Page 64 of Stubborn as a Shadow

“Okay. Let’s load up these bad boys,” I said, before he had the chance to suggest we stay here for the night.

To my surprise, he agreed.

In one cupboard, we found a few plastic containers filled with linens. They were clean and critter free. Excellent! We filled a couple of pillowcases with as many cans as we thought we’d need for a couple of days. Nelson dropped a few twenties on the counter as we left. That was way too much money for what we’d taken, but we had broken into the cabin, so I suspected the money was meant as an apology too.

When we returned to our cabin, I shimmied as we unpacked our bags. Nelson and I were brilliant. We’d gone out with nothing and returned victorious, like mighty hunters returning from a successful hunt. It made me feel weirdly capable.

My long-ago ancestors might have needed to forage to survive, but I preferred stores. I know, I know. Acquiring things from someone else’s cabin wasn’t exactly foraging, but it still felt that way. What could I say? I was a modern unicorn.

Our cabin wasn’t as warm as it had been during the night when the fire had really been blazing, but it was still warmer than those other ones. And the snow we’d gathered in pots and set by the hearth was melting, which I figured was a good sign.

“Why don’t you make something for us to eat while I find more firewood?”

I was about to argue with him when my stomach rumbled its discontent.

“We need to eat,” Nelson said.

“I’m not much of a cook.”

Nelson cast his gaze over the cans and dried goods on the counter. “I don’t think you need to know how to cook to heat a can of beans.”

Violet said I was a poor cook because I was too easily distracted. But without access to the internet or a TV, the odds of my making something edible had to be a touch better. “Okay. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Without another word, Nelson faded into his shadow form and slipped out the door. I watched as he moved from shadow to shadow under the trees. It must be so cool to do that, to go anywhere a shadow existed. Poof. Just like that.

Not like being a unicorn.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t hate myself or anything like that. But it wasn’t easy being a unicorn. I couldn’t just go galloping across the landscape whenever the mood struck. Some people might dismiss seeing me as a hoax or a horse in an elaborate costume, but there were too many jerks who knew about magic. And they thought a unicorn would… I don’t know… be useful or something.

Over the many years I’d been searching for my birth family, I’d read a lot about unicorns.

Unicorns showed up in written works from cultures all around the world. Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, RenaissanceEurope, and even theBibletalked about my kind. There were stories from South Asia and possibly China too, although I personally thought calling a qilin a Chinese unicorn was about the same as calling a faun a two-legged centaur. Most myths suggested unicorns could heal and do all kinds of marvelous things: purify water, heal people, or bring the dead back to life.

My uncle had tested some of those theories, and as far as I could tell, those tales were all a bunch of hooey. My magic didn’t work that way. All I could do was create rainbow bubbles when I laughed and shift into a horse-like form that had a horn.

But what did I know? I might be defective. Other unicorns could have amazing superpowers. I had no way of knowing, since I’d never met another unicorn to ask them.

Then there were the myths that said we were only drawn to virgins. That was one hundred percent wrong. Leonardo da Vinci famously wrote about unicorns and virgins, so you’d think he’d be a credible source, right? But he’d said unicorns forgot about being wild and fierce around virgins and were only capable of being trapped when they fell asleep in a virgin’s lap.

How ridiculous.

Because I sincerely doubted Nelson was a virgin, and I was ready to nap in his lap the second he offered. No proof of virginity required. In fact, I rather liked the idea of his not being a virgin, because there were so many fun things he could teach me.

A shadow moved in the trees. Nelson was already coming back. He materialized only long enough to dump an armful of logs by the door before taking off again. He was so sexy when he was trying to be all protective.

Wait. I was supposed to be working too, wasn’t I? Oops.

I sorted through the cans. I selected a can of mushroom soup for Nelson and a cream of celery for myself. Good enough. I dugthrough the cupboards and found a can opener and two small pots we hadn’t commandeered for snow/water duty.

The weather had been quite mild until this storm hit, so the soups weren’t frozen. Perfect. Within a few minutes, I had the pots of soup tucked into the embers. Determined to stay close and not destroy our supper, I spread a small woolen blanket over the floor and sat down right beside the fire.

By the time Nelson came into the cabin again, the soup was bubbling.

“I made you cream of mushroom soup!” I yanked the pots onto the hearth tile in front of the fireplace.

“Sounds good,” he said as he removed his jacket and boots and set them close to the hearth. His nose wiggled as he sniffed the air. He wasn’t an animal shifter, so I didn’t know what he was sniffing for.

I stirred the soup. A dark brown chunk ofsomethingfloated to the surface of his soup. I surreptitiously fished out the clump and tossed it into the flames, making the fire sizzle.