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When Warbel woke the next morning, the cave was empty, but an odd snuffling was drifting in from outside. She flitted toward sound and lit on a boulder next to Angelina.
The unicorn was sitting next to the cave entrance, watching the sunrise, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Why are we crying with such a lovely sunrise to watch?” the wren asked.
“Because getting the berries was nearly impossible, and I had you to guide me. Now I have to find a blue gemstone in the deepest cave, and I don’t know where to start. What am I going to do?”
The little wren rocked back and forth on her perch, making that funny sound again.
“Why are you laughing at me?” Angelina demanded.
“What did the list say?”
“You know what it said as well as I do.”
“Just repeat the first two lines.”
“Fine,” Angelina huffed. “Something about a red berry from the great tree—”
“Which grows ‘atop the highest mountain.’”
“Yeah, yeah, and a sapphire from the deepest cave.”
“Which you will find ‘inside the tallest mountain.’” Warbel looked at Angelina expectantly. When she just looked at her, Warble fluttered impatiently. “What do the highest mountain and the tallest mountain probably have in common?”
Angelina snorted and tossed her mane. “It can’t be that simple.”
“And yet, it is.” Warbel leaped into the air, flying out past the ledge where they sat and looked down at the foot of the mountain. “When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that the deepest and the highest parts of a mountain are connected. The cave you seek is at the foot of this very mountain. All you need to do is go to the bottom, and then keep going down.”
Angelina peered over the edge and swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat. Her legs were still covered in bruises and cuts from the trek up the mountain. Her neck still ached a bit from where she’d slammed into the hawk. All she really wanted was a bath and one of her mother’s cupcakes.
And maybe a good book and her favorite cuddly blanket to curl up in.
She shook the longings out of her head. She’d probably just get her pillow stuck on her horn again, anyway. She sighed. “All right then. Might as well get moving.”
Warbel led the way, and they started down the mountain.
The second time the path ended at a cliff edge, and she had to scramble down the rocky screed like an antelope, Angelina was ready to quit. “Going down is harder than going up,” she panted. “And going up was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Life tends to be that way. Each hard thing feels worse than the last. And maybe it is, but usually it isn’t.”
Angelina narrowly avoided breaking an ankle on a rolling stone and turned to the wren with a quizzical expression. “What do you mean?”
“Well, whatever we’re going through at the moment often seems like the worst thing that’s ever happened. But half of that is the fault of hindsight, which is not 20/20, you know. More like 20/60 with rose tinting on the lens,” Warbel replied.
“I don’t know about that,” Angelina said after thinking about it. “I have a pretty good memory.”
“Of course. And you probably remember the basic facts of an event pretty well. But the level of difficulty? That’s what they call subjective.”
“Meaning...?”
“Meaning that it’s mostly based on how you felt about it. While you were going through whatever it was, it felt challenging, maybe even impossible. But after you survived it, it doesn’t seem so bad, and the further you get from the event, the less dangerous and difficult it feels. That’s why you can laugh about truly awful things that happened in the past. After a while, your relief at having survived makes them seem less frightening than you thought they were at the time.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Warbel made his little-bird-laughing sound. “Humans don’t make much sense.”
“Do birds do that too? Remember things as less dangerous than they were?”
The wren didn’t look at her but flew straight beside Angelina. “No. Birds remember everything, exactly as it happened. Forever.”
“You sound angry,” Angelina said. “Or sad.”
“Sometimes that’s the same thing,” the wren replied. “Listen, you won’t need me for this next bit. Be careful, listen to good advice. I’ll see you when you come out.”
“But—”
But Warbel wasn’t there. She soared high into the leaves, disappearing from sight. Startled, Angelina stopped suddenly, and a bunch of pebbles scattered under her hooves. She’d reached the bottom of the mountain.
The trail wound left through the tree-covered hills. A stream bubbled nearby, and Angelina took a deep, grateful drink before splashing through it and following the path on the other side. Warbel didn’t return, but within an hour, Angelina could tell she’d found the cave.
The mouth yawned high overhead, lined in jagged, tooth-shaped rocks; the floor was rough and red. Thick vines covered in black berries and dark green leaves grew on both sides of the cave. But Angelina wasn’t tempted to taste them. Between the leaves, thorns grew, each one as long and thick as her thumb when she was human, needle sharp and shining with a liquid she was sure was poison.
Gritting her teeth, Angelina stepped inside with her front feet, leaving her rear hooves in the safe outside. Light pushed in with her, but it was as if the sunshine met a wall less than two feet from the entrance. Beyond that, the dark was so thick she could almost touch it.
Where was Warbel? For all Angelina knew, this wasn’t even the right cave. She could be walking into the lair of some great, ugly, unicorn eating beast and she’d never know it.
But deep inside, she knew that this was the right place. She didn’t know how, but the conviction was there, right behind her breastbone, and it wasn’t going anywhere.
So, she took another step, bringing one rear hoof inside the cave. The darkness gathered closer, and she heard a sigh from somewhere deep inside the cave.
As she brought her fourth hoof inside, the light went out, leaving her in darkness, and Angelina shivered all over, her coat rippling in distress. She looked down and couldn’t see her feet.
Something skittered over the rock in the dark and Angelina jerked. In a flash, she was outside again, her sides heaving, head bobbing as she sucked in lungfuls of air.
She hadn’t needed a night light since she was three, but this dark was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Deeper, blacker, as if it had taken all the light and just... swallowed it whole.
She couldn’t go back in there.
“Warbel!” Angelina shouted. “Where are you? I need your help.”
Quiet pressed in on her. The woods were an orchestra of sound. Birds sang, squirrels chittered, animals scurried through the brush. The wind bustled in the leaves, and in the distance, the brook gossiped of all it had seen on its long travels, but none of these sounds were the one Angelina needed.
Warbel’s voice.
Keeping the cave entrance in sight, Angelina searched the area nearby for food and found some berry bushes and several patches of wild oats and roots. It didn’t take long to fill her belly. It took even less time to realize how tired she was.
She decided to lay down in a shady patch of grass to wait for Warbel to return. Or her own courage to show up, whichever came first.
Sunshine warmed her back and a soft breeze played in the tufts of hair around her ears and chin. Soon, her eyelids drooped, and her tail swished gently in the flower-strewn grass.
It felt like a few minutes later, but the long shadows suggested hours, when something skittered past her nose, huffing and puffing with exertion.
Angelina kept her body still, but couldn’t stop her eyes from flying open. At the cave mouth, a mouse paused, set down the basket he was carrying and combed his whiskers with his paws. The basket was as big as the mouse’s head, stuffed with packages and bundles of every shaped and size, mounded up twice as high as the wicker was deep. Angelina wondered how the mouse carried it.
The little rodent finished cleaning his face and ears, straightened his whiskers and groomed his tail. He scampered to the vines and plucked a thorn and a berry. Skewering the berry on the thorn, he tucked it into the basket with the berry poking out the front.
Then he squared his shoulders and hoisted the basket into the harness he was wearing. Angelina hadn’t noticed it before because it was the same color as the mouse’s fur. Pale gray and white.
The mouse took a step toward the cave and Angelina clambered to her hooves. “Wait, aren’t you afraid?”
Startled, the mouse whirled around, the weight of the basket pulling him off balance. Angelina reached out and steadied him with a carefully placed hoof, but the mouse wasn’t impressed.
“Here now, whatcha doin’ startlin’ a body like that,” he squeaked. “Sneaky thing, and such a great big one, too!”
“Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Scare me? You? Don’t be daft! You didn’t SCARE me!” The mouse brushed down the fur on his chest and puffed up a bit. “No one, big or small, scares Valus Mouse, and you can take that to the cheese factory. Thank you VERY much.”
He eyed her carefully, and when he saw Angelina didn’t mean to attack, he checked over his basket, ensuring that each package and parcel was secure and that the berry skewer remained intact.
“Gotta head in now. Don’t want to be late with my deliver for the Queen.” Balancing the basket, he turned and headed for the cave.
“Wait,” Angelina said. “It’s terribly dark in there. Aren’t you afraid?”
He gave a huff of annoyance. “Afraid of what? There is nothing in the dark but more dark, and the smallest bit of light can fix that.”
With that, he flicked the berry with his tail. The black fruit quivered and cracked; streaks of light shone through, lighting the way in front of him.
“How did you do that?” The question burst out of Angelina like it was on springs.
The mouse eyed her carefully. “Liquid on the thorns reacts with the berry juice, makes a bit of light,” he explained.
“So, it isn’t poison!” Angelina said.
“What fool told you it was?” Valus exclaimed.
Angelina didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “I wish I could make one of those.”
“Then why don’t you?” Valus asked.
Angelina held up a hoof. “No fingers, no toes,” she said.
“I see. And why do you want to go in?”
Angelina told him her story, making it brief, as he seemed impatient.
When she finished, he rubbed his tiny chin. “Oh, well. We can’t let things like that stop us, can we?” He scurried to the vine and plucked a few thorns, skewered several berries, and formed them into a small ring. “Bend down now. Don’t fear. I won’t hurt you.”
Angelina did as he asked, having to go down on both front knees so he could reach her horn. He slipped the berry circlet around her horn and tapped it sharply with his tail. The glow was so bright, Angelina had to squint.
“It’ll only last an hour, so don’t dawdle,” Valus warned, and without another word, he ran for the entrance, stopping just at the edge. “One last thing. Seek the queen and tell the truth. Do not steal, no matter the temptation or whether you feel you’ve a right. The queen doesn’t take thievery lightly, and she is far more powerful than she looks.”
Without waiting for a reply, he scampered away into the cave, a white glow in the dark.
