The Thirteenth Unicorn

by W. D. Newman

CHAPTER 9

  THE FAIRY GLEN

  Casey and Jenny watched the cabin door from behind the rock, while Ben and Joey crouched beneath the window on the side of the cabin, listening to Louise and the big hairy man called Amos. Actually, Jenny watched the cabin door. Casey kept looking over her shoulder, as if someone might be sneaking up on them. Jenny had no idea that Casey was looking for gnomes, ogres, and dragons. Suddenly Jenny whistled. “Bob-white, bob-white.” Casey spun around. The big hairy man named Amos had come outside with a bucket in his hand. Jenny kept whistling. Casey looked down at Ben and Joey. Either they did not hear Jenny whistling or they were so intent on trying to hear what was going inside the cabin that they forgot all about the signal. Jenny whistled louder. “BOB-WHITE, BOB-WHITE.” Casey looked back to the front of the cabin. The bucket was sitting on the ground in front of the door and Amos was gone. She was getting ready to sprint down the hill and get them when they suddenly realized that Jenny was sounding the alarm. The two boys sprang up from their crouched positions and sprinted to the rear of the cabin. As they rounded the corner, they ran into Amos who had sneaked around the other side. Amos quickly snatched them up and took them inside.

  “Oh no,” Casey moaned. “We are so dead. Grandma is going to kill us.”

  “Joey won’t tell them we are out here. We can leave now and they will never know we were here.”

  “Ben will tell. All Grandma has to do is give him one of her stern looks and he’ll spill his guts,”

  “Should we go on down then?” Jenny asked.

  “No, let’s wait and see what happens. Maybe Ben won’t talk.”

  A few minutes later, Ben poked his head out the door and yelled, “Casey, Jenny! Come here! Grandma wants to see us.”

  Casey and Jenny entered the small cabin, while Amos held the door open for them. The cabin was one room, as they had expected. The oak floor was aged and polished to a deep honey-amber color. To their right, a black iron kettle bubbled on the hearth of a massive stone fireplace, filling the cabin with the heavy scent of a thick and hearty beef stew. A copper bound trunk, with a padlock the size of a dinner plate, sat under the window to the right of the fireplace and in the corner, to the left of the fireplace was a bed. This bed, a king size bed for any of the kids, was just a small cot for Amos. The only other furnishings in the cabin were a hutch, a rocker, and a table with benches on each side. Louise was perched on top one of these benches, shaking her head and drumming her fingers on the table top. Casey hung her head and tears welled up in her eyes, threatening to spill down her cheeks at any moment. Ben saw his sister's grief and shame and it tore at his heart to know that he had brought this upon her. He stepped forward and cleared his throat.

  “Casey had nothing to do with this, Grandma. I had told Joey about this place and we sneaked away while Casey and Jenny were petting the baby goats. Casey even tried to stop us when she realized what we were doing.”

  Casey looked up at Ben, he saw the gratitude in her eyes and maybe even a little bit of admiration too. But Louise’s eyes told a different story altogether: anger, hurt, and disappointment. Ben walked over to the table and sat down across from her.

  “I’m very sorry I disobeyed you. Joey and I were just going to pop in and then pop right back out, but when we got here we saw you and we wanted to know what you were doing here.”

  “So, you spied on me?” Louise asked, raising her eyebrows and staring down at Ben over the rim of her glasses.

  “No! Well, yes... I guess we did,” Ben replied.

  After a long awkward pause, it was Amos’s deep rumbling voice that broke the silence. Casey and Jenny both jumped and Joey edged away from the towering man.

  “Louise, it appears that no harm was done here. These kids are just curious, as all children are and should be.”

  “Well, we have a saying where we come from,” said Louise. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “And satisfaction brought him back,” Ben added.

  Amos threw back his head and roared with laughter. Even Louise could not hold on to her anger after that remark and she finally gave in, threw her hands up in the air and declared, “I give up.”

  “I will have to remember that saying,” said Amos, wiping his eyes. “Let’s all have some stew. Later we will take a walk and I will show the children the forest.”

  Ben looked up at the smiling giant; Amos winked at him and tousled his hair. He really wasn’t that scary once you got over his size and appearance. He had, what Ben would have called, a merry face and twinkling eyes. Kind of what you would expect Santa Claus to look like, if he were seven feet tall with wild black hair, bulging muscles, and draped in black and brown furs instead of red. Well, maybe Santa Claus was a stretch. But Ben did sense a kind and gentle spirit in Amos. A kindred spirit. And yet, there was still something dangerous about Amos. Something Ben could not put his finger on.

  The kids were surprised to discover that they were even the least bit hungry after all of the food they ate at their fish fry. But when Amos got some bowls and spoons from the hutch and began ladling out the thick brown stew, their mouths began to water. While they were eating, Ben brought up the little experiment they were supposed to do on Saturday.

  “Grandma, it seems that there are not any parallel universes here. When we came through, we ended up in the same place and time that you were in. What time did you go through the Merlin Tree?”

  Louise swallowed a mouthful of stew and thought for a moment. “Let’s see. George went to town to get some mower belts. He left about a half hour after you and Casey left. I guess I came through about fifteen minutes after that.”

  “Hmmm,” Ben thought. “I don’t know what time it was when we came through, but it was a good while after you. How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. I came straight to Amos’s cabin when I got here.”

  “How can that be?” Ben asked. “We came in a long time after you, and yet, we saw you going into the woods when we came out of the bamboo.”

  Louise shrugged her shoulders. “I simply do not know. It would seem that time gets distorted when you travel here. I came back to the same time frame here - the same amount of time that passed in our world has passed here since my last visit. But when you kids came through, you came through to my time and that means more time has passed here than in our world since your last visit. Now, when I go back, I don’t think it will be the same time I left, like it normally is. I bet I go back to our world in your time frame; the point in time that you left.”

  Ben pushed his glasses up on his nose and sat forward on the edge of the bench. “So, it’s almost like the Merlin Tree is a portal that not only connects two worlds, but two time frames as well.”

  “What do you mean?” Louise asked.

  “Think of time as a fabric. As long as one person is using the Merlin Tree, then there is only one thread of time in the fabric and there are no time differences to account for between the two worlds. But when two people start using the Tree, then we have two threads in the mix and the Merlin Tree has to weave those threads into a single fabric.”

  “That’s a remarkable analogy,” said Louise, “and probably a correct one too.”

  Amos scratched his head. “I have no idea what you two are talking about. All I know is that Merlin Tree gives me the creeps and I do not like to go near it.”

  The kids looked up at Amos with wonder. How could this giant mountain of muscles be afraid of anything?

  “Are you really going to take us for a walk?” Joey asked.

  “Sure.” Amos replied with a huge grin. “How would you kids like to see some real live fairies?”

  “You mean like Tinkerbell?” Jenny asked.

  Amos scratched his head again. “Who is Tinkerbell?”

  “She is a fairy in the Peter Pan movie.”

  Now Amos tugged on his beard. “What’s a movie?”

  “Yes, these ar
e fairies like Tinkerbell in the Peter Pan movie,” Louise interrupted as she rose from the bench and smoothed her skirts.

  “Cool!” Ben yelled. “Let’s go!”

  “One moment,” Louise said, rising from her seat. She reached into her pockets and pulled out two necklaces; the small emerald necklaces she had purchased at the Jockey Lot. “Put these on first. I was going to give them to you Saturday, but since you couldn’t wait until Saturday to come here, you need to put them on now.”

  “What are they for?” Ben asked.

  “The emerald is the only jewel not native to Camelot and it has some powerful magical properties here.”

  “Like what?”

  “They are called spell catchers. If you are wearing one of these when a magical spell is cast at you, the stone will catch the spell and hold it. If you take the necklace off and lay it down, so that it is not touching you, the spell will be harmlessly released. However, if you touch someone before the Spell Catcher has released the spell, then that spell will be transferred to the person you touch.”

  Ben and Casey snapped the necklaces around their necks and tucked them beneath their shirts.

  Louise began clearing the table. “I’ll stay here and clean up while you are gone. Don’t be too long though, because I’m not sure what time the Merlin Tree will put us back when we go home.”

  Amos ushered the kids out the door and set off down a winding shady lane thickly carpeted with pine needles. The path paralleled the hillside, looping in and out between great moss covered boulders. After a while, the trail turned and began to climb the hill. When they reached the top, which was clear of trees, they could see for miles. Behind them, the pine forest ended at the edge of the great meadow that stretched out to the horizon, and they could make out the bamboo patch, a small speck of green afloat on a great sea of green and gold. The snow covered mountains, to the left of the patch, seemed even larger from the hilltop.

  “There’s where we are going,” said Amos, pointing down the other side of the hill into the valley below. On this side of the hill, the pine forest stretched out for miles.

  “Where?” Casey asked. “All I see are trees.”

  “Look down there.” Amos said. “At the bottom of the hill there is a small clearing. See it?”

  Casey shaded her eyes from the bright sunshine. “Yes, I see it. What’s that twinkling down there?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see for yourself,” Amos teased and set off down the hillside. The kids followed behind, and once again, the trail disappeared under the tall canopy of pines. The scenery, on this side of the hill, was pretty much the same. Joey was beginning to think that Camelot was a boring place where everything looked the same. Depending on where you were standing, you either saw all trees, or no trees at all. Ben was thinking the same thing. They had been here for over an hour now and had not seen a single troll, ogre, dragon, or unicorn. However, when they reached the bottom of the hill and the trail opened into a small glen, they changed their minds. The clearing was about half the size of a football field. In the center of the field, a fountain gushed skyward from a round stone basin and arced over to splash on top of a tall slab of red granite beside the basin. The mist from the artesian geyser formed a perfect little rainbow over the granite slab. Around the slab and across the clearing, wild flowers of all shapes and sizes bloomed in brilliant blues, reds, and yellows. Ben scanned the field.

  “Where are the fairies?” he whispered.

  “I don’t see them either,” Joey muttered.

  “That’s because you are looking for them,” Amos replied. “You cannot see them if you are looking for them.”

  Now, it was Ben’s turn to scratch his head. “Then how are we supposed to see them?”

  Amos pointed to the center of the field. “Fix you eyes on either the stone basin or the granite slab. Pick a spot and stare hard at it.”

  The kids lined up beside Amos and began to stare at the basin and slab. After a few moments Casey grabbed Ben’s arm with both hands. “I see movement!”

  “Those are the fairies,” said Amos.

  “But when I turn my eyes toward the movement they disappear.”

  “I see movement too!” Jenny exclaimed.

  “This stinks,” Joey complained. “We see something moving and as soon as we look at it - it vanishes.”

  “I told you,” said Amos, “you cannot see them when you look at them. As soon as you see them moving, look as close to them as you can without looking directly at them.”

  “What do you mean?” Joey asked.

  Amos held his big ham fist beside Ben’s head. “Look at my fist Joey. Now don’t take your eyes off of my fist. Can you see Ben?”

  “Yeah,” Joey replied.

  “Well that is how you see the fairies. Look as close to them as possible, but do not look directly at them or you will not be able to see them.”

  The kids turned back to the field and began staring at the stone basin and granite slab once again. Within a few seconds, all of them were jumping up and down, shouting and pointing.

  “Look at that fairy!”

  “Look over here!”

  “Look over there!”

  It was difficult at first. Every time someone pointed to a fairy for the others to see, they would immediately look to where the person was pointing and the fairy would vanish from their sight. After a while, they got the hang of it though. The small clearing was filled with fairies; fragile little creatures two or three inches tall, all clothed in colors matching the flowers of the field. Some had on the cool blues and purples of bluets and wild irises, while others wore the warm yellows and reds of jasmine, fleabane, firepink, and dewdrops. All of them were fair skinned with silvery wings and had a golden aura about them. No one could tell what color their eyes were though, without looking directly at them. Ben tried several times with no success. A split second before his eyes would come in contact with the fairy, the woodland creature would vanish. As soon as he would look away, the creature would reappear.

  “This is too cool,” Ben exclaimed.

  The other kids nodded in agreement and Amos cracked his hairy face with a huge grin. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, all of the fairies disappeared. The kids turned to Amos, who was still looking down at them with that silly grin on his face.

  “What happened?” Casey asked.

  “What do you mean?” Amos replied.

  “Where did all of the fairies go?”

  Amos quickly scanned the field, his smile now gone, then turned to the children and bellowed, “RUN!”

  *****