"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."
Leopold nodded.