Eternal Spring A Young Adult Short Story Collection (31 page)

“For what?”

“For being you.”

“Does that mean you’ll think about it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

Jen claims my eager lips, anchors my heart and gives me
eternal hope. Three simple words I’m praying to God will change all our lives
for good.

***

Renee Pace writes nitty gritty young adult stories. She is
the author of
Off
Leash
and
Off
Limits
. Renee lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she juggles motherhood
and working as a volunteer in the community. She is a member of Romance Writers
of America and her local Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada, as well as the
Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers
and Illustrators. For more information, please visit
www.reneepace.com
.

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On A Field,
Sable

By

Diana
Peterfreund

Ashes fall from
my fingertips and my mouth tastes of smoke. I’m almost halfway through the pack
of cigarettes, and nothing’s happened yet. The fumes are evaporating too. It’s
a pity. Bet it would smell great here normally. Ursula would love it. She’d be
running around, picking all kinds of flowers. The little purple spiky ones with
the leaves like grass. The white daisies with the cup like centers. The tiny,
shapeless masses that sprout from cracks in the rocks, dripping with petals so
yellow they make my eyes water.

There are red
ones there, near the boulder where Rosamund bled to death. Ursula would
probably know what they’re called. All I know is they aren’t roses, which
strikes me as much funnier than it should. Maybe I’m high from the nicotine. Or
the gas fumes.

Or the
altitude.

It’s quiet on
the mountainside. I’m sitting on a rock, dangling my feet over the side,
thunking my heels against the stone as I smoke. It might be
the
rock
— it probably is, though the stains of Astrid’s blood have long since
washed away. It’s been months since her brains were dashed out against the
stone, months since I carried lifeless bodies down the trail. So much blood
spilled on this mountainside, and now all I see are flowers.

Two cigarettes
later, and the scent of tobacco smoke wanes in my nostrils in favor of true
fire. For a moment I’m elated, and then I realize the origin, as rot joins the
mix.

In storybooks
and movies, magic lets you see the secret path, the hidden sprite. It lets you
hear the sound of fairy music, or the voices of the dead.

My magic
stinks. Unicorns stink. They smell of soot and stagnant water. Of death that
comes by suffocation or incineration. I wonder if those are preferable to the
one I always figured awaited me, somewhere on the end of a unicorn’s horn.

The magic makes
it impossible for a unicorn to sneak up on you. Your mind smells them from
miles away. Today, however, I’m grateful. If it weren’t for the stench
heralding his arrival, I’d have jumped from my skin when he spoke.

Daughter of Alexander
.

I flick some
ash and keep smoking, steeling myself for the sight of him. I have my crossbow,
but it didn’t even pierce his skin last time. Some part of me, some tiny
traitorous part, must have been waiting for him.

Seconds later,
there he is, bigger—always bigger than I expect. Bigger than the pictures
in the books, or the statue in the rotunda, or the nightmares Ursula’s been
having for the better part of a year. Big, bigger biggest.

“The name’s
Melissende, Bucephalus.” I nod at the unicorn. His voice in my head reminds me
of my father’s. I’m sure that’s what he intends.

In storybooks,
unicorns are lithe, graceful things, with slender, deer bodies and mischievous
goat faces and gorgeous, spiraling white horns. Bucephalus looks more like a
wooly mammoth, with hooves the size of hubcaps and eyes like temple fires. His
horn is a massive spike from his head, a tusk of stone stained with the murders
of millennia. I climbed up this boulder, but he still stands at eye-level.

“What are you
doing here?”

What are you doing
here? He reflects back at me. And why does the soil smell of peat?

I gather the
images in my mind for him. Automobiles and oil fields, petrol stations and red
warning labels.

His front
hooves paw the ground. The boulder beneath me vibrates at his every move. If he
kills me where I sit, will I have succeeded or failed in my goal?

Do not wish for death,
young hunter.

“Why? Don’t
you, after all these years? You have nothing. Nobody. Everything you ever knew
or loved is gone.” I flick away my cigarette. Nothing. No sparks, no flames, no
tiny plumes of smoke. I know my aim is better than that.

But it is not that way for
you. You have your sister. The little bear.

“Don’t speak of
her.” My fingers itch for my crossbow. Instead I light a match. Such a frail little
stick, compared to my horn-tipped bolts. But it’ll do more damage, magic or
not.

Bucephalus says
nothing. He snorts and shifts on his massive legs. Nothing was meant to live as
long as he does. I have heard that there are trees that do, though, in Norway
or New Zealand or America or something. That makes even less sense. How much
worse would thousands of years be if you were rooted to the same place that
whole time? If your children fell from your branches and lived in your shadow
and died so close you could touch them, if only the breeze was strong enough
that day.

If I’d been a
few meters closer, I might have killed that re’em before it got to Astrid and
Rosamund. If I hadn’t tripped, if my first two shots had been deeper or in a
more vital artery. If Dorcas hadn’t decided to stay back and let her arm heal.
If there had been more hunters on the mountain that day. If Clothilde Llewelyn
had killed every last one of these monsters when she’d had the chance a hundred
and fifty years ago. If she’d never made a deal with the monster
who
stands before me.

When Bucephalus
growls, you feel it more than hear it. Your bones shake beneath your skin.

The match
extinguishes in the mountain breeze. Oh well. Plenty more where that came from.

“I’ve killed a
hundred unicorns," I say.

I’ve killed ten thousand
men.

“Please, tell
me more about all the people you’ve murdered.” Of course, your bones can
shudder from other causes, too.

We are both killers,
Daughter of Alexander. There is no need to apologize for it.

“Do you see me
apologizing?”

What is your wish?

To avenge the
death of Rosamund is the only one I’ll allow in my mind for Bucephalus to see.

Her killer is dead.

The image
floats before me—I slew the re’em while Rosamund and Astrid lay in pools
of blood on the mountainside. It didn’t take the half-dozen bolts I fired into
the unicorn’s body, nor the dagger I used when it dropped to the ground. Even
as it gurgled its last breaths, it cried out for its offspring. I heard their
answering pleas in my mind for the first time as their mother’s lifeblood
soaked my hands and stained my clothes.

I would have
killed them, too, but I had to get Astrid off the mountain.

Do you know what happened
to them?

I shrug and light
another match. I feel faintly sick, but I don’t know if it’s from too many
cigarettes or a unicorn far too close.

Search for them now.

I flick the
match from my fingers. “Not necessary.” The match bounces on the ground and the
flame dwindles. Nothing. Again.

Who knew it
could be so hard to start a fire?

Search for them. Do you
feel any unicorn other than me on this mountaintop?

Against my
will, my instincts reach out, but I hear no chord, scent no fire,
feel
no unicorn thoughts. But what does that mean? I
couldn’t feel them last time, either. Their
existence was
shielded by their mother
.

Who is now
dead. Do you think they survived here all winter without her?

I grimace and
fumble for the box of matches, knocking the canister so it falls over, clattering
against the stone, splattering oil in its wake. My fingers are shaking. Yes,
too much nicotine. Too much magic. The scene blurs before my eyes — the
massive, red-brown hide of Bucephalus, the tiny pinpricks of wildflower color
against the carpet of mountain green.

“If the
unicorns aren’t here, then tell me what I’m doing.”

You know what you are
doing, Melissende Holtz. But do you know why you have not yet done it?

I have to
strike the match three times before it lights. “Oh, I get a name now? I heard
you were stingy with things like that.” The flame licks at my fingertips, but I
can’t feel its heat. I need more. So much more. I toss the match away from me,
and watch its arc down into the grass.

Bucephalus
watches too. I can’t see that well anymore, but he helps. This match, too,
fails to do its duty. It lands facedown in the heart of a wildflower, melting
the petals and singeing the stamen before it extinguishes.

Come now. Your aim is not
that bad. When you kill a unicorn, you shoot for the heart. Why such a coward
when you wish to kill yourself?

My head flies
up, my eyes meet his. There’s a pool of gas on the rock at my side. And I shove
my sleeve into it. “I’m no coward.” Where are my matches?

Bucephalus
charges forward, swiping his giant head at me. I’m swept from the rock by the
flat of his horn, tossed in the air like a petal torn from a flower.

If I landed on
a rock, I might be dead, or maimed, like Astrid. But Bucephalus’s aim is as
good as mine. I hit the thick grass hard, but not hard enough to break. There’s
gas in my nose and damp wildflowers in my hair. My body burns with pain. I
cough, trying to catch my breath as his shadow blocks the sun.

My crossbow is
gone, up on the boulder. My matches have been flung in every direction.

“So why don’t
you kill me?” I scream at his ancient, terrible face. His nostrils flare wider
than my open mouth. If he wanted, he could bite off my head. He could crush my
skull to dust beneath his hooves.

He’s killed ten
thousand people. How many were hunters, just like me?

I grab the
nearest rock, and bash him on the snout. He winces — if monsters can
wince, and I scramble out from beneath him.

I race back to
the boulder, but his legs are as long as my whole body. Again, he brushes me
aside, and I go tumbling, over and over, my body jostled by half buried rocks
in the pillowy grass. Bruises and blood bloom on my skin like so many spring
flowers.

I push myself
to my feet against, bracing my body against the rock and face him. The unicorn
is eyeing me, horn lowered, mouth open so saliva drips over his fangs and off a
tongue as large as my arm.

“Speak!”

But there are
no words from the unicorn in my mind. It’s closed off to me, the way the re’em
or the
kirin
can sometimes shield their thoughts, the
way the little ones like Bonegrinder never can. “Is that what makes you
special?” I spit at him. “That you have the choice whether or not to speak, but
you can always, always read our minds, as we can always read the minds of the
lesser unicorns?”

The unicorn is
silent. The whole mountain is silent. The birds and insects have fled the
stench of gasoline, and even the breeze has stopped. I hear the blood in my
ears.

“You should
kill me,” I say. “I’m not soft, like the Llewelyns.” Like
all
the Llewelyns. “I have no love for
fluffy animals that only want to eat me.”

Nothing.

“Speak!” I
shriek. I rush at him, unarmed. He doesn’t let me get a blow in this time,
lifting his head and shoving me back against the boulder. His horn screeches
against the granite above my head.

This is how it ended
for Astrid. My skull smacks against the stone, but not hard enough to crack.
Not nearly hard enough.

I slump to the
ground as he backs away, and I cover my face with my hands. My skin is wet with
blood or gas or tears. My flesh stings and burns, but not with fire. Not with
fire.

I don’t want to
die by fire.

“If I live,” I
say at last, “I will kill you all. Unicorns are a threat to my family. To
everyone I love. I won’t rest until every last one of you is dead.” I drop my
hands to the grass at the base of the boulder and rake my fingers through the
blades. Bucephalus watches me with eyes as old as the ages. In his endless
life, he’s watched millions die. He’s seen empires fall and stars fade and
species wink out of existence.

And still he
fights. He could have walked off a cliff a century ago, and he didn’t.

“I would
dedicate my life to eradicating unicorns. Is that not reason enough to kill
me?”