by Sean Platt
But they were gone; there was no question about that. Once Edward saw the haven’s old location and finally found his bearings, realizing that the old landmarks were still in place as long as he stayed atop the magic vein, the unicorn knew they were never coming back. He’d known it for a while. And now, right before he fell asleep, Edward felt the Wellspring’s power. Somewhere between wakefulness and the surrender of sleep was an in-between place, and in that place he could sense Grappy’s stories. He could sense Grammy’s memories of Edward, and seeing them through his own eyes (or whatever passed for eyes as he fell asleep; he wasn’t quite sure how that worked) was strange. But the other thing he felt, when he considered Grammy and Grappy and what might have become of them, was peace. They were where they wanted to be. They’d been ready to go because they’d been mere instances of a larger source of magic, and it would have been selfish to hold on.
Once Edward returned to Mead and found the other unicorns, he unleashed his torrent of questions: How long had he been gone? What had happened to the others while he’d been away? What had happened to the world? Only when they’d answered his questions did he venture versions of his own, and the versions he told were only halfway true.
He told Cerberus, Jack, Diane, and the others that he’d found himself in a different world, but he didn’t explain the finest points of those worlds — in which Edward, himself, had begun to doubt his own existence. He sniffed around the edges of the other unicorns’ knowledge and realized that they didn’t seem to understand that their world was fundamentally different, that they were “in the center” as the cat had said.
As long as the others didn’t ask for details, Edward felt he didn’t want to volunteer more. It wasn’t like they believed him anyway. Meeting those he’d met had been strange, and meeting the Sandman had been the strangest of all. But Edward didn’t have to hide in subterfuge; the unicorns were arrogant, and more or less assumed that their world was more real and that they were central. Mead was where life had started, and where they were now. Hence, Mead mattered most.
Answers to Edward’s own questions were unsatisfying. The Cataclysm, said Cerberus, seemed to have unseated the worlds into fractured bits, and then those pieces had shifted back and forth among one another like pieces of a puzzle floating on the surface of water. Edward’s ammy and appy had searched for their colt for a long time after losing him in the storm then had eventually surrendered, sensing that he’d not returned to the Wellspring and hence was alive somewhere. They’d flown to a mountaintop and had spent many cycles of day and night waiting for the floodwater to recede. They returned to Mead, found it cleared and filled with the scattered, exhausted others, and had begun to rebuild.
Soon after, the unicorns began to worry about the magic. The land’s veins were like those in their bodies. When those veins were severed, they spilled and wasted their contents. The land itself, said Cerberus, wasn’t physically ripped open; the schisms were more subtle. The unicorns could feel the veins ripped open, could feel the magic pouring away but couldn’t tell where it was going. They could feel the way that some of the sundered lands (because they were somehow sundered; Cerberus kept contradicting himself) almost tipped to the side and, absent a connection to the veins, poured what magic they had into nothingness. The unicorns would go to sleep in Mead beside neighboring land, whole and intact, then wake the next morning to find it still whole and intact, but changed into a completely different place. There were entire areas where walking from one spot to another was like walking through fog, except that the fog felt like fear and ephemeral nothingness rather than fog true. These fog-covered areas shifted and left behind something like a patchwork. Grasslands bordered oceans. Mountaintops moved beside sweeping plains. A few years later they’d reshuffle, and land would shift again.
Eventually the movement ceased, and the world settled into the configuration it had now. It was different from what Edward had known but was at least stable, with familiar grass underhoof.
Edward asked how much time had passed, but his answers were different dependent on whom he asked. He was only sure that there had been generations of humans, and that none of the other unicorns seemed the least bit surprised to find Edward fully grown. All of his old friends were now adults, too. Cerberus was very much like Edward, only slightly larger and with a slightly smaller horn — a significantly pleasant turnaround, given how Edward had only a nub through his colthood. Edward’s wingspan was also slightly wider, and when he finally did fly for the first time, he found that he was also slightly faster and a bit more agile. Cerberus seemed annoyed that Edward had surpassed him in one fell swoop, but other than that their friendship went on as it always had.
It took weeks for Edward to ask his appies about Adam and Eve. His answer was the same as he himself had concluded: Nobody knew how his grappies had perished, but everyone knew that they had. Edward’s Grammy and Grappy were the original holders of unicorn magic, and their departure from the world had changed that magic’s feel. The distrust and animosity directed at the old unicorns had vanished in death. All of Mead had found the respect that Edward had felt for his grappies all along. Their memorial (funeral felt like the wrong word; there were no bodies, and they seemed to have returned to the Wellspring months before it was held) was a massive event. Every species from the surrounding lands sent representatives. Elves, trolls, ghryst, and even xombies came to show their respect. Cerberus told Edward it was fascinating to watch: all of the warring species in one place with their heads down, showing respect to the progenitors of the magic that allowed them to exist. Only the humans didn’t attend, but at that time, nobody was surprised or bothered. At the time, humans weren’t magic and had still been considered highly unintelligent. They and their horses rode to the horizon and watched the gathering from a distance, seeming to wonder at the ritual.
And there was another thing, Cerberus added. On the day the Mead elders decided to hold a memorial for Adam and Eve, a tiny black sapling began to grow at the top of the central hill. The sapling grew, and by the time two weeks had passed and the funeral was held, the small black sapling had grown a single peach whose weight bent the petite tree in half. When the funeral was concluded, the peach fell from the tree and immediately began to rot into the ground. The tree shriveled and retreated into the soil like a snake backing up the way it had come.
Edward quickly fell into Mead’s familiar rhythms. He was older and had to break the still-engrained habit of clinging close to his appies and abiding by their schedule. Unicorns of multiple generations tended to live together regardless of age, and Edward was able to reclaim his old place in his rebuilt home without interruption. Beyond that, Edward tried to remember that he was no longer a colt (which was difficult at first but grew increasingly easier through the passing years) and became quite involved in Mead culture. Little had changed from the old days other than one very significant difference: the unicorns now considered the humans very worth paying attention to.
Adam’s words were true. Humans were fast. In the time since Edward had left Mead, somewhere between fifty and one hundred generations of humans had lived and died. In that time they had built cities and settlements, exemplified by The Realm. They’d clustered and learned trade. They’d created machines made of wood then animated them with the magic they had learned to harvest from the surrounding land. It extended beyond the driverless plows that David had told Edward about. They had driverless carriages, washing boards that didn’t require hands to clean fabrics, smith hammers that were hot when they struck metal but cool in the smith’s grip. And there was more. Appallingly, humans delighted in having magic think for them. They created magic pigments and painted walls then somehow turned them into what looked like windows — except that instead of looking out onto the other side of the walls, these windows looked into artificial realities. Sorcerers were charged with designing pictures to appear on the walls, and those sorcerers who could create the most compelling artificial realities were the most valuab
le members of Realm society. Nobody knew what magic the sorcerers were using to create their visual stories, but it bothered the unicorns. Whatever the magic was, its purpose was pure pleasure.
The Unicorn Blessing — the governing body that led the society — now sounded like Grappy. The others didn’t seem to realize it, but for Edward, almost no time had passed. Just a short while ago by his own internal timeframe, unicorn society had shunned Adam for his heretical beliefs. The Blessing now repeated those beliefs as if they were their own. They said the humans were using too much magic, that they were separating pleasure-generating light magic from pain-causing dark. Unicorns used both types, but humans were only using one. They used magic to make life easier, and more pleasant, to further distract themselves. Human society was trending toward a sort of permanent bliss, and that made them dangerous.
The farther humans paved the road toward paradise, the less likely they were to embrace the dark magic required to balance the light. Three times now, the balance had skewed so significantly that the unicorns were forced to send representatives into The Realm. The humans saw these as invasions because the unicorns used force to wrench the pleasant magic from the humans’ hands. But the change never stuck. It took only a few dozen generations, and the humans would return to their old ways. Each time, they rediscovered the trick — and the addictive nature of white magic — faster. Each time they managed to amass better defenses when the unicorns came to set things right.
For a while, factions in the Unicorn Blessing had disagreed over the so-called human problem. Some wanted to shepherd the humans, as Adam had. Some wanted to keep doing as they had: keeping an eye on them then stepping in when the balance between light and dark grew too skewed. Some wanted to eliminate them. Cerberus was a vocal proponent of the last option, and his arguments were eminently logical. He said that they were invasive creatures that threatened every other living thing, and that when a weed threatened to swallow a garden, you had to pull it out or let everything perish. Because every speck of life ultimately returned to the Wellspring, Cerberus found no real moral objection to their elimination; human lives were short, barely there, and the unicorns would simply be returning them to their source sooner rather than later.
Edward didn’t agree and argued with his old friend over endless dishes of a beverage that was new to Mead — something Edward told the others he’d brought back from his travels called “apple brew.” Apple brew was actually a human drink from The Realm. Edward told this to no one then laughed as Cerberus drank his brew and argued that the humans had created nothing of value.
It bothered Edward to find himself on the human side of things, but with Adam gone it also seemed fitting. If Cerberus got his way, the humans would all be gone. And while they were a problem as a whole, plenty had value as individuals. David had grown into a man, and whenever Edward visited him, he saw what a fine man he’d become. The spark was still deep in David’s blue eyes, and whenever Edward was near him, he felt the same connection he’d felt on their first meeting. There was something in the human king that wasn’t in many of the others — something that kept the great white unicorn returning to the castle to both offer and (he’d never admit) receive advice. David ruled The Realm fairly, and that fairness never faltered no matter how many greedy humans tried to seize what belonged to others.
Edward asked David about the magic. He tried to explain the idea of light and dark, and how both were needed for balance. He told the king that The Realm was using too much light and not enough dark, and told him that if it continued, the worlds could fracture again. But so much was a leap; Edward didn’t know if partitioning of magic had caused the Great Cataclysm or not, nor did he know if the humans had caused it through their actions or if it had been something else. David certainly didn’t know, and neither did any of his advisers. He always listened to Edward, though, and tried to take his concerns seriously. But each time, he failed to enact any change. The Realm was a kingdom of free merchants, where each made and grew what he or she chose and traded it however they wanted. The only way to make any sweeping change — say, to limit or eliminate the use of magic — would require the act of a strong fist. David wasn’t a strong-fisted leader and was always fair. He couldn’t destroy the livelihood of the magic harvesters, or the magic cart makers, or the sorcerers who created entertainment on walls with magic pigment. Discussions always ended in stalemate, with David agreeing that the issue was a problem but unsure what he could possibly do about it.
Cerberus and Edward met over brew. Cerberus urged decisive unicorn action — now, before the problem worsened. Edward went to David and told him what Cerberus and the others were planning. David agreed that it was a problem then admitted that he could do nothing without risk of becoming a tyrant.
Decades passed. The unicorns changed little, but every time Edward visited David, he was much older. In what felt like no time at all, David became an old man with white hair and a beard that held onto a surprising amount of dark strands. He was in excellent health until the end but was mortal, and couldn’t live forever. His children grew to middle age and had children of their own. The second generation was large, and the third even larger. The fourth generation was largest of all. By the time David finally returned to the Wellspring, The Realm’s citadel was swarming with old men and women, their ambitious middle-aged children, and the pitter-patter of David’s great grandchildren’s tiny little feet.
Power fell to David’s oldest son then quickly to his oldest son. In the blink of an eye, Edward’s connection to The Realm changed entirely. He was made to wait for a word with the king. He was looked at askance in the street. More and more people seemed to remember that the unicorns had thrice marched on The Realm, whereas in David’s days of plenty they had found it easy enough to forget.
The Realm became an unfamiliar place, and Edward began to see the strings that had always been at work behind David’s reign. David’s answer to his children was always the same as his answer to Edward: I don’t know what I can do.
With David gone, glossed-over conflicts between siblings quickly rose and festered. Two of his youngest had been fighting over land south of The Realm, where a river delta created a particularly fertile patch of land, but David had never solved the conflict and so the wound had festered in a farce of peace. One of David’s grandchildren wanted to tax the use of magic, but rather than clearing it with the king, he simply instituted a small fee, due to the castle. By the time David discovered the levy, it was too late to stop it, so he’d let it go — much to the consternation of several other grandchildren who felt that the first was getting more than his fair share of the kingdom.
Petty tyrannies rose, all exactly small enough to warrant no action.
Too much magic was being used, but once David was gone, none of his successors were willing to listen as Edward warned them.
Every house soon had a wall painted in magic pigment. The stories inside them started seeming familiar. The same went for magically bound volumes that the humans read out loud to one another. There was one that featured a big bad wolf who blew down the houses of pigs. There was another about a small man with a funny name, who tricked a townswoman into giving up her baby.
The old conflicts within David’s family festered for so long that they simply faded into the background. It was like the family forgot that disagreements and resentments could be solved and simply grew used to them. When a royal wanted to do something, he or she did it. Others didn’t agree, so they said nothing and let it go, unsure what they could do about it anyway.
By the time David’s great grandson William took the throne, The Realm’s feeling had gone from animus to banal. There was a time when it seemed The Realm was threatened by the unicorns’ quiet menace and wanted to gear up to fight back. There was a time when the dirty looks Edward received in The Realm’s streets had reached an intolerable level, and the unicorn was certain that the city would soon stop allowing him to enter. He’d been sure a fight was coming; he’
d been sure that one day the royals would send him away as an enemy of the state, then war would rise and a fourth unicorn incursion would be at hand. But instead of being sent away, Edward suddenly found himself welcomed with big, dumb smiles. They invited the unicorn to eat extravagant food off of elaborate, magic-etched plates. They gave him fancier, sparkling versions of apple brew. They invited him to parties where the humans would dance in fancy clothes. Kings and queens grew fat then found magic solutions to their obesity and again became thin. Peace reigned on the surface while royals, merchants, townspeople, and traders stabbed at each other from behind their backs.
A moving picture show was created that featured a magical cat who could disappear behind his smile. Bound volumes appeared at so-called booksellers, featuring a unicorn who was ridden by a human.
Edward reported back to Cerberus. They drank apple brew, and Edward felt guilty while drinking. Cerberus’s animosity toward The Realm seemed to have dissipated. Edward was tired. He was tired of being so accepted in the human city, tired of how humans with difficult lives seemed pacified enough by their entertainment to walk the world with ever-present smiles. He asked Cerberus if he still wanted to march on the city, and Cerberus gave a small equine shrug and asked if Edward would bother raising armies to march on a marshmallow.
Edward found himself wanting to fight but not knowing what he could possibly fight for. There were no sides. There was only peace.
