Unicorns? Get Real!

ear were still alarming.
    But the bee and the wasp vanished into the night, and suddenly the edges of Berwynna’s body began to grow blurry and smudged. Her face was fading.
    “She’s dissolving,” Gundersnap whispered to herself. How can she leave me like this?
    “I can, I can.” The words echoed somewhere in her head.
    “But what am I supposed to sew—a horse or a unicorn?!” Gundersnap moaned in despair. “Oh, come back. Please come back!” she wailed.
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Chapter 6
    A ROYAL MESS

    “Well?” Alicia asked when Gundersnap returned. In fact, less than an hour had passed since she had left, although it had seemed much longer. The princesses were readying themselves for luncheon.
    “Where’s Gortle?”
    “Don’t worry. He’s not entertaining anyone. He and Lady Merry went out for a sleigh ride. Although now that the snow is gone, they’re probably stuck in the mud someplace.”
    “Did you find her? Did you meet her?” Kristen asked impatiently.
    “Yes, I met with Berwynna.” Gundersnap sighed as she spoke.
    “Oh no!” Alicia exclaimed. “Up to her old tricks, was she?”
    “Rather,” Gundersnap replied.
    “What old tricks—magic?” Myrella asked.
    “Not really,” Alicia replied. “Berwynna has this annoying habit of speaking in riddles and never actually answering your question, at least not with whole answers.”
    “So what parts did she give you, Gundersnap?” Kristen persisted.
    On her way back from the Forest of Chimes, Gundersnap had thought hard about what she would say. She would have a lot of explaining to do, because she had never revealed to Kristen or Alicia what she had seen that last night of the previous session when they had worked on the unfinished tapestry. She had never told them about the dim lines of the figure of what could possibly be a unicorn. She was not sure why she had not told them. Perhaps it was because she did not believe in unicorns. Or was it because her mother did not believe in unicorns? “Fairy tale nonsense” the empress called them. If her mother said something didn’t exist, it didn’t! And her mother was usually right.
    But then again, her mother had been so wrong about Menschmik. She had said that the pony was a gift. That he belonged to Gundersnap alone and that none of the other fourteen—or was it fifteen—brothers and sisters could ride him. Yet it was her mother who had taken her gift away, taken Menschmik into war.
    Could there be some connection between Menschmik and the dim outline she saw in the tapestry? Or could the tapestry, like a cloth version of a crystal ball, foretell what had happened to her pony?
    “Are you going to tell us anything?” Kristen blurted out.
    Gundersnap turned to them. “I’m going to tell you a lot,” she said softly.
    “What?” The three princesses pressed around her.
    “The tapestry is not finished. Not at all. We must go there as soon as possible. I’ll explain on the way.”
     
    The cool shadows of the portrait gallery stretched across the stone floor. Hanging in this gallery were paintings of all the princesses who had attended Camp Princess and then been crowned as queens, including Princess Alicia’s own mother, Queen of All the Belgravias. Whenever Alicia came into the gallery, she felt as if her mother’s eyes were following her.
    The four princesses walked directly to the portrait of a princess from long ago who they now knew was, in fact, the very same one who had haunted the South Turret for hundreds of years. On the way Gundersnap explained about the dim outline of a unicorn she thought she had seen in the tapestry.
    “So that’s the Ghost Princess, the one who helped your bird to sing, Alicia,” Myrella whispered.
    In the painting this princess wore the typical headgear of the time. A wimplelike coif on her head was wrapped down under her chin, held fast by a coronet, and then over this a full veil fell to her knees. Alicia, Kristen, and Gundersnap were always rather stunned by the old-fashioned garb. And although Myrella had walked through the gallery countless times, she had never really stopped to look at this painting close-up as she was doing now.
    “Oh good heavens, talk about last year’s fashions—try last century!” Myrella gasped.
    “Yes, slightly Middle Ages,” Alicia said as she touched the lower edge of the frame of the painting. Myrella looked on in amazement as the portrait mysteriously swung open to reveal a doorway. The