Unicorn Genesis (Unicorn Western)

by Sean Platt

  Edward opened his eyes. Something was wrong.

  He looked around, unsure what it could be. A moment before, nothing had seemed amiss. He had been on his way home to Mead (mayhap, hopefully), away from the Sandman. Both sun and grass were as beautiful as he had remembered. Only after closing his eyes did Edward realize that something was off.

  He closed his eyes again and walked a few steps. It was the sounds that were wrong. Edward opened his eyes, edging panic. Something felt disturbing, but the unicorn saw nothing untoward. Green grass. Peaceful day. He looked to the right, left, forward, back. Up, down, and …

  That was it.

  Edward looked down at his hooves, finding them strange. He clapped them on the path, realizing they sounded wrong without knowing why. They were different; that’s all he knew.

  The unicorn ran.

  There was a lake in the valley ahead. Edward ran to its edge, unsure what he might see to explain what he felt. He waded into the water, peeked forward, and nearly fell over at the sight.

  His face, in his reflection, appeared longer and more angular. His ears stood taller. In the middle of his forehead, where there had once been a tiny, laughable nubbin, was a magnificent white horn of curled keratin.

  Edward stepped back then looked down at his hooves and realized what he was seeing. His hooves looked strange because they were farther from his eyes and sounded strange being farther from his ears. His ankles had less girth relative to their length, and his legs were longer. His chest had broadened, and looking back, he realized his tail had grown long.

  Edward was an adult.

  Just like that. He hadn’t grown up; he’d become an older unicorn. And what was more, now that he was paying attention, Edward could feel it continuing to happen. He could feel magic inside him in a way he’d never felt it before. His horn was an antenna, and though he couldn’t tell anything specific, Edward was sure he felt the presence of other unicorns. It was like he’d been given a new sense, every bit as present and obvious as sight. He could feel the animals around him, and the feeling expanded with each passing second. He felt life in the grasses and trees. He felt a strong sense of power pulsing in his chest. His wings, too, felt strong; he stretched them to their full length and marveled at their span. Then he folded them, wary of flying when things were so uncertain, and focused again on the magic. It was everywhere like a warm glow. He felt dipped in light, growing brighter through each passing second.

  Edward looked at the shore and saw a large rock near the lake’s edge. He knew what to do. He imagined the rock lifting into the air. It didn’t move, so he shifted his perception: Instead of seeing it lifted in his mind, he pictured a human arm reaching out from his chest and picking it up, turning visualization into intention. The rock began to glow then raised from the ground. It was simple. Easy. With a feeling of exhilaration, Edward imagined himself heaving the rock into the lake. It flew as if it weighed nothing and splashed in the center, sending water gushing into the air.

  Edward, already feeling like a different unicorn and not at all like the colt he’d been, marched back toward the path. Strange, but it had to be a good sign. It had to mean he was back in Mead. Where else would his internal magic feel compelled to sync with nature’s?

  Edward felt suddenly troubled. Of course his magic would sync with nature’s magic, but why had the sync been so dramatic? Unicorn colthood lasted for many human lifetimes. Eons must have passed since he’d left. Yet that was absurd. He couldn’t have been gone for more than fifty cycles of day and night, could he?

  Edward looked down at his great white chest. How old was he? There was no way to tell. As Edward wondered, he remembered what Saul had said about how more time passed each time he’d returned to the Realm, and how there had been unicorn incursions in the intervening years.

  Edward shook the thoughts away. Whether the situation made sense or not, he was an adult unicorn now and was, presumably, in what the cat and Sandman had called the “axial world.” His own world. The real world, or at least one of them.

  He used his horn to test the magic. Strangely, despite the fractures he’d just walked through, the magic here felt healthy and whole. Where were the rips and cracks? Where was the gaping hole he’d flown through on Appy’s back in the storm? During the flood it had seemed as if the world had been shattered. Why didn’t he feel the shards now?

  Edward shook his head. He’d either find answers to his questions, or he wouldn’t. But regardless, he had to keep moving. He couldn’t learn more about where and when he was until he started exploring, and until he knew more, he’d be at a disadvantage. He had magic now and a feel for how to use at least some of it (the rock-lifting parts, anyway), but he was still a unicorn out of time. Somehow, he’d had missed many years of this world’s history.

  He started walking.

  He found a road carved through the grass then followed it. Along the road he began to see signs. Some pointed toward The Realm. A few indicated other places that he didn’t recognize, and a few steered toward something called “The Great Meadow.” Edward wondered how far Mead was, and again if he should fly there. But no, he decided, he shouldn’t. Opening his wings would make him too obvious, and his presence in the air would make him a target. He also didn’t know if he could fly. So he tucked his wings in and continued along the path, putting one hoof in front of the other.

  He began to see signs of settlements. He passed a village that was loud with a sound like clanking alloy. The land around him was mostly rolling grassland, but there were low fences carving the land into confined shapes — some of wood, many made of rock. In a few of these enclosed areas, he could see sheep, what were probably cows, and even gaggles of dumb-looking horses. Edward looked at the fences, feeling indignant. They’d clearly been made by humans, to confine what they’d decided was theirs.

  The road dead-ended into a sudden field of tall grass. Beside the road’s end was a sign that told Edward he’d reached The Great Meadow. The wheel ruts and the trampled grass stopped abruptly, and the grass beyond was pristine. Edward, after a brief glance around, stepped into the grass. He took five steps, then ten. When he looked back, he couldn’t see a single bent blade of grass. The place was imperturbable. The carts and walkers probably did cross the Meadow — but where did they go next?

  Edward looked back, attempted to sight the road’s direction. Then he looked ahead, trying to imagine the way it must continue forward.

  Then, unsure if he were headed in the right direction, he resumed walking.

  After a while longer (and no more certain about his direction or his proximity to The Realm, Mead, or anything else), he heard a small yip from below, at his hooves. He’d just kicked something beneath the grass. He looked down and realized that it was a small man who’d been lying on his back in the middle of the meadow.

  The man sprang upright. He was dressed like a human, wearing a tan shirt and plain brown pants. This man, however, only came to Edward’s chest and could have passed directly beneath his now-adult belly without so much as ducking.

  “Hey!” the little man shouted in a high-pitched voice. “Watch where you’re going!”

  Edward looked down. He was either growing into a typical adult unicorn’s caustic nature, or his long journey through strange and annoying worlds had frayed his nerves. He didn’t think to apologize. Instead, Edward found himself irritated at the man for being in his way, and hence said nothing.

  “Who and what are you?” the man said, now looking up.

  “I’m a unicorn. You’ve never seen a unicorn?”

  Irritation drained from the man’s face, replaced by what seemed like fatigue. “I’m not from here,” he said.

  “Where are you from?”

  The man shook his head, waving a small hand. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me,” said Edward, meeting the small man’s eyes with one of his own. The magic he sensed in this interloper was somehow different. Magic was like music, and for some reason th
eir two notes were failing to harmonize.

  “I hate it here,” said the man. “I was sent by the Sandman.” He waved his hand again, realizing he’d misspoken. “But you wouldn’t know who that is. Just … never mind.”

  “I know the Sandman,” said Edward, surprised. Something about this encounter was already bothering him. He had just left the Sandman, and the Sandman had said that Edward (who apparently could have been unreal as easily as he could have been real) already had an existing story. And here he’d met someone who had come from the same place? It was too coincidental to be anything other than fiction, just like the presence of the cat in his path or the appearance of the two paths through the woods. The thought made him uneasy.

  “You know him?” The small man’s eyes went bright. “So can you get me back to him?”

  “Why would you want to go back to the Sandman?” he asked. Edward couldn’t imagine. He himself had barely escaped. Saul had seemed terrified of even being in the man’s presence, and he’d said he was afraid each time that he might not return home.

  “Because I hate it here!” the man snapped. “It brings out the worst in me! I hate who it’s turning me into! And I hate what I see here! These people are nuts, these humans. The Sandman was wrong. I am better as an unreal thing. I was happier in the Dark Forest. Here, all I do is marvel at these humans and how terrible they are.”

  “Terrible how?” Edward asked.

  The man’s face pinched as he seemed to decide whether or not to tell Edward something. Finally, confidentially, he said, “Okay, so I’m a trickster, right? I made sense with the witches and the trolls and the giants. I had fun raiding the light village, messing with that big stupid egg, fooling the lasses into giving me their babies. But here?” He shook his head. “It’s too easy. And this is the central world, unicorn. This isn’t just one of the real worlds; it’s the real world, with a capital R. When I trick the fools in the light village, what does it matter? It’s all part of the tale. You expect lasses to make bargains to surrender their babies in stories. But not in reality. Yet they do it every time. The same ruse, I pull over and over again. In the same places! And yet they never catch on. Do you know how many babies I’ve appropriated since I’ve been here?”

  Edward couldn’t make sense of what the tiny man was saying. “Why are you taking babies?”

  The little man gave an exasperated shrug. “I don’t know. It makes sense in stories. I spin gold; I trick you out of your baby if you can’t guess my name. Don’t ask. But I always win. Every. Dagged. Time. I’m up at my house on the hill, doing my little dance, yelling out that my name is Rumpelstiltskin — because that makes sense if I’m supposedly trying to keep a low profile — and they never get it. In the stories, they always do! But not here.” He rolled his eyes and put his hands on his hips. “I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t even want babies. What am I going to do with a baby? They’re as big as I am, and constantly messing their pants. Like I need that aggravation. So I leave them back at the orphanage, and sometimes the lasses figure it out and reclaim their babies, and sometimes — sometimes! — I can even manage to do it again: go back to the same lass with the same promise and abduct the same baby. It’s terrible.”

  “Why don’t you just stop making bargains to take babies?”

  Rumpelstiltskin stepped back specifically so he could stare Edward full in the eye. “Because I’m a story man, dummy.”

  Edward returned his stare, unsure why this small man seemed so compelling. Even with places to go, the unicorn was compelled. There was something here he wanted or needed to do — mayhap even something he was supposed to do.

  “You’re from the Dark Forest?”

  “Of course!”

  “And you don’t want to be here?”

  “I don’t belong here! The Sandman made a mistake! What exactly am I supposed to be doing? I’m miserable and causing nothing but trouble. Do you think I enjoy causing trouble? It’s in my nature, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it. In the unreal world, it does no damage. Here, I think I’m spreading Darkness. Exacerbating stupidity. Making everything worse.”

  “And that bothers you? You, from the Dark Forest?”

  The little man shook his head. “Oh, I don’t know. The Sandman said I’m real. I feel like I’m a story. So which is it? I act like a cliché. But these people here, that’s what they seem to want. So what can I do? And do I really think I know better than the Sandman? But what’s here for me? That’s what I want to ask him. I want to know what good a trickster is in this world — what purpose there is for someone who spins straw into gold, who plays pranks. I feel like I just go back and forth. I tell my tales, then I go. I tell another tale, and I go. They always listen. Always believe it. It’s like they need the Darkness.”

  Edward found himself thinking of Grappy. “Maybe they do.”

  “Need Darkness? Or tall tales?” He put his hands back on his hips, cocked his head up at Edward, and strode forward. It was a wide-open meadow, and the little man could have gone anywhere — including and especially around Edward — but instead he rammed the unicorn’s legs with malice. “Get out of my way, idiot!”

  When Rumpelstiltskin was a few paces behind Edward, the unicorn turned and yelled after him. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to the Sandman. Back where you apparently came from. Is that okay with you?”

  Edward felt a strange kinship with the jerky little man, so he tried again. “I think you belong here more than you think.”

  Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “I feel like I’m spreading a disease.”

  “Maybe you’re here to shake things up.”

  At this, Rumpelstiltskin’s small features twisted into a mischievous smile. “Oh, that I can do,” he said. “I could tell you some stories.” But then he turned and resumed walking, apparently unconvinced.

  Edward whispered after him, too quiet for the little furrow in the tall grass to hear him.

  “I’m sure you could.”

  CHAPTER 22

  ON THE ROAD TO MEAD

  A short time after Rumpelstiltskin was no longer moving grass behind him, Edward reached The Great Meadow’s edge. The tall grass ended and became shorter and scrubbier; Edward’s earlier path resumed as if never interrupted — the same two wheel ruts headed off in the same direction relative to the sun.

  He stepped out of the grass. Edward didn’t know how much time he’d spent in the meadow, but it felt like forever. There had been human settlements before he’d entered, and he could already see signs of more now that he’d left. He thought of Rumpelstiltskin’s stories about bamboozling villagers and wondered if those villagers — this blooming plague of humans that had spread everywhere in his absence — had tried to build in the Great Meadow. Edward had never seen or heard of the Great Meadow but knew it was a unicorn place. A wild, natural, magical place. Had the humans, greedy for their land and fences, tried to build in the space between the villages on the other side and those on this one? And if they had, what had happened? Had the Great Meadow swallowed them, made them never-there?

  He looked forward, seeing that he’d come to a valley’s pouting lip. The road curved gently downward. Here and there along its visible length he saw more signs and tributary roads that must lead to more settlements. When Edward had left Mead (when he’d been forced from it, he mentally amended), humans had been scattered savages. They’d had that one settlement — the Realm — and the rest lived in small shelters and caves, using magic rocks to make fire. Now they were everywhere. The road signs, as he began walking the valley, pointed in every direction, to everything. Small human houses dotted the landscape, isolated but plentiful. And always forward, the small wooden signs pointed the way to The Realm. Capital T, capital R. How much had changed? And how long had he been gone?

  The unicorn was tireless, eager to reach The Realm and see if it was the same as before. If it was, Edward could find the haven. And if he could find the haven, he could reach Mead. The world may have changed, b
ut it was still the world, and mountains took unicorn lifetimes to rise and fall. He would still be able to find the line of hills he’d last traversed when the world had felt young, and his grappies had been alive. He would find the river, the valley, and the meadow where he’d last tried to fly. Edward thought of his wings and again decided to keep them at his sides. He would never pass for a horse, but it felt safer to be a small target, just in case.

  Night fell, and still Edward kept walking. The world was quiet under the stars, as it should be, and Edward found himself remembering the cat in the other world. He remembered the Dark Forest — which, ironically, hadn’t been as dark as the night around him was now, with its candlelit windows and its fireflies. He remembered the Sandman and the piper. He found himself feeling unreality suffuse him, suddenly unsure if any of his travels had actually happened. Had he really crossed worlds? Had he really met all those beings, all those creatures? Had a strange cat really flitted from branch to branch in front of him, trying to convince him that he might not be as real as he thought he was?

  Now that he was nearing home (and in the dark, with the human settlements and roads obscured, it even felt like home, with familiar stars overhead), his adventure felt like a story Grappy might tell in front of the fire, over a steaming mug of marshmallow chocolate. The entire journey felt like something from a tale — which, Edward thought as he remembered the words of the Sandman, might be exactly the point.

  Morning dawned, and the short grass became tipped with dew. Edward felt his newly adult ankles brushed with moisture. He’d come far in the night and could finally see a settlement on the horizon. This one was different from the others; it was huge and gray, alive with activity even in the dawn hours, visible from afar. Edward could see a wall around the buildings, and the buildings themselves appeared to be made of stone. Looking at the wall, Edward felt a chill. If he was looking at The Realm, this wasn’t the same Realm he’d known. When Edward had looked at the human city from Adam and Eve’s haven, it had looked like a collection of ramshackle huts. What he saw now looked like a fortress, with tall borders made of hewn stone.