Eternal Spring YA short story collection

On A Field, Sable by Diana Peterfreund

On A Field, Sable

By

Diana Peterfreund

Ashes fall from my fingertips and my mouth tastes of smoke. I’m almost halfway through the pack of cigarettes, and nothing’s happened yet. The fumes are evaporating too. It’s a pity. Bet it would smell great here normally. Ursula would love it. She’d be running around, picking all kinds of flowers. The little purple spiky ones with the leaves like grass. The white daisies with the cup like centers. The tiny, shapeless masses that sprout from cracks in the rocks, dripping with petals so yellow they make my eyes water.

There are red ones there, near the boulder where Rosamund bled to death. Ursula would probably know what they’re called. All I know is they aren’t roses, which strikes me as much funnier than it should. Maybe I’m high from the nicotine. Or the gas fumes.

Or the altitude.

It’s quiet on the mountainside. I’m sitting on a rock, dangling my feet over the side, thunking my heels against the stone as I smoke. It might be the rock — it probably is, though the stains of Astrid’s blood have long since washed away. It’s been months since her brains were dashed out against the stone, months since I carried lifeless bodies down the trail. So much blood spilled on this mountainside, and now all I see are flowers.

Two cigarettes later, and the scent of tobacco smoke wanes in my nostrils in favor of true fire. For a moment I’m elated, and then I realize the origin, as rot joins the mix.

In storybooks and movies, magic lets you see the secret path, the hidden sprite. It lets you hear the sound of fairy music, or the voices of the dead.

My magic stinks. Unicorns stink. They smell of soot and stagnant water. Of death that comes by suffocation or incineration. I wonder if those are preferable to the one I always figured awaited me, somewhere on the end of a unicorn’s horn.

The magic makes it impossible for a unicorn to sneak up on you. Your mind smells them from miles away. Today, however, I’m grateful. If it weren’t for the stench heralding his arrival, I’d have jumped from my skin when he spoke.

Daughter of Alexander.

I flick some ash and keep smoking, steeling myself for the sight of him. I have my crossbow, but it didn’t even pierce his skin last time. Some part of me, some tiny traitorous part, must have been waiting for him.

Seconds later, there he is, bigger—always bigger than I expect. Bigger than the pictures in the books, or the statue in the rotunda, or the nightmares Ursula’s been having for the better part of a year. Big, bigger biggest.

“The name’s Melissende, Bucephalus.” I nod at the unicorn. His voice in my head reminds me of my father’s. I’m sure that’s what he intends.

In storybooks, unicorns are lithe, graceful things, with slender, deer bodies and mischievous goat faces and gorgeous, spiraling white horns. Bucephalus looks more like a wooly mammoth, with hooves the size of hubcaps and eyes like temple fires. His horn is a massive spike from his head, a tusk of stone stained with the murders of millennia. I climbed up this boulder, but he still stands at eye-level.

“What are you doing here?”

What are you doing here? He reflects back at me. And why does the soil smell of peat?

I gather the images in my mind for him. Automobiles and oil fields, petrol stations and red warning labels.

His front hooves paw the ground. The boulder beneath me vibrates at his every move. If he kills me where I sit, will I have succeeded or failed in my goal?