F&SF BK OF UNICORN VOL1.indb

by Gordon Van Gelder

  For a brace of years Barbara had wandered more and more, impelled by a thing she could not name—if indeed she was aware of it at all. She knew only that over-the-rise was a strange and friendly place, and that it was a fine thing on arriving there to find another rise to go over. It may very well be that she now needed someone to love, for loving is a most receiving thing, as anyone can attest who has been loved without returning it. It is the one who is loved who must give and give. And she found her love, not in her wandering, but at the market. The shape of her love, his colors and sounds, were so much with her that when she saw him first it was without surprise; and thereafter, for a very long while, it was quite enough that he lived. He gave to her by being alive, by setting the air a-thrum with his mighty voice, by his stride, which was, for a man afoot, the exact analog of what the horseman calls a “perfect seat.”

  After seeing him, of course, she received twice and twice again as much as ever before. A tree was straight and tall for the magnificent sake of being straight and tall, but wasn’t straightness a part of him, and being tall? The oriole gave more now than song, and the hawk more than walking the wind, for had they not hearts like his, warm blood and his same striving to keep it so for tomorrow? And more and more, over-the-rise was the place for her, for only there could there be more and still more things like him.

  But when she found the pure pool in the brackish Bogs, there was no more over-the-rise for her. It was a place without hardness or hate, where the aspens trembled only for wonder, and where all contentment was rewarded. Every single rabbit there was the champion nose-twinkler, and every waterbird could stand on one leg the longest, and proud of it. Shelf-fungi hung to the willow-trunks, making that certain, single purple of which the sunset is incapable, and a tanager and a cardinal gravely granted one another his definition of “red.”

  Here Barbara brought a heart light with happiness, large with love, and set it down on the blue moss. And since the loving heart can receive more than anything else, so it is most needed, and Barbara took the best bird songs, and the richest colors, and the deepest peace, and all the other things which are most worth giving. The chipmunks brought her nuts when she was hungry and the prettiest stones when she was not. A green snake explained to her, in pantomime, how a river of jewels may flow uphill, and three mad otters described how a bundle of joy may slip and slide down and down and be all the more joyful for it. And there was the magic moment when a midge hovered, and then a honeybee, and then a bumblebee, and at last a hummingbird; and there they hung, playing a chord in A-sharp minor.

  Then one day the pool fell silent, and Barbara learned why the water was pure.

  The aspens stopped trembling.

  The rabbits all came out of the thicket and clustered on the blue bank, backs straight, ears up, and all their noses as still as coral.

  The waterbirds stepped backwards, like courtiers, and stopped on the brink with their heads turned sidewise, one eye closed, the better to see with the other.

  The chipmunks respectfully emptied their cheek pouches, scrubbed their paws together, and tucked them out of sight; then stood still as tent pegs.

  The pressure of growth around the pool ceased: the very grass waited.

  The last sound of all to be heard—and by then it was very quiet—was the soft whick! of an owl’s eyelids as it awoke to watch.

  He came like a cloud, the earth cupping itself to take each of his golden hooves. He stopped on the bank and lowered his head, and for a brief moment his eyes met Barbara’s, and she looked into a second universe of wisdom and compassion. Then there was the arch of the magnificent neck, the blinding flash of his golden horn.

  And he drank, and he was gone. Everyone knows the water is pure, where the unicorn drinks.

  How long had he been there? How long gone? Did time wait too, like the grass?

  “And couldn’t he stay?” she wept. “Couldn’t he stay?”

  To have seen the unicorn is a sad thing; one might never see him more. But then—to have seen the unicorn!

  She began to make a song.

  It was late when Barbara came in from the Bogs, so late the moon was bleached with cold and fleeing to the horizon. She struck the highroad just below the Great House and turned to pass it and go out to her garden house.

  Near the locked main gate an animal was barking. A sick animal, a big animal . . .

  Barbara could see in the dark better than most, and soon saw the creature clinging to the gate, climbing, uttering that coughing moan as it went. At the top it slipped, fell outward, dangled; then there was a ripping sound, and it fell heavily to the ground and lay still and quiet.

  She ran to it, and it began to make the sound again. It was a man, and he was weeping. It was her love, her love, who was tall and straight and so very alive—her love, battered and bleeding, puffy, broken, his clothes torn, crying.

  Now of all times was the time for a lover to receive, to take from the loved one his pain, his trouble, his fear. “Oh, hush, hush,” she whispered, her hands touching his bruised face like swift feathers. “It’s all over now. It’s all over.”

  She turned him over on his back and knelt to bring him up sitting. She lifted one of his thick arms around her shoulder. He was very heavy, but she was very strong. When he was upright, gasping weakly, she looked up and down the road in the waning moonlight. Nothing, no one. The Great House was dark. Across the road, though, was a meadow with high hedgerows which might break the wind a little.

  “Come, my love, my dear love,” she whispered. He trembled violently.

  All but carrying him, she got him across the road, over the shallow ditch, and through a gap in the hedge. She almost fell with him there. She gritted her teeth and set him down gently. She let him lean against the hedge, and then ran and swept up great armfuls of sweet broom. She made a tight springy bundle of it and set it on the ground beside him, and put a corner of her cloak over it, and gently lowered his head until it was pillowed. She folded the rest of the cloak about him. He was very cold.

  There was no water near, and she dared not leave him. With her kerchief she cleaned some of the blood from his face. He was still very cold. He said, “You devil. You rotten little devil.”

  “Shh.” She crept in beside him and cradled his head. “You’ll be warm in a minute.”

  “Stand still,” he growled. “Keep running away.”

  “I won’t run away,” she whispered. “Oh, my darling, you’ve been hurt, so hurt. I won’t leave you. I promise I won’t leave you.”

  He lay very still. He made the growling sound again.

  “I’ll tell you a lovely thing,” she said softly. “Listen to me, think about the lovely thing,” she crooned.

  “There’s a place in the bog, a pool of pure water, where the trees live beautifully, willow and aspen and birch, where everything is peaceful, my darling, and the flowers grow without tearing their petals. The moss is blue and the water is like diamonds.”

  “You tell me stories in a thousand voices,” he muttered.

  “Shh. Listen, my darling. This isn’t a story, it’s a real place. Four miles north and a little west, and you can see the trees from the ridge with the two dwarf oaks. And I know why the water is pure!” she cried gladly. “I know why!”

  He said nothing. He took a deep breath and it hurt him, for he shuddered painfully.

  “The unicorn drinks there,” she whispered. “I saw him!”

  Still he said nothing. She said, “I made a song about it. Listen, this is the song I made:

  And He—suddenly gleamed! My dazzled eyes

  Coming from outer sunshine to this green

  And secret gloaming, met without surprise

  The vision. Only after, when the sheen

  And Splendor of his going fled away,

  I knew amazement, wonder, and despair,

  That he should come—and pass—and would not stay,

  The Silken-swift—the gloriously Fair!

  That he should c
ome—and pass—and would not stay,

  So that, forever after, I must go,

  Take the long road that mounts against the day,

  Travelling in the hope that I shall know

  Again that lifted moment, high and sweet,

  Somewhere—on purple moor or windy hill—

  Remembering still his wild and delicate feet,

  The magic and the dream—remembering still!

  His breathing was more regular. She said, “I truly saw him!”

  “I’m blind,” he said. “Blind, I’m blind.”

  “Oh, my dear .. .”

  He fumbled for her hand, found it. For a long moment he held it. Then, slowly, he brought up his other hand and with them both he felt her hand, turned it about, squeezed it. Suddenly he grunted, half sitting. “You’re here.”

  “Of course, darling. Of course I’m here.”

  “Why?” he shouted. “Why? Why? Why all of this? Why blind me?” He sat up, mouthing, and put his great hand on her throat. “Why do all that if . . .” The words ran together into an animal noise. Wine and witchery, anger and agony boiled in his veins.

  Once she cried out.

  Once she sobbed.

  “Now,” he said, “You’ll catch no unicorns. Get away from me.” He cuffed her.

  “You’re mad. You’re sick,” she cried.

  “Get away,” he said ominously.

  Terrified, she rose. He took the cloak and hurled it after her. It almost toppled her as she ran away, crying silently. After a long time, from behind the hedge, the sick, coughing sobs began again.

  Three weeks later Rita was in the market when a hard hand took her upper arm and pressed her into the angle of a cottage wall. She did not start. She flashed her eyes upward and recognized him, and then said composedly, “Don’t touch me.”

  “I need you to tell me something,” he said. “And tell me you will!” His voice was as hard as his hand.

  “I’ll tell you anything you like,” she said. “But don’t touch me.”

  He hesitated, then released her. She turned to him casually. “What is it?” Her gaze darted across his face and its almost-healed scars. The small smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.

  His eyes were slits. “I have to know this: why did you make up all that . . . prettiness, that food, that poison . . . just for me? You could have had me for less.”

  She smiled. “Just for you? It was your turn, that’s all.”

  He was genuinely surprised. “It’s happened before?”

  She nodded. “Whenever it’s the full of the moon—and the squire’s away.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “You forget yourself!” she said sharply. Then, smiling, “It is the truth, though.”

  “I’d’ve heard talk—”

  “Would you now? And tell me—how many of your friends know about your humiliating adventure?”

  He hung his head.

  She nodded. “You see? They go away until they’re healed, and they come back and say nothing. And they always will.”

  “You’re a devil . . . Why do you do it? Why?”

  “I told you,” she said openly. “I’m a woman and I act like a woman in my own way. No man will ever touch me, though. I am virgin and shall remain so.”

  “You’re what?” he roared.

  She held up a restraining, ladylike glove. “Please,” she said, pained.

  “Listen,” he said, quietly now, but with such intensity that for once she stepped back a pace. He closed his eyes, thinking hard. “You told me—the pool, the pool of the unicorn, and a song, wait. ‘The Silken-swift, the gloriously Fair . . .’ Remember? And then I—I saw to it that you’d never catch a unicorn!”

  She shook her head, complete candor in her face. “I like that, ‘the Silken-swift.’ Pretty. But believe me—no! That isn’t mine.”

  He put his face close to hers, and though it was barely a whisper, it came out like bullets. “Liar! Liar! I couldn’t forget. I was sick, I was hurt, I was poisoned, but I know what I did!” He turned on his heel and strode away.

  She put the thumb of her glove against her upper teeth for a second, then ran after him. “Del!”

  He stopped but, rudely, would not turn. She rounded him, faced him. “I’ll not have you believing that of me—it’s the one thing I have left,” she said tremulously.

  He made no attempt to conceal his surprise. She controlled her expression with a visible effort, and said, “Please. Tell me a little more—just about the pool, the song, whatever it was.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t know!” she flashed. She was deeply agitated.

  He said with mock patience, “You told me of a unicorn pool out on the Bogs. You said you had seen him drink there. You made a song about it. And then I—”

  “Where? Where was this?”

  “You forget so soon?”

  “Where? Where did it happen?”

  “In the meadow, across the road from your gate, where you followed me,” he said. “Where my sight came back to me, when the sun came up.”

  She looked at him blankly, and slowly her face changed. First the imprisoned smile struggling to be free, and then—she was herself again, and she laughed. She laughed a great ringing peal of the laughter that had plagued him so, and she did not stop until he put one hand behind his back, then the other, and she saw his shoulders swell with the effort to keep from striking her dead.

  “You animal!” she said, good-humoredly. “Do you know what you’ve done? Oh, you . . . you animal!” She glanced around to see that there were no ears to hear her. “I left you at the foot of the terrace steps,” she told him. Her eyes sparkled. “Inside the gates, you understand? And you . . .”

  “Don’t laugh,” he said quietly.

  She did not laugh. “That was someone else out there. Who, I can’t imagine. But it wasn’t I.”

  He paled. “You followed me out.”

  “On my soul I did not,” she said soberly. Then she quelled another laugh.

  “That can’t be,” he said. “I couldn’t have . . .”

  “But you were blind, blind and crazy, Del-my-lover!”

  “Squire’s daughter, take care,” he hissed. Then he pulled his big hand through his hair. “It can’t be. It’s three weeks; I’d have been accused . . .”

  “There are those who wouldn’t,” she smiled. “Or—perhaps she will, in time.”

  “There has never been a woman so foul,” he said evenly, looking her straight in the eye. “You’re lying—you know you’re lying.”

  “What must I do to prove it—aside from that which I’ll have no man do?”

  His lip curled. “Catch the unicorn,” he said.

  “If I did, you’d believe I was virgin?”

  “I must,” he admitted. He turned away, then said, over his shoulder, “But—you?”

  She watched him thoughtfully until he left the marketplace. Her eyes sparkled; then she walked briskly to the goldsmith’s, where she ordered a bridle of woven gold.

  If the unicorn pool lay in the Bogs nearby, Rita reasoned, someone who was familiar with that brackish wasteland must know of it. And when she made a list in her mind of those few who travelled the Bogs, she knew whom to ask. With that, the other deduction came readily. Her laughter drew stares as she moved through the marketplace.

  By the vegetable stall she stopped. The girl looked up patiently.

  Rita stood swinging one expensive glove against the other wrist, half-smiling. “So you’re the one.” She studied the plain, inward-turning, peaceful face until Barbara had to turn her eyes away. Rita said, without further preamble, “I want you to show me the unicorn pool in two weeks.”

  Barbara looked up again, and now it was Rita who dropped her eyes. Rita said, “I can have someone else find it, of course. If you’d rather not.” She spoke very clearly, and people turned to listen. They looked from Barbara to Rita and back again, and they waited.

  “I don’t
mind,” said Barbara faintly. As soon as Rita had left, smiling, she packed up her things and went silently back to her house.

  The goldsmith, of course, made no secret of such an extraordinary commission; and that, plus the gossips who had overheard Rita talking to Barbara, made the expedition into a cavalcade. The whole village turned out to see; the boys kept firmly in check so that Rita might lead the way; the young bloods ranged behind her (some a little less carefree than they might be and others snickering behind their hands). Behind them the girls, one or two a little pale, others eager as cats to see the squire’s daughter fail, and perhaps even . . . but then, only she had the golden bridle.

  She carried it casually, but casualness could not hide it, for it was not wrapped, and it swung and blazed in the sun. She wore a flowing white robe, trimmed a little short so that she might negotiate the rough bogland; she had on a golden girdle and little gold sandals, and a gold chain bound her head and hair like a coronet.

  Barbara walked quietly a little behind Rita, closed in with her own thoughts. Not once did she look at Del, who strode somberly by himself.

  Rita halted a moment and let Barbara catch up, then walked beside her. “Tell me,” she said quietly, “why did you come? It needn’t have been you.”

  “I’m his friend,” Barbara said. She quickly touched the bridle with her finger. “The unicorn.”

  “Oh,” said Rita. “The unicorn.” She looked archly at the other girl. “You wouldn’t betray all your friends, would you?”

  Barbara looked at her thoughtfully, without anger. “If—when you catch the unicorn,” she said carefully, “what will you do with him?”

  “What an amazing question! I shall keep him, of course!”

  “I thought I might persuade you to let him go.”

  Rita smiled, and hung the bridle on her other arm. “You could never do that.”