Chapter 35

Kim

I watched as Cat yelled at Sara and then sat down by the fire. I had never heard her that angry, and I wondered if I should say something, but I decided not to. She was much nicer now, and we had become friends, but maybe she wanted to be left alone when she was upset.

Sara wasn’t the same after we had visited the Gnomes, though. She wasn’t coming up with plans and telling us what to do any longer. Nowadays, she mostly walked by herself and didn’t almost speak at all. I had tried to talk to her, I even dared to ask her how she felt once, but she had barely responded.

I did understand her, though. The Gnomes hadn’t turned out as I thought they would be, either. I had wanted to ask them about my mother, father and little brother, but for reasons that I couldn’t explain, another question came out when I sat there. I had told them my story, about a time when my little brother and I found a wounded lamb while we were herding sheep, and we had nursed it back to health. The Gnomes said they liked it, and that’s when I would ask my question. But instead of the one I had thought of, I asked, “How can I help Stina?”. I didn’t know why I did it, but they looked at me for a long while and said that I would find courage in my heart when the time came.

I didn’t understand what it meant, but it made me realise how much I missed her. It wasn’t fair to have left her, and I felt like such a coward, leaving her alone in the Queen’s Champion camp. I should have taken her with me. She was all alone now and had no friends. I wondered if I could go back to rescue her, but I wasn’t sure how I would do that. It was too far to go there, and I didn't know how to enter again without being caught.

She stayed on my mind as we continued North, every day a bit further. Sara was still walking behind us. It wasn’t as much fun any more to travel when she wasn’t her usual self, even if we were still a team. But I didn’t want to leave them; I still wanted to be with Silvi and Cat, and anyway, I didn’t know how to find my way home.

And then a strange thing happened, because one evening Sara walked over to us as we sat by the fire, and announced,

We will go to the Unicorns.