Custos Unicorium 1 ~Longe Aluid--Something Very Different~

Chapter One: A Keeper

Laughter edging on insanity filled the room. Everyone looked around except me. It was my laughter, and really, I didn't mean for it to sound so crazy. They were the ones being crazy.  

"Lady Regina," a gruff voice at the front of the room cut through my laughter, made it stop cold, "there is nothing funny about our proposal. Being a Keeper is a great honor." 

"Of course. The youngest of children know that." 

"Then what is your opposition--" 

"I can't," I almost spat the second word. 

"But--" 

"I'm not a virgin." Silence filled the room at my words, but none of the faces in it looked surprised. 

"We know." 

"Then you know I can't be a Keeper," I said, and turned to leave. 

"You have been chosen anyway." 

"How can I possibly Keep a unicorn if I can't see it?" My voice rose, frustration building inside me. 

"We don't know." 

That was the last straw. I stormed out of the hut, and half-ran over to the gate. Not even bothering to open it, I leaped it, and picked up to a run. Dodging trees, going deep into the forest, my eyes searched for the one thing I knew they wouldn't find. 

A unicorn. The mystical creature I'd always wanted to see. Don't get me wrong, being a Keeper had always been my dream. Surprised? Yeah, that anger back there, this all just came too late. To reiterate, I can't Keep a unicorn if I can't see the unicorn. Wow did that make me mad. 

My pace slowed when I reached a clearing. It was nice and open...And the Dispatchers were there. All of them, old monks of the unicorn haven, and they outran me, a seventeen-year-old tracker. 

"Crazy, old, maniac, insane, old..." my string of insults fell to silence. "Well?" I shouted, "Have you seen one yet? I haven't!" My eyes whipped fiercely around at the Dispatchers. 

"He's right there," the Speaker's gruff voice announced as he nodded a few paces to the side of me. I spun in the Direction. 

"Can't see it. Damn, I'm no idiot. I knew it," muttering to myself, I closed my eyes. Instantly my attention was drawn all the way across the clearing. Further away than where the unicorn was. 

"We're not alone," the Speaker said, he had noticed. 

"I know that," I spat, "I'm a tracker." 

"Of course. Hayden, come introduce Koriun," the Speaker called. 

The person at the edge of the clearing walked cautiously toward me, no toward the unicorn. Something clicked in my brain.  

"Oh no Baxan," I turned on the Speaker, "Even if I were to do this, I'm no child. I could handle it," a growl slipped into my voice, "on my own." 

"It's not my choice," Baxan, the Speaker, rasped, "and it's not yours either. Hayden has been Koriun's Keeper for some time now and you will join him." Baxan emphasized the last four words of his sentence. 

I raised my right fore arm in a shapr motion, wrist up, hand as though it was being pulled down, and curved, like a paw. At the same time I tossed my head.  

"Lady Regina," Baxan's voice came again. It was really starting to annoy me. "I know enough wolf to know that was a curse." 

He was right. I spoke fluent wolf, proudly, and had never met anyone--human that is-- better. And I just swore big time. Oh well.