by T. J. Klune
“You almost despised me.”
“Almost.”
“And now you don’t.”
“Now I don’t.”
“Because….”
Gary breathed more on his face, nostrils flaring. Then (finally), “Unicorns are fickle creatures. I don’t need a reason to change my mind. It’s been done and you should just accept it and be thankful I no longer plot to murder you in your sleep.”
“Testify,” Tiggy said.
“So now you have affection for me,” Ryan said, “and you—”
“I didn’t say affection. I said I liked you, not that I’m ready to pick out curtains. Gods. Calm the fuck down. You’re engaged to be married. I will not be your dirty little secret. I am a strong, independent unicorn, and I will not take your shit.”
“—and you came to this sudden realization after listening to what are supposed to be the ranting and ravings of an ancient wizard. Not to mention things were discussed in said ranting and ravings that have made all of you strangely cagey—well, more than normal—and less than willing to answer a simple question.”
Gary inched even closer. Their noses pressed together. Ryan was going slightly cross-eyed trying to keep his gaze locked with Gary’s. “That sounds about right,” Gary said, never blinking.
Ryan flinched and pulled away as Gary let out a particularly loud breath of air.
“I win!” Gary crowed. “Unicorn one, supposed Knight Commander zero!”
Tiggy held out his fist. Gary bumped it with his hoof.
“Are you guys done?” I asked.
“Sam?” Ryan asked.
I averted my eyes, finding something interesting to stare at on the horizon. “What?”
“What’s a cornerstone? Why is it important?”
Tiggy and Gary looked at me and waited.
So I looked at Ryan and said the only thing I could. “We’re running out of time to get Justin back. We need to keep moving.”
I turned and started walking down the road, trying to calm my racing heart.
I didn’t look back.
Eventually, the others started following me.
CHAPTER 17
Gary Is an Asshole and Other Stories
“SAM.”
I ignored him.
“Sam.”
I marched resolutely forward.
“Sam. Sam. Sam.”
It was such a nice day outside.
“Sam.”
Not too warm. The breeze felt good.
“Sam. SamSamSamSamSam.”
“What?” I snarled at Gary.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Hi. You got something you want to talk about?”
“No.” I made sure not to glance back where Ryan and Tiggy were walking a bit behind us. We were halfway to Tarker Mills and this was the first time Gary had managed to get me reasonably alone ever since Randall opened his fucking mouth. I’d plotted at least fifty-seven ways that I could kill him, each more violent and gory than the last. I was almost scared how bloodthirsty I seemed to be. But then I reminded myself what Randall had spilled and I really didn’t give a fuck.
“So, you don’t have anything to say at all.”
“Not a word.”
“No… stone unturned?”
“Nope.” I was able to stop myself before I punched him in the face. Barely.
“When I was little, you know what I wanted to be when I grew up?”
“I don’t care.”
“A stonemason.”
“Oh my gods.”
“When I was a wee slip of a unicorn. I went through a rebellious stage. Got stoned a lot.”
“Gary.”
“Sometimes when you get angry, your face gets stony.”
“Gary.”
“My mother once gave me a piece of advice. She said a rolling stone gathers no moss.”
“Are you done?”
“Yes. No. Wait. Did you hear I was sick last week? I had kidney stones. Okay. Now I’m done.”
I glared at him. He smiled back at me.
We walked on.
“So,” he said less than ten seconds later because he couldn’t drop anything. Ever. “We gonna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
“Like, not at all.”
“Not at all.”
“We gonna talk about how you didn’t tell me?”
“Nope.”
“Huh,” he said. Then, “Well, I’m going to talk about it.”
“I would really rather you didn’t.”
“Of course you would. Because you’re about to feel my wrath.”
“Gross.”
“Not like that! Stop making it weird.”
“I’m talking to a hornless unicorn named Gary. It’s already pretty weird.”
“Point. Now. First things first. When are you going to sink your ass down on his cock?”
I tripped and almost fell.
“Hmm,” Gary said with a frown. “Maybe I should have gone with a different approach.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I hissed at him. “You can’t just say stuff like that. He might hear you!”
Gary rolled his eyes. “Oh please. Tiggy is keeping him distracted for me.”
“You planned this?”
“You always have to have a plan when you are going into battle.”
“I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”
“Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. SamSamSamSam—”
A WEEK later, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a cold nose pressing against my face. I groaned and cracked an eye open.
Big unicorn nostrils right in my face. I could hear Ryan’s and Tiggy’s snores from the other side of the fire. Gary had been on watch.
“What?” I croaked.
“What are you doing?” His breath smelled of cinnamon and apples. Apparently it was a unicorn thing to have delightful odors.
“Sleeping.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“So.”
“So?”
“I thought of another one.”
“Another what?”
“Did you hear about what happened to the murderers in Falquist?”
“What? What are you talking about? What murderers?”
He leaned closer and whispered in my ear, “They were stoned to death.”
He never blinked.
“Oh my gods,” I muttered, pushing his face as hard as I could. “Did you wake me up just so you could tell me that?”
“Yes. Obviously. Tell me.”
“Fuck off.” I rolled on my side and pulled the scratchy blanket over my head.
Right before I fell back asleep, I heard him whisper, “I’m never going to forget this. You will succumb to the power of the unicorn.”
I WOKE up the next morning to a pile of stones next to my head.
Tiggy laughed.
Ryan’s eyes narrowed.
Gary said, “Wow. How did that happen?”
GARY WASN’T getting what he wanted from me, so four days later he went a different direction.
“So, Ryan,” he said quite loudly. “I feel like we don’t talk very much.”
I gritted my teeth but continued walking down the road. It was a beautiful day out and I was going to fucking enjoy it. Tiggy was chattering happily at my side about butterflies and bacon, and I was doing my best to pay attention to him.
“That’s because we don’t,” Ryan said.
“Well. I feel like that’s something to be rectified. Since, you know. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other. For the rest of our lives.”
My hands curled into fists.
“That right?” Ryan asked. “How do you figure?”
“Oh. Well. I’m sure we’ll leave no stone unturned to find the Prince. One day soon, you’ll turn a corner and he’ll be there with the dragon. We’ll defeat it and live happily ever after and Sam will be a great wizard and you’ll be… wait. What are you supposed to be again?”
“King Consort,”
Ryan said. He sounded strained for some reason.
“Riiiight,” Gary said. “That was it. I’d forgotten. Forgive me. So.”
“So?”
“We need to become friends. Tell me everything about you. Your hopes. Your dreams.” Gary’s voice dropped. “Your fantasies.”
Tiggy babbled on, “…and that bacon we had one time in castle. Good bacon. Good, good bacon. I….”
“My what now?” Ryan asked.
“Your fantasies, Ryan. We’re having girl talk. If that’s too much for you, I can go first.”
“Please don’t,” Ryan said.
“Okay. We can wait until the campfire later to talk about that. I’ll eat some grass, you can eat your old can of beans, and you can tell me how you like to get tied up and spanked or whatever knight commanders are into.”
I choked and coughed.
“You okay up there, Sam?” Gary called.
“Just fine,” I said without turning around.
THAT NIGHT, by the fire.
“How are those beans?” I heard Gary ask Ryan.
“Dry.”
“Poor baby. So. You ready?”
“For what?”
“Girl talk.”
“Uh.”
“This one time, I got fisted by a large selkie named Honest Frank. His name was a bit of a misnomer because everyone knows selkies lie about everything. That being said, he didn’t lie about punching my asshole.”
“Oh my gods.”
“Right? It was a most eye-opening experience. Your turn.”
“Oh my gods.”
“Ever been fisted by a selkie, Ryan?”
“No!”
“Oh. It’s kind of like being with a merman, but less fishy.”
“I’ve never been with a merman!”
“Seriously? What kind of mystical creatures have you been with?”
“Oh my gods. None.”
“Really?” Gary puffed out his chest. “I could change that. If you feel the need.”
“Gary!” I snapped.
He looked at me, fluttering his eyelashes. It looked amazing. Fucking unicorns. “Yes, Sam?”
“Cut it out.”
“Cut what out, Sam?”
“You know what.”
“I’m just trying to get to know the Knight Commander. After all, he’s going to be living only a stone’s throw away from us for the rest of our lives.”
“Gary.”
“Ha,” Tiggy said. “Stone.”
“I feel like something’s going over my head,” Ryan said.
“Do you feel like that a lot?” Gary asked. “Because you look like you feel that way a lot. Missing things. That are right in front of you. I know too many people like that.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know that many people.”
“Exactly,” he said.
I frowned. “I get the feeling you’re being a dick.”
“Oh? You think so?”
“Quite possibly.”
Gary looked back at Ryan. “You’ve been working out, right? You seem bigger than you did a year ago.”
He shrugged. “I guess. Gained a stone or two of muscle.”
“A stone or two of muscle,” Gary said, slowly turning his head toward me. “How. About. That.”
I threw my jar of beans at his head.
WE WERE four days outside of Tarker Mills when we stopped in the hamlet of Arvin’s Crossing and treated ourselves to staying at an actual inn with a bed rather than another night on the cold, hard ground.
There was a tavern in the inn that served strange-smelling fish that made me wish for the beans again. The customers at the bar were in awe of Gary and Tiggy and kept touching them. I kept an eye on them as I poked the fish with a stunted metal fork. I swear to the gods it blinked at me.
“I can’t tell if this is fresh or has been dead a really long time,” I muttered.
Ryan made a face. “Either way, I don’t think I can eat it.” He pressed his fork against the fish on his plate and some viscous liquid shot up into the air. He turned a little green as he pushed the plate away. “I would send it back, but I think the cook only had one eye and a dirty mustache. You can’t send food back to a man with one eye and a dirty mustache.”
Against my better judgment, my curiosity was piqued. “And why is that?”
He shrugged. “One-eyed dirty mustache men are more likely to murder you.”
“Is that so? Done an official study on it, have you?”
“Past experience.”
“I don’t know what that says about you as a person that you’ve had enough experiences with one-eyed men with dirty mustaches in order for you to be able to say that most if not all are murderers.”
“Gay fairy married,” he said, voice deadpan. “Dark wizards. Fairy drag mothers. Dragons. Magic mushrooms. Penis noses. Pseudo-elves that want to take your virginity. Everyone that wants to take your virginity.”
“It is a precious thing,” I agreed. “I can’t wait to give it away.”
He scowled at me. “Just hand it off, will you?”
I rolled my eyes. “It becomes a burden to carry after a while. Why are we even talking about this? We were making fun of you.”
He eyed me for a moment. Then, “Before we left, I ran into one of those fan clubs you were talking about.”
“Oh?” I managed to say, as if I hadn’t just started sweating like a motherfucker. “That right?”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah. Strangest thing, I’ll admit. There was a woman there… well, a girl really. She seemed to be in charge of the group.”
“She wishes,” I muttered. “That bitch.”
“What?”
Oh shit. “I said, no more fishes because they make me itch.” I made a show of pushing the dinner plate away. “So how was it meeting your adoring fans?” My voice was tinged with what I hoped to be the perfect amount of sarcasm. In reality, it came out slightly strained.
“Intense. Very… intense. They wanted me to sign stuff. Like papers and thighs.”
“You poor dear. It must have been so hard to have everyone fawning over you.”
He shrugged. “They were sweet. Well, most of them were. There was a guy there.”
“Oh?” I said. I wondered if it was considered okay if I set something on fire to cause a distraction. Like a chair. Or Gary.
“Named Martin? No. Wait. Mervin.”
“Sounds foreign,” I said. “Must not be from around here. You’ll probably never see him again. You should probably forget all about him. Forever. Are you tired? I’m tired and—”
“Said he was a Sam Girl.”
“A what now?” I smiled to show that I thought it was amusing, but it came out as a grimace because I was freaking out.
“Sam Girl,” he repeated. “Apparently it’s a thing. Like Foxy Ladies.”
“I’ll be honest,” I said. “The fact that you just said Foxy Ladies really made my day. Say it again.”
“Foxy Ladies.”
“Yeah. Didn’t have the same effect that time. Maybe not say it so growly.”
“Mervin wasn’t very happy to see me,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair. “Said he wasn’t a fan.”
“Can’t win them all, am I right?” I forced a hearty laugh to show this was just between us bros and that I understood completely. “Bros before hoes,” I said and immediately cringed internally.
“What?”
Shit. “Uh… never mind. Thinking about something else. Like hoes. And bros.”
“What about them?”
“I have no idea,” I said honestly.
He squinted at me. “You’re odd sometimes.”
“Pretty much all the time. Let’s talk about—”
“So, Mervin was a Sam Girl. Not a Foxy Lady at all.”
“Oh, we’re still going to talk about that,” I said. “That’s super.”
“Did you know about that? Sam Girls?”
Of course I did. I had invented the term. “Nope. I had n
o idea.”
“Apparently it’s a big thing.”
“As it should be. I’m awesome.” I shouldn’t have said that.
“True. You don’t seem very surprised.”
“That I’m awesome?”
“Sam.”
“I am awesome.”
“HaveHeart is apparently a thing too,” he said, not once taking his eyes away from me.
So I said, “It’s always nice to have a heart.”
“No, that’s not what it means. It means you and me.”
“There is no you and me,” I said.
Something flickered across his face. Something I couldn’t quite make out. It almost seemed like hurt and pain, but it was gone behind the mask he usually wore, stoic and strangely charming. “True. Rystin was the other one. You know. For me and Justin.”
“Very fitting,” I said. Rystin sounded like a contagious genital disease. “It suits you two.” I chose that moment to glance over at Tiggy and Gary so Ryan wouldn’t see through my bullshit. They were off in some corner, whispering to some stranger, looking back over at us and then whispering some more. Gary was plotting. This wasn’t going to end well.
“I just thought it was fascinating,” Ryan said. “People pairing us up like that. I wonder what that was about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. We belong together! “Must be something they see that we don’t.” Put your dick in me! “Absolutely no idea.” All the ideas! I have all the ideas!
“Anyway,” he said, “I signed some autographs. The leader or whatever. She was very adamant. Tiffany, I think her name was.”
“Tina,” I said.
His eyes widened slightly.
I blanched. “Teee naaa,” I said like a moron. “Tina. Go. Tinago Fall. Is a waterfall. In the Luri Desert. And that is your fun fact for the day. Because geography is knowledge and knowledge is power.” I gave him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I probably looked a little manic.
“Knowledge is power,” he repeated. “You okay there, Sam?”
“Now that you mention it, I’m kind of—”
“So, as I was saying, you were right about the fan clubs.”
“Of course I was,” I said. “I’m right about most things. And the things I’m not right about are frivolous and have no bearing on anything anywhere. Ever.” I looked back at Gary and Tiggy in time to see Tiggy slipping some money to the man they were talking to. That was definitely not good.