The Transfigured Hart Read online

  They had been meeting at the pool every afternoon. Some afternoons, because she had lessons of one sort or another, Heather did not get there until late. But get there she did.

  The first day, Monday, Richard had gone back on his own, fighting his fears and anticipations in equal measure. He had rehearsed the scene so often, it was as if it had already happened. Yet when it came, it was different from all he had imagined.

  He had barely settled down when he heard some branches snap and the breathing of a large animal. It was too heavy and earthbound for the unicorn, of that he was sure. It had to be Heather’s horse.

  He jumped up in greeting. Heather waved gaily in return and slid from the horse’s broad back. She tied the reins to a tree branch and came over. She would have taken Richard’s hand, but he drew away and gestured awkwardly to the old army blanket he had spread on the ground. Heather shrugged and sat down, sitting cross-legged.

  Richard sat down carefully on the far edge. “I hoped you would come,” he began. It was how he had begun every scene in his mind.

  “Couldn’t keep us away.”

  “Us?” Richard was disconcerted, for in his rehearsals she had never said anything like that.

  “Hop and me.” She nodded at her horse.

  “Do you go everywhere on that horse?”

  “On Hop? Of course. Oh, he won’t scare the deer, I mean unicorn, away if that’s what’s worrying you.”

  Richard looked down. “You don’t really believe in it, do you,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “No, I do. I really do. It’s just . . . it’s just it takes some getting used to. I mean, I’ve seen loads of deer, but I’ve never seen a unicorn before. And yesterday, when it was here—the unicorn—it seemed right. That it was a unicorn. I believed the whole thing. But today—today it seems harder, somehow, to believe.”

  “It takes practice.”

  It was Heather’s turn to look bewildered. “What?”

  “Believing. It takes practice.”

  “That’s a weird thing to say.”

  “Well, actually, I didn’t invent it. The White Queen said it.”

  “But that’s Wonderland. And this is here.” Heather said it softly. She didn’t sound angry or unbelieving or anything negative. She just sounded as if she wanted to be convinced.

  “Wait till you see the unicorn again,” Richard said. “You’ll believe it. I know you will.”

  “I know I will, too,” said Heather.

  “If your horse doesn’t scare it away.” Richard didn’t know why he added that.

  “Look,” said Heather. She was clearly annoyed. “I told you he wouldn’t scare it away.”

  “You said ‘deer.’ ”

  “Well, I meant ‘unicorn.’ And what do you have against my horse, anyway?”

  Richard shrugged and looked over at the horse that was quietly cropping the brown grass. Occasionally the horse took a cautious step toward Heather and was stopped by the halter reins looped and knotted around the tree. “I don’t . . . it’s . . . his spots, I guess. Like measles. Or chicken pox. You know, diseases. Not white like the unicorn, but diseased. That’s it. He looks diseased.”

  “Oh no,” said Heather.

  “You asked,” Richard said defensively.

  “But he’s not spotted like a disease,” she said. “You’ve got it all wrong. He’s dappled like trout and finch’s wings and freckles.” She closed her eyes and recited: “Glory be to God for dappled things.”

  “But that’s a poem,” said Richard. “That’s Gerard Manley Hopkins.”

  At his name, Hop lifted his ears and twitched them back and forth, whickering softly.

  “Of course,” said Heather. “Do you think you’re the only one in the whole world who reads?”

  Before Richard could begin to frame an answer, Heather reached into the pocket of her blue jeans and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “I was hoping I would see you today. No, I believed I would see you today.” Her attempt at sarcasm fell flat and made them both uneasy, so they pointedly ignored it, and Heather went on. “I copied this down. We have a book at home on the unicorn tapestries. I’ll bring it tomorrow if you like.”

  Richard was eager to please her. “Yes, I’d like that,” he said rather more formally than he intended.

  Heather smoothed out the paper with fingers that still bore signs of her afternoon painting class. “It says that ‘wealthy kings and bishops owned unicorn horns, long and whorled and white.’ What’s ‘whorled’?”

  “Twisted.” He made an upward spiral motion with his hand.

  “‘Five feet or more in length. These horns were beyond price, for they changed color when brought into contact with poisoned food or drink.’” Heather cocked her head to one side and thought a minute. “There must have been an awful lot of unicorns around.”

  “I don’t know,” said Richard. “Maybe then. But I like to think that there’s just one in the whole world now.”

  “Yes,” said Heather. “Ours.”

  Suddenly Richard had a horrifying thought. “How do you suppose the kings and bishops got all those horns?”

  “I don’t want to think about that.”

  “Could be the unicorns shed their horns every year like deer, and the kings and bishops just found the horns lying around under trees.”

  Heather grinned. “Medieval litter,” she said.

  “I used to call it,” Richard said, trying out a joke of his own, “I used to call it the Middle Evils.”

  Heather clapped her hands delightedly.

  Richard relaxed and allowed a grin to pull itself across his face. “What else does your book say?”

  “Just the other stuff you said yesterday. About the Maid . . . maiden. Except . . .” Heather hesitated.

  “Except what?”

  “Except if she had any stain in her—the maiden—the unicorn would rip her open with its horn. I think that means if she isn’t pure any more. But I’m not really sure how far . . . what a stain is. I kissed Henry Castlemain at his birthday party. It was just a game. Is that a stain?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Richard said quickly, furious at the thought.

  “But then, you aren’t a unicorn.”

  “Are you afraid?” Richard asked.

  Heather considered the question a long time. She was remembering Henry Castlemain and trying not to think about the horn. It was some time before she spoke.

  “If you were there with me, I wouldn’t be afraid.”

  Richard smiled. “Of course I’ll be there,” he said.

  Twelve

  Each subsequent meeting at the pool was a discovery. They discovered they both liked poetry, though Richard liked to read it silently and Heather to recite it aloud. They discovered they both liked fall better than spring—Richard for all the things that were being covered and hidden, Heather for the colors and the raucous calls of the birds flying south. They discovered they both liked secrets, though Richard had always known it and Heather had just learned it. And they discovered each other.

  It happened on Friday, that final discovery, when Richard was walking Heather to her horse. “I never talk to anyone, and now I’m talking to you.”

  “Oh, I talk to a lot of people. And a lot of people talk at me,” Heather answered. “But you’re the only one I talk with!”

  They were both silent a moment. Then, as Heather climbed onto Hop, they both started again in a rush.

  “Why do you suppose we haven’t seen . . .” Richard began.

  “Do you think you might come to dinner tonight?” Heather asked.

  The invitation was overriding. Not only was Heather’s voice louder, but in the confusion and excitement, they both forgot Richard’s question, which was the more important. For they hadn’t seen the white hart since the previous Sunday when they had started him from his soft ferny bed.

  Richard was alarmed at the idea of going to Heather’s house for dinner, to face the barrage of questions she ha
d promised him would come from her boisterous family; yet he blurted out “yes” without hesitation. His tongue was simply not listening to his cowardly heart.

  Heather shouted, “Great! See you at six. Only white house on Hunt’s Lane,” and kicked Hop into a lazy canter before Richard could change his mind. Indeed, she could hear him shouting after her, “Wait, Heather! Maybe I shouldn’t.” She refused to hear any more.

  Richard was so afraid of telephoning the Fieldings to say he couldn’t come that he went. In fact, his Uncle Hugh drove him over and didn’t stop talking the entire way, so there was never any time for Richard to voice his fears.

  “Never really met the Fieldings,” Uncle Hugh was saying. “But know them by sight. Good family. Stick together. Great hunters, too, you know. Been here generations, not newcomers like us. Own a lot of the town, or used to. Understand she paints. Pretty woman. You meet the girl in school?” It went on like that for some time. So when they finally arrived at the only white house on Hunt’s Lane, Uncle Hugh carried his monologue right into the house and finished it up on Mrs. Fielding.

  She didn’t seem to recognize it as one-sided. Presumably she had participated in many similar ones before. She invited him in for a drink.

  Heather and Richard stared at each other for a long, horrible moment, suddenly strangers, and Heather ran back into the kitchen, where she attacked the salad with a paring knife. Richard wanted to follow her in and he wanted to run out to the car and he wanted to sink into the carpet. Instead he stood where he was, feeling sure that every time Heather’s brothers, unseen in the family room, laughed at the television show, they were really laughing at him.

  At last, his uncle’s drinks and his uncle’s jokes were finished. Uncle Hugh clapped him on the back and said, “I’ll be back at ten for you,” and disappeared out into the fresh night air.

  At that point, dinner was served.

  If dinner was good or bad, Richard did not know. He barely ate it. Heather watched him turn alternately white and pink as the conversation eddied and flowed around him. She pitied him and was angry at him for not being as funny and dear and sweet and serious as she knew he was. Her brothers seemed especially loud in their jokes. Yet they also seemed lively, while Richard seemed dead or turned to stone.

  “Richard and I,” Heather said, “have known each other for ages. In school. But we never spoke until last week. Did we, Richard?”

  “Ughm,” Richard said, the horrible noise rising again in his throat. The questions had started, and Heather herself had started them. He felt like an animal at bay.

  “Richard, dear, you’ve scarcely touched your plate. Is anything wrong with the food?” That was Mrs. Fielding.

  They were going to be on him now for sure, Richard thought. Why? Why? Why? There was no hope of avoiding the questions.

  “Are you in Heather’s class?” asked Mr. Fielding.

  “A grade ahead, actually,” said Heather, slipping in with answers to rescue him. He threw her a thankful look. “He was tutored and is ever so much smarter than the rest of us, aren’t you, Richard?”

  It was the kind of question that needed no answer, and they both knew it.

  Ian looked up from his plate, where, until now, most of his attention had rested. He tossed his dark hair out of his eyes. “Richard? Or Dick? Or Rich? Do they really call you the whole thing—Richard?”

  Brian, across the table, laughed. “Richard the First, Richard the Second, or Richard the Third?”

  “Oh, don’t be beastly,” said Heather, grimacing across at him.

  “Well, which is it?” asked Dylan. A natural athlete, he fancied himself a scholar as well, and was actually close to brilliant at history. “Richard the Third was a humpback, so that can’t be it. You’re tall but straight. And Richard the First was lionhearted, brave, and outspoken. Or so they say. Whoever they is. They always say they when they don’t have any real facts. But you don’t seem very outspoken. How about lionhearted and brave? And Richard the Second was . . . well, he was a bit of a problem, he was. He had an overbearing uncle and a rebellion and a flag with a white deer on it. Which . . .”

  “A white deer? Oh, Richard, then that one’s you. It’s our . . .” Horrified, Heather stopped herself by clapping both her hands over her mouth. She stared at Richard, who suddenly couldn’t take his eyes off the table. He turned absolutely white himself and started to choke on his food.

  “Hit him on the back,” cried Ian.

  Mr. Fielding, sitting at the head of the table, reached over and began to pound Richard while the boy kept on sputtering.

  “Not so hard, dear, he has a bad heart.”

  “Only bruised, Mother,” said Heather, but it didn’t sound like a joke at all.

  Brian, though, was not to be diverted. “What’s this about a deer, Heath? Have you spotted one for us?”

  Ian took it up. “Where’d you find it, Heath?”

  Heather, her hands back again on her mouth, shook her head, imperceptibly at first, then harder and harder. But the boys would not let up.

  “Heath’s a great little spotter, Rich,” Dylan said. “She and Hop find all our deer for us on their travels. She never wants to tell us where they are, but she never can keep a secret. We always worm it out of her in time.”

  “She has this peculiar problem, you see,” Ian added. “She cannot tell a lie.” He put his hand up as if pledging allegiance. “So it’s all a matter of asking the right questions.”

  Brian came in then. “The Famous Fielding Finder, we call her, don’t we?”

  “Boys,” warned Mr. Fielding, who realized that this time the teasing had gone too far.

  But Ian did not pay attention. Like a dog on the scent, he was unable to stop. “Hey, I know where you went this week. Bet it’s in Five Mile Wood. Come on, Heath, is he big? Is he a nine-pointer? Don’t forget, tomorrow’s Opening Day.”

  Heather ripped her hands from her mouth and cried out, starting like a small animal from a bush, “It’s a secret! I can’t tell you. I can’t. I can’t. Richard.”

  Richard pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. His arm brushed Mr. Fielding’s wineglass, and the glass overturned on the table, staining the cloth. He hissed at Heather, “Traitor. Traitor. You’ve just told them. You’ve just told them everything.”

  His voice had barely risen above a whisper, yet it could be heard clearly by everyone at the table.

  Heather couldn’t answer him. She felt he was right and yet he was wrong. She couldn’t think what to do, and so she tried to buy time by reaching over with her linen napkin to sop up the spilled wine.

  But Richard didn’t wait for an answer. He ran to the door. He looked one more time at Heather, his mouth twisted with anger, but his eyes brimming with tears. Then he opened the door and ran out of the house into the dark.

  Heather couldn’t move except to turn the napkin over and over, running her finger across the wine-colored stain. Suddenly her mother was standing by her chair with Richard’s coat in her hands. “Best run after him, dear,” she said. “He’s very upset about something.” And she handed Heather the coat.

  “Oh, Mother,” Heather said, snuffling, and then the sobs came in earnest. She let the coat slip through her fingers to the floor. Then she got up, went over to the door, and closed it.

  Thirteen

  The white hart slipped along the path, ever windward, between his bed and the feeding grounds. The path he chose was an old Indian trail through an orchard long gone to seed. Apples, sweet even without man’s cultivating hand, could be found there in season. In season, too, wild blueberries lined the tumbled stone walls.

  The hart’s toes were still quite sharp. Age had not yet rounded them. They left small, precise prints in the soft parts of the path that a hunter might have followed.

  This night, in the full moon, a keener hunter than man was on the hart’s trail. The blue-gray Scottish deerhound was out tracking. Not one to go by scent, the rough-coated hound had glimpsed a shadowy mo
vement through the moonlit trees and was on the hart’s trail at once.

  The dog had no real need of food. He ran home each evening for a dish set out by the door. But hunting wild deer was what he had been bred for. And the old blood called to him.

  Usually the deerhound led a pack of farm dogs. But this night the others had remained home, chained or sleeping, content, their bellies filled with canned food. So the hound tracked the hart alone. A foolish joy, but one the dog could not deny himself.

  The hart stopped in a small turnabout and sniffed the air again. He heard a crackling of twigs behind him. Instead of bounding away in swift leaps, the hart turned and set himself for a fight. He lowered his head slightly and pawed the ground.

  The hound was not ready for such a trick. He bounded into the tiny clearing that was full of the overwhelming musk of deer. He nearly galloped right onto the hart’s horns. The paleness of the animal, gleaming white in the half-light of moonshine, confused the dog for a moment.

  That moment was all the hart needed. He scooped his head down and lifted the silent dog up upon his horns. The weapons of bone struck home.

  Like a ghostly pantomime, gray and white in the wood, the deadly dance concluded. Speared, the dog was lifted into the air on the hart’s rack. Only then, when he was in the air, did the dog begin to scream. He continued screaming as he was flung over the albino’s back. He stopped only when he hit the ground, blood staining his gray coat.

  The white hart paused a moment to pound the dog’s crumpled body with his hooves. Then he turned and leaped off to find the shimmering pool—the fight, the death of the dog, already forgotten.

  Fourteen

  Richard felt a pain in his chest, but he did not stop, and he barely noticed the dark. He knew he could not possibly run all the way home, but to keep warm he jogged slowly, willing the pain to go away. The rhythm, the pace, finally eased the ache, and it went, a little at a time. He was left with a feeling of exhilaration that surprised him. He guessed it was a combination of the crisp night air, the full moon, and the thought of what was to come. What had to come. People lay behind him; only the unicorn lay ahead. He would have to take action, something he had never really done before. It was like a quest, an adventure, a heroic journey. He could count on no one else in this, certainly not on Heather, who had betrayed them at their first real trial. He could count only on himself.