For a few moments Tyler had no idea what he meant-he could hear nothing but the rumble of a distant storm. Then he realized it was June in the California valley and there wasn’t a cloud anywhere in the sky. The drumming noise grew louder until the ground itself began to quiver. Tyler had a sudden feeling that the entire grove of trees was being lifted up by gigantic engines and was just about to take off into the sky like a rocket ship.
Then the unicorns came.
They flooded into the clearing like a storm, with so much power and such a swirl of reddish dust, muscled flanks all white and gray and dappled, that they seemed like clouds hurrying along the ground, struggling to fly as far as possible before they burst and released their burdens of rain. But there was no mistaking the bright sharp horns, or the flashing of their eyes, or the glint of their pearly hooves when some young ones excitedly reared in the air at the center of the clearing, jabbing at the air.
“Oh!” said Lucinda beside him, and for the second time in two days Tyler realized that his sister was holding his hand. Strange as that was, he didn’t pull away. As he watched the tall creatures thundering back and forth across the clearing, snorting and bucking, ivory horns shimmering like flickers of lightning, he felt he was watching some kind of magic river, that if he lost contact with the ground it might just carry him away and he would never be heard of again.
“ Oh! ” his sister said again. There really wasn’t much more to say.
The unicorns crowded into the clearing, bumping and rearing so that it was hard even to guess how many there were-two dozen? three? They seemed at least as big as ordinary horses (Tyler didn’t have a lot of experience with real horses), but more slender and long-legged, with great tangled banners of mane at their necks and tufts on their chests and ankles. But it was the horns that made something amazing into something truly unbelievable, the pointed spirals that grew, not from the tops of their heads as in the sappy posters Lucinda still had in her room, but farther down, just below the line of the eyes, like the horn of a rhinoceros.
The herd formed into groups around the troughs and fed, horns clacking together gently, almost silently, ranged according to some hierarchy that Tyler couldn’t make out, since it didn’t seem to have much to do with age or size or color or anything else. At some troughs the young unicorns fed first, while at others the small ones stood patiently while an adult with a mane like store-window Christmas snow took the lead.
“They’re so beautiful,” Lucinda kept saying, over and over.
“Where do they come from?” Tyler asked Ragnar, who seemed more likely to answer questions than Mr. Walkwell. “What are they eating? Do you have to feed them every day?”
“They come from China,” Ragnar answered him. “Or they did once. Now they are gone. Ki-lin, they called them. And they eat grass and other things, but we give them every day a… what is the word, Simos?”
“Vitamin supplement,” growled Mr. Walkwell, who was squatting beside a gray adult unicorn. It watched him nervously from the corner of its eye while it ate, and he in turn examined it for any signs of ill health.
“Yes, vitamins,” said Ragnar. “Because the grass alone is not enough to keep them healthy, I think. And there are other medicines in the food too. These are the only unicorns still living in the world, so we must take good care of them.”
“Yeah,” said Tyler. “Awesome.” He was certainly interested in the unicorns, but more interested in going back to see the dragon again.
Lucinda, who didn’t seem to have listened to anything said, was walking slowly toward the nearest trough, her eyes wide as though she was hypnotized. Tyler hoped she wouldn’t do anything embarrassing, like start crying with joy or some other girl-and-unicorn thing. She stopped only yards away from one of the young unicorns, which examined her with large gray eyes. It didn’t look fright ened, but Tyler thought it didn’t look happy, either. When Lucinda did not move any closer it put its head down again and nosed in the trough.
Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar were together off to the side, looking over other members of the herd. The young unicorn’s pearly horn moved back and forth in front of Lucinda as it fed.
Tyler watched his sister, who was staring at the creature as if she had just opened her front door to find her number-one boy-band heartthrob waiting there to take her on a surprise date. She slowly reached out her hand to touch the horn. Tyler watched, wondering if he should say something-the unicorns were wild animals, so they were dangerous, weren’t they? Or were they? It was hard to know in such a crazy place.
A lot of things suddenly happened all at the same time.
Haneb saw what Lucinda was doing and ran toward her, crying, “No! No!” The unicorn reared up and made a startled noise, something blaring and utterly strange. As it came down it shook its head violently from side to side. The horn whipped past Lucinda’s face so fast she didn’t even flinch until after it was gone.
Haneb reached her and pulled her away, but now all the unicorns were milling and snorting, prancing nervously, making little tornados of dust spin up. Mr. Walkwell whistled a single shrill burst and they began to calm, but still would not come close to the troughs again.
“You scared me!” Lucinda shouted at the scarred man, yanking herself free of his protective grasp. She burst into tears, then turned and retreated toward the wagon.
“Wow, are you nuts?” Tyler said to her as she hurried past. He was stunned and impressed that his boring sister would do something so
… Tyler-like. “They said not to touch anything. That thing almost stabbed you!”
Haneb, who looked as though what had happened was somehow his fault, shuffled off to gather up feed bags.
“Everyone back to the truck,” Ragnar said. He bent to pick something off the ground, then went to talk to Lucinda at the edge of the clearing, where she stood wiping her tears away. “You could not know,” he told her kindly, “but the ki-lin do not like their horns to be touched. Very sensitive.”
“I… I didn’t mean… ” Lucinda swallowed. “It was just so beautiful.”
“Yes, they are,” said Ragnar gently. “But it is no ordinary thing, like a bull’s horn or a deer’s antler. It is a sort of tooth that grows up through the skull, like the tusk of the white corpse whales-two teeth, actually, growing together. The enhjorning -as my people call it-uses it to test the air, the water-to smell, almost, as a cat uses its whiskers or a snake its tongue.”
“A tooth?” said Tyler. “ That’s weird.”
“Shut up,” Lucinda said, and gave him a dig with her elbow. Her eyes were red and puffy. “Just… don’t say anything.” She abruptly veered away from the two of them and walked over to Haneb, who was watching with a worried expression, but whatever she said seemed to put him at ease: he nodded his head vigorously as they walked and talked, still keeping his face turned away from her as much as possible.
“I am glad she thanks Haneb,” said Ragnar. “The little man may have saved her life.”
“Saved her life?” Tyler made a face. “You’re joking, right?”
Ragnar held out his large hand. Lying across the palm was a hank of Lucinda’s golden-brown hair, cut as neatly as if by a pair of scissors. “The horn did this. It came that close. It is not wise to startle a unicorn. They are lovely to see, but they are not pets and they are not even friends.”
A cold tingle went right up Tyler’s backbone. He wasn’t always crazy about his sister, but he didn’t want her shredded by some razor-horned horse, either.
“Are we done?” he asked as they climbed back onto the wagon and waited for Mr. Walkwell, who was still crunching toward them. “Where do we go next?”
Ragnar gave him a serious look. “It depends on whether you two learn to do as you are told. Because now we are going to show you some of the dangerous animals.”
Chapter 8