Unicorn Western

by Sean Platt

  “I thought you knew everything,” said Clint.

  “I know plenty, but free will keeps getting in the way.”

  Clint shook his head, annoyed, and took a sip of his brew.

  They sat under the tree for longer than they should have, but it was hard to summon urgency after nearly four and a half long years of pursuit. It was perfectly true, what Edward had said about the many-month lead that Kold already had on them. Every step along the way, they’d wandered and meandered and become lost, forced to deal death, while Kold had marched forward with purpose and haste. What difference could another half hour possibly make?

  Soon the time came to leave — to push on into Elf Meadows, to the doorstep of The Realm and the railroad being built upon it — so Clint stowed their gear and packed it away, overburdening the horses because with so many backs at the ready, Edward had resumed his refusal to carry saddlebags. He cleaned the site, brushed himself off, and went to work re-securing Mai’s travois behind the unicorn.

  Clint knelt in the dirt to look at her. Once upon a time, she’d been so strong. He knew she had magic inside her, and he’d always told her that one day, they would return to The Realm. He’d come from The Realm; she’d come from The Realm; they’d found each other like two needles in one big, sandy haystack. Their meeting was so fortuitous that it sometimes seemed too good to be true. That’s what he’d felt back in Solace as he’d stood in the saloon’s farback, staring into the mirror on the day of his hitching: he wasn’t meant to be happy. How had he managed the trick of it? Out of all of the men in the Sands, how had this beautiful woman found him? Why had she chosen him? But for whatever reason, she had. The gunslinger had nearly found solace in Solace, as appropriate as it seemed. He had almost hung up his guns for her. But it hadn’t been meant to be.

  Before re-securing the travois, Clint cocked his head at the woman he’d almost hitched, trying to see her as she’d once been, on that day long ago.

  “Mai Maneau,” he whispered, too low for the others to hear. “What has a gunslinger’s love done to you?”

  Her eyes fluttered open, as they now often did when people spoke to her. Her skin was still like paper, but her eyes were alive inside that dry and dead hull, just as he remembered them. He tried to see past her desiccated lids and cracked lips. Tried to see the woman she’d once been.

  A dry hand reached up. He took it, held it briefly, and set it gently at her side. He gazed at her for a long, silent beat.

  Her lips parted. Her eyes watched him as he watched her.

  She drew breath and said, “Clint?”

  UNICORN

  WESTERN 6

  CHAPTER ONE:

  HUSK

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Edward said. “Unless, of course, it means everything.”

  Clint was in the dirt, on his knees, surrounded by the first true grass he’d seen since leaving The Realm. He leapt to his feet in a single fluid motion and, carefully leaping over the travois that carried his once-bride, Mai, flew at the unicorn. His fists were up and out, and he didn’t care if Edward could instantly heal wounds, if there were no soft spots on a unicorn, or that he’d bloody his fists trying to fight. He was sick and tired of being in the dark, and being toyed with.

  He slugged Edward hard in the eye, causing the unicorn to fall an unlikely and impossible step back. Then the gunslinger yelled, his fist throbbing and his face just inches from Edward’s.

  “YOU WILL STOP TOYING WITH ME AND TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO KNOW!”

  “Clint…” said Sly Stone from behind him.

  The gunslinger turned, planted both hands on the outlaw’s chest, and flung him hard to the dirt. Stone looked up without an iota of anger in his eyes. He carried two sawed-off shotguns in his holsters, but he didn’t flinch toward them. He held his back to the ground, looking up at Clint in shock.

  The gunslinger was usually about as emotional as a stew hole. This was the first true crack Stone had seen in Clint’s dusty armor since they’d first found Mai’s husk outside of Aurora Solstice, left by Dharma Kold after he’d sucked her essence — also known, in Mai’s case, as the powerful Orb of Benevolence — from her like juice from a fruit.

  Above Stone, the gunslinger spun back to Edward.

  “YOU ARE HIGH AND MIGHTY AND I AM LOW AND STUPID BUT THIS IS MY WOMAN AND IF YOU WITHHOLD INFORMATION, PROVIDENCE HELP ME I WILL… I WILL…” He paused, then screamed in inarticulate rage and punched the unicorn again, this time in the other eye.

  Edward said nothing. He hadn’t bothered to heal the first eye Clint had punched, which was already starting to puff and bleed. The unicorn could make Clint boil from the inside; he could hurl him across the valley; he could disintegrate him into his component elements or pull him into pieces. But right now, the power he was using — and it was a mighty power indeed — was the power of restraint. This confrontation was four and a half long years coming, and Clint never vented. It was time. Edward seemed accepting of the gunslinger’s rage, being strong enough to take it.

  Stone remained on his back, lying in the ratty brown grass with his hands at his sides. Pompi Bobo, the giant, had turned to look at the commotion but had otherwise barely moved. The Realm thinking machine, Buckaroo, had powered down for a brief rest and was still in repose, oblivious. A trickle of steam billowed from behind his neck as he leaned against the tree.

  Clint’s shoulders rose and fell. His hands balled into even tighter fists. He could hear his heart hammering through his chest. After a too-long moment, Edward finally addressed him.

  “I mean this only as a question,” he said. “But are you finished?”

  Clint’s mind processed the unicorn’s query. A part of him was still red-hot, but his more logical side considered and decided that he could settle down from high alert. So he did. His breathing started to slow and his fists unclenched. He looked down at Mai, who’d fallen back into something like sleep after saying Clint’s name — the stimulus that had gotten Clint worked up in the first place. Her ability to recognize him, to know him, or even to know herself was supposed to be impossible, seeing as Kold had siphoned out the core of her soul along with everything that made Mai Mai. If she recovered, Edward had said, it would be a recovery of body, not mind or spirit.

  Then later, the unicorn had added that there was more to Mai’s situation. He knew more — including what might happen next — but in Edward fashion, he refused to share that information with Clint.

  “Yar,” Clint said. “I think I’m finished. But you need to tell me what’s happening with her. Now.”

  “I’m not entirely sure, but I have an idea,” he said, speaking as if Clint had never punched him. “Let’s just say there’s a small chance Mai has some of herself left inside that shell. Are you aware of a bird called a phoenix?”

  “A mythical bird, you mean,” said Sly Stone, judging it safe to move.

  “A bird called a phoenix,” Edward repeated, looking sidelong at Stone to let him know this was Clint’s conversation, not his. “It dies in fire, and then is reborn. Mai had magic lineage. We always knew that. She knew that. But magic lives in the blood, and magic calls to magic. Understand?”

  “Nar.”

  “We’re on The Realm’s doorstep. We’re nearly to Elf Meadows and into the Lakes O Plenty — named so back when there were still lakes instead of so many patches of land. We’ve traveled atop the strongest remaining vein of magic, direct to its source. She came from here, Clint. You knew that. You’ve promised her you’d return her to The Realm from the start, have you not?”

  Clint nodded. Looking back, it seemed like a vain, stupid promise made between lovers. Of course he’d return her to The Realm, he’d told her. But of course that was impossible — just something they said to one another. The Realm couldn’t be found. Questions without answers, fracture and leaking. Mai knew it all, and knew she’d never return. But still Clint promised, because that’s what a man did for his woman: he attempted the impossible.

  “Yo
u’re saying she’s being… restarted from the ground up? And that she might return to herself, like your phoenix?”

  “Mayhap. But — and you must prepare for this possibility — it could also be a stir of echoes. Memory buries itself in flesh, and flesh is temporary, even for unicorns. The magic will start something inside of Mai as we get nearer to the Meadows. But whether that something will be her nature true or false memories without association, no one can say.”

  “No one but Mai.”

  The unicorn nodded.

  Clint said, “I’m sorry about the punches.”

  Edward’s horn glowed. The swelling, discoloration, and blood marking Clint’s strikes vanished. A moment later, the unicorn looked as pristine as he ever had.

  “What punches?” he said.

  Clint reattached the travois to Edward, watching Mai for new signs of stirring, but she remained impassive. He gave her a long look before circling to mount Edward. They’d found Mai a few weeks back, and every time Clint looked at her, he couldn’t keep himself from cringing at her appearance. She was so weak and dried out. But now, after hearing his name come from her lips, he looked upon her with fresh eyes, trying to see her for what she was rather than seeing how little she’d changed in the past hours or days.

  She did look better, if Clint could bring himself to compare Mai to the shell they found in the shack rather than the one he’d known when the two of them had held hands in Solace. Her flesh was firmer than that skeleton’s flesh, as if it held more water. Her lips were fuller. Her color, in skin that still appeared as brittle as old parchment, was more robust. Her wrists and ankles seemed sturdier, less sharp and bony. Edward fed her magically, placing masticated food in her belly, and her body saw benefit from the nutrition. Her clavicles protruded less. Her shoulders seemed slightly rounder, less angular.

  The others packed up the site, pretending not to notice Clint as he knelt and whispered.

  “Mai. Are you in there?”

  But there was no sign, no stirring, no opening of eyes, no saying of his name.

  He pulled away and looked at her face — so unlike the face he’d seen four years before in her pink hitching veil.

  Then the gunslinger sighed, climbed onto the unicorn’s back, and rode.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  THE GROSS OF GRINGOS

  The rolling hills passed underfoot as if being fed toward the travelers on a belt. Each rise surrendered to a valley which then gave way to another rise. Farms in the distance rose and fell as if the land was breathing. The path curved and wove. Everything was round and soft — not sharp like in the deeper Sands. San Mateo Flats began to feel like a memory. The land they saw was still sparse, but it was no longer dusty or dead. They saw only a few cacti and a few tumbleweeds. There were crops everywhere, and there were clumps of trees. The farmers of the crops were likely slaves to weather — a warm summer would kill their entire harvest unless they hauled buckets of water out from a well on donkeys — but there were farmers. Crops could grow out here on the Meadows’ apron where Edward steered them. Whether it was the water, magic, or magic in the water that allowed them to grow, Clint couldn’t say.

  Eventually, Edward nodded forward with his horn and said, “Look.”

  The unicorn could magically see farther than anyone else in the party, so Pompi (on foot), Stone, and even Buckaroo (on horses; Buckaroo was tireless but seemed to love playing cowboy) were unable to spot what Edward saw for another five minutes. But then eventually, a small dot appeared on the trail far down the path, walking with purpose toward them.

  Clint said, “Does he have a gun?”

  “Nar. He’s a kid. Farmer’s kid, judging by his clothing. Loose whites from head to toe. He has a hat in his hand rather than on his head, where it belongs. Just like a kid, being stupid in the sun.”

  Clint kept his sidearms holstered. Five minutes later, the kid was near enough to start running, waving his big floppy hat at the travelers. He arrived in front of them, gave Edward a long look, and then started shouting up to Clint, who sat atop his back.

  “Señors!” said the kid, speaking in farm dialect, “You are riding to Baracho Gulch, sí?”

  “Yar.”

  “We need your help. Will you help us?”

  “Kid,” said Edward. “We’ve helped at least five groups of helpless people out of five separate situations. I’m all helped out.”

  “You talk?” said the kid, gasping as he stared at the unicorn.

  Suddenly, almost nostalgically, Clint found himself remembering the kid Teddy from a lifetime before in Solace, as Teddy had reached the same shocking epiphany about Edward. Teddy had insisted on joining Clint’s “posse” back when this all began, back when Sly Stone’s outlaw brother Hassle had returned to Solace with Dharma Kold and his unicorn of a different color. Clint never found out what became of Teddy. In order to save the brave but fool kid’s life, he had sent him ahead of what he’d thought would be a confrontation in the Sands with the bandits, ordering him to get Mai out of town. It was a fool’s errand, and Mai turned out to be the target. But through all of that, he’d heard nar of Teddy. Clint wondered if he’d survived, and whether Dharma Kold would hurt a kid.

  Clint smiled at the memory, wishing Teddy well and picturing him at seventeen, the age he would be now.

  “Yar, seems I talk,” said the unicorn.

  “Amazing,” the kid whistled. But then it was as if this “amazing” revelation evaporated from the front of his mind as he immediately pushed on, rushing into his business with the unicorn and rider. “We need help. You’ll be going right by our village if you stay on this road. You are going to Elf Meadows, sí?”

  “Yar,” Clint said.

  The kid shrugged, then looked around at the farms lining the road. “Many people go that way now.”

  “What sort of people?”

  “Realm people. You can tell them by their clothes. They bring big machines, both ways. It didn’t used to be that way. But you are not Realm people.”

  “Not totally,” said Clint, shifting so the kid could see his twin seven-shot revolvers.

  “We cannot pay for your help,” the kid said, either unimpressed by or ignorant about Clint’s guns. But as he listened, Clint realized how smoothly the kid had shifted his way of speaking so they were now helping and simply needed to settle upon the matter of proper payment. “But we can feed you. Give you beds. Water.”

  “Thankoo,” said Edward. “But nar. We are used to the trail. Our party is well-supplied and rides in haste.”

  “You are passing near us anyway,” the kid insisted. “You could sleep on the hard ground under trees, or you could have peaceful dreams in our village’s beds. And our frijoles? Our guacamole? You’ve never had better than my abuela’s.” Then he considered the unicorn and added, “I suppose we could put a mattress under a shelter for you.” He turned to Stone and Buckaroo’s horses. “For all three of you. How does that sound, amigos?”

  Stone’s horse whinnied and blew a snot bubble from its giant nose.

  “Muy bien. Come. Come.” The kid began trotting down the trail.

  “So now we’re helping him?” Clint asked Edward as they started to follow.

  “Nar. We’re going down the road. Only now we have a target out front to draw fire, should we run into bandits. That’s a win.”

  The village was a good twenty minutes away, and the kid used that time to work on Clint and Edward, who he correctly judged as the group’s leaders. He was respectful to Stone, who seemed to like the kid, and put his hat back on just so that he could tip it to the giant, whose kind he said he knew from working the Meadows. He even asked after Mai, lying on the travois. Clint gave him the truth so succinctly that it hurt to say it: “She’s sick.”

  The kid seemed to be in his lower teens — around thirteen or fourteen, the same age as Teddy had been way back when. His name was Rigoberto Montoya, or Rigo for short. He had been born and raised in Baracho Gulch, and he said he was growing to be
a good man in the warmth of its bosom. He worked on his father’s farm and would take it over one day. He even had a horse, which Clint (and, the gunslinger was positive, Edward) immediately saw in his mind as resembling Teddy’s flap-jawed, googly-eyed mount, Pinto.

  Even though Clint and Edward insisted many times that they wouldn’t be stopping in Baracho Gulch or helping the kid with his problem, Rigo told them every detail anyway.

  “Our town is just south of the Rio Verde river. Everything north of the Rio belongs to Elf Meadows, which is where you amigos are headed. You will cross the Rio either way, and you will pass the outskirts of Baracho — directly by my father’s western field — if you stay on this road. There is law in Elf Meadows, but Baracho is the town nearest the border so we are the first stop for bandits who don’t dare disobey Realm law. This is the way it has been since before I was born. Each year a man named El Feo rides down to Baracho from the north. El Feo is a very bad man. His gang is an army: The Gross of Gringos, who all wear masks modeled to look like our crop demons. They are meant to frighten us, and do. Because El Feo and that many men with guns keep our pueblo in terror, our fathers do as they say.”

  “And what do they say?” said Stone.

  Clint shot his companion a glance. The last thing they needed was to encourage the boy, or to give him false hope that they might help.

  “They say we must surrender our crops. They collect our corn and wheat and whatever else we have. We are left with enough to survive, but only barely. Our bellies still rumble. They do this each harvest so we are forever scraping by. We have no money, or anything other than what we hold in our hearts, since even a man so ugly inside as El Feo can never take that away.”

  “You have to fight, kid,” Stone said. Clint shot him another look.

  “Si, we must! But with what? Fight guns with machetes? Even if it were only El Feo and not his Gross, we cannot. He laughs when men try. The last time he came, a man named Sancho ran from his house bearing a machete. El Feo shot him twice, once in the heart to kill him dead and another just because. We cannot fight, señor.” The kid shook his head. “We have nothing.”