barely aware of it, and it would have made no difference to her had she taken the time to think about it. She had long since ceased to care about anything but the subject of her search; all else had become irrelevant.
She must find the unicorn. She must know its truth.
She let her eyes glaze slightly with the memory of last night’s dream and wondered anew at its meaning.
Then she drew herself upright and continued on, a frail and tiny bit of life amid the giant trees of the mountain forest, a child strayed. She worked her way slowly through a grove of fir and pine clustered so thick that the boughs interlocked, barely glanced at a stand of Bonnie Blues beyond, and pressed upward along a gentle slope that led to a meadow plateau. She picked her way with careful steps, remembering wearily that she had passed this way before — once, twice, more? She wasn’t certain It didn’t matter. She listened to the sound of her heart pounding through her neck and in her ears. It was very loud. It was almost the only sound in the forest. It became the measure of each step she took.
How much farther? she wondered as the heat pressed down. When am I to stop?
She crested the meadowline, paused in the shadow of a long-limbed crimson maple, and closed her eyes against the uncertainty. When she opened them again, the black unicorn stood facing her.
“Oh!” she breathed softly.
The unicorn stood at the center of the meadow, framed in a splash of unclouded sunlight. It was ink black, so perfectly opaque that it might have been sculpted from midnight’s shadows. It faced her, head lifted, mane and tail limp in the breezeless air, a statue carved out of ageless ebony. The green eyes regarded her steadily and within their depths called to her. She breathed the sullen heat into her lungs and felt the scorch of the sun’s brightness. She listened. The eyes of the unicorn spoke soundlessly, images caught and reflected from dreams remembered and visions lost. She listened, and she knew.
The chase was over. The black unicorn would run from her no longer. It was to this time and place that she had been brought. It only remained for her to discover why.
She came forward tentatively, still half expecting with every step she took that the unicorn would disappear, that it would bolt and run. It did not. It simply stood there — motionless, dreamlike. She slipped the bridle from her shoulders and held it loosely in her hands before her, letting the unicorn see it clearly. Sunlight danced off the traces and fastenings, brilliant flashes that pierced the forest shadows. The unicorn waited. Willow passed from the shade of the crimson maple into the meadow’s sunshine, and the sweltering heat enveloped her. Her sea green eyes blinked away a sudden film of moisture, and she shook back her long hair. The unicorn did not move.