Afterwards, Aycenia practically glowed with awe and pride at the fact that we’d defeated the Flying Shadow. Only for all that to be replaced with horror and revulsion at the sight of Paco skinning and chopping the monster apart and turning it into a meaty, celebratory stew. She noticeably kept her distance from the gunslinger after that. She kept company with Nakoda most often, likely deciding that he made the sanest and friendliest company. A day passed where our group simply relaxed in our victory. Belkross (now wearing the Flying Shadow’s modified head as a hat) kept his eyes to the south in case cannibals tried for another attack. Out of the supplies we’d used for the trap, only a sizeable portion of gunpowder remained. Yet, due to old age, neither of the cannons had survived the shots taken at the Flying Shadow, with one of them split down the middle by the force of the blast. Despite how useful they’d been, I was silently grateful I wouldn’t be tasked to drag the cannons around through the jungle. The memory made my muscles ache as I focused on resting. Eventually, as they tended to, my thoughts turned to Mother.
And the nightmare.
Despite how tired I’d been, the thought of sleep had put me on edge. I needn’t have worried. The sleep I managed to scrape together was dreamless. I got the feeling that this was just as notable as the nightmare itself. That I’d gotten a look at something I shouldn’t have, and that someone-or something-on the other side was making sure it didn’t happen again.
It was almost discouraging. Almost.
It meant that I was getting strong and that something, maybe the Monstrosity, had taken notice. The donkey in me felt panic at that. But the unicorn straightened its back, dug its hooves into the ground, and stood unyielding in the face of evil.
I released a deep breath. Only then did I notice Lilian standing a few feet away, an eyebrow raised in question. She gave me a quick look over and then asked, “Are you meditating? Trying to unlock more of your unicorn magic?”
I hesitated to respond. Half of me liked Lilian, but the other half knew that she wasn’t quite right. Not insane. Just…not right. The sight of her screaming for the Shadow’s execution still burned in my mind. She’d been terrifying. Yet she was also one of the main reasons why the group had survived this far. And, up to this point, she’d offered me nothing but support, knowledge, and friendship.
With all that in mind, I lied and cautiously snorted once. If she wanted to give me another magic lesson, I wasn’t going to turn her down. Especially if the Monstrosity now had its psychic eye on me.
Without another word, Lilian reached into her coat and pulled out a knife.
My breath caught in my throat.
She then produced a handkerchief and held it in her other hand. She used the knife to cut a hole in the cloth’s center. She closed her eyes. The handkerchief glowed briefly as the hole knitted itself closed, making itself whole again.
“Neat,” yawned a voice to my left. It was Turtle. Despite his size, I hadn’t heard him lumber over.
“Hey, Turtle,” I said. “Go get that cloth she has and put it on my head.”
Lilian allowed him to take it from her using his mouth, looking a little confused. He pushed it down against my horn. “Like that?”
“Yes.”
“Alright…So now what?”
“We’ll see,” I murmured, inhaling deeply. “I’m gonna try.” I closed my eyes. Concentrated…and concentrated…aaaaaaaand concentrated. A terrible migraine began to set in-
“OOF!” Breath exploded from my mouth as I suddenly collided headfirst with a hard surface. There was the sound of wood snapping and then the sensation of falling. I landed with a loud thud, eyes spinning. I tried to get up only to plop back down. Several Turtles and Lilians were rushing my way. All of the Lilians knelt by my side checking for injury. They picked up something on the nearby ground. The Handkerchief. It still had the hole in it. Despite this, they looked impressed. Head still pounding, I looked around. We were under a tree roughly forty feet away from the top of Aycenia’s hill.
…Did…Did I just…just…?
Lilian (thankfully now just one) glanced over her shoulder. Seaweed Man was making his way over, rolling one of his glowing rocks across his palm as he walked.
“Did you see what I did?” I asked Turtle painfully.
“Yep,” he replied with mild interest. “So, you’re super magic now?”
“Yes!”
“Alright!”
“But I’m also kinda scared,” I admitted, shaking leaves out of my mane. “What if I’d teleported into the ground?”
Or gone out into the ocean and drowned?” Turtle supplied helpfully.
…Maybe I don’t want to be magic after all.
Existential crisis aside, I notice Seaweed Man looking me over out of the corner of my eye. “What’s all this about?” he asked Lilian, pocketing the stone away.
“I’ve been trying to help Donkiote unlock more of his unicorn bloodline.” A thought seemed to come to her. “Unicorns are notoriously linked to light. It might be similar enough to one of the spells that you use. So, perhaps if you demonstrate, he’ll be able to replicate it.”
“Oh. Well that’s quite simple.” Seaweed Man picked up a nearby stone a little smaller thank his closed fist. H concentrated on it, and it immediately began to glow. “And if that doesn’t work,” he snapped the fingers of his free hand, making a spark shoot up into the air. “Either or works if you need a source of light,” he said, tossing the stone away. It continued to glow a few minutes more before going dark.
I studied it and then chose another stone roughly the same size. I picked it up with my teeth and concentrated, praying desperately that I didn’t teleport straight up into the sky…
But nothing happened.
“I have an idea,” said Seaweed Man. He took the stone from my mouth and pressed it up against the tip of my horn. He pressed his other hand against my shoulder, blessing me with…with power…
Yes! I suddenly thought. Yes, I CAN do this!
The stone flickered with light.
And near immediately went dark again.
I released an agitated heehaw.
“Hmmm how about not trying it on a rock,” Lilian offered. “But on your own horn.”
I did as she said. By this point my head was pounding, but I pushed through. I focused on the tip of my horn. My stupidly curved, deformed horn. One of the many sources of ridicule…But it had to be more. More than a deformity. In this moment I had to weaponize it, make it into a beacon…A BEACON OF LIGHT!
I knew it had worked before I opened my eyes. But when I did I saw Lilian, Turtle, and Seaweed Man all basked in ivory light. It wasn’t long before the magic receded from my horn, but hey! Progress!
“Well, there you go,” Seaweed Man said with a nod.
Lilian returned the nod. “Well done, Don. Come on. Let’s get some food into you.”
We bid Seaweed Man goodbye for now and headed back up the hill. As we drew closer I spotted Nakoda talking excitedly with Aycenia. Seeing that, too, Lilian asked my cautiously, “Nakoda said that you two are like brothers?”
I snorted in answer.
“I hope it works out better for you than it did for me but let me give you some advice. Family will always abandon you or betray you.”
…What?
Alrighty then. Well that filled in a depressing, nihilistic piece of the puzzle that was Lilian.
I snorted once again, but she wasn’t done.
“When I was born, my mother abandoned us.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, that was because she died, but I still consider that abandoning us. My oldest sister ran away. My father went insane and couldn’t help us. Because of that, my other sister died. And her murderers, my family-minus Grandfather-came at me.” She held up a finger. “So be careful. I hope it works out for the two of you, but it’s still possible that one day, when you find a knife between your shoulders, it came from those closest to you.”
“Or a lance,” Turtle yawned.
On that morbid note, I ate a few mouthfuls of stew as quickly as I could and left the two of them by the campfire. I plopped down a few feet from where Nakoda and Aycenia were chatting, under the shadow of her tree. The dryad gave me an appraising look. She ruffled Nakoda’s hair and slid back into her tree. Only then did my brother realize I was there. “Oh! Hey, Don. You having fun?”
I snorted once halfheartedly before closing my eyes to try and rest. I hope he didn’t take it personally. Even with the Flying Shadow dead, there was still tension in the air. Aycenia could only make the situation so bearable. We were still stranded on Smuggler’s Shiv, with cannibals for neighbors. I needed to prepare for the worst. I needed to master my magic. But, for right now, this donkey-unicorn needed a nap.
“Oh, okay,” Nakoda said.
“He wore himself out,” Lilian called over. “Practicing magic.”
“Ah. Cool! Thanks!”
My sleep was restless, startling myself awake more than once. On the fourth time, I opened my eyes and spotted Nakoda. He’d taken a position closer to the campfire, keeping watch with Paco. Both of them were cleaning their respective weapons. “So, um,” Nakoda said to the gunslinger, “that was some good shooting you did this morning. Just boom! Bam! Really good!”
“Hmhmm,” Paco replied.
“Did your dad teach you how to shoot? Or your mom? Or an angry auntie?”
Paco glanced up from his disassembled rifle. I noticed that he kept his intact pistol on the ground within hand’s reach. Lilian wasn’t the only paranoid one apparently. “I don’t know who any of those people are.”
Nakoda frowned at him. “Where did you grow up?”
“Nowhere, really. My earliest memory is waking up in the back of a traveling wagon. I think I fell asleep there. Up until I met Turtle, I was just going around, waking up in different places.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Not a bad life, I think.”
“Sounds like you’d make a good Rider of the Wing,” Nakoda told him. “We go from place to place, too.” He frowned. “I don’t know how we know where we’re supposed to go. I think Dad would talk to this lady, our God, Desna, and she would nudge him in the right the direction. All the high-ranking Riders can do that, apparently. I, uh, I’ve never talked to her, though. Or she won’t talk to me. Maybe ‘cause I’m not a full Rider-”
“Desna won’t talk to you?” Paco asked.
“Nope.”
Paco raised an eyebrow. “Why would you wanna talk to Desna?”
“Wel…as a Rider of the Wing, she’s the Butterfly.” He pointed to the butterfly sigil on his pauldron. “And she fills your own wings with magic and sends you in the direction that people need helping. Saving those who can’t save themselves.”
“Have you ever tried talking to the other butterflies?” It was hard to tell if the gunslinger was just messing with Nakoda at this point.
“Not other butterflies,” Nakoda admitted. “But I’ve been using Don’s magic a lot. Maybe it’s okay for me to be blessed by a unicorn instead of a butterfly as long as I still do good.”
“Can the donkey-corn speak to the butterfly?” Paco asked.
“He can speak to most animals, but I don’t think he can talk to Desna-?”
“Have you ever asked?”
“…No. Never have. Huh.”
“Yeah, maybe now that his magic is awakening.”
Nakoda’s eyes went wide. “Ooooh! I didn’t think about that.” He then asked, “What gods do you think unicorns pray to?”
Good question, I thought. Wish I knew. Outside of the four Guardians of the forest, there was no other higher power. At least, none that I’d communed with.
When Paco didn’t have an answer, Nakoda asked him, “What about you? What god do you pray to?”
“Why do I have to pray to a god?” Paco scoffed.
“I mean, they can guide your bullets, make life easier,” the little Rider offered cautiously. “That’s kinda what the point of a god is, isn’t it? To guide you, put you where you’re supposed to be.”
“I do just fine on my own,” Paco answered. “And none of them have gone out of their way to help me, so…”
The pair slipped into a pensive silence for a long moment, the only sound coming from the gunslinger finally clicking his rifle back together. He was checking the weapon over when Nakoda finally asked, “What would you do if you were a god? Would you go around helping people, or would you just…”
Paco set the gun down and rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “I’d sleep.”
“You’d sleep? So maybe some gods are sleeping and you’ve just gotta wake ‘em up with praying.”
Paco shot him a disgusted look. “That would be stupidly annoying,” he sneered. “I’d hate it if I was sleeping and someone wanting stuff kept waking me up. If I was a god, I’d tell them to fuck off.”
Nakoda seemed to deflate a little. “I guess,” he sighed. He glanced around at the camp, hesitated, and then looked Paco straight in the face. “Do you…like me? Like as a person?”
Paco grimaced and his eyes narrowed as he simply stared back at the boy.
Then, in a what-you-gonna-do?-kind of tone of voice, he answered, “I think you have your uses.”
Nakoda waiting for Paco to continue.
The gunslinger never did.
Mostly because, by then, he’d fallen back asleep.
#
I didn’t realize that, like Paco, I’d fallen back to asleep until I was squinting at the first rays of daybreak. Sluggish, I got up and stretched. I glanced over. Paco was still asleep, as was Turtle and Nakoda. The flap to Lilian’s tent was pulled closed. Aycenia was likely still in her tree. That just left Belkross, Alton, and Seaweed Man to stand watch. Judging by his usual behavior (and the fact that every animal in the jungle practically worshipped him now that he wore the Flyng Shadow’s head) Belkross was likely in the wilderness, hunting for wayward cannibals. But where were Alton and Seaweed Man?
I looked around for a bit before catching movement out of the corner of my eye. Aycenia’s arm appeared from the base of her tree, as if it were a surface of water. She jerked a thumb west, where shadows still remained, trying their best to hide from the rising sun. If only for a little while. A shiver ran along my spine as I made my way over and saw Seaweed Man and Alton sitting side by side at the base of the hill, shadows wrapped around the two men like a shared blanket.
I had to strain my ears to pick up their words. It could have been my imagination, but I would have sworn I could smell the sea as they spoke. “I did not sleep well,” Alton was saying. “It was too hot by the fire…”
Seaweed Man offered him a bowl of water. Alton drank from it deeply without hesitation. “I should be dead…If it weren’t for Nakoda, that thing would have gotten at me, killed me, and no one would have known of the captain’s betrayal.”
Seaweed Man chuckled humorlessly. “I also almost died because of Nakoda.”
Alton shook his head. “He didn’t mean for things to go that way. The boy means well…But the first thing you learn when out on the seas is that there’s no such thing as a truly good person. Everyone’s grey. Almost black. Everyone wants something.” He made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “I just wish that I knew what Kovack wanted!” He shook his head. “And that stupid dream…”
He hesitated before turning to Seaweed Man. “This is going to sound very silly.”
“No, no, go on,” Seaweed Man said gently. He reached out a hand, holding it over the empty bowl. Water magically appeared, filling it to the brim. This time Alton didn’t drink. Instead, he stared down at his reflection.
“…I was back on the ship,” he recounted miserably. “Up on deck. There were corpses all around me. Kovack’s sword is pinning me to the deck, rammed through my stomach. I can’t break free. Finally, the ship goes beneath the ocean and I’m sinking with it. The corpses are floating all around me. I’m still pinned, and I can’t breathe but I can’t die. Everything is green and blue and my eyes…My brain is screaming at me to give in…I have no choice but to stare straight upwards, towards the water’s surface…And the moon’s there.
“The algae in the water come together and make a face across the moon,” he laughed incredulously. “It speaks to me. Telling me to just breathe. But there’s no air! How am I supposed to breathe! And I try screaming that, but the moon won’t listen. It just keeps whispering the same thing over and over again. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. By then my blood is practically dancing all around me, turning everything red. Turning the moon into a giant red eye. It tells me to let it in, breathe it in…
“And finally, I do.”
Alton closed his eyes and almost smiled. “Power. So much power. It flows into my stomach and knocks that bastard’s sword free. And then I’m swimming upwards, towards the moon. And if feels like coming home…” He opened his eyes and the smile died. “But now I’m awake. And hate that I’m awake.”
“Alton,” Seaweed Man said, almost tenderly, “here.”
He handed over one of his gems.
“Oh. I-I can’t.” Alton tried to hand it back. “Aren’t these what you’re after? Why would you give it to me?”
“Don’t worry,” the strange man reassured him. “So long as you have it, and so long as you’re nearby, I’ll eventually find it. When the time comes. It might ease your mind.”
Alton set aside the bowl of water and studied the green-red stone. Then, likely on whim, he made it dance across the knuckles of his right hand. “Hey,” he said, distracted. “Seaweed Man-”
“You can call me Salim.”
“Salim. You want to make a deal?”
Salim arched an eyebrow. “What kind of deal?”
“We’re both hunting for something. You’re after these stones. I’m after the man who almost murdered me. We both get what we want. You help me kill Kovack and I help you. An adventure’s an adventure.”
Salim smiled. “I don’t see any point in turning you down, since our goals seem to be leading us down the same path.”
“Okay. “Alton grimaced and stopped making the stone dance. He rolled it into his palm and gripped it tightly. “It’s just…when the time comes, I don’t think that Nakoda will understand. He’s a good boy. But I feel like he’ll stand in the way of me getting what’s mine. All you need to do is, when the time comes, keep between him and me.”
Salim’s smile widened further, showing teeth. Like a predator.
“Gladly.”