Epilogue #2
Gently, Dian eased themselves up from under her, and Issy stumbled unsteadily to her feet. Frida and Cliff were immediately there, and Fireheart was speaking very quickly as she slithered towards them, claws sinking in the wet grass.
‘Ok, little one,’ the dragon crooned. Was that a tremble, Frida heard, in her voice? ‘Ok, this is it! You know what to do.’
Issy neighed, narrowing her eyes, as if she was concentrating really, really hard.
On the edge of her vision, Frida saw something sinewy and horse-like start to grow from below the darkest shadows of the willow trees. ‘Come on Is, you can do it,’ she murmured, crouching down as her heart somersaulted. ‘You can do this.’
Cliff was next to her, his tanned cheeks bursting with his grin. He’d never looked prouder. ‘You’ve got this, Is!’ he boomed. ‘We believe in you!’
Issy whinnied, tossing her head. Her sides heaved as her horn glowed a bit brighter, and Dian caught Frida’s hand, squeezing as their breath sucked in. Suddenly, Issy stubbornly thrust her head forwards, into a gap in the empty wood-scented air.
The tip of her horn blazed.
For a split second, all Frida could see was a flash of silver, like a star had burst forth.
When her eyes cleared, her ears were full of the cawing sound of gulls.
For a few moments, all of them took in what had appeared, Issy included, her turquoise eyes wide as if even she couldn’t believe what she’d just done.
A few steps away, waves pounded on a beach.
The air shimmered as sea spray dusted Frida’s face.
A gap had opened before them, big enough to encompass a kraken, and small enough for a fairy glow-worm to slip through, all at once.
The edges glimmered, as if bedazzled with starlight.
It turns out, a unicorn’s horn doesn’t glow for nothing.
That is, if you can get her to concentrate long enough.
Dian had explained to a small group of them – Frida, Antony and Hamish, Cliff and Gloria, Zuzka, Fireheart, Lucky, the storm monkeys, the Nuckelavee (who, it seemed, also liked stories), and a curious Issy – how they’d come to know about unicorns.
That the illusive creatures could move between worlds was common knowledge, it seemed, in fairy realms. But a few days after Frida had fallen back through time with Lucky, and the earth had stopped fragmenting, Dian had gathered their courage and slipped back to the Old Forge.
Obviously, the whole long story had had to be told again (it had been told now numerous times) and Frida had been quite happy to let Dian do it, listening to their soft, leafy voice tell of their first meeting, with surprising humour.
All too quickly, she fell into their story and listened, open mouthed, to hear – this time for the first time – how they’d recovered those sacred things that had been trapped in the jars and how, over the next years, they’d searched for their owners. One by one.
If it was possible, Frida fell even more in love with them.
Dian had explained how eventually, after many adventures, they’d found the unicorn. Apparently, he’d been quite a chatty fellow.
With a happy whinny, Issy now came to lean against Frida, sagging her head tiredly against Frida’s shoulder.
Hugging her tightly, Frida buried her nose in Issy’s musky fur.
No one had known how she’d turned up on the side of the Thames, all alone, when no other living unicorn had been seen for over fifty years.
But now they knew that unicorns could use their horns to make temporary doorways between worlds, as surely as a dragon could dig through time.
Maybe her parents had sent her here, somehow. Or maybe she’d sent herself.
‘You did it, Is,’ Frida murmured, gazing at the space between worlds before them, at the waves that rushed against the slate-grey cliffs. ‘You really did it.’
Issy shone. ‘Ididitididitididit!!!!’ she neighed, racing in uncoordinated circles. ‘Seacousingohome!Ballsappleshappyflyyeeeeweees!!!!’
The sea-door shimmered, and then, out from beneath the willow trees, came the slow, tremulous clip-clop-hiss, clip-clop-hiss of the Nuckelavee.
Fireheart had suggested, in a tone that brokered no argument, that he be the first. The heaving mass of sinewy muscle, bleached bone and misty sea spray lumbered towards his door.
Somewhere, crabs scuttled in the backs of Frida’s ears.
She had to work really hard not to run in the opposite direction, but his coal-flaming eyes didn’t turn her way.
His nostrils flared, and his hooves sprayed sea water and the scent of old blood across the grass.
He was trembling as he hefted his heavy head and stared through the slender gap, into a place of sea caves, salt spray and spindrift.
Frida had no idea whether the door led to another time, another universe, another Orkney entirely.
All she knew was that when that door had opened, the world around them had sighed a bit more easily.
Cliff had alerted the people of Orkney just in case, and promised to send someone down there to work out a treaty for Nuckelavee-human relations.
He’d already asked Frida if she’d be willing to go.
She thought she would. Maybe she’d ask if Dian would go with her.
For now though, for those few seconds under those summer willow trees, they listened to the rushing of waves, crashing on a cold black sand beach.
They saw golden sunlight slanting, hitting the crests of the water.
Gulls, cawing. An orange flash of a puffin’s beak.
Then with a howl of joy, the Nuckelavee, in all his monstrous hellishness, slipped through.
The next second, he and his doorway were gone, along with the pounding of the waves.
And in that moment, it was the silver dragon Frida was thinking about, smiling into his beard.
Was this what those people had seen all along, the ones who’d loaned her that beautiful woven tunic?
Was this one of the possibilities they’d seen unfurling from far away and long ago amidst those primordial palm trees?
She wondered as Dian rested their head on hers, Emerald-City-green hair with silver streaks tumbling around their shoulders, the warm bistre of their eyes angled towards the sky where a purple shape was doing lopsided loop-the-loops.
The Nuckelavee’s door was the first.
After Issy had had a snack, maybe she’d be willing to try another.
THE END