by Lou Anders
“That’s just its name.”
“It’s not a very welcoming one.”
“Well, no,” agreed Midnight. “The fens are yucky and mucky, it’s true. But it’s a shortcut. That means we don’t have to be in the fens for very long. And we’ll get where we’re going on time.”
“Which is where?”
“Where I need to be.”
“Which is where?”
As you might imagine, our ponies are going to go on like this for a while. But Midnight is going to win the argument in the end, because Curious doesn’t really have a choice other than to go along with her if he wants to get home. So she’s going to lead him through the Festering Fens despite his complaints. So while they argue about it pointlessly, let me ask you something with a point.
Do you know what you call a herd of unicorns?
Well, I guess you call them a herd, sure. But lots of creatures come in herds. Cows and cats and children, I suppose. Shouldn’t there be another term for a gathering of creatures as magnificent as unicorns?
Well, there is.
In fact, nearly every animal—or at least every interesting animal—has a name for a group of a whole bunch of them together.
So you have an army of ants. A swarm of bees. A colony of beavers. A murder of crows. Nice one, that. A school of fish. An embarrassment of pandas. A pod of whales. A wisdom of wombats.
And magical creatures are no different. They need fancy-schmancy names for when they all congregate too. So what do you call a lot of unicorns together?
You call them a Blessing.
A Blessing of unicorns.
That’s what they are. It tells you right off how special they think they are, to call themselves a Blessing.
And so, of course, what do you think a herd of night mares is called?
It’s going to be the opposite of a Blessing, isn’t it?
It sure is.
So what’s the evil opposite of a Blessing?
A Curse.
A Curse of night mares.
Not very nice. Not very fair. But there you go.
A Curse of night mares.
Why do I mention this now?
Well, for two reasons, really.
One is that the Curse is where Midnight is heading. Where she needs to be. And she needs to be there by midnight.
Clocks aren’t important on the Glistening Isles, sure, but every night mare knows when midnight is. And midnight is important.
And the other reason why I told you about Blessings and Curses? Well, the other reason will become important shortly. But right now, let’s catch up with Midnight and Curious.
I see that they’re still arguing.
“I can’t go to the Curse!” Curious yelped. And he was right. He couldn’t go. Not if he didn’t want to be torn to pieces.
“I’m not asking you to!” Midnight yelled back.
“But you’re going,” Curious pointed out.
“That’s right.”
“And I’m with you.”
Midnight sighed.
“We’ve been through this before. You are not with me, unicorn.”
Curious rethought his words.
“I am traveling alongside you, then,” he suggested.
“Alongside, but not with.”
“And that means if you go to the Curse, I’ll be alongside it too.”
Midnight snorted.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I have a Plan.”
“Will you tell me what it is?”
Midnight shook her head.
“Past experience has taught me that it’s best if only I know my Plans. Other horses don’t seem to get my Plans when I explain them beforehoof.”
“Your Plans sound like my Experiments,” said Curious.
“It’s nothing like those,” objected Midnight. “I’m sure I don’t do Experiments. Anyway, trust me, you don’t want to hear my Plan.”
Curious was usually not on this side of a conversation about doing something dangerous. But he did have past experience with telling someone they didn’t want to hear something.
“That means I really do want to hear it,” he said.
“I said you didn’t.”
“If I didn’t, then I do. If I did, then I wouldn’t need to.”
Midnight was about to object, or at least to try to untangle that mess of words, but she was interrupted.
You see, they were working their way through a barely noticeable path that meandered through the Festering Fens, which were every bit as yucky and mucky as you might imagine. And the yucky, mucky path had been winding its way toward the Silent Stones, where the Curse spent each night.
Unfortunately, Midnight and Curious hadn’t been particularly quiet.
They hadn’t been particularly careful.
The Festering Fens of the Whisperwood were no place for that. No place at all.
Because you could attract all sorts of unwanted attention if you weren’t quiet and careful.
And they weren’t. And they did.
“Ow,” said Curious. He suddenly stumbled. “Ow, ow, ow.”
“What is it?” said Midnight.
“A pain in my knee,” he said.
“Your knee?”
“Yes. Right, front.”
Midnight grunted. She was in a hurry and pains in the knee weren’t that serious. What did she care if the unicorn had a pain in his knee?
“This is odd,” Curious said.
“Why?” said Midnight. “Are you going to tell me that unicorns never get knee pains?”
“Well, we don’t,” said Curious. “Our horns heal everything.”
“Oh,” said Midnight. That irritated her. Then she remembered where they were. And why they were called the Festering Fens. And maybe why her shortcut wasn’t such a good idea after all. So she stopped walking and bent her neck to examine Curious’s knee.
It was scraped. And looking all oozy and puffy and gross.
Curious saw it too. His eyes went wide. He’d never had any sort of infection before, so his reaction was a lot bigger than it needed to be.
“I’m dyyyyyyyyying!” he shouted.
“You’re not dying,” Midnight chided him.
“Yes, I am, I’m dying! Here in the Whisperwood with only a Creature of Wickedness for company!”
“You’re not dying!”
Midnight was right. Curious wasn’t dying. But an infection on a unicorn was a problem. A serious problem. It could mean only one thing that Midnight knew of.
“Festerlings!” she shouted.
“It’s festering?” he asked.
“No, well, yes, it is. But no. I mean we’re under attack.”
“By what?”
“By a fury of festerlings!” she said.
And so now you know the other reason I told you about animal names. Because “fury” is the proper name for a group of festerling fairies.
And what are festerling fairies?
Well, just look, because here they come!
They came bursting out of the trees, a big black swarm—no, a fury—of them. They looked sort of like rotting ravens with cobwebs for wings. Or dead birds with the wings of flies in place of feathers. Long lizard tongues snaked out of their wicked beaks. Big, buglike eyes twitched on either side of their gray, rotten heads.
They were festerling fairies doing what festerling fairies did best.
Festering.
As they got closer, more spots appeared on Curious. They popped into existence on his legs and back and chest. And even on the end of his nose.
“Ow, ow, ow,” he said again.
And Wartle, because he didn’t want to be left out, said, “Ow, ow, ow,” as well.
But then Midnight fel
t it too.
The closer the fury of festerlings came, the worse the horses and Wartle all felt. And the worse they all looked.
Boils and blisters and pustules and pus and all kinds of ick was sprouting and bursting on their bodies. It was gross. Disgusting. Intolerable.
Midnight called on her fire and shot it out in a big blast.
Which, unfortunately, zoomed around the three not-quite-companions in a circle before swooping at Curious’s head.
The unicorn ducked just in time, and a tree behind him exploded.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Watch where you blast that thing!”
“Sorry,” said Midnight.
Then she coughed up some more fire.
This time her flame shot out in a long arc, high up into the air. But it went right past the festerlings, curved, and rained down—
—right where Curious had been until he jumped aside.
“Stop shooting me!” he said.
“I don’t have much control,” Midnight replied.
“Or any!” he said. Then he coughed, because the festerlings’ corrupting magic was even getting inside him now.
Midnight was embarrassed. But she also realized her fire was just maybe seeking out the person she was the most upset with. Because even with the festerlings attacking, it was this dumb unicorn, who had ruined her first Plan and forced her to take him along, who was messing up her evening. Still, she needed to control her fire, and that was her problem.
“Look,” she said with a cough because now the festerlings were getting inside her, too, “this is why I wanted a wispy wood wink.”
And then she thought of another Plan.
“Give me the Absorbing Orb,” she said.
“What? I’m not giving you the Orb.”
“Give it to me now,” she said. “I know how to save us.”
And Curious stopped. Because maybe this had been her Plan all along. Maybe she just wanted to lure him into a trap. And get his Orb. And then leave him to cough and sputter while she ran away.
“Give it to me,” she repeated.
“No,” he said. “I don’t trust you.”
He felt bad saying it. But that was the truth. He couldn’t trust her, could he? Not a night mare. Never trust a night mare. Wasn’t that what they said?
They were Creatures of Wickedness.
And he was a unicorn, albeit one with a Scientific Mind.
What could he do?
What should he do?
He was going to have to do it quick, whatever it was.
What would you do?
Things weren’t looking good for Curious.
Things weren’t looking good for any of them, but Curious was by far the worst.
His legs were starting to give out. He was down on his knees—and remember he had four of them—and he was shaking and quaking from all the sputtering and coughing.
Unicorns never get sick. And they never feel very bad. So this was the worst he had ever felt in his young life.
And he had to do something about it. Because anything was better than this.
“W-W-Wartle,” he cried.
“Wh-wh-what?” Wartle answered. He wasn’t stuttering because he was sick. He was just generally up for whatever Curious wanted to do, and if the unicorn wanted to stutter, he would too.
“The Ab-Ab-Absorbing Orb,” Curious said. “Gi-gi-give it to her!”
“Ri-ri-right,” said Wartle promptly. But then he hesitated. Surely Curious didn’t mean to give the Orb to the night mare? That didn’t sound smart.
“C-C-Creature of W-W-Wickedness,” Wartle pointed out.
“I kn-kn-know she’s a C-C-Creature of W-W-Wickedness,” Curious said, “but she’s my—my—my only hope. Gi-gi-give her the Absorbing O-orb now!”
Well, that was clear enough.
“You’re the b-b-boss!” said Wartle.
The puckle leapt from Curious’s neck, sailing through the festerling-filled air, to land with a thump and an oomph on Midnight’s back.
Midnight blew a surprised blast through her nostrils. It took all her willpower not to toss Wartle right off. She hated having anything on her back. All night mares do. Of course they do. And normally she wouldn’t have put up with it. But she knew that this puckle was bringing her something she wanted—very, very much. She bit down her discomfort. Even so, her hide shivered in that way horses do when they’re trying to dislodge a bug. It made Wartle shiver too, and he giggled.
“The Absorbing Orb,” she said. “Give it to me!”
Wartle held the Absorbing Orb in his hands. It glowed blue with the wispy wood wink inside. He looked around helplessly for some way to hand it to her. But, of course, that was problematic.
“No hands,” he said. “You don’t have any hands!”
“Give it to me anyway,” said Midnight, who still didn’t really appreciate the value of a good pair of hands.
Wartle’s small beady eyes looked panicked. How could he give a horse something when she didn’t have any hands to take it with?
Then he had an idea. Maybe not the best idea, but he was a puckle after all.
“Bye-bye, Winky!” he said.
He took the Absorbing Orb, and he crammed it in Midnight’s ear. Deep in her ear.
“Owwwwwww!”
Oh, did she buck then!
She kicked her hind legs high in the air.
Wartle went sailing over her head, back through the festerling-filled air.
“Wheeeeeeeeeee!” he shouted as he flew.
Wartle landed with a thump and an oomph in a bush, a black, prickly bush full of thorns and thistles, which is the only kind that grows in the Whisperwood.
“Ouch!” he cried. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.”
But the horses weren’t listening.
Curious was too busy collapsing, as the fury of festerlings buzzed around his head. And Midnight was—
Midnight was too busy feeling…strange.
Like all her fires were being stoked, which they were. Like she had new energy. New focus.
And something about her felt all lined up.
Like metal shavings do when you hold a magnet near them. Or toy soldiers do when no one is looking.
But Midnight felt very organized and together and powerful.
And she liked it.
Midnight galloped up to the nearest festerling. She opened her mouth and she—
Hiccupped.
A loud, croaking, groaning hiiiiiic-cup!
It wasn’t what she had intended to do.
Not at all.
But it was enough.
A burst of red flame shot from her mouth.
But this time, the flame was concentrated. It was like a thin red beam.
It hit the first festerling, and it ricocheted.
Right into the second festerling. And it bounced off that one into a third.
A fourth.
A fifth.
The bolt of red night mare fire bounced all around the woods, striking every single festerling and lighting them up.
“Aaaaa-yaaaa-yoooo!” they all yelled at once. And “Ouch” and “Eeee” and “Ooooh.” And then they turned and, flapping their burning, smoldering, crisping cobwebby feathers, they flew away as fast and as far as they could go.
They were gone. Leaving only a smell of burnt festerling behind them. It was an unpleasant smell, but a very welcome one considering.
“I did it!” shouted Wartle. “Me, me, me!” He was very pleased with himself and quite prepared to take all the credit, even if it wasn’t his to take.
But Midnight didn’t mind. She didn’t notice.
She was staring down at her own muzzle, which was twisting into a new expression. One it hadn’t had a lot of practice with.<
br />
It said, Midnight is very, very, very pleased with herself.
She was so excited, she threw back her head and she let out a loud, exultant WHINNNNNYYY.
Which is what a horse does when she is super excited.
And she almost did it again.
But she wasn’t entirely selfish. She really could think about others when they needed thinking about. Maybe she ought to check on someone else before she whinnied again.
So she looked to the unicorn.
She needn’t have bothered.
Curious’s festering wounds were healing so fast they were shrinking away right before her eyes.
She saw that his horn was giving off a great golden glow. A healing glow.
By the time he climbed back to his feet, he was completely one hundred percent okeydokey.
Midnight pursed her lips. As the golden glow faded away, he was a perfectly perfect unicorn again.
By the moons, that was irritating!
But Curious looked at her with concern in his eyes.
That was irritating too.
“You’re hurt,” he said. He trotted toward her, and his horn began to glow again.
“Don’t put that thing on me,” she said.
“But you’re still festering,” he said. “You’ve got spots all over.”
“Heal me, heal me!” cried Wartle. “I’ve got spots too.”
Curious eyed the puckle. Apart from lying upside down in a thorn and thistle bush, he seemed okay. All his blisters and boils had faded away. Nothing really bothers puckles very much. Maybe because they’re usually the ones doing the bothering.
“Are you actually hurt?” the unicorn asked.
“I bruised my bottom on the bush,” said Wartle.
“I think that you will live,” said Curious. He turned his attention back to Midnight.
“No way,” she said. “I don’t want any unicorn magic on me.”
“Bottom!” said Wartle. “Bottom, bottom, bottom!”
“Please,” Curious said. “It’s not a big thing, really. I wouldn’t count it as a favor I was doing you or anything.”
Midnight eyed the glowing horn suspiciously. Her festerling wounds were nasty. They did feel rather gross and icky.
“Well, I suppose if it isn’t a favor…”
“It’s not.”
“All right, then,” she said. “As long as I never have to hear about it again.”