Kaitlyn spent time every day meditating outside and inside. She tried different locations to try to untangle the spells around her house. She had found a few small spells and unraveled them from the knots of spells. There was a spell which defined the garden, and it turned out it did not include the new land she and Cilvic had been working on.

She carefully marked out the edges of the current land the house saw as “its” land. Cilvic helped her track some plants both inside and outside, and they found bugs were less likely to try to attack the plants inside the house’s range, but otherwise they couldn’t tell a big difference.

Kaitlyn also found a spell which had been entirely disabled. She had been forced to write down the language of the spell and show it to Master Garthis. He tilted his head and said, “Interesting. I don’t recognize the language.”

“Can we translate it?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Let’s try a simple translate spell first,” he said. This was a spell which was so much more complex than anything Kaitlyn could do yet. She watched in fascination, and she saw when he began adding layers of complexity on top of the spell. He frowned and began adding more layers. She watched as the spell layered at least a hundred times. She also recognized when he added a fae language layer, and then a dragonic layer which she could pick out a few words of.

He finally broke the spell, looking strained and said, “No, this can’t be translated by spell. It might be an anti-translation written into the spell itself or it might be a feature of the language itself. I’ll take this and contact some mages I know who specialize in languages, we’ll see if we can get it translated. Needless to say, don’t enable that spell until we know what it does.”

Kaitlyn nodded and he said, “I am seeing progress when I look at the house. It still looks like a gods forsaken knot, but more like a knot of yarn than a tangle of prickle bushes.”

“I’m not sure I understand the difference,” Kaitlyn said.

“That’s because it never looked like a prickle bush to you,” he pointed out, “it has some kind of defense to prevent me from looking too deeply at it. I almost wish I could have met this witch who lived here. She must have been a genius.”

Kaitlyn couldn’t help but feel a little jealous and he looked at her and quickly said, “Kailtyn, that isn’t anything about you. You have a depth of power any mage would feel jealous about. As you develop your knowledge, I think you will be amazing. She was probably hundreds of years old when she built this house, you are… twenty?”

“Almost,” she admitted and felt a little silly for being upset.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of right now,” he said, “Remember, you are doing things that most wizards do only after three or maybe even five decades of building their magic. Your learning is completely different than anything I’ve heard others attempting.”

She took a deep breath and tried to nod, but she then shook her head and said, “Master, how do I get my curse under control so I can go home?”

He folded his hands in front of him and rested his chin on his laced fingers. He finally spoke and said, “There are a few options. I’ve been trying to find out more about unicorns and curses. There is much on the benefits of white unicorns, but the rumors and stories of the black unicorn are more difficult.”

“A unicorn is a well of magic themselves, so the amount of power they might be able to pull on is…. well the stories of white unicorns achieving feats few mages could muster even with weeks of work are not unheard of. The spell to revive the dead… it’s common enough for white unicorns to do such things and I know of a few rituals which could accomplish some of what a unicorn does. It would take weeks, even in a mana-rich environment to gather the power.”

Kaitlyn shifted a little and said, “Maybe they do something more efficient?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been looking into it, but I haven’t found anyone who has ever been able to study unicorns. They don’t like people, even if they will come to the defense of virgins - they defend virgins, and then they leave again.”

“So unicorns are excessively powerful but no one understand them,” Kaitlyn said.

“If you want to simplify it all, yes,” Master Garthis replied. “So I’ve had more luck with curse magic, but it still may not be as helpful as you were hoping for.”

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“Don’t get my hopes up,” Kaitlyn agreed.

“There are wizards who had studied curses more extensively,” Master Garthis said, “both for good and for bad reasons.”

“How can a curse be for good?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Curses have two elements,” Master Garthis said, “a catalyst which activates a response. So one of the ways it has been used positively, is in dealing with sentient creatures who got into…. unsavory habits. A dragon who got a little too into human-hunting. In that spell, the wizard set up the catalyst as when the dragon touched a human and the response was for the dragon to fall asleep.”

“So every time the dragon touched a human, bam. Asleep?”

“Exactly,” the mage said, “it deterred the dragon from hunting humans. Mostly by making it so every time he fell asleep the humans apparently left him an offering of cattle. When he woke up he ate and went back to his cave. Eventually the dragon just stopped wanting humans because he developed a taste for cows instead.”

“So what is my catalyst?” Kaitlyn asked. “What is a catalyst?”

“A catalyst is something that instigates, sorry starts, an event or a chain of events,” Master Garthis said. “Arguably, planting an acorn is the catalyst for a new tree. Extremely simplified example, but it gets the idea across.”

“So…. my catalyst is….?” Kaitlyn struggled. “I just feel pain constantly… there isn’t a catalyst?”

“There must be a catalyst,” Master Garthis said. “There is always a catalyst. We just need to identify it and then we can begin to work around it if we have to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that dragon could have started using flames to kill humans, but because he wanted to capture them instead…” the mage said, “the simple catalyst of touching a human could have easily been circumvented. The curse worked to change the dragon’s behavior because the dragon had a precise way of behaving.”

“So I need to try to identify my catalyst,” Kaitlyn said. “Could it simply be distance from this place? Since this is where the unicorn cursed me.”

“That would be a simple enough catalyst to test,” Master Garthis said, “it takes you about three hours to notice the pain, right?”

“Yes,” Kaitlyn said.

“Linnmell, can you see how far you could carry Kaitlyn in three hours?” Master Garthis called over to the dragon.

She nodded and offered a clawed hand to Kaitlyn to help the girl climb onto her back. Kaitlyn hesitated only a minute and then said, “What if it is distance?”

“I will turn around if you begin to feel pain before three hours,” Linnmel said, “Fapallo, climb on with her. If something begins to go wrong faster than she can let me know, you can help us.”

Fapallo nodded and rose from his favorite sunshine location on the roof to climb on his mother’s large back. Kaitlyn climbed up and suddenly realized she had no idea what flying would be like. She bit back a scream when Linnmel launched into the air.

Kaitlyn clutched Fapallo and fought panic as they climbed above the trees. When Linnmel leveled out hundreds of feet in the air Kaitlyn slowly unclenched to look around. The canopy of trees looked like solid ground from this height.

They went two hours away and there was still no pain. Kaitly got an appreciation of just how large this forest was. She couldn’t help but wonder how she had gotten this far in two days. She was pretty sure it had only been two days she had fled from Claus. Maybe it was three, but regardless how had she covered so much distance?

As soon as they landed Linnmel said, “It cannot be distance. Two hours away and two hours back, and there was not any pain at all.”

Master Garthis took her hand to help her down from Linnmel’s back and said, “I am sorry, take some time to recover. We’ll keep trying to figure out your catalyst.”

Kaitlyn’s legs were surprisingly shaky. Fapallo whistled, “I’m told it’s the same if you ride a horse all day.”

“Except I am not a horse,” Linnmel replied with a slight undertone of a hiss to show her annoyance. Fapallo gave the larger dragon a mischievous grin and quickly took off towards the forest edge. The large dragon gave a half-hearted glare after him and then turned back to Master Garthis.

“Well, if distance is not a catalyst, that might be a good thing,” Master Garthis said. “When we do determine your catalyst you may be able to take trips away from this hut.”

“What else could be a catalyst?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Anything really,” Master Garthis said, “this will definitely require that we spend time experimenting with various catalyst which exist around here. A catalyst can either be something you require, like drinking from this well, or something which you trigger when you do something or encounter something.”

“So it might be that there is something in the forest which I encounter and acts as a catalyst when I try to leave on foot?” Kaitlyn asked.

“Hmmm,” the wizard said, “that is certainly possible.”

“Master, why would the unicorn want to trap me here?” Kaitlyn asked.

“I don’t know that either,” Master Garthis said. “Honestly, the motives of this unicorn have to be one of the most baffling elements of this entire mystery. It keeps you alive but might be torturing you constantly if you had not been fortunate enough to be in a house that can leech the pain from you.”

“Could the unicorn have known the house could do this?” Kaitlyn asked.

“I don’t think so, until you started fueling the spells again with your magic, it just looked like an abandoned hut,” Master Garthis said, shaking his head.

Kaitlyn shivered a little and for a moment considered asking Linnmel to carry her far away, regardless of the risks. This house and this curse scared her. There were a lot of things which felt contradictory. Master Garthis stood and said, “Well, I am sorry we could not get more done today Kaitlyn, I’ll try to come in just a few days because otherwise it might be two or three weeks.”