Melody's Unicorn Read online

  First published by Our Street Books, 2018

  Our Street Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,

  Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

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  Text copyright: Richard Swan 2017

  ISBN: 978 1 78535 725 1

  978 1 78535 726 8 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938671

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Richard Swan as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design: Stuart Davies

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

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  Prologue

  The wolf stood at the edge of the clearing. The subtle browns and fawns and greys of its coat made it almost invisible in the dappled light from the trees above. Only its eyes were clear, glinting pools of light fixed on Melody where she stood in the open with her father. Melody stared back. She had noticed the eyes first, and then her keen sight had begun to separate the shape of the wolf from its shadows, until she could see the whole of the beast as clearly as if it were drawn in ink against the background. There was no mistake. It wasn’t a dog, some Alsatian or wolfhound that had strayed into the forest, or been brought by an adventurous walker. This was a wolf, pure and wild, and it was standing watching her with fierce intensity. As yet it made no move to attack, but Melody wasn’t in any doubt as to its capabilities or intentions. It could rip her apart before she could move three paces, and the presence of her father would do nothing to stop it.

  Melody was torn between fear and anger. The fear was a natural thing, the response of any human being out in the open, menaced by a predator. The anger was personal. To her, wolves meant one thing, the death of her mother seven years before. She too had been in this forest; she too had been stalked and threatened by a wolf. She had died.

  Abruptly Melody’s anger turned to wild, uncontrollable rage. She raised her left hand, the plain brass ring on her forefinger glowing in the sunlight, and pointed at the wolf. Her father shouted, ‘Don’t!’ But it was too late. Melody concentrated all her mind on the wolf’s head, between the eyes that were suddenly assailed by doubt, and wished with all her heart that the wolf would die.

  There was no sound. The wolf’s head snapped back, arching as if hit by a bullet. Its body quivered, jerked into the air, then slumped lifeless to the ground. Where there had been a threatening predator there was just a heap of disordered fur and flesh. Melody could feel her own heart beating fast and the rush of air from her lips as she exhaled the breath she had been holding since she’d first seen the wolf.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Her father’s voice was stern, even angry. Melody had never known him angry, never heard such a tone. He was the calmest, mildest, kindest man she could ever imagine.

  ‘It was a wolf,’ she answered simply, and the rage she had felt still echoed in her words. ‘A wolf killed my mother. The wolf had to die.’

  Her father gripped her by the shoulders, not gently, and spun her round. His voice hadn’t lost its edge. ‘Why did it have to die? Is one death answered by another? Is this all you’ve ever learnt?’

  Melody met his gaze, wouldn’t look down, but his depth of anger stunned her. He’d never spoken harshly to her, never raised his voice to anyone. He was the calm, measured forester, not disturbed or provoked by anything.

  The core of Melody’s rage had been spent in her destruction of the wolf, but the lingering emotion that had been with her all her life remained.

  ‘That creature killed my mother!’ She wanted to shout, but restrained herself, just. ‘It would have killed me, and you too, if I’d let it live! I had to kill it.’

  Her father continued to hold her by the shoulders, and stared at her almost with hostility. ‘Do you know that? Do you know this was the creature you believe killed your mother? Do you know it would have attacked? What if it had come to say sorry?’

  Melody was about to retort that wolves didn’t say sorry, that was a stupid idea, but her mind was caught by two other words her father had used.

  ‘What do you mean, “you believe”? What are you saying? That my mother wasn’t killed by a wolf? You’re the one who told me that, don’t you remember?’

  To her surprise it was her father whose gaze faltered first. He looked away, over her shoulder, towards the carcase of the wolf.

  ‘It isn’t as simple as that. You were too young. I told you that your mother had been killed by a wolf, but I’m not certain. It’s not clear exactly what happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Melody repeated. She was confused, the anger draining away and leaving a mixture of emotions. The shock of the wolf’s appearance and death, and her surprise at her father’s attitude, were being overlaid by a sense of uncertainty. It sounded as if all the things she’d believed were about to be undermined.

  Her father let go of her and drew himself up to his full height, standing tall as if to compose his feelings and set himself to what he had to do. Melody had often seen him use the same gesture before a difficult task, whether that was the felling of a particularly stubborn tree or an argument with one of her teachers over his daughter’s moody and rebellious temperament. His gaze came back from the wolf to rest on her, but there wasn’t one of his comforting smiles on which she so often depended. His face was stern, resolute.

  ‘It’s time you knew the truth. I never told you, because the lie seemed simpler. It seemed a kind of ending, something definite, to tell you that your mother had been killed by that wolf. The truth is, I don’t know. There was a wolf, or wolves, sure enough, and they had stalked your mother in this forest, very near here. I have woodsman’s craft enough to tell all that. But I don’t know that she died. Her body was never found. She just disappeared. There were no signs of struggle, or violence, no sign that she used her power against her enemies or that she was overcome. She just vanished. Gone. I’ve never seen her again, nor any sign of her, nor any indication of what might have happened. I’ve thought through every possibility, walked every path and off every path, looking for evidence. There is none. What happened to her, perhaps only a wolf could tell us.’

  There was a long silence as Melody’s mind tried to take in what was being said to her. She remembered her mother as a tall, beautiful woman with immense strength of character and immense power, all focused through the intricate silver ring she wore like moonlight on her left hand. The ring was what Melody remembered most clearly of all, the wonder of it and its strange otherworldly beauty. Her mother had told her she would inherit it in the fullness of time, and as a tiny girl she had been overawed at the thought. The ring had vanished along with her mother, and for years Melody had imagined it lost somewhere in this vast forest where, she had always believed, her dead mother lay. Her own brass ring and her own temperament were pale imitations of her mother’s power and greatness, ways of remembering what she had lost. For seven years she had mourned her mother, had vowed to avenge her. Now her father was telling her that neither her grief nor her vengeance were what she had thought them to be.

  There was something else though, something her fath
er had said. “Only a wolf could tell us.” And earlier he’d said that perhaps the wolf had come to say sorry.

  She looked up at him. ‘What do you mean, about wolves being sorry and able to tell us things? Do you believe that? What do you know about wolves?’

  Her father’s shoulders had sagged as he’d explained about her mother’s disappearance. She watched him draw himself up again as if coming to another difficult decision.

  ‘Not a lot, but more than you’d expect. There’s so much that you don’t know, that I’ve never been able to talk about. It was too painful for me, and too difficult to explain it to you.’ To her immense surprise, Melody saw that her father was on the verge of tears. She’d never seen him cry. Instinctively she reached out to him and they hugged, clinging on to each other for support.

  ‘Your mother was a remarkable woman,’ her father said in a voice so low she could barely catch it. He was trying not to let the tears prevent him speaking altogether. ‘Special to me, of course, but much more than that. She had power, true power, you know that. And she understood so many things that I’ve never guessed at. There were creatures in my woods that I hadn’t seen, and I think she could talk to them in ways I couldn’t imagine. I knew there were wolves here, despite what any authorities might say, but I didn’t view them as dangerous. She used to disappear in the forest for days, sometimes weeks, but I never worried. She was part of it, or it was part of her.’

  ‘That’s why you didn’t want me to kill the wolf,’ said Melody with sudden understanding. ‘You didn’t view it as a threat. You thought it might be able to give us information about what happened to my mother.’

  Her father hesitated. ‘Not exactly. It’s more basic than that. I don’t think you should kill any living thing without knowing why you’re doing it. We kill stuff all our lives, to eat or to help us, but we don’t do so thoughtlessly. When I chop down a tree I know why I’m doing it, and I apologise for taking its life. And I don’t know that the wolf could have helped us. I don’t know that it wasn’t a threat. You may have been right. But you didn’t think before you acted.’

  Melody did cry then, long and soundlessly. All the grief for her mother, all the sorrow that she couldn’t be what her father wanted her to be, couldn’t be calm and thoughtful, all her emotional life blended into one long shaking and sobbing. Her father held her, not speaking, until the tide of emotion had slowly receded.

  ‘I’m sorry, love,’ he whispered. ‘I know what it’s been like for you, how it’s been.’

  Melody tried to speak calmly. ‘It’s been hard for you too.’

  She felt her father’s grip tighten. ‘Yes, it has. Harder than you’ll ever know. Not for you to know. What’s done is done, and we must deal with it.’ So saying, he drew himself away from Melody a little, and raised her chin so that he could look in her eyes.

  ‘There’s so much going on, I don’t understand a lot of it. You have power too, that comes from your mother, but you don’t control it in the same way. I feel you need to know more about yourself, to discover who you are.’

  ‘And how am I going to do that? Where’s the mother who should teach me, show me how to use my power and what I’m supposed to do with it?’

  Her father’s eyes closed for a moment, then opened again. ‘I know. We’ve both lost what we need. And I’ve done all I could for you. So I think we ought to look elsewhere. I have a cousin in London, he knows about these things. I think you should go to stay with him for the summer, to see if he can help.’

  ‘I’ve never been to London.’

  ‘No. And you’ve never met my cousin either. There’s a world of experiences waiting for you, and London itself is a special place. I don’t know, but for some reason I think it’s important that you go there.’

  Melody was torn. Part of her had stirred at his words, and the idea of going somewhere unknown and finding completely new things was exciting. At the same time she was aware of how much her father needed her, how she needed him, and the thought of leaving him scared her.

  ‘Because it’ll help me understand myself?’ she said uncertainly.

  ‘More than that. I can’t explain properly because it’s just a feeling. An intuition, if you like, and your mother taught me to trust such promptings. “What the heart says is right.” Don’t you remember her saying that?’

  Melody did, very clearly. It was one of the things that conjured her mother’s voice and face most vividly. “What the heart says is right.” As a young child Melody thought it meant that you could do whatever you fancied, and it had led her into a lot of trouble. At this moment she thought she realised better what her mother had really intended her to learn. “What the heart says is right.” Yes, she trusted her father; she felt that what he said was destined to be. London. She would go to London.

  A Way In

  ‘You can’t come in here!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re a girl!’

  With that the door slammed and Melody was left standing on the doorstep, shocked. She’d arrived at the house in Ealing and checked that she had the right address, then looked for a bell. There wasn’t one. There was only a knocker in the shape of a lion, set high up on the blue door. She liked lions, and this one had a friendly face. She reached up and rapped it firmly against the striking plate, and was rewarded by a dull reverberation that seemed to travel not only through the door but through the whole house. A few seconds later the door was thrown open, and she was confronted by a boy who looked older than her but was only about her own height. His dark features were contorted into a hostile look, and the conversation between them was brief and, apparently in his view, final. The slamming of the door was worse than if he’d slapped her in the face.

  She was furious. It wasn’t the same rage that she’d felt when confronted by the wolf, but it had similar origins. She couldn’t take it out on the boy, so she looked at the door instead. Superficially, it was an ordinary front door on an ordinary Victorian semi-detached house on an ordinary residential street. But below the bright blue gloss paint, Melody could sense that the door was made of solid oak. It would be. More to the point, she could sense that it was constructed of vertical panels, and that it was weak down its centre line.

  She smiled grimly to herself and raised her left hand, extending the forefinger so that it pointed directly at the weak line in the door. She focused her whole mind on the brass ring that she wore on that finger, and spoke a single word.

  There was a crack of sound, the door split apart, and its two shattered halves rammed backwards against the frame. More than the effect of the knocker, the shock seemed to shake the house. In the hall, startled beyond description, stood the boy who had refused Melody entrance.

  ‘May I come in now?’ she said with exaggerated politeness, but there was an edge of anger in her voice and her finger pointed straight at the shrinking figure. The boy was silent.

  From behind him emerged a man, tall and stern and with greying hair and a pinched face.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  The boy remained silent, staring at Melody as if in shock.

  ‘This person,’ said Melody coldly, and the barely controlled anger in her voice was obvious, ‘refused to let me in. So I decided to knock.’

  The man ignored the evidence of her ‘knocking’, and continued, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to stay,’ Melody said simply. She was so angry that she’d lost all manners, and strode into the house past both the boy and the man. It wasn’t until she was half way down the dark narrow hall that she turned to face the two figures, who were now silhouetted against the light from outside. ‘I thought I was expected.’

  The boy at last found his voice, but he didn’t speak directly to her. ‘That door’ll take days to replace,’ he complained.

  ‘Be quiet, Tamar,’ said the man, gesturing the boy to silence and focusing his attention on Melody. ‘Who are you, and why are you here?’

  ‘My name�
��s Melody. My father wrote to his cousin Corann, and he said I could stay.’

  ‘We didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Now you do,’ said Melody, and without waiting for a further reply, she turned as if to explore the house.

  The man turned again and looked at what remained after Melody’s forcible entrance, then hurried after her.

  ‘We don’t want you here.’

  Before Melody could retort even more rudely than she had done so far, a man’s figure appeared at the far end of the corridor, where a couple of steps led down to what might be a kitchen.

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  The voice of the newcomer was calm, measured. Melody sensed that this voice would always be reasonable, and reasoning. She felt its owner would discount emotional outbursts, and wouldn’t make decisions based on them. It was also a voice that reminded her of her father’s.

  ‘Corann?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Corann. Who’re you?’

  ‘Melody. My father wrote to you.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But as I said, what seems to be the trouble here?’

  ‘I was trying to explain to these people,’ Melody said, striving to speak in the most deliberate and polite way she could, ‘that I’ve come to stay. They don’t seem to want me here, and they seem to think there’s a problem because I’m a girl, but I don’t believe that can be a real barrier.’

  There was a silence, as if the new figure was assessing her, or perhaps just assessing the situation in the hall.

  ‘Hmm. That was a remarkable display of power with the door. And yet my companions seem to have taken against you. Let me see. I think we may be able to come to an accommodation.’ There was a suggestion of laughter in the voice of which Melody was instantly aware, and she recognised the joke in his words. Did he mean that they could make an arrangement, and did he literally mean that she could stay there, that she would be accepted? Her mind lifted with hope, but she told herself to be cautious.

  ‘Yes indeed,’ continued the voice, as if catching her thought. ‘I think we may be what you need, but there will have to be some adjustment on both sides. How good are you at adjusting?’