Cara stood frozen with horror, her hands still outstretched to where her father had been standing. Then something deep within, a rage and a strength she had not known she possessed, took over. She launched herself at Beloved. Knocking the knife from the woman’s hand, she carried Beloved backward with her momentum. Together they tumbled to the floor.
Again, Beloved clutched at the amulet. But before she could take it from Cara, Lightfoot entered the fray. Snatching the woman’s robe in his teeth, he hauled her from Cara.
With a cry of rage, Beloved ripped away. She threw herself across the floor, toward the silver dagger. Cara was there first. Kicking the blade, she sent it skittering toward the hallway.
The door to the kitchen burst open. Anders and Marcus, the Hunters who had hauled Jacques away, came running in.
Lightfoot turned to face them. Anders, sword in hand, slashed at Lightfoot, but the unicorn was too fast for him and danced nimbly away despite his wounds.
Marcus raced to Beloved, knelt beside her, and whispered urgently to her.
She was on her feet in an instant. “To me!” she cried in triumph. “Come to me, my children!”
Even as she spoke, she hurried to one of the fallen Hunters and stood astride his body.
At her call, Anders backed away from Lightfoot. The unicorn, who had been rearing defiantly, dropped to all fours. He watched the men cautiously. Marcus and Anders each grabbed one of the other men who had been rendered helpless during the first fight — one unconscious, the other unable to walk — and dragged them to Beloved’s side.
Cara, with no one to stop her, had also raced to a fallen Hunter. Her father. She knelt beside him, tears streaming down her face. His hand closed over hers, weak but warm, and she felt a surge of relief. He was still alive!
But what was Beloved up to?
When the Hunters were gathered close around her — the last of them had dragged himself to her side — she lifted her hands.
“This round is yours, Grandchild,” she said, her eyes narrow and filled with hate. “But the battle is not over. In fact, it’s just beginning, as you will soon see, my stubborn one.”
She spread her arms, encircling the Hunters with her black cloak, which seemed to billow and expand as she lifted her hands. As the cloak swirled around her, she uttered some words in a deep, guttural voice.
With a flash, the group vanished.
“I don’t like this,” said Lightfoot. “What is she up to?”
“Never mind that now!” cried Cara. “My father is hurt. You are, too, I know. But I think he’s dying. Can you heal him?”
Lightfoot hurried to her side.
“The cut is deep and bitter,” he said after probing the wound with his horn. “Not only blade but poison is at work here. Even so, I think it can be healed. Though why I should heal a Hunter . . .”
“He saved us!”
“Oh, I know,” said Lightfoot wearily. “Another renegade. I’ll probably end up liking him. Well, let me do my work. You had best go check on your grandfather.”
With a throb of guilt Cara, realized she had almost forgotten Jacques. Had the Hunters hurt him? Killed him? Longing to stay to make sure her father was properly healed, yet trusting Lightfoot and knowing there was nothing more she could do here, she hurried to the next room.
A cold dread seized her. Jacques, still tied to the chair, sagged in his bonds. His head was slumped onto his chest. Hurrying to his side, she was relieved to find he was still breathing. She saw no blood, no stab wounds. But when she knelt beside him to try to wake him, she noticed an egg-sized lump on the side of his head.
“Poor Grampa,” she whispered softly. She set to work untying his bonds. When she had him free, she lowered him gently to the floor. She looked around for something to cushion his head but saw nothing that would work. “I’ll be back,” she whispered. Then she returned to the living room.
Lightfoot was lying on his side, his eyes closed. He lifted his head when he heard her enter. “It’s done,” he told her quietly. “Your father will live.” Then he dropped his head back to the floor, closed his eyes, and slept.
Ian Hunter still lay facedown on the floor. Cara knelt beside him. His color was good, his breathing regular.
She turned her attention to Lightfoot. The slash that had opened his side was longer than her arm but not deep, and the bleeding had stopped. She thought briefly about trying to sew it shut, then decided it would be better to wait for one of the other unicorns to heal it. She returned to the kitchen and got a pan and a towel. She filled the pan with water and soaked the towel. Then she returned to the living room and washed the blood from Lightfoot’s side.
That done, she stood and looked around, feeling oddly lonely at being the only one in the house still awake. Lonely and restless. She felt as if there was still more to do. But what? Her grandmother was gone; where, she didn’t know. They couldn’t return to Luster until the others had recovered. With a sudden surge of dread she wondered if, when they did return, it would be to Ebillan’s cave, or somewhere else altogether. Did time pass the same way here on Earth that it did in Luster? Had the world shifted yet? If so, where would the amulet take them?
She felt a restless need to move now. To do something. Anything. Finally she remembered that she had been going to get something to cushion Jacques’ head. She could do that for her father, too. Eager to do anything that felt useful, she headed for the stairway. The shabby blue carpet that covered the steps seemed immediately familiar despite the time that had passed since she last saw it.
At the top of the stairs, she turned left. When she entered her old bedroom, the sight of it, so comfortable and cozy, so far from the life she had been living, made her stagger. She leaned against the wall, staring at it in wonder. How far away the girl who had once lived here — the girl she had once been — now seemed.
She went to her bed and ran her hand over the bedspread, smiling at its flowers. She had wanted unicorns, cute and cartoony, and had been angry when her grandmother had forbidden the idea. Now that she had seen real unicorns, she understood.
She picked up the single pillow, then frowned. She needed two pillows, one for Jacques and one for her father. After a moment’s hesitation, she headed for her grandmother’s room.
Slipping through the door, she turned on the light, then cried out in astonishment.
On the bed lay her grandmother.
Ivy Morris.
The Wanderer.
Calling her grandmother’s name, Cara hurried to her side.
The old woman lay perfectly still. She was fully clothed, her hands crossed on her chest, her eyes closed.
She can’t be dead! thought Cara. She can’t be!
Tenderly, fearfully, Cara reached out to touch the body.
It was warm!
She remembered Beloved telling her that her grandmother was wandering, and not here. Had she lied? Or had she, in her own strange way, been telling the truth?
Her grandmother was here, but not here.
Was her spirit indeed wandering somewhere else?
If so, where? And how could she be called home? Cara felt herself overwhelmed by a sense of mystery. “What has she done to you, Gramma?” she whispered, kneeling beside the Wanderer’s bed. “What kind of spell has she put you under?”
The Wanderer did not answer.
“Wake up!” cried Cara, shaking her grandmother’s shoulders. “WAKE UP! I NEED YOU!”
Ivy Morris lay still and unmoving.
Despair washed over Cara like a wave of blackness. Dropping her head to the bed, she sobbed with a hurt she had not known she could feel anymore.
* * *
She remained kneeling beside the bed long after her tears had stopped, whispering to her grandmother, cajoling her, begging her to wake.
The Wanderer made no response.
At last, overwhelmed by loneliness, Cara decided to check on the others again. Clutching the pillow she had taken from her own room, she went downstairs, where she tucked it under her father’s head. Then she took a throw pillow from one of the chairs — smaller and less comfortable than those from the beds, but still better than the floor — and carried it to the kitchen, where she tucked it under Jacques’ head.
The older man stirred as she moved him. “Cara?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured with a tone of gloom deeper than any she had ever heard from him, so deep it was almost painful to listen to. “So sorry.”
“For what? You saved me. If you and Lightfoot hadn’t arrived when you did, Beloved would have taken me away with her.” Then she remembered something she had wondered about earlier. “How did you do that, anyway? Come through from Luster to Earth?”
But he had drifted into unconsciousness again and could not answer her.
She stroked his brow for a moment, then left the kitchen and climbed the stairs once again, so weary that she had to drag herself up them. They had come all this way to find her grandmother, and, though found, she was still as lost to them as ever.
Returning to her own room, so familiar yet now so strange, Cara took the chair from her desk and carried it to her grandmother’s room. She placed it beside the bed and sat down to keep watch.
She remembered how her grandmother used to do the same for her when she was ill — how she would sit beside the bed and sing to her. Reaching out, Cara put her hand on her grandmother’s forehead and began to sing herself. She did the old songs first, the comforting lullabies that had meant so much to her when she was little: “Toora Loora Lura” and “All the Pretty Little Horses” and “Angels Watching Over Me.”
She ran through all the ones she could remember, sang them twice, and then a third time, pleased at how many of the words she still knew, oddly sorrowful at how many she had forgotten.
Then, almost without thinking about it, she began another song.
The “Song of the Wanderer.”
Her voice high and clear, she sang:
Across the gently rolling hills
Beyond high mountain peaks,
Along the shores of distant seas
There’s something my heart seeks.
But there’s no peace in wandering,
The road’s not made for rest.
And footsore fools will never know
What home might suit them best.
The song seemed to speak to her of her own life now, and her voice began to waver on the second verse as longing and sorrow choked her. Tears swam in her eyes, blurring her vision. So she didn’t see her grandmother’s lips begin to move.
She did, however, feel M’Gama’s ring begin to burn on her finger.
Looking down, she saw that it was glowing again, more intensely than ever before. The green grew brighter, brighter still, until it almost hurt her eyes.
Then it pulled her in.