by DL Kopp
I dropped onto his chest, sobbing, and for a moment it looked like Octavius wouldn’t comfort me. Then his arms enveloped me, and he rubbed my hair gently, making soothing sounds.
“I know,” he murmured, “I know.” I could see Byron looking stricken out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t blame you. It’s him. He’s been playing dumb all along to get you on his side. He knows that whoever mates you first…”
I jerked back. “What?” Octavius’s mouth snapped shut. “What were you going to say?”
“He was going to say that whoever mates you first will be your king,” Byron said, and now he looked kind of smug—and also not as innocent as he did before.
“In order to have a king, I’d have to be a queen,” I said, giving a half-hearted laugh.
“Don’t tell her, you fool,” Octavius spat. “She doesn’t need to know about her destiny.”
I stepped out of the circle of his arms. “Okay. Yeah. I do.”
Byron touched my shoulder. “You are the one destined to bring about the Joining. You will one day be very powerful, and whoever mates you—”
Octavius slugged him. Byron crumpled.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” I said. “Joining? Powers? Mating? If you’re accusing Byron of taking advantage of me to be my king, then what are you doing? You admitted to using your siren powers to seduce me! You’re no better than he is!”
“No, Calliope, my love,” Octavius said, stepping toward me with his arms out, but I evaded him.
I tore at my hair, staring up at the ceiling. “Why? Why did I ever have to leave Georgia?”
Pushing his arms away, I ran up the stairs, up the secret passage, and into my bedroom. I dragged my armoire in front of the door, and then picked up the heaviest box I could find and hauled it up the stairs, jamming it in front of the secret passage so it couldn’t open, either.
Then I flung myself upon my bed and cried.
“I miss Allison,” I wept into my pillow. “I miss Mariah. I just want to go home…”
Part of me wished my parents would come home early so I would have an excuse to no longer work on Byron. An even larger part of me wished I was eighteen so I could run away and not have my parents come after me, allowing me to disappear into the relative anonymity of college.
I ached for Octavius to comfort me, but he was just using me. Nobody used Calliope Crestone. Nobody.
A sound outside my sliding doors made me look up. Octavius had unfurled his wings and was flapping outside, his hands pressed against the glass. It was locked, so he couldn’t get in, but his eyes implored me to change that.
I got off the bed, drying my eyes on the backs of my hands. Then I yanked the curtains shut.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Chapter Forty
I stared at nothing, lying in bed for hours. Sleep eluded me completely, and though I tried not to admit it to myself, I strained my ears for sounds of Byron or Octavius. But Octavius had taken my dismissal seriously, and even the crying from the basement was missing.
But I knew it was useless. Even if they'd been there, I wouldn't have allowed them to touch me. I couldn't.
I took a trip to the bathroom, although I didn't know why at first. I didn't feel like a shower, and I didn't need the toilet. It was only as I stared in the mirror at my haunted, gaunt face that I understood.
My grandmother's quill was in my hand, and like a zombie, I pressed it to my skin. I didn't flinch as it pierced the surface, or hiss as the pain shot up my arm, or blink as a thin stream of red trickled on pale.
A few moments after, I cleaned the wound and bandaged it, but I still felt like a zombie. I knew, through the haze that was my mind, why.
Nobody saw me here. They saw potential, and glory, and that was something I could never live up to. That no human could live up to, really. Not when surrounded by the perfection that surrounded me.
I didn't go back to bed that night.
The particulars of the plan unfolded as I gathered my things into my backpack. I tossed all of the notebooks and textbooks out and put things like clothes and my poetry inside. I barely needed food most days, and I had a little money set aside, and speed was the crucial element here.
I knew what I needed, and that was to be out of Coos Bay before the sun rose.
Everything was in place just as the sky started to light with false dawn. I went out the front door and hesitated as I looked by the garage. The car would be the fastest mode of transportation, but it was saddled with downsides: easy to track, the necessity to constantly refuel when I didn't have the money for it, limited mobility. I briefly considered taking it with me just until I reached the city limits and ditching it, but it would point to the direction I left.
Instead, I ran.
Every step of the way, my heart was in my throat, and I wished I had wings or a motorcycle, like Octavius. I was exposed, and I was slow, but I was moving.
My soul called for Octavius and Byron. I was ripping myself away from them, and a lot of me didn't want to. But they had betrayed me almost as much as I had betrayed myself, and I was angry. How could I not be?
It was that anger that fueled me over the city line and over the county line. I needed away from them. I needed to go home.
Georgia.
Chapter Forty-One
I walked until I couldn't walk anymore. I drank from streams and ate the safe plant life – my dad had taught me what was edible a long time ago – and slept under branches.
A couple times, I did touch the money. I figured quickly that a bike would be faster than walking, nearly as safe, and just as mobile, so I went into a thrift store in southern Oregon and purchased one. I was surprised by how much faster it was.
I had never been so free in my life. I slept during the day and biked at night, across dry deserts and snowy mountains and everything in-between, and avoided towns whenever possible. I bathed in water when I could, and I stank when I couldn't. I was dirty and uglier than ever, and I'd never been happier.
During my rest periods, I wrote poems of the beauty I saw. They were the happiest poems I'd ever created, and I couldn't even bring myself to care that they broke the standards I had set for myself. I hadn't even cut since I'd left.
This was the life I'd always wanted.
Which is why it didn't last.
My hair was all the way down my back, and I had just reached the moist heat of the South, when I got hints of others catching up to me.
First of all, there were more cars driving on roads that had been previously deserted. Part of that was due to the fact that I was catching up to civilization, but it was the first time cars were slowing to take a look at me. I'd thought it was in my mind at first – who would want to see a dirty homeless girl? – but as it happened with increasing frequency, I started to believe in my paranoia.
It occurred to me that I had made a mistake. By talking the back routes and avoiding bigger cities, I had also made it more difficult to blend in. One girl traveling solo was a lot easier to spot than a homeless person in a city like Dallas or Denver. I'd wanted to return to Georgia so badly that I hadn't considered what Georgia meant.
Capture.
I had been so caught up in the normal, if epic, beauty of the United States that I had forgotten the real reason I was on the road. I didn't want to deal with creatures and monsters and a destiny. I wanted to be me, in a place where I could be me. I thought Georgia was the place, the place where my heart and my friends were, but I was wrong.
I camped on a beach that night and took in the moisture. I also cried in my little cubby hole until I passed out from exhaustion. I couldn't evade the world forever, as much as I wanted to, but I couldn't bear the thought of leaving this behind.
My sleep that night was dreamless.
Chapter Forty-Two
I awoke with someone standing over me.
Before I could even see, I panicked. I began to punch and kick blindly, squeezing my eyes shut. “No, Octavius! Don’t make me go
back!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
That was not Octavius’s voice. Nor was it Byron’s.
I froze, then lowered my arms slowly, squinting to make out the form above me. “Rich Coos?” I asked disbelievingly, staring. It wasn’t my imagination. He looked relieved that I recognized him, sitting down on the sand beside me.
“We’ve been looking for you all month,” he said. “I’m so glad I found you first.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you disappeared, the whole town was in an uproar,” Rich said earnestly. “They ripped apart the coast searching for you. Some thought you’d been taken into the ocean – those who knew what had happened earlier – and others thought you were just kidnapped. I suspected you had run by your own will, so I was looking for you differently.”
I was flattered that everyone would spend so much time searching for me. After all this time thinking I needed to be in Georgia, it turned out that my true friends had been in Oregon all this time looking for me.
And I had worried them. I was such a terrible, horrible person. I hated myself.
All the stress of the last weeks on the run came out of me in a rush of tears, and I flung my arms around his neck, sobbing on his shoulder. He held me tight, patient and comforting.
“They must hate me now,” I wept.
“No. Nobody hates you.” He held me at arm’s length, giving me that wide, Rich Coos grin. “Least of all me. I know why you left, Calliope.”
“You do?”
“They wouldn’t tell you,” Rich said. “I was right, wasn’t I?” I nodded mutely, and he swept the hair off my shoulder, cupping my cheek.
“Byron and Octavius wanted to both mate me for my power,” I mumbled. “Whatever that means.”
“Let me explain. I don’t know how much you already know, but there are scientists working on breaking the barrier between the Lands of Myth and what humans know as the ‘normal world,’” he said. “It’s destined to happen. It’s called the Joining. But what the scientists don’t know is that there will be a Queen to rule it all—and that Queen is you.”
“Me?” I asked, gaping. “How do you know?”
“It’s all been foretold. I knew it was you as soon as you showed up at school and Octavius began following you around. He’s a power-hungry bastard.”
I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I wasn’t about to argue. “And how do you know all that?”
Rich’s grin widened. “I was honest with you now so you’d know you can trust me. Do you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “More than the other guys I know.”
“Great,” he said.
He stood and backed up, ripping off his shirt to bare a muscular, lightly-haired chest. Then he turned his face to the sky, took a deep breath, and changed.
All those hints of light I had seen around Rich’s face – the shapes in the water – the strange motions of the unicorns on the binder at school – it all suddenly made sense. Rich’s body shifted, furred. His hair grew. He dropped on all fours, and a horn sprouted from his forehead, between his bangs.
Finally, he turned entirely into horse form, with shimmering white fur and a long, luxurious, golden mane and tail.
Rich Coos was a unicorn.
“Oh my gosh!” I breathed, reaching up to touch his leathery nose. He nickered softly, bumping my palm.
It all made so much sense.
He nudged me again, and I stood, stroking his horn. It was pearlescent and beautiful, shining like a star on his forehead. But it was still definitely Rich looking at me through the unicorn’s eyes.
“Can I… ride you?” I asked.
He threw his head in a nod, and I slipped onto his back, gently wrapping my arms around his neck. He was larger than a horse, yet somehow more delicate, like he had hollow bird bones instead of those of a horse.
But when he wheeled about and took off across the beach, he felt sturdy and strong beneath me. Powerful. Magical.
I threw my head back, enjoying the ocean breeze – so long missed – and laughed into the wind.
Nearly slipping off, I quickly twined my fingers in his mane to hold myself steady. He slowed until he was sure I was on his back safely, and then took off again, splashing through the surf and leaving cloven hoof prints in our wake.
We ran for a long time, up and down the beach, frolicking joyfully. After a couple hours, he returned me to the cove where my belongings were and knelt so I could slip off gracefully.
He shifted back partway, half-man and half-unicorn. His skin was still shimmering and white, and the horn didn’t go away, but he was still otherwise human. He managed to shift with his pants both in and out safely, protecting my modesty.
But I was suddenly curious what was going on under them.
“That was amazing,” I sighed. “Thank you. I really needed that.”
Rich grinned. “Do I win brownie points?”
“You can have all of them. Trust me.”
He dropped to his elbows atop me, and I knew he was going to kiss me a second before he did, and it was fine. I was happy to let him make out with me, running his hands all up and down my body. I hadn’t been touched in so long, I had almost forgotten what it felt like.
When he pulled back, there was fire in his eyes, and I knew what he had in mind.
I grabbed his horn to stop him before he could kiss me again. “Are you… intact?” I asked, eyes flicking down to his jeans.
He laughed heartily. “Oh yeah.” Then Rich showed me, and he definitely was not lying.
I stared. “Holy… wow. You really are a horse, aren’t you?”
Rich didn’t need to respond, or even speak at all after that. He lowered me to the sand, and I silently thanked my lucky stars that one man in my life wasn’t holding out on me.
Chapter Forty-Three
I fell asleep again. Between the combined efforts of our love, my travel, and all the worry I'd built up about being caught, it was no wonder I slept. I don't think I'd ever slept so well in my life.
I dreamed.
It was back in the apple orchard, but it looked less golden than before. If anything, it looked pretty normal: cloudy, misty. The blossoms had disappeared and switched to leaves, so there was more of a green look to the area than the purity from my earlier dreams. It wasn't any less pretty, just different. And I'd had enough sun recently that the mist didn't bother me.
Octavius walked up and looked at me. “You betrayed me,” he said.
I held my ground. “You betrayed me first.”
“But...I did everything because I love you.”
“You love power,” I said, closing in. “Not me.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“He didn't need to tell me anything. He cares.”
I heard a heavy step behind me, and I looked. Standing in the gloom was Byron, complete with dual vision and the motor in his chest. He appeared ready to weep.
“You left me,” he said. “You left me to deal with Father and your dad. You promised.”
“I won't feel guilty about this!” I cried, even though that's exactly how I was feeling. “I was manipulated by everyone!”
I heard hoof beats behind me, and I turned to see Rich, in unicorn form, riding toward me. The clouds parted, and the sunlight made him glow. I breathed a sigh of relief and hugged his neck when he stopped.
“Take me away from here,” I whispered.
I swung on his back and looked down at Octavius and Byron.
Octavius looked hurt. “So this is how it is?”
“For now,” I found myself saying. “But everything changes with the wind.”
A breeze blew up, and the clouds covered the sky until all light was leeched from the area. It was only when the horn on Rich's head glowed that we cut through the darkness. Even Octavius and Byron looked awed.
“For now,” I whispered.
Chapter Forty-Four
I awoke in Rich's arms.
He looked fully huma
n, and although he was shirtless, he was wearing jeans. I was touched that he would protect my modesty in such a way.
He laid a kiss on my forehead. “You're beautiful,” he said.
I blushed. “You're the beautiful one. I'm just a human.”
“You're a little more than that,” he said, “but I'm just an average unicorn. You look amazing.”
I brushed my hand on his forehead. I remembered the horn, and how powerful it had seemed. “Average, nothing.”
Rich grinned. “Ready to go back home?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You mean Oregon?”
“I mean Oregon,” he said.
“But what would I face there? Being Queen of all the creatures, or whatever?”
He gave a faint smile. “That's going to happen anywhere.”
“What?”
“Why do you think everyone was so panicked that you were gone?” he said. “Everyone's been prepared for it to happen in Coos Bay. We have precautions in place. It would be devastating if it happened elsewhere.”
I looked at him through narrowed eyes. “And you were just waiting for it, weren't you?”
He seemed puzzled. “What?”
“You were using me, just like everyone else,” I said. “You thought you'd get to be the King by getting in with me.”
“I'm hurt that you would say that,” he said. “Hurt. I've been looking for you all month, worrying about your safety--”
“You were?” I felt myself melting. There was something so genuine about his words.
“Why do you think I was the first to find you?” he said. “I felt a pull to you, and I knew I couldn't let you go. I felt it here.”
He put a hand over my heart. I felt it beat to match his touch.
“I can't fall in love again,” I whispered. “It hurt too bad last time.”
“I'm not asking for love,” he said. “Just your safety. I couldn't bear it if you disappeared again. Or worse, if you--”