In the second car, Iz was taking it more in stride, but Simon’s ability to poke fun at all of this seemed to have briefly been drowned out by sheer wonder.
Iris felt an unexpected flash of hometown pride.
It’s probably just because I’m about to leave,she told herself.I’m feeling nostalgic for something that’s notquitegone yet.
Her unicorn disagreed:
No, it’s more than that. This could be a good place, if someone would just air it out and make it a little more comfortable.
And what would that take? And how am I supposed to make that happen?
It didn’t have an answer to that, but it tentatively suggested that tastier grass, and also some readily available oats and apples, wouldn’t go amiss.
Well, those weren’t the first changes she would have suggested, but it wasn’t like they could possibly make things here any worse. Simple pleasures like eating oats and apples in unicorn form were underrated.
She and Keith shifted and trotted out ahead of the cars, ready to lead them in.
(Iris cast an amused glance back at Simon, and she was pretty sure she could see him saying, “Notlike Lisa Frank,” with a look of faint awe in his face.)
It wasn’t that long a walk to the Council House, but Iris was still uncomfortably aware of the attention their little processional was attracting. Cars were rare here, and everyone knew all the village vehicles on sight. You could go months or even years without seeing one you couldn’t recognize. To seetwo, and to see a pair of unicorns leading them straight through the center of Purity ... well, it was no wonder that people stopped to gawk.
She held her head up and tried to walk with spirit and grace. She couldn’t help wondering how many of her neighbors would recognize her in her shift form. If they did, it wouldn’t take long for word to get out that Iris was back to causing a stir.
But she was with Keith! That had to make it okay. They were doing all this with Lady Marianne’s blessing—reluctant blessing, admittedly, but still.
And she wasn’t supposed to be thinking like this anymore. Or at least, she wasn’t supposed to be feeling an onrush of terror while she did it. Sure, she was still going to play it safe while she was within the village, but she’d decided to embrace her true self. Why was she so unsettled by the idea that all the old gossip was going to start up again? If it did, the revelation that this had Marianne’s approval would quash it.
Telling herself that didn’t make all her anxiety go away.
So it turned out that self-improvement and self-acceptance weren’t things she could completely master overnight.
Falling in love with Keith had been easy. Fixing herself was going to be a little harder.
But it made sense that these old worries would be haunting her like ghosts. That was how she’d felt about the old Iris, therealIris, back when she’d been trying to be a newer, more spotless version of herself. The person she used to be was still tagging along inside her head, it was just that this time it was the damaged, shame-filled person she’d become after the accident.
She would have to find a way to deal with that.
When they got to the steps of the Council House, she and Keith transformed back, and his team pulled their cars into the circular drive.
“We’ve got looky-loos,” Keith said to Iris under his breath, twitching his head a little in the direction of the people who had poured out onto their porches and doorsteps to gawk.
“I’m guessing if you asked them, they all just felt the sudden need for some fresh air.”
“I don’t like making my friends into a spectacle. This isn’t a circus.”
He was almost as tense as she was, Iris realized. At that, some of her self-reproach melted away.
Okay, so being the version of herself she really wanted to be could take a lifetime of work. So what? He was working on the same thing. They could do it together.
“Whatever they think,” she said in a low voice, “you know that what we’re doing is fine. There’s a lot you probably wouldn’t trust these people’s opinion on. This is just one more thing.”
Keith turned to look at her. His gaze was warm and inexpressibly tender.
“You’re a wise smart person, Iris Lightfoot.”
That was so wrong that it made her laugh.
“No, definitely not. It just seems that way because Ialreadyworried about that. I got out ahead of you and got my worrying done before you caught up.”
