Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt

  Clint’s eyes narrowed. His lips formed a stiff-lipped frown. Listening to his own voice, he was shocked and almost frightened by the ice he heard in it as he said, “I don’t want your forgiveness.”

  “Then how about entertainment?” said a fourth voice.

  Clint turned around. Havarow had taken Sly Stone’s guns and shackled him to a post while they were gearing up to leave, and now Stone was, against all sensibility, laughing behind him.

  He smiled, then shook his giant orange afro and said, “Hey, everybody loves a clown.”

  CHAPTER FIVE:

  AN UNEASY PALAVER

  As they set out for Aurora Solstice and their rendezvous with whatever a shimmer was, Edward went in and out of lucidity. Clint did his best to hide Edward’s condition from the others, but he wouldn’t be able to for long.

  During his more present moments, Edward told Clint that his thoughts were becoming increasingly foggy. He was having a hard time holding his concentration. He sometimes forgot the trick of using magic — but more troublingly, he also sometimes flat-out forgot the trick of being Edward. He spoke of elves and turkey pie and of things that didn’t exist. He spoke of his colthood, which sounded like it might have been millennia back… and that’s assuming that the unicorn was speaking true in the first place. Edward himself soon couldn’t tell which thoughts were real and which weren’t, and took to quizzing the gunslinger to find out.

  “Cerebrus defiling Mai?” said Edward.

  “Real,” said Clint.

  “Chili in the last town?”

  “Rumor,” said Clint. “Superstition.”

  “An easterner wearing eyeshades and singing about style?”

  “That was my hallucination, back in the Dinosaur Missouri. How can you know my hallucination?”

  “I don’t know. But somehow it infected me, because he’s right beside you.”

  Clint looked over, saw nothing, and continued to ride.

  Clint feared that his opportunities to speak with the real Edward were growing fewer with each passing hour, so he, in turn, tried to gather whatever information from the unicorn that he could while there was still time. He asked about the Orbs, about Kold, and about the object that Edward had alluded to called the Triangulum Enchantem. But Edward was already too far gone. He could barely remember the Triangulum. He could barely remember the Orb of Malevolence. He could barely remember fighting Jarmusch, or the Orb they still carried in a vial, heavily protected inside of Clint’s pack.

  “If Kold finds the third Orb before we find Kold,” said Clint, “will he be too powerful to stop?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. I think so,” said Edward, his eyes distant and helpless.

  “So we should pursue Kold, and we should abandon these fools.”

  “Kold is going to The Realm, and they are going to The Realm. So where we are is not insensible.” He blinked. “I mean, I think it’s not.”

  “Yar, but this group is going through a shimmer, whatever that is,” said Clint. “Kold is taking the long route, and he might be finding the Orb right now. By the time we meet him in or near The Realm — if we meet him — he may be unstoppable.” Clint paused, then added, “And while we’re at it, what is a shimmer?”

  “I don’t know.” Edward shook his head, making his mane dance. “I mean, I did know once, but I no longer do. It’s so hard to concentrate. The magic in me is too rich. It’s like a disease, eating me alive from within.” He took a deep breath and seemed to concentrate. Then he said, “I believe that a shimmer is like a door.”

  “Why have you never told me about shimmers before? We could have been searching for them, taking shortcuts.”

  “They’re a product of decay,” said Edward. “They are not supposed to be here.”

  “So is it that you don’t know where they are, or are you being elitist and refusing to use doorways that are somehow perverse, even though they might speed our journey?”

  A moment passed. Clint waited for Edward to answer, but then he looked down and saw that the unicorn’s big blue eyes were vacant, gazing at the dusty trail ahead.

  Edward’s vacantness became the norm as the day grew long. When they’d left Nazareth Shiloh, Clint had been riding Edward the unicorn. But after a few hours, Clint was riding something or someone else. Edward forgot Clint. He forgot The Realm. He forgot that he was magic, and that he was a mighty unicorn. He became an unresponsive, blindly obeying mount. Like a horse.

  So, to quiet his panic about Edward, Clint spent the rest of the afternoon trying to draw information from Havarow and Buckaroo — the only two beings from The Realm he’d met since his exile.

  Havarow was useless. He was tight as a drum, and refused to talk to Clint beyond the necessities. He seemed to feel that an exiled marshal — one who thought he was above The Realm’s forgiveness, could such forgiveness be given — shouldn’t be offered more information than he already had. He seemed to think that Clint Gulliver had been exiled for a reason and should be handed nothing that might help him to return.

  Buckaroo, however, wouldn’t stop talking. So after a few miles, with Havarow in the lead on a horse he’d purchased in Nazareth Shiloh and with Stone tied securely to a horse beside him, Clint slowly fell behind and lured Buckaroo to the rear of their convoy with him.

  Then, he and the thinking machine started to chat.

  Buckaroo was of limited help because he’d never actually been to The Realm, but he was miles better than the silent paladin. He was a mere service machine, tasked with leading stitching crews to repair damage before it could spread to The Realm. The offhand way Buckaroo spoke of the rest of the world — nobody cared if the fissures spread away from The Realm, for instance — irked Clint, but Buckaroo spoke so matter-of-factly and innocently that it was clear he was programmed (quite literally) to think only of The Realm. His prejudice wasn’t his fault. Buckaroo had no malice toward the rest of the world, but he definitely loved The Realm above all else. The fact that he himself had never been allowed behind the wall didn’t seem to faze him.

  As they rode — always watching for Stone’s roving rope gang and never seeing it, though constantly assured by Stone that it was following — Buckaroo also told Clint about his other function.

  “I am a timekeeper, sir,” he told Clint, patting the alloy pouch on his side and thus affecting a pat of his pocket watch.

  Specifically, what Buckaroo “tracked” were tears in the fabric of the worlds. As a timekeeper, his job was to calculate the timing, location, and duration of tears. Buckaroo, being a low-level machine, didn’t understand exactly how or why the world had tears, but Clint had heard enough rumor (and pried enough from Edward over the years) to fill the gaps in Buckaroo’s knowledge.

  During the first fracture, the Realm sheared loose from the rest of the world in a way that no man could see, but that unicorns could. The physical roads leading to The Realm didn’t crumble, but the roads nonetheless grew confused. The Realm, so it was said, became impossible to find. The ways in — which had once been concrete and distinct — became vague. A path to The Realm could be long or short depending on a traveler’s perception, the day and time, or shifts in the magic. A man could brush the wall of The Realm and not know that it was there — and, in a way, might not actually be near it at all.

  It was all very confusing, but the way Clint imagined it was this: it was as if The Realm had fallen out of phase with the rest of the world. Edward talked about frequencies of magic and of “tuning in,” and told the gunslinger that The Realm was no longer at the same frequency as the rest of the world. Edward also used some of the same terms Buckaroo used: fabric and tearing. Edward often spoke of loose threads, and about how you should never tug on a loose thread lest the whole of the fabric unravel. And so, Clint’s mind had formed a picture of the worlds as a large bolt of fabric with many folds in it. Sometimes — and Buckaroo seemed to agree with this metaphor — tears in various places on the fabric lined up. When that happened, somethin
g from one point on the fabric could instantly travel through the tear to an entirely different place.

  To The Realm, for instance.

  Buckaroo, as a timekeeper and tracker of aligning tears, was equipped with instrumentation that he himself didn’t understand. All he knew was that the pocket watch device he carried gave him data, and that his intuitive processors were capable of making rather precise estimations about the location, timing, and duration of tears — called “shimmers” — based on that data.

  “What’s to stop a bandit from taking you apart and stealing that machinery for his own use?” Clint asked, making sure they were well back from Stone when he did.

  Buckaroo tapped his golden head and replied in his polite, down-home, syrupy voice. “Intuitive processors,” he repeated. “Magic can’t just be read, sir. It must be thought out, like a logic puzzle.”

  When full dark fell, they made camp. Edward fell into and mostly out of lucidity, spending the majority of his time sullen and disconnected. Clint was concerned. He wondered if the real Edward would ever return… if the poisoning he’d received from the magic was like a passing illness that simply had to run its course like a fever, or a lingering one that would result in lasting damage.

  With Edward addled, there were only four coherent souls around the fire that evening. Buckaroo was so subservient and by-the-rules that his presence was closer to that of a spark cooker, and so, despite their differences, Clint, Sly Stone, and Paladin Havarow made palaver as if, for a desperate moment, they had become friends.

  Stone was disarmingly pleasant for a man in shackles who was on his way to trial and then to death. He made jokes. He asked politely for food. He ate neatly. He said pleasem and thankoo. When Clint dropped a fork, Stone picked it up, cleaned it, and returned it with a smile. This happened several times, because the forks Havarow supplied were tiny, and Clint had gigantic gunslinger’s hands.

  Stone also told them about his gang — not because he wanted to make threats, but just for the practice of spinning yarns. His tales treated the gang’s deadliness as matter-of-fact. He explained that he’d allied with the rope gang’s leader, Gunther Jethro, because they had the same aims. They were not innately tied, and would remain allied only until such time as their aims diverged. But Stone added that until that time, the gang remained fiercely loyal to him. They were absolutely on their trail, probably watching from the weeds, waiting for the right time to pounce. He quite calmly told the paladin that he’d never make it to the shimmer. The gang, including Jethro, saw Sly Stone as a co-leader, and they’d see his taking — from them, proud ropers that they were — as a direct affront to their honor. And they did not stand for affronts to their honor.

  “Gunther Jethro,” said Havarow, spitting into the dirt. “I’d say that’s as stupid a name as Sly Stone.”

  “My full name is Sylvester,” said Stone, nonplussed.

  Havarow chuckled. “That’s even worse.”

  “What’s your first name, if I might ask?”

  Havarow cleared his throat and raised his chin. “Nigel.”

  “That’s a fine name for someone with his head up his own butt,” said Stone, nodding.

  Havarow stood, his suit of chain mail jangling. He pulled his scimitar from his belt and lit it. A sword of light extended from the alloy cylinder, casting shadows that danced across the campsite, counterpointing the shadows made by the flickering light of the fire.

  “I wonder if I’d be praised or reprimanded if you died on the way to your trial,” said Havarow.

  “I wonder if, with that hat on, you look like a bedpan from above,” Stone countered.

  “I think they’d be disappointed that they couldn’t try you, but that they wouldn’t chastise me too harshly,” said Havarow.

  “Do birds ever pee on your head?” Stone asked placidly.

  Havarow, who had been ready to boil from the moment Clint had met him, lunged for Stone. Clint managed to get his hands between the men, holding them apart. Havarow’s teeth pulled back in a snarl.

  “Oh, of course birds don’t pee on your head,” said Stone, leaning back as Clint fought with the paladin. “How silly of me. Birds urinate in a paste. So do birds ever paste on your head?” He made a curious face. Then he squeezed a sausage from his dinner between his fingers, shooting a lumpy stringer of grease onto the paladin’s chest.

  Havarow, barely restrained, renewed his lunge toward the bandit. This time, Clint couldn’t get between them. Havarow began throwing punches at his prisoner. Stone tried to hold up his shackled hands in defense, but it was no use; blow after blow landed until Clint pulled Havarow away, still kicking and thrashing. But the paladin still needed a target, so he turned his rage on Clint. He tried to swing at the gunslinger, but Clint easily deflected his blows.

  Stone, beaten and bleeding, laughed from the dirt. Havarow hurled insults. Across the fire, heedless, Edward slept on his side.

  Eventually Havarow calmed down, and after casting a few final glances at Clint, he tied Sly Stone to a tree. Stone’s hands were shackled; his cheek and eyes were already starting to puff. Then Havarow spread his bedding in a clear area, rubbing his bruised fist. Clint, still quietly fearing for his unicorn companion, laid down beside Edward.

  Eventually, the reluctant companions — now turned combatants — fell into uneasy sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  NO TEARS FOR THE PALADIN

  Clint awoke to a sensation he almost never felt: a hand lightly slapping him awake. It was so odd that at first, he had no reaction. Even though it had happened in his sleep — someone had gotten the drop on him.

  “Wake up.”

  The campsite was dark, three shades from pure black. Clint had no idea of the time. Buckaroo was normally studded with lights, but he’d extinguished them when he’d put himself into sleep mode. The fire had burned down to embers and was now glowing with a vacant, haunted orange that peeked between the remains of the logs in an abstract lattice.

  The hand continued to slap him. The voice he’d heard was a whisper, so whatever was happening, Clint’s foggy mind reckoned that quiet and discretion were warranted. And the owner of that hand hadn’t killt him yet.

  Clint had a pack of matches in his pocket. He pulled one out, lit it with his thumbnail, and held it up to see the patient face of Sly Stone haloed by bright orange hair. The hand that had been slapping him was now visible in the matchlight. Stone’s other hand was at his side.

  (!!!)

  Clint shuffled backward fast, his back colliding with a sleeping unicorn. Edward didn’t stir. The gunslinger’s hand flew to his holster and within a fraction of a second, his gun was out and pointing at Stone. He’d even managed to do it quietly.

  “How are you free?” Clint hissed. The last time he’d seen Stone, before sleep came to drag him down, the bandit had been tied to a tree with shackled hands. Somehow, in the midnight hours, Stone had freed himself from his shackles and, quite separately, broken his tether to the tree.

  Stone held a finger in front of his lips.

  “How?” Clint hissed. He was panicked. It was wrong of a marshal to be panicked, but he’d also just been surprised while sleeping. It was a miracle Stone hadn’t reached his guns. But that hadn’t been a real possibility, had it? His hands and hips would feel a man fooling with his sidearms… wouldn’t they?

  Stone jabbed the finger more insistently in front of his lips. Clint’s own fingers, holding the match, were getting warm; the match had almost burned to its end. His other hand moved his pistol into the light, in case Stone had missed it.

  Stone’s eyes rolled. “The fork, okay?” he whispered. “Your fork from dinner.”

  Clint felt his head clearing. He moved his gun forward. “Where is it now? The fork?”

  “In the paladin’s neck.”

  The flame from the match touched Clint’s thumb and he jerked his hand. The match went out and fell to the dirt. Clint felt it strike his leg.

  With the matchlight gone, the n
ight suddenly seemed unfathomably black. Clint’s eyes had adjusted to the flame, so now he couldn’t see a thing. Where was Stone? Would he try and take Clint’s gun now that the darkness was full?

  With his heart beating a drumroll, Clint fumbled until he found another match. Every second felt like minutes, hours, days. He could imagine the outlaw’s hands finding him. He could imagine Stone’s hands grabbing at his gun.

  The match popped alight and Clint saw Stone exactly where he’d been, in exactly the same position. Clint’s gun was still aimed at Stone’s forehead.

  “The fork is in his throat?” Clint whispered.

  “Yar. He’s killt.”

  Clint nudged Edward, immediately behind him, with his elbow. The unicorn grunted but didn’t stir.

  “Here, for Providence’s sake,” said Stone. He ripped a piece of fabric from Clint’s sheet and tied it around a stick. He held the fabric-wrapped stick out to Clint, who surmised that he was supposed to light it. He did, then waved the match to a thin line of smoke and the scent that went with it. Stone stuck the end of the tiny torch in the sand, and the campsite was cast into a weak orange light and severe, ominous shadows. It was just enough light to make out the form of the paladin, slumped in a corner with the gleam of a fork below his chin just as Stone had promised.

  “We have company,” Stone whispered, his comical face with its comical hair suddenly dead serious.

  “Your gang?”

  “I wouldn’t wake you if it were my gang,” said Stone. He looked around and then went on, his voice even lower. “Dooners.”

  Clint sat up. Now he nudged Edward harder, and the unicorn started to stir. Clint planted a hand on Edward’s neck, their trail sign to move carefully. A moment later Edward was standing and awake, but by the light of the tiny torch, Clint couldn’t tell if Edward’s usual self was present in those giant equine eyes. He didn’t think so. It was too much to hope for a window of lucidity when it was most needed.

  “I woke you because you have the only weapons. Believe me, I’d like to run. But I’d never make it.”