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Sheila found herself walking down a grassy hill. The song was all around her, high and plaintive, yet she could see no singer. Below her was a herd of over two hundred unicorns. They stood, whinnying and scared, in a grove ringed by tall, leafy trees.
Suddenly a strange glow appeared in the sky above them. The panicked unicorns beat the ground with their hoofs and turned frantically in circles, but they couldn't find their way out of the ring of trees. Sheila ran down toward the herd. She knew that if she could lead one unicorn back up the slope, the others would follow to safety
As she made her way to the middle of the herd, the frightened animals kicked at the air around her. She had to be careful of their sharp horns as they dipped their heads and then reared back.
The unicorns' panic was contagious. Sheila's heart began to race. The lights were now flowing all around, overhead and near the ground. Steadying her nerves, she reached out to grab the mane of the nearest unicorn. Just as her hand touched it, the animal dropped to its knees and refused to get up. She reached for another, and it, too, crashed to the ground.
The lights now joined together and filled the sky. The song in the air had become maddeningly loud, almost drowning out the unicorns' terrified cries.
"Run!” Sheila screamed to the unicorns. "Up that hill! There is danger here! Terrible danger-“Sheila bolted upright in bed, the word danger still on her lips. The first blue light of a misty dawn was filtering through the palace window. She heard the gentle call of two birds outside, but there was another sound as well. She cocked her head and listened, straining to make it out.
It was the song, the one in her dream, now playing softly, barely audible. But it was definitely there.
Pushing back the velvet cover, she swung her long legs over the side of the bed. Was she still dreaming? She didn't think so. The room was exactly as she remembered, though in the morning light she first noticed the rich tapestry of the multicolored curtains and the fine artwork that decorated the bowl and pitcher on the stand. It was the same room. The torches still burned on the wall. The stone floor felt solid under her bare feet. She was surely awake—and yet the song played on.
Sheila stood and picked her clothes up off the floor. Slowly she dressed, still hearing the haunting tune. It seemed to be coming from the hall outside. She opened the door. Now it seemed to be coming from down the corridor.
Sheila picked up her bags and followed the music down the hall. Whenever she thought she was near its source, the sound moved farther on, drawing her along, almost hypnotically. Sheila went by guards who looked up sleepily and nodded. She was hardly aware of them as she passed through the palace and out its front gate.
She walked the early morning streets of Campora, taking little notice of the merchants who were opening their shops.
She only knew she had to find the source of the song. Something inside her was sure that when she reached the singer, many of her questions would be answered.
Away from Campora, she wandered down through the lush valley outside the city, and into the dense forest. As Sheila walked, her mind was curiously blank, filled only with the music she followed. She walked and walked until the sun was a red ball hanging low in the sky and her feet and legs ached. She pulled a carrot from her backpack and ate it. Then she lay down at the root of a giant, gnarled tree, and using her pack as a pillow, she slept.
Sheila awoke after only a few hours and continued walking in the direction of the song. The strong white light of the full moon shone through the trees, illuminating the forest with its ghostly shimmer.
Sheila went deeper and deeper into the forest, which grew ever more dense, the moonlight breaking through now in only small and infrequent patches of light. She trailed the song along dark, muddy paths, ripping apart tangles of undergrowth and slipping on the mossy beds of shallow streams. Sweat drenched her T-shirt and plastered her damp hair to her forehead.
Finally her legs would move no further. Like the unicorns in her dream, Sheila fell to her knees. She stretched out on the soft cool ground, half awake and half asleep. The muscles of her calves twitched, and her arms felt leaden from carrying her bags.
Her mind wandered now, as she drifted in and out of sleep. Imagining that her mother was waking her for school, Sheila opened her eyes only to see the moonlit leaves fluttering overhead. She rolled over and dreamed she saw Laric and his men soaring through the sky as eagles, the way she had seen them so many times before. Again she awakened to see nothing but the rose-colored light of dawn streaking across the forest floor and falling on her lavender backpack a few feet away.
This time her eyes stayed open. Though half asleep, she knew something had changed. Her stomach was growling with hunger. She rolled onto her back and listened to it tumble for half a minute before she realized what was different, The only other sound to be heard was the gentle swoosh of the breeze through the leaves. The song was gone.
Lifting herself up onto one elbow, Sheila looked around. The forest seemed still enough. She had found no magical singer, no endangered unicorns. Was she under some evil spell or was she simply losing her mind?
Sheila rubbed her eyes and sat up. She had no idea where she was. Without the song to guide her, she had no direction. Fighting terror, she tried to clear her mind and decide what to do next. She was momentarily distracted by the sight of a large black beetle crawling across her backpack. Absently she picked up a long branch and reached over to sweep the hideous bug off her pack.
Zwappp!i The branch was suddenly alive with a sizzling green current. Sheila hurled the burning branch to the ground, but not before it sent an electrifying shock up her arm.
"Ahhhh," she moaned, rubbing her arm as the tingle of the shock turned into a throbbing ache. She looked down at the branch. It lay blackened on the ground—and next to it swirled the bottom of an even blacker robe.
"Mar .." She tried to speak the awful name of the man who stood there in his inky robes. It was the cruel wizard Mardock, his long oily hair oozing around his shoulders, his yellowish eyes boring into her mockingly.
"Impossible, I know," he said in the deep smooth voice that had always made Sheila imagine what it must be like to drown in quicksand. "You thought good Prince Laric had destroyed me, didn't you? Thought he had changed me into a beetle forever. Well, just as he broke my spell, I was able to break his. Now I, too, can shift from human to inhuman shape at will. A most useful byproduct of that particular spell."
Mardock chuckled at his own cleverness. Sheila had jumped to her feet and now trembled before him. She tried to remember the training she had received from Illyria. Banish fear, think only of surviving for the next minute and then the next until alt the minutes are one and you are victorious.
"I sensed your return to this world almost immediately," Mardock gloated, approaching Sheila as she backed away from him. "I'd have thought a sorceress such as yourself would cloak her return more effectively. But I forget—you are but an apprentice sorceress. Or was it that you wished for me to find you?"
"No, I wasn't looking for you," Sheila assured him, Mardock's words reminded her that he was convinced she, too, possessed great magic. That's why he hated her so much. But he also regarded her with a certain amount of respect and was greedy to know the secrets of her "magic" backpack. Because the things she carried in it were unfamiliar to him, he assumed they must have magical powers.
As if reading her thoughts, Mardock darted his eyes to the lavender pack which lay on the ground between them, In an instant the wizard was lunging for the prize, but Sheila had anticipated his move and threw herself on top of it first. She grabbed the pack and rolled away with it.
Infuriated, Mardock raised his sharp nails into the air and sent jagged lines of sickening green current toward Sheila, She scrambled up and leapt behind a tree, but Mardock felled it with one concentrated zap.
Noticing that her pack had come undone, Sheila reached in and pulled out the first thing that came to hand: her thick book of news pictures. With all her strength, she hurled the book at Mardock.
It was a hit! The wizard staggered back, holding his forehead. This was it—her chance to run! Sheila whirred around, looking for an escape route.
But Mardock recovered quickly. As Sheila began running, he used his magic to throw a small invisible boulder in her path. The next thing Sheila knew, she had stumbled over nothing and was falling face first to the ground. She pushed up on her skinned arms to find that the contents of her backpack had been tossed onto the ground in front of her. Horrified, she saw the Tracker sitting out in clear sight.
Mardock stepped over the spilled objects, his eyes boring into Sheila's. "The game is over, little sorceress," he hissed, reaching down and dragging Sheila up by her shoulders. She winced as his pointed nails dug into her skin and his sulphuric breath filled her nostrils. "The game is over and you have lost it.''
Still holding her tightly with one hand, Mardock placed his other hand on her collarbone and let it drift slowly upward until he had wrapped it firmly around her throat. "Now you will teach me to use everything in that bag," he said, tightening the grip on her neck. Sheila coughed and fought for air.
"The choice is yours," he continued, squeezing even tighter. "You can show me, and then perhaps I will allow you to be my slave, or you can just let me figure it all out for myself—no real difficulty for one with my powers. But in that case, of course, I might as well snap your neck right now."
Sheila struggled with the last of her strength, trying to rip Mardock's hand from her throat, but the evil wizard held fast. Desperately she lashed out and clawed his face with her nails.
"Now you've done it!" Mardock shrieked, throwing her to the ground and wiping the blood from his face. A large rock instantly appeared in his hands, and Sheila knew that in the next second he would use it to crush her skull. She turned her head away, trying not to think about the searing pain to come. She shut her eyes tight.
There was a sudden silence . . . and then the soft sound of something flying through the air. "Aaaaahhhhhhh!" she heard Mardock howl in pain.
Sheila opened her eyes in time to see Mardock sink to his knees and clutch his bloody shoulder, where a silver-handled dagger was lodged. She whirled around in the direction the knife had come, and her eyes filled with tears of happiness. There1 in the clearing, mounted on her silvery-white unicorn, blue eyes blazing fiercely, was Illyria.
"A curse on you, Mardock!" Illyria shouted, unsheathing her sword. "Come now and dare to fight the Unicorn Queen!"
Back To Chapter Listings!
Chapter 1: Haunted Days, Sleepless Nights
Chapter 2: Transported
Chapter 3: Return to Campora
Chapter 5: Reunion
Chapter 6: The Unicorns' Lament
Chapter 7: Spellbound
Chapter 8: Stops Along the Way
Chapter 9: The Hickorites
Chapter 10: Across the Unknown Sea
Chapter 11: Queelotoo
Chapter 12: In Ankzar’s Prison
Chapter 13: The Words of Reemergence
Chapter 14: Simi's Revenge
Chapter 15: Sheila’s Magic
Chapter 16: Homeward Bound
Email: Nikki