"Fine, if it's asomething it can stay in — " Leopold began, his tone wary. But Siegfried left Leopold talking to the empty air as he slipped out of the saddle and followed his ears. The sounds led him off the path and into the deeper forest, where he had to pick a way among the bushes and undergrowth. The sounds persisted and he followed them, until he found himself very near a long bar of sunlight streaming down from above on a tangle of vegetation.
The canopy wasn't as thick here; an absolutely enormous tree had come down, probably in that big storm everyone was still talking about, clearing out a swath of lesser trees and bushes as it fell. Around the trunk, things were a mess, broken branches and debris surrounding it. Siegfried heard the scrabbling again, from up ahead, along the trunk. It sounded like whatever creature was making the noise was desperate.
When the tree had come down, it had made a tangle of the whole area; rather than fight his way through the mess along the trunk, Siegfried decided to see if he could find an easier path, moving back into the forest and paralleling the trunk. Still following his ears, with Leopold trailing cautiously behind him, he got as close as he could to the sounds before getting his axe off his belt and hacking the rest of the way in. In the quiet of the forest, he made a terrible racket; startled birds exploded through the branches above him, and a hare bolted away from practically under his feet. The sounds stopped then, but he knew where he was going, and at any rate the noise of his chopping was probably terrifying whatever poor beast was making them.
He emerged at the trunk, made a little cleared space, and as he looked around, it was obvious what the problem was.
Dug under the fallen trunk was a den. Four woeful little fox kits stared out at him from behind a screen of debris and branches. Claw marks showed where frantic digging had failed to free them. It looked to Siegfried as if a she-fox had made herself a den here after the storm, and then at some point today half a tree that had been left hanging above it had decided to come down, trapping the kits. The scrabbling and whimpering he'd heard must have been her, trying to get to them. Of course she was nowhere to be seen now.
"Well, if you want a present for Rosamund, there's some fur," Leopold said, pointing to the kits. The little ones couldn't understand him the way they could understand Siegfried, but he was looking at them, and they probably thought he was going to eat them.
"Don't be ridiculous. You don't kill kits for fur. The Princess would be appalled." The poor kits were nearly out of their minds with fear now. He whistled for the bird, which flitted through the trees and landed on a bit of the debris at eye-height. "Can you find the mother and coax her back?" he asked her. "Tell her I'm getting the kits out." He chirruped at them, but they ignored him. Even though they should have understood him, they were too terrified to think. They couldn't go much longer without feeding; their eyes were beginning to look a little glazed to him.
"Of course!" The bird flitted off. Siegfried examined the problem in front of him. There were a lot of branches piled up, and one log as big around as his thigh. The best solution would be to cut all that up. He needed them to get away from the debris-choked entrance, because once he started chopping, an inquisitive nose in the wrong place could result in tragedy. He went down on one knee next to the den to explain, but as soon as he approached, they squirmed as deep as they could manage under the big log all by themselves, cowering away from him. Assured now he wouldn't strike them with errant chips or his axe, he raised the axe over his head and began carefully chopping away the debris, checking now and again to be sure he wasn't making things worse.
There was a lot of brush here, and the branches were springy. He was about halfway through the obstacle, when the bird flitted back followed by a trembling vixen. The little fox looked up at him with a terrified face, cowering when she saw the axe in his hand as if she expected him to rain blows down on her at any moment.
"It's all right, little mother," Siegfried said soothingly, looking, not straight at her, but off to the side. "You've nothing to fear from me. Give me a little more time. We'll have your children out."
"I hope so," Leopold said, sounding a little cross. "If we're going to wander about the forest, I'd prefer to do so in the saddle. I'm getting eaten to death by midges and mosquitoes." But he waded into the brush and started pulling the stuff that Siegfried had already cut, hauling it away from the mouth of the den so that Siegfried could get more easily at that last barrier.
The vixen slowly got over her fear when she saw he was doing what he said he would do. Her ears came up, her tail came out from between her legs, and she darted in to seize branches in her teeth and haul them away for him.
A short time later, while the vixen danced with impatience, Siegfried made the last cut through the thick branch lying across the entrance, Leopold pulled the branch away, and the vixen dashed inside. From within the darkness of the den, suckling sounds emerged.
"There you go, little mother," Siegfried called. There was no answer, but he didn't expect one.
"What, no 'thank you'?" Leopold said mockingly. "All right, let's get back to the horses and the King's Arms."
"Are you sure you want to?" Siegfried asked. "It's cruel hot in the city. It's nice and cool here." He shouldered his axe and made his way hack to the path, listening to the life of the forest come back to normal now that he wasn't making all that racket anymore.
"It is cool here, as long as I don't have to chop wood or do some other insane thing you think you need to do. How can you tell where you're going in this maze?" Leopold asked.
"You weren't the one chopping wood, and I know where I am going because I follow the bird," said Siegfried with amusement. "All right, how about this. You were complaining that you couldn't find a gift for the Princess in the city that every other suitor would be able to duplicate. You will be much more likely to find something out here. As long as it doesn't require killing something that doesn't need to be killed, we stay here in the forest until we find something for you to give Rosamund to impress her."
He pushed aside some bushes, and there were the horses, waiting patiently, pulling up the few blades of grass they could find. Grass had a hard time growing where there was so little direct sunlight.
"What are we going to find here? It's a forest " Leopold asked incredulously. "There's no one out here!"
"That's where you are wrong, and that is why we'll find something. It's a forest. It's The Tra — " He stopped himself from saying "The Tradition" in time. "It's the way things work. Forests are full of magical things. The bigger the forest, and the more powerful the kingdom's Godmother is, the more magical things will be in it."
Leopold took up his horse's reins and fitted one boot into the stirrup. "Well if we find that frog who says he's a Prince in here, I am not bringing him back. I refuse to add to the competition."
They mounted, Siegfried cheerfully, Leopold impatiently, and Siegfried led the way deeper in.
They passed by the ruins of a cottage; it had once been carved and painted in a manner that was like nothing he had ever seen before. The door was off its hinges and on the ground, there were holes in the roof, and most of the trim had fallen off. They went inside and looked it over curiously, but could find nothing to tell who had lived there or what had happened to her. Her, Siegfried was fairly sure, because of the tattered remains of black dresses and skirts in a chest. Whoever it was had done a lot of baking, for there was an outsize oven in the yard. Maybe that accounted for why what was left of the walls and roof looked like a fancy wedding cake. It almost looked as if something else had been fastened over the wood, but whatever it had been was long gone.
"That place's almost morbidly cheerful," Leopold noted, as they left the cottage behind. "I think if I lived in a house that looked like you could eat yourself sick on it, I'd have to kill myself after a while." The path emerged from the woods and came out beside a pond. "Maybe that's what happened to the owner. She couldn't stand it anymore and jumped into her own oven. And why would you need a cott
age to look like that out where no one could see it but you, anyway?"
"Maybe she used to be a baker in the city," Siegfried suggested.
If the cottage had been morbidly cheerful, this pond was just morbid. Despite the fact that the sun was high in the sky, there was no sign of sunlight here — it might have been twilight, not almost noon. It was surrounded by weeping willows that dripped their boughs morosely into the water, and a mist hung over most of the open area and wreathed in among the trees. The surface was covered with lily pads, but there were no lily flowers among the flat green leaves.
There was also no sound. Not a frog, not a bird, not even the plop of a fish.
Siegfried sensed something that he didn't like about the place. Something dark and dangerous. His skin began to crawl, and he felt the distinct urge to get away from there as quickly as he could.
And at that moment, the mist on the far side parted to reveal a beautiful, golden-haired girl, sitting with her legs dangling in the water, combing out her tresses. Except for the hair, she was absolutely nude. That was when Siegfried recognized exactly what the peril was.
"Now that's more like — " Leopold exclaimed, his eyes lighting up.
And Siegfried grabbed his friend's horse's reins, pulling them out of Leopold's hands, and spurred his own horse, plunging both of them into the green-scented forest gloom again. They needed to get away from there fast. Before she saw them and started singing.
"Siegfried!" Leopold snatched in vain for the reins, his face going red with anger. "Siegfried, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? That was a woman back there!"
"No it wasn't," Siegfried said shortly.
"Of course it was! I saw her with my — " Abruptly, Leopold remembered where he was, in the midst of a forest full of magic, and his mouth shut with a snap. Siegfried looked back at him, saw his face change and allowed the horses to slow. "If it wasn't a woman, then what was it?"
"That was a Nixie," Siegfried told him severely. "They're water spirits. They sing, and they like to take human lovers."
"They do?" Leopold grabbed for the reins again, eager to get back to the sensuous, nude spirit.
"They like to take them underwater." Siegfried held on to the reins and waited for that to sink in.
"They like to...oh. Um."
"So unless you've suddenly gotten the ability to breathe underwater..." He let go of the reins.
Leopold gathered them up again with a sigh.
"So far, we haven't found anything I could take to Rosamund," Leopold grumbled. "Can we go back to the city now?"
Siegfried grinned at that. The prince sounded like a sulky child.
But they hadn't gone five more paces before something suddenly appeared before them on the path, blocking their way. A beam of light lanced through the canopy overhead, illuminating it from above. Not that it needed the illumination. It glowed from within.
Leopold blinked, as Siegfried blushed a brilliant crimson. "Siegfried, is that...?" he said, quietly, for once not a single note of mockery in his voice.
"Yes," Siegfried got out, in a strangled voice.
"A unicorn."
"Yes."
"I thought they were extinct!" Leopold exclaimed, drinking in the glorious creature with his eyes.
"Not... exactly..."
Siegfried didn't blame Leopold for being entranced. She was an exquisite creature, from the tip of her crystal, spiraling horn to the tip of her silken, leonine tail, she glowed with a pearly light that owed nothing to the sunlight she stood in. Her coat looked like the softest of plushy velvet — this mare clearly was of the same variety as in Drachenthal, which needed a thicker coat for the cold mountain winters. In his travels, Siegfried had also seen smooth-coated unicorns, with hides like satin. Her cloven hooves were a shining gold, her mane a fall of silver. Her eyes were gold to match her hooves, her tiny beardlette a dainty thing, as suited a lady unicorn. She moved like water flowing over a stream. There was nothing about her that was not perfection.
Except, perhaps, her brain.
She locked her gaze with his, radiating adoration. Siegfried groaned. Not again. Not another one...
Completely ignoring Leopold, the unicorn paced deliberately toward Siegfried, each hoof leaving an indentation in the moss that glowed for just a moment. Siegfried watched her with the look of dread of a man that sees his inescapable fate bearing down on him.
Well, at least she wasn't trying to skewer Leopold.
With a sigh, as his bewildered and bedazzled horse stood stock-still, the unicorn lifted her chin and placed it firmly in his lap.
"Hewwo," she lisped. "I'm Luna. I wove you."
With a sigh of resignation, Siegfried bowed to the inevitable and scratched her forehead around the crystal horn. "I know you do," he said, with only a touch of bitterness, waiting for the truth to dawn on Leopold. "That's all right. I love you, too, Luna. You are a beautiful girl"
When the truth finally did strike him, his friend fell off his horse, laughing. By that point, Siegfried was crimson.
They rode out of the wood with a necklace of braided unicorn hair folded in a handkerchief and stowed carefully in Leopold's pouch. It had taken this bribe to get him to stop laughing. Siegfried wasn't angry — how could he be angry? It was funny. But he was deeply, profoundly embarrassed. Someday this would all be hilarious, he was sure. Someday he would sit at the fireside and tell the story on himself.
Today was not that day.
He hadn't been able to look Leopold in the eyes since his friend started laughing at him. Not even when he'd given Leopold the necklace. The ride back had been punctuated only by Leopold's smothered sniggers.
He did not regret going into the forest with Leopold today, and he was glad that they had found his friend a gift to impress the Princess, because he had been feeling a bit guilty about those lessons in defending oneself. He just wished that it had been some other sort of gift.
As they neared the gates of the city, Leopold finally rode up next to him; he seemed to have gotten himself under control at last.
"You are a fine fellow, Siegfried," he said quietly. "Most men would have punched me in the eye for laughing at them like that. I wouldn't have blamed you for riding off and leaving me there."
Siegfried sighed. "I don't blame you. It's funny. If it had been you, I would have been the one that was laughing. It had to look awfully funny, too, with that daft thing coming up and planting her head in my lap. At least you got a present for the Princess out of it. I told you something would turn up."
"Yes, but you were the one who suggested it, and you were the one who braided it. And you were the one who lured the — the — ' Leopold's face twitched as he barely kept himself from laughing again. To Siegfried's relief, he managed to hold it in this time. "Anyway. If it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have this, and I don't know too many people with a necklace of unicorn hair."
"Oh, there are plenty, they just don't come from a live unicorn." Now Siegfrieddid let bitterness creep into his voice. He honestly did not hate too many people, but there were exceptions. "Hunters get virgin girls to go sit in the woods, the poor stupid beasts come and lay their heads in the girl's lap, and the hunters kill them. You saw for yourself that in the presence of a virgin they lose what few thoughts they have, and they aren't the sharpest swords in the rack to begin with. That's why they're rare."
Leopold choked, which made Siegfried feel a little better about being laughed at. At least Leopold could see how vile the Hunters were. "That's horrible!"
He nodded. "So are the Hunters. They're vile, vile men. Only a really vile person would kill something like a unicorn, something that is literally purity and innocence incarnate."
"Then why do it?" Leopold asked, now bewildered. "I know the horn is valuable, but couldn't you just wait for it to fall off, or find where they go to die?"
Siegfried shook his head. "Unicorn horn can purify any poison. Nasty people that other people would like to see poisoned like to have a bit
of it around, just in case, and unicorns are Fae, and if they don't live forever, they certainly live a very long time." Siegfried's voice was hard. "As for the hair — hair taken from a dead one protects from sickness, and it's so strong you can't break it."
"What about this?" Leopold asked, patting his pocket.
"It's better." Siegfried managed to smile. "Hair from a live one, especially hair given freely, is more powerful, though most people don't know that. It gives you insight into anything magical, it can ward off curses, and nothing inherently evil, like demons and demonic creatures, can come near it. I very much doubt the Princess has anything like that in her jewelry caskets."
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