Zoë saw Ainsel out with guilty relief. Her brown eyes filled with tears had been hard to see, and Zoë would have obliged her in any other way if she could have.

But she couldn’t this time. It felt like a betrayal of her own side in a horrible little war with her parents that she felt but could barely understand. They didn’t pay attention, night after night, but she would. She wouldn’t replace them with Ainsel’s caring parents. If her mom had an attack of Mom Of The Year and rushed home, Zoë would be here. It was pathetic, but there it was.

She went back to her room and double checked the lock on the sliding glass door. Then she pulled the curtains and got ready for bed, just like she’d promised Ainsel. She stopped at her computer and grabbed a pair of notebooks, then climbed into bed.

Then she looked at her notebook, climbed back out of bed, and packed up her backpack with camera, phone, pepper spray and a pocket knife, because the world had suddenly become a lot less predictable.

Once she was in bed again, she stared down at the notebook where she’d written the strange words about the kingdom on the other side of the stars. She recognized her handwriting but she didn’t remember writing the words. It was a strange feeling, as if somebody else had taken over her body for a while.

But she’d read stuff on the internet about that. It was called automatic writing, where you just let yourself write whatever came, and your subconscious or spirits or whatever came out through your hand, bypassing your conscious mind entirely.

Yesterday, Zoë would have been dismissive of that as silliness. But the whole world was turning upside down. She still couldn’t quite believe Tyler wasn’t exactly the friend she’d believed he was. Was he her friend at all? She couldn’t even guess. Just because he was kept secrets and sounded different when he wasn’t talking to her didn’t mean he was bad. But he’d sounded so cold.

Tonight she couldn’t dismiss automatic writing as easily. But she’d read other stuff on the internet, too: the idea that lost memories could sometimes be regained by exposure to the source of the memories. So she combined the two ideas, gripped the same pen she’d written the strange notes in, and opened a new notebook to about the same page.

As soon as she put the pen to the paper, she started feeling strange. She’d done this before. Last time she’d captured words. This time they remained elusive.

Staring at the blank paper, she tried to resist frustration. Instead she let her mind freewheel across the day. She shied away from thinking about Tyler, about the wolves or her parents. Instead she found herself remembering staring out her sliding glass door. The memory was layered on top of itself and in each layer, it ended abruptly with her waking up in her bed the next morning. And then there was the two nights she’d planned to go outside and photograph the meteor shower. Each time she’d picked up an armload of stuff… and woken up the next morning.

She was annoyed at herself for missing just how strange it was, and her pen jerked across the page. But it was just a scribble: her tension made manifest.

Zoë took a deep breath and let it out again. If she let herself get upset, she wouldn’t be able to remember anything. She’d get all twisted up and find herself organizing the front closet or something, as if by cleaning she could banish her stress too.

She took several more deep, calming breaths. It had been a long, confusing day, and she hadn’t been sleeping well. She was tired. She’d just work on this memory recall thing a little bit more and then she’d fall asleep.

But she was more tired than she thought. Her body warred with her determination, then came to a compromise. One more deep breath and her head drooped as she drifted into a dream of doing exactly the work she thought she was doing, and becoming progressively more strange. The skin-warmed paper under her hand became a warm, living hide. The scent of cinnamon and pine tickled her nose. Her dream-pen looped across the page, writing words she didn’t know how to read.

Somebody whispered her name and she realized she was sleeping. She was uncomfortable, too. She ought to wake up and finish her work so she could go to bed properly.

Zoë. Zoë. Sweet Zoë. You shouldn’t be here. This is beyond my sanctuary. Zoë. It’s dangerous. The voice was warm and beautiful. She wanted to lean into it, feel arms fold around her and cradle her close.

Zoë. Oh no. You have to wake up. How did this happen?

The voice was right. She really ought to wake up, so she could snuggle up to that voice and fall asleep again, perfectly comfortable, wonderfully happy.

Her knees burned. Something warm trickled down her shin. It was a final strident note of wrongness. Zoë woke up.

She was standing in chilly darkness, deep within a forest, in her nightshirt and bare feet. The crisp scent of pine combined with the hint of cinnamon and other, less easily named smells. A small gap in the clouds above revealed the stars as she glanced around in confusion. Her hands and knees hurt, scraped up by multiple falls that somehow hadn’t woken her.

As she realized that she’d gone into the forest after all, shame rushed through her. She’d promised Ainsel, and now she’d proven she couldn’t even trust herself. What was wrong with her, that even her own promise couldn’t keep her away from the woods?

“You’ve twisted the magic somehow,” said the warm, wonderful, cinnamon voice to one side and a little behind her. “I didn’t know humans could do that.”

There was just a glimmer of white in Zoë’s peripheral vision. She was suddenly afraid to turn her head to see clearly. Her shame faded away, replaced by a crystal clear awareness, as tangible as the pine needles under her feet, that looking at the whiteness would change everything.

But she was a photographer. Someday it would be her job to look, and to show others. She’d trained herself since she was eleven years old to see what others missed. If she refused to look now, she’d be abandoning everything she committed to being.

She turned her head.

He stood half hidden behind a tree, but the dark silhouette of trunk and branches couldn’t hide his flowing bronze mane, his deep dark eyes, or the long spiral horn that emerged from a head that was a little like a horse’s and a little like a deer’s. His coat was as white as the moon. Definitely white enough to ruin any casual night photography.

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“Oh my God,” said Zoë.

The unicorn sighed and moved out from behind the tree. He stretched out his neck toward her and made a soft noise. Then he said, “Hello, Zoë. It’s nice to meet you, again.”

Zoë put her hand to her head. She heard his voice, but she couldn’t tell how he was actually talking. What she saw didn’t match with what she heard.

She shook her head. Talk about irrelevant things to worry about. Instead she stepped toward him, holding out her hand. He briefly put his chin into her hand and she remembered the whiskers tickling her palm.

Then his head dipped and the bronze horn brushed against her skinned knees, one after the other. The stinging pain vanished.

“We’ve met before,” said Zoë, wonderingly. Her head felt crowded with fragmented memories: of seeing him for the first time, over and over again, of touching his head, leaning against his flank. She couldn’t connect any of them up to form a coherent experience but she knew this was what had happened in those moments she’d lost. It hadn’t been something awful at all. It had been something amazing.

“Yes. And each time is supposed to be the last time.” He pushed his muzzle into her hand again. “I should have left. But I worried about you. And here you are. I was right to worry. The wolves have found your scent.”

“Why do I keep forgetting?” Zoë asked, the unicorn’s last words barely registering.

“Nobody was to know I was here,” The unicorn’s mysterious voice was regretful. “Come, we must return to your home before the wolves get closer.”

He stepped backward gracefully, without a single pine needle rustling underfoot. Zoë followed him instinctively.

The unicorn blew out. “Be careful of the roots. This is not a forest I can carry you through but I will walk with you.”

Zoë started to say something but a wolf howled and whatever it was vanished from her mind. “Should we run?”

“No,” said the unicorn calmly. “Put your hand on my neck and walk beside me. If we run, they will be drawn to us.”

Hesitantly, Zoe moved closer, trailing her fingers down the long, sleek white neck. His bronze mane was silken against the back of her hand and she felt a sudden desire to throw her arms around his neck.

His ears twitched at her touch and he huffed again. “Yes, like that.” Another wolf howled, and he added, “They are puzzled. You have always confused them.”

“How do you know?” Zoë whispered, walking beside him.

“They do not belong in this world, so I can feel them when they are near. We’re lucky, though, that the broken one isn’t with them right now. We will circle around so the wind is in our favor.”

None of this made any sense to Zoë, but she was still too confused to pick out specific questions. A unicorn, a real unicorn, in her forest. The wolves were hunting her again. And she was barefoot, in her nightshirt.

Small twigs and needles stabbed her feet, and she kept stubbing her toes on protruding roots. Branches loomed out of the darkness to ambush her, but the unicorn used his horn to push them aside. It was very, very dark, but she could just make out dim shapes close by and against the sky above. Only the unicorn next to her was easy to see.

She walked beside him, close enough that his warmth took the edge off the night chill. Except when they howled, she couldn’t hear the wolves at all. That made it more frightening, especially when she remembered the silent figure of the monster looming over them the last time she’d walked through a dark forest.

“Stop,” said the unicorn softly. “Wait. Stay a moment.” He moved out from under her hand and lowered his head to investigate something on the ground. It was far too dark for Zoë to see anything unusual, but he recoiled, pulling his head back. “No good. We must go around, through the deeper trees.”

“What is it?” Zoë took a step forward unconsciously, trying to see through the dimness. The unicorn whirled, body blocking her.

“No! Impulsive Zoë.” Exasperation threaded through the unicorn’s voice.

She realized what she’d done and stopped. The shame she’d felt upon awakening rushed back over her, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry. But… I don’t understand any of what’s going on, and I want to. What is it?”

The unicorn came back to her side and pressed her into the deeper woods. There was barely space between a grouping of trees for them to slip through one at a time. He pushed her ahead of him. “The world is fraying. That is one of the holes. If you stepped into it, you would fall through into another world. Not a kind one, either. Then you would be trapped. Except that won’t happen, because I am with you.”

Zoë’s foot fell through a dead tree that made up a hidden part of the ground. She almost fell, trying to stifle a shriek. The unicorn’s horn and head slid under her arm to steady her.

A twig cracked deeper in the forest and the unicorn froze, ears swiveling. “The wolves have called for their pack master and the broken one. We cannot be outside my Sanctuary when they come.”

The fear crept over her again. She was being stalked, and at any moment the wolves would leap out on her, knock her down, tear at her. The image of the unicorn covered in blood flashed before her eyes and she choked back a sob. On the verge of panic, she freed her foot from the crumbled tree.

“Sweet Zoë. Not much further,” said the unicorn soothingly. Another twig cracked behind them but the unicorn didn’t even flick an ear. “But now we must be as quiet as possible. Breathe, walk. But do not speak.”

Step by step they walked through the forest. Zoë concentrated on her feet, trusting the unicorn. ‘Not much further’ seemed like an endless number of steps.

Then the unicorn relaxed under her fingers and she looked up. The forest was still dark and full of looming shapes, but it was also familiar. It felt like home. She whispered, “My house is nearby?”

“Yes. This is my sanctuary. Here none can find me if I do not choose. It is small, but enough for my purposes.” The unicorn pushed his nose against her shoulder.

Zoë’s mouth was dry. “How did I end up so far away?”

“I wasn’t here. I had work to do.” Once again she could hear the regret in his voice. “I think I made a mistake in ever showing myself to you.”

Suddenly very aware of the horn slanting over her shoulder, Zoë said, “You made me forget before. I came out here and we spoke, and then you stole my memories.”

“I made you sleep,” said the unicorn gently. “A sleep that brings forgetfulness. My presence here is a secret.”

The unicorn was beautiful, but Zoë stepped backward unsteadily. “I don’t care. You… you can’t do that again. You can’t just steal hours of my life.”

“I can,” said the unicorn, and the scary, amazing dream Zoë had found herself in suddenly became a full-on nightmare. Her heart hammered in her chest

The unicorn rubbed his nose against his leg. “But I won’t. You’ve tangled the magic somehow. It might hurt you if I used it again, and I won’t do that, even if it gets me in trouble.” He paused and looked at Zoë with one eye. “I knew you were special.”

“Hah,” said Zoë automatically, then pressed her hand to her chest, willing her heart to calm down. “Now what?”

“Now you go back to your house, that way, and sleep.”

Zoë looked the direction the unicorn had gestured, the looked back.“I won’t tell anyone, you know. How could I?”

The unicorn sighed. “Yes, you will. You’ll tell your friend at least. I’m prepared. If I’m to get myself in trouble, I ought to do it well, don’t you think?”

Zoë focused on the part she could follow. “Ainsel? I can’t tell her. She’d never believe me.”

“Won’t she? Ask her what she knows about the wolves. And now… goodnight, lovely Zoë.” The unicorn faded into the background without moving, as if the forest was a curtain that had closed in front of him. No matter how she stared at the darkness, he was gone.

She waved a goodbye, feeling silly, then trudged the direction the unicorn had pointed. It was only a few steps until she could see where the forest broke into her back lawn. And as she went, she thought, It would take a unicorn to call me lovely…

In her bedroom, she spent an hour writing and sketching in her notebook and then, despite how frightened she was of losing her memories again, she drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep in the few hours left until dawn.