The Secret Country (35 page)

The unicorn said, “We do not regard the Children of Men with such awe as you give to us, and you are only a child, who will grow only to a woman. But you seem to me full of some power, as if we were the transient thing and you the lasting. But this is not so. What power is in you?”

I made you up, thought Laura. But looking at the unicorn, she could not believe that she had. It was enormous and solid. Its breath was warm on the top of her head. It had whiskers on the sides of its nose. The long horn with its spiral of violet gleamed and slanted, cold and dangerous, as the animal moved its head. Laura, sinking slowly into gravelly mud, looked up into its inquiring eye—violet, as Fence had said, and with an upright pupil like a cat’s—and felt herself a slight and wavering thing. She remembered the exasperating line from
Hamlet
that Ted quoted at her when she could not understand his explanations, and she shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I never dreamed you in
my
philosophy.” The unicorn took two paces backward, drenching Laura to the waist.

“Certainly you did not,” it said, but it sounded startled.

“Oh, don’t go away,” pleaded Laura.

“You will see me again,” said the unicorn. “Today is the hunt.” It wheeled around like a leaf in a whirlpool and fled after the rest of the herd.

Laura, backing away slowly, as if she were retreating from an audience with a king, tripped over her nightgown and sat down with a tremendous splash in the shallows of the lake.

She trudged back upstairs, leaving a trail of sand and water, and dripped into their bedroom. Ellen sat in the middle of the unmade bed with a very red face, trying to braid her hair. “Shan’s mercy!” she said fiercely as Laura entered.

“Don’t swear,” said Laura.

“That’s not swearing,” said Ellen crossly as she looked up and stared. “What happened to
you?
”

“I talked to the unicorns!”

“In the water?”

“I tried to wake you up.”

“Well, you did, but you were already gone.”

“And I have to talk to Patrick.”

“You’d better dry off first,” said Ellen. “He won’t be very pleased if you go dripping cold water on him. Did you go swimming?”

“No. I just talked to one of them for a minute. Oh, Ellie, you should have seen.”

“Was it like the Secret?”

“Much better,” said Laura. “We didn’t know anything about it at all.
Those
are
real
unicorns.”

“Are you going to start arguing with Patrick?” demanded Ellen.

“I’m just going to tell him.”

“Well, let’s get dressed first.”

“What in?” asked Laura, stopping in the act of untying the bow at the neck of her nightgown. “I refuse to go in the woods in one of those dresses.”

Ellen bounded out of bed and went over to the wardrobe.

“They’re special festive clothes,” she said, “like the ones for the banquet. So if we can find two more outfits that look alike, I’ll bet that’s it. No, don’t you come over here, you’ll get everything all wet. Why don’t you go dry off.”

Laura dripped obediently into their bathing room. Today, for some reason, the towels were black, but they were still linen. Laura wrapped herself up in one and wished for a mirror. Agatha had a hand mirror which she used to show Ellen and Laura what she had done to their hair, although Laura did not think that a protest on their part would make her change the hair. Ruth had a hand mirror in her room. The only other one Laura had seen was Fence’s, which was probably not a mirror at all. There was a room called the Mirror Room, but in fact its walls were covered with tapestries.

Laura stalked out of the bathing room, intoning, “I am the Demon Queen.”

Ellen, who had her arms full of green stuff, favored her with the remark, “You don’t have any warts.” She dumped the clothes on the bed. “These must be the right ones,” she said. “See, they’ve got short skirts and no lace, and they’re all loose. This one is bigger, it must be mine. Here.” She threw the other dress across the bed to Laura and began climbing out of her nightgown. “Did you hang up that wet nightgown?” she added.

“Claudia doesn’t have any warts,” said Laura, dropping the towel in a heap on the floor and pulling the dress over her head. “And she’s a demon queen.”

“She’s somebody awful,” said Ellen.

“I want my tennis shoes,” said Laura.

“They’re in Agatha’s mending basket,” said Ellen. “And the cat ate one of the laces. They’d look funny with that dress anyway.” She went over to the wardrobe again. “Here. Green boots. Or moccasins. Or something.”

“Too heavy,” said Laura.

“There are brambles out there,” said Ellen. “Agatha said if we tried to wear our sandals like we did last year, she’d leave us behind with bread and water.”

“Oh, well.” Laura sat down and took the boots. “
Did
we wear sandals last year?”

They put the boots on, with some trouble, as the laces were complex. “Let the cat eat these,” mumbled Laura. Then they went to find Patrick.

He was sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor, lacing his boots up with a sort of pleasurable concentration on his face. He was wearing a tunic of the same color and material as their dresses, and his boots were green too.

“Agatha says both Ted and Ruth can’t come with her party,” said Ellen.

Patrick looked startled. “Oh,” he said. “I should have thought of that. But will she let Laurie go?”

“Sure. Everybody except Ted, or except Ruth. So one of them has to ride.”

Patrick finished his boots and frowned. “Who rides better, Ted or Ruth?”

“Ruth,” said Ellen, loyally.

Patrick shrugged. “I think Ted should go with the main hunt. He’s the prince, after all.”

“I’ll tell Ruth to come with us, then,” said Ellen. “Agatha says if we’re late we’ll be left behind.”

Patrick shrugged again.

“Where’s Ted?” asked Ellen.

Patrick pointed to a lump in their wildly untidy bed. “He won’t get up. He had bad dreams last night, and spent hours walking the battlements, or something.”

“Well, tell him he has to ride today.”

Laura, who had been fidgeting around, said, “Patrick, we didn’t make up those unicorns.”

“No, of course we didn’t. The Greeks did,” he said. “Or was it the Middle Ages?”

“But you said—”

“
We
didn’t,” said Patrick. “Not the way we made up Lord Randolph. Not the idea of unicorns. But we put them here. It doesn’t make them any realer, Laurie, just because somebody else made them up, does it?”

“You don’t make any sense at all!” said Laura, crossly, and bolted into the hall. She was not sure, now, that she could describe her early morning experience to anyone. She certainly could not describe it to Patrick. She wondered what he would say if she told him that the unicorn had seemed to think that she had made it up.

“I hope,” said Ellen, joining her, “that you’re not going to be nasty all day.”

“Who’s nasty?” said Laura, astonished.

“Never mind,” said Ellen, eyeing her sideways as they went down the stairs. “Sometimes you act
just
like Princess Laura.”

Laura considered this all the way down to the dining hall, and became pleased with herself. She thought that High Castle must be rubbing off on her somehow. She thought about riding horses, and liked the idea no better than she ever had. The rubbing off must be slow.

There was nobody in the dining hall, but there was even more food than usual on the sideboard; some empty plates and cups on the table showed that other people were up too. They inspected the sideboard.

“Hey!” said Laura. “Oatmeal.”

“Gah,” said Ellen. “I’m getting tired of pork chops for breakfast.”

They took their food and dishes and sat down at one end of a long table. The high roof of the hall arched above them, full of shadows. It was very quiet. Outside two birds argued. Laura buttered her bread lavishly, licked her knife, and blanched. She kept forgetting that there was no salt in the butter. There was none in the oatmeal either, or perhaps something else was wrong with it. Whatever was wrong, she didn’t like it.

“How long,” she asked Ellen, “are we going to be here?”

“Well,” said Ellen, laying a bare chop bone on her plate, “I guess it depends on how many stories we’ve made up. We never did use them all, you know. By the time Ted comes back to life and is king—”

“But wait,” said Laura. “Those other stories came before now. We didn’t want them to happen afterward because we didn’t like having stories without Lord Randolph.”

“
I
never thought Lord Randolph was so much,” said Ellen, scowling. “Who wants murderers around anyway?”

“But he wasn’t a murderer before.”

“He was thinking about it.”

“Well, you agreed,” said Laura.

“Huh,” said Ellen. She picked up her plate, letting the bone fall to the table, and examined the pattern. “Hey,” she said. “It’s that darn pattern again.”

“Has it got the sun or the hole?”

Ellen turned the plate, examining it. “Well!” she said. “It doesn’t have that scene at all.”

“I wonder what’s going on,” said Laura, sadly.

There was a sudden commotion at the door as Ted, Ruth, and Patrick all struggled to get through it at once. It was just barely too narrow for all of them, and none of them would give way. Ruth and Ted were laughing, but Patrick, who was stuck in the middle, kept repeating calmly, “I won this race.”

“Ha!” said Ruth, dropping to her knees and scooting between their legs and across the floor to the sideboard. “Ha!” she repeated, standing up. “You said, I’ll race you to breakfast.
This
is breakfast. I win.”

Ellen and Laura looked at one another.

“Maybe she’s forgotten about being a sorcerer,” whispered Ellen.

Laura doubted it. She knew of no rule that sorcerers could not occasionally be silly.

Patrick picked himself up off the floor and came sedately over to join her. Ted followed. Before they had finished choosing their breakfasts, Randolph, Fence, and Matthew came in and made for the sideboard.

“Listen, you guys,” said Ruth, holding a ladleful of oatmeal over the iron pot and watching it dubiously, “do you really think Ted can keep up with the hunt? I’ve been riding longer, and—”

“Shut up!” said Ellen, making odd movements with her eyebrows at the two lords and the magician.

Ruth did not see her, but they did. Fence and Matthew simply stopped walking and looked receptive, but Randolph, to the everlasting astonishment of Laura, came quietly up behind Ted, who was carefully spooning honey onto a plate, and tickled him. Ellen burst out laughing. Laura dropped her cup of mead into her lap.

Ted gave an unnerved shriek and leaped backward, his hand going to his belt. Laura saw that he had there a dagger in a leather sheath, and any impulse to laughter she might have felt was stilled.

Randolph was smiling at Ted, but he looked a little anxious. Ted stared at him for a moment and then giggled, possibly in relief. Patrick rolled his eyes at the ceiling, which made Laura giggle too. Ruth placidly served herself some oatmeal. Fence and Matthew, exchanging glances Laura would have given a great deal to know the meaning of, came and got their own breakfasts.

Fence sat across from Ellen and Laura as Ellen was trying to mop the mead off Laura’s dress.

“Stupid napkins,” she muttered. “They’re as bad as the towels.”

“Never mind,” said Laura, trying to squirm away from her. Fence looked suspicious again. She had not seen him since he gave her the ivory unicorn, and her reaction to that seemed to have been what he expected. Apparently spilling mead in her lap was not what he expected of her. Laura cursed Princess Laura and pushed Ellen’s hand away.

“Seek out the old napkins,” said Matthew to Ellen, sitting down beside Fence. “They grow more pliable with age.”

“Unlike men,” said Randolph, and slid himself in next to Ellen.

“This is not a day for such remarks,” said Fence severely.

Randolph looked at him, and Laura expected him to shrug. He looked remarkably like Patrick for a moment. Then he smiled. “I cry you mercy,” he said, and bit into his bread.

“I have been thinking,” he added, with his mouth full, a thing for which he had chided Laura at dinner the night before, “that we require a new riddle for the ceremony for the hunt, if that which we commonly ask the unicorns hath been answered by another. Am I not right, lady,” he said to Ruth, “to say that you have solved the riddle of Shan’s Ring?”

Ruth choked on her oatmeal and turned red, whether from the choking or from embarrassment Laura did not know. The rest of them sat very still; Laura looked at Ted and saw that he was afraid.

“What?” said Fence, dropping his knife.

“Well,” said Ruth, and cleared her throat.

“Oh, well done!” said Fence, beaming at her. Ruth was too nonplussed to say anything.

“It’s what I used on Claudia,” she told him, cautiously.

Fence nodded. “I had wondered,” he said, “but—ah, well, ’tis not for me to pry into your secrets. So Shan’s Ring goes now to be an heirloom of the Green Caves.”

Ruth shrugged; Laura suspected her of being confused.

“I would we had known this sooner,” said Fence, looking reproachfully from Ruth to Randolph.

“Well,” said Ruth, “I thought we’d ask the riddle again and check the unicorn’s answer this year, just to be sure. I mean, the Ring could do what it’s done so far because of a lot more theories than mine.”

Laura felt Patrick, who had sat down on her other side, move jerkily. She glanced at him. He looked outraged. She supposed that he disliked Ruth’s taking credit for his ideas.

“Cautious, prudent, sober,” said Fence. “Not according to the Unicorn Hunt, methinks.”

“What instead, then?” said Randolph.

“There is our present distress,” ventured Matthew, but both Fence and Randolph shook their heads at him.