“Mom, is everything all right?” Marco immediately asked.
“There’s a unicorn next to you!” Emi marveled.
“Friederike the Enchantress!” Irmgard whinnied as she bowed her noble head. “It is my honor.”
“Mama, Mama! Are you okay?” Leon squealed.
Were his eyes red? Had he been crying?
Frieda heaved a sigh of relief. “Very good. I see you have help.”
“Yes, Irmgard the unicorn rescued me from the forest gnomes.” When she noticed her children’s horrified faces, Hannah immediately added, “It’s all right. No need to worry!”
How she would have loved to stroke her youngest child’s dark-blond mop. She stretched out her hand, but all she could touch was the water’s surface.
“See, little angels? Your mama is fine!” Frieda laughed the heartiest of laughs, as if Hannah had merely gone for a walk. As she did so, she stroked Leon’s and Emi’s shoulders.
Seeing that loving gesture, Hannah felt both a sense of relief and a stab in the heart. She was the mother! She was the one who should be with her children. She was the one who should comfort them—oh, heck, if she were there, they wouldn’t have had anything to worry about anyway!
She smiled bravely at her children. “How are you doing?”
“Good, good! Is that for real? The unicorn can talk?” Emi exclaimed in amazement.
Irmgard whinnied. “Of course I can talk, Anni.”
Emi started to correct her, but the unicorn wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise. “All unicorns can talk. We know every language in the whole world.” She knit her unicorn brow as if wanting to say something in another language, but the words seemed to have slipped her mind.
“Frieda, Irmgard told me what happened to Mirabelle at that time. She had planned all along to deceive Prince Maximilian. That was her intention from the beginning.” Hannah quicklysummarized for her elderly neighbor what the unicorn had told her about Mirabelle and her mother.
By the time Hannah had finished, Frieda looked furious. “That stupid creature. She’s joined forces with the Evil. Doesn’t she know that no good can come of that? Always these young things!”
“The Evil?” Hannah shuddered. “What are you saying?”
“The Evil lives everywhere, including here in this forest, hidden away. We haven’t heard from it in this area for hundreds of years. But now that the forest is full of fiends, it should have occurred to me sooner that its power had grown.”
“So are the fiends the Evil?”
“The Evil attracts the fiends and drives away the peace-loving creatures.”
Irmgard neighed in confirmation. “For weeks now, many in our herd have been talking of leaving the forest before the Evil can wipe us out.”
“How was it able to come back to your forest?” Marco asked, joining the conversation.
“The Evil needs souls to increase its power,” Frieda explained. “It goes to the miserable and desperate, to the angry and hate-filled souls. It beguiles them, ingratiates itself with them, and promises them everything they desire. In return, it requires their souls—for all time!”
“Who would go for something like that?” Marco asked, unable to understand.
“It takes strength and courage to pick yourself up in a hopeless situation and keep going. To not give in to hopelessness and self-pity. Mirabelle was unable to do that.”
“She was still young and all alone,” Hannah said, defending her without thinking. “She didn’t know what she was getting into.”
Frieda shook her head in disapproval. “There’s no point in racking our brains over it. We need a plan.”
Irmgard neighed. “Mirabelle needs to forgive Prince Casimir?—”
“Prince Maximilian!”
“Mirabelle needs to forgive Prince Maximilian for him to be saved. She won’t be able to do that unless we do something for her.”
