Once Upon a Unicorn by Lou Anders

Author:Lou Anders [Anders, Lou]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2020-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

“Drat and darn and fiddle de fum,

Where’d this rafty guy come from?”

But Jack could not enter the water. He stood on the shore glaring angrily with hate-filled holes-for-eyes as the river swept Curious and Midnight and Wartle and Winky away and away.

Poor Mad Tom poled downstream, far away from Jack. And the two horses watched until the lights of Jack’s eyes disappeared altogether. And then and only then did they turn to Poor Mad Tom.

Curious was very curious.

“You’re a human,” he said in amazement.

“Quite right,” said the boy, nodding. “Poor Mad Tom is human. Or mostly so.”

He looked at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time.

This made Wartle nervous, because up until this point he’d had the monopoly on hands. So he waved his own digits frantically to remind Curious of their value.

“Are you a young human?” asked Curious. He thought Tom looked about two in horse terms, which you know would place him around twelve for a human, but he wasn’t sure.

“Is Poor Mad Tom young?” asked Poor Mad Tom. “He was young once. Long, long ago. How long he couldn’t say. Poor Mad Tom feels as though he has been young forever.”

Well, that was weird. Curious whispered out the side of his mouth to Midnight. “Why does he talk like that?” he asked Midnight. “Why does he call himself Tom? Can’t he say ‘I’ and ‘me’? Or is that how humans talk?”

“No,” replied Midnight. “He talks like that because he’s mad.”

“When I get mad, I don’t talk like that,” said Curious. “I don’t walk around saying ‘Curious is angry. Grrrr, Curious.’ ”

“Not mad mad,” explained Midnight. “Mad as in crazy.”

“Oh,” said Curious. He stepped a pace back from Tom.

Poor Mad Tom laughed.

“Don’t fear Poor Mad Tom,” said the boy. “Tom hurts no living thing. But especially Tom will not hurt a unicorn. Not one who was plucked from the world and brought here just as Tom was.”

“You were brought here?” asked Curious.

“Aye,” said Tom. “Once Tom was a wee little lad with a mum and a da. But Tom liked to wander in woods. Too far from home Tom wandered. And that’s when he saw her. And she saw Tom. She was so beautiful. And Tom was a pretty lad in his way. Or pretty enough. She took Tom, off to her palace, to be her servant and her jester, her pet and her toy.”

“Do you mean you were abducted?” asked Curious. “Who took you?”

“She of all the flowers. It was the fairy queen that took Tom all those years ago,” said Tom.

“What? No!” said Curious, who couldn’t believe such a thing. “Not the fairy queen. You must mean some other queen, some queen of the Wicked Fairies.”

“No, Tom means the queen of the Court of Flowers. Tom knows it well. Many a long year he spent there too, until finally she had used up all the fun in him. Then she was bored with Tom, and what was left of Tom she cast out.

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