Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  That didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it.

  But he needed to prepare himself. So for a while he simply stood in the darkness, gazing at the horn. Light seemed to play beneath its surface, as if there was something alive inside it—though how that could be after all this time he didn’t know.

  Finally he reached out to stroke the horn. Just stroke it. He wasn’t ready, yet, to truly embrace whatever mystery was waiting for him. Just a hint, just a teasing glimpse, was all he wanted.

  His fingertip grazed the horn and he cried out in terror as the room lights blazed on, and his uncle’s powerful voice thundered over him, demanding to know what was going on.

  Jamie collapsed beside the desk. His uncle scooped him up and carried him back to his room.

  A fever set in, and it was three days before Jamie got out of bed again.

  He had vague memories of people coming to see him during that time—of a doctor who took his pulse and temperature; of an older woman who hovered beside him, spooning a thin broth between his lips and wiping his forehead with a cool cloth; and most of all of his uncle, who loomed over his bed like a thundercloud, glowering down at him.

  His only other memories were of the strange dream that gripped him over and over again, causing him to thrash and cry out in terror. In the dream he was running through a deep forest. Something was behind him, pursuing him. He leaped over mossy logs, splashed through cold streams, crashed through brambles and thickets. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t escape the fierce thing that was after him—a thing that wore his uncle’s face.

  More than once Jamie sat up in bed, gasping and covered with sweat. Then the old woman, or the doctor, would speak soothing words and try to calm his fears.

  Once he woke quietly. He could hear doves cooing outside his window. Looking up, he saw his uncle standing beside the bed, staring down at him angrily.

  Why? wondered Jamie. Why doesn’t he want me to touch the horn?

  But he was tired, and the question faded as he slipped back into his dreams.

  He was sent away to a school, where he was vaguely miserable but functioned well enough to keep the faculty at a comfortable distance. The other students, not so easily escaped, took some delight in trying to torment the dreamy boy who was so oblivious to their little world of studies and games, their private wars and rages. After a while they gave it up; Jamie didn’t react enough to make their tortures worth the effort on any but the most boring of days.

  He had other things to think about, memories and mysteries that absorbed him and carried him through the year, aware of the world around him only enough to move from one place to another, to answer questions, to keep people away.

  The memories had two sources. The first was the vision that had momentarily dazzled him when he touched the horn, a tantalizing instant of joy so deep and powerful it had shaken him to the roots of his being. Hints of green, of cool, of wind in face and hair whispered at the edges of that vision.

  He longed to experience it again.

  The other memories echoed from his fever dreams, and were not so pleasant. They spoke only of fear, and some terrible loss he did not understand.

  Christmas, when it finally came, was difficult. As the other boys were leaving for home his uncle sent word that urgent business would keep him out of town throughout the holiday. He paid the headmaster handsomely to keep an eye on Jamie and feed him Christmas dinner.

  The boy spent a bleak holiday longing for his father. Until now his obsession with the horn had shielded him from the still-raw pain of that loss. But the sounds and smells of the holiday, the tinkling bells, the warm spices, the temporary but real goodwill surrounding him, all stirred the sorrow inside him, and he wept himself to sleep at night.

  He dreamed. In his dreams his father would reach out to take his hand. “We’re all lost,” he would whisper, as he had the day he died. “Lost, and aching to find our name, so that we can finally go home again.”

  When Jamie woke, his pillow would be soaked with sweat, and tears.

  The sorrow faded with the return of the other students, and the resumption of a daily routine. Even so, it was a relief when three months later his uncle sent word that Jamie would be allowed to come back for the spring holiday.

  The man made a point of letting Jamie know he had hidden the horn by taking him into the study soon after the boy’s arrival at the house. He watched closely as Jamie’s eyes flickered over the walls, searching for the horn, and seemed satisfied at the expression of defeat that twisted his face before he closed in on himself, shutting out the world again.

  But Jamie had become cunning. The defeat he showed his uncle was real. What the man didn’t see, because the boy buried it as soon as he was aware of it, was that the defeat was temporary. For hiding the horn didn’t make any difference. Now that Jamie had touched it, he was bound to it. Wherever it was hidden, he would find it. Its call was too powerful to mistake.

  Even so, Jamie thought he might lose his mind before he got his chance. Day after day his uncle stayed in the house, guarding his treasure. Finally, on the morning of the fifth day, an urgent message pulled him away. Even then the anger that burned in his face as he stormed through the great oak doors, an anger Jamie knew was rooted in being called from his vigil, might have frightened someone less determined.

  The boy didn’t care. He would make his way to the horn while he had the chance.

  He knew where it was, of course—had known from the evening of the first day.

  It was in his uncle’s bedroom.

  The room was locked. Moving cautiously, Jamie slipped downstairs to the servants’ quarters and stole the master key, then scurried back to the door. To his surprise he felt no fear.

  He decided it was because he had no choice; he was only doing what he had to do.

  He twisted the key in the lock and swung the door open.

  His uncle’s room was large and richly decorated, filled with heavy, carefully carved furniture. Above the dresser hung a huge mirror.

  Jamie hesitated for just a moment, then lay on his stomach and peered beneath the bed.

  The horn was there, wrapped in a length of blue velvet.

  He reached in and drew the package out. Then he stood and placed it gently on the bed. With reverent fingers he unrolled the velvet. Cradled by the rich blue fabric, the horn looked like a comet blazing across a midnight sky.

  This time there could be no interruption. Hesitating for no more than a heartbeat, he reached out and clutched the horn with both hands.

  He cried out, in agony, and in awe. For a moment he thought he was going to die. The feelings the horn unleashed within him seemed too much for his body to hold. He didn’t die, though his heart was racing faster than it had any right to.

  “More,” he thought, as images of the place he had seen in his dreams rushed through his mind. “I have to know more.”

  He drew the horn to his chest and laid his cheek against it.

  He thought his heart would beat its way out of his body.

  And still it wasn’t enough.

  He knew what he had to do next. But he was afraid.

  Fear made no difference. He remembered again what his father had said about people aching to find their true name. He was close to his now. No one can come this close and not reach out for the answer, he thought. The emptiness would kill them on the spot.

  And so he did what he had to do, fearful as it was. Placing the base of the horn against the foot of the massive bed, he set the tip of it against his heart.

  Then he leaned forward.

  The point of the horn pierced his flesh like a sword made of fire and ice. He cried out, first in pain, then in joy and wonder. Finally the answer was clear to him, and he understood his obsession, and his loneliness.

  “No wonder I didn’t fit,” he thought, as his fingers fused, then split into cloven hooves.

  The transformation was painful. But the joy so far surpassed it that he barely noticed the fire he fel
t as his neck began to stretch, and the horn erupted from his brow. “No wonder, no wonder—no, it’s all wonder, wonder, wonder and joy!”

  He reared back in triumph, his silken mane streaming behind him, as he trumpeted the joyful discovery that he was, and always had been, and always would be, a unicorn.

  And knowing his name, he finally knew how to go home. Hunching the powerful muscles of his hind legs, he launched himself toward the dresser. His horn struck the mirror, and it shattered into a million pieces that crashed and tinkled into two different worlds.

  He hardly noticed. He was through, and home at last.

  No, said a voice at the back of his head. You’re not home yet.

  He stopped. It was true. He wasn’t home yet, though he was much closer. But there was still more to do, and further to go.

  How could that be? He knew he was, had always been, a unicorn. Then he trembled, as he realized his father’s last words were still true. There was something inside that needed to be discovered, to be named.

  He whickered nervously as he realized all he had really done was come back to where most people begin—his own place, his own shape.

  He looked around. He was standing at the edge of a clearing in an old oak wood. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, dappling patches of warmth onto his flanks. He paused for a moment, taking pleasure in feeling his own true shape at last.

  Suddenly he shivered, then stood stock-still as the smell of the girl reached his nostrils.

  The scent was sweet, and rich, and he could resist it no more than he had resisted the horn. He began trotting in her direction, sunlight bouncing off the horn that jutted out from his forehead.

  He found her sitting beneath an apple tree, singing to herself while she brushed her honey-colored hair. Doves rustled and cooed at the edges of the clearing. They reminded him of the pigeons his father had raised.

  As he stood and watched her, every fiber of his being cried out that there was danger here. But it was not in the nature of a unicorn to resist such a girl.

  Lowering his head, he walked forward.

  “So,” she said. “You’ve come at last.”

  He knelt beside her, and she began to stroke his mane. Her fingers felt cool against his neck, and she sang to him in a voice that seemed to wash away old sorrows. He relaxed into a sweet silence, content for the first time that he could remember.

  He wanted the moment to go on forever.

  But it ended almost instantly as the girl slipped a golden bridle over his head, and his uncle suddenly stepped into the clearing.

  The man was wearing a wizard’s garb, which didn’t surprise Jamie. Ten armed soldiers stood behind him.

  Jamie sprang to his feet. But he had been bound by the magic of the bridle; he could neither run, nor attack.

  Flanks heaving, he stared at his wizard uncle.

  “Did you really think you could get away from me?” asked the man.

  I have! thought Jamie fiercely, knowing the thought would be understood.

  “Don’t be absurd!” snarled his uncle. “I’ll take your horn, as I did your father’s. And then I’ll take your shape, and finally your memory. You’ll come back with me and be no different than he was—a dreamy, foolish mortal, lost and out of place.”

  Why? thought Jamie. Why would anyone want to hold a unicom?

  His uncle didn’t answer.

  Jamie locked eyes with him, begging him to explain.

  No answer came. But he realized he had found a way to survive. Just as the golden bridle held him helpless, so his gaze could hold his uncle. As long as he could stare into the man’s eyes, he could keep him from moving.

  He knew, too, that as soon as he flinched, the battle would be over.

  Jamie had no idea how long the struggle actually lasted. They seemed to be in a place apart, far away from the clearing, away from the girl and the soldiers.

  He began to grow fearful. Sooner or later he would falter and his uncle would regain control. It wasn’t enough to hold him. He had to conquer him.

  But how? How?

  He couldn’t win unless he knew why he was fighting. He had to discover why his uncle wanted to capture and hold him.

  But the only way to do that was to look deeper inside the man. The idea frightened him; he didn’t know what he would find there. Even worse, it would work two ways. He couldn’t look deeper into his uncle, without letting his uncle look more deeply into him.

  He hesitated. But there was no other way. Accepting the risk, he opened himself to his uncle.

  At the same time he plunged into the man’s soul.

  His uncle cried out, then dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands, trembling with the humiliation of being seen.

  Jamie trembled too, for the emptiness he found inside this man could swallow suns and devour planets. This was the hunger that had driven him to capture unicorns, in the hope that their glory could fill his darkness.

  Then, at last, Jamie knew what he must do. Stepping forward, he pressed the tip of his horn against his uncle’s heart.

  He had been aware of his horn’s healing power, of course. But this was the first time he had tried to use it. He wasn’t expecting the shock of pain that jolted through him, or the wave of despair that followed as he took in the emptiness, and the fear and the hunger that had driven his uncle for so long.

  He wanted to pull away, to run in terror.

  But if he did, it would only start all over again. Only a healing would put an end to the pursuit. And this was the only way to heal this man, this wizard, who, he now understood, had never really been his uncle, but only his captor. He had to be seen, in all his sorrow and his ugliness; seen, and accepted, and loved. Only then could he be free of the emptiness that made him want to possess a unicorn.

  Jamie trembled as the waves of emptiness and sorrow continued to wash through him. But at last he was nearly done. Still swaying from the effort, he whispered to the man: “Go back. Go back and find your name. And then—go home.”

  That was when the sword fell, slicing through his neck.

  It didn’t matter, really, though he felt sorry for his “uncle,” who began to weep, and sorrier still for the soldier who had done the deed. He knew it would be a decade or so before the man could sleep without mind-twisting nightmares of the day he had killed a unicorn.

  But for Jamie himself, the change made no difference. Because he still was what he had always been, what he always would be, what a unicorn had simply been an appropriate shape to hold. He was a being of power and light.

  He shook with delight as he realized that he had named himself at last.

  He turned to the wizard, and was amazed. No longer hampered by mere eyes, he could see that the same thing was true for his enemy—as it was for the girl, as it was for the soldiers.

  They were all beings of power and light.

  The terrible thing was, they didn’t know it.

  Suddenly he understood. This was the secret, the unnamed thing his father had been trying to remember: that we are all beings of power and light. And all the pain, all the sorrow—it all came from not knowing this simple truth.

  Why? wondered Jamie. Why don’t any of us know how beautiful we really are?

  And then even that question became unimportant, because his father had come to take him home, and suddenly he wasn’t just a unicorn, but was all unicorns, was part of every wise and daring being that had worn that shape and that name, every unicorn that had ever lived, or ever would live. And he felt himself stretch to fill the sky, as the stars came tumbling into his body, stars at his knees and at his hooves, at his shoulder and his tail, and most of all a shimmer of stars that lined the length of his horn, a horn that stretched across the sky, pointing out, for anyone who cared to look, the way to go home.

  With His Head Tucked Underneath His Arm

  Fifteen kings ruled the continent of Losfar, and each one hated the others. Old, fat, and foolish, they thought nothing of sending the child
ren of their subjects off on war after war after war, so that the best and the bravest were gone to dust before they ever really lived.

  The young men left behind fell into two groups: those who escaped the wars for reasons of the body—the weak, the crippled, the maimed—and those who avoided the wars for reasons of the mind; those too frightened, too smart, or simply too loving to be caught in the trap the kings laid for them.

  This last category was smallest of all, and a dangerous one to be in. Questioning the wars outright was against the law, and standing up to declare they were wrong was a quick route to the dungeons that lay beneath the palace. So it was only through deceit that those who opposed the wars could escape going off to kill people they had never met, and had nothing against.

  One such was a cobbler’s son named Brion, who had avoided the wars by walking on a crutch and pretending that he was crippled. Yet he chafed under the role he played, for he was not the sort to live a lie.

  “Why do I have to pretend?” he would ask his friend Mikel, an older man who was one of the few who knew his secret. “Why must I lie, when I am right, and they are wrong?”

  But Mikel had no answer. And since much as Brion hated the lie, he hated even more the idea of killing some stranger for the sake of a war he did not believe in, he continued to pretend.

  One afternoon when Brion was limping through the marketplace on his crutch, he saw an officer of the king’s army beating a woman because she had fallen in his path. The sight angered him so much that without thinking he stepped in to help the woman. “Leave her alone!” he cried, grabbing the officer’s arm.

  The man pushed Brion away and raised his hand to strike the woman again.

  “Help!” she wailed. “He’s killing me!”

  Brion hesitated for but a moment. Though he knew it would reveal his lie, he sprang to his feet and felled the man with a single blow.