Chapter 8

Sara

Fool! What had the elf girl done? I paced the bank of the river, watching for any signs of her, but the torrent had washed away both the girl and the Whip. Half-wit, how could she be so careless, risking herself for the Queen’s Whip? I skidded down the muddy river bank and stepped over to the edge of the foaming water. There was no sign of them. Foolish girl. What was she thinking?

My hooves slipped on the soft soil as I struggled to return up the slope, and I stumbled to the firm ground and over to the shade of the trees. The water would calm and become a stream further down, but I didn't know if the river would spare her. Foolish girl. She should have listened when I told her about the World; her gullible kindness had no place outside her sheltered forest.

I watched the roaring waters. Even so… Had my desperation led me to sacrifice the naive being? Since leaving the elves’ forest, I had once again come to wonder if the legend of their extraordinary powers was true after all. Perhaps the elves’ magical abilities had simply been forgotten with the passing of generations. I’d shown her the ruins of the Queen’s rule and the suffering of the people, hoping that her magic would awaken if she saw the darkness of the world. But it had been for nought, and she’d cowered behind me and pleaded to leave.

Seeing my chances slipping from me, in my desperation, and once I’d sensed the Whip was gaining on us, I’d decided to try to coax out her legendary magic by putting her in harm's way. The Whip’s powers were no threat to me, and I could have destroyed her at any moment, but I’d hoped that the dormant magic of the elves would make themselves known. Had I stepped too far? The girl had done nothing but cowering yet again, refusing to stand up to the Whip. Had I kept her out of the battle, she would never have tried to save the Whip.

There was a sudden rustle, and I turned to see two dark figures escaping over the meadow. The Whip’s followers. I ignored them. They posed no threat; they knew better than to bother me, so I turned back to the trees.

I would have to look for the girl. If the water had decided to spare her, she would have washed up on the banks further down the stream. I left the shade of the trees and began to walk along the river's path. It would take me North, just as I had planned after leaving the elves’ forest. If the girl was still alive, we could wait out the winter there, and I could gather my thoughts.

I thought back to my visit to the elves’ forest. Had it been a delusional journey all along? Had my desperation become so great I saw signs where there weren’t any? Maybe the legend was nothing more than a haze of despair. I didn’t know. History had been forever altered when the self-serving amendments of the Unicorns became the Truth. No one knew what the past held any longer. Had magic once been something different when the tribes still remembered theirs? Is what we saw today an altered version of the powers? The few tribes who still practised their unique abilities used it for nothing else than mundane tasks: helping plants grow, finding berries in the forest or, in the case of the Whip’s dog, tracking.

Even the fire of the Unicorns was only used to bring warmth and hope. Desperation had pushed me to think about it differently, and I’d expanded its use to cause harm to my enemies. Only the Queen seemed to have an awareness of the powers, judging by the way she’d trained her Whip. Even so, she held no answers to my questions. I had no way of knowing what had once happened and if the legend of the Elves was true. I glanced at the path ahead of me. Unless… There was still one tribe who might still remember. The Gnomes had been present in this world for even longer than the Unicorns; their sole purpose was to gather the legends of each tribe. They cared for nothing of the world; they were as useless as the elves, but the memory of what once happened might still live in the stories they shared.

I glanced at the path ahead of me. They were on the way to the Northern tribes and the elf girl. Once I’d looked for her, we could visit them. I didn’t know if they would agree to share their stories with me, but once again, life threw me onto another path, and I would follow.