Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt

  “What’s a shimmer?” said Clint. But Buckaroo didn’t hear him, and Edward, who’d returned from looking wistfully down the blue magic vein, nudged Clint with his rump, silently telling him that they’d discuss it later.

  The paladin, finally finding himself after scavenging the site and pouting, moved until he was directly in front of Edward and Clint. He pulled something from his pocket. It was a badge — much smaller and less ornate than the one Clint once carried, but a badge nonetheless. He had the air of a man reaching an important decision.

  “I need your mount,” the man announced, speaking to Clint.

  “Pardon?” said Edward.

  “And I claim one of your sidearms, too,” he added.

  “Pardon?” Clint repeated.

  “My scimitar is contaminated with sand. All of them seem to be,” he said, patting a pouch around his waist that apparently held his fellows’ weapons. “So I’m going to need a weapon.” He extended a hand.

  Clint ignored both hand and request. The layers of ineptitude and inappropriate behavior were downright baffling. The man wasn’t authorized to carry a seven-shooter; it violated the taboo; his hands weren’t large or strong enough to fire one; his shoulder wasn’t sturdy enough to handle its kick. The magic in Clint’s guns would, in all probability, blow off his unauthorized hand purely for spite. Asking a gunslinger for his guns was like asking a woman for her undergarments. And Edward? Edward would gallop through a sea of razors before he’d ride below a man who’s soul he didn’t know and trust.

  “Friend,” said Clint, putting his huge hand on the paladin’s shoulder. “I’m going to do you a favor and ignore everything you’ve just said.”

  “I need to ride in. I need to pursue Stone.”

  “Because you did so well against him just now?”

  “We were surprised.”

  “Yar,” said Edward. “You were.”

  “There is a standing order,” said the paladin. “Stone is wanted. Badly wanted. I need to find him. And I need to bring him in.”

  “That would be a neat trick,” said Clint.

  The paladin pushed Clint’s hand from his shoulder. “I just lost two of my fellow knights!” he blurted. Clint found himself glad to see a genuine reaction from the man. “We’ve lost four rigs to this bandit and the fractures are spreading. You can’t keep pulling at a tear in fabric or it will all fall apart.” He jabbed a finger at the horizon, and the direction Sly Stone had ridden with his gang. “They’re headed toward Nazareth Shiloh. I aim to follow. Are you so stubborn as to keep me from my duty? Stand aside!”

  Edward had walked to the side of the ambush site, between the paladin and Nazareth Shiloh. The man’s finger was still pointing; it looked like he were accusing Edward of a crime.

  “Stand aside yourself,” said Edward.

  The man’s face grew red as he started to march toward Edward. The change was so complete, Clint couldn’t believe it. Maybe this dumb, incompetent knight had some life left in him yet.

  “You will try to keep me from doing my duty? You once served The Realm! You are bound by Realm law — not to mention natural law, if I understand your kind — to…”

  “No,” said Edward, his voice calm. “I mean, stand aside.” And he nodded toward the ground, toward the blue-fire rift in the ground, and to the remains of the Realm stitcher.

  Clint saw Edward’s meaning. He stepped back a few paces, away from the open magic vein, then grabbed the paladin’s forearm and pulled him back as well. The man, unused to being commanded by the stern voice of a unicorn, complied. Buckaroo was already away, looking at his watch and fretting about things that made no sense to the gunslinger.

  Edward lowered his head. His horn started to glow — turning purple and red before settling on a sunny, delighted orange — and then blasted a massive bolt of energy from its tip. The bolt swallowed the machine sitting atop the fracture. For a moment, Clint thought it would explode. Instead, it blew into a billion microscopic pieces, like sand-sized confetti. It looked like the whole thing was made of dust, and someone had just breathed on it hard enough to make it fall apart.

  Then a stronger bolt — one that made a clap like thunder — shot from Edward’s horn and struck the magic vein. The blue hands Clint had seen in the fissure all reached up at once and seemed to grab it from both sides, then pulled the rift together like slamming a door. All four of them shook as the ground jerked and rattled beneath them. The fissure vanished in a fine spray of shaken rock.

  When the rattle was finished, Buckaroo walked to where the fissure and his rig used to be. There was nothing there now but a small, hair-thin line in the clay that would disappear forever once the sands blew across it for an hour.

  “You’re welcome,” Edward said.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  CLOWN WITH SHOTGUNS

  Clint couldn’t quite figure where Edward’s loyalties lay with respect to The Realm and the magic — which, according to Edward, were often more or less at odds — so he asked. He asked why Edward had sealed the leaking vein of magic; he asked why The Realm didn’t use unicorns for stitching jobs all the time (though he suspected it had to do with unicorn pride and their general level of jerkiness); he asked why they were escorting Paladin Havarow and Buckaroo into Nazareth Shiloh and whether or not they were just escorting, or whether Edward actually had plans to help the man and the machine apprehend Sly Stone.

  Clint asked Edward all of this, and Edward’s response was puzzling.

  “HOLY GUNS, THERE’S CHILI HERE!” Edward blurted.

  There were two levels on which Clint was confused. He didn’t know how to react because it was strange to see such unbridled excitement from Edward. He also didn’t know how to react because the notion of a town having chili was as stupid as that of a flying unicorn.

  Clint looked levelly at Edward, but he could pry no further because Havarow, who was walking a few paces ahead with Buckaroo, turned his head at Edward’s gee-whiz, pa! exclamation and quickly had his nose in the gunslinger and unicorn’s business.

  “Did you say chili?”

  “He’s kidding,” said Clint. Then to Edward: “You’re so silly, Edward.”

  Havarow, after a moment’s indecision, returned his attention to the trail. Nazareth Shiloh was only a few miles off, so they all agreed to walk. Edward was tired from stitching the vein, so Clint walked too. Havarow seemed to think he was in charge, and Clint let him believe it. If they encountered bandits along the way, Clint’s bullets would make things clear. For now it was irrelevant.

  Edward’s lips were flapping and loose. His eyes wore a wild look, almost divided and staring in two directions at once.

  “Don’t mess with the paladin and the machine,” Clint told him. “Let’s just deliver them into town. Then we can go — back through the rest of the Lakes O Plenty and to your Elf place.” After a second he added, “By the way, there are no lakes here.”

  “That cactus is mean,” said Edward.

  Clint looked at him. “What?”

  Then, suddenly, the fog vanished from the unicorn’s big blue eyes. His vacant expression cleared. He looked at Clint for a long moment as if angry, like the gunslinger had done something to offend him.

  “We should be on the trail toward Kold and Mai,” Edward said finally, the gee-whiz gone from his voice, his manner once again surly. “He has two of the three Orbs in the Triangulum. Why are we with these fools?”

  “Exactly,” said Clint.

  His hoofs beating a slow tattoo on the hard-packed clay of the ground, Edward continued to stare at the gunslinger.

  “What?”

  “I asked you a question,” said the unicorn.

  Clint looked at Edward for a moment, then shook his head and ignored him. Edward was being obtuse. He was always obtuse. He still hadn’t explained what in the Sands this “Triangulum” thing was, and knowing Edward, he never would — at least not entirely. And now, for some dumb reason, he was playing games.

  Annoye
d, Clint walked faster. He left the unicorn behind and strolled up next to Havarow, deciding to try his luck at pulling Realm news from the paladin. He may never find The Realm again, but at least he could gather some of the latest gossip.

  “Do you think it’s true?” the paladin asked without preamble as Clint came up beside him.

  “I know nar of your man Stone or what might be true or false about him,” the gunslinger said.

  Havarow cleared his throat, scratched his dusty skin with a dirty fingernail, and spit into the sand.

  “I meant what your unicorn says about chili,” he said. “They can see far, can they not?”

  Beside him, perhaps listening in, Buckaroo made beeping noises. The vent on the back of his neck belched white steam.

  “Edward is an idiot,” Clint said. Then he decided that wasn’t fair. “Okay, he’s not an idiot. But he is a jerk.”

  “But could it be true, though? Could there really be chili?”

  Clint thought. He’d heard the rumors. He’d heard the reports from travelers, and he’d always regarded them in the same way he’d regarded reports about the Fountain of Youth. He’d heard from seers, from those who dealt in magic.

  “Of course not.”

  Havarow spit into the sand again.

  “Do you think your man will be there, though?” said Clint, changing the topic away from absurdity.

  “Why? Are you feeling like a lawman again?”

  Clint shook his head. “Just curious.”

  They were passing a large cluster of signs. One said, You are entering the land of Abraham and chili. Havarow looked lightningstruck when he saw it, but Clint made a casual remark about how superstitious the outlands were about their gods and about chili, and Havarow fell silent. Later, neither remarked on a crooked, ancient sign ten feet further on that read, Providence saves; blessed is the chili.

  Havarow spat. The glob struck Clint’s boot, and Clint resisted an urge to leave the paladin killt in the sand lying beside his saliva. It would be easy, and he doubted the thinking machine would judge him for it, giddy as it had been to see them back at the seam.

  “He’ll be there,” said Havarow. “He’s cocky. He’s walked right in front of us before, just to flaunt his supposed power and authority. And that hair? Those shotguns? It’s all showy, since he figures…”

  “Shotguns?”

  Havarow rolled his eyes. “He carries two magic-enhanced sawed off shotguns in his holsters instead of pistols. Kind of hard to miss. Some marshal you are.”

  “I’m sorry, Paladin,” Clint said. “I was too busy watching your men get slaughtered to make out the insignia on his barrels from a quarter-mile above you.”

  Havarow’s eyebrows drew together, but he said nothing.

  “Butterflies!” Edward yelled from behind them.

  “What is wrong with your mount?” said Havarow, looking back.

  “He’s messing with you,” said Clint.

  Buildings were becoming visible as they crested a rise. They passed two more signs. The signs were identical, flanked by crosses, one on each side of the road. They both said, Believe in chili.

  “I think it’s true,” said Havarow.

  “Oh, it’s true,” said Clint. “He messes with me all the time.”

  “I meant the chili,” said the paladin. “We’ve worked these lands before, though I’ve never been to Nazareth Shiloh proper.” His eyes darkened with superstition. “The shaman here whisper of chili.”

  “I ain't heard nar a person who believed the rumors of chili were true,” said Clint.

  But the rumors were true, or else the town of Nazareth Shiloh was suffering a grand delusion. When they entered the town itself — passing a well not unlike the one outside Precipice, then a blacksmith, then a cobbler’s shop — they began to see signs for chili everywhere.

  Clint was reminded of a time he’d accompanied a friend to a revival. The friend had been acting strange (not unlike Edward was now, in fact) and had told Clint all about how his new friends could sift magic like a shaman and were planning the return of the magic. Though Clint knew it to be untrue, he went to the revival anyway. And at that revival, he’d found crazy men and women dancing and singing and circling a washtub, burning candles and branding themselves with cattle irons. Crazy people, brainwashed into a dream.

  The chili aura of Nazareth Shiloh town felt like that revival.

  On a storefront: Our chili has seven spices.

  On the storefront across the street: Forget how many spices a chili has — ours has simmered for hours!

  On a post outside the town hall: Serving chili here! Believe in chili!

  And at the town marshal’s office, at the head of every hitching post: In chili we trust and To protect and serve chili.

  “I hesitate to ask for help from a chili-based lawman,” said Clint.

  But Havarow didn’t hear him. He was licking his lips, picking up his pace as they neared the marshals’ station. Then he started to run.

  But there was something wrong. Clint could feel it.

  “Paladin!” he shouted. “Stop! It’s a trap!”

  The gunslinger sprinted after him, diving to catch Havarow in a tackle. But the paladin was too fast, his chili lust too strong. He was a half-step ahead, and Clint only caught his ankle.

  Clint fell to the ground. Urgently, he turned to summon Edward’s help, but it was in vain; his vision was met by a semicircle of keratin descending toward his face. He rolled to the side and the keratin — a unicorn hoof — slammed into the ground beside his ear. Another set followed, all somehow miraculously missing their stomp.

  He rolled in the dirt, his heart thumping.

  Edward’s enormous white rear and swishing white tail passed him, running behind Havarow. The paladin jumped onto the porch outside the station and through its door. Edward stayed close, but he was too big; instead of passing through the doorframe, he slammed hard into it. The doorframe shuddered and shook. Wood splinters flew.

  Along with being too wide for the doorway, Edward was also too tall. His horn caught on the top, knocking his head backward. Then something gave — presumably the threshold — and Edward’s large shoulders jammed to a stop. Then he stopped, jammed in the doorway with his head jerking around as if confused about what had just happened.

  “Edward!” Clint shouted, scrambling to his feet.

  “I seem to be stuck,” said Edward’s rear.

  “It’s a trap! Create us a bubble!”

  A small pink bubble formed at the tip of Edward’s horn, then fell to the wood planking underfoot and popped.

  “A bubble of protection!” Clint snarled, equally panicked and annoyed.

  Edward didn’t give any indication that he’d so much as heard him, but Clint was already realizing that it didn’t matter. Nothing had happened. Despite Havarow and Buckaroo’s mad dash into an obvious trap, there had been no gunfire.

  He approached the unicorn, who was still wedged into the doorframe, and tried to peek around him. But then Edward’s head snapped around and he stared daggers at Clint, wordlessly accusing the gunslinger of causing his predicament.

  Edward’s body shimmered with light. There was a sharp pop, like the noise of a woman’s tiny pistol, and an inch of space appeared all the way around Edward where the doorframe had been pinching him. The wood that had filled the space sifted to the deck in a billow of sawdust. Then Edward backed up, minding his horn, and continued to stare sidelong at Clint.

  Clint met Edward’s look of loathing, then looked past him into the police station. Buckaroo and the paladin were both inside, speaking to a man behind a desk. Clint could see several paintings on the wall of bowls heaped with chili. None of the people in the room gave any indication that they’d noticed a unicorn getting stuck in the doorway.

  “Everyone okay in there?” Clint shouted.

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” said Havarow.

  Edward was still staring wordlessly at Clint. He backed off of the wood deck and int
o the street. He started to pace. Clint, leaving the lawmen behind, followed him, more confused about Edward than ever.

  “Why did you bring us on this fool errand?” asked the unicorn.

  “This was your idea,” said Clint.

  “I’ve no recollection of that.”

  Clint grabbed Edward’s long face and stared into his right eye. “What’s wrong with you, Edward? Something is wrong in your head, isn’t it? Tell me true.”

  The big blue eye blinked, its expression turning to exasperation. Edward sighed. “It’s the magic. I was worried about this. Have I been saying strange things?”

  “To put it mildly.”

  “Even unicorns are not meant to be so near a pure source of magic, or at least not one that is so completely exposed. I’m afraid it has left me addled.”

  “Will it go away, now that we’re further from the magic and the vein is sealed?”

  “It’s like catching a sneeze,” said Edward. “I’m afraid it will have to run its course.”

  Clint sighed. “Fine. Then let’s get this ‘fool errand’ over with and be on our way. Look around for the bandits we seek.”

  Edward turned his head, looking around.

  “Using your magic, I mean.”

  But Edward just looked at Clint uncomprehendingly, a fog across his eyes.

  “You’re back into ‘addled,’ aren’t you?” said Clint. “You don’t know how to use your magic, do you?”

  Edward looked at the gunslinger for a moment longer, his expression vacant.

  So Clint started pacing. He walked to one side of the street. He turned, then walked back to the other. Edward remained rooted, his head low like a common horse. So Clint walked further, peeking in windows, and when he returned, he saw that Edward had magicked a piece of turkey pie from the pack. It was floating in front of his face.

  The unicorn eyed Clint and took a bite.

  “You remembered how to use your magic, then,” said Clint.

  “Yar. I also remembered how ugly you were,” Edward replied, chewing.

  “Come on. Let’s try the saloon.”

  So they walked down to the saloon, which had a sign posted outside advertising free chili with brew. It was the sort of place where any outlaw worth his salt would hang out if he came through town, and once Havarow and Buckaroo rallied their posse, it would probably be the first place they’d look for Sly Stone and his gang. It’s where Clint would look first, anyway.