Red Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  Abruptly she remembered how Honj had deliberately caught the feasting peeve's sneeze in an appalled noble's hat. Honj—

  The peeve.

  Where was it? She had forgotten it. She had not seen it since this morning.

  III

  When she was with Honj, his soldiers, the Locusts, had reminded her of the soldiers of Jaive's fortress. Now the captain and his second reminded her, of course, of Honj's men. So she liked being with them. The first thing she had liked here.

  Wandering about in the frosty night sands below Jaive's fortress, the second carrying a torch, they were searching for the peeve.

  As they completed their circuit and started round a second time, she saw again the red and green window of the hall, glowing only five feet above the dunes. It was impossible to see in through the panes, though faint music still sounded.

  The captain looked miserable, and Tanaquil was afraid, after all the food and drink, he would be ill. As if sensing her thought, the second announced, "One good thing about that stinker's magic meals—no hangover."

  The second had stopped sneezing promptly following his last magnificent effort. Tanaquil had almost laughed, watching him brushing Worabex down with the wet mauve hanky, saying, "Oh pardon me, sir, what a ghastly thing," etc.

  They had all laughed when they got outside, before gloom returned.

  "Any chance it could have run off?" added the second. "I mean, it's a peeve."

  "No, not really. My familiar, you see," said Tanaquil. Here, of all places, they would understand that.

  "Oh, right. Well, no sign yet."

  Tanaquil was worried. She told herself that the peeve, as she was, had become invulnerable. Nothing surely could hurt it. But supposing it were trapped somewhere?

  She called, "Peeeeve!" This sounded daft. Then they all did it. Dafter.

  "I think probably," she said, "it's just gone off exploring old haunts. It can usually find me. Sometimes it was missing for a while. I'll leave my window open. . . . Thank you anyway. You've been kind."

  They always had been kind in her childhood. Finding her things to mend when she was going mad with bore-dom. Tonight, the captain had mentioned the cannon she had mended, twice.

  They went round to a door and idled there. Tanaquil looked towards the rock hills, half a mile off. The moon was up, half full, and touched them with gilt. It was there she had found—the peeve had found—the bones of the black unicorn, from the Perfect World. And so begun all this.

  Could the peeve be there?

  But she could not ask these weary, fed-up men to go that way, and if she said she would go they would feel they must. She would have to trust the peeve. After all, there had been times, as she said, it had gone off in other lands, in unknown cities, in strange countryside. Though perhaps it had never been missing for as long as this.

  "You go in," said the captain to his second. "I'd just like a word with Lady Tanaquil, if she won't mind."

  The second clicked his heels again, and went off.

  "What is it, captain?"

  "Well, I don't know how to ask you, frankly."

  Tanaquil braced herself. She knew he was going to speak about her mother. But at last he looked her directly in the eyes. He said, flatly, "I understand your sorcery is in mending, madam. Well, you always could mend things beautifully." He paused, swallowed. He said, "Can you mend a broken heart?"

  "Oh, captain." Was it a witty joke? No, for he looked deadly serious. "I don't think it's the same thing," she said.

  "The old stinker," he too meant Worabex, "said you mended some chap's broken arm."

  Honj . . . "That was a bone, though. I don't—"

  "I know the heart doesn't actually break, madam. Just feels as if it has. In bits. I don't know where I am. I never asked anything from her, you see. I made do with just looking out for her. Now I'm as much use as the cannon. The fortress is sorcerously guarded. If a friend approaches, up goes a pink firework. And a red one for an enemy. Then the demons get ready. Or so he says."

  "My mother," said Tanaquil, "valued you very highly."

  "Did she? Yes, perhaps. Not any more."

  As he was speaking, Tanaquil seemed to see right into his chest, and there the heart was, not as it would be in fact, but an exact symbolic heart shape, and made of pure gold. It had cracked in two.

  She thought, maybe sympathetic magic might help after all. And the old challenge—why not? She said to him, "I'll try."

  She put her hand flat on the captain's chest, where in her imagination she could see the broken golden heart.

  She visualized the heart coming together, sealing tight. In a moment it was done. Now the heart had only one honorable scar.

  Some pain it seemed you had to suffer. But this pain would only wear him out. It would be no use. She said in her mind to the healed heart, Be free. Be whole. Be ready for another.

  Then she stepped back.

  The captain blinked in the moonlight.

  "The God," he said. Then he smiled. He looked younger. "Like a ton weight lifting off me. You are good, aren't you? What a girl, er, madam. Yes. Jaive's a fine woman. Good luck to her. But, plenty more fish in the sea."

  He turned in at the door, and held it wide for her.

  As they walked through the corridor, he whistled under his breath. At the foot of the stairs, he said, "I can't thank you enough. You've really helped me."

  "I'm glad. I hope so. Don't . . . be disappointed if . . ."

  "I'll sleep on it. If I feel like this tomorrow, I'll be off. And my second will go with me. I mean, if we've gone, you'll know I'm all right."

  Yet one more pang of loss went through Tanaquil. This her reward for helping, to lose her only friend.

  He mistook her expression.

  "I really think you've done it." He shook her hand now. Then leaned and kissed her cheek. “The best of fortune to you, lady. You deserve great happiness."

  As she climbed the stairs, she thought, If I healed his broken heart, why not mine? But she knew then she wanted the pain. It was all she had left of Honj.

  About an hour before sunrise, the peeve came in through her opened window. She woke as it plopped down hard on her stomach.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Mpp," said the peeve. It looked extremely sheepish, actually embarrassed. What had it done? But she fell asleep again, with its sandy-smelling snoring fur under her chin. And in the morning, going up to the battlements, Tanaquil found no one. While from the turret where the captain had lived, everything was gone. He had left her a note, or left everyone a note. It was scratched into the wall. It read:

  Plenty more fish in the sea for me.

  IV

  So she kept the pain.

  It was all she had of him.

  And she thought of him every morning, almost, for five or ten, sometimes for twenty or thirty minutes. And then she tried to put him out of her mind for the rest of the day.

  How dull yet irritating the days were, too. Like the time here, before she had run away. Jaive shut up in the sorcerium, or dawdling through the fortress with Worabex. Shouts of laughter. Bangs of random magic. Apples changing into lemons, lemons changing to mice, an ostrich running through the corridors bleating. A rainbow that dropped down colors that stained everything for a whole afternoon. Like before, worse than before.

  While the peeve—the peeve was definitely up to something.

  Most nights it was absent, from sunset until sunrise, or longer. During the day it went missing too. It gave off, rather than its usual air of busyness, a sly, furtive, secrecy. She had not said to it, "Where do you go? What do you do?" She thought it was out exploring. Yet, this odd human guiltiness hung round it. It was shifty.

  And, on the other hand, it was always appearing and trying to cheer her up, distract her, feed her. Somehow it constantly rustled up or stole bits of bread, cheese, squashy fruits. Probably these were leftovers from the dinners or breakfasts the magician and sorceress shared. Tanaquil, to please the peeve, t
ended to eat what it brought in preference to the elaborate dishes left by the demons outside the guest room door. (She had . . . persuaded the demons not to come in at all, ever.)

  In the first couple of days after the captain and his second had gone away, Tanaquil had roamed about the fortress. She had seen the empty basement kitchen, already thick with blown-in sand and spiderwebs. Neither Jaive nor Worabex nor the demons needed to employ anything as ordinary as a kitchen. Imagined pictures of the cook, the kitchen boys, Pillow's child with her mended doll, hovered in the air.

  Other parts of the fortress seemed changed, as Tanaquil had first suspected. Some chambers, before neglected, had blossomed with rich furnishings and mechanical toys. Some rooms seemed to have disappeared or been relocated. The garden courtyard, viewed even from the guest window, had some new trees, with singing flowers or silver fruits growing on them. The goats, always now in some mode of escape, occasionally got into the fortress. But they allowed the demons to milk them. This was done for the goats' own comfort, not because their milk was needed. The pails of white liquid stood in corners, turning to cheese, until the demons came back and vanished them with a wave. Once the peeve, suddenly appearing, got to one first and drank half the bucket, before the demon shooed it off. It was useless for the peeve to try to bite the demon. All of them were physically insubstantial. In case the demon might retaliate, however, Tanaquil dragged the peeve away.

  "You look very smart," said Tanaquil to the peeve, not really thinking. "Very combed."

  "Yes. Much groom." It gave her a look, went "Sprr," and bounded abruptly off.

  Only later did it occur to her the peeve had seemed to think it had just made some sort of mistake. As if to be groomed was an error.

  At dinner it reappeared, as it normally did, never, incredibly, seeming interested at all in the tray of delicacies at the door, bringing Tanaquil today one very beautiful green fig.

  "Thank you. That is nice. Sweet." She ate it, and the peeve sat on the floor, now and then turning round, twiddling its tail. "If you want to go out again, please go ahead."

  "Out? Just in."

  "Yes. But you don't seem settled."

  The peeve jumped up on the bed, turned a somersault, ran up a curtain, fell down another curtain, and gained the window embrasure.

  "Big moon," said the peeve.

  "Yes, it's full tonight."

  "Just must—" said the peeve, and scrambled over the edge, rummaging off across the roofs again.

  She thought, Did it ever know a full moon was coming before? It had always seemed keen on the moon, but surprised by the moon. Maybe it had learned the moon's phases.

  In a small stable court the camel was well cared for, fed and watered, even exercised by demons. Tanaquil did not like this, but she realized she had neglected the camel. It really was going to be no use lying on her bed or walking up and down corridors, thinking of Honj all day. It had been supposed to be five minutes for Honj.

  As for Jaive, since the feast, Tanaquil had met her. That had to be the term. Met. No more arranged gatherings. She would simply come on Jaive and Worabex, always together, in some room or passage, as when chasing the bleating ostrich, for example, with screams of adolescent mirth. They made her feel very old.

  She noticed that they now wore simple, spell-stained garments. Jaive's hair was again a mess, and once—just once—Tanaquil was sure she saw a mousp tangled up in the mane of Worabex.

  Another time, she discovered them having a sumptuous picnic on a staircase, with all the carvings flying round them. The wooden vultures were catching bits of meat, that Worabex threw for them, on the wing.

  "Oh, Tanaquil. Do come and have some—"

  "Er, no, thanks. I'm just going . . . to my room for . . . something."

  But they did not look sad when she left them there. She was quite superfluous.

  On one occasion, too, she came upon her glamorous old nurse. She was dressed up in cloth-of-gold, with highheeled slippers, and two pet rats with pearl necklets. The peeve, luckily, was elsewhere.

  "How have you been?"

  "Lovely, dear. And who are you?"

  Fearing that the old woman's memory had failed her after all, Tanaquil explained who she was.

  "Oh that Tanaquil," said the nurse, cuttingly. "You've aged, dear."

  She then strode vigorously off on her three-inch heels, the rats skidding after her. Tanaquil distinctly heard one rat say, "Who that?" The other replied, "I dunno. Who care?"

  Which meant that at last the rats too had caught the knack of speech, and also that no one, absolutely none of them, cared about her.

  She had come back to be at least dutiful, perhaps, daughterly. But she was redundant. Had ten or twelve days passed, or more? Surely, it was already time to go.

  But where? To whom? To what?

  Tanaquil was dreaming. She knew she was. The desert stretched away from her mother's fortress, covered in layers of deep crimson, peach pink and purple flowers. And over this a unicorn ran towards her.

  She felt great happiness seeing it. It had not forgotten her. Conceivably, it needed her for something.

  Then, as the sun rose higher in her dream, Tanaquil saw it was not either of the unicorns she had known before. Not the black unicorn with its moon-sea-fire mane, nor even the gold steam-driven unicorn of Lizra's war.

  This unicorn was russet red.

  The mane, the tail, the fringes of the fetlocks, were of a strange greenish bronze.

  But its horn was red copper, the very color of some dress Tanaquil had worn, sometime, recently.

  Nevertheless, a unicorn it was. It spun over the flowery sands, coming straight at her. And all at once she saw the metallic horn was levelled at her heart.

  Something hit exactly there. She shouted and sat up, and the dream fell down in fragments like a broken mirror.

  It was just sunrise. The peeve, outlined with soft gold, was rolling down the bed, having landed on her quite hard a moment before.

  "Don't do that."

  "Sorry."

  "It's all right. Just don't. Though I'm glad you woke me."

  The peeve righted itself and washed rapidly. Shook itself. It lifted its front paw. Its topaz eyes were huge.

  "Found something."

  "What?" Tanaquil felt slow. Her mind was already racing.

  "Want show."

  In this way it had come to her, bringing the moonlight bone of the first unicorn.

  She said, before she could think, "From the rock hills, the arch like the unicorn gate, do you mean from there?"

  The peeve's eyes bulged.

  "Whup."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Come see," said the peeve. Then it blinked and looked down. "No. Me tell first."

  Enthralled, tingling with excitement and hope, she leaned forward.

  "Tell me, then."

  "Was playing. Then she. We play. Play good. Then hunt. Then I go rock, and play there, with she."

  "Wait," said Tanaquil, "she? Who?" She sounded like the nurse's rat.

  The peeve began to search carefully, virtuously, for a flea. It turned round, tumbled over, raised a back leg, snorted.

  "Who is she?" impatiently said Tanaquil. She was only puzzled. And yet, within her, the sudden hope-flame, dying . . .

  "Name Adma. Have name. Not speak. From rocks. Nice. Sweet."

  "Adma?"

  "Nice."

  Tanaquil, bemused, sat back, but she was cold inside, and heavy. It was as if part of her had turned to stone.

  The peeve raised its head. It stared at Tanaquil, fierce, defiant. Human.

  "Mine," said the peeve. "My girl."

  After Tanaquil had washed and dressed and put on her boots, and drunk some of the tea left by the door, and after the peeve had upset a bowl of raisin and nut porridge and washed and dressed in that, they went to meet the peeve's 'girl.'

  Tanaquil's heart—and she could visualize it—was like lead. But she tried to seem bright and pleased.

  The
peeve, no fool, now said little.

  There was a way over the roofs, and Tanaquil and the peeve climbed out, and around. After a while Tanaquil grasped they had come up, over gulleys and slopes and flat bits, to the eave of the library. The peeve led her through the dry canal between the roofs where red flowers grew, past the old cistern.

  "Is it your original nest?" Tanaquil asked politely.

  "Yes, good nest."

  They had to jump the tiny space with the large drop below. There was no one in the kitchen yard down there, no one hanging out washing. And no soldiers scanned them, nervous or drunk, from the battlements.

  The ancient ravens' nest was all gone. They went by the place, then the peeve said, "Go ahead me. Tell her you coming."

  "Oh yes, of course."

  He—foolish to continue saying it—he rattled away down the channel.

  After a minute she heard him squeak, and then his most soprano call. He used her name. "Tanaquil!" Had the peeve called her by name ever before?

  And she was to go in alone. He was waiting there with his friend. His mate.

  Under the dark overhang, she came to the peeve nest. It was expectedly full of things, cushions, brushes, meat bones, jewelry stolen—presumably—from jaive or the old women. It had the familiar smell of musky fur and warmth.

  Bolt upright sat the peeve. And, just behind him, another peeve. Who must be Adma.

  She was smaller, her pelt a little more blonde. One of the wild peeves that lived normally by the rock hills, she did not, he said, speak. Both her paws were down, but her ears were up and her tail was very, very bushy. Either she was anxious or angry. Her eyes were the roundest, most brilliant jewels in the nest.

  Tanaquil looked at the female peeve.

  Did she understand human speech? Had the peeve taught her? Would she want to be talked to as Tanaquil talked to the peeve, or in a more . . . animal way? Definitely not oochy-coochy-coo.

  "Hallo," said Tanaquil. She added lamely, "Your nest is very nice."

  Adma's tail got bigger, then smoothed off. Her eyes seemed to soften. She made a soft, cautious chirrup.