Part One is here

 

Lara grabbed Scarlet’s hand, staring at her with eyes wide, and she felt the now-familiar sinking that meant things weren’t going to plan. ‘You mean we can’t get out of here? Oh goodness, my parents are going to lose it.’

‘Not how you’re thinking of doing it. All you can do is petition the king, and hope he sees things your way.’

Scarlet sighed. There were days like this. Days when the canteen was invariably sold out of cookies and maths was period five and you had a detention for some reason that made no sense in anyone’s world save the teacher’s. She glanced across at her pale, shaking, girlfriend. Girlfriend. Heh. Had Lara ever had a detention? Somehow, she doubted it.

‘Have you ever had a detention?’

The unicorn and Lara both gave her the same look of complete incomprehension and she giggled. Days like these. They seemed to be happening more and more often. She turned to the unicorn. ‘OK, first things first, what’s your name?’

‘What do you care? Happenstance was a popular one, but Elt’s the most recent. Ain’t been called much of anything in the last sixty years.’

‘Wow. Still better than being called something nasty I guess.’

‘Not really.’

‘Oh, OK, well, my name’s Joanna, this is Lara. Where are we?’

‘You’re in the Kingdom of Illest, once a beautiful and flowering land and now bent, busted and broken beneath the End of Days.’

‘Yeah, about that, sounds nasty. It’s not going to happen anytime really soon, is it?’

The unicorn made a sound Scarlet was fairly certain was a laugh. Like a cement mixer clearing its throat. ‘I’ll call you Elt, if that’s OK?’

‘It’ll do.’

Lara grabbed Scarlet’s hand and pulled. ‘Look, I don’t mean to sound all hysterical, but we’re trapped, in some magical land—’

‘Hah, that’s a joke. This place is anything but magical. My horn was taken during the scourge. Now all the magic’s in the palace, hidden away, ‘safe’.’

‘But why?’

‘The king’s paranoid, isn’t he? He’s also stupid, and ignorant, and twa—’

‘Um, so, I’m not sorry I sound hysterical anymore. Could someone please listen to me. We’re stuck here, we have no way to get home and my parents are expecting me for tea.’

Lara checked her watch and swallowed. ‘In about an hour. They will seriously lose it, I mean, you don’t want to see my dad lose it. What are we going to do?’

It was fair question and Scarlet realised her girlfriend’s mood wasn’t going to be bettered by a compliment about how it made her cheeks all pinky and pretty. Girlfriend. Heh.

‘Elt, you said we could petition the king, right?’

‘Not got much other choices.’

‘Great, could you, like, take us there please?’

Elt rolled his eyes, but lowered himself to the grass, resting on his knees. Scarlet turned to Lara, bouncing on the spot and waving her clenched fists in front of her chin. ‘Oh my god, we’re actually going to ride a unicorn. I mean, I don’t mean to come over all geeky, but that’s just amazing. Eeep.’

She stretched her leg over and tried to get comfortable as Lara, rather hesitantly, got on behind. She sighed as her arms wrapped around her waist and her head rested against her back. This could be cooler but she had no idea how. Oh, hang on, maybe ice creams, or chocolate.

Elt stood and they shifted around, getting balanced. He began to walk and she felt something surround her, like being in water, and as the walk sped to a gallop she realised there was no way they were falling off. Within moments, the grass beneath them was a blur, the forest coming rapidly closer.

They reached the edge of it and Elt turned, running parallel, tree roots flashing by beneath him. Lara was gripping her like she was an advanced copy of the new Harry Potter. Not that there ever would be a new Harry Potter. It was finished and for a moment, she struggled to breathe, her chest heavy. Then she felt the arms tight around her and smiled into the wind.

The trees were blurring and the breath was pinched from her mouth as they moved faster and faster. Within moments, the forest fell away and they were passing over a plain, then a road, dark stone beneath his feet.

He slowed suddenly and she gasped, wanting to feel glamorous but fairly certain her hair looked like she’d been trapped in a wind tunnel. At least Lara would look the same. She glanced over her shoulder to see her girlfriend quickly tying her hair back with a scrunchy. Dammit. Girlfriend. Heh.

Ahead lay a city, the likes of which she’d only seen in her mind, deep in one fantasy novel or another. Huge walls of dirty grey stone blocked the horizon and up and down them, baskets and pallets and all manner of things were being hauled. The top was lined with winches, and it was directly beneath one of the larger ones that Elt came to a stop.

He knelt and they slid off, wobbly for a minute, as he explained.

‘The king don’t like to open the gate. Like I say, paranoid, so most everything goes in and out via the winches. They’ll let you in, easy enough, but once you’re there, be a love and come let me in too. I’m considered safe enough now…’

He trailed off and she saw the pain he had kept hidden until now. She nodded and looked up the wall. A face, half covered in dirt, peered down. ‘Business?’

‘Uh, we want to see the king?’

‘Look on a coin then.’

She sighed. It was like that. She waited for the words to come, like they had before, only this time they didn’t. She turned to Lara. ‘Could you ask, you know, nicely?’

Lara stepped forward and looked up, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Um, excuse me, but we wish to enter in order to petition the king on business of the most urgent sort. It is essential that this be dealt with with the utmost expediency.’

The face peered down again, forehead scrunched up, but the winch began to squeak and a platform drifted slowly down. When it touched the ground they both stared at the two foot square of tatty boards, roped together and held in random spots by the winch ropes.

Scarlet raised an eyebrow as she met Lara’s gaze and grinned. ‘Looks like we’ll have to get really close together.’

She felt sleazy as she said it, but Lara’s reply was a smile as she stepped onto the board and when Scarlet put her feet on, her arms went around her waist. All she could smell was Lara, which made a welcome change to the rather pungent scent of manure and unwashed bodies.

The rope went taut and they lifted off the ground, both squeaking at the same time, then laughing. The laughter set the platform swinging and Lara clung even tighter. Scarlet watched the countryside appear below them, huge fields tilled and sown, the people working in them becoming tiny dots far below.

She opted not to look down. That way lay madness and almost certainly embarrassing toilet accidents. Instead she buried her head in Lara’s shoulder and breathed her in until the platform was hauled over the edge and set down on the wall.

They shuffled off, not quite ready to let go of one another, and stood for a moment. It felt quite wonderful and entirely strange, and she could feel acutely all the places they were pressed together, as though someone were going round her body and pointing them out, places she’d never even felt before.

Finally though, they did break apart, and the view made her mouth drop open and her hand reach for Lara, who clasped it with her own and squeezed.

The city was huge. No, that didn’t cover it. Imagine huge, then do some maths thingy to make it much bigger. Like, square it or something.

From here, they could see rooftops, thatch and tile, flat stone and wooden, running all the way into the centre, where the coolest castle she had ever seen dominated the entire place. It had battlements, and towers, and gargoyles the size of cars, and almost certainly at least one hidden room, probably more.

The wall upon which they stood was a couple of metres thick and the drop on the far side was far smaller than that which they’d just scaled. They thanked the man with the dirty face and scampered down one of the wafer-thin flights of steps that led to the city floor.

As they descended the smells rose up to meet them, of food and people and fire and dirt and something far worse. Lara was right behind her and tapped her on the shoulder. She stopped, trying to grip onto the wall as she glanced back over her shoulder.

‘We’re going to be alright, aren’t we?’

Scarlet really wanted to say something reassuring, but the best she could manage was. ‘I’ll look after you.’ Judging by the look on Lara’s face, it was the right thing to say, which was weird cos the idea of her looking after anyone was laughable. She just about remembered to feed the cat, but often only after it attacked her with its bowl.

They reached the bottom, took some deep breaths, realised how bad an idea it was to breathe at all down here and headed along the wall to the enormous gates. Two guards leaned casually either side of it, swords nowhere to be seen, but playing cards clearly in evidence.

Scarlet pushed Lara forward, hoping she could repeat her earlier trick. ‘Um, excuse me, gentlemen, but we require that you open the gate, please?’

‘And why is it you require that, young lady?’

‘Our steed is waiting without, and we require his assistance, within.’

‘You ‘require his assistance?’ Clever horse, this one then, ey?’

‘He’s not a horse, he’s a unicorn.’

The guard rocked back on his heels, shaking his head and folding his arms. ‘He’s back again, is he? Well, that’s a pity. I can open the gates, for you, but you might not want to be seen in here with him. He has a history in this city, and not a good one.’

Scarlet pushed Lara aside. ‘Is that the history where the king chopped his horn off?’

‘It might well be, but seeing as he’s unlikely to have told you himself, let me ask you a question. If you know someone’s a murderer, killed a few people, do you leave him his knife, or do you take it away?’