The Unicorn Hunter (20 page)

‘Is it going to be safe to breathe it in?' asked Maddy.

‘Only one way to find out,' said Nero.

‘It's all right for you, you're lower down,' said Danny.

‘What's that got to do with anything?' asked the wolf.

‘Smoke rises, which means the taller you are, the quicker it will get to you,' said Danny.

Without meaning to, they all looked at Fachtna at the same time. She raised an eyebrow as she stared back at them, but no one said a word.

‘I don't think that is going to apply here,' said Fenris. ‘It's not normal smoke, mist, whatever we're going to call it. Besides, the Coranied know we are entering it and why – they would hardly poison us on their borders.'

‘Our biggest problem is going to be seeing, not breathing,' said Fachtna. She thrust her arm deep into the mist and it was as if it had been swallowed from the elbow down. Maddy couldn't even see a dim outline.

‘We'll leave the horses here; it's too dangerous to try walking them through this,' Fachtna continued. ‘If they start to panic in there it will be hard to hold them, and we do not want to risk getting separated.'

‘Will they be OK?' asked Roisin.

‘They will be fine,' said Fachtna. ‘They will wait for us here until we emerge or their riders call them home.'

Maddy picked up George and zipped him into her jacket. She gasped in pain as he wriggled against her sore ribs, and he rasped his rough tongue over her chin by way of an apology.

‘Myself and Nero can smell all of you well enough, but you will have to hold on to each other,' warned Fenris. ‘It will be too easy for someone to get lost and wander away in there.'

‘We'll have to hold hands,' said Roisin. ‘Fachtna, you lead the way. Maddy, you can hold hands with her, seeing as you are such good friends.'

Maddy looked at Roisin, shocked by the spite in her voice, but Roisin just glared at her with a
Yeah, and?
look.

Maddy sighed and held out her hand to Fachtna.
Roisin grabbed her other hand, Danny held on to his sister and together they shuffled forward into the mist.

Maddy had felt a tiny bit stupid, venturing into the unknown holding hands, but once they were inside the mist it was a different story. She
knew
she was holding Fachtna's creepy triple-jointed fingers and Roisin's podgy digits because she could feel them, but she couldn't see them. She couldn't see anything. When she looked down she couldn't even see her own feet.

Panic and claustrophobia clawed at her and within seconds she found herself fighting the urge to scream. Her breath came in ragged shallow gasps and in her painful, hitching chest it felt like her lungs were shrinking as rapidly as a salted slug. George picked up on her distress and began to squirm, which only made things worse. Maddy clenched her teeth and felt a tiny trickle of sweat slide down the side of her face, but before she could give in to the panic a massive wedgeshaped head butted against her side and she could feel a wet nose nuzzling her hip and she relaxed. She had no idea if it was Nero or Fenris, but just the feel of the warm, shaggy body padding alongside hers and being surrounded by the sharp scent of wolf calmed her down.

She could hear Danny and Roisin panicking alongside her as their breathing quickened and caught
in their chests and she wished they had enough wolves to go around. She was about to say something when a strange smell tickled her nostrils.

‘Can anyone smell that?' asked Danny.

‘Is that …' Maddy sniffed, ‘… doughnuts?!'

‘I'm getting chocolate cake,' said Roisin.

‘Pancakes,' said Danny. ‘Definitely pancakes.'

Up ahead the mist cleared and Maddy's mouth dropped open when she saw what was waiting for them.

A cottage crouched in their way, but it wasn't built of bricks and mortar or wood. The whole thing, from the front doorstep to the roof, was made entirely of desserts. The roof was slabs of chocolate cake, the walls stacks of pancakes mortared with layers of cream and maple syrup, doughnuts swirled to form a door frame and from the chocolate-log chimney rose a thin wisp of smoke. The door and the window frames were made from chocolate flakes while the windows were flat translucent sheets of sugar.

‘Wow,' said Danny.

Maddy hadn't been hungry, but just the sight of that sugary, sweet building made her mouth water. She longed to snap a doughnut off the door frame, cut herself a slice of pancake wall …

‘It's a gingerbread house,' said Roisin.

‘What?' asked Maddy, half in a daze as she imagined
how a chocolate-cake roof tile would taste, melting in her mouth.

‘It's obvious,' said Roisin. ‘It's the gingerbread house out of “Hansel and Gretel”, built to tempt passing children so the warty old witch who lives there can snatch them inside and cook them up in her oven.'

‘Are you sure?' asked Danny. ‘I can't see any gingerbread.'

‘Course not,' said Roisin. ‘Who eats gingerbread these days?'

‘Can we have some?' said Maddy. Her stomach growled.

‘Do you remember what happened to Hansel and Gretel?'

‘Oh yeah,' said Maddy.

‘Let's go round it,' said Danny.

‘Did the witch do anything to wolves?' asked Nero's voice somewhere near her waist. She could hear both wolves sniffing the air.

‘Wolves weren't in the story, but I don't think we should risk it,' said Maddy. There was silence for a second and then Nero said, ‘Shame,' in a quiet voice.

‘So do we have a decision?' snapped Fachtna.

‘Yeah, we're walking on round it,' said Maddy.

‘At last,' muttered Fachtna and strode off, dragging them all in her wake.

They skirted the cottage nervously and once they were past it, the mist closed over it again. The smell though was all around them, and it didn't seem to be getting any weaker. Maddy, Danny and Roisin's stomachs growled in the silence and Maddy had to swallow repeatedly to keep from drooling.

They walked on for a few more minutes, found the mist clearing again and the same cottage sat in front of them, waiting for them as contently as a cat in sunshine, the same lazy trail of smoke looping into the air from its chocolate chimney.

‘I don't believe this!' said Roisin.

‘Now can we have some?' asked Nero.

‘NO!' they all shouted at the same time.

Fenris sniffed the air. ‘I don't like this. Let's try to get away from here.'

So on they walked, with the smell of all those sugary goodies as strong in their noses as ever, until a few minutes later, there sat the cottage again.

‘Are we going in circles or something?' demanded Danny.

‘Did you see us take a turn anywhere?' asked Roisin.

‘No.'

‘Well, shut up then!'

‘It's not going to let us past,' said Fachtna.

‘What do you mean?' asked Maddy.

‘What I said,' she snapped. ‘It's a creature of the mist. It might be a test set by the Coranied, but whatever it is, it isn't going to go away. You need to deal with it.'

‘Us?!' said Maddy. ‘How?'

‘I don't know,' said Fachtna. ‘This thing comes from your world, your heads. It's for you to deal with.'

‘Great,' muttered Danny.

‘We could just eat our way through?' said Nero hopefully.

Fenris sighed. ‘Please stop thinking about eating.'

‘I can't help it. I'm hungry,' said Nero. ‘We really should have hunted last night.'

‘We need to act out the story,' said Roisin.

‘What, take a bite and get kidnapped?' said Maddy.

‘It's waiting for us and it's waiting for something to happen,' said Roisin. ‘We have to sort it out before we can move on, so I suggest we act out the story. And when I say we, I mean you two. It only needs a Hansel and a Gretel, and I'd be no good at fighting off scary witches.'

‘Is this really the only way through?' asked Fenris, a frown creasing his face.

‘Unless anyone else can think of another plan,' said Roisin. They all looked back at her. ‘Fine. This is the only way.'

Maddy sighed and unzipped her jacket. She handed George over to Roisin. ‘Keep hold of him and don't
let him run off or we'll never find him again,' she said.

‘Are you going to take the sword off?' asked Roisin.

‘Why?'

‘Gretel didn't have a sword,' she pointed out.

‘Then she was an idiot,' said Maddy.

‘Just leave it – we've got Fachtna. You might mess the story up,' insisted Roisin.

‘I'm not involving myself in this,' said Fachtna, her long hooked nose wrinkling in distaste.

‘I'm definitely bringing my sword,' said Maddy. She grabbed Danny by the arm and the two of them walked up to the cottage. They dug their hands into the flake sticks that made up the rustic front door, broke off handfuls of the brittle chocolate and shoved it into their mouths. Maddy looked back at everyone else, raised her eyebrows and shrugged when nothing happened. Danny, cheeks bulging like a hamster, gave a thumbs-up … right before the door burst open and a pair of green hands grabbed them both by the arms and yanked them inside.

Maddy staggered as she was spun around in the doorway and shoved across the room. The sword tangled in her legs, tripping her, and she screamed with pain as she crashed down on the floor, landing on her ribs. Her swollen eye throbbed in the heat of the room.

Inside the cottage was just bare boards, on the floor and on the walls, a single-room shack that held nothing but a table laid for one, a bench with some very wicked-looking hooks and knives on it as well as a massive pie dish, and a huge stone oven. An inferno blazed inside it and it throbbed from the power of the heat. Flames glared balefully from a small glass door set in the belly of the oven, casting a hellish glow over the shack. It was the only light in the room and darkness clung as thick as cobwebs in corners and hung from the rafters of the ceiling.

She heard Danny groan and saw him lying stunned
by the bench. Outside the wolves were howling and a heavy body was throwing itself against the door. Paws scrabbled at the base of the door, but the chocolate cottage seemed to be impervious to the damage a wolf's granite-hard claws should be able to inflict.

Maddy heard a low chuckle and turned her head to look at the witch.

She was straight out of a fairy tale, dressed in black with a hump on her back, green warty skin, her hands huge and tipped with long black nails, and a tall black pointy hat on her head. Its brim shadowed her face. She lifted her head to fix her eyes on Maddy and the flames lit up her face.

Yellow eyes blazed in a green face and sharp yellow teeth ground and chomped in a wet, slobbering, black-lipped mouth. A long hooked nose and a long hooked chin that almost touched each other completed the picture. She was an echo of Maddy's nightmares, the storybook witch come to eat her flesh and crunch her bones, only this time Maddy wouldn't wake up screaming to find her mother comforting her.

‘Naughty little mice, nibbling on my cottage,' she said, and even the
voice
was from a book, high and creaking. ‘Naughty little mice, come to steal from me. Greedy little mice that think they can take what they
want without even a please or a thank-you. But now you have to pay for what you took.'

There was a movement at one of the windows and Maddy could see a silvery blur through the cloudy sugar glass as Nero braced his huge front paws against the window sill and tried to peer through into the gloom. The witch saw it too.

‘Stupid wolf,' she snarled. ‘Can't it stay in its own story?'

Maddy climbed slowly to her feet. ‘No one can get in, can they?' she asked.

The witch smiled a ghastly smile at her. ‘And no one can get out. Not until the story is done.'

‘You know how the story ends, right?' asked Maddy. The witch hissed at her as Maddy undid the sword belt, wrapped it around the hilt of the sword and hefted it in her hand like a club. ‘You do realize I get to shove you head first into an oven?'

‘Endings can change,' hissed the witch.

‘Come on then,' said Maddy, grinning and lifting the sword. ‘Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.'

The witch gave a howl of rage and charged. Maddy stood her ground and then spun around at the last second, cracking the witch hard across the back of the head with the flat of her blade and sending her
staggering head first into the wall. The witch growled and clambered to her feet.

‘Calling yourself a Hound doesn't make it so,' the witch said. ‘Weave a story for yourself if you like, girl – it doesn't mean you can live it. And the ending of every story can change, even this one.'

Maddy held the sword over her shoulder like a bat and prepared to swing again. ‘You're going into that oven, whether you like it or not,' she said.

The witch and Maddy circled each other, each looking for an opening, while Roisin screamed their names outside and the steady
thud, thud, thud
at the door told her Fachtna had overcome her reservations and was trying to break in. The witch howled and charged Maddy again, but this time Maddy stepped into her arms and head butted her squarely on the nose. Her head rang but the witch went down a second time.

Danny had managed to grab hold of the bench and pulled himself to his feet. Maddy turned to see if he was all right, when the hag climbed to her feet and lunged for the vicious-looking instruments Maddy had noticed when she first entered the room.

‘Stop her!' yelled Maddy.

It was not the most elegant intervention. Still woozy from his fall, Danny half fell against the witch, but he managed to pin her arms to her sides in a bear hug.
The witch howled with rage and thrashed in his arms. Sweat poured from his face and the pair nearly fell over backwards as she arched her back and pushed off the ground with the pointed heels of her shoes.