nine

Keelie was sure she’d feel Peggy’s broom on her head or her backside, but the woman had turned to run out the peasants’ exit. Keelie heard her apologizing profusely, probably to the spattered man.

She looked around wildly for Knot, then spotted him hightailing it toward the woods with a spear of steak chunks in his mouth. She ran after him, lifting her feet high to keep from slipping, then stared at the rub canister still in her hand. Now was not the time to return it.

Behind her, the crowd laughed and cheered as if the mayhem were part of the show. Keelie ran on, trying to keep Knot in sight. She slipped past the end of the shops, where delivery trucks lined a small gravel road leading to the employee parking lot.

On the other side of the parking lot, several picnic tables were grouped under a small stand of sycamores. A distant fanfare blasted the air and she heard cheering. The joust was starting. She plunked down on the wooden seat of one of the tables and dropped the rub on the grease-stained tabletop. No guests would see her here, and everyone else was too busy working. She’d be alone for a while.

Maybe Elia had cursed her. She’d been fired from two jobs in one day. But Elia wasn’t that smart. And with the dumb decisions Keelie had been making, she didn’t need a curse to make her life go bad.

She should head back to the Admin building to return the uniform, endure another fiery butt-blasting from Finch, and beg for a new job. She’d either get another post, or else Finch would outright fire her, and Keelie would have to go work at the shop with Dad for no money. She had to do that anyway.

Keelie needed a break. She’d been yelled at by just about every adult she knew, and she had to keep taking it in order to repay her father. It was all about the dollars.

Knot leaped lightly onto the picnic table and scraped his head up against the rub container, purring loudly. His mouth was shiny with rub-daubed grease. His little tongue licked out to taste it.

“Thanks to you, we’re going to be on the Most Wanted List at this Faire. Or worse—the Least Wanted.”

Knot hopped off the table and looked back at Keelie. It was as if he wanted her to follow him. “That’s great. Now you’re doing dog tricks like some kind of feline Lassie.”

He meowed and looked at the Faire buildings, then back at her.

“Okay. I’ll bite.” She had nothing else to do.

Knot led her toward the front of the Faire, stopping to let her catch up when the crowd got in the way. She thought she saw Elianard, but it was a man in a wizard costume, staring intently at a group of children. He was either a magician looking for an audience, or he was about to get his butt reported for extreme creepiness. He didn’t notice her as she passed by, but she saw that the trees above him swarmed with the feithid daoine. The bug fairies seemed to be having a little party up there.

Knot negotiated the crowd as if they weren’t even there. His bushy tail, its tip crooked over, was the flag that she watched for as she dodged strollers and slowpokes, her feet sore from the curlicue shoes that weren’t exactly made for sand and gravel.

They were headed in the direction of the Admin office. Keelie slowed down. She so didn’t want to go there yet. Knot stopped, swished his tail, and ran ahead on the path. The trees swayed, and Keelie thought she saw the bhata moving among the leaves of a low-lying branch of a nearby tall maple. She heard their excited buzzing. They were probably laughing at her outfit.

Finch had said she wanted fairies. Well, now she had them. She’d regret her words, if these were anything like the ones in Colorado.

The breeze shifted, and suddenly Keelie’s mind filled with a picture of the glowing white unicorn, tossing its head, mane flying, silvery horn gleaming in the moonlight. Again, she had a sudden compulsion to find him. The image had come out of nowhere, and with it an urgent desire to run through the woods. Suspicious, she looked around. No sign of magic—not that she knew what to look for, but at least nothing seemed out of place. Other than the stick people in the trees.

Knot seemed to be encouraging her, as if he knew where the unicorn was. Bet Dad—Zeke!—was going to love that, especially after warning her not to go near the “mythical” beast. Nevertheless, something was summoning her, and she knew it had to be him.

Knot meowed and started walking, looking over his shoulder at her.

Finally, curiosity and the insistent cat convinced Keelie she needed to find the unicorn. She stepped onto the path, hoping that Elianard wasn’t lurking around. She only had her Queen Aspen pendant with her, which wasn’t of any use against obnoxious elf lords.

In the woods, sound dimmed and the air was different, thick with the spicy earthiness of green living things. Knot walked ahead, his steps almost soundless despite the usual debris of the forest floor. She opened her senses to the trees, anticipating the flow of greenness that would wrap around her, enveloping her in its welcoming shelter.

What she sensed was very different. Her throat constricted and her stomach seemed to rise, ready to toss its contents. She fell to the ground, shaking her head, trying to lessen the pressure inside. She was nauseous with the overpowering sense, the painful ache, that built until she thought she couldn’t breathe. The trees were sick, all of them. Something was weakening them.

A dark energy willed her not to go any further. The Dread. She forced herself past it. The trees were sick, and they needed help. The part of Keelie that was elven reached out to them, not able to bear their pain.

“What can I do to help?” She spoke the words aloud. She looked up as Knot thrashed through the leaves and jumped onto a huge granite boulder covered in lichen. He meowed again to Keelie.

She climbed up. The wind lifted her hair. It was warm, like spring, on top of the rock, and the scent of flowers wafted through the air. The unicorn was like spring. She imagined he’d been here for the first spring on Earth, when the world was new and bright.

And then she saw him. He stood in a shaft of afternoon sunlight, his horn sparkling, glorious in its beauty and radiance. Each spiral gleamed as if it had been dipped in iridescent moonlight. He looked at her, then danced skittishly, hooves digging into the loam.

She squatted and dropped from the boulder.

He wheeled and ran, darting impossibly between the trees.

“No, don’t go.”

A bird shot out of a nearby bush, joined by others. The air was briefly darkened by rushing wings.

The unicorn stopped and turned, tossed his silver mane, then galloped away. Knot leaped after him, and Keelie followed. She wasn’t about to be left behind.

Around her the trees entreated her to stay. “Don’t go. Be our shepherd. Help us.”

Keelie drove the tree thoughts from her mind and focused on the unicorn. A small part of her noticed that it wasn’t a conscious effort—the tree thoughts had faded into the background. The unicorn had taken over her mind, had become a singular compulsion. She ran on, thinking that she must not lose him. She belonged with him. On and on through trees, through thickets of bushes, she ran as if in a trance, pulled like a puppet by a magical string.

Her skirt snagged on a branch, ripping. She pulled the skirt up and knotted it at her waist, then slipped out of the ridiculous shoes and ran barefoot, the green hose in tatters around her ankles, hardly feeling the rocks and twigs she stepped on. She forced herself to move faster, always keeping Knot and the unicorn in sight. Her side burned and she pressed a hand against her ribs to rub the stitch away.

The unicorn leaped across a stream, tail rippling, and landed lightly on the other side. Keelie grabbed a sapling to keep from falling in.

“Help me, shepherd. I grow weak … ” It was a young oak, sick, like all the others.

She took her hands away from the treeling, and its entreaties for help faded. The unicorn pawed the ground lightly, but didn’t move. Keelie crept forward slowly, deliberately, like a cat stalking its prey. A small part of her mind wondered why she hadn’t stopped to help the little tree.

Knot sat upright at the water’s edge, staring unblinking at the silvery white beast before them. Without looking away from the unicorn, Keelie lowered her foot, feeling for the stream bottom. When her toe touched sediment she dropped the rest of the way. The water was numbingly cold, and the pebbles that formed the streambed bruised her feet. The unicorn tossed its head, but made no move to leave. The water soaked the hem of her skirt, making it heavy, but the cold finally woke her up enough to realize she’d been somehow enchanted. She took a step forward and ran into an invisible wall.

A frisson of fright rushed through her body. A magical force held her in place. Fear did not override her desire to follow the unicorn, but a sane part of her mind awakened, freed from enchantment.

Knot meowed, and his low cry turned into an angry growl. He stared across the water, unmoving, but Keelie couldn’t tell if he was under the spell, too, or if it was just a kitty’s natural aversion to water.

The unicorn’s eye glowed with intelligence.

“What do you want?” she whispered. It tilted its head and moved its ears forward. Keelie stepped back, and the spell released her. It was as if she’d walked out of a spider web, and thin tendrils of the spell tickled her with the compulsion to be still.

Move, don’t move. A breeze blew softly through the forest, blowing thin strands of the broken spell around her.

She climbed back onto the bank, grateful that her feet were numb, because when the cold wore off they’d probably hurt like crazy.

Behind her, the unicorn whickered, the cry so horse-like that she turned to look. Was he calling her back? The glow around him faded, and suddenly she could see that his hide was bare in spots, and his horn was dull and yellowed. His neck was thin. As if he knew that she could see the truth, he hung his head, then backed away until he faded into the bushes behind him. This did not look like the guardian of the forest.

Keelie’s tears dripped into the stream. The little glade where the unicorn had been seemed dimmer now. The afternoon sun had dipped lower, and the light would fade faster in the forest. Her heart ached with sadness, and she wanted lie down on the decaying forest floor and cry.

She wondered what could hurt a unicorn, and whether the forest had sickened it or if it was the guardian’s illness that was affecting the forest. According to Dad, unicorns were very powerful. What evil could do this? Dad was the Tree Shepherd. She had to tell him, although he had warned her to stay out of the woods.

The forest seemed gloomy and sinister.

“Come on, Knot. Let’s head back.”

Limping, she retraced her steps. The little oak at the bank’s edge seemed small and sad. She gently grasped one of its branches, and with her other hand touched the Queen Aspen’s heart. Her fingertips tingled, the signal of rising magic. She couldn’t help the unicorn, but she could save this tree. The magic bubbled up, like heated sap, and spilled over. She guided it to the tree’s feeble roots and felt them thicken and throw out rootlets, reaching deeper into the nourishing earth. Leaves burst from the branches and its bark grew smoother.

As the magic deepened, she heard the singing of the sprite that lived in the stream, and the voices of the tall trees around her, begging for a sip of her magic.

There wasn’t enough for all of them. I will return, she promised. A tug pulled her toward the magical stream, and she cried out as her hand brushed against bark and stuck fast, her magic usurped by the wide oak that branched over the water. He drank deeply of the Queen Aspen’s magic. But the magic was not just the pendant’s—it was Keelie’s life force as well.

She fell to her knees, pulse racing. Her heart beat like a mechanical thing gone wild. Other trees protested above her, clamoring for a taste. Keelie fell over, numb, and as her vision grew fuzzy she watched an ant walk the edge of a leaf. Her world had been reduced to this, the march of the tiniest creature.

With an effort she turned her head. Silvery forms sprang to being around her, a ghostly forest that cried out to return to the earth. She heard the echo of saws and the shouts of men, and the cracking and thunder of falling brothers.

Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe anymore. This is it, she thought. I’m dying, because I didn’t listen to Dad. A roar filled her ears, like a wind machine beating against her ear-drums. The saws had come for her. She closed her eyes, ready for whatever came next.

Someone was sandpapering her eyelids, and the horrible feeling of being siphoned dry lifted. She opened her eyes. Knot’s face loomed large, revealing the reason why she couldn’t breathe. He was sitting on her chest, purring, and he’d put his paw on her forehead to anchor himself as he groomed her.

She pushed him off and sat up. He purred and rubbed against her arm. “I thought I was dying, Snot, and it was just you.” She laughed shakily, aware that she might have been really dying, and that just maybe the cat had done something to stop the trees from draining her.

The ghostly forest had faded, but it was still visible. She shivered. It had been real. This was the forest Dad had told her about, the trees that sought rest, the sisters and brothers of the oaks, themselves so sick that they might join them in death.

She glanced at the young oak, now in full leaf and healthy. One spot of vibrant health in the haunted and dying forest. Her good deed had almost killed her.

Nauseous, she got to her knees and then stood up, careful not to touch any trees. She needed to tell Dad about this. Maybe the haunted forest was the reason he looked so ill. It could be that he’d let the trees take his energy, but she doubted that he’d deplete himself so much. He probably knew a better way. No, he hadn’t allowed himself to be drained. This was bad magic.

She was already in a lot of trouble. She’d been fired from her second job, she owed Dad and Lady Annie hundreds of dollars, and Laurie was coming. Her life was so messed up that she didn’t know what he could do to make it worse.

Then it hit her. He could call Elizabeth and tell her not to let Laurie come to New York, he could say that Keelie couldn’t drive. He could tell Lady Annie to sell the boots. She needed to stay in Dad’s good graces, and that meant that her forest misadventure would remain a secret.

She looked down at Knot, who was blinking up at her. “Don’t you tell him. This has to be our secret.”

In answer, he stalked past her with his tail held high. Keelie followed his furry booty, and he led her to her shoes. She never would have believed she’d be glad to find the hideous gold lamé gnome booties, but almost cried with relief when she put them on. Her sore feet still kept her progress slow. Behind her, in the deep woods, the unicorn neighed, and the trees above whispered songs of sorrow and regret.