Black Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  "You must remember," said Jaive to the nine-year-old Tanaquil, "that this world is badly made. But we sorcerers believe there are other worlds, some worse, and one the improved model of this. Of this perfect world we may catch glimpses." And she had tried to teach Tanaquil use of the magic mirror, but Tanaquil had made a mistake and the mirror cracked and Jaive had been furious.

  "Oh, Mother," said Tanaquil.

  She sat on the bridge-rock until the sun began to wester over the sloping dunes. Then she got up and faced back toward the fortress of the sorceress.

  Probably she could find some cold snacks in the kitchen. There was seldom dinner in her mother's hall. Then she must search the library for a readable book—though bursting with volumes, the library had few of these. And then. What was there but to go to bed and sleep as long as she could?

  Tanaquil went up to her room from the library, where she had read part of a book on ancient witchcraft and part of a parchment on sorcerer-princes, having located nothing else. She had decided to try to find some of her missing clothes, which usually moved themselves into absurd places, such as up the chimney, or mixed themselves with the furnishings and changed color, so that they blended.

  As she was investigating the chimney, Tanaquil recalled the peeve that had rushed up there after a bone. She hoped it had found a way out. Although the nights were icy cold, fires were not often lit. Tanaquil, in passing, pressed the lion's mouth for hot water, but a fountain of paper flowers fell out.

  Beyond the window, light snow drifted to the desert. The moon had risen, and the dunes were iced biscuits.

  Tanaquil looked at her bed.

  On the pillows lay something round and black. Tanaquil approached with caution. "Oh, no!" shouted Tanaquil. "You wretched thing!"

  The peeve of the morning—covered thick with the black soot it had also sprinkled generously all over the bed and the pillows, which it had also decorated with black paw marks—raised its head.

  "What?" asked the peeve.

  "Just look what you've done, you pest."

  "Done nothing," said the peeve. "What done?" It looked about, surprised.

  "All this ghastly mess—"

  "Soots," said the peeve. "Wash, wash," and it rolled about, licking itself halfheartedly, spreading the soot further.

  Tanaquil grabbed the peeve and bore it to the window. She plumped it in the embrasure and gave its flank a sharp tap. "Get out. Go away."

  "Moon," said the peeve, staring rapturously skyward.

  "Go away."

  Tanaquil slammed the shutters on it.

  She dreamed she was running over the dunes, in the snow. Her feet were bare, she went like the wind. There were no rocks, no sign of the fortress, she did not know where she was and did not care.

  She woke up because of a loud rasping and scratching on the shutters.

  "Come in," stated a voice, "come in now."

  "Go away," repeated Tanaquil to the peeve.

  But the peeve went on scratching and demanding to enter.

  "If I come to the window, I'll push you off onto the roof below," threatened Tanaquil.

  "Come in," said the peeve. "Now."

  Tanaquil got up scowling. She flung the shutters wide. There, in a glistening oval of moonshine, crouched the peeve. "Bone," said the peeve to her intently, "found a bone."

  And it nosed something on the stone at its paw.

  Tanaquil gazed. What she had taken for a bar of moonlight was not. It was a bone. Long and slender, unhuman, not at once identifiable, the material from which it was made glowed like polished milk-crystal. And in the crystal were tiny blazing specks and glints, like diamond—no, like the stars out of the sky.

  "A bone?" whispered Tanaquil. "Where did you find it?"

  "Found it," said the peeve.

  "But where?"

  "Sandy," said the peeve, "hot." It blinked and took the bone lightly up again into its mouth.

  Tanaquil reached out to touch. The peeve growled around the bone and lashed its tail, making a thumping noise on the shutters. "Mine."

  "Yes, I know it's yours. But you brought it to show me. Let me—"

  "Rrr," said the peeve.

  It backed away, the incredible tube of starlight gleaming between its teeth.

  "You mustn't—don't crunch it—" cried Tanaquil.

  The peeve wrinkled its face and abruptly threw itself around, in a kind of horizontal somersault. It fled, fur rippling, tail flapping, scuttling and rolling along the roof below, and vanished over an ornamental weathervane into the confused stages of darkness beneath.

  2

  Morning was still dim in the kitchen. The oil lamps burned and the cook was taking her hair out of its pins, while Pillow bathed her child in the sink.

  Tanaquil advanced and, bravely opening the pail for the rubbish heap, began to rummage.

  "Why, whatever are you after, Lady?"

  "I'm looking for a nice juicy meat bone."

  Pillow gave a faint shriek.

  The cook said winningly, "Now, Lady. Just you wait, and I'll do you some fried bread—"

  "No, it's a bone I want, with some good bits of meat still on it—roasted or raw, I don't mind."

  "Poor girl," said Pillow.

  "There's been nothing like that for a month," said the cook, "not since the last dinner in hall. Is it the marrow you're after, for soup?"

  "It isn't for me," said Tanaquil, irritated. The pail contained peelings and eggshells, moldy crusts and other unpleasant debris. No bones and no remnants of meat. She knew quite well the kitchen usually made itself a huge roast joint once a week, but perhaps they had been too lazy recently. "What have you got? Meat fat? Put that on some toast, thickly, for me—and a bowl of that green tea."

  "Green?" The cook shook her hair-knots. "There's no green tea here. Must have been another leak from Madam's chamber did that."

  Tanaquil stayed in the kitchen until the toast and fat was ready. She ate an orange while she waited, and watched Pillow's child trying to break her doll on an oven, but the doll survived and only went Mamaa!

  Armed with the food, Tanaquil hurried back to the stairs to her room, and put the slimy toast out in the embrasure for the peeve. She had left her shutters ajar all night, but it had not returned. Somewhere it must have its burrow, lined with things it had rooted out or stolen. But she did not know where. And where had the bone come from? Somewhere in the sand, in the hot daytime—

  It had occurred to Tanaquil that maybe the peeve's bone was an ordinary bone, only transformed by the magic overspill of the fortress. And yet, it had not looked, or seemed, of that order. The changes here tended to be ridiculous or alarming. The bone was only exquisite.

  Tanaquil sat at her work table, fiddling with fossils, cleaning her repairer's tools, one of which had coiled itself up like a snail and needed to be straightened. Then she merely sat, with her chin on her hands, staring at the open window.

  The peeve did not come back. She had annoyed or upset it. Perhaps it had bitten the bone in half and devoured it—surely that could not happen.

  The sun turned hotter and bathed the room in light. The fat smelled, and a golden fly danced on it and feasted.

  It was midday. The peeve had not and would not come.

  Tanaquil stood up. She had found her divided skirt, and now tucked its hems into her boots. She swung into the window embrasure and out, and dropped the foot or so onto the sloping roof below.

  Out here the sun was scaldingly hot. It was a world of roof hills and drainage gulleys, bushed with crops of weathervanes and old mysterious pipes. The copper roof slates greenly seared, and here and there were copses of chimneys. Above rose the tallest towers and the hedge of the battlements, where two soldiers passed each other with a bleary clack of spears. Was the burrow among the roofs, or had the peeve just decided to run up to her window on a whim?

  Tanaquil picked her way along the copper slates, in and out of the shadow of chimney pots. The peeve might even have made a lair in one
of the most disused of the chimneys. She peered into crevices, and found red flowers growing from cracks. Further over, under the eave of the library, was a large untidy nest once used by some ravens. They had caught speech and flown away yelling that the fort rubbish heap was not interesting enough. The nest lay in the shadow of a tower, and was protected by juts and slopes of the building.

  Tanaquil lowered herself into a dry canal between the roofs and pushed through the flowers. At the canal's end was a cistern full of scummy water—it caught the snow by night and fermented by day. There were black paw marks on the cistern's edge.

  To reach the library roof Tanaquil had to jump a narrow gap, through which she saw the kitchen yard below. Pillow and another girl, maybe Sausage, were hanging up some washing. They were small as the child's doll. Tanaquil took a breath and jumped. She landed on the library and heard Pillow say, far below, "Just listen, those ravens must be back."

  One of the soldiers looked over from the battlements, too. Tanaquil had a moment's fear he might take her for an invader and fire at her, but he only waved.

  The ravens' nest was empty, but beyond it a channel went back under the walls of the tower and the overhanging roof. Tanaquil moved on into deep shade, and stumbled over a pile of rugs and straw. The enclosure smelled of peeve, clean fur and meat and secrets. And there was a hoard of silly things—a small pan from the kitchen, some sequins, probably from one of Jaive's gowns, a spear-head . . . and, gleaming like white water in the shadow—"Seven," said Tanaquil aloud, "seven of them." Seven bones like the bone she had seen the previous night: two very little, and one very long, broken, and curved, like a rib, perhaps, and four exactly the same as the first, of which it must be a replica. And all of them like milk-crystal and stars.

  "Bad."

  Tanaquil started guiltily. She looked round, and up on the ravens' nest the peeve poised in silhouette against the bright sky. Its fur stood on end, its ears pointed, its tail was a brush. Under its forepaws was another of the amazing bones. The eighth.

  "In my place," said the peeve.

  Tanaquil wondered if it would attack her.

  Then its fur lay flat and its ears flopped. Its face took on a forlorn and sorry expression.

  "Oh look, I'm not stealing from you," said Tanaquil, remorseful. "I waited for you to come back and show me the bone again. And when you didn't, I came here."

  "My place."

  "Yes, to your place. Haven't you got a lot of these bones? Aren't you clever."

  The peeve sat down in the nest and scratched behind its ear. "Itch," it explained. It seemed to have perked up at her compliment. "Clever," it repeated.

  "Of course they belong to you. But won't you let me help you find them—I mean, if there are . . . more?"

  "More. Lots."

  A cold shiver oozed down Tanaquil's spine in the boiling day.

  "Will you show me? Can I help you?"

  The peeve put its head down and studied the eighth bone it had brought. There was a silence.

  Tanaquil said, "You know, the ravens might come back to their nest and steal from you."

  The peeve tossed up its head and scanned the sky, its whiskers making fierce arcs.

  Tanaquil felt like a villain.

  "Let me help," she said. She went over to the peeve and gently stroked its head. The peeve allowed this and looked at her out of topaz eyes. "You are so clever. It's a wonderful bone."

  They went out in the afternoon, when the worst of the heat was lessening. The peeve had been running back and forth all morning, only pausing to drink from the cistern in the roof gulley.

  After all, the peeve seemed pleased to have company. It bustled along, sometimes rushing ahead, then playing in the sand until Tanaquil caught up. The direction in which they went was that of the rock hills. Tanaquil accepted this with an odd feeling in her stomach. When the little afternoon shadow of the hills came over them, and the peeve bounded in under the hollow hill shaped like a bridge, Tanaquil nodded. The hoard of fabulous bones lay exactly beneath the spot where she had brooded. Perhaps the dust storm a week ago had uncovered them, or even other playful peeves.

  The dark heat under the arch of the hill was solemn and purple. Over among the tendons of the rock, the peeve excavated, sending up sprays of sand.

  Tanaquil went to see.

  And there, sticking up like crystal plants, were the tops of bones.

  They dug together .

  "Good, good," said the peeve, thrusting in its nose, and suddenly uprooting—there could be no doubt—a whole ribcage. It was large, daunting. How it shone in the shadow. "Sprr," said the peeve. They pulled out the cage of ribs, and leg bones followed and dropped apart in jewelry bits. It was like the leg of a huge dog, or like a horse's leg.

  "Is there a skull?" asked Tanaquil.

  The peeve took no notice, only went on digging. It had apparently realized that, with Tanaquil to carry the bones, it could unearth all of them.

  They had worked in the hollow hill for maybe an hour when the sand gave way, pouring down and over itself into a big cauldron. Some of the bones just coming visible were folded away into the sand-slip.

  The peeve rolled about, kicking. Tanaquil used one of the oaths the soldiers were fond of.

  Very likely, the bones lay over a void in the sand; they might tumble down into some hidden abyss, unreachable. The sand might also give way entirely under Tanaquil and the peeve, casting them after.

  Tanaquil tried to make the peeve understand this, but it paid no attention, only resumed its digging. Tanaquil shrugged, and threw in her lot with it, bracing herself, if she felt any movement under her, to grab the animal and run.

  No more slips occurred, and gradually the new bones came clear again. There were parts of vertebrae, and the segments of a long neck: star flowers.

  Then, against her plucking hands, Tanaquil felt a smooth mass. She heaved the object out. The sand shook off.

  "No good," said the peeve. "Not a bone."

  "It's the skull," said Tanaquil.

  She held the skull in her hands, astonished, even after what she had seen.

  It was a horse skull, or very like one, and it gleamed like an opal, polished finer than the other bones. Colors ran through the crystal of it, fiery, limpid. She imagined the brain inside this case, which must have fed on such colors, or caused them. The teeth were all present, silvery white. A pad of bone rose on the skull, above the sockets of the eyes—layers of opal—indented like another socket to hold some precious gem.

  Tanaquil looked about. She was surrounded by the bones. The peeve was still industriously digging, shooting sand into the air, disappearing slowly down a hole.

  "I think that's all," said Tanaquil. "Almost all of it's here."

  "More," said the peeve.

  "Let's go back now."

  The peeve kicked and the sand gave. The peeve fell only a foot, but Tanaquil leaned down and took hold of it. It came out pummelling the air, sneezing angrily.

  "Want dig."

  "No, that's enough."

  "Dig, dig."

  "Let's take these bones to my room. They'll be safe there. You can share my room. You'd like that. I'll get you some lovely meat fat."

  The peeve considered. It sat down and washed itself, leaving the bone hole be.

  Tanaquil began to gather up the bones. She took the scarf off her head and folded bones into it, and put bones into the cuffs of her boots, into pockets. The ribcage was difficult; she somehow got it on to her back. She picked up the opal skull, cradling it in her free arm. "You take those." She indicated the last few slender vertebrae she had not managed to stow. The peeve got them into its mouth. Its mouth stood open, glittering.

  Suppose someone saw them? Generally, the fortress might as well have been deserted during the afternoon. The soldiers and servants dozed, and Jaive swirled about her Sorcerium impervious to heat. Tanaquil hoped they would keep to their usual schedule; she did not want to share her discovery. Although she could not leave the f
ort, she had found a temporary escape—for the bones of the magical beast made her forget herself. In comparison to them, what did anything else matter?

  The blast of the sunlight beyond the hill was mighty, but the sun was lowering itself westward and the sky was thick and golden.

  Tanaquil and the peeve walked toward the fortress with great shadows before them.

  Tanaquil told the peeve about the fat toast, and roast meat, and other things she thought she might be able to get for it. It kept pace with her, not arguing, mouth full of magic.

  The peeve made a lair under Tanaquil's bed. It bundled up her rug and pushed that under, and took a pillow. Streams of feather stuffing eddied out from the torn pillow, across the floor.

  As she arranged the bones along the floor at the opposite end of the room, she heard the peeve snuffling and complaining to itself, fidgeting about. It had eaten the rancid fat in the window, and she had brought some fresh from the kitchen, where only two of the sweeper boys were lying asleep on a cool stone oven. Now and then the peeve would emerge and watch Tanaquil's actions with the bones. "Please don't move them," said Tanaquil. It came to her that it would be better to suspend the skeleton in the air, from a ceiling beam, and she opened her work box, measuring lengths of fine brass chain, cutting these, and finding clips whereby to attach them—she did not want to pierce any of the bones, was not sure she could.

  On the floor, the skeleton emerged into its true shape.

  Tanaquil straightened up at last to stare at it.

  Fragments were chipped, and there were gaps, missing pieces of the long spine, omissions in the ribcage—and below the right foreleg the small sharp toe of the hoof was absent. She could replace all the losses in less beautiful but adequate materials, so that at least the beast of bone was whole.

  Without doubt, now she could see it was the skeleton of an extraordinary horse—but a horse also of extreme fineness, longer than was usual in the back and legs, the tail and neck, with the head also longer, and on it the strange pad of bone above the eyes . . .

  The skeleton sparkled. It looked almost friendly. And then, by some shift of the sunset light, it altered, and a vague terror touched Tanaquil, like nothing she had felt before. Her mother did not believe in religion or priests, but Tanaquil wondered if she should make some offering to God. For only the God could know what this thing had been.