Unicorn Seasons

by Janni Lee Simner

  A stone gave way beneath her foot. Megan cried out as she fell the last few inches to the ground. Pain shot through her knee as her leg twisted.

  Her cry was echoed by a howl up above. Megan stumbled to her feet and looked up.

  A unicorn stared down at her from the top of the outcrop, teeth and horn glinting wetly. For an instant, its dark eyes held her, even as terror knotted her stomach. The other unicorns trotted up behind it, howling as well.

  Megan whirled away from the creatures, and she ran once more. Branches caught in her hair as she crashed through them, and something sharp slashed across her cheek. Pain coursed through her knee. Don’t give out now, she thought desperately as she found the trail and followed it. Not now.

  Hooves pounded over the earth behind her as she kept running. Ahead, she caught the glint of Josh’s pickup in the sun. She ran harder, practically throwing herself at the vehicle as she reached the road. She grabbed the door handle.

  It was unlocked. Megan threw herself into the truck and pulled the door shut behind her. She’d been hoping Josh had left his keys inside, too, but she wasn’t that lucky.

  Outside the hooves and the howling grew louder, as loud as the blood roaring in Megan’s ears. The largest unicorn threw itself at the truck. Glass shattered, and Megan ducked out of the way of its jabbing horn. She knew then, knew down to her bones, that she really could be killed by a herd of freaking unicorns.

  Time for plan B. The unicorn withdrew, just for an instant. Heart pounding, Megan grabbed Josh’s rifle from behind the seat and flung herself out the passenger door. Behind her, she heard the crunch of crumpling metal.

  When she looked back, the largest unicorn had gotten its forequarters through the ruined door. A second unicorn tore at the radiator grill, foam dripping from its mouth. Megan turned at a sound behind her, just in time to see the third unicorn charging straight at her.

  Megan removed the safety, lifted the rifle, and fired.

  She hit the unicorn square in the chest. It reared and crumpled, as surely as the metal door had. There was a quiet sound, like the chiming of bells, and then the creature lay motionless in the mud.

  Megan reloaded and spun back to the other unicorns. For a moment they both stared at her over the truck’s hood, utterly still. The larger one lifted its head and sniffed the air. Megan took aim.

  Both unicorns wheeled and bolted into the forest, leaving Megan’s shot to fly harmlessly through the trees.

  Megan remained there, rifle to her shoulder, waiting until she was sure they were gone. Only then did she return to the unicorn she’d shot. Its blood puddled in the mud, and its eyes had rolled back to show the whites. Its horn still shone though, ice-bright in the sun, and no mud stained its silky white hide. Even now, Megan ached to bury her hands in the unicorn’s cloud-soft mane. Even dead, it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

  And she’d killed it. She’d killed it.

  “It’s not like I had a choice,” she said aloud. The unicorn would have killed her if she hadn’t.

  But it was still beautiful.

  Megan’s legs began to tremble. She collapsed into the mud beside the unicorn, and it was a long time before she could stop shaking.

  * * *

  It was until near sunset when Megan limped out of the forest and into the field behind Carrie’s house. Every step sent pain through her knee, but she just kept walking. Her jeans were torn and caked with mud, her face and arms scraped and bleeding from countless tree branches. The rifle, hanging from its strap over her shoulder, kept bumping her hip, but no way was Megan putting it down, just in case the unicorns hadn’t given up after all. Even now, she started at every snapping branch, every rustling leaf.

  She should have stuck to the road, not the trail she’d found running parallel to it through the woods. But taking the road might have meant meeting up with Josh, assuming his truck was still drivable, and if she met up with Josh—well, Megan didn’t trust herself not to shoot him, too.

  Megan hesitated as she reached Carrie’s back door, then left the gun propped outside before heading in.

  Carrie sat alone on the living room couch. She looked up as Megan entered the room, and her eyes grew huge.

  “Megan?” Carrie’s voice squeaked as she stumbled to her feet. She threw herself across the room to grab Megan into a hug.

  Megan winced as she pulled away. Her whole body ached. She took in Carrie’s splotchy, tear-streaked face. “You look awful,” she told her cousin.

  “I look awful?” Carrie stared back at Megan, and Megan couldn’t tell whether Carrie was about to laugh or to cry. She did neither, just took Megan’s hand and led her gently to her couch. Megan sank gratefully down into its cushions, wondering distantly whether her aunt and uncle would be angry if she got blood on them. Where were they, anyway?

  “Mom and Dad went out looking for you,” Carrie said, as if guessing her thoughts. “After Josh came back, with what was left of the truck ...” Carrie looked like she might cry after all. “What’d you leave the cave for? You should have stayed safe inside.”

  “The unicorns would have waited.” Megan was suddenly so very tired. “Josh even said so.”

  “Then you should have ...” Carrie began.

  “Should have what?” Megan cut her cousin off. “Slept with Josh? What kind of an idiot would do that?”

  Carrie flinched, as if Megan had struck her. “Things are different here.” She wouldn’t meet Megan’s eyes. “Wait a minute. I’m getting the first aid kit.” She fled the room.

  “I’m fine !” Megan called after her, but Carrie ignored her and returned a few moments later with the kit. She poured some alcohol onto a gauze pad as sat beside her cousin and began dabbing at her scratched-up arms. The liquid stung, hot as fire, but Megan let her. What was a bit of alcohol, or being stuck in some small town for the summer, compared to facing down a herd of killer unicorns?

  “It’s my fault,” Carrie said as she worked. “I should have told you, but ...” Carrie hesitated, pressed on. “Well, up here we take care of this sort of thing before it becomes a problem.”

  What did she mean, take care of it? Megan watched her cousin unwrap an extra-large bandaid. I’m not scared for me, Carrie had said, and Megan hadn’t understood.

  All at once, she got it. Got, too, why Carrie didn’t want to talk about Josh. “Carrie, you and Josh didn’t ... just because ...”

  “It’s no big deal.” Carrie pressed the bandaid over some particularly deep scrapes on Megan’s arms. “It’s not like I didn’t agree, or didn’t know what I was doing when I went in with him.”

  “The hell it isn’t a big deal.” Megan shrugged off another bandaid and grabbed her cousin’s arms. Carrie might live in a nowhere town, she might not understand Megan or her three-hundred-miles-away-from-here life, but she still deserved better that this. “Carrie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “Forget it,” Carrie said, but she still wouldn’t look at Megan. “Let me have a look at that leg. You were limping when you came in.”

  Megan wouldn’t forget it. She peeled off her jeans. Maybe better began with how Megan treated her cousin.

  Beneath the jeans, Megan’s knee was a scraped and bloody mess. She gritted her teeth as Carrie cleaned it. Just let Josh try to touch either of them again. They’d have to drag his body away by the time Megan was through.

  Megan thought about the unicorn, bleeding to death at her feet. Carrie had been right, it was dangerous, but it was beautiful, too, beautiful even as its blood had soaked into the mud.

  But just let another unicorn try to get anywhere near her. It would meet the same fate Josh would. Hell, Josh was beautiful too, if it came down to that. Beautiful things weren’t always safe or tame.

  Up here we shoot things that move.

  “Carrie,” Megan said, “do you think your Dad would still take us hunting?”

  Carrie shook her head as she wrapped gauze around M
egan’s knee. “Deer aren’t in season. And it isn’t safe now, especially for you.” Carrie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you finally get that?”

  Oh, Megan got it. She totally got it.

  “I’m not talking about deer.” A slow, grim smile crossed her face. “I’m talking about unicorns. I think unicorns are in season right now. Don’t you?”

  Fall

  Tearing Down the Unicorns

  Karen was tearing down the unicorns.

  She pulled poster after poster from the wall above her bed, throwing them down to the floor beside her. A unicorn with pink ribbons in its mane and butterflies dancing around its horn ripped loudly away from the plaster. A unicorn flying through a green field, a wreath of wildflowers about its neck, tore in half as she pulled. Bits of paper and brittle tape were everywhere—on Karen’s frilly bedspread, on our pink carpet, on my own bed and dresser, halfway across the room.

  I stood in the doorway, too startled at first to do anything but watch. Some of those posters had been up for years, for longer than I could remember. Karen reached for another poster, this one of a unicorn with gentle purple eyes, curled beside a rabbit in a snow-covered field.

  "Stop it !” I yelled. Karen spun around, noticing me for the first time and looking more than a little annoyed at being interrupted.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, a little more quietly—but not much.

  Karen rolled her eyes. I knew she wished I’d just go away. She’d been like that ever since she’d started junior high. Until then we’d done everything together, so much so that people called me “Karen’s shadow.” Mostly I didn’t mind, though sometimes I wished they would use my name, Stacey, instead. But lately Karen didn’t seem to have the time to be bothered by either a shadow or a sister two years younger than her.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” she asked, her voice dripping sarcasm.

  “Okay then, why are you doing it?” I stepped into the room and stood beside her.

  Karen sighed dramatically—she’d been doing that a lot lately, too—and said, “Just look at them, Stacey.” On her wall only a couple of posters were left. One was a copy of some flat-looking medieval tapestry, a unicorn sitting quietly inside a low fence. The other was of a girl on a silvery unicorn’s back, both its mane and her pale hair flowing softly out behind them. Sometimes I wished I could find a unicorn of my own like that, even though I wasn’t so sure unicorns were real in the first place.

  I’d only admitted to Karen about not being sure once, back when we were both younger. Karen’s eyes had turned steely and cold. “Of course they’re real,” she’d said. “Assuming you believe hard enough.” Her voice had made it clear that she believed, so I bit my lip, did my best to believe as well, and didn’t ask her again.

  Yet now Karen was the one who looked at the posters on her wall, on her floor, and repeated, “Just look at them. They’re so sappy, so stupid, so—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “So fake.” She yanked down the last two posters. Then she snatched the whole pile up from the floor, as if ready throw them all away. My stomach knotted painfully at the thought.

  “No !” I ran over and grabbed the unicorns away from her. More tape and paper fluttered to the floor around us. I clutched the posters tightly to my chest, knowing I was crinkling them but not willing to let go.

  Karen just stared at me. “What’s your problem, Stacey?”

  I stared back. “How can you just throw them out?” Karen had spent years collecting those unicorns. I’d helped, looking through racks of posters with her whenever we went to the drug store or mall.

  “What do you care?” Karen gestured toward her now-bare wall, pink paint scarred white where the tape had been. “It’s not like you ever believed in unicorns anyway, even back when I did.”

  The first part of her sentence bugged me—I’d tried to believe, after all, tried to be as much like Karen as I could—but the second part was worse.

  Even back when I did. Karen didn’t believe either, not anymore. I don’t know why that bothered me so much more than what I did or didn’t believe, but it did. I took the posters and dumped them on my own bed, on top of my pillow.

  Karen shook her head. “What are you going to do? Hang them on your walls?”

  “Maybe.”

  Karen shrugged, as if she suddenly didn’t care what I did or didn’t do. She grabbed a jacket off her dresser and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Without thinking, I started across the room to follow her.

  “Out with my friends.” She draped the jacket over her shoulders and glanced back at me. “Alone.” She left without saying anything more. I listened as her footsteps crossed the house and the front door slammed behind her.

  How come every time Karen said she wanted to be alone, I was the one who wound up feeling lonely?

  I flopped down on my bed and stared at the posters beside me. A serious-looking unicorn, standing beside a pale green-and-pink castle, stared back at me.

  I didn’t have as much wall space as Karen, thanks to the window above my bed, and some of the space I did have was already filled with pictures of Karen, Dad, and me. Still, I got up, and I began taping posters to my wall. The unicorns were crumpled from being pulled down and then grabbed; those that had been torn apart wouldn’t fit together again quite right. The tape on one unicorn pulled loose, and it fluttered back down to the bed.

  I sighed and looked out the window. Our room faces out onto the woods, or at least as much of the woods as you get in the suburbs. Dad told me once that our yard is almost an acre, and I know by the way he said it that that’s supposed to be a lot. We have a small patio near the house, but most of the yard is filled with tall oaks and maples, hiding the chain link fence beyond them.

  Karen and I used to play out back a lot, Karen insisting that our house bordered some enchanted forest, leading us back and forth among the trees, never taking the same route twice.

  As I looked out now, I saw bright red and yellow leaves clinging to the branches. Browner leaves lay on the ground, among the weeds Dad was always bugging us to help him pull up. I opened the window a crack, letting in the crisp smell of autumn. A single leaf trembled free and drifted, very slowly, to the ground.

  Did something else move among those trees? I saw another branch tremble, caught a glimpse of autumn gold—but then I saw only leaves and trees once more.

  * * *

  Karen didn’t come back home until just before dinner. After dinner, she stayed in the living room with Dad, doing her homework. I never had as much homework as Karen, and I’d already finished it all, so I hung around for a while, then went back to our room.

  Another poster had fallen down, and those still on my wall looked more ragged and messy than ever. I knelt on the bed and started re-taping them. Outside, the night was surprisingly clear, full of glittering stars. My breath frosted faintly against the window. The trees were shadows against a moonless sky.

  A sudden movement caught my eye. I dropped the poster in my hand and strained for a better look. I saw a flash of something brighter than autumn leaves, brighter than the flames in our fireplace last winter.

  The light faded, leaving the yard darker than before. The glow from the houses around ours seemed suddenly very far away. Then the darkness faded, too, and at last I saw the creature that stood only a few yards away from my window, right at the patio’s edge.

  Its body was the color of burning gold, a deep, hot color I don’t really know how to describe. The air all around it glowed with gold light. Its mane blew restlessly about, like flames flickering in some invisible wind. Its eyes, staring straight at me, shone red as embers. And on its forehead—

  On its forehead was a single horn, bright as fire, so bright my eyes hurt just from looking at it. I didn’t look away, though.

  It was like no poster I’d ever seen. But Karen had been right, before she’d torn her posters down. Unicorns were real. And
this one was more stunning than I’d ever imagined.

  More than anything, I wanted to be outside with it.

  I almost told Karen first. She was still in the living room, arguing with Dad about some boy at school. But even as I thought about her, the unicorn pawed restlessly at the patio. I feared if I left the room, even for a moment, it would be gone when I returned.

  Besides, after the way she’d pulled her posters down, I wasn’t so sure Karen deserved to see a real unicorn now.

  I opened my window. Chilly air flooded the room, along with the faint smell of burning ash. Our house was only one story; Karen and I had both snuck out the window before, at different times when Dad wouldn’t let us outside. When I was smaller, I’d needed Karen to help pull me back up inside afterwards. That was a long time ago, though. Now I lifted out the window screen, climbed over the sill, and jumped easily to the ground.

  The unicorn still stood at the edge of the patio, watching me through smoldering red eyes. I heard its deep breathing, saw its breath come out in puffs of white frost—or maybe smoke, I couldn’t tell. Very slowly, I walked toward it. The air grew warm as I approached, then hot, nothing like autumn was supposed to feel. Finally I stood right in front of the unicorn, bathed in heat so strong it reminded me of the fire Dad had built when we’d gone camping last summer. Hot gold light reflected off my bare arms; sweat trickled down my neck. The smell of ash was much stronger than before.

  For a long moment I just stood there, staring, still not quite able to believe in spite of all I saw. Then I reached out to touch the unicorn’s golden mane.

  My hand brushed burning fire. I gasped and pulled away. The unicorn threw back its head and let out a deep, throaty yell, like the roar of flames on dry wood. I stumbled backward. My palm began to throb, the pain much sharper than the time I’d touched the burner of our stove. I clenched my hand into a fist and shook it, but the pain wouldn’t go away.