The Transfigured Hart Read online

  Praise for Jane Yolen

  “The Hans Christian Andersen of America.”

  —Newsweek

  “The Aesop of the twentieth century.”

  —The New York Times

  “Jane Yolen is a gem in the diadem of science fiction and fantasy.”

  —Analog

  Praise for The Devil’s Arithmetic

  “The book’s simplicity is its strength; no comment is needed because the facts speak for themselves. This brave and powerful book has much it can teach a young audience.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A triumphantly moving book.”

  —Kirkus

  “Adds much to understanding the effects of the Holocaust, which will reverberate throughout history, today and tomorrow.

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  Praise for Sister Emily’s Lightship

  “[Yolen’s] first collection of genre stories for adults and it has been worth the wait.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An outstanding collection.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates

  Praise for Briar Rose

  “Terrifically moving.”

  ―The Washington Post

  “Both heartbreaking and heartwarming, Yolen’s novel is a compelling reminder of the Holocaust as well as a contemporary tale of secrets and romance.”

  ―Booklist

  The

  Transfigured Hart

  Jane Yolen

  Also by Jane Yolen

  Novels

  The Wizard of Washington Square (1969)

  Hobo Toad and the Motorcycle Gang (1970)

  The Magic Three of Solatia (1974)

  The Mermaid’s Three Wisdoms (1978)

  The Acorn Quest (1981)

  Dragon’s Blood (1982)

  Heart’s Blood (1984)

  The Stone Silenus (1984)

  Cards of Grief (1985)

  A Sending of Dragons (1987)

  The Devil’s Arithmetic (1988)

  Sister Light, Sister Dark (1989)

  White Jenna (1989)

  The Dragon’s Boy (1990)

  Wizard’s Hall (1991)

  Briar Rose (1992)

  The Wild Hunt (1995)

  The One-Armed Queen (1998)

  The Wizard’s Map (1999)

  The Pictish Child (1999)

  Boots and the Seven Leaguers (2000)

  The Bagpiper’s Ghost (2002)

  Sword of the Rightful King (2003)

  The Young Merlin Trilogy: Passager, Hobby, and Merlin (2004)

  Pay the Piper: A Rock and Roll Fairy Tale

  (with Adam Stemple, 2005)

  Troll Bridge: A Rock and Roll Fairy Tale

  (with Adam Stemple, 2006)

  Dragon’s Heart (2009)

  Except the Queen

  (with Midori Snyder, 2010)

  Snow in Summer (2011)

  Curse of the Thirteenth Fey (2012)

  B. U. G. (Big Ugly Guy)

  (with Adam Stemple, 2013)

  The Last Changeling

  (with Adam Stemple, 2014)

  Centaur Rising (2014)

  A Plague of Unicorns (2014)

  Trash Mountain (2015)

  The Seelie King’s War

  (with Adam Stemple, 2016)

  Young Heroes series

  Odysseus in the Serpent Maze

  (with Robert J. Harris, 2001)

  Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazon

  (with Robert J. Harris, 2002)

  Atalanta and the Arcadian Beast

  (with Robert J. Harris, 2003)

  Jason and the Gorgon’s Blood

  (with Robert J. Harris, 2004)

  Collections

  The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales (1974)

  The Moon Ribbon (1976)

  The Hundredth Dove and Other Tales (1977)

  Dream Weaver (1979)

  Neptune Rising: Songs and Tales of the Undersea People (1982)

  Tales of Wonder (1983)

  The Whitethorn Wood and Other Magicks (1984)

  Dragonfield and Other Stories (1985)

  Favorite Folktales of the World (1986)

  Merlin’s Booke (1986)

  The Faery Flag (1989)

  Storyteller (1992)

  Here There Be Dragons (1993)

  Here There Be Unicorns (1994)

  Among Angels

  (with Nancy Willard, 1995)

  Here There Be Witches (1995)

  Here There Be Angels (1996)

  Here There Be Ghosts (1998)

  Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (1997)

  Not One Damsel in Distress (2000)

  Sister Emily’s Lightship and Other Stories (2000)

  Mightier Than the Sword (2003)

  Once Upon a Time (She Said) (2005)

  The Last Selchie Child (2012)

  Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tales Voices with a Twist

  (with Rebecca Kai Dotlich, 2013)

  The Emerald Circus (2017)

  Graphic Novels

  Foiled (2010)

  The Last Dragon (2011)

  Curses Foiled Again (2013)

  Stone Man Mysteries

  (with Adam Stemple, 2016)

  Sanctuary (2017)

  The Transfigured Hart

  Copyright © 1975 by Jane Yolen

  This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and the publisher.

  Cover art and design copyright © 2017 by Thomas Canty

  Interior by James DeMaiolo

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  415.285.5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: James DeMaiolo

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-162-6

  First Particle Books Edition: 2017

  for

  DAVID,

  1937-2006

  who always indulged my passion

  for unicorns

  and for our twin granddaughters,

  Caroline and Amelia,

  whom he never had a chance to read to

  The Sages say truly that two animals are in this forest: one glorious, beautiful and swift, a great and strong deer; the other an unicorn. . . . If we apply the parable of our art, we shall call the forest the body. . . . The unicorn will be the spirit at all times. The deer desires no other name but that of the soul. . . . He that knows how to tame and master them by art, to couple them together, and to lead them in and out of the forest, may justly be called a Master.

  —from Abraham Lambsprink’s

  On the Philosophers’ Stone,

  a rare Hermetic tract

  One

  The hart lived in a thicket close by a shimmering pool. He had been born in that thicket on a spring morning before the sun had quite gained the sky.

  As soon as he was born, his mother had sensed something wrong. She licked off his birth wrapping. The sheaths fell off his hooves. But the doe nuzzled her fawn with a hesitant motion, puzzling out his peculiarity.

  He was an albino, born weak and white on that clear spring day. His eyes were pink and his nose a mottled pink, too.

  After a few minutes, the doe was satisfied. The fawn would live. He was different, but he would live.

  So the white hart was born, and so he grew.

  By the time he had reached his fifth year, and had dodged the pack of dogs that ran i
n the woods and, in season, the hunters as well, he was a wise and wily beast. He knew the best runs to the water. He could paw down the snow to the shoots that winter had left and find the sweet early spring grass.

  No hunters in the area had actually identified the albino. Or if they had noticed a flash of white, they had not known him for what he was. For the white hart was a loner. He chose a solitary existence, never joining—even in the rutting season—the small herds that lived in Five Mile Wood.

  He spent much of his time in the thicket of twenty-two trees close by the shimmering pool. And he lay, mute and gleaming, under a wild apple tree a good part of each day.

  Two

  Richard Plante was a loner, too. He had read a lot for a twelve-year-old. At first he read because he was so sick and there was nothing else to do in the great house where he lived, the only child among adults.

  Richard read about giants and kings, about buried treasure and ghosts, about gods and heroes far away in place and time and some near enough for memory. His wall was papered with the lists of his reading, neatly arranged by subject and author in a secret code that only he understood.

  Richard had read in his bed, mostly, since that was where he had seemed condemned to spend much of his early childhood. But even after he got better and was allowed to run about several hours a day and urged to play with children his own age, the reading habit stayed with him. He read in his bed, still, though his room was outfitted with two generous reading chairs with a table and lamp between them. And when he was pronounced entirely well from the rheumatic fever that had kept him in bed, the loner habit stayed with him, too.

  Rather than being with other children when the adults urged him out of doors, Richard preferred to take a book and make his way deep into Five Mile Wood. When he could find a comfortable spot lined with soft leaves, a mossy place by a stream, an outdoor bed, Richard would lie down and read. He read in great gulps, devouring his books with an appetite his aunt would have preferred he show at the table. And he retained almost all that he read, his mind a ragbag of facts that he forced into mental lists.

  After several hours had passed, Richard would tuck his book into his shirt and head for home. He would run the last hundred yards or so. That way he would be just enough out of breath to allow his aunt to assume he had been following doctor’s orders and playing outdoors with neighborhood friends.

  It was after dinner one evening that fall that Richard first saw the white hart by the shimmering pool. There was a splash in the water, and suddenly, in the fading light, he caught a glimpse of a white haunch, a flash of leg, a dart of head before the startled stag leaped into thick brush. But there was still enough daylight left for Richard to feel sure of what he had seen. A unicorn. What else but a unicorn was that silken swift and dazzling white?

  Recognition, almost like a pain, burned in his heart. All the things that he had ever read about unicorns tumbled into his mind. That they had been confused with rhinoceroses. That sailors brought back narwhale tusks and said they came from unicorns. That the early Christians thought the unicorn a symbol of Christ. He especially remembered the line “And He was beloved like the son of the Unicornes,” because once he had tried to put it into a song in his own off-key way.

  Richard shook his head to clear it of the tag-ends of his readings. He disliked the sudden leaps that his mind sometimes took. They were so untidy. He was more comfortable when he could set things down straight, in ordered lists as his father had.

  Something in the back of his brain was bothering him, though. Some piece of the puzzle did not fit.

  He rehearsed the scene again. The flash of haunch, leg, head. The startling white in the fall setting. The spiraled horn.

  No. That was it. He had seen no horn.

  The shift back into an ordinary day was too much to bear. Richard tried to shake off the disappointment. He ordered his thoughts, trying to control them. Made a mental list and read it off carefully. And then he made another connection. A unicorn was probably related to a deer. And if that was so, then perhaps it lost its horn every year just like a deer and grew a velvety one anew. He didn’t recall reading such a thing in any of his father’s books. But what did that matter? The answer felt right, it had to be right. He would take the books out of the study again and reread them, all the books that mentioned unicorns.

  For it was a unicorn—of that Richard was once again convinced.

  He hurried back to the great house, eager to get to his father’s book-lined library. The beat of his heart paced his steps, and when he ran into the house his aunt could only raise her pencil-arched eyebrows and breathe out a surprised “Well!”

  Richard did not let his aunt’s eyebrows or her frequent “Wells” bother him. It had been five years since she and her husband had become his guardians. And for four of those years Richard had been too ill to care about raised eyebrows. He had just floated in the sea of his bed, his books his raft.

  “Well, hello,” Richard said back now, in unconscious parody, as if bursting breathless into the house were a usual entrance for him.

  “Well! You were out until dark,” she said, eyebrows lifting again in a kind of greeting.

  Richard said no more but went into his father’s study. It was kept just as his father had left it. A gentle widowed scholar and teacher who had died as quietly as he had lived, Edward Plante had left only his book-lined study as a legacy for his boy. The house and everything else had gone as a sort of bribe to his younger brother and sister-in-law to take care of Richard. Whenever Richard felt tired or mean, he would think bitterly that the arrangement had worked very well. Hugh Plante and his wife had moved in just in time to give Richard into the hands of a doctor and to nurse him through his long days of sickness.

  But most often Richard didn’t feel mean, and lately less and less tired. Still, he had never quite gotten over a certain distrust of his aunt and uncle. He felt, in the deepest part of him, that they were there because of the house, and he was just another part of it, another part to be kept clean and polished and presentable.

  In the study that was his but that he still called his father’s, Richard went over to the middle shelf. It was the shelf he had practically learned by heart. Here were his favorite books. Folklore. Bestiaries. Collections of the Brothers Grimm and Asbjornsen and William Butler Yeats. Fables and the fabulous. It was all there, all waiting for him to unriddle.

  He put his hand out and reached for his father’s well-thumbed copy of Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. Richard had not yet understood more than the smallest part of it. But he was sure it was great poetry and as he learned more he would understand more. He looked up unicorn in the index.

  “Richard!” It was his aunt again. “Don’t you ignore me, young man. Into a hot bath with you. Then bed. You might get sick all over again. Then where would you be?”

  “Where would you be?” Richard thought. He knew where he would be—in bed. But what his Aunt Marcie really couldn’t stand was the thought of all that waiting on him again. He had overheard her saying it to Uncle Hugh one day. And that’s where she’d be, his aunt, who always seemed to intrude on him when he wanted to be private. She meant well, he tried to tell himself. It was just that she and his uncle seemed to consider silence a personal affront, an antisocial attitude on his part that they felt duty-bound to change. So they tried to surround him with spoken words. He much preferred the quiet of the printed page.

  Reluctantly but obediently, Richard went upstairs. The hallway was dark and Richard remembered how he used to dread the trip upstairs when he was little, even when they carried him up trailing his quilt. He had to admit that he still felt a bit queasy about walking through the dark. And though he no longer woke at night shrieking, oppressed by the dark weight on his chest, he still felt safer in the light. Of course, he would never admit that to anyone, especially his aunt and uncle. He hardly liked to admit it to himself. So he squinted his eyes and barreled ahead, full tilt up the steps and into the bathroom. T
he contrasting glow of the lights was instantly comforting. He ran the bath as hot as he dared and sank down until only his nose showed. His body was underwater but his thoughts were still in the forest, where, with a flash of haunch and head, the unicorn danced on and on.

  Richard knew what he must do. Morning, tomorrow being a Sunday, would give him plenty of time.

  Three

  Heather Fielding was an enjoyer. She enjoyed other people, she enjoyed her family, she enjoyed new places, she enjoyed old legends, and she enjoyed slipping off quietly by herself on an adventure.

  Since she had been little, Heather had enjoyed going off alone. But she had an annoying habit of going too far and getting lost. After the third time the local police had been called out to find four-year-old Heather, the Fieldings began to keep a very careful eye on their only daughter. And even though she was now almost thirteen, she still had literally to sign out for an afternoon when she wanted to disappear. It meant leaving a detailed note on the bulletin board for her mother or three brothers. It was one of those many rules she had first resented and then found ways to make enjoyable. And so this day the bulletin board read:

  Don’t have time to really stop.

  Into Five Mile Wood on Hop.

  Hop was Heather’s horse, an appaloosa gelding, gentle and undemanding, with a gray-dappled hide that looked as if it had been spotted by raindrops. His slow, loose-limbed pace fitted Heather’s style. It gave her plenty of time to enjoy, to drink in the world as they ambled by.

  The fall day Heather saw the white deer, the sky was overcast and threatening. This only heightened her enjoyment, for the woods always changed colors under a leaden sky. Little creatures began to creep out that might otherwise have hidden, terrified of the bright, revealing sun.