Jan stood off and shook himself. He had rolled in dust. His winter coat had shed upon the Plain, coming off all in an evening in thick mats of hair. And the color beneath had been darker than the old, not a trace of sable to it. For he was black as his father beneath the shed. The color at last ran true.
But he had felt strange in his sleek new coat, like a trickster, somehow—like a thief. So he had rolled in dust to hide the color from others’ eyes a few days longer. But there could be no more hiding now. He was home. He shook himself again. Dust rose like smoke from the glossy blackness of him, and hung in the still, sunlit air between the shadows.
His mother gave no indication of surprise. “And what is that upon your brow?”
He realized then he had shaken his forelock back as well. He had not meant to. He had been letting it fall thickly into his eyes this last half month. But there could be no taking that back, either. He went to stand before his dam.
She studied the new hairs, pale as hoarfrost, growing in a thin crescent where the rim of the firebowl had burned him. He had seen them for the first time only that morning, in a pool in the Pan Woods. But he had felt them these last dozen days, growing.
“Show me the heel where the wyvern stung you.”
Jan lifted his hoof and held it crooked that she might see the fetlock better. Since they had left the Hallow Hills, he had kept the spot daubed with mud on the healer’s advice; but they had waded streams in the Pan Woods that day, and he had forgotten to replace the mud. The new hair covering the little spot was pale as well.
“I am the Firebringer,” he said. He had not realized it until they were long out of the Hallow Hills, halfway home across the Plain. He had said nothing to anyone, till now. “I…I always thought it would be Korr.”
Ses laughed then. “My son, I love your father well, but he is no seer of dreams.”
Jan gazed at her. He could not fathom her unsurprise. Again she laughed.
“On the night of my initiation, long ago, I saw myself give birth to a flit of flame. And I have never doubted for a day what that must mean.”
Then Jan said nothing for a while, for he could think of nothing. His sister Lell left off her suckling, and crept around her mother’s side to look at him.
“Look,” he heard Ses saying. “I see Korr across the Vale, coming back with the elders from the kingmaking.” She looked at him a moment, and then off. “The sun’s almost set. We should go down.”
She started forward, out of the trees’ shadows. He did not follow. She halted, glancing back at him.
“Do you come?”
He shook his head. “You go,” he told her. “In a while.”
He watched his mother descend toward the valley floor, Lell stumbling after her on long, still-awkward legs. They joined the crowd and made for the rise at the center, which Korr was now mounting. His shoulders were daubed with the red and yellow mud of the grave cliffs, that marks the new-made kings among the unicorns. Jan turned and headed up slope through the trees.
He made his way to the lookout knoll and stood only paces from the wood’s edge there, from the treeless swatch where he and Tek had fought the gryphon more than a month past—it seemed a very long time ago. Jan gazed down at the milling unicorns, deep blues and scarlets mostly, a smattering of ambers, here and there a gold, a gray.
“There you are,” panted Dagg, coming up the slope. “I’ve been looking—everyone has.”
Jan nodded, not turning. He scrubbed himself absently against the rough bark of a fir. His new coat itched.
Dagg snorted and shouldered against him. “What are you doing up here?”
“It’s a good spot,” Jan answered. “I can watch the dance from here.”
“Watch it?” cried Dagg. “You’re always watching things. You never enter in.”
“I do,” said Jan. “I’m a better dancer than you.”
“You are not.”
They fell on each other, nipping and shoulder-wrestling. They snorted, panting—and broke off abruptly at the sound of a low, nickering laugh. Jan turned to see Tek watching from the trees.
“How did you find us?” demanded Dagg.
Tek shrugged, emerging from the trees. She turned to gaze toward the unicorns below. “I have long known all your haunts and hollows. They were mine but two years gone.”
Jan and Dagg came to stand beside her. The dusk deepened. None of them spoke. The evening sky grew red.
“We should go,” Dagg said.
Jan caught him back. “Not yet.”
The sky above was hinting into violet. Tek turned to Jan. “They want to make you prince before the dance,” she said. “It was why I came.”
Jan looked at her. “Will it matter to you, when I am prince?”
He heard Dagg’s laugh. His friend shouldered against him. “I never cared when you were princeling, did I?”
Tek shrugged, eyeing him with half a smile. “Princes put no fear in me.”
Jan almost laughed, then caught himself. The mark of Alma rode heavy on his brow. “But what if I were more?” he said. “More than prince—would it matter?”
Dagg looked at him. “Korr’s not dead yet,” he said.
Then Jan did laugh. He caught Tek studying him.
“What are you talking about, little prince?” she said quietly. “Tell us.”
The prince of the unicorns looked down, away. His white heel pricked him in the dark. He picked at the fir needles underfoot with that hind, cloven hoof. “Tomorrow.”
Above them, the sky shaded from wine to indigo, lying smooth and cloudless as still, clear water. Night settled. A line of silver peered over the slope across the valley from them, and the dark blue of the sky grew suddenly smoky and more light. The few stars pricking the canopy above paled. Jan watched the rim of brightness edging over the hills.
“Moon’s up,” he heard Dagg saying. “They’ll be starting the dance.”
Jan drew his breath. “Full moon tonight,” he murmured. “I’d forgot.”
The herd below had begun to turn, slowly, a rough, wide Ring drifting now deasil, now widdershins about the rise in the valley floor where the new king stood. Tek wheeled on Jan suddenly, gave him a smart nip on the shoulder, then bolted from beside him, tearing down the slope. Her light taunt drifted back:
“First down shall have the center of the dance!”
Jan sprang after, and heard Dagg barely a half-pace behind. They galloped breakneck, shouldering and kicking, as they raced to overtake her before she reached the bottom of the slope.
Full Circle
So it was not Jan, but I that night who watched the dancing from above. Though the others thought me gone, I had kept myself hidden on the far wooded slope where I had stood the month before. Thus I saw the pilgrims safely home, and the making of Korr into the king.
The circle on the valley floor below me grew gradually thinner, its members fanning outward to form a greater, more circular Ring. The young prince, my daughter, and their shoulder-friend rejoined the dance now moving deasil, steadily deasil, beneath the circling moon.
I departed, and left them to their dancing. And I have come among you these many years after, you who dwell upon the Plain and call yourselves the Free People, you who know so little of your southern cousins, the unicorns of the Vale.
I have told you this tale to remind you of them, for though you have forgotten it, all unicorns were once a single tribe, just as–though you may doubt it–my people, who dwell beyond the Summer Sea, were once like yours. But this tale marks only the first night of my telling. Come to me tomorrow evening, and I will tell you the rest.