Unicorn Trade by Anderson, Poul. Part six

“Good old Patch,” he said, and got his pack. He shared the last piece of honeycomb with his hippogriff and watched the sun sink still further. The clouds were turning red.

“Let’s go see those clouds,” Johnny said. He mounted the piebald hippogriff and they flew off, up through the golden air to the sunset clouds. There they stopped and Johnny dismounted on the highest cloud of all, stood there as it turned slowly gray, and looked into dimming depths. When he turned to look at the world, he saw only a wide smudge of darkness spread in the distance.

The cloud they were standing on turned silver. Johnny glanced up and saw the moon, a crescent shore far above.

He ate an apple and gave one to his hippogriff. While he chewed he gazed back at the world. When he finished his apple, he was about to toss the core to the hippogriff, but stopped him—

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self and carefully took out the seeds first. With the seeds in his pocket, he mounted again.

He took a deep breath. “Come on. Patch,” he said. “Let’s homestead the moon.”

—Karen Anderson

THE COASTS OF FAERIE

Minna was a child of the fisher folk who dwell by the narrow harbor of Noyo on the western sea. Every morning she went with her father into his boat, for no sons remained to him, to draw the ling cod from the cold salt-stinging water. Whether in sun or cloud or rain, each day they went forth; and whatever the weather near shore, there was always a bank of lowlying mist that retreated toward the horizon when they approached it.

One day as they returned to the narrow harbor Minna was sitting in the stern of the boat. She had taken the last fish from the hooks and coiled the lines. Now she looked behind, and saw that the mist was become clean-edged and had taken on the shape of hills like those of the land she knew.

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“Look, Father!” she cried. “What land is that?”

“It is only the mist,” said her father without turning, for the wind gusted about the bluffs and the harbor was not easy to enter.

“But look! There are hills afire with scarlet flowers!”

“It is only the sunset,” said her father. They passed under the headland, and the sight was gone; and at the wharf the fish must be unloaded for the fish market, to be sold to the folk who lived in the town atop the bluff.

Many a time did Minna see that coastline as they returned with their fish to the harbor of Noyo, but her father would never look. “See to the lines,” he would say. “It is only the mist.” And Minna learned not to speak of it, but she watched. Not twice alike was the line of the hills, and the burning flowers changed their seeming as she watched: now poppies, now roses, now lilacs and purple heather. By this Minna understood that it was Faerie she saw. She looked, as if trying to will herself there: across the dark bitter water of the fishing grounds, to the silver shallows under the long lines of the hills, to the blossoming colors of the ridges. But her father bade her see to her work; and so she coiled the line. Its heavy hooks caught at her hands and left scratches that burned from the salt water.

When they came home, she would wash away the salt and salve the scratches, but they would scab and break open again the next day. And

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each night she went to her bed in the little room under the roof, and she dreamed of the hills of flowers, where youths and maidens wore robes of changing colors and danced a long dance along changing slopes and ridges. And every day was the same as every other, as they took the boat from the gray wharf and out of the narrow harbor and set the bait on the barbs of the hooks.

Out of the west one evening came a wind that smelled of roses and cinnamon, and on it were drifts of petals. “Look! Oh, look!” Minna cried; but her father would not look. She held up her hands and caught at the glowing petals, but when they touched her salt-burnt hands and the salt-crusted deck they vanished.

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