Guardians of the Wild Unicorns Read online

  “At least I’m not a big fake.”

  “That was incredible!” gasped Flora, grabbing Scott’s arm. “I thought I’d never be able to do it. But I did! I was a total star!”

  Scott smiled and gave her a thumbs up, but his eyebrows raised a fraction. Rhona bet he found Flora really, really annoying but was too polite to say. She’d tell Flora to her face if she didn’t stop winding up Lewis.

  “You’ve all been total stars!” Scott beamed. “Every single one of you.”

  “One of us hasn’t been a total star,” Lewis sighed. “One of us has been utter rubbish.”

  Flora’s mouth opened, ready to give her opinion. Rhona gave her a very hard stare. Flora’s lips clamped shut.

  Scott pointed at the teetering pile of gear. “Let’s get ourselves organised and back to the Centre for tucker. And don’t forget it’s the ping-pong derby, followed by storytelling round the campfire!”

  “Yay! Tomorrow night will be karaoke and a quiz with amazing prizes, and Thursday’s our disco!” Max grinned. “I bet you can’t wait!”

  Rhona glanced at Lewis. She bet that every single one of those activities would be his idea of hell on earth. He’d clearly heard Max, and if he hadn’t been in such a stinking mood she’d have burst out laughing at his appalled expression.

  “All this socialising is doing my head in,” he grumbled. “When am I supposed to get peace to read?”

  Rhona didn’t even try and answer that one. “I’m starving. Hope there’s loads of chips,” she said cheerily, hoisting her borrowed rucksack onto her shoulders. “An’ apple pie with custard, or rhubarb crumble and ice cream for afters.” She gave Lewis a sharp poke in the ribs. He was doing that weird staring thing again. “Stay away from the custard. You’ve got a face on you that would sour milk.”

  Lewis drew his eyes away from the mountain, gave her a rueful grin. “You wouldn’t be so flaming cheery if you’d just humiliated yourself in public.”

  Rhona smiled back, glad he’d returned to planet Earth. “Lewis, do you see anybody who’s bothered?”

  “Well, if they’re not bothered, I am. I hate it here, Rhona. I want to go home.”

  “You can’t though, can you? You said your mum’s away working. Mr Deacon won’t let you go home to an empty house, so there’s no use you pretending to be ill.”

  “Today was the pits. I preferred day one, when I spent hours underwater in an upside-down kayak.”

  Rhona tried to swallow her rising irritation. “Lewis, it was seconds. You should have held your breath instead of gulping in water.”

  “I did hold my breath! But I’m not a flaming goldfish. I was actually drowning. It was horrible.”

  Rhona sighed. The kayaking had been amazing. They’d seen an osprey skimming the still water, a huge fish dangling from its talons. Lewis might be hating every moment, but this was the best week of her life, and he was starting to spoil things. Since they’d arrived, it was as if he’d got stuck in a bog, sucked down into misery, and she wasn’t able to reach him, no matter how hard she tried.

  The two teachers, the rest of the P7 pupils and Max and Scott were getting further away, dotted and clumped in groups along the path as they headed back to the Outdoor Education Centre building.

  “Come on, Lewis. We need to go.” Rhona nudged his arm with a heavily padded elbow. The white quilted jacket kept her warm as toast, but she thought it made her look like a wee fat snowman. A wee, fat, grubby snowman… The jacket had been dragged by Mr Deacon from the bottom of the lost property box when he’d spotted Rhona getting on the coach dressed in a thin cagoule and jeans. At least nobody had accused her of nicking it… yet.

  Lewis didn’t move, so she tried more food-based persuasion.

  “Imagine your plate piled with steaming-hot fish fingers and chips with tomato sauce. Imagine being too late and me eating all of yours.”

  “I’ll be ready in a second.”

  “Hurry up! They’re all ahead of us. We’ll be last served. My stomach’s thinking my throat’s cut.”

  “I’m coming. I just need to pull up my socks. My left heel’s got a massive blister.”

  “I’ve got blisters on my blisters, Lewis. But I’m no’ moaning for Scotland.”

  “No, you’re not moaning, that’s for sure. It’s as though you’ve morphed into a flaming cheerleader.”

  Rhona grinned, quite enjoying the idea. “Give us an L! Give us an E! Give us a W!”

  “If you’re trying to cheer me up, you’re doing a lousy job.”

  She waved imaginary pompoms around, bouncing up and down in front of him.

  “Quit it. You’re bugging me.” Lewis kicked a clod of wet earth. Slurry mud splattered on Rhona’s white jacket.

  “Ha! Is that so, big man? How’s this for annoying?” Rhona flicked her foot just as Lewis stepped forward – and tripped him up. Not just a basic trip… a massive face-first splat.

  Rhona gasped, knowing she’d gone too far. As Lewis lay there, sprawled in the mud, her heart started to bang against her ribs, afraid she’d just killed their friendship stone dead. There was a terrible silence, broken only by a distant buzzard keening above them.

  3

  Lewis

  Mud oozed up Lewis’s nose. Icy rain trickled down the back of his neck.

  Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse, my best pal shoves me in the mud. Bet that bloomin’ buzzard swoops down now and tries to peck out my eyes.

  Rage burned a hole in his brain. “Look what you’ve done! I’m soaked!” He stumbled to his feet, fists flailing. He couldn’t see, blinded by mud and rain, but one of his fists landed, drove through something soft and squishy, crunched against bone.

  “Ow! Ya flamin’ eejit!”

  Lewis’s anger fizzled and died. He wiped at his face with his sleeve to clear the mud from his eyes.

  “Rhona? Are you OK? Did I hit you? I didn’t mean—”

  She clutched her arm. Was that rain or tears streaming down her face?

  “That hurt. Get lost,” she spat, and she stormed off towards the Centre, leaving Lewis alone on the moor, lost in despair.

  At first he could see Rhona’s white jacket bobbing along, glowing like the moon. But then the little white blob disappeared, as if a cloud had covered it. It didn’t matter how hard he stared; Rhona was gone, vanished into the evening mist that swirled over the moorland. He sat down on a rock and let loose a torrent of swear words, most of them learned from Rhona.

  She started it. She deliberately tripped me. I could have hit my head and been killed. Then she’d be sorry.

  He shook his head, like a dog with fleas, trying to rid himself of the guilt, but he remembered clenching his fists, swinging his arms, the burning rage he’d felt.

  Maybe, after all, despite everything, he was turning out like his dad. But he couldn’t be, surely, because it had been so long since he’d seen his father he could hardly remember what he looked like. Tall, he thought, though maybe that’s because he’d been so small in comparison. Thinning fair hair and glasses. Lewis had inherited his mother’s black hair, but his dad’s short-sightedness. His dad had worked in a bank, until he got made redundant, but like Lewis, he’d loved art and history. Their favourite place in the world had been Kelvingrove Art Gallery. They’d used to go on Saturdays, to marvel at the dinosaur fossils and the trays of crystals and the Egyptian mummies. But then Dad had changed and the art gallery visits had stopped. Lewis shuddered, remembering his father’s smell on that terrible night, toothpaste masking stale alcohol and of his voice, desperate, slurred, as he ran after the car, banging on the window.

  “Lewis! You know your old dad. I wouldn’t hurt a fly! It was a mistake! I didn’t mean any of it…”

  A huge sob broke from Lewis’s throat, and then the tears started falling and wouldn’t stop. He slumped, head on knees, and stayed there on the moor as the sky darkened and the rain teemed down.

  As darkness fell, the temperature plummeted. Thick grey mist swir
led across the moorland, making the place seem as eerie as a zombie graveyard. The temperature had to be below zero, he reckoned, especially if the wind chill factor was taken into account. He’d packed light, too light: just his packed lunch and a Mars Bar. And he’d eaten both hours ago. No matches, no torch, no survival blanket. If he stayed out here on the moor, he was doomed.

  Then the shivering started.

  Right, that’s it. I’m in trouble now. Hypothermia’s setting in. People die of hypothermia.

  He didn’t know how long it took, and even if he’d been allowed to bring his phone on this trip, he couldn’t google information out here in the Internet Dead Zone. He brushed rain out of his eyes, spoke aloud to break the terrifying silence.

  “What the heck do I do now? I don’t know what to do…”

  There was a frayed, panicky edge to his voice that was even scarier than silence.

  Calm down for a start, you eejit.

  Staying out in this bleak, foggy moorland was stupid. He knew he should head back. He knew which direction to go. Well, he was fairly sure he did.

  If the mist clears, I should be able to see the lights of the Centre. But if I wait too long they might turn them off. Then I’ll be totally lost. I’ll end up wandering round like that poor guy, what was his name? The one who got stuck in a canyon for weeks and had to cut off his own arm. He was trapped and he was dying of thirst. He drank his own pee in the end. It was gross. There’s no way I’m doing that.

  Lewis got up, stretched out his arms, like a blind man feeling his way, and stumbled a couple of steps. But his left foot sank into wet, cloying mud. He tried to lift it out. It wouldn’t budge. Overwhelmed by panic, afraid he was actually trapped and would be swallowed up, he struggled frantically, his foot sinking deeper into the slurry peat bog.

  “Help! Help me! I’m stuck!”

  Thick mist snaked round his voice and choked it.

  There’s no one here to help, you saddo. You need to do this yourself.

  Lewis took a deep, gulping breath, grabbed his leg, and tugged with all his strength. Nothing happened. His foot stayed stuck, and now his other foot seemed to be sinking too. He’d definitely seem a film like this… by the time the rescuers got to the victim, only his hat had been visible. The man had been sucked down, choked to death by mud.

  He took another deep breath and, once his breathing slowed, he tried again, channelling Princess Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt. He took hold of his calf and pulled. His boot came free with a disgusting squelch and he staggered backwards. Heart banging against his ribs, he limped back to the rock. He crouched beside it, tugged his hood over his face and tried to come up with a better plan: a plan that involved him getting home to his own bed, his own home.

  There’s a station at Arichdour, about three miles south. If I walk there I could buy a ticket to Glasgow, sneak back to the flat, break in through the kitchen window, and when Mum gets home I’ll pretend I’m just back. I could drop hints about smoking or drugs or bullying on the trip. No, maybe not. She’d only phone the school and Mr Deacon would call me a liar. I could tell her I’m never going to pass any exams and need to move to a school that isn’t scraping the bottom of the league tables. Mr Deacon can’t argue that one.

  It wasn’t that he was desperate to go back to Bellwood Academy. His life had changed so much in the last four years that he doubted he’d have anything left in common with his old friends. Sam messaged him occasionally, but he always seemed to be on his way out to rugby practice. While Lewis enjoyed watching the Six Nations on television, he was hopeless at playing it himself and wasn’t keen to improve his skills, either. He’d read about rugby players who died of broken necks or ended up paralysed. It was too dangerous to even be called a sport. It was all football at Eastgate, but he wasn’t keen on football either.

  Rain dripped off the end of his hood, splashed onto his numb, frostbitten nose.

  He needed to move, but if he fell into another peat bog, his corpse might not be discovered for thousands of years, like Tollund Man. Mr Deacon had talked about Tollund Man during last term’s topic on prehistoric times and they’d found out all the grisly facts about how he’d been killed. Even all the scientific stuff about how they’d worked out his age from the state of his bones and teeth had been interesting. Now it just felt scary. Lewis didn’t want to be a mummified corpse. He didn’t want scientists musing over his Scottish and Chinese parents or tutting over the filling in his back tooth and deciding he’d eaten too many Haribo in his short lifetime. He wanted to go home.

  Lewis got up and squelched along for what seemed like endless hours when he stopped dead, struggling to take in what he was seeing right in front of him: it was the rock that reminded Rhona of Pikachu. His stomach clenched. Hot tears gathered in his eyes. He’d been travelling in a circle. He was back where he’d started, at the foot of the abseiling cliff.

  The rain was falling so hard that the world looked blurry, out of focus, but the mist had shifted, become torn and threadbare. Mountains, dark and misshapen, loomed above him. The wind had dropped and darkness was creeping closer. Even if he could try again to squelch to Arichdour, he had no idea of the train times. There was nothing else for it. He’d have to find his way to the Centre. Horrible as the prospect was, he’d have to face them after all, even Rhona, or die of exposure on this hillside. Thinking of Rhona was painful, like stubbing a toe or standing on Lego. He couldn’t imagine dealing with high school without Rhona; she was always around – taking his side, mocking his fears, making everything bearable. And now she’d never speak to him again, and it was his own fault.

  Collapsing against the rock, shivering, he sank down, oblivious to the wet ground. His brain felt fuddled. All he wanted to do was lie in the shelter of the rock, curl up into a ball and go to sleep. He felt too warm and wondered if he should take off his jacket.

  It took a long moment to register that something was coming, heading towards him across the moor. At first he thought it must be Scott in his pick-up. His head swam with relief. The instructors had realised there was a pupil missing and were coming to the rescue. But then it dawned on him that the sound was wrong: it wasn’t the rumbling of a vehicle, more a deep, rhythmic drumming.

  It was as if the earth was shaking. He could feel the tremor through the soles of his feet, thrumming through the rock he was leaning against. It was a low, thumping sound, like the thudding of hooves. The sound got louder and louder, impossible to ignore. A terrible thought grew in his mind.

  It’s the unicorn. It’s coming to get me.

  He threw back his hood and peered through the drizzle. It must be a hallucination. But hallucination or not, it was the unicorn and it was coming straight towards him.

  Almost invisible in the mist, dark grey against purplish heather, the huge beast galloped alone. As it thundered towards Lewis, he could see it more clearly: muscled flanks, flowing black mane. Steam billowed from its quivering nostrils and its spiralled horn gleamed like steel. The unicorn was a huge, frightening beast, but it wasn’t on the attack – it was terrified.

  Lewis felt the animal’s fear, heard the loud drumming of its heart, shared its panic. It wasn’t coming for him. The unicorn was the prey. Somebody was hunting it down, and the beast was crazy with fear and confusion.

  Lewis ignored the part of his brain that was yelling at him to hide. He stood up and moved from the shelter of the rock and spoke clearly, urgently, desperate to soothe the panicking animal.

  “It’ll be OK. I’ll help you, I promise. Don’t be afraid.”

  The last thing Lewis saw was the horn, long and daggersharp, as the animal lowered its great head and charged.

  4

  Lewis

  “I thought you were deid!”

  Lewis’s eyes were closed, and his head was spinning, but he could hear Rhona’s voice, loud and clear.

  Rhona’s here. She’s come back for me…

  “Why did you stay out there all by yourself when it was getting dark
? You’re scared of the dark, you big lummox! I’ve been up to high doh! What if you’d died? What would I have done then, you selfish git?”

  She ranted on for a bit longer while he lay there, luxuriating in the warmth of the room, the heaviness of the covers on his body, the softness of the pillow under his head. He was in bed, and he was safe, and he couldn’t have been injured because he didn’t seem to be in any pain. And he was definitely not dead, because he could hear Rhona’s voice. She might have been raging, but at least she was speaking to him.

  When Lewis opened his eyes, Rhona’s face swam into focus. She looked upset, teary-eyed and pale, rather than angry.

  “I’m sorry.” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  Rhona’s eyes widened. Then she smiled, two dimples appearing in her cheeks. “Aye, I’ll not shove you in any more bogs and you keep your flailing hands at peace. But why didn’t you follow me home? I thought you were huffing in the boys’ dorm when you didn’t come for your dinner. It wasn’t till Mr Deacon did one of his head counts that I realised you were still out there. Mr Deacon was raging with me, which was hardly fair.”

  Lewis couldn’t trust himself to speak, so he lay still, staring at the ceiling, hot tears stinging his eyes. Rhona squeezed his hand. He knew it was meant to be reassuring, rather than a crush, but it hurt all the same. Rhona never knew her own strength.

  “I’m glad you’re not deid, Lewis. I thought you were a goner.”

  Did he nearly die? It was all a terrifying blur. Closing his eyes, he could see himself, huddled against the Pikachu rock, shivering with cold, panic exploding in his chest as he listened to the sound of hooves thudding on grass…

  The unicorn… Somebody was hunting the unicorn. I promised…

  Lewis opened his eyes and the vision vanished, replaced by Rhona’s red-rimmed eyes, her crooked smile.

  “How did I get back here?” His voice was weak, a cracked whisper.

  “Scott and Mr Deacon went out looking for you. Scott says you were shaking all over. You gave them a real fright. They got the out-of-hours GP to call in, but he said you were faking.”