Thandie looked at the boy with the boat and the girl with the toffees. She was sure that Linnell was right, and that the stolen ones would follow, but Linnell didn’t have the full picture. “You don’t understand. The unicorn is using the memories to gain power. With every memory we take back, he weakens.”
“It doesn’t matter how powerful he is if we escape! We will tell those in power and they will send some soldiers to fight him.”
Thandie shook her head. “We need to free them properly – restore their memories. Are you sure there isn’t anything you can tell me about any of the others here?”
Linnell shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. She still looked so confused. “I just want to go home.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Thandie. “We’ll get you home.” She knew it was not Linnell’s fault. Her memory had been stolen; it must have been traumatic. But still Thandie wished there was something – anything – Linnell could tell her about these people. She opened her book and read out some of the names at the back.
“Posy Tweed, John Fairton, and Ivy Medway, all from Arvale. That is your closest village. Do you recognize any names or faces?”
“Ar-vale, Ar-vale,” repeated Linnell dreamily, staring into space. Thandie looked around hopelessly. Any one of these people could be a Posy, Ivy or a John. She couldn’t tell from the way they looked. She shouted out a couple of names from the list but nobody paid any attention. She had literally nothing to go on.
Then she noticed that Linnell was humming again. A new tune this time.
“What is that? What it the tune you are humming?”
“‘Ar-vale, Our vale.’ It is a song from Arvale, I think. The Arvale harvest song…”
“Sing it! Sing the words!” shouted Thandie excitedly.
Linnell looked surprised but began to sing.
“Arvale – our vale,
Harvest time again.
Arvale – our vale,
Celebrate the rain….”
It was a simple tune with just four notes. Thandie could follow along on the pipe, even if it sounded a little clumsy. She wished Sander were here. He would have picked it up instantly. But still, she was pleased with the job she was doing. She heard his voice in her head as she played. “Don’t think about how hard you are pressing your fingers into the holes or how hard you are blowing. Just think about that bird in the tree… Listen to the bird.”
Right now, Linnell was the songbird, singing sweetly and Thandie was accompanying her morning song.
The two girls walked around the room, until four pairs of eyes gradually turned towards them. Thandie noticed that same spark in their eyes that she had seen with Linnell. These were surely the four missing people from Arvale. Linnell confirmed it. “I think I recognize them. Yes. But they are so much taller now. Thandie, how long have I been here?”
Thandie couldn’t bring herself to answer this question. “I will tell you everything I know, but now is not the time. We need to give these people their memories back and escape from this place. You understand that, don’t you?”
Linnell nodded and continued to sing as Thandie read their names aloud from the page. Gradually, the mist began to clear for them and the four Arvale youths sang along to their song, tentatively at first and then with passion.
That was when it hit Thandie: if the Arvale harvest song worked for the Arvale people, then why not the Essendor wintertide song? She left Linnell to talk to the Arvale group, picked up the pipe and went to find Clover Malling and the other Essendor children. It didn’t take her long to identify them, and she piped the Essendor song, the same tune that she had played that beautiful breaking dawn when Sander had given her first real pipe-playing lesson.
Back then, she’d fought against the memories the song stirred, of eating chestnuts at Madam Tilbury’s, and learning to play the pipe with her mother. This time, she let the memories flood back to her. Snow falling in Essendor square as Queen Audrey was crowned, the reds and greens of winter foliage hung in boughs on people’s doors and the honeyed smells of festive baked buns. This song brought back so many memories of her birth city. Surely it must be the same for anyone who had grown up in Essendor? Thandie saw the lights flicker behind their eyes as the music stirred something deep within them.
Linnell was by her side again, cheeks flushed. “It’s working! The Arvale group have remembered who they are.”
“Well done, Linnell. It is working here, too, but I think we need the words as well as the music. Will you sing along?” She scribbled down the words and passed them to Linnell. This time, as Thandie played, Linnell sang along in her sweet way.
“In Essendor, at Wintertide,
Wrap up warm and come outside,
As the snow begins to fall,
The unicorn protects us all,
Midnight black against the white,
In the silence of the night,
Take my hand and dance with me,
In Essendor, we’re all born free.”
The Essendor children began to come back, little Clover Malling the first to start singing along. That was when Thandie realized: her plan was actually going to work.
THE TRANSFORMATION
Sander
Sander faced the unicorn, no longer afraid.
“I don’t care about the deal any more. I don’t care about promises I made or promises you made. I refuse to work for you any more.” Sander felt lighter, freer, just saying the words.
The unicorn turned back his ears, showed his teeth and swished his tail violently. He was angry, Sander could tell. But Sander didn’t care.
The interpreter was angry, too. She raised her staff.
“My master has made life extremely easy for you. For the past eighteen years you have been free to roam, to adventure, to do as you please. All he expected in return was your loyalty: a small price to pay. But you have let him down.”
Sander held his hands to his head. “No. It was not a small price to pay; it was the greatest price of all. I have put aside all my morals, all my beliefs, to work for you. What you have both done to those young people is pure evil. You have used part of their very souls for your own gain, without caring who you hurt.”
The interpreter laughed loudly, the sound echoing around the room. “You talk as though you were not part of this. As though it were not the three of us, working together.”
Sander shook his head. “None of this was my idea. I would never have agreed to the deal if I had known what it meant.”
“If you really believed that, Sander, you would have never brought Linnell to my master two years ago. Yet you did. And you brought forty-two other people after her. Quite a long time to change your mind, wasn’t it?”
“I thought it was too late for me. But I realize now that it is not.”
“Why? Because of that girl, Thandie? She might talk about selflessness but she has her own wants. She is not really here for the others. She wanted to find her mother. We all just want to help ourselves.”
“Maybe to begin with but then most of us come to realize that we cannot live in isolation. My time of selfishness has come to an end. I have grown up. So undo the wish that you granted and let me be free.”
MANY YEARS AGO
Sander
The one thing that Sander couldn’t find at the top of a mountain or on a deserted island was youth. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing his youthful looks, his charm or his fit and healthy body. And that was the great prize that had been offered to him twenty years ago. As long as he worked for the unicorn, Sander’s skin would remain smooth and unlined, his eyes bright, his hair lustrous and the skip in his step would be as energetic as ever. He would not age.
While the sorcerer perfected his skills of transformation and the castle grew in size and splendour, Sander’s quests and adventures continued. He realized that, with youth on his side, he really could be the best adventurer; there was nothing to hold him back. At first he returned home every six months or so, but then t
he time between his visits lengthened until he stopped visiting at all.
He thought little of his family and the life he had left behind, until one day just three years back.
Sander was in a marketplace near where he had grown up when he heard two old women gossiping: his mother was ill.
He hadn’t seen her for over five years. He had to see her now.
He came to the village at night-time and sat by her bedside in the cottage where he had lived as a boy. she was unwell, struggling with her breathing, her speech laboured.
She reached to him with her frail hand, and he stroked its papery skin. The illness had aged her, which was a pity: she used to be so beautiful. He held her hand between his own.
“Sander? Time has not changed you at all. How can it be? You are nearing thirty and yet you do not look a day over sixteen.”
“It is just the fresh air and exercise, mother. They are good for the mind and body.”
But she knew. Even in this weak light and battling ill health, she knew. She didn’t know how he had done it but she knew that some kind of spell or enchantment must be responsible. Sander realized that he could not keep returning here, to this village where people knew him. They would grow and change but he would stay the same. If he chose to keep his youth, then he would have to give up all emotional ties and lead a lonely and selfish life. Or he could return to the unicorn and ask for his old life back. He could come back to the village and lead a normal, happy life.
He made his decision: he said a tearful farewell to his mother and left the village without contacting the rest of his family. Shortly afterwards, he heard that his mother had died. He didn’t return.
After his mother’s death, the unicorn came to him. By this time he had almost forgotten about his part of the deal. No, not forgotten, pushed it to the back of his mind.
But now the unicorn told Sander exactly what was required of him.
He needed people. Young people, with fresh memories.
“No,” said Sander. He was no kidnapper.
But the unicorn was adamant. “You promised to do anything as long as it didn’t involve hurting anyone,” he said.
“But taking people from their families… It would be hurting them. Not physically but… It would be wrong,” said Sander. “It is something I cannot do.”
“Then our agreement has come to an end,” said the unicorn. “I will give you back all the years that I have saved you.”
And Sander realized what that meant. He stretched his arm out in front of him and looked at his hand, trying to imagine it as his mother’s had looked. He would age overnight. He would be a different person. An older person. Uglier, weaker. This was something he wasn’t prepared to do. He had achieved what he had always wanted: eternal youth. And if all he had to do was to lead some people here, to this grand castle, then it was a small price to pay.
“I will do it,” he said.
He had cut all ties with his family; he had no distant relations and no friends. And if there was no one to answer to, then what did it matter if you did wrong?
Except now, since meeting Thandie, there was someone to answer to.
IN THE THRONE ROOM
TRANSFORMATIONS
Sander
The interpreter laughed a loud cackling laugh, and the unicorn lowered his head, pointing the sharp tip of his horn towards Sander.
Back when he had made his wish, he was so sure of his chosen path, so sure that youth was the most important thing in the world. Back then, the sorcerer had cast the spell from a wand. The spell had felt good, like golden sunlight flooding his body.
This time, the magic came from the unicorn’s horn. It shot out towards him and pierced his chest. Twenty years of aging hit him at once, the pain spreading through his body. He felt it in his hands first. They stiffened, like claws. He couldn’t bend them. His knees, his elbows, all his joints, felt as though they could do with a good oiling. His head hurt, his eyes were dry. Even his hearing was deadened. He ran his tongue along his teeth. They were more crowded, crooked. All those niggling ailments he had avoided for years came at once. His head ached. He ran his hand through his hair and found it sparse.
Sander inspected his hands, which until a moment ago had been smooth and unlined with even, pink nails. Now they were wrinkled around the knuckles, with thick, ridged nails. He turned them over and felt the calluses on his palms.
“That is just your hands, Sander. Would you like to see your face?” the interpreter sneered, and the unicorn stepped towards the central frozen pool, dipping his horn towards the ice.
Sander knew he should look away, put off this moment until he was alone, but curiosity got the better of him. He gazed into the pool at his face, which was no longer the young, tanned, sixteen-year-old face that had been such a pleasure to inhabit for the past twenty years. The face that gazed back at him from the pool was unfamiliar, lined, puffy. His eyebrows were bushier and lower, and his eyelids sagged above bruise-coloured smudges. His hairline grew further back. Even his nose seemed larger. His face but not his face. The face of an aging man.
The unicorn stepped back and met his gaze. “Your handsome looks opened doors for you, did they not? Meals and journeys given for free, beds for the night. Many were taken in by your attractive appearance and charming mannerisms but we will see if this continues. Now you are a man with average looks at the onset of middle age. Perhaps you will understand the limitations that we have faced, as aging sorcerers in an unforgiving world.”
Sander forced a smile. “I am perhaps not as shallow as you imagine. Life will be different, but it will go on.”
“Think of the future, Sander. What do you have to look forward to? You abandoned your family long ago, Thandie will be disgusted by you and you will be known throughout the kingdom as the man who stole children away from their families.”
The interpreter laughed again but stopped suddenly when the unicorn flinched, side-stepping as he had before. She looked at her master with concern and then continued speaking for him.
“Perhaps you will continue on your adventures, staying fit and fighting as hard as you can against the inevitable aging process, but there will come a time when you are too weak to haul yourself up a rope, too frail to walk long distances. What will be waiting for you then, Sander, apart from creeping old age and death? Perhaps then, you will regret your betrayal and the choice you have made.”
Sander looked away from the pool and met the unicorn’s gaze. He refused to give in to these defeatist thoughts. “I will never regret doing the right thing. And I may be weakened with age, but I notice that you are also weakening. You are losing your power.”
It was true. The unicorn stood still, no longer stamping or running but breathing hard, breath rattling. His power was dwindling.
Despite the transformation and his newfound vulnerability, Sander laughed. “It’s working!” he cried. “Whatever Thandie is doing in there is sapping your strength. People are regaining their memories. You are no longer the Greatest Unicorn.”
The unicorn’s eyes flashed with anger and a dark green mist crept up around him, starting from his hooves and travelling higher.
Sander blinked and stepped back, fearful that it was a toxic spell.
The unicorn reared up, slowly. There was so much mist now that Sander could barely see, but he concentrated hard on the unicorn, who was shaking his head vigorously and moving his limbs as if running on the spot. The figure began to look less equine and more human. The mist slowly cleared, dissolving into the air, and the Greatest Unicorn was gone. In his place, stood a man. A man that Sander recognized, older and more tired than the last time they’d met, but still tall and slim with dark clothes and a deep yellow hat. The sorcerer.
“So I am not the only one who has aged,” said Sander.
As well as looking old and tired, the man also looked angry. Like a man whose dreams had been thwarted and who would not give in easily. He narrowed his eyes at Sander.
“You thi
nk you can beat me but you are very much mistaken. Remember that without my unicorn powers I am still a sorcerer – the greatest sorcerer in the kingdom! You and that girl are no match for me.”
The interpreter stepped towards the sorcerer, with concern in her eyes, but he turned on her, raising his voice. “Why are you still standing there? I no longer need you – I can speak for myself! Find that girl and stop her!”
RATTLING DOORS
Thandie
It was working. With music, familiar local songs and the few facts she knew, Thandie and Linnell managed to bring the young people out of their living slumber. And the more who regained their memory, the easier and faster it became. Everyone knew somebody or someone. People sung snippets of local songs that their cousin had shared with them, or described the hair colour of someone who had disappeared from the next village.
Thandie ticked them off one by one.
She didn’t have time to speak to them, to discover their stories, but it was fascinating to see them return to the real word.
One girl had striking black ringlets but as she regained her memories, the perfect curls unfurled until they were poker-straight. Still glossy and healthy-looking, just straight. Had she really given up everything just for curly hair?
Another girl gave up an adorable mahogany coloured puppy with big black eyes to have her memories back again.
But the ones that really stuck in Thandie’s mind were the juggling boys. She guessed that one of them must be Aldo, the missing circus performer, so she played the famous Elithian circus march. The younger boy immediately stopped juggling and listened to its fast tempo. But as recognition lit up in his eyes, the older boy faded, ghost-like, and then vanished. The pain in the younger boy’s expression was so acute that Thandie had to look away. She knew what it was like to get so close to finding someone you loved, only to lose them again.
As people returned, Thandie’s excitement grew, but with it, the jangling of her nerves increased. She wondered what was happening on the other side of the doors. As the stolen ones recovered their memories, did the unicorn grow weaker? Or was he just biding his time, waiting to attack? Her gaze darted towards the double doors, expecting them to burst open at any time and for an angry unicorn to rush in. She had no idea what she would do if he did.
The Darkest Unicorn Page 18