Page 17 of Unexpected Magic

Furthermore, the lindwurm refused to be held. Delia looked up from the book she had been reading just in time to see Mary twist and wriggle her powerful snake body until Polly had to release her.

Whereupon the baby shot across the room to hide under the nearest bed. The piercing sound she made when in distress emerged to fill the room, the house, and no doubt the castle. Polly and Delia clapped their hands over their ears, but that did little to mute the noise.

Sister Louise arrived to find both girls on their knees, trying to coax Mary out from under the bed.

“I don’t understand it,” Delia told her. “She only ever makes that noise if she is hungry and we are not feeding her fast enough. And she certainly never refuses to feed.”

“I have never heard such a frightful noise,” said Sister Louise. “How can we get her to stop?”

But nothing they tried helped. She wouldn’t be coaxed out from under the bed. Showing her the bottle made her keenlouder. Tears were rolling down the baby’s cheeks, and Polly was crying, too.

“Is there something wrong with the milk?” Delia asked, at last.

“I made it the same as always,” Polly protested. “Three quarters goat’s milk and one quarter hot water. But she took one sip and spat it out.”

“Does it taste the same as usual?” Sister Louise wondered.

“I think so,” Polly said.

Delia checked. “There’s some left in the jug.” It was the jug Polly had used to collect the goat’s milk. She had added the boiling water directly to the jug then poured the resulting liquid into the feeding bottle, leaving perhaps quarter of an inch of liquid in the bottom of the jug. Delia poured it into a mug.

“I’ll try it,” she said. But Mary’s high-pitched keen turned to an anguished shriek. She threw herself out from under the bed and flicked her tail forward to knock the mug from Delia’s hand.

Sapphire burst out of the corner where he had been hiding, his head buried under a pile of cushions away from Mary’s noise. He leapt toward Delia, horn first. Delia shrank back, certain he was about to attack, but he jerked to a halt and lowered his horn into the milk mix that puddled on the floor.

Mary stopped shrieking, collapsing back into Polly’s arms. She wrapped her own arms as far as they would go around Polly’s neck, shut her eyes, and dropped off to sleep.

Sister Louise said, “What was all that about? I wonder…”

She took the catgut teat off the ceramic feeding bottle and held it out to Sapphire, who first backed away, tossing his head so that his mane flew, and then reversed direction, lowering it to present his horn to the bottle, approaching cautiously.

With Sister Louise’s help, he fitted the tip of his horn to the bottle’s opening, and she tipped it so that the liquid within sloshed up to its touch.

Delia watched, holding her breath, until Sapphire lifted his head and snorted, then turned away. Sister Louise met Delia’s eyes.

“Was it poisoned?” Delia asked.

Sister Louise nodded. “Or cursed.”

Part of the reason the royal house laid claim to any unicorns born in the realm was that they had the power to neutralize most poisons or curses with a simple touch of their horn.

“The milk or the water?” Delia wondered.

“If it was the milk, Mary was the probable target,” Sister Louise said. “If it was the water…”

She did not need to finish the sentence. Everyone in the castle drank from the same well, though those living in the camps outside fetched their water from nearby streams.

Whatever the poison or curse was intended to do, it would have affected the entire castle population, human and animal.

Chapter Eight

Jasper had comeat a run when the lindwurm first began her ear-piercing complaint, but he had to wait in the visiting room to find out what it was all about, for Sister Louise and Miss Nettleford were both attending to the crisis, or so said the nun who had answered the door.

Even after the noise stopped, he still had to wait. He tried to be patient, but his instinct for danger, which had been niggling at him all day, was now almost as demanding as little Mary, if without the indescribable noise.

He was pacing the room when Sister Louise and Miss Nettleford both hurried in, followed by several of the other nuns.

“We believe the well has been poisoned or cursed,” said Miss Nettleford, without preamble.