The Lawrence Watt-Evans Fantasy

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Beth turned, as well.

  She had seen the unicorn do that before. It was getting ready to charge. She had seen it charge any number of times over the years.

  Always before, though, it had charged at nothing. This time it looked ready to charge at Josh.

  And that horn was sharp.

  “Stop it!” she called angrily, her voice unsteady. “You stop that this minute!”

  The unicorn raised its head and whinnied; the hoof stopped moving. It looked astonished.

  “And just what do you think you’re doing?” Beth demanded, facing the unicorn with her hands on her hips. “He wasn’t hurting me!”

  The unicorn stared at her for a moment, then lowered its head again.

  Josh stepped away from her, his hands dropping away from her, and Beth felt as if she wanted to cry. “You just go away, unicorn!” she shouted.

  The unicorn raised its head and looked at her, and a tear appeared in one eye. It didn’t leave, though; it stood its ground.

  Beth felt like crying herself, but she didn’t know why. She didn’t even like the unicorn any more. And why was it acting like this? She hadn’t been doing anything to harm it.

  It acted as if it were trying to protect her, but protect her from what? From Josh? Josh hadn’t been hurting her; quite the contrary.

  Maybe she was angry because her first real kiss had been ruined, but it was too late now—the kiss was ruined and there wasn’t anything that could be done about it. And maybe the unicorn had meant well.

  It was still staring at her unhappily.

  “Oh, all right, you can stay,” Beth said, “but don’t you touch Josh!”

  The unicorn nodded reluctantly, and Beth turned back to Josh.

  He was too busy staring at the unicorn to notice at first. Then turned and stared at her instead.

  “That’s a unicorn!” he said breathily.

  “Yeah, I know,” Beth said. She grimaced. “It’s mine, I guess.”

  Josh blinked in astonishment. “You have a unicorn!”

  “Yeah.” She stood, wanting him to hold her again but unsure how to make it happen. “Listen, Josh, I… I’m sorry it did that, I don’t know what’s wrong with it. It never threatened anyone before. I mean, it never even let anyone but me see it before.”

  “It was protecting you,” Josh said, stepping back, away from Beth.

  She wanted to cry. “But you weren’t hurting me!” she said. “I don’t want to be protected!”

  “Yeah, but…” Josh stammered. “I… I mean, Beth, unicorns…you have to be a virgin to have a unicorn around.”

  She looked up at him, puzzled. “So?” she said. “You thought I wasn’t?”

  “Well, I…” He shook his head. “No, I mean, don’t you have to be not just a virgin, but you know, a true innocent, or something?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know; I never studied unicorns. I don’t think I’m an innocent—I mean, not any more than anyone else. I know, you know, stuff.” She laughed nervously.

  “But you must be special. You have a unicorn!”

  “I don’t want a unicorn!”

  “But I don’t want to be responsible for driving it away—I mean, you must be really special.”

  Beth frowned. “I don’t think I’m special,” she said. “And I don’t care if you drive it away.” But she looked at the unicorn again, and with a bit more interest in it than she had of late.

  Special? Because she had a unicorn?

  Nobody else did, true, but she’d always just thought that made her weird, not special. It wasn’t as if she’d ever wanted a unicorn.

  It really was a beautiful animal, though—a little smaller than a horse, bigger than a pony, all of it shining white except the horn and hooves, which were golden. A little beard, like a goat’s, hung from its chin; its tail was a swirling brush of gleaming white curls, not straight like a horse’s tail.

  It was still looking straight at her.

  For the first time it occurred to her that the silly animal loved her.

  If it really did leave for good, she realized, she would miss it.

  “It would care if it had to leave you,” Josh said, pointing at the tears that were dribbling slowly down the unicorn’s face. “I couldn’t do that to it.”

  “I guess not,” Beth admitted.

  “I never saw a unicorn before,” Josh said. “I thought they were just in stories!”

  Beth shrugged.

  Josh looked from the unicorn to Beth, then back to the unicorn.

  “You must be really special,” he said again.

  Beth didn’t know what to say.

  “I better go,” Josh said. He backed away, around the car, watching the unicorn the entire time.

  Beth stood there on the sidewalk and watched as Josh climbed into the car and drove slowly away, almost stalling the engine as he stared at the unicorn. She felt both sad and somehow relieved—the kiss had been exciting, but scary.

  Then she looked around, and saw the neighbors staring at her from half a dozen windows and porches—no, not at her; at the unicorn. She turned, and saw her parents staring from the front window, as well.

  Maybe having her own unicorn was something special, after all.

  She walked up to the unicorn and brushed away its tears, then hugged it around the neck.

  “Okay,” she said, “you can stay for awhile. You’re going to have to leave some day, because I really am growing up, and I can’t keep a unicorn around forever—but you can stay for awhile.”

  Then she let it go.

  She watched as the unicorn pranced off into the woods; then she turned and walked into the house, wondering how she could explain the unicorn’s presence to her parents—surely, they’d want to know where it had come from, and when, and why. They’d want to know why she’d never told them about it before…

  Wouldn’t they?

  Maybe not, she realized. Maybe she wouldn’t have to explain anything at all. Maybe they’d just accept it, the way she always had.

  Maybe, she thought, they already knew all that mattered.

  THE BRIDE OF BIGFOOT

  July, 1990:

  Rodney MacWhirter had drunk a very pleasant little lunch back at the rest stop and was feeling the after-effects. He was of the opinion that the six-pack of Bud had not impaired his driving skills whatsoever, and would gladly argue the matter with any state cop who thought otherwise, but there was no denying the pressure in his bladder.

  And the next rest stop, according to the sign, wasn’t for fifteen miles.

  Rodney blinked thoughtfully, then announced to no one, “Guess it’s time to water the trees.” He found the brake pedal on the second try, and managed to bring his battered Plymouth to a stop on the outer edge of the paved shoulder.

  He was zipping his fly when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  He turned around, and the world seemed to vanish into a brown blur; startled, Rodney stepped back, tried to focus, and found himself staring at a broad expanse of shaggy brown hair. He blinked, decided it was a coat of some kind, then raised his eyes, looking for a face.

  He had to go much farther than he expected, and when he arrived he wished he hadn’t.

  There was a face there, as he had expected, but the face was brown and furry, with deep-set brown eyes, a broad black-tipped nose, a wide, lipless mouth, and with stubby fangs protruding from the upper jaw. The heavy brow-ridges were a good eight feet from the ground.

  “Whoa!” Rodney said. “Hi, there, fella! You’re a big one, ain’cha?”

  The creature smiled, revealing several dozen yellow teeth, and nodded. Then it held up a stack of mismatched sheets of rather used paper in one hand, and pointed to it with the other, which clutched a handful of battered crayons.

  Rodney squinted at the top sheet of
paper and read, in large, shaky, red letters, I NEED RIDE TO OREGON WOODS.

  “Whoa!” Rodney said again. “That’s a mighty long way, friend; I can’t take you that far.” From the corner of his eye he saw the thing’s smile vanish, and he hastily added, “But I can get you partway, I guess.”

  The smile returned, and together, Rodney and the creature walked to the car.

  * * * *

  “So, you got a name?” Rodney asked.

  The creature shook its head, and hair scraped audibly against the car’s roof lining. A Plymouth Duster might have more headroom than the typical modern car, but it was never intended for anything the size of Rodney’s passenger.

  “No?” Rodney said, mildly surprised; he turned to stare, then snapped his attention back to the road at the sound of a horn blaring. A car coming the other way roared past, the driver’s fist waving in Rodney’s direction.

  For a moment Rodney concentrated on his driving; then he suggested, “How ’bout I call you Bubba? You remind me of a fellow I useta know went by Bubba.”

  The creature shrugged, as best it could while squeezed into the Plymouth.

  “Bubba it is, then,” Rodney said. For a minute or so he hummed quietly to himself.

  “So where you going in Oregon, anyway?” he asked a moment later, still watching the highway unroll before him. He waited a few seconds, to give the creature time to write, then glanced over.

  The beast didn’t hold up a paper; instead it shrugged again.

  “Just tired of Wisconsin, huh?” Rodney said, with a sympathetic smile. “I can understand that. You really need to go all the way to Oregon, though? You couldn’t just check out Minneapolis?” He watched the highway, then added, “But I guess you’re not the city type. Still, there’s plenty of nice country in Minnesota. Or up in Maine; might be more traffic that way. Why’s it got to be Oregon? Got family out there?”

  The creature hesitated, then pulled a wrinkled piece of newsprint from its pile of scrap paper and held it up. Rodney glanced at it, and saw a battered fragment of tabloid—specifically, the Midnight News for October 1, 1987, featuring the headline, “THE BRIDE OF BIGFOOT! Scientists Report Sighting Female Creature In Oregon Woods!””

  There was no photo, but a drawing captioned, “Artist’s Rendition of Creature, from Scientists’ Description,” accompanied the article, and depicted a stooped, furry, apelike figure with ragged, waist-length head hair and immense breasts.

  Rodney slowed the car slightly and looked the clipping over again.

  “Bride of Bigfoot,” Rodney read aloud. “That your wife, then? Mrs. Bubba?”

  The creature shook his head.

  “But you’d like her to be, maybe? You looking for a date out there?”

  Bubba hesitated, then nodded.

  “You don’t like the local girls?” Rodney asked.

  Bubba found one of his crayons and scrawled quickly, then held up a paper saying, CAN’T FIND ANY.

  “What, none?”

  Bubba shrugged again.

  “What about guys? You got friends around here, might want help?” Rodney thought he might have a money-making idea here—a dating service for bigfoots!

  Or was it bigfeet?

  While Rodney was trying to puzzle out the correct plural, Bubba wrote, ALL ALONE. NO OTHERS.

  Well, Rodney thought, so much for that idea. “Wow, tough,” he said. “No family? Nothing?”

  Bubba held up the same paper after underlining ALL ALONE.

  “Jeez, no wonder you want to get out there,” Rodney said. He thought for a moment.

  There ought to be some way to make money off this, he told himself. He couldn’t make a career out of matchmaking if Bubba and the lady in the picture were the only ones out there, but there had to be some way to cash in on picking up a mythical creature as a hitchhiker.

  He’d intended to just drop Bubba off, but as he sobered up the possibilities began to occur to him. As they crossed the Minnesota state line he said, “Look, I was only going as far as St. Paul, but maybe I can… I mean, I might be able to take you clear to Oregon, if you’re not in a hurry.” He glanced over.

  Bubba nodded, smiling.

  * * * *

  Smuggling something Bubba’s size in and out of motel rooms was an art Rodney had never acquired; fortunately, despite his bulk, Bubba could be amazingly stealthy. He moved in utter silence, and could hold so still that a bored motel maid might pass within a yard of him without noticing his presence.

  That at least explained something of why the scientists still didn’t believe in Bigfoot, or sasquatches, or whatever Bubba was.

  Feeding him turned out to be simple enough—fast-food salad bars provided everything Bubba needed. Cherry tomatoes seemed to delight him no end, and Rodney made a point of getting as many of those as he could, despite the dirty looks from restaurant staffs.

  Bubba had no idea what a bed was for; he was perfectly happy curling up on the motel-room carpet. He didn’t understand indoor plumbing, either, but finding a few out-of-the-way bushes was usually easy enough. Rodney gathered, from a conversation that was largely grunts or nods on Bubba’s side, that the creature had learned English from spying on campers, and taught himself to read and write from studying the newspapers, labels, and other scraps they left behind—a project that had occupied most of the past ten years, inspired by a discovery of a “bigfoot” photo in an old tabloid. Bubba, however, had never been inside a building before, and was not much interested in human civilization—except for picking goodies from its trash, and using it to find himself a mate.

  That first night Rodney, now thoroughly sobered up, was a trifle uneasy about sleeping in the same room as this immense beast—even though Bubba had made it clear that he preferred salads to burgers, Rodney still worried about all those teeth and claws.

  When he awoke the next morning, completely intact, at first he thought he’d dreamed or imagined the whole thing; he came within inches of stepping on the still-sleeping Bubba, who had rolled over close to the bed.

  By the second night they were both old hands at it.

  And on the third night they made it as far as Walla Walla, Washington, just across the Oregon state line—Rodney had decided the fastest route was to leave the Interstate and take U.S. 12.

  He didn’t tell Bubba how close they were, for fear he’d want to go on that same night—Rodney was tired of driving.

  When morning rolled around, though, the two of them got rolling as well, and had gone just a few miles when Rodney pointed out the WELCOME TO OREGON sign.

  “We’re in the right state,” he said with a smile. “So where’s this lady-friend you’re looking for?”

  Bubba handed him the clipping.

  Rodney glanced at it, then pulled over to the shoulder atop the next ridge and read through the clipping carefully. As he read, his smile slowly faded, to be replaced with a worried frown. “Bubba, ol’ buddy,” he said, “It doesn’t say where she was, anywhere in here. There’s no dateline or anything, it just says ‘somewhere in the Oregon woods,’ and that doesn’t tell us enough.”

  Bubba growled, and tapped a claw-tipped finger insistently on the word OREGON.

  “Bubba,” Rodney said, “hop out of the car for a minute, okay?”

  The pair climbed out and stood by the road; Rodney waved an arm to take in the entire surrounding countryside, a broad vista of hills and forests extending seemingly forever.

  “Bubba,” he said, “that’s the Oregon woods. Everything you see, and a lot more besides.”

  Bubba stared for a moment, then made a noise that Rodney could only liken to a strangled kitten. The huge creature turned and stared helplessly at Rodney.

  Rodney thought for a moment the sasquatch was going to cry.

  “Hey, don’t worry, Bubba,” he said. “We’ll find her somehow. You just come
with me.”

  * * * *

  “I tell you, Bubba, I felt really stupid buying this thing,” Rodney said, as he thumbed through the latest issue of Midnight News. The two of them were seated in the Plymouth, parked in front of a drugstore in Milton-Freewater, Oregon. “Oh, here we go, page 6—Midnight News, editor, managing editor, yadda yadda yadda…telephone! Editorial, area code 407…” He lowered the paper. “Where the heck is area code 407?”

  Bubba just stared silently at him.

  * * * *

  Area code 407 turned out to be central Florida; the address was further down the block of tiny print on page 6.

  “Figures,” Rodney said in disgust, as he dialed the motel-room phone. “The damn opposite corner of the whole damn country, is all. This call is probably gonna cost more than the damn room.”

  Bubba didn’t answer; he sat and stared.

  The phone on the other end only rang once before a female voice said, “Midnight News.”

  “Hi,” Rodney said. “Look, I need to know more about something you ran in your paper—it’s very important to a friend of mine.”

  “What is it, exactly?” the voice asked warily.

  “It’s about this piece you ran in October ’87, about seeing a female bigfoot in Oregon…”

  Before he could finish, the voice cut him off. “’87?!” the woman exclaimed. “Mister, are you crazy? That was three years ago!”

  “Yes, I know,” Rodney said patiently.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t keep…” She stopped, thought better of whatever she had been about to say, and instead asked cautiously, “What did you want to know?”

  “I want to know where in Oregon this bigfoot sighting was,” Rodney explained. “It just says ‘Oregon woods.’ Oregon’s a big state.”

  “I suppose it is,” she agreed.

  “So where was this sighting?”

  “Mister, is there a by-line on the article you’ve got there?”

  Rodney blinked, and squinted at the yellowed clipping. “Uh…yeah,” he said. “Special correspondent Maurice Betterman, it says.”

  “Moe Betterman?” The voice sighed. “Well, at least I know who that is; he’s a freelancer, still writes for us sometimes. Lives in Eugene.”