Page 4 of Heir of Autumn
He pointed at the Wilde grimoire next to my arm. “Those don’t look like tiny rainbows to me.”
Sylvain’s chair scraped as he backed away from the table. I glanced at the grimoire, my heart skipping a beat when I realized what Satchel meant. The unicorn sticker that Cornelius Butterworth had given me was shining. The air around the grimoire sparkled. And were those tiny rainbows scattering across the table, around the bookshelves?
“Do you hear that?” Satchel asked, his pointed ears pricking up as he glanced around the library. “Does that sound like horses to you?”
I glanced around the aisles, brow furrowed, my ears picking up a familiar sound. Satchel was right. The distant neighing of horses. I looked down at the unicorn sticker, frowning. No way. It couldn’t be.
Any minute now, Mr. Brittle would come loping in to scold us, grab us by our scruffs, and toss us right out of the library. But whatever commotion the sticker was making, this bizarre, gaudy light and sound show, only the three of us seemed able to see or hear it.
“This is — odd, to say the least,” Sylvain said.
And then it happened. A beam of multicolored light emanated from the sticker, curving across the room in an arc. It was a perfect rainbow, one that ended in the gloom between a set of nearby bookshelves. A pool of swirling magic appeared in the floor where the rainbow landed, the colors spilling into it endlessly. From deep within came another inviting neigh.
“Well, this is just ridiculous,” I said.
Satchel cleared his throat, strutting up toward me. “As an expert on pocket dimensions and portals, I can tell you that the thing on the floor is also a portal.”
I pursed my lips. “Thank you for that enlightening information.”
“But it’s true,” Sylvain said. “See how the light filters into the opening?”
“Okay, you guys, I get it,” I said, peeling myself away from the table. “And I guess we’re supposed to enter.”
“Why are you being so weird about this?” Satchel asked. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Locke?”
“Trapped in a dark room where it belongs, right next to my common sense. You know, the gut feeling that we shouldn’t be walking into a portal that appeared out of my grimoire, no matter how sparkly and tempting it is?”
Sylvain huffed, tugging me by the wrist. “Now why in the world would your Cornelius Butterworth grant you a gift that would bring you harm?”
I blinked, narrowed my eyes at the portal, struggling to come up with a single excuse. Headmaster Cornelius had always been kind to me, and he must have given me the sticker for a reason. The design printed on it was so vivid in my mind, too, burned there from the brightness of its magic. A unicorn cantering over a rainbow.
Gods, if this portal led to where I thought it would lead, I was absolutely going to lose my shit.
“Come on, losers,” Satchel said, flying straight toward the portal. He spun in the air, holding his nose like he was about to dive into a pool. And so he did. My heart clenched as he plunged straight into the twinkling lights, disappearing from view.
I gulped, seeing that the last of my doubts had been dispelled. “If that was an illusion cast by the sticker, Satchel would have cracked his skull right on the floor.”
“But it isn’t an illusion,” Sylvain said, nudging me forward, his hand firm yet gentle against the small of my back. “It’s no fanciful glamor. Satchel detected the portal’s presence correctly from the start. And now he’s all alone on the other side of the rift. Shouldn’t we join him?”
“Oh, fuck,” I said, sprinting forward, my hesitation completely overwritten by concern for my feisty familiar. “Oh fuck, oh shit, Satchel, you’d better not be getting murdered in there.”
I leapt feet first into the pool of light, my cloak billowing behind me. I fell through a tunnel of sparkling color, the inside of a fractured prism, rainbows cascading in every direction. The wind whipped at my hair, my clothing. In my ears, the faint tinkle of invisible bells, of unseen jewels clinking together.
And in the distance, a friendly, alluring neigh.
The sensation was breathtaking, like going down a waterslide. Bruna, Namirah, and I had gone once, a waterpark in Brazil that reached up into the sky, a twisting, exhilarating crisscross of pipes and tunnels. Instinct, excitement, and pure joy took over. I threw my arms in the air and screamed. From somewhere behind me, Sylvain roared with laughter.
But then the ride ended.
“Oof,” I grunted, landing on my butt on a patch of very, very soft grass.
I scratched the back of my head. The velocity of my fall straight onto solid ground should have shattered my bones and obliterated my entire ass. But reality worked differently in this place, a beautiful sunlit glade filled with flowers, foliage, and —
“Oh, gods,” I breathed.
Three unicorns stood in the clearing. Flesh and blood unicorns. Well, they were mostly hair and hooves, really, their manes cascading like rainbows, hooves and horns gleaming like precious metal. One had a spiraling horn made of gold, another of silver, and the last one of copper. But each was equally beautiful, their coats lustrous and white as clouds, their manes shimmering in every color known to man.
And flitting between the three of them, chattering excitedly, was young Master Satchel, friend of the forest and my extremely social familiar. An actual social butterfly, I realized.
