The Secret Country (40 page)

The unicorn raised its head. Laura, fearful of losing it, climbed down the tree and walked straight into the chilly water. The unicorn nuzzled her as a horse would; its whiskers were wet. Laura thought perhaps she would think more kindly of horses in the future.

“Well, Child of Man,” it said.

“Claudia said you had all gone south.”

The unicorn snorted. “We are always here,” it said. “Claudia is a tale-weaver. What did you desire of us?”

“The answer to a riddle,” said Laura. It occurred to her for the first time that she had not invented a rhyme. Well, it was too late now.

“That must be decided in council,” said the unicorn. “It is not the season for riddles.”

“Can you take a message to the council, then?”

“No,” said the unicorn.

Laura was relieved. She had seen and spoken to the unicorn. It would have been fun to have returned in triumph with the answers to all the riddles the hunt had been too stupid to ask, but that had not been what she wanted most.

“But I can take you,” said the unicorn.

Laura was taken aback. But the thought of being left alone in the woods in the wrong season and with only Claudia for company was worse than the thought of riding even a horse, and this ought to be better than riding a horse.

“All right,” she said.

The unicorn knelt in the water, and Laura climbed onto its back. It felt like satin, and it was much warmer than the water. She took a double handful of cobwebby mane, wondered how many bones she would break, and said, “I’m ready.”

The unicorn went in one bound out of the stream and over an enormous stretch of underbrush. Laura’s hair unbraided and tangled itself behind her. The trees went by like a flurry of fallen leaves. The sky streaked to gray. The unicorn stopped, and Laura promptly fell off into a pile of leaves.

A dozen other unicorns moved away to give Laura room to stand up, but she could not see where she was. They were warm and spicy smelling. The one she had ridden spoke to the others in a most peculiar language. Laura could not help expecting them to sound like horses; they looked more like horses than like anything else. But the one she had spoken to in the lake, and the one at the hunt, and the one she had ridden, all sounded like flutes when they spoke human languages. When they spoke their own, they sounded deeper, but still like some strange horn.

The others did not answer the one Laura had ridden; when it had finished speaking to them, it said to her in human language, “Speak your riddle, Child of Man.”

Laura took a breath. It had been hard to think while riding the unicorn, but she had come up with something that sounded formal, if not rhymed.

“How can a world be and not be? How can a play be a world? How can a sword be a gate?”

The unicorns moved like a flash of sun on water and made odd noises, like a group of recorders being warmed up.

“The form is not proper,” the one she had ridden informed her.

“I haven’t had much practice,” said Laura, at random, and a little sulkily.

The unicorns became discordant. Laura lay back on the crackling ground and watched the leaves whirling against the clean-washed sky. She breathed in the cinnamon-or-ginger smell of the unicorns and discovered that it was impossible to worry.

“That is nonsense,” the one she had ridden said. “You have walked out of your own time, you have played the Flute of Cedric, and you have found one of our number outside all feasts and customs.”

“I didn’t mean to walk out of my own time!” protested Laura. “And I never even heard of the Flute of Cedric, and I asked the cardinal to find me a unicorn.”

The unicorns became even more discordant, like a very badly played brass band. They moved uneasily, and Laura suddenly found it hard to see them when she looked straight at them.

“What hast thou seen that thou hast not told?” demanded one of them.

Laura, who was by now thoroughly bewildered, felt as if she were in the middle of a mystery novel. She had never read one herself, but Ruth had read dozens of them one summer in a rebellion against Shakespeare, and had told the stories to the rest of them. Patrick had said that Shakespeare did it better, which had enraged Ruth. It was true, though, that none of those mystery stories had become parts of the Secret Country.

Unless, of course, she was in one now. Maybe Ruth, while being mad, had made up a mystery story for the Secret Country without telling anyone. In that case, Laura could not possibly know what she had seen and not told. She sat up thoughtfully. Thinking of things happening to her that had not happened in the game . . .

“Oh,” she said. “You mean the pictures I see in the swords, and the lamps, and the jewels, and all that?”

“No doubt,” said the unicorn, dryly. It sounded, despite the airy and inhuman quality of its speech, like Fence. Laura wondered if he often talked to unicorns.

“Why,” the one she had ridden asked her, “did you see so much and tell nothing?”

“They don’t listen,” said Laura, quite sulkily.

The wind stopped, and the leaves fell straight down, showering the unicorns and making Laura sneeze. The unicorns hooted like the musicians at the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, but more melodiously.

“The seasons listened,” said the one she had ridden. “The path of flowers listened. The cardinal listened. Those others are but men. Wherefore could one such as you not make them listen?”

“Particularly,” added the other one who had spoken, “to such things as these must be. Why, look you, Child of Man, how the not telling hath turned you awry.”

“Is that why I’m out of my proper time?”

“We do not answer why,” said the one she had ridden. “But that is how.”

“How do I get back, then?”

“Tell what you have seen.”

“But how can I unless I get back?”

“A pretty problem,” said the other one who had spoken. The rest of them made burbling sounds that Laura was sure were chuckles. Being laughed at by unicorns was unnerving. They looked serene, austere, unearthly, and more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. They did not look as if they could laugh. She did not like to think of what kinds of things must make them laugh.

And it’s not as if they’re laughing because I’m me, or even because I’m a Child of Man, she thought, or they would have done it earlier. They’re laughing at the way things are. I want to go home.

“Wait,” she said. “If I went to High Castle now and told them
then,
could I go back? Do I have to go back? Could I stay in the fall?” After all, everything bad should be over by then.

“Things should be told as they are seen,” said the one she had ridden.

“But I already didn’t,” said Laura, ready to cry.

“Tell as close to the occurrence as you may, then.”

“But you said I couldn’t get back until I did tell them!”

The unicorns were quite silent.

“Didn’t you?” said Laura.

A flurry of wind rustled the drying leaves, and a rabbit streaked into the underbrush. Laura picked up a handful of leaves, stirring up a rich smell that reminded her of Fence. The thought of him was comforting. She looked up at the circle of pale sleek faces and violet eyes. She was not good at puzzles and riddles, but she recognized the quality of this silence. The older children had a certain type of joke that produced this same smug, expectant, and gleeful quiet. Laura thought carefully.

“You didn’t say I had to tell
them
before I could go home!” she cried. “You just said I had to tell!”

This was greeted with a chorus of whistling and piping. They were pleased with her, which was more than Ted and the others had ever been on the rare occasions when she figured out their jokes.

“If I tell you will you take me back to summer?”

“If you tell us you will return to summer.”

“Do I still have to tell people too?”

“It would be wise,” said the unicorn she had ridden. “Although we might find mirth in your not telling.”

Laura resolved to tell anyone she could find everything she could remember as soon as she possibly could.

“Well,” she said, “I have to think.”

The unicorns murmured, and several of them lay down with the abrupt motion of a cat that wants to play. Laura thought. She was surprised to realize how long they had been in the Secret Country. Finding the sword seemed like something that happened in another year. Of course, from where she was now, it
had
happened in another year. Laura wondered if she was having trouble remembering through that much time even though she hadn’t lived through it yet. Magic was certainly confusing.

“Okay,” she said at last, slowly. “The first time the swords lit up, I just saw a lot of faces, and more swords shining, and something like a horse, only . . . I bet it was one of you.”

“No doubt,” said one who had not spoken before. Laura wondered if Fence had taught them English, or whatever it was she was speaking with them.

“After that,” said Laura, “at breakfast, the first day, I saw something. In the jewels on Randolph’s dagger. It was that lady in the secret house. She was looking in a mirror, but she wasn’t
in
the mirror.” She stopped, fearful that she had given too much away, or that the unicorns would want to know why she had said the “first day.” They gave her a grave and attentive silence.

“It seems like something else happened that day too,” said Laura, “but I can’t think what.” She looked at the unicorn she had ridden. “Can I go back even if I forget?”

“Perhaps.”

The unicorn sounded uncompromising. Laura thought harder. The unicorns around her were perfectly still. As she thought, they faded and slipped sideways into the periphery of her vision, and the things she had seen and not told crowded the leafy clearing.

“On Midsummer’s Eve,” said Laura, “at supper, in Fence’s room, I looked at Randolph’s ring, and I saw a lot of shapes, all misty, but up in the sky was Claudia’s face. And it was the same as one of the faces I saw in the sword, before. It was big, bigger than the sun would be.”

The silence held.

“And later Ellie and I found the knife Claudia made, and I saw Ted’s face in it, all bloody. Hey!” said Laura, sitting up and trying to address a unicorn through the shifting shadows. “When Patrick broke—I mean, later, I did see Ted with blood on his face! Really. Except . . .” She frowned. “I think,” she said, slowly, staring straight before her to where a ghost of Claudia’s dagger winked, “I think when I saw him in the dagger his face was a lot dirtier. It’s hard to be sure.”

“Certainty is a trap,” said a unicorn.

“Well,” said Laura, “and that same night I looked at Fence’s robe and I saw a lot of people and beasts all running around on a flat place. And I think,” she ended, “that that’s all.” A great gust of wind swept through the trees, and the unicorns filtered back into view. Laura blinked. How had they done that?

“Well, Child of Man,” said the unicorn she had ridden, “I think it is time we had your name.”

“Laura,” said Laura. In the silence after she had spoken, a kind of resinous fragrance wafted by, prickling but sweet; on the very edge of hearing a horn blew happily.

The unicorns drew back a little.

Laura wondered if she had been rude. “May I have yours?” she asked.

The one she had ridden came forward again. “Chryse,” it said. Laura, gazing upward, saw for the first time that its eyes were not violet like the others’, but a brilliant gold. The wind and the light sweetened suddenly into summer again, and the grass was full of dandelions.

“That’s pretty,” said Laura, before she thought, but Chryse did not seem to take it amiss.

“My thanks to you,” it said, graciously. Then its ears went back. “Yours,” it said, “is much more than pretty.”

Chryse did not sound precisely pleased, so Laura changed the subject. “I guess you can’t answer my riddles?”

“When you change time of your own power,” said Chryse, “when you have played the Flute of Cedric and found the unicorn in winter, bereft of the cardinal, then we will answer your riddles.”

“Thank you,” said Laura, glumly. Ruth could change time of her own power, and she could play the flute, too, though she probably didn’t know who Cedric was; Laura saw no possibility of doing any of these things herself.

“I think,” she said, “since it’s summer again and they might start to miss me, I’d better go back now.”

“This is not your summer,” said Chryse. The other unicorns were slipping sideways again, sliding into sunbeams and not emerging on the other side. “But I will take you to it.” It knelt, and Laura climbed onto its back again.

Chryse leaped, and things became a blur of green and blue and gold, and Laura fell off suddenly, flat into the middle of the abandoned fence from the hunt.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Due payment duly paid,” said Chryse, with a remote amusement, and it shot over the fence and disappeared.

Laura picked herself up, brushed herself off, climbed over the fence, and followed the trampled trail of the others to the feast.

CHAPTER 22

IT seemed that Laura had not been gone very long. She caught up to Ellen, Benjamin, and the white horse before they had come to the feast. She trudged along behind them, looking at the wild tangle of Ellen’s hair, and found that she was still jealous, but that she no longer had to do anything about it. She was sure, without knowing why, that Ellen had not felt the harder edge of the unicorns’ character, the almost malicious mirth and the inhuman laughter. Ellen had behaved in accordance with custom, and the unicorns had been kind to her. Laura had not, and though they had not been unkind, they had been difficult. Laura tried to think of this as a superior adventure, but it felt more like a breach of manners. She shrugged and ran.

“Wait for me!”

The white horse shied and Benjamin spun around, but Ellen looked over her shoulder and grinned. “There you are,” she said. “Did you get to see everything?”