Unicorn Genesis (Unicorn Western)

by Sean Platt

  Edward couldn’t bring himself to pair. He used the excuse of being an ambassador and claimed that he had to stay impartial. Other unicorns believed him and found worthy humans — among those humans, William’s brother Cyrus. Cyrus paired with a mare Edward had grown up with — a beautiful thing named Marie. Their pairing was the first and was so perfect and fated as to immediately change dozens of minds on both sides. Other unicorns sifted the population, all trusting their internal senses to feel what Edward had once felt — the spark of worthiness and nobility inside the fragile human shells. Rites were read, and humans climbed onto the unicorns’ great white backs. And as they did, more and more unicorns realized that Cyrus was right: despite all of the lazy, greedy, do-nothing humans in The Realm, there were gems among them.

  The humans and their riders became peacekeepers. They came and went from The Realm, wandering out into the lands. In the beginning, they carried the newer, better, magic-imbued slingshots popularized by Cyrus and his group. Despite the unicorns’ qualms about the humans’ use of magic, nobody questioned the slingshots. They were balanced. The slingshots could deal both peace and death, and did so evenly as the riders changed, as they became official, as The Realm gave them badges and powers, as they earned the nickname “marshals,” before the name became true.

  The marshals rode without tack — a concession to the unicorns’ proud nature and a nod to the bond itself — going bareback or not at all. Slingshots became better slingshots. Better slingshots became alloy tubes called rollers, again imbued with magic, capable of firing similar balls through the ignition of magic powders. As centuries passed, rollers became firearms. Commoners began to carry firearms to protect their wares and property — just in case because some were greedy and wanted to take what others had made for themselves. The new weapons had six revolving chambers, each holding a ball with a point wedged into a casing containing a small explosive. The unicorns helped their riders create better firearms than those used by commoners. The marshals’ weapons were faster. Truer. Deadlier. Seven chambers, instead of a common man’s six. They fired magic bullets in plumes of dull red smoke.

  But throughout the years, as Cyrus aged and found a mate who gave birth to a fine woman named Genevieve, as Genevieve gave birth to a girl who grew to have the fastest hands in The Realm, as that woman birthed a man named Malachi who lost a hand and learned to become deadly with one hand and an agile foot, the magic continued to leak. Whatever the humans had done early in the history of Mead had broken too much, and whatever Adam and Eve had caused in the Cataclysm had failed to purge it.

  The once magic-rich land under Mead became poor and mundane. Their verdant world was submerged in floodwaters. Then the waters drained too far, and the lands turned dry. The Realm harvested more magic despite the problems, the magic-fat citizens never heeding unicorn protests — or, by that point, the marshals — always seeming to dare their allies to challenge them. Feeling besieged, The Realm subtly turned some of its stolen magic to weaponry and defense. It built a better and taller and more impregnable wall. The new wall kept the people in and the invaders out whenever the gates were closed, as they were more and more often. It held the magic inside. It kept The Realm whole and prosperous and green even as reports returned from the farthest reaches of the veins, reporting fallow lands.

  Even as lands turned to dust and death suitable only for an increasingly heartier strain of human outlier, The Realm refused to unplug from the source. Instead, they challenged the unicorns to do what they’d promised to do generations ago — to control the leaking and seal the gaps, to keep magic, stories, and dreams in place. The Realm was the center of civilization. It had planned well, they said. If anyone was at fault for the world’s continued fracture, it was the guardians, who had built a network of tunnels to connect and intertwine the worlds. The fates of poor outlanders were not The Realm’s problem. The Realm was doing well. It was prosperous and thriving.

  A schism grew. The Realm had become too big to challenge. Many unicorns stayed in the city, intent on trying to guide it from within. Unpaired unicorns went with them, trying to build relations. Other unicorns left. Edward and Cerberus came and went — Edward for reasons having to do with building bridges between the peoples and Cerberus for reasons that Edward never quite understood. Cerberus saw opportunities. He used the tunnels, opened the way for other unicorns, should they need to come and go. The Genesis Treaty held; nobody returned to the Dark Forest except for the raconteurs — who told their stories, shuttled magic, and kept their secrets like babes at their breasts.

  In time, The Realm’s world logic became circular. The Realm existed because it existed. And in the past, The Realm had existed because it had existed. Unicorns and marshals watched their streets. Realm kings and queens always said they needed Edward, that he was their bridge. A bridge to what? Edward always asked. The monarchs could never answer. The peoples’ pleasure and decadence grew. The raconteurs became tired. They vanished, and nobody noticed. Unicorns stopped using the tunnels, which had begun to mold themselves into something from distant human worlds, all shiny rocks and loud engines. Humans came and went in generations like seasons. The Realm turned inward. Still the unicorns stayed.

  The Realm existed because it existed. The Realm had always been. Nobody inside The Realm asked why, or what the city had been founded upon. Nobody traveled. The gate stayed closed more and more, and those who wanted to wander required special permission from the castle. Not that anybody wanted to travel.

  The marshals rode, the best of a depressed species. The people forgot. The unicorns let them.

  Entrances to the tunnels were lost. No one cared. Nobody knew they were there. The magic continued to fail. The raconteurs stayed away, and the humans forgot they’d ever existed. Even the unicorns began to forget.

  Realm storytellers told the same stories again. And again. And again. Inspiration came in the form of widening leaks from below, as worlds began to shift and buckle, as the inevitable chasms started to widen. Inspiration came whole from other places — not just the Dark Forest and the worlds of the Seven Nation Army, but from other worlds — past, present, and future. Human worlds. Alternative worlds. Inspiration came in the form of signals that nobody understood or cared to understand. History began to unspool backward, past conforming to present. When something was spoken, it became forever true. Ideas were stolen, but there was no crime because once the idea was part of The Realm, everyone came to believe that it had always been there.

  The Realm existed because it existed. Because it always had. There was never a time when The Realm was small and worlds were whole, never a time when Mead was merely a hilly path with an outcropping at its top, where once upon a time a frightened young colt waited for his appies while his grappies ended worlds.

  There had never been free unicorns who opposed The Realm.

  There had never been a Seven Nation Army.

  There had never been times of strife, times of challenge, times of innovation.

  There was and there was and there was and there was. Forever.

  Edward moved in and out of The Realm. Cerberus did the same, always curious about the nature of dark magic after emerging from the abundant Realm light. The constant white made Edward nauseous. He still remembered his choice in the clearing, when he’d eschewed paradise and chosen to enter a dark tunnel of horrors. Both unicorns were tipping on the edge of their pure white centers, but in different ways.

  Edward went on pilgrimages. He lost track of the outside unicorns, all of whom abandoned Mead as The Realm’s magical infractions grew large enough to shear the corporeal world beneath its feet. Magic faults in the land began to appear outside the wall, and when they did, The Realm’s location began to shimmer and wander, as if it were becoming less real. Each time Edward returned to The Realm from one of his trips, it took him longer and longer to find it. Worlds shifted against each other like rocks in a turbulent stream.

  One day on his way back to The Realm, lost and in
creasingly sure he’d never see the wall again, Edward came across a small tan-and-gray creature that looked like a miniature crocodile. It opened its mouth, revealing a pink palate and two fanged teeth. It hissed a single word at him as he approached: “Sands.”

  Edward stopped. Stared at the creature. It turned, and he followed. A wind stirred, and a storm surrounded him, leaving him a path. He followed the creature through the path, and when he reached a clear place, he saw the Sandman sitting in its center atop his throne of dust.

  “I was right to send you through,” he said. The crocodile climbed up his throne and perched on his arm. “You have lived quite a story so far, Edward the Brave.”

  “So far,” Edward echoed. His head wanted to hang. He let it. He didn’t feel like a unicorn much these days and certainly didn’t feel brave. Mead was gone. The worlds had become a desert, where all a being could do was wander forever. The world he’d known was a distant memory. He didn’t trust it. It had been thousands and thousands of years. He didn’t even know how many, and wasn’t sure it mattered. Sometimes there were mirages in the desert as he wandered alone. In them he saw the distant past where land was green. Or the distant future where there was nothing at all. He hid his wings. He didn’t know why, and didn’t know when he’d started. The other unicorns had all started doing the same. No one said why. Mayhap it was merely the giddy thrill of bending reality that made them do it. The world was a bag of bones, and he felt like he’d once felt in the presence of a disembodied smile that had told him it didn’t know which way to go, which way led to madness. If they hid their wings and allowed time to pass, the humans would forget, and the new story of humanity would profess that unicorns did not have wings. It was as if their collective will could bend reality and make the humans the creators of stories — gatekeepers to the truth like the Sandman himself.

  “Yes, Edward. So far. And yours has been an excellent tale. Journey. Redemption. Love. Loss! Oh, so much loss.” The Sandman looked around, and the billowing storm cleared. For miles and miles and miles, there was only sand and dunes and sand and death. “And finally, amid this second plague of sand, I understand why I am here.”

  Edward looked around. Before he’d seen the little crocodile, he’d thought he was getting close to his destination. He’d seen Realm spires spearing the horizon, and now he saw nothing. Not that it meant he’d been close; three times now he’d seen the wall, had marched toward it, and had found it to be yet another mirage. He longed to be done. He was tired, and wanted the story to end.

  “No, no,” said the Sandman. “I hear your dreams. But your story is not over. Oh, I have had to sample it and to give parts away, for telling in other worlds. It was necessary, in these thin times. I have had to purchase the way ahead of you, to barter for your passage. To make sure that you are always crossing borders, always becoming more and more real. But do not worry. You have plenty of tales yet to live.”

  Edward looked up. “You speak of my future as if it’s the past.”

  The Sandman waved a dismissive hand, and a dusting fell from his suit of sand. “Past. Future. You unicorns are a magical race, yet you choose to perceive things within your world, as if it can hold you. It isn’t in the past, Edward. It isn’t in the future, either. It just is. If you choose to lay those events in order, though, I can’t blame you. A story is always best if you discover it as you go.” The Sandman reached down at his feet and grabbed a handful of sand. The crocodile ran to it and snapped greedily, so he closed his hand, enclosing the pile. “Would you like to see it the other way?”

  Edward shook his head. “The other way?”

  He kept his hand closed then raised it to his middle. He opened his palm, showing the pile of sand, then cupped his other hand over the top. He squeezed, and the space between his hands glowed red.

  “My favorite part of the story, Edward, is where you made your choice,” said the Sandman. “A decision, this one a literal fork in the road. You were but a colt. In a strange land, surrounded by your fears. Unformed, like a lump of clay. You were on your own, without the formative pressure from your famous grappies or the criticism of your appies. It was, perhaps, the first true adversity you faced. Do you know what I’m referring to?”

  “The path?”

  The Sandman’s eyes widened, his hands still pressed together over the red-hot glow. “Yes! The one that led you, a creature of light, into darkness. Why did you take that path, Edward? Why did you leave what made you comfortable and enter something so horrible? I could see all of your fear as you contemplated that path; it’s written in the text of your story, and I could feel it as if it were my own. Why did you do it?”

  Edward shook his head. It had been an unknowable length of time ago in his own perception, or likely two unknowable lengths of time as measured by the axial world.

  “I don’t know,” he said. He didn’t want to play this game but was too tired for protest. He wanted to make it back home to The Realm, or die. “I suppose I realized I had to. That I could stay on the path of light, and go nowhere.”

  The Sandman pointed a long-fingered hand directly at Edward’s nose.

  “Exactly! And as a keeper of paths, I’ve seen the same thing over and over. I saw it in you the last time we met. You had to decide then, too. You said you were more than a fable. You insisted. What if you hadn’t? What if you’d chosen to stay in the Dark Forest? First, you had to decide to enter; then you had to decide to leave. And if it hadn’t gone exactly that way, you’d never have reached Mead. And how would it have been then? Well, the axial world’s story would have been different because it would’ve been a world without you.”

  Edward shook his head. He was at the Sandman’s mercy. He could try walking on, but the Sandman would meet him again on the next horizon, or the one after that. Somehow, he’d reached another point of decision. Until he made that decision, he couldn’t continue — couldn’t, as the Sandman had said, get back home.

  “Okay,” said Edward. “Tell me what you must. What about the ‘other way’?”

  The Sandman lifted his top hand from the other and held up an irregular piece of glass. Particles of half-melted sand still clung to it. He brushed them away and held the glass in front of his eye. It was warped to the shape of the space between the Sandman’s sandwiched palms. Edward saw his eye as warped, beyond inhuman.

  “You chose the dark path despite its darkness because it was the only way to move forward,” he said. “Like Grappy taught you. What drives progress? Difference. Conflict. Embracing not just delight but horrors. Remember?”

  Edward shook his head. “Don’t talk to me about Adam. Or Eve. It has been a long time, and what they did cannot be undone.”

  The Sandman laughed, turned the glass in his hand, and held it very close to Edward’s face. There was something in the glass. A tiny world. As he watched, the glass darkened, and his view through it — into another place — became opaque. It looked like one of the flickers in The Realm, where tired stories played out, long ago drained of their fresh allure.

  “Edward, you have never chosen the easy path. Like David. Like Cyrus. Like the other noble humans you’ve known. All of you saw something you wanted, yet all of you turned from it because you knew the greater good would come from something you didn’t want to do. If you hadn’t made the decisions you’ve made, the axial world would not have Edward the Brave. But look at this … the other way things could have happened, had you not made the choices you did.”

  Despite himself, Edward felt his neck craning forward. He watched the small glass, but what he saw wasn’t precisely seen as it was sent directly into his mind, faster than his eyes could ever have processed. Image after image and impression after impression slammed into the magic inside him. He was forced to see each.

  He saw a world with no unicorns at all — a world where the guardians of magic had left, and humanity had forgotten about them. The magic itself was gone. Connection to the Wellspring was lost.

  He saw men killing
men. Women killing women. Nations killing each other. He saw machines of death. He saw skulls and torment and felt the tearing roar of spirits as they were shredded asunder.

  He saw evil. Evil in the guise of men. He saw torture. Struggles for power. He saw a man confine millions to caged farms then lead them to their deaths. He saw barbarians conquer villages. Reapers.

  He saw disinterest. Disillusionment. He saw a world filled with people who were always looking but never finding because they didn’t know what they were after. He saw the soulless cry that came from enchanted detachment. Science had disproved wonder. A world of humans who crawled across a blue marble, consuming and destroying, never knowing their source. The sadness. The sadness. Edward couldn’t take it. It was all pain and agony and detachment and banality and emptiness and frustration and torment and violence and fury, and there was nothing more, and nothing more, and there was only trudging, progress without growth, and horrors that nobody realized were horrors, and the world was filled with shells and husks and …

  The Sandman pulled the small glass lens away, snapping it into his closed hand.

  “Pleasant, isn’t it?” he said.

  Edward blinked, feeling himself emerge from an odd kind of trance. His moment in the glass had lasted forever. He’d lived lives, watched empires rise and fall. It had all seemed so meaningless. Now he was staring at the Sandman and he felt old — older than ancient, a world’s tortured lifetime behind him.

  “What is it?” said Edward.

  “It’s how the world would have been had you not made the decisions you did. In that alternate world, the unicorns would have given up trying to save humanity long ago. They would have fractured the magic so badly that it all leaked away, all at once like a plate smashing to the floor. The magic wouldn’t have sifted. It would simply have gone, and the unicorns with it. Then the humans would have forgotten as they have today. Day would follow day would follow day, and they’d take over. Every scrap of land. They would build. And consume. And build. And consume. And … well, you saw what they would have done next.”