The Seam Sorceress

Achishar, part 1.

The beast's head dropped as he took another woozy step towards the light. Rising to her feet, Tilly was brought face-to-face with the tip of his horn, crusted over with brown and ageing blood. Shadows settled in the five still-wet gouges along its flank. Once, she'd seen similar wounds—a poor fella Dr. Crabbe called "too ornery to die" from a bear attack—but these were bigger and deeper than even that.

Hope left her chest hollow as it died stillborn.

"Shh, it's gonna be okay—" Shoving the golden needle through her lapel, she threw her arms out to catch the unicorn as he stumbled into her embrace. His hide burned with fever and her hands came back frothing wet. Acid climbed up Tilly's throat. "Bless your heart. You're plum worked up in a lather—"

Booger waited at the edge of the clearing, hunched with hackles raised. She'd seen the claw marks too, staring deep and wary into the ink of night.

"You listen to me now, little red cloak." The unicorn's head was a heavy weight on Tilly's shoulder, and the muscles in his jaw fluttered like the fleeting heartbeat of a frightened bird. "This is nae place for you nor your Wolvenkind. I'll chase you off myself if I have to—"

"All right, Mr. Unicorn, we'll up and go," Tilly said, and hoped she didn't sound as nervous as she felt. Though her mind churned with a dozen questions, each imagined answer more terrifying than the next, she swallowed it back and combed through the creature's tangled mane with her fingers. "But we ain't gonna take off and leave you here by your lonesome. Not in the state you're in—"

"To hell with the state I'm in," he said with a dismissive snort. "That doesn't matter—"

"Well, it matters to me," Tilly answered, "and besides, I'd like to see you do any amount of chasing right now."

He stamped in the dirt. "Oh, you've a smart mouth on you."

"So I've been told," Tilly said, eyes sliding to Booger at the clearing. "You got a name?"

The unicorn threw his head aside and tore himself from Tilly's grip. Still breathing deep and heavy in the stillness of the sleeping woods, he studied her with blinking, clouded eyes that never focused. He was leaner than she thought he'd be. A bit of gnarled grey worked through his curling beard.

"Achishar," he finally spat, as though he'd done them both a great service.

"It's nice to meet you, Achishar. My name's Tillomena Lafayette." She circled around to pluck up the beer bottles near the hearth and emptied them into the grass. "And the Wolf is Booger, and she's not really a Wolf."

"Only part, and only sometimes," Booger added, but didn't move from her post. "How long you been running?"

"Ach, longer than I care to tell." Achishar tried another step but it proved too much for him. He fell to a kneel with a pained grunt, mumbling darkly about arthritis. "It's been ages since these hooves have felt the soil of my mother forest. Bloody shameful, that's what it is."

"Easy now, easy now." Tilly stole a glance his way as she waded back into the waters of the crick. One by one, she washed out the beer bottles until she could see the moon clearly through the glass, then filled them up again. "You need rest."

"I think I'm a scant too old to be told what I need by a child." Achishar left trails in the earth as he tried to stand again, only for his back legs to curl beneath him. The rest of him soon followed suit, resigned and beyond that, exhausted. "I came here to warn you, not to be babied by a nursemaid younger than my own beard."

Tilly's heels slipped in the mud as she climbed the bank. She sat down by the beast and offered him water. "Here."

His sniffed the bottle with flared nostrils. "Merciful heavens."

"What? It's not gonna drink itself," Tilly said with a growing smile. "Or you want me to feed it to you like a little baby?"

"Not if you plan to keep them wee fingers," Achishar growled. Begrudgingly, the unicorn took the offered beer bottle by the neck, perched delicate between his long teeth. His gums were a dark, muddy brown color, at odds with his brilliant white coat. He drank deeply, and when he finished the first one, Tilly gave him a second, then a third, until the thump of her heart no longer thundered in her ears.

"Now, what's been giving you such a time?" she asked, but there was a twisting in her guts that said she already knew the answer.

Achishar looked deep into the fire, its reflection a beacon that cut through the fog in his eyes. When he spoke again, the rasp of his voice had softened to that of a grandfather tasked with hiding an awful truth in the pleasantries of a bedtime story.

"There's a beast in these woods, somewhere between a bear and a tiger, and larger than them both combined," he said. "I know not where he came from but I can tell you that my mother forest did not birth him. He's not of Grimland, Southeast or otherwise."

"The kalidah." Tilly nodded, and the knot in her middle untangled with confirmation. "I saw it in a book once."

"Whatever you've read, child, he's worse," he urged. "He took my mother, then my brother. Now he comes for me. Dunnae where you be heading, but it's best you get on there. He'll eat you up in a mouthful and won't even stop to chew your bones."

"Be that as it may," Tilly said, pulling the McGregor's blanket over to drape across the unicorn's neck and shoulders, "we won't make much progress in the dark. We'll cover more ground tomorrow after a night's sleep."

He shook his head, but as he opened his mouth the magic of the baby blanket swept over him like a much-needed breeze. His protests turned into a yawn.

"Fair enough, red cloak," he mumbled, listing to his side. "But come sunrise, we're off."

Tilly gathered her grandmother's cloak around her. "Yessir. I promise."

With their little camp gone still at last, Tilly stared at the fire until it became bright and jumping shapes, waiting for sleep to come. She blinked once, then twice, and wasn't sure if it was minutes or hours that passed between them.

"Psst."

A wet nose jarred her awake.

Tilly didn't move. "Whatcha need, Boogs?"

"Got your scissors," Booger said, pushing the gilded scissors towards Tilly with her snoot.

"Good girl," Tilly said with a half-hearted wave of her hand. She rolled onto her back. "What I need 'em for?"

"To cut the dad-burned unicorn's hair off, what else?" The shapeshifter whined with impatience. "Good thinking with the blanket. By the time he wakes up, we'll be two counties over."

"What?" The implications pulled the last cobwebs of sleep from Tilly's thoughts. "Booger! He's injured."

"Exactly!" The dog's tail wagged. "Even more reason he won't be able to catch up to us. Now come on."

A loud snore rumbled from the beast beside them. Both Booger and Tilly froze, watching, waiting, but the unicorn continued to sleep soundly.

"We ain't taking his hair," Tilly hissed, but softened as she thought of Mama, still at home, still sick, still waiting for them to return. "At least not 'til we've asked permission."

"Fine, fine." Nudging her way underneath Tilly's cloak, Booger curled up in a circle so tight that the tip of her tail tickled her mouth. "But I don't wanna hear a peep when we wake up in the morning and he's plum vamoosed. You get that?"

"Yeah, yeah, Boogs," Tilly laughed as she stroked the dog's velvet-soft ears. "I get it."