This is a first draft of Chapter 7 of The Unicorn Guide, the fourth book in the 11 Quests series. Books 4, 5 and 6 tell a new story, so you can read The Unicorn Guide even if you haven’t yet read the first three books. Since this is a first draft, if you spot any errors please let me know! I’d be happy to find out in email and fix it. Feel free to send along any other comments you may have. Make sure you read Chapter 1 first!
Chapter 7
The Machines
Esmeralda picked up the pace and Tumi saw that both the path and the border veered off to the right. During a few more minutes of brisk walking, the trees continued to extend just beyond the border. Then, the line of trees started extending farther out beyond the border. A narrow and less used trail branched off on the right, heading straight for the border. The unicorn turned onto the side trail and Tumi followed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Tumi could see the green curtain of the border, shimmering, sparkling and swaying as they approached it. He couldn’t see it directly ahead, but he felt it as they stepped through. It felt like a momentary cool breeze, pushing them away from the Lost Jungle. Even though he had spent almost his entire life outside the Lost Jungle, it already felt unsettling to him to be away from the land of magic in the Amazon.
“Where are we going? Is it okay for you to be outside of the Lost Jungle?” Tumi asked, speaking a bit faster and in a higher pitch than normal.
“Try to be quiet,” Esmeralda whispered. “If there are any people nearby, they’re more likely to hear us now that we’re past the border. We need to come out here to make sure they don’t get in.”
They rapidly approached the edge of the jungle. Tumi and Esmeralda stood in the shade of the trees, invisible to the group of men standing in the sunlight of the clearing. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and the men appeared to be leaving. One man climbed up onto the back of a horse while the others stepped into a van.
Tumi watched the van with interest. He had heard of cars and other machines of modern civilization, but had never seen them or even imagined that he would. He heard the engine start up and watched as the van bounced along the two thin tracks of dirt that led across the field. A small cloud of dust rose up behind the van which shortly entered the jungle on the other side of the field. The man on the horse followed behind more slowly, and Tumi’s attention started moving around the field.
“What is that?” he asked, a little more loudly than he had planned. Esmeralda looked in the direction in which Tumi was pointing and saw a large machine with black tires and a bright yellow body. The machine had a glass-enclosed box at the top and what looked to Tumi like a giant arm at the end of which was a huge, cupped metal hand with claws.
“That,” Esmeralda explained, “is my target. I have heard it called a backhoe. They use it to dig up the earth. They also use it to knock over trees and then dig up the roots.”
“Your target? What can you do to a machine like that?”
“You’ll see!”
Tumi could swear that the unicorn was grinning, and he felt certain that it was an expression you’d never see on a horse.
The two crept from the safety of the jungle into the clearing. One of the cows turned lazily to watch them and then went back to grazing. The man on the horse was nearly to the jungle across the field and there was no one else in sight.
Convinced that the way was clear, Esmeralda quickly ran straight at the machine. Just before reaching it, she lowered her head and her horn slid straight into one of the tires. She jumped back and the tire slowly flattened, its rim coming to rest on the ground. She ran around and did the same to the other three tires. Tumi stared in amazement as she then proceeded to push her horn straight into the metal body of the backhoe in three different places. It seemed to take her no effort at all. That horn must be sharp!
Tumi saw that Esmeralda’s horn was covered in some dark, slimy ooze.
“Yuck,” she said. “Let’s get back in among the leaves. Maybe you can help me clean that stuff off my horn.”
Tumi plucked a large leaf from a plant at the edge of the jungle and started wiping the goop off Esmeralda’s horn as they stepped back into the shade of the trees.
Meanwhile, the man on the horse was galloping back toward the machine as fast as his horse could go.
Continue reading with chapter 8