ᨐ ᨐ ᨐ ᓚᨐ
Jen exited the castle's stone walls into the wide-open moor. Sweeping arcs of tall grasses rippled through the hills, dancing to the lull and flow of the whispering breeze. As she strode onto them, her shoes sank softly into the springy grass. She padded along the sloping meadow.
White oxeye daisies, yellow buttercups, and bluebells winked between the blades. Evergreen bushes lined the path, trembling beneath the weight of berries and leaves. Pine, oak, and spruce trees stood scattered across the hillside, their branches stretching like fingers reaching out to the sky.
The wind caught her long dark hair and sent it waving behind her like a cape around her billowing Hogwarts robes. Jen eyed a weeping willow on the other side of the lake, whose pale-jade branches sagged against the ground like a tent.
A pitch-black fuzz flashed past her peripheral vision.
In alarm, she whipped her head, eyes searching. Her black cat went missing in the week past. Making a decision, Jen marched off the path toward the distant green.
Deeper into the grounds, twigs and branches dotted the fields. The pines became more frequent, and the grass was peppered with white clover, pink heather,, and the blue pompom heads of devil’s bit scabious.
Jen forged ahaead, until she came upon a huge black willow blotting the horizon, twisting outward, thick and carpeted in lichen. Its trunk was gnarled with ridges and bumps. Its swooping branches scraped the bottoms of the clouds, yet they swayed with an unsettling violence for something so large.
The sprawling roots dwarfed Jen. She stared up at it, recalling something her grandmother had said to her as she tended her night flower garden. She'd been bent by the soil with a shovel while Jen lounged on the tire swing. Jen remembered the weight to her eyes as she straightened and remarked,
"We should take care of the land. Someday we'll be part of it."
She shook off the memory, gave the tree a wide berth, and resumed stomping around, hoping to catch another tuft of black. Not a moment later, Jen spotted not one, but four tufts of black bobbing through the grass. The last three were much shorter than the first. Jen crouched, following closely.
In the low foliage, Jen could see that one of the cats was clearly Jelly, but the other three cats were only half his height and trailed Jelly like he was Mother Goose.
The babies couldn’t be his, however, and he would be a terrible mother goose, reasoned Jen, as Jen's mum had outfitted him in a ruffled rainbow collar lined with little bells right after he'd been neutered.
But as Jen crept closer, she realised they weren't quite following Jelly alone. Tiny shapes clung to their backs, half-hidden amongst their black fur.
'Hmm...suspicious.' thought Jen as she squinted 'Very suspicious.'
Shimmery pollen dusted the cats' coats, and from behind the little riders Jen spied delicate glass wings sticking out.
They ventured further towards the edge of the grassy fields, where moss-eaten ruins huddled beneath a covering of English ivy. A sparse scattering of beech, sycamore, pine and yew marked the back of the grounds.
Sun-catchers and bottles hung from the lower branches, while the trunks bore carvings left by generations of visitors. Stinging nettles, red campion and dusky purple-blue columbines populated the bushy undergrowth that Jen carefully navigated.
The cats ducked through a hole in the tall brambles bordering the forest. Jen hesitated, considering the oak sign reading 'Turn Back Now' in large lettering. Well, reasoned Jen, it wasn't like she could even fit herself through the cat sized hole to get in.
She got down on her knees and stuck her head as far into the opening as she could. Beyond it lay a sheltered grove beneath a thick canopy of trees, its floor carpeted with dead leaves and a brook winding through the shadows. She grabbed her omnoculars while she was at it, just in time to see the cats stop at the hollowed opening at the base of a tree trunk.
The little glass-winged creatures floated down from the cats' backs. They trailed a dusting of golden light as they gathered at the mouth of the hollow. One of them was a little buff-tailed bumblebee. It stood on two little legs, facing a white ermine moth.
‘Fairies!’ thought Jen with a thrill of excitement.
A common green grasshopper with iridescent wings stationed before them like an officiant. The final fairy was a tiny human girl with downy brown hair drifting around her face. She was wrapped in a leafy gown, twinkling as she looped figure eights around the couple.
Jen’s jaw dropped, and a little green frog promptly hopped in, settling comfortably on her lower lip. Now she was terrified for an entirely different reason, leaving her jaw unhinged as far as possible.
An ethereal horse had materialised in the distant green mist.
Its mane streamed like silk, sailing majestically around it in a symphony of pastels. Its smooth coat was glaucous and luminous, looking almost translucent as it waltzed delicately forward under the mogshade.
Hogwarts: A History had mentioned that they occupied the Forbidden Forest. White, silver-maned, magical unicorns, wandering somewhere among the trees as though that were the most ordinary thing in the world. According to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, unicorns were XXXX-rated beasts. Jen never quite understood why. They weren't described as particularly vicious, and besides, this elysian creature was the loveliest thing she’d ever seen.
It approached a hollowed tree stump pooled with still water and tapped the wreathing pearl horn upon its crown at to the silvery surface, where the faint daytime moon was reflected through a gap in the canopy. The pool rippled. Drop after drop, inky blackness spilled from the horn's tip, engulfing the unicorn’s reflection.
The snowy unicorn withdrew from the stump.
An obsidian horn pierced the water's surface, followed by a head and a body of fluffy black curls. The dark reflection surged from the pool adorned in glistening rivulets of streaming water, beading jewels with every step. It was like a cosmic twin to the cloud-like unicorn, its floating mane painted in a galaxy of blues and purples and dotted with twinkling stars. Its eyes were puddles of black, and its wispy grey eyelashes were crusted with crystal dewdrops. In her head, she decided to call the light one Nebu and the dark one Boba.
Jen had little time to dwell on them, however, as a willowy spotted deer pranced down the winding brook. Its tawny coat was speckled with white. Twin toasted bone-antlers emerged between its floppy ears, spiraling upward to meet in a great circular arch above its head. Within the circle, a spider's web glistened. At its centre squatted a teensy oil-black spider with eight milky eyes.
The deer’s eyes were similarly milky, framed by full dark lashes. It trotted up to the hollow on elongated legs, crouching to let a garden snail down from its back before tossing its head to greet the unicorns, who huffed and stomped in return.
Oddly, it then scuffed its hoof against a mossy mound on a small, rough boulder sunken deep into the ground. The terrain itself seemed to sigh at this. The ground rumbled, shifting and crackling as the dappled grey figure of a unicorn slowly rose from the crumbling earth, upending dirt into Jen's open mouth. It was matted with earth and pebbles and blanketed in dangling plants and moss, from its rocky horn to its hanging green tail.
Jen could hardly believe what she was seeing. A flurry of insects scampered down as it stood, congregating by the trunk hollow. More little creatures had begun arriving alongside the unicorns.
The grasshopper fairy jingled, as if saying something.
Led by the grasshopper fairy at the front, with the bee fairy and the ermine moth fairy second, a little procession began. A chorus of jingles and chimes enlivened the air as the procession made its way towards a circle of spotted red mushrooms. The four cats followed behind them.
One by one, the fairies and unicorns vanished into the ring. The frog leapt out of her mouth to join them. When the last unicorn had stepped through, Jen spat the dirt out of her mouth.
“Psst... Jelly,” she hissed.
The cat angled its head at her, holding eye contact, then dove into the fairy circle after the others. The ring of mushrooms disappeared behind him, leaving nothing but empty forest.
In resignation, Jen crawled back from the bramble, putting some distance between herself and the forest before she was spotted. She trudged away, the wind following her down the hill.
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