The Secret Of The Unicorn Queen - Moonspell by Gwen Hansen

Author:Gwen Hansen [Hansen, Gwen]
Language: eng
Format: epub

8

Night of the Half-Moon

Sheila slept late the next day and awoke to find Darian gone. It was nearly afternoon—the afternoon of the half moon-when he returned to the cave from what he called "a little scouting."

"The piers down in the village were swept away in last night's rain, and the fields are completely waterlogged. They're losing their crops," he reported. "And I caught a snatch ofconversation—something about some woman hunting the unicorn and losing her soul."

Sheila shut her eyes at the memory. What had she done?

“Anyway," he went on, "she's still terrified, and the rest of the Tomai aren't too pleased. The good thing is, they ob­viously haven't caught a unicorn for tonight's ceremony. Most of them are out now, hunting like mad."

"Oh, Morning Star . . ." Sheila moaned.

Darian gave her a reassuring smile, "Look, if Morning Star won't even let us get near, you can be sure she's going to keep her distance from everyone else. Don't worry," he said. "She can take care of herself."

The lion cub chose that moment to wedge himself be­tween them, making Sheila laugh in spite of her fear. "So what do we do tonight?"

Darian sighed and ran a hand through his long hair. "I think the ceremony is being held in the fields. At least, they're setting up some sort of platform there. The most important thing is that if they do manage to get a unicorn, we find some way to free it. But I don't think that's going to happen. They haven't been successful so far, and they don't have much time left before moonrise. So they'll probably sacrifice a lamb or a cow.”

"A goat,'' Jeno corrected him.

“A goat, then. What I'm planning is to show up at the ceremony and convince them I'm some sort of messenger from their gods. And the message is—leave the unicorns alone!"

"I've already told you that won't work," Jeno said in a bored tone.

Sheila had to admit it didn't sound terribly promising, but at the moment she didn't have a better idea. ''Well," she said, we could use makeup from my backpack and paint our faces to look really bizarre. And we could take my tape recorder, and I'll play some tape really loud. That should scare them."

"What's a tape?" Jeno asked.

Sheila grabbed her recorder from the pack, slipped in her only metal tape, and blasted it. Jeno looked mildly curious but otherwise unaffected. "You're both going to get killed," he predicted.

"So are you if you don't shut up," Darian snapped. He looked at Sheila and said, "Let's get started."

Sheila nodded and reached into her pack for the makeup she had brought along. She took out three little pots of blush, a palette of eyeshadows, an eyeliner pencil, and a lipstick. Starting with the black eyeliner, she drew designs on Darian's face that made him look as if he were wearing a fierce kabuki mask. Gradually she began to fill in the lines with splashes of red, blue, yellow, and green in the most garish combinations she could think of.

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